This is life

Reflections on 4th of July in Bulembu

2007-07-23T08:23:00.000-07:00

One day I thought it would be fun
to go and play out in the sun.

But then the sun did not come out,
So I sat and tried not to pout.

It was Independence Day,
so volleyball I wanted to play.

But the rain would not go away,
so in my house I had to stay.

But in my house things went awry,
I saw the water tap had run dry!

And on top of that the microwave broke,
I thought to myself "Is this day a joke?"

I chopped the onions and made some food,
but my hands were dirty so I was in a mood.

We decided the weather could not ruin our spirit,
Red, white and blue-no matter what we would wear it!

So we sported our capri pants with socks pulled up high,
and our jersies with hoods to help keep us dry.

And onward we went to the nice Chinda Place,
to celebrate this day with every different race.

Then we sang all the American songs that we knew,
but the Brits couldn't remember their own anthem, 'tis true.

We played "baseball" with a spoon and a bun,
and rounded the "bases" fast as we could run.

We ate burgers and salads and then apple pie,
and shot fireworks up high in the sky.

But after all this the fun had to end,
we knew the kitchen was a mess-we could no longer pretend.

So we rushed home to do the piles of dishes,
and concluded our day sharing our thoughts and wishes.

I have a plan

2007-07-02T07:53:00.000-07:00

So the plan is that I will be leaving Africa on August 11th and spending a few days in England...then flying back to Dallas August 17th to LIVE IN AMERICA. I have lived overseas for 3 years now and it is time to return to the homeland. I will be living with my brother and his wife in Frisco until I can get my life sorted out-get a job, some friends to live with, a car, etc. I would like to be closer to Denton because Darren lives there...so we will see. If anyone knows about an awesome job opportunity in DFW or a great used car for me to buy or some fun people I can live with...please let me know.

Things are Happening

2007-06-19T08:11:00.000-07:00

This past Sunday was pretty hectic. Africa is a crazy place, I will say that. It is certainly different than America in a whole lot of ways...I mean that's obvious right? But I'm talking about spiritually. In America we don't see a ton of witchcraft, ancestral worship, witchdoctors, and curses. But those things are fairly prevalent here. I'll get into all of that in a minute...before the hectic news regarding those things, we had some other news come in the morning. At about 9 a.m. one of our Swazi friends came to let us know that little Tevi was doing really poorly in the hospital. She had gone in Thursday with bad stomach problems and they talked about doing surgery Friday, but thought she wasn't strong enough. Apparently Saturday they discovered that she had holes in her bowels (???) and did surgery. Sunday morning she was doing so badly that the hospital called the sisters (the Anglican nuns that run the girls home here) and said that they didn't know how long she would hold on. The sisters left immediately to head to the hospital which is a couple hours away and they were able to spend several hours with Tevi. She seemed to be doing a little better and the sisters headed back. But soon after they left Tevi did pass away. So we got that news Sunday night. She was 11 and absolutely precious and we were blessed to have the last few months with her. Most of us truly believe that she came here to be loved and to know God's love. Maybe you remember me saying that she had spent the previous 5 months of her life abandoned in the hospital and was severely malnourished and depressed. So when I first saw her and she came to be in my class, I did not know how or why she was still alive. I couldn't understand HOW she was physically still alive. She was obviously holding on for something. Well, what she found here in Bulembu was love love love. We adored that precious girl and welcomed her into our school and into the Jacaranda girls home and we had a great time with her. She suffered so much with the diseases inflicting her body and she experienced so much pain, we are glad to know that her last days were wonderful and that she is now dancing in Heaven with Jesus. That's the beauty of our future hope! But of course it's been hard and we miss her so much. I guess I never really thought I would have to actually encounter this-losing a student out of my class or even our school-I guess I thought it was something that might happen sometime in the future...but not now while I'm here...not til after I was gone. But it has become a sad reality for all of us here.
Then Sunday night Alison and I were waiting and waiting for the girls (housemates) to get home from church and we just watched the clock until it had been 2 hours since church had let out!! We were really confused as to what they could possibly doing!! Well they finally got home and let us know the craziness that had gone on that evening at church, and in the morning at the church in Piggs Peak. To make a very long story short-Sunday morning this Swazi woman, Ntombi, who has had a close relationship with Kara for about 9 months (Kara seriously has been helping this woman so much...but I can't possibly begin to explain the depths of it) was set free from 4 demonic spirits that were possessing her. But they believe there is still one more inside of her. I know this all sounds crazy but I promise you that even though you probably have never seen this stuff in America, it is certainly happening here. It probably happens in America more than we realize too. I actually prayed at a similar thing last November when a young woman was possessed. None of us girls have ever seen this stuff and we certainly don't have a reference file for it, but we just pray in the spirit as we are led. Anyway, that night at church this other woman had a similar thing happen and our housemate Gennie was down at the church praying for almost 4 hours with a few other people. She has not yet been set free though. But we know that God is at work in this place and Nomsa will also be set free. The really interesting thing is that these 2 women were raised on the same homestead and probably have the same curses placed on them by Ntombi's stepmother. Crazy crazy crazy, I know. It all sounds bizarre and crazy but it is real. Praise God that people are being set free. We are praying and fasting our lunch times this week for these women and the children's center in the village and for Bulembu in general. Please keep us in your prayers especially during this time. Thanks!

MOO

2007-06-16T04:06:00.000-07:00

So our main source of entertainment over the last few weeks has been THE COWS. The interesting thing about them is that sometimes you don’t see them for so long and then suddenly you see them on a daily basis for the next month. They are vagabonds. Our first big “encounter” with them was a few weeks ago at about 10:30 at night when we were in bed going to sleep, but not asleep yet. Well, my housemate Kara and I have moved our mattresses into the lounge so we can sleep there because that room is much warmer and it is winter now so the nights are super cold, and obviously we do not have indoor heating systems here. So we hear this extremely loud running noise-many feet, not just one set, crazily stampeding around our house/in our yard. Well, we think some people are trying to invade our house and are about to fly through the door or window and rob us or something crazy, because this is definitely not a normal noise…and we are both super scared at this moment-so Kara is under her blanket shivering in fear and I start screaming TWINS!! TWINS!! Because of the 16 year old british twins that are the daughters of our principal-whom often play practical jokes on us and run down the stairs to our house, etc. and I knew the noise was not made by just ONE person…so to me, this made sense. Also, the screaming would, in my mind, let the criminals that I truly believed were outside (I didn’t completely think it was the twins, I thought we were gonna get robbed) know that we were in fact awake and ready for them-so they couldn’t just barge in on us without us knowing. Does this make sense? Anyway, kara’s like “Lindsey, shut up!!” Because she is so scared, but I am convinced, in my fear, that this will definitely keep the people out! I also was yelling for our third roommate Julie to come into the lounge because I thought she should probably be in the “safe” lounge with us at this time. So she comes running in and jumps on the beds with us. Then the noise stops and we just sit and wait to see if it’s really done. Finally, we go to sleep. Next morning we leave the house to go to school and we see CRAZY HOOF PRINTS everywhere!! All over in our little garden. Apparently the cows stampeded through our yard, but it is a mystery has to how they got in and out because there are gates on both sides!!
Then a few days later we are asleep and it is 3:30 a.m. and Kara and I both hear a MOO so loud that we actually wake up and say “Did you hear that? Was that a cow?” We wait a second to confirm and, yes, there it is again-a second extremely loud moo. Are the cows living outside of our window?? We do not know.
A few days later we are jogging down this one road and we encounter 3 cows, but we don’t know if it’s safe to pass them or if they’ll get upset with us or what…so we walk past. Then we get to another road on the other side of the little valley, and encounter 3 more cows that are in our way as we jog. Weird.
A few days later we are standing outside at the school during break time and we see this massive herd of cows running up the road and several minutes later a huge tractor comes down the road and chases the cows down the hill that they were just running up like 40 seconds earlier. We laughed a lot at that one. Watching the cows run up and down the hillside road is quite funny.
So goes life in The Bu. We have weird, abnormal things happen pretty much daily. Always an adventure, that's what we say here. Nothing is ever a surprise. It's such a strange and unique place and culture.

My Two Week Holiday

2007-05-19T02:00:00.000-07:00

It’s always so strange/difficult to write a blog after not having written for a while because so much happens in between and then I can’t possibly write it all or think of it all so it becomes a boring blog to read. Oh well. Here is my update. My dad and stepmom and Darren, my boyf, all arrived in Bulembu April 25th and we headed out on our wild road trip adventure the 26th. It was awesome. We probably did too much in too little of a time though, because almost every place we went I felt like I wanted to spend about 5 days in…not only a few hours or one day. We didn’t spend much time in Swaziland. Headed down to a province called KwaZulu Natal to visit a Zulu village and a game park for a day safari. Good stuff. The game park was super beautiful with rolling green hills and trees. We saw lots of animals-elephants, monkeys, giraffes, rhinos, wildebeest, birds, impalas, warthogs…and who knows what else. Safaris are fun. Went to Durban for 2 nights and I got to see my South African friend Sarah, so that was really nice. We stayed at a great hostel that was across the street from the beach. Very nice. It had several different little cabins/buildings and the bathroom was up at the highest point so you actually had an amazing view of the coast from the showers!! From there we went to the greatest place ever, Cintsa. This place must be the best kept secret of SA. What an amazing location!! We stayed at the greatest hostel EVER, which was situated on a hill-again it was many separate cottages. The main office/house had balconies with incredible views of the lagoon and the ocean. So did the breakfast/dinner room. They had a private lagoon where you could use their free kayaks. They offered yoga classes, surf lessons, sand volleyball, a climbing wall, a great pool and sundeck, and a secluded beach. What more could you ask for? It sounds like I just completed an advert for them huh? Well they did hire me as their new marketing manager. Obviously. Anyway, the place was stellar and I would like to return there for 6 months to work and live, but that is an unlikely dream. The trip after that mainly consisted of the Garden Route, which is probably the most beautiful part of the country. I don’t know for sure, but I think it must be. Mountains, forest, ocean. Unbelievable natural beauty everywhere!!! My dad bungy jumped off the highest bungy jump bridge in the world!!! 216 meters. It was madness. I felt so proud! My dad. What a guy. My stomach turned just looking out at the massive gorge and not even having to be near it. I could not believe that people even WALKED on the bridge, but to JUMP off?? Crazy.
Capetown was pretty rad. It’s such a cool city because of the location. The main part of the city lays at the foot of Table Mountain and stretches out to the coast. How great is that. It reminded us of San Francisco. Darren and I got to stay there for 6 days, which was perfect because there is so much to do. I think we both could have stayed longer though. It would be a nice place to live because there are several great beaches and beautiful areas and lots of cool stuff to do. Unfortunately there is a lot of crime there. It’s pretty bad. We actually didn’t experience it personally until the last day we were there, luckily…otherwise we probably wouldn’t have had as nice a time. The last day we were walking down a busy street and a guy came next to Darren and kept asking him for money. He repeatedly said he couldn’t give the guy any, but then the guy said something like “don’t make me use a knife” or something to that effect…luckily I did not hear him say that but I did try and tug Darren’s arm to pull him away from the guy because he was walking way to close to Darren and hassling him. We got away without any problems.
So now I am back in the Bu and busy working working working! It’s nice to be with my housemates again, but sadly we are one short-Cass went back to the states for a month and a half-hopefully! She should be back mid June after God provides all the money she needs for the year. We miss her dearly because she is pretty much the funniest girl ever. So we are praying that Cass and Gennie return June 14th together so our little house will be full of laughter again! The end.

It's Been A While

2007-04-15T04:04:00.000-07:00

I recently realized that I haven’t written in a while…maybe in part because I think only about 3 people actually read this and I’ve also been busy and unsure about what to write. But I have some things to write about!! Probably anyone that reads this received my email update and heard about Phetsile. It’s so amazing because every day she is happy and smiley and joyful. It’s awesome. Now we are pouring into Tevi (newest little girl who is 11 and weighs about 35 pounds and was severely depressed after losing both of her parents and being left in the hospital for the last 5 months) lots and lots and watching her come back into herself. She has a precious personality that is coming out. This week she has been smiling so much every day…and she is talking and laughing and saying funny things. It’s remarkable. She’s still not much more than skin and bones, but she is actually gaining weight and looking better. She makes me smile!
Last weekend for Easter we had a nice 4 day weekend, so my housemates and I went to a very beautiful area in the province north of us (Mpumalanga) to see some beautiful sights. We had such a great time together. On Friday we drove up to Nelspruit, the nearest town in SA that has a mall with a cinema and restaurants and lots of stores. We stayed the night there and then drove up Saturday to a tiny town called Graskop. It was really beautiful and reminded me of being in America because there were several small mountain towns with lots of cute little shops and cafes. So nice!! We stayed at a little hostel in Graskop. The weather was overcast and rainy and pretty cold, but we were still able to see many beautiful things. We went to a couple of waterfalls, a massive canyon called Blyde River Canyon, a rock formation called the Three Rondavels, and a gorge with these little pools of water called Bourke’s Luck Potholes. I’ll put some pictures below. We also went to this tiny church for Easter Sunday and there were about 30 people there. It was precious. We sang with the organ and the older lady in the back row who sang to her own tune. Greatness. We loved it. So the whole weekend was really nice and much needed.
We are learning siSwati now!! It is such a hard language to learn. There is so much that doesn’t make sense. I guess it’s like that for most languages. They don’t have masculine and feminine/she or he at all in their language apparently. To make things plural or possessive or first or third person could be any sorts of different prefixes and suffixes…it seems there’s no rhyme or reason to it. Some things follow the same rules but I don’t know how you figure it all out. It’s pretty crazy. Then there are the clicks.
And lastly we have been able to do more “community service” work lately in our spare time J Two weeks ago we got to help paint the outside of a foster house and yesterday we got to paint and clean up the inside of another house. We were all talking about how we really would enjoy doing service projects like we do on missions trip because it just unifies people to work together like that and it’s always fun! So now we are trying to incorporate those types of things into our lives more. That’s about it for what’s been going on here I guess. Only 10 days until Darren, Dad, and Lynda get here!!!

I miss driving

2007-03-23T12:42:00.001-07:00

You people in America probably don't even enjoy driving all that much, but let me tell you that it is a wonderful gift. It is a fun thing. I miss it so much. I didn't realize how much I missed it until I drove about one mile tonight in Julie's car. It was beautiful. I felt so free! So, next time you are driving, thank the Lord that you have a car and that you have freedom to go wherever you want in that car! You are blessed.

Who Am I?

2007-03-10T02:31:00.000-08:00

I am a mother to some of these motherless children, a friend to everyone, a teacher to my class, a lifeguard to the students of our school, a missionary of the Lord, a discipler to Ncobile, Nomvula, and Fikelephi, a traveler of the world, a follower and disciple of Christ, a student of everyone and everything around me, a work in progress, a photographer of the things I see, a cook for “my family,” a piece of clay being formed and reformed, a writer of my life and experiences, a counselor to these children, a leader, a follower, a woman.
It depends on the day and the time and the moment…but at one point or another I am one or many of these things everyday. I am learning so much in my life. I am learning about myself. I am learning about others. I am learning about God. I am being stretched sometimes more than I could have imagined I would be stretched. I am being challenged all of the time. I am working hard. I am building relationships. I am forming unbreakable bonds. I am constantly learning. I am experiencing life abundantly and I am loving it. (Most of the time anyway).
I am dependent on Jesus Christ. I truly rely on him for my strength. He is my provider. He is my counselor, friend, teacher. So things are good.

Highlights From The Past Week

2007-03-03T02:15:00.000-08:00

Megan (Megan and Carl are a young married missionary couple here. They have a 4 year old daughter, have been here one year, and will be here at least 4 more) had her baby and they named him Nathan after much discussion and debate on the topic. He was born and without a name for the entire first day of his life, so we were all calling him Noname Vonderhaar. He is beautiful and perfect and precious and tiny and healthy.
The ABC children’s home received a new baby about a month old and I have been going up most evenings to hold her and feed her. She is tiny and precious also. She was abandoned and found, I believe, in a bush-near the Mozambique/Swaziland border. She was dehydrated and taken to the hospital…and then Robyn and Jerry (founders of ABC) were called. She’s doing so well now!
Spent last Saturday afternoon at ABC playing cards, ping pong, chatting, holding the baby, etc. It was super fun and I am excited about spending more time with the kids this year.
Church Sunday night was awesome and we had many kids come up to say that they want to be a God seeking generation. I was praying over Ncobile and she started sobbing-I could feel her shaking so I knew she was crying-She turned to me and I held her as she wrapped her arms around me just wept into my chest. It broke my heart. We went outside to talk and she sobbed for so long-her tears were streaming down my chest. She told me that her dad left her home alone when she was 6 and didn’t come back-so she crawled out the window and went to her aunt’s house-and she’s never seen her dad since. She went to the Jacaranda girls’ home soon after and has been there ever since. She’s now 12. She is so special to me…I can’t explain it…but we have a special bond. She is a quiet girl, but she is really beginning to open up to me and I love that she is able to do that.
Saturday night we had a bring and share with all of the teachers…we watched “Lean on Me.” It was good fun. A night of inspiration!
My mp3 player got stolen last Friday when I was playing squash. I thought it would have been returned/found by now because the battery is surely dead and now it’s of no use to anyone else. Shame.
Watermelon. So good. So summery. Simply stunning.
I feel like God is growing me and challenging me in patience and selflessness. Two areas in which I will never “arrive,” but will always be developing.

Is This My Life or a Reality TV Show

2007-02-26T09:40:00.000-08:00

Sometimes my housemates and I wonder about this very question. Life in the Bu is simply different from ANYWHERE else. We are certain of that. Unfortunately, it’s indescribable in full, but lets just take this evening for example (but realizing of course that events, happenings, occurrences similar to this and weirder and just random odd things happen almost daily). So we got home around 8 p.m. tonight and there was this massive spider on the ceiling of the bathroom. Spider was busy eating a moth. The spider was first seen this a.m. behind/above the toilet. He hung around all day. So the 3 girls in that room wanted to kill him so they could get to sleep. But how exactly? What would be the best approach? Well, first Gennie (who is not quite 5 feet tall) decides she’ll climb up on a shelf and somehow jump and get the spider or something like that. We decide against that since she’s very short and the shelf would probably break anyway. We decide that Cass, the tallest, will spray the spider with RAID to disorient him and then he’ll get the broom. Everyone goes to their places. I am recording the entire thing on video and so is Kara, Gennie is waiting with another broom in hand, Julie just stays out and watches. Cass stands on the edge of the tub and sprays the RAID, which makes the crazy spider scurry away a bit and then fall from the ceiling to the floor, where Gennie attacks him with the broom. It was all very exciting and there was a lot of screaming and commotion. It was a huge, 20 minute long ordeal. It may not sound that exciting, but I think the size of the spider and the way it was handled made it very exciting. The whole time, there was a gecko on the wall witnessing, but we just left him alone. Then I walk into my bedroom and up to my bed where I see a little lizard run across my bed and jump onto the floor. This freaks me out way more than the spider because I HATE LIZARDS. They move so fast, it’s creepy. So we continue in the killing/capturing of creatures. I’m yelling, so they all run into my room with brooms and the flashlight. The lizard was under my bed and he disappeared into a hole for a while, but finally resurfaced and then Julie captured him in a cup and released him outside. Thank goodness. So after all of that, we were able to go to sleep in semi-peace.
Life just doesn’t seem normal when you find yourself casually saying things like "Could someone please get the DOG OUT of the classroom?" and "Look at how much of my bread the rat ate today." and "The rooster woke me up at 2 o’clock this morning, AGAIN." AND "We can’t play soccer until the cows get off the field." And "Let’s walk to the border in the morning." I am telling you, life in the Bu is like NO OTHER.

Embracing The New

2007-02-17T23:36:00.000-08:00

The old has gone, the new has come. I am living in a different house this year with different housemates; our house has rats; I recently slept all night with a gecko in my room on the wall; several people have moved out of Bulembu and some new people have come in; we have started the ACE individualized program at school; our school staff prays together every single morning before school; I saw my first poisonous snake…these are some of the new things in my life this year J It’s going to be a fantastic year. I absolutely love my life in Bulembu. It’s simple in some ways, but complex in others. Problems, struggles, and frustrations are not absent from this place, but dealing with things is different. I have a greater appreciation for just about everything. And every single day, at some point, I think to myself, “I love my life.” So that’s a pretty good place to be. I miss my boyfriend and my family and my friends, of course, but I really do have a life here and I am working and building relationships, so it’s great.
Last week the school was still not finished and so we could not begin the normal school year. So we had a sort of “summer camp” week. We played sports and games, did team building stuff, hiked, went swimming, had a field day with all sorts of relays and such, had a big scavenger hunt, made skits from a parable, etc. It was a super fun week, but we did work really hard to finish our classrooms and make the week fun for the kids. They had a blast. Now school has officially started and it is…interesting. The ACE program we are doing is SO different from anything any of us has ever experienced, so it’s really going to take some getting used to. There are all of these tedious little procedures that the kids have to do, and if they don’t do it all correctly, they get demerits, which are bad…so then they feel bad and it’s all a bit overwhelming!! But we will get through it and get used to it and then it will be great. I hope!!

Wheelbarrow races!!!

Part of our Scavenger Hunt...hanging from the soccer goal

Our waterfall in Bulembu...it's pretty awesome!

Reunion

2007-02-10T00:44:00.000-08:00

Coming back into Bulembu and seeing everyone was pretty exciting. Sometimes you don’t realize how much you miss someone until you see them again. I was so busy in America that I didn’t really miss people all that much…but then you see all the people again and it’s so wonderful! We actually didn’t get in until kind of late Friday night….it was HECTIC. On Friday, someone was meant to pick us up around 10 a.m. from the hostel. We had to leave the room by 9 or they’d charge us another night. So we left our stuff in their office (which wasn’t locked and there were people in and out) and went to find a phone to call our ride and make sure they were coming. No answer-left a message on the mobile phone. We talk to them at 10ish and they say it’ll be half an hour. They had not been to the place we were staying, but Candice had given them directions and it was right off the main road anyway. Well at 11:15 they still weren’t there, so we called again. Said they couldn’t find us and went to run an errand and it would be an hour. About 12:30 (we’ve been waiting 3 and a half hours at this point. Just sitting outside the hostel with our luggage in the Africa heat waiting) we talk to them again. They had a flat tire. Then the girl’s purse got stolen out of the car. Then they went to the police station, etc etc. So to make a long story shorter, we waited 7 HOURS. Sitting outside of the hostel for 7 hours. I was impatient. But anyway, we made it back safely and that’s the most important thing. Saturday was super fun because I got to see ALL THE KIDS. The girls from Jacaranda house, the ABC ministry kids, everyone. Plus all of the teachers and other people in the community. It was wonderful reuniting! I am all settled in to my new house now. There are 5 of us instead of 4 because Kara’s friend is here for 2 months. There is Julie from Georgia, and Kara, Gennie and Cass from Boston. It’s a fun house. The only problem is that we have rats. We have been putting out poison and they ate some, so maybe they are dead now. We are not sure.
We’ve been super busy working to get the school and everything ready for Monday the 5th. Unfortunately, things in Africa don’t usually go as planned or expected, so the desks we need for our new teaching and learning system weren’t even put in by the workers until Thursday and Friday…and they weren’t completely finished and done right. So basically we will still start school officially on Monday, but this week will be more like a summer camp program because we can’t use our classrooms right now. So we’ll be doing sports, swimming, team building, hikes, relays, etc. It actually will be way fun, so I’m looking forward to the week. It’s crazy hot though!!
Monday we had a big braai and I think the whole town was there! It was super fun. All of the kids were there and just loads of people. I enjoyed spending time with the girls. I feel like my relationship with these girls is deeper now-since I left and came back. They just seemed closer to me and were talking so much and staying really close by and wanting to sit together and everything.
In the month that I was gone there were 2 babies born and Megen and Carl’s baby is due in 3 weeks!!! It’s awesome. It’s actually shocking how much has changed though. So many people coming and going. Several people have had to move and we have some new families in as well. Very interesting. It is sad though because the people that have left/are leaving were a great part of the community. It’s too bad things have to change in that way sometimes. I suppose that’s how life goes.
We still need about 15ish scholarships for our kids…they will come to the school but we are hoping to see this money come in. It’s a lot of money-about $600 each for the year on this new Accelerated Christian Education program. It’s subsidized for the students, but that is what the actual need is for the curriculum, pay for the local teachers and monitors, and for the school and materials. So please keep us in your prayers! Be blessed.

Back to Africa

2007-02-02T06:35:00.000-08:00

I am in Africa again. It’s so beautiful!! Mountain after mountain covered in green grass and trees. It looks nothing like Texas! I am on a bus right now as I write this on my laptop. It’s a pretty bumpy ride, but the bus is nice and clean. It’s a private bus, not like the stereotypical African overcrowded ones. Candice and I are headed to a town called Nelspruit, SA. We are staying the night there and in the morning someone from Bulembu will fetch us. I am excited about getting back now, but much work lies ahead.
We have next week to prepare and then school starts February 5th.
I don’t really have much to say now. The past 5 days I was in England and it was wonderful. I had forgotten how much I loved it there. I miss it very much. I got to go on a couple of long walks in the countryside, which was always one of my very favorite things to do when I lived there. And pubs!!! Oh pubs are so great. They are so warm and quaint. I miss them very much too! Well not all of them. Some of them don’t have any character, but the ones in the little villages in the country usually do. So great. I caught up with lots of people too, which was fab. Got to spend some good quality time with Emily and Lisa Mellgard, whom I used to live with. I also got to visit with two of my favorite kids from the youth group-Emily and Robin. Another family who has moved on happened to be there visiting for the week, so I got to catch up with them also. Went to the women’s bible study group I used to attend and it’s a whole new group. The area and church is always transitioning and I really saw it in that group. But it was so nice to see those familiar faces and do some catching up. The fundraising has been excellent as well. I knew God would provide because He always does, no doubt. He has provided well for me and for many of the children in Bulembu. I am blessed to have very generous people in my life. That’s it for now.

WEIRDEST/CRAZIEST DAY OF MY LIFE, NO DOUBT

2006-11-22T07:31:00.000-08:00

Excitement in the Bu

So it’s 8:15 a.m. on Tuesday and there is a lot of commotion in Bulembu right now. Normally at this time we would be in school, but at 10 to 6 this morning we received a phone call from Cathi-another teacher-saying that there were loads of police around and they had the workers lined up and it was thought that they might be doing a TRP check. TRP’s are the Temporary Residence Permits that you must have to work in Swaziland or to be here for longer than 3 months. I am okay without one right now because my 3 months isn’t up yet. However, my 2 roommates have been here since January and do not have TRP’s. So the way this day has gone so far has been interesting because first we got that call, but we weren’t absolutely sure about it. Then, our new principle, John, came over and said that the police had been here since 11 last night and that a convict escaped from a maximum security prison in Mozambique and the police were here searching for him. We are very close to Mozambique, only a couple of hours away from the capital, Maputo. Anyway, John said we would have school at 8 as usual…but then a few minutes later Corey showed up at the door and he had just gone up to the border and talked to the border police and found out that it was, in fact, a TRP check. Back to square one, which of course is to hide out in the house. So then we were unsure whether or not we would be having school at all or just postponing. Then John returned again later and said that we would probably have school at 11, so long as the police were gone by then. We don’t know how long the police will be here though. We also don’t know if they’ll come door to door or not. So now we are just hiding out and waiting for John to come with the newest info. I think the worst that would happen is deportation. I’m not sure if they also would give a fine or something though. Who knows. Hopefully it will all pass. We have prayed about it this morning. I think it will be completely fine.
What else is going on? Oh, Brian left yesterday. He’s on his way back to America now. We will all miss him. He’s the best volleyball player!!! Plus he’s the only guy around that cooks. He’s a really good cook too. He made some cheesecake a few weeks back that was fantastic. We had a get together/going away thing for him Sunday night at our house. My South Korean roommate, Jo, was cooking him dinner because he wanted her delicious Korean food (she’s amazing). So it ended up being the feeding of the 5,000 because first she said she only was cooking for him and another guy, but then she invited several Swazi friends over, plus we had invited the other interns and people to hang out. We meant for them to all come after dinner, but everyone wanted her Korean food because it’s always so stinkin’ wonderful. So we ended up feeding about 13 people, I believe. We were worried and decided to make some pasta as well because we didn’t think there would be enough, but there actually was plenty…even some leftovers. Didn’t end up making the pasta at all. God always provides. It was cool. And then somehow there ended up being 20 people in our living room!! That’s the most ever. So we were all hanging out chatting and everything…and then Kara and I somehow decided we should turn the living room into a disco and have a dance party. So we pushed the couches back and shut off the lights and she used a flashlight as a strobe light…and we blasted some dance music from the old school and had ourselves a little party. It was hilarious!! The guys were the only ones dancing for so long, which was pretty funny. One Swazi guy, Sparky, loves to dance!!! He was entertaining to watch. But I guess we all joined in at some point. It was great fun. Then after some people cleared out we decided to play Hearts. There were about 10 of us. It’s Brian’s fave card game. We’ve been playing it a lot lately. So, needless to say, I set a new record of bedtime on a school night. I normally go to bed at 9:30-10:30 depending (because I get up around 5:30 usually), but I actually didn’t go til almost 12:30, which was shocking to some people. Brian could hardly believe it, haha, but it was a special occasion. Monday I was so tired all day though!! And then we ended up being at the school from 7:45 until 6:30 with less than a half hour break to run home and grab food at 1:30. That was a first. It’s because our new principle just returned from a training program regarding our school/curriculum for next year and we needed to start these diagnostic tests yesterday and then mark them and everything…plus have a meeting. We are down to the last few days of school though. Only like 8 days of actual school left. Then we have our big prize giving and school play on the 1st. And on the 3rd we head to Pretoria for our training in this ACE program. Training is the 4th through 8th…then I’m going on a little road trip and I fly back to America on the 14th. I’ll be in America for around 5 weeks and then head back here for the whole year!!! Exciting stuff.

Okay now it is Wednesday and I can safely and honestly say that yesterday was the most bizarre and crazy day OF MY LIFE. But I am not able to write more now, so it will have to be continued later…

Time Warp

2006-11-22T07:27:00.000-08:00

Sunday (11/12) was one of my favorite days in the Bu thus far. I got to go on a 4-wheeler around to some other parts of Bulembu and the surrounding area, that I had never been to before. There are so many little communities around that I have heard about, but not visited. Most of them are actually just other parts of Bulembu, like neighborhoods I guess. I think it’s sort of the equivalent to our neighborhoods in America that have groups of homes and a name for the area, but it’s still part of the bigger town. Anyway, we went to one place where there are 350 empty houses and this massive high school. The houses all used to be occupied and the high school was booming, but years ago when the asbestos mine closed down, so did most of the town. When we went inside the different rooms of the school there was still writing on the chalkboards, kids work strewn about, scales and chemicals in the science lab, etc. It really was like stepping back in time. Kind of surreal. This is such an awesome place, rich with history. I really enjoyed exploring the area. The only thing I didn’t enjoy was being chased by some wild horses when we were on the quad. Scary! There were 4 wild horses in a field next to the path and when we came by they took off after us. One of them was bucking and one or two just ran after us and it was seriously scary. In the matter of a few seconds I was just imaging the quad not moving fast enough and the horses catching up and kicking us to death. Luckily we made it safely.
Another place we visited was the old lab where they did all the asbestos testing, separating, etc. The lab still has all of the big machinery and huge scales and everything. There was even asbestos in the machines. There was a calendar from 2001 hanging on the wall because that was the last time the mine was open. It had been closed before that and only reopened for a short time then. I saw mail lying around and tons of paper work and things…even some bottles of sprite. It was so bizarre. Really really cool though. I love this place. I am pretty sure there’s nowhere else like Bulembu.
I also got to see some of the area back behind the main part of Bulembu, where there are just thousands of trees and gorgeous hills and scenery. It was awesome.
Saturday was a fun day too. My housemates and I went to Mbabane and Ezulwini to do some Christmas shopping and go to lunch and buy groceries. There’s this place called the Golden Mile where you can by all sorts of African craft things, mostly wooden and stone. They sell all sorts of beautiful wooden bowls, salad tongs, jewelry, animal carvings, jewelry boxes, statues, etc. Beautiful stuff. I did all of my Christmas shopping there! It’s called the Golden Mile because it is seriously long-just stall after stall that seem to go on forever. They all pretty much have the same stuff though. And we went to a Chinese restaurant which was really yummy! We don’t go out to eat at restaurants much, since there are none in Bulembu, so it’s always a big treat.
And other than that we’ve been busy practicing for the Christmas play. We are doing a creation themed play and I think it will be really great. Each class is performing to one or two songs and then at the end we’ll all come together to do a song. My class is doing the crucifixion scene, so I chose to use Love Song by Third Day, which works perfectly for my boys. Then my girls are doing Above All by Michael W. Smith. I’m so excited about the play! We are performing Decmber 1st. We also have a prize-giving that evening which is really just like an awards ceremony in America, but the prizes are things like toys and pencils and such. It’s going to be great! We are doing the whole thing in the old cinema. The cinema actually used to be a proper cinema where movies were shown and everything, so it has 250 fold down seats. I have no idea how many years it’s been closed though. The doors are broken and there’s a massive hole in the middle of the stage and it’s pretty dirty, but it should work fine. It’s a neat place. We haven’t made our props yet, so we’re having a big prop party on Saturday and trying to get everything finished.
Other breaking news: Tuesday night volleyball has really been booming and is becoming increasingly popular. Now instead of only having enough people for two teams or 4-5, we have 3 teams of 6-7 usually. It’s super fun and I think some of us end up laughing more than playing! These days we’ve been following our volleyball with cards back at my house. We’ve only played Hearts so far and this week we had 10 people so we had to play with 2 decks!! Fun stuff. That’s about it for now.

Lots to say cont. II

2006-11-11T06:23:00.003-08:00

And then there was Halloween. The Johnstons decided to have a dress-up “Harvest party.” At first we (the teachers) were very unsure what we would dress as because it isn’t like we have loads of clothes and options here. But after some creative thinking and a short visit to the warehouse, we came up with some ideas. My housemate and teacher friend Candice decided to go as Cinderella-but like half before/half after the ball. I saw a magic wand in the warehouse, so decided to go as her FGM. Since we had such limited options, I had to wear a red dress and red glasses, so I actually was the FGM from Shrek 2. I don’t even remember her, but I guess Cathi (another teacher friend) dressed me up quite well because everyone knew who I was meant to be. I even had a magic dust shaker and gray hair (thanks to baby powder). It was super fun. We had all foods and drinks in black and orange. I made mac and cheese. It was well received. I wish I could post pictures, but I really can’t.
And lastly, yesterday (Wednesday). Well, I had invited a few people over for dinner and Kara had also just told us she was staying with us for a few days because a team from Florida came and the 4 girls were staying in her house. So, Jamie and Corey (guys from Canada) were coming for dinner at 7. At about 2 o’clock we (me, Kara, Cathi, Candice) decided to take an unplanned trip to Piggs Peak. On the way out of Bulembu we were stopped by Megan, who informed us that there was a big meeting about the future of the town and the ministries and EVERYTHING being held at 7 that night. Go figure. Our lives used to be full of bring and shares, now it’s meetings. Every day, meetings. So anyway, I saw Jamie and said we had to do 6, rather than postponing, because the chicken had already thawed. Well, we didn’t get back from Piggs Peak until 5:30 and I put the chicken in the oven…but then the oven/stove soon ran out of gas!!!! Our tank was empty. So Kara and I load up all of this food we have cooking and carry it all over to her house to cook. So the guys came there, but the food still wasn’t ready by 7, so we had to turn it off and go to the meeting, which lasted til 8:30, got home and turned the oven back on and ate at 9. It was madness. I say this only to illustrate life in Bulembu. You just never know what will happen. Any normal day can become a crazy day in the blink of an eye. Unpredictability.

Lots to say cont.

2006-11-11T06:23:00.002-08:00

Joburg was great. We stayed at this 5 star hotel…hands down the nicest place I’ve ever stayed. It’s called the Emperor’s Palace and it’s this whole complex with 3 hotels and a massive Vegas style casino, performance theatres, loads of restaurants and shops, and a huge arcade area complete with a roller coaster and bumper cars (all indoors). The rooms were sweet and there was a ginormous breakfast buffet included. I had a three course breakfast. You could have absolutely anything imaginable and it was so beautiful! There was the whole cooked breakfast area (with all of the English breakfast options), every type of breakfast meat in the world, an omelette/fried eggs man to make you exactly what you wanted, cereal/yogurt/milk bar, smoothie/fresh juice bar, European breakfast with about 40 types of breads and various meats and cheeses, waffles, pancakes, flapjacks, bowls of fresh cut fruit, pastries/quiches, even sushi and noodles for the Asians! It was madness. I loved every minute of it. So the England team left on Saturday evening, but paid for Lee-Ann and I to stay an additional night so that we could drive back from Joburg on Sunday. Saturday we all went to a mall and even to the movies in the mall. It was so exciting!! (Reminder: There are NO cinemas in Swaziland) I saw Click, which was actually really good. Sunday when Lee-Ann and I drove back, she wasn’t feeling well, so I got to drive all the way back from Joburg to Bulembu (around 5 hours)! It was so exciting. I love driving and haven’t done it in about 2 months now, so it was wonderful.

Lots to say cont.

2006-11-11T06:23:00.001-08:00

Lots to say...

2006-11-11T06:23:00.000-08:00

So for days I’ve wanted to write something, but haven’t had the chance….so now that I finally do have a free minute I feel like I have loads to say. I’ll try to keep it fairly concise though and stick to the highlights. Let’s see…we’ll start with last Thursday. It wasn’t the greatest day of my life and by the time the evening came, all I wanted to do was watch Felicity. So I’m watching Felicity and Kara starts watching too…and we decide that all we feel like doing that evening is watching Felicity-so we figure we should probably have a slumber party at Kara’s that night-me, Candice, and Kara. Well…suddenly we have this major storm with thunder like you have never ever heard in your life and we think we’ll probably have a blackout. So far in the Bu we have lost electricity a few times during storms, but it always comes back on soon enough (except for at the school where we can go days or weeks without electricity sometimes). But this is a pretty hefty storm, so we decide that there is a good chance we may really have a blackout. All of the sudden Cathi is at our house and she’s taking Candice away to her house and Kara has to go home because Brian is coming to cook dinner for her and Gennie and everyone is leaving me!!! I do not want to be home alone at night with a possible blackout in the major storm. So I go with Candice and Cathi, but on the way we pick up Brian, who is walking to Kara’s in the crazy rain, and drop Kara and Brian off at the house. Well, we come back about an hour and a half later to spend the night and Brian is still at the house and dinner has not been cooked yet (it’s like 8:30 now) because it turns out the girls have no gas because someone else ran out of gas and borrowed their tank. Brian cannot cook the chicken. The gas tank finally returns, dinner gets cooked, and they eat at 9. Sometime during all of this we did lose the power and then lived the rest of the evening by candlelight and with a couple of little lanterns. It was awesome. I’m not being sarcastic, it really was. We had a blast. We ended up watching Felicity until the power in my laptop ran out. Then I fell asleep on the couch because I was so tired. It was a late night. Friday we were all super tired, but in the afternoon my friends from England came and picked me up and I went to Joburg with them for the weekend.

My very social life

2006-10-18T08:54:00.000-07:00

About this being the most social week ever…after our housemate picked us up on Tuesday we were driving home and she began explaining that every single afternoon/evening this week there was some kind of social gathering. You know how sometimes you get that feeling like you’re drowning and you just want to get your head above water? I felt like that because we were a day late back from Durban and I had to have someone substitute my class and I wasn’t fully prepared for the week because I still hadn’t met with the girl who used to teach my class and talk about what I needed to cover. We were supposed to meet before I left but have yet to meet. Anyway it was just one of those things when you suddenly realize you are going to have no ME time or ALONE time or planning time. Well you may have a little, but not a lot. But it was actually pretty fun and everything worked out alright. Tuesday night we had a surprise “kitchen tea party” (bridal shower) for this SA girl Jacqui who is getting married in December. It was really nice. Wednesday night we had this surprise going away dinner for Julie because she’s leaving for 6 weeks, but it was a flop. I don’t know why were doing it anyway since she’s coming back. It wasn’t really goodbye. Thursday afternoon there was a baby shower for a Swazi lady, but I skipped that because I don’t really know her yet. Friday there was supposed to be a dinner but we ended up not having it and had a LOST marathon instead. We only watched 5 episodes this time. And then Saturday I had the girls from my class over to watch a movie. They chose Pride and Prejudice, which was kinda funny because I’m sure they couldn’t understand half of what the actors were saying. Then we had this major volleyball tournament in the afternoon. It was like the Olympics because we had people representing America, SA, Canada, England, Swaziland. It was awesome. SA rolled in on the tipper truck (flat bed pickup sort of) wearing these SA flag banner things on their heads and SA flag t shirts they had just made. They were yelling and cheering. Then 3 of our Americans rolled in with their USA t shirts and red, white, and blue bandanas and wigs and such. After we kicked SA’s bums we had a cheer competition (just the 4 of us American girls and the 4 SA girls). It was hilarious. This is another reason why I love the Bu. Word spread about the tourney and pretty soon we had tons of kids up watching and some of the missionaries coming with their fold up chairs to watch. It was an event. Afterward we had a big braai at the other girls house. Then when the peeps left, we girls watched another 2 episodes of LOST. It was scary stuff. So yeah we had a pretty great Saturday. And tonight (Sunday) after church there’s a surprise birthday thing-a bring and share dessert get together. So the week of social events continues!! But I thing next week will be more mellow. And Monday the inspectors are coming to the school, so we had a big huge clean-up afternoon on Friday. Hopefully everything will go well and we’ll pass inspection. Saturday our team from England arrives, so that’s really exciting…see some familiar faces. Have a great week and be blessed!

Durbs

2006-10-18T07:59:00.000-07:00

Sorry I haven’t written in so long!! First I went out of town for a week when we had a school break. Then this week was the most social week of my life, so I never was able to email or blog. It’s been madness!! I’m more social now than I was in college I think. In the Bu. Weird. Anyway I went to Durban, SA to visit my friend Sarah that I met in on a cruise in Greece in July. She’s super sweet and so are her parents. We really had a blast. We did some shopping (especially for good groceries since our grocery store in Piggs Peak has about 4 aisles and no choices), went to movies, went out for meals with her friends, went to the biggest aquarium in the Southern Hemisiphere (Ushaka), went for a bunny chow, went to a huge outdoor market, and hung out. Durban is really beautiful. There are loads of trees and flowers and it’s very hilly so you get some fantastic views. My favorite tree ever is called the Jacaranda tree which is covered with beautiful lavender colored flowers. They are all over South Africa and Swaziland.
Ushaka was super awesome and a bit like Sea World in that they have a dolphin show and a seal show. Sea World is WAY better though. But it was fun to see the little shows. The aquarium part was really cool. It is absolutely amazing to see all the different types of fish God made. He’s so creative! The whole aquarium is meant to be like you’re at the bottom of the ocean in a wrecked ship, so the way it’s set up and decorated is pretty neat.
The bus we took from Durban on Monday was 4 hours late which was really frustrating. So then we didn’t get back to Mbabane, Swaziland until too late for my housemate to come get us. Mbabane is still about 2 hours from Bulembu so we were stuck there and had to stay at a hostel. But interestingly enough, there were some girls from Plano there and one of them had gone to UNT!! Crazy. Then the next morning we got a kombi from Mbabane to Piggs Peak and our housemate picked us up in Piggs Peak. A kombi is like a taxi/bus thing. They CRAM the people in like none other. I’m not gonna lie, it was pretty uncomfortable. But we got it done.
A couple other things about my Durban trip. So one night we’re sitting there watching a movie in Sarah’s living room when I notice movement out of the corner of my eye. I look up on the wall and there’s a gecko crawling around. I was like, “um, there’s a lizard on your wall” and they said “yeah there are 2 and they live there and eat the moths.” Also, they are very territorial so they hiss at each other. Pretty funny. They are actually kinda cute. Better than lizards for sure. And I ate pumpkin ravioli with a creamy walnut sauce at a restaurant. It was really good. And Sarah and her mom kept saying that I have “movie star” hair. What’s up with that? I found that hilarious. My hair is anything but “movie star” hair. But I’ll take the compliment. Okay I think that’s about it for Durbs.

Bu peeps and places

2006-10-08T12:12:00.000-07:00

Our school

Kara and some of our girls

My 5th and 6th grade class

The whole school performing songs at church

Julie, Kara, Lindsey

Brian and the ladies

Dish duty: Our favorite social activity

Lindsey, Candace, Kara, Julie

Our princesses

No Electricity

2006-09-25T06:43:00.000-07:00

We had quite a storm last Sunday night, so Monday morning when we got to school there was no electricity. There was no electricity at the school all week. When it’s sunny outside it doesn’t matter as much if there is or isn’t electricity because it’s fairly bright in the classroom then, but it was a pretty overcast week, so it was a bit of a struggle. It was also fairly cold and since there was no electricity we could not use the room heaters. But the biggest pain was probably that we could not heat up water to make ourselves a nice cup or coffee or tea during the break, which was really a bummer!!! So then we heated up water at home and brought it in a thermos and then all was good in the world again. I felt bad for the kids because they were working so hard and it was so chilly and dark…no fun. On Friday after the morning break we brought all the students up to our house (which is like 5 steps from the school grounds) and practiced singing these songs we are presenting at church on Sunday. Friday was a beautiful day so it was nice to get them out of the classroom and give them a little break.
This weekend there were around 150 people here from various places celebrating a Bulembu reunion. Apparently back in the day when Bulembu was really nice and financially stable there were loads of people living and working here at the mine. Most of the people were white, but I’m not sure where all they came from. Last night they had a big party up at the club house with a band and everything! They were playing some great music. Some of them went to the school Friday afternoon and reminisced about when they were there. I wonder what this place was like back then. Looking at the remnants now you can easily that it was quite a wonderful place in its prime.
Today my roommates went to Nelspruit, SA to fetch a team that’s coming in from Capetown. I could have gone but I decided to stay in Bu because I need to prep for teaching this week and it is a 2 hour drive there and back…and they will only be in Nelspruit for about 3 hours total. I am going there next weekend for an overnight trip anyway, so today I’m just gonna relax at home again. I’m looking forward to going to Nelspruit next weekend because they have a movie theatre and big grocery markets. I guess it’s a fairly large city. There are no movie theatres in Swaziland. I love movies.
We have a school break after this week, so I am trying to sort out a way to get over to Durban, SA to visit my friend Sarah. Durban is on the coast and is supposed to be a pretty nice place. I hope I get to go!
Have a blessed week!

Life In The Bu

2006-09-25T06:33:00.000-07:00

It’s Saturday evening and I am sitting on the couch, typing emails on my laptop. I just heard some singing from outside…sounded like praise. So I walked over to the window and looked up to the road behind our house and there I saw several teenagers (one American, the rest Swazi) who have been out and about riding their bikes…now taking a quick break to sing “Jesus Lover of My Soul” to our heavenly Father. Praise God for them. They seem to have their priorities straight. This is not something a person would normally encounter, but things are different in The Bu. Pretty sweet. The American girl is about 14 or 15 and her parents are missionaries here. What an interesting life…to be raised by your parents in a country such as this.
Anyhow…today has been extremely uneventful. I think many of my Saturdays will be like this. I am so worn out and tired by the end of the week that Saturday has to be a chill day for me it seems. Last weekend was nice and relaxing…and this one has followed the same structure. Sleep in…do some aerobics….eat some food…take some washing up to the lodge…type emails…prepare for school next week. Very calm. We had a super fun Friday night though. We (Candace and I) had the 3 American girls (Julie, Kara, and Gennie) and another South African girl called Jackie, who lives with the other 3 girls, over for dinner and a LOST marathon and slumber party. We had decided on it earlier this week. We began watching LOST season 1 last week and it is extremely intriguing…but quite creepy too. This is why we had a slumber party-girls do not want to walk home in the extreme dark after watching LOST. There are no lights in Bulembu on the roads or anywhere outside I guess…so it’s incredibly dark. The sky is pretty amazing at night though. I’ve NEVER seen so many stars in all my life. Anyhow, back to Friday night…Candace and I made a carbolicious meal consisting of some FANTASTAIC garlic bread, two types of potatoes, mixed veg, and chicken sausages. Then we started the marathon. I fell asleep during the 3rd episode we were watching, so was ready to call it quits then. But Kara and Gennie said “I thought this was a marathon!!” So I tried my hardest to stay awake for some more. Well, 8 EPISODES LATER we called it good and went to bed. 8 stinkin episodes. That’s crazy. I was totally falling asleep during the last and maybe the 7th as well. So, we went to bed at 3 a.m. Wow. I go to bed at 10 normally. 9:15 Thursday night actually. I was one tired little girl…so I slept til 11 today!! Amazing. The girls made french toast for breakfast, but I was totally out so I missed the whole thing. They saved me some.
Turns out tomorrow I get to leave the Bu for the day and go to South Africa!! We are going to Nelspruit to pick up a team of 10 coming from Capetown. They are from the same church as my roommate Candace. They will be here for the week, but I don’t know what they’re doing actually. We have teams in and out. There is another team in from America this week, but I haven’t seen any of them. So I’m really excited to go to Nelspruit because they have REAL grocery stores there and other stores too!!!
That’s about it for now. Have a blessed day!

Weekend in Bulembu

2006-09-18T06:14:00.000-07:00

So I was in Bulembu the entire weekend and it was actually pretty nice, but definitely not something I would be up for every weekend. There isn’t anything to do here, so you have to create things. This means a lot of together and having friends over, watching DVD’s on the laptop, playing games, sitting around talking, etc. So that is all pretty normal and similar to home…except there is no “going out” here. No restaurants or shops or anything. This is what I mean when I say you have to create things to do. Luckily, I REALLY REALLY like people and enjoy just hanging out so it was really a nice, fun, relaxing weekend BUT I also really really like a change of scenery/change of pace every now and again…so staying in Bulembu every weekend is just not possible! The problem is that I do not have a car, so we’ll see what happens.
I taught all day Thursday and Friday and it went really well. It’s an extremely tiring job though! Wow. Like I said before, these kids have a difficult time grasping new concepts, so math is really a challenge. We will persevere and just do the best we can! Thursday night we had a big thing at the community center with sports/games, worship, skits, a talk, and some food at the end for the people. There were 200 people there!!! How crazy is that! It was the first one, so this week they expect more people once word gets out about the free food. So that was a pretty cool deal. Friday afternoon the 4 of us American girls and Candace and Kathie had our first Christian Life Skills group thing with the older girls. It went really well. We set up a manicure station so that they would come in and have their hands washed, dryed, moisturized, nails filed, and nails painted. So that’s what we began with. They LOVED it. Afterward we talked to them about how our bodies belong to God and we are the temple of God-so we must take good care of our bodies…so we talked about good hygiene. We had little skit type things that were funny for each thing we talked about-like dental hygiene and bathing and deoderizing and such. Then we gave them each a bag that we had put together with a journal, a purse/bag, deo, soap, toothbrush and paste, pen, shampoo, lotion. They really had a great time and we are looking forward to our next get together with them.
Then Friday night Candace (my awesome roommate) and I invited over the other American girls and Brian for a bring and share (potluck) meal and a movie. It was really fun! Brian and I mad cous cous and chicken, Candace made spaghetti, and the girls brought over pancake mix, but we were all full from the other stuff and didn’t get to it. Then we watched Wedding Singer. Saturday was really chill and Candace and I pretty much stayed home all day and watched The Color Purple and just hung out. I also moved in to my new room, which was pretty exciting. Now I’m all settled in! Then Saturday night we had a big braii (SA cookout/bbq) at the club house. I guess it was just for the people working for Bulembu ministries. It was good eatin’. I had chicken sausage for the first time ever. Yum. Sunday was chill too. I watched 3 episodes of LOST!! I had never seen any and I immediately became addicted. It’s really intriguing and you just want to keep watching and see what’s next. Great stuff. I also did some planning for school. Then we had church at 4 and it lasted until 6! Afterward a bunch of us went over to the American girls’ house for the pancakes and eggs we never got to enjoy on Friday. It was seriously yum. Good times all weekend. Oh, and there is another new girl from South Korea and she is super cool. I really like her. She doesn’t live with us though. Her name is Sujin I think. I have no idea how it’s spelled. She is here 3 months and was previously doing YWAM in Capetown.
Did I tell you that the kids call the adults aunty’s and uncle’s? So I am Aunty Lindsey to all the children. It cracks me up. I’m used to it now though really. That’s about it. Hope you had a nice weekend too.

My First Full Day Teaching

2006-09-14T06:23:00.000-07:00

So today Hayley had to go to Mbabane, so I was the one and only teacher in my classroom. She’ll be around tomorrow, but then as of Monday, the class is fully mine and I am fully theirs. (At that time I will also be moving into my very own bedroom…which I would like to add is the “the big bedroom” with a bathroom and shower in it!!!) So today went pretty well I think. I have to say that teaching these kids is not as easy as one might assume simply because they are so behind in their education and many of them do not easily grasp new concepts and ideas. Today we talked about simple and complex sentences, which a person might think is easy to understand. I mean you are really just combining Michael went to the station. He missed the bus. into one sentence by adding but, and, or, because, etc. Seems easy enough to understand, but wow, apparently not. Actually after a while most of the kids did understand it, but I was surprised at how they kept thinking that I was speaking only one sentence when I was speaking two (with a very evident, long pause in between sentences!) So my point is, I have my work cut out for me. I really enjoy teaching though. It’s difficult…sometimes I just don’t know what else to say to try and make them understand. Like with percentages, wow, they really struggle with understanding. It’s hard without manipulatives because these are abstract concepts and need to be really shown and explored for better understanding. Ya know? Anyway, the kids are awesome and they really try hard and work well without complaint, so that in itself is a beautiful thing.
It’s a perfect day outside and shortly I will make the long hike down/up to the office (walk down the hilly street, then up another) to post this and send emails. Because the office is on a pay by the minute dial up plan (this is the only option, but I’m thinking that’s pretty good for Bulembu anyway) we must write all of our emails and such beforehand and save them onto a flash disk-then take them in and send them. At that point I must copy and paste all of my new emails into a document to save it onto the flash disk so I can bring them home to read. It’s a process. Everything is a process, but it’s cool. It’s not a hurry up rush rush world here, so you can take time to do things.
Thanks for reading.

Sanibonani

2006-09-13T05:49:00.000-07:00

First I just have to say that Bulembu is so stinkin BEAUTIFUL!! It’s just a lovely place. The mountains and trees are so nice. It’s very peaceful here. Sunday was my first full day in Bulembu. I slept until 10!! That’s pretty crazy for me, but I was one tired girl. I went for a nice long walk around and just spent the afternoon relaxing at home. Church is at 4 p.m. each Sunday, so I was looking forward to that. My first church service in Africa! It was a good mix of Caucasians and Swazis, which was really cool. The inside of it really appeared to me sort of as my mind’s image of a little African church. I loved it! We had a great time of praise and worship and then a message presented by a Swazi man. It was pretty charismatic. I guess most of the people here speak in other tongues. So some of the worship was free flowing, which I can appreciate. It was a good service. Afterward Lee-Ann had invited my house and Brian over for dinner. It was a lovely time and we even played a board game that is similar to Taboo. Monday I got up early and went to the school at 7:30 with Hayley and Candace. Hayley is the lady I am sort of replacing-well I’m taking over her 5th and 6th grade class. She actually just took it over in July when the teacher went back home early. I absolutely loved being in the classroom and I am so looking forward to teaching. I will start teaching on Thursday. I have 13 students and they are an enjoyable group. So the last couple of days I have mostly been observing Hayley and discussing what the kids have learned, need to learn, ideas, curriculum, etc. I am excited to start, but a tiny bit nervous I think. I have been soooo busy! I thought I might get bored here but I have already realized that I won’t even have a chance to get bored. I will be quite busy with school stuff and bible study and getting together with friends and doing household things. It is such a different lifestyle here of course, but I so appreciate it. I am loving the simplicity. Today I actually washed a couple of clothes items in a basin in the tub. Yes. We boil our tap water so that it is drinkable. I have no vehicle, so am completely reliant on others to take me to town for groceries and such. There is not a grocery store here. There is a tiny food store that has like 5 items. We have no heating and it gets pretty chilled at night. My first night I slept in flannel pants, tank top, sweatshirt, thick socks, fleece beanie over my head and ears, blanket, and duvet cover. I was warm and comfy then. So what I’m trying to say is that I LOVE IT HERE. So far so good. Monday after school I went into town to get groceries (all stores close at 5!!!!), then came home and made a baked potato and then it was already 7 and the American girls arrived at my house to watch Lost. It’s my DVD and I couldn’t even join them because I still had to clean up and do dishes and boil some water and put groceries away and blah blah blah and I was so tired because my day had been so busy that I had not had 5 minutes to myself. Today was exactly the same…after school we came home to eat, then had women’s bible study at 2:15, the women left at about 5 and I started preparing dinner and the girls got here at 6 to discuss this Life Skills Christian group thing we (Candace, Julie, Kara, Jenny, Kathie, and me) are going to do with the girls that are 9 and up. They left at 8:30, I got ready for bed and then came and started typing away. So you see!! No boredom allowed. I think tomorrow night I will finally have some Lindsey time to actually read a bit and watch something and just chill. I’m not complaining, just saying that I am surprised at how busy I have been. I haven’t had a chance to really even look ahead for what I’m going to be teaching next week! Well I must go to bed now. Please keep me and Bulembu in your prayers. We would like to see the school get funded so that it can stay opened next year and be an accredited school using a Christian curriculum. Hayley is going to fundraise in October and the school will need either $40,000 or 40,000 pds basically. This is no big deal for God.
Oh, and I live across the street from the school. I literally just walk through my yard to the street, walk across the tiny street, and down the stairs into the school. Pretty convenient. And here are a couple of names of students in my class: Phila, Fikelphi, Ncobile, Nontobeko, More Blessing (i'm dead serious), Nothando, Mxolisi, and Bongekile. Try pronouncing those.
Thanks for reading. Be blessed.

Arrival

2006-09-13T05:44:00.000-07:00

(I will just write here about my arrival stuff and then write a new entry about actually being here-so if you want to skip this one because it may be boring, you may do so! But the bit at the end sort of introduces the people.)

Hi friends and family! Boy am I glad to FINALLY be writing. I’m in my room in my house in Bulembu at the moment. No, we don’t have wireless internet! I’m going to be writing all of my blogs and emails here and then sending them when I get to use the internet.
Let’s start with the beginning. I arrived in Joburg Friday morning after a long haul over! I flew from Dallas Wednesday afternoon at 4 and got to London the following morning at 7, only to see the LONGEST customs line I think I’ve ever seen! Lisa Mellgard, my surrogate mother, picked me up from the airport. I was sure happy to see her! She took me to the house and I got to rest and shower and repack because apparently you cannot have a normal size carry on when you go through London Heathrow airport, but only a briefcase. Of course BA flew me into Gatwick where a normal carry on was fine, but then they sent me out of Heathrow and it was up to me to suddenly shrink my baggage in order to not have to pay the ridiculous fee of 30 pds per kilogram!!! So that was a bit annoying. That evening at 7 I flew from LHR to Joburg, arriving Friday at 7 a.m. I wasn’t able to have much real sleep on the fully booked plane…just a few hours of plane sleep. So I was TIRED! Well…after going through customs I waited a while for my baggage…and I got some of it, but was missing one piece…so after a very long while there was no more luggage coming and I came to the conclusion that my last piece, my very small piece, was not there. So I went to the desk only to find out that it would be coming in on the next flight from LHR at 9:30. Unlucky! So we had to wait around a couple of hours. Well we were actually waiting for Brian anyway so we didn’t mind too much… Brian’s flight was meant to arrive at the same time as mine…but at about 8:30 we were really concerned because the only flight in from Cairo had already landed about an hour earlier. I finally got my last little piece of luggage and we decided that Brian must not have been on that flight after all….so I thought I should go check my email immediately to see what happened. To make a long story short, I had an email saying that he would hopefully be in Joburg the following morning instead. So Lee-Ann and I were able to spend the day and night in Joburg, which was great! We did a bit of shopping and eating and then went to her friend’s house, where we would stay overnight. We even got to go to the movies that evening! So the next morning we grabbed Brian and headed up to Bulembu. We arrived in Bulembu around 5:30 and went straight to a dinner party that was actually sort of a welcoming thing for these 2 American girls who had also just arrived that day. I was so excited to meet all of the young people! There are so many people around my age…I already have more friends my age than I did in England. How crazy is that! We have Julie from California/Georgia who is 23 and here for a year, Kara and Jenny from Boston who are in their early to mid 20’s and here 6 months (also brand new), Carl and Megen in their 20’s who are here for 5 years and are married with a precious little 4 year old daughter, Kathie in her early 20’s who has always lived in South Africa/Swaziland and is teaching at the school, my housemate Candace is 24 and is here through December and possibly another year (she teaches at the school as well and she’s my new best friend), another housemate called Jo who is South Korean and here another full year to teach at the preschool, Jackie who is South African and in her 20’s, Lee-Ann who is my friend and in her 30’s, Brian who is 25 and here 2 ½ months…I think that’s about it for the young and singles. As you can see, Brian is the long single male amongst a plethora of women!! I’m sure he’ll enjoy it though. So that is the run down. Now, in order to not make this entry any longer, I will do a new entry about my time here since my first day.

Sep 6th = Leave for Africa

2006-09-04T12:59:00.000-07:00

Hi peeps, just wanted to write a note to say that I am once again on my way out of the country. I leave Wednesday afternoon at 4:20 for Africa. It's a long trip. I first fly to London Gatwick and arrive at 7 a.m. their time, when I'll be picked up by my surrogate mother Lisa...then I will hang out with my surrogate fam there for the day until that evening when they drop me off at London Heathrow to fly to Johannesburg. After that 11 hour flight I will arrive in Johannesburg, only to be driven another 5 hours to Bulembu, Swaziland...so I should actually be at my final destination Friday afternoon. It's a long haul. I want to apologize to the four of you that actually read this because I have been a crap blogger and have been very infrequent with my posts. Hopefully in Africa I'll post weekly or bi-weekly. We'll see. I think that was always my goal but it never happened. Please pray for me and the other missionaries I'll be with and the children we'll be working with whenever you think of it, I appreciate it very much!
May each of you be blessed and loved in all that you do!

Ephesus, Turkey and Patmos Island

2006-07-26T03:07:00.000-07:00

I am almost out of time at the internet cafe but I wanted to post something. The Greek Isles cruise has by far exceeded our expecations. I am just loving my time here and never wanting to leave these gorgeous islands. The water is crystal clear near the shores, but blue like sapphire when you stare out across it. Absolutely splendorific! Mykonos was an island of white buildings with cobalt blue, turquoise, deep red, or green doors and window shutters. Saw an amazing sunset there and passed time wandering through the windy pathways. There were only a couple of roads with cars. It was a bit like Venice in that way. Really a uniquely beautiful place. Yesterday we went to Ephesus in Turkey early in the morning. That was a truly awesome excursion. The ruins there have been extremely well preserved. We actually got to stand on the very stage that St. Paul would preach to the Ephesians from in the theatre. It was a huge theatre with seating for about 25,000. Ephesus was quite a thriving city back in the day. Definitely the best ruins we've seen since Pompeii. In the late afternoon we stopped at the island Patmos and took a hike up to the highest point to visit the grotto where St. John wrote the book of Revelation after he had been exiled from Ephesus. Also visited a monastery there. The views from the monastery were magnificent. Today we are at the island Rhodes for the day. We are about to have lunch and then go to the beach. Only one more full day on this great cruise and then back to Athens friday morning.

Have I got a story for you!

2006-07-22T06:50:00.000-07:00

We'll start with 7 p.m. Thursday night. Nikki and I were bored out of our minds in Olympia (because once you've seen the ruins there you've done it all and there is NOTHING else to do) so we went to the internet cafe. Well, the co-owner guy, Tassos, was talking and talking to me because he's very friendly and was probably bored out of his mind too...and he asked us to come back around 9 for a drink. He didn't speak great English, but we could sort of communicate. I speak no Greek. Anyway, we went back and had a coffee and he asked us to come celebrate his sister's "happy birthday" at his house in Lalas (10 km away) with his family. I was like, "okay we are 2 random Americans that your sister doesn't know, but you want us to come to her birthday celebration with your family?" This seemed kind of strange to Nikki and I, but he was relentless. He was begging us to come and he said there would be lots of good food and Greek music and dancing and everything. Sounded pretty fun and we had nothing else to do, so we thought, what the heck, let's go. The only problem was that he seemed to be in love with me and would occasionally touch my arm or hair. It sort of weirded me out, but whatev. He was 28 by the way and his sister was 21. Okay, we don't even leave Olympia until a little past 10 and get to Lalas around 10:30 and there's like a dozen people at this huge table eating...so we just come in and they are extremely welcoming (though no one actually speaks a word of English) and sit us right down and start piling on the food. Everything was delicious and made by his mom and sisters. We had meat and potatoes and Greek potato salad and fresh bread and tzaziki and little fried things and baklava and all sorts of yummies! And I was seated right next to his 96 year old grama, yai-yai. I loved her. She was absolutely precious. Nikki and I just could not get over her! She was the tiniest thing ever and looked like mother Theresa or something. So adorable. She kept talking to me in Greek and she would laugh and grab onto my leg and hold onto it. It was so cute. We were instant friends. I think she was telling me to marry her grandson. He kind of said that she was saying something about him needing a wife and such....scary! Throughout the rest of the night he kept trying to put the moves on me, put his arm around me a couple of times, liked to touch my hair, etc. I made Nikki stick close by though. Then Nikki and I did lots of Greek dancing with the fam. Good times. We had a really fun time but we were tired and ready to go around 1 a.m. (yai yai and the kids were still up!!) but we didn't get to leave until 2. Greek people are crazy! They are night owls. Who eats dinner at 10???? Oh, and Nikki and I told his sister happy birthday, but she told us it wasn't her birthday but her name day celebration. She didn't speak much English either. We were thinking...okay, what does that mean? Wouldn't your name day be the day you got your name, aka birthday?? Who knows. Anyway it was fun. And toward the end of the evening his 70 year old father and this other guy were singing this Greek village song together, just at the dinner table. It was so great! Very "my big fat greek wedding." I liked to dance and say "Opah!"
Went to Ancient Corinth today which was cool but there was like no information on anything so we couldn't really know what we were looking at or what significance anything had. That was unfortunate. Tomorrow we'll go to Athens and meet our cruise group in the evening and leave out the next morning for the isles. We are pumped about that! Take care!

It's all Greek to me

2006-07-19T11:45:00.000-07:00

After almost 20 hours on the ferry, we finally arrived in Patras, Greece. The ferry ride was overnight and luckily it was pretty empty so we were able to lay down on the seats and get some rest, sort of :-) I used my towel as a blanket. The bathroom was absolutely disgusting, but other than that it was good. We are excited to be in Greece. We ate lunch at TGIFriday's and it was so great to have some good American food! We were excited about it. The menu was in Greek mostly, with some words written in English randomly. But the food was great. Now we are in Olympia for 2 nights. Tomorrow we will see the archaeological sites. Olmpia is really small. It seems to be a pretty happenin place though. Our hotel is good and we are happy to have our own room and bathroom (Nikki didn't find a hostel for here or Corinth online so we have cheap hotels). Our last day in Italy was spent at Amalfi. We did some shopping and laid on the beach for a little while. Amalfi was nice, but Positano was definitely my favorite town. That afternoon we were looking for a restaurant at about 3:15 because in Italy most restaurants close between 4 and 7...but apparently in Amalfi they all close at 3. Unlucky. We finally found THE ONE restaurant that was open and I had Ricci pasta! I was so excited. Then the waiter thought we were beautiful girls so he gave us free limoncello. Limoncello is the alcohol of the region that is made there. It's basically pure alcohol with some lemon flavour. It was very strong, but we choked it down. I got a great pic of Nikki's "limoncello face." Oh, and we almost didn't make our ferry. We left at 7:45 a.m. from our hostel in order to make a 9:30 train from Naples to Brindisi. That train was late and then our connecting train was like an hour and a half after we arrived in the other town...so by the time we got to Brindisi it was 6 p.m. and the ferry was to leave at 7. We barely made it out to the dock at about 6:30 only to find out that the reservation she had made wasn't in their system...so we ended up just paying cash and literally getting on the boat at 7. Close call. Speaking of...we had a similar experience when we went to Capri Sunday and we were actually running to the boat and were the last ones on. It's great fun!

Soakin up the sun

2006-07-17T01:21:00.000-07:00

Well...we have been busy girls. Let's see...went to the ancient city of Pompeii with Paul (Australian hottie) Saturday and it was really great. I mean, it's a pretty amazing place. I don't know if you know the history at all or not, but Mount Vesuvius erupted in A.D. 79 and basically covered Pompeii and all the inahbitants. So the city was pretty well preserved, and then excavated I think in the 1800's or so. Anyway, it's really quite big and fascinating. When they were excavating they found bodies that were covered in the hardened ash and even the expressions on their faces were preserved, so they poured plaster of paris into the cavities and were able to capture the positions and expressions of the people. It's kind creepy, but also pretty awesome. Paul acted as our tour guide and led us around with the map. It was really HOT though, so we didn't see absolutely everything, but we did spend a few hours there. Yesterday we went to the Isle of Capri which I absolutely loved and would like to visit again later. I would love to rent a boat there (which you can do) and a scooter to ride around on. It's so beautiful!!! We mostly soaked up the sun on the beach, which was really nice and relaxing! Last night we were in Sorrento walking around thinking about finding a restaurant and then we ran into this girl Laura that Nikki had met at the hostel in Rome, so we went to dinner together and then randomly were seated next to these 2 American girls that I had seen at Capri but hadn't talked to. I noticed them on Capri because they were reading Rick Steve's guide to Italy and were clearly American. So we sat by them and I said "weren't you at Capri today, I saw you there...." and they were so precious. Twenty years old and studying in florence for 6 weeks this summer. One is from Dallas and was just the cutest thing, reminded me of Nikah actually. They had some good travel stories and stuff, so we ended up hanging out with all these girls in a piazza in Sorrento until after 11-there was live music and folk dancing going on in the square for some festival. Then we caught the last bus back to the hostel. Today we are gonna go soak up some more sun at Amalfi. Good times!!

I'm in LOVE with Italy

2006-07-14T12:40:00.000-07:00

If I could marry a country, I think it would be Italy. My goodness there is just so much beauty here...such fantastic places to see. I thought Cinque Terre was the best place EVER, then I went to Lake Como and thought that was heaven on earth, but then I visited Tuscany and decided that it was a slice of heaven. Sometimes I think you find a piece of heaven in different things...like in a person or a place or a food or an idea or anything...you just discover these little pieces of heaven. I've had may pieces of heaven during the past 2 weeks.
I can't believe this place. I have so much to say since I haven't been able to post in a while...but I'll try to condense it!
So I stayed at this place called Fattoria Basseto in Certaldo in Tuscany. It was amazing because it was this 300 year old farmhouse kind of place...very rustic and simple. One building was the villa with private rooms and the other had the hostel rooms. It was really cool and relaxing there. I took a couple of hammock naps which were fabulous! They had a little pool as well. This place is so great that several people there were return visitors and others were there on recommendations. I would definitely like to go back. The second day I was there I did a cooking class with my new canadian friends and some others. It was so much fun! We learned how to prepare bruschetta, a spaghetti dish I can't remember the name of, and Tiramasu. The food was ridiculously good. This chef, Guiseppena, makes everything, even her own olive oil from her olives on her trees. It was so cool. We had wine and cheese as well...and we got to wear chef hats and everything. Loved every minute of it! That evening 4 of us went up to the old town on the hill (Certaldo Alto) to this radical festival called Mercantia. It just happened to be this week, so we were really lucky. There were loads of musicians walking around or sitting playing instruments like accordians and fiddles and such...it was awesome. There were lots of crafts and artsy things and it was just really cool and really random. I saw some amazing bellydancing. I mean wow. And I ate this pork sandwich, which was pork straight off the pig that had been roasted on the spit. I kid you not. The whole pig was sitting right there. It was the best pork I've ever tasted. And it was on focaccia bread, so yum. And the next day me and my new friends went on the Tuscany tour...went to Volterra, San Gimignano, Wine tasting (Chianti), and swimming in a river thing with big, deep water holes. So we were jumping off the rocks into the water and everything, way fun!! Volterra and San Gimignano were both really cool old hilltop towns. It was like the greatest day ever. If you ever go to Tuscany, you should definitely stay at Fattoria Basseto. Yesterday I met up with Nikki in Rome and we headed down to the Amalfi Coast. We are staying in Sorrento. Today we went to Positano which was beautiful. These are towns built up into the side of the mountains, and with the coast at the bottom. Really pretty. We met a hottie Australian today and so tomorrow we are all going to Pompeii. I gotta go sleep now! We are having a blast!

My week of bliss came to a grinding halt...

2006-07-10T08:33:00.000-07:00

Everything was absolutely wonderful in every way...until Sunday. It wasn't a completely horrible day, it was just a wasted day really. Bologna is not my favorite place. Basically I woke up early on sunday and was hoping to leave the hostel by 8-8:30, but the guy was late arriving so I wasn't able to checkout. But he was there are 8:30 which meant I could check out and still catch the ferry, but he said no the ferry was going on strike at 9 for the whole day and I couldn't get it. But I saw the ferry and I said "it's there, i can still get it" but he said "no it will not leave Menaggio because of the strike. I needed to get the ferry to get across to the train to make for a shorter trip than taking the bus all the way down to Como. Well he was wrong and the ferry did leave, without me. So I had to wait 2 hours for the bus, then an hour trip down to Como, then wait another hour for the train to Bologna, changed at one place and had to wait half an hour...so I finally got to Bologna at about 5 on a Sunday and Sundays in Italy are not a lot of fun-everything is closed. So I didn't even know where to go to see anything and so I gave up and went for the hostel. The hostel was actually more like a hotel which was pretty sweet and I made a new Australian friend. We played some mean table tennis and watched the Italy v. France game and Italy won!!! You should have heard the cheers and then the fireworks. Then this morning because of staying just outside of town and because of busses and everything I did not make the early train to Tuscany, so had to wait a couple hours...so thought I would go to the old town center in Bologna and see what there was. Turns out I don't care for the city much. It has some really nice and beautiful and interesting buildings, but it also mostly smelled of pee or poo (haha) like everywhere I was walking. Dirty. I'm sure it has some charm to offer but I was in a bad mood I think because of my wasted day and a half. I finally arrived at my hostel in Tuscany though and it's quite a place. I'm lovin it and I sooooo wish I had just skipped over Bologna altogether and come straight here. Oh well, no use crying over whatever. But I think tomorrow I am going to do a cooking class and go on a bike ride. Then the next night I will meet Nikki in Rome. So, one wasted day isn't so bad in the grand scheme right?? Thanks for reading.

I can't believe this is my life!!!

2006-07-08T06:47:00.002-07:00

Sometimes I feel like I must have stepped into someone else's life! Oh my good heavens, I am so stinkin in love with Italy, it is just unbelievable! Where do I begin?? I haven't been able to use the internet because it's extremely hard to come by and it does not come cheap!! So I'm sorry if you've been waiting to hear how things are! I absolutely LOVE traveling alone! It's so great because you meet new people everywhere you go and if you want to be alone you can, but if you don't want to, you usually don't have to. Today is actually the first day I have been alone...so I've been wandering around aimlessly and loving every minute of it. Let me just say that life is pretty good when the most stressful moment of your day is trying to decide what flavor gelato you want :-) So...what have I been doing? Let's see...day one I arrived in Genoa and met some Brits from Cambridge on the bus up to the hostel, so we hung out that day with another American girl who had been living abroad in Paris for the past year. We walked around the beautiful old town center and ate some amazing focaccia while sitting down on some steps in a piazza and listening to a man play the accordian. How nice. Liguria is the region where focaccia is from, so it's pretty tasty and cheap! Tuesday I headed to Cinque Terre and arrived at my hostel during closing hours, so wandered around the very small village of Biassa. It was precious and I really enjoyed it. It was just outside of the Cinque Terre, so much quieter and very tranquil. After checking in, I immediately met a Candian girl called Emily and we headed to the beach at Monterosso. We had a really nice time and then went to Vernazza (Rick Steve's favorite of the five villages...) for dinner. A friend had recommended La Torre (the tower) to me, so we decided to find it. What an adventure! It was up at the very top of a whole heck of a lot of stairs...we would come to a restaurant or house or just see someone and ask "Dove La Torre?" And they would just point up...so we carried on climbing until we arrived to this tiny ristorante with the most incredible view. Oh my word, it was truly breathtaking. We dined al fresco of course and were seated next to some really friendly honeymooners from Montana. Had the best bruschetta I've ever tasted and then some amaznig pesto lasagne. Wow. Pesto actually originated in Vernazza, so you can imagine how fabulous it is there! The next day Em and I hiked from Biassa (our small village) through the Cinque Terre towns. We had quite an adventure the night before (long story!!) and were really tired, but we made it to Vernazza. Had some fantastic pizza there after we spent an hour kayaking. We had the best day ever and I think we'll be friends for life. We make great travel companions. The next day I came up to Lake Como-to Menaggio. I almost didn't because it was quite a trek up, but decided to anyway and AM SO GLAD I DID!! I was riding the bus up to Menaggio from the train station at the bottom of Como and as soon as I saw the lake surrounded by the majestic mountains, I seriously almost cried. I don't think I've ever had such a reaction to a place...I just can't even begin to describe how gorgeous it is. You'll just have to see my pictures. There are plenty! Yesterday I thought I'd probably go hiking and these 2 California boys (Santa Barbara) invited me along with them to do a hike...and it was quite a hike. We ascended 600m in 1hr 20 mins. That's pretty hefty. I got freaked out about the heights and turned back close to the end, but I ended up finishing after lots of encouragement from my new friends, Gurie and Nate. It was great and we had the most incredible views throughout the hike. Today I've been wandering around aimlessly through Bellagio and Varenna on Como. Tomorrow I'll head to Bologna for a night, just one because I decided to stay an extra night up here. I have so much more to say and so many stories to share already...but I know this has already gotten quite long and my time is about up anyway. The best 3 words that could sum up my thoughts and feelings through this adventure thus far would probably be opportunity, possibility, and liberation. That's what I feel and what I see ahead. I hope you are each doing well and enjoying your sunshine and friends! Email me or leave comments please because I miss you!

2006-06-23T02:14:00.000-07:00

The other day I wrote down my top 10 rules for life. I don’t know why, I just did. I decided to share them with you.

Lindsey’s Top 10 Rules for LIFE

1. Always wash your hands after you go big potty. And if you are a boy, ALWAYS wash your hands after ANY potty.

2. Smile A LOT. Smile at people you know, people you don’t know, when you’re happy, when you’re sad, when you have everything in the world to smile about, and when you think you have nothing to smile about.

3. Laugh loudly and heartily. Don’t pay attention to people around. Don’t care if they look at you-just belt it out!

4. Eat good food. Make your mouth happy. If your mouth is half as busy as mine, you most definitely will want to make it happy.

5. Randomly give people notes, cards, or little gifts. It warms your heart and theirs as well. But do it for no special reason or occasion. Just because.

6. Try new things. Get different types of experiences. Maybe this means travel or try different types of food or go scuba diving or horseback riding or backpacking in the mountains or reading a different genre of books than you normally would. But push yourself and get out of your comfort zone. A LOT.

7. Budget. And give. Budget SO THAT you can give. Give more than 10%. Give to the charities you love and believe in and support people however you can. And budget to stay out of debt. It’s easier than you think.

8. Read books and discuss them with people. Have a book club if you can. Challenge your mind and apply what you learn to your life. And always share your thoughts.

9. Listen to people. Not just your friends. Anyone who needs to be listened to. Even if it is a “weirdo” that randomly comes up to you in the middle of Waterloo station to start telling you about her sick brother. She obviously needs someone to listen to her-so do it-and be kind about it. Don’t act annoyed or too busy.

10. Never forget to PRAISE God for any and every thing. Realize your blessings-even if its nothing but running water or a bed or sunshine or shoes or a friend or a new day. Take NOTHING for granted. You’ve got it made. :-)

Da Vinci Code

2006-05-25T09:10:00.000-07:00

I don't know how you feel about The Da Vinci Code, but I personally do not enjoy ANYTHING that blasphemes Jesus in any way. I love Jesus, I live for and because of Jesus, and I cannot stand it when anyone desecrates or mocks Him, because to be honest, it offends me. I have not and will not read this book or see this movie because I personally believe that it is a waste of my time and money. I do not believe that I need to be familiarized with it in order to defend my God or my faith. I don't see it as as a "tool" that will help me share the good news of Jesus Christ. Your thoughts on this may be entirely different. In any case, I wanted to share an essay that I just read regarding DVC. If you are familiar with C.S. Lewis, then you have probably heard of or read one of his books called "Screwtape Letters." This essay is titled "Screwtape on The Da Vinci Code" and is written as a letter from Screwtape to his nephew, Wormwood. It is quite an interesting thing to read in this format, but probably much more so if you have read "Screwtape Letters." It's a bit long, but highly provocative.

There is also an interview with Eric Metaxes about his essay on RELEVANT magazine's website.

If you are able to read either or both of these, I would love to hear your thoughts.

RED MOON RISING

2006-05-11T08:13:00.000-07:00

Okay. I recently read this incredible book, RED MOON RISING, and I really wanted to share this bit from it with anyone that might happen across this blog. RED MOON RISING is a book about the 24/7 prayer movement. If you haven't heard about it, you need to look into it. In fact, you should stop reading this right now and leave wherever you are to go and buy this book and begin reading it immediately. Or order it from a christian bookstore RIGHT NOW to be delivered to you in only a few days. The book is story after story of God's FAITHFULNESS and amazingness!!!

This is a bit long (don't scroll down, it's shorter to read than it seems!), but bear with me, it is really something. Parts of it spoke straight to my heart. I hope it reaches you as it did me.

It was about 3:15 a.m. and I'd taken a middle-of-the-night slot in the Chichester prayer room where we'd been praying now without a break for several weeks. I wandered around the room, reading what was on the walls, trying to pray. I think Moby was on the stereo as I sipped a Red Bull energy drink and tried to shake off the sleep that was hovering nearby, waiting to return if I wasn't vigilant.
'Why am I here in the middle of the night anyway when sane people are all tucked up in bed?' I wondered, trying to make sense of the events of the previous weeks: the wrestling with God, the wild goose chase around Europe, Hernnhut, and Dubi, and now this crazy prayer room. Wasn't it all a bit extreme?
I grabbed hold of a big blue marker pen, sat down on the floor with some sheets of paper and began to write: 'So this guy comes up to me and says, 'What's the vision? What's the big idea?'' I wanted to explain the dreams and visions that were causing so many of us to pray like never before. I guess, when you're going against the flow of what the culture around you expects-and often against the flow of what the church expects, too-you need to be able to explain yourself.
The words that tumbled out onto the paper reflected conversations, thoughts, and prayers from previous weeks, previous months, and somtimes even previous decades. I soon lost track of the time, scrawling a stream of conciousness, a succession of word-pictures onto the paper as Moby's soulful gospel samples filled the room. I was formulating a declaration of spiritual intent that would reach far beyond the walls of that converted warehouse in Chichester-although it never occurred to me at the time. If I'd known what would happen with my poem-prayer, I would have seized up, unable to write, but at that moment in the middle of the night, I was intimately alone with my Master, and the world outside was forgotten as I scribbled my fervent thoughts onto paper, lost in a place somewhere outside of time.
I taped the sheets of paper to a large piece of linen separating the room and went home to bed still buzzing. This is what I had written:

THE VISION

So this guy comes up to me and says, "What's the vision? What's the big idea?" I open my mouth and words come out like this...

The vision?
The vision is JESUS--obsessively, dangerously, undeniably Jesus.
The vision is an army of young people. You see bones? I see an army.
And they are FREE from materialism.
They laugh at 9-5 little prisons.
They could eat caviar on Monday and crusts on Tuesday.
They wouldn't even notice.
They know the meaning of the Matrix, the way the West was won.
They are mobile like the wind, they belong to the nations. They need no passport. People write their addresses in pencil and wonder at their strange existence.
They are free yet they are slaves of the hurting and dirty and dying.

What is the vision?

The vision is holiness that hurts the eyes. It makes children laugh and adults angry. It gave up the game of minimum integrity long ago to reach for the stars. It scorns the good and strains for the best. It is dangerously pure.
Light flickers from every secret motive, every private conversation.
It loves people away from their suicide leaps, their Satan games.
This is an army that will lay down its life for the cause.
A million times a day its solders
choose to lose
that they might one day win
the great 'Well done' of faithful sons and daughters.
Such heroes are as radical on Monday morning as Sunday night.
They don't need fame from names. Instead they grin quietly upwards and hear the crowds chanting again and again: "COME ON!"
And this is the sound of the underground
The whisper of history in the making
Foundations shaking
Revolutionaries dreaming once again
Mystery is scheming in whispers
Conspiracy is breathing...
This is the sound of the underground
And the army is discipl(in)ed.
Young people who beat their bodies into submission.
Every soldier would take a bullet for his comrade at arms.
The tattoo on their back boasts "For me to live is Christ and to die is gain."
Sacrifice fuels the fire of victory in their upward eyes.
Winners.
Martyrs.
Who can stop them?
Can hormones hold them back?
Can failure succeed?
Can fear scare them or death kill them?
And the generation prays
like a dying man
with groans beyond talking,
with warrior cries, sulphuric tears and
with great barrow loads of laughter!
Waiting. Watching: 24-7-365.
Whatever it takes they will give:
Breaking the rules.
Shaking mediocrity from its cosy little hide.
Laying down their rights and their precious little wrongs,
laughting at labels, fasting essentials.
The advertisers cannot mold them.
Hollywood cannot hold them.
Peer-pressure is powerless to shake their resolve at late night parties
before the cockerel cries.
They are incredibly cool, dangerously attractive inside.
On the outside? They hardly care.
They wear clothes like costumes to communicate and celebrate but never to hide.
Would they surrender their image or their popularity?
They would lay down their very lives--swap seats with the man on death row--guilty as hell.
A throne for an electric chair.
With blood and sweat and many tears, with sleepless nights and fruitless days, they pray as if it all depends on God and live as if it all depends on them.
Their DNA chooses JESUS. (He breathes out, they breathe in.)
Their subconcious sings. They had a blood transfusion with Jesus.
Their words make demons scream in shopping centers.
Don't you hear them coming?
Herald the weirdos!
Summon the losers and the freaks.
Here come the frightened and forgotten with fire in their eyes.
They walk tall and trees applaud, skyscrapers bow, mountains are dwarfed by these children of another dimension.
Their prayers summon the hounds of heaven and invoke the ancient dream of Eden.
And this vision will be. It will come to pass; it will come easily; it will come soon.
How do I know? Because this is the longing of creation itself, the groaning of the Spirit, the very dream of God.
My tomorrow is his today.
My distant hope is his 3-D.
And my feeble, whispered, faithless prayer invokes a thunderous, resounding bone-shaking great "Amen!" from countless angels, from heroes of the faith, from Christ himself. And He is the original dreamer, the ultimate winner.
Guaranteed.

Quote of The Day

2006-05-03T07:28:00.000-07:00

On Monday we had a bank holiday (no school/no work) and I was hanging out with 2 of my fave 7th grade girls. So we're at Starbucks sipping out fraps when Emily declares that she has a brain freeze, to which Robin replies, "When I have a brain freeze I punch myself in the head." Like she says this completely serious and with a straight face and I just burst out laughing, hysterically. I'm sure people were staring at us by this point. So then she starts laughing and we just laugh for SO LONG. And ever since then, each time that I replay the moment and her words in my mind, I literally laugh out loud. I love it.

Swaziland

2006-04-25T02:52:00.000-07:00

April 16, 2006

After a 12 hour flight, we finally arrived in Johannesburg, South Africa. Now we are on the road headed to Bulembu, Swaziland. It's about a 6 hour trip. Driving through S. Africa toward Swaziland wasn't too different from driving in Texas (Denton to Amarillo) at first. Pretty flat and dry and nothing much to look at. After a few hours, though, the scenery has changed dramatically and suddenly there are more hills and thousands of trees clulmped together. Very foresty and beautiful. And I can feel the desire to be here increasing inside of me and though we are still many miles from our destination, I know that I want to be here, and not just for a week. My excitement at the thought of serving here for several months is welling up inside. One word can describe me: EAGER!....

(A bit later during the drive...)
We just passed the first homes I've seen. I don't know how to articulate the feelings evoked inside of me as I stare at these completely simplistic, primitive, bare bones structures that serve as homes. Humbling, and yet, strangely appealing. I love the simplicity and the lack of materialism here-which I myself can get so caught up in back home. And there are African people around-near the houses, the stores, on the roadside hoping for a ride, just sort of standing around in various places...and I feel a sense of love for them. I am drawn to them. I always have been. Some cows just crossed the road in front of our vehicles and gave us a brief traffic jam :-) And the land here in Swaziland is BEAUTIFUL. There are these ginormous hills and mountains that just end and drop off suddenly...with crazy deep drop offs. I can't really describe it, but it's awesome. THIS IS AFRICA!
Looking at the African children and gazing out across the vast land, I feel a strange sense of belonging.

April 19, 2006

It's already Wednesday and in an hour we'll be leaving Bulembu. I meant to write, but I was always so tired by bedtime-so never did. It's been an awesome 3 days here. I've had loads of interesting feelings and thoughts knowing that I will be returning in a few months.
So Sunday night after we arrived-several kids/teens/adults did some African singing and dancing for our group, which I loved! I have always enjoyed African music (the bits I have heard) and their unique dancing style. It was really cool to finally see in person.
Monday we worked hard shoveling loads of cow dung and cleaning out Lee-Ann's future care center. (Lee-Ann is our missionary in Swaziland) When we had arrived at the care center that morning, it was occupied by 2 cows, which we chased out. You can imagine the beginning condition of the place. In the afternoon that day, some of us went to visit ABC ministries (Abandoned Babies for Christ) which was truly awesome. It's sort of an orphanage, but really more like a huge foster family. An older South African couple started ABC about 12ish years ago I believe, and they currently have around 25 children. They have little babies up to 14 year olds right now. We spent a lot of time holding and kissing babies! I met a nice woman in her 20's called Danelle. She is from California and she shared her incredible testimony with me. She was lovely and my heart was warmed by listening to her share about the life that God brought her out of-she is a perfect example of 2 Corinthians 5:17 "Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!" Remarkable. Anyway, hearing the stories of the children there was heart wrenching. One was buried alive straight after birth, one abandoned in a long drop latrine (outdoor toilet), one was abused by his father and grandfather and was lowered into a pot of boiling water, one could not walk and was prayed over and healed, praise the Lord, and walked into the doctor's office later, to the doctor's amazement. Every child there is a living miracle and proof of a God that is love.
Monday night we had dinner with many of the "Valley of Hope" missionaries, who shared about their ministries and how God is at work in Bulembu. I loved it. I met a teacher, Megan, and her husband Carl-from Florida. They moved over in January and will be in Bulembu for 5 years. Megan is like me in that she finished her student teaching, but did not teach in her own classroom before moving away...and now she is teaching in Bulembu. No curriculum and hardly any resources, but children that are eager to learn.
Tuesday I went to visit the school and Megan's classroom in particular. It was simple and really cool. The only materials they have are what comes in on the containers a couple times a year, and anything they decide to purchase with their own money. I love Bulembu! It's incredibly beautiful and peaceful. It's this lush valley nestled between mountains and loads of trees...and there's no telephone or internet connections, so not a lot of distractions. No streetlights either :-( I think it would be great to live here because you can focus on what's important, like relationships. Relationships with God and people...while not being caught up in any kind of superficialism. Of course there are plenty of downsides as well, like the fact that the electricity goes out randomly for 2 or 3 days at a time or that you may wake up and not have running water some days...things like this that you don't normally face in America. There's no grocery store in Bulembu either. But you deal with these things and it's no big deal. Oh, and today I saw 4 or 5 monkeys in the wild, just in the road a couple of houses down from Lee-Ann's. That was awesome! Tomorrow we are going on a safari!

April 20, 2006

Oh my goodness-today had to be one of the more amazing days of my life. An actual African safari. Amazing. What an experience. Not exactly what one might expect, but nevertheless, really cool. We rode around in these Indiana Jones vehicles that could probably tread through just about anything. If you've ever ridden the Indiana Jones ride at Disneyland, you know what I'm talking about. And basically we drove around on a dirt path throughout the game park. You don't just jet out into the wilderness as one might expect, you do stay to the path. This particular park was around 20,000 acres. We saw impala, sable antelope, another type of antelope, warthogs, wildebeests, hippos, zebras, rhinos, giraffes, elephants, oxpeckers...I think that's about it. We saw some so close I could hardly believe it. The only time we left the vehicle was to walk out closer to a mother and baby white rhino. We were able to get to about 20 feet from them. It was awesome. I got some amazing pictures, but they are on Lee-Ann's camera that I borrowed because mine died-so I don't have them yet. Later when we went for lunch-some rhinos came right up next to the jeep-but it was after we were out. Still, they didn't seem too bothered by the humans. The animals in general were smaller than I thought they would be-especially the elephants. I'm sure the ones I've seen at the circus are much bigger :-) The entire thing, including lunch, lasted aroune 6 hours and only costs around £30. Oh yeah, and for lunch we ate some impala! Anyway, it was pretty exhilarating being so close to such beautiful and interesting creatures in the wild. Definitely one of the neatest experiences I have ever had. I have a few pictures online of Bulembu, so click here if you want to see them.

When in Rome...

2006-04-14T05:29:00.000-07:00

How many times did I say that in the last week? Countless. Anyway, I got back from the Tour de Italia Wednesday night. It was truly fabulous. Italy is pretty much my favorite country. It's so romantic, just naturally. I love the tall buildings that are so close together that they create narrow walkways below. And as you look up, you'll see loads of open shutters and people's clean laundry suspended on clotheslines 20 feet above. It's also very interesting to see how the old is mixed in with the new. It seems very strange to look down at the end of a busy street and see the Colosseum sitting there in the midst of the busyness.
I'll start with my journal entry from the first night in Rome.

Saturday April 8th

We arrived at our hotel in Rome around 6:30 this evening. On the way to our hotel, we passed the colosseum, which is only 1/4 mile away! After checking in, we went for a walk down to the old city...and it was just amazing to view the sites...my senses were overwhelmed. The way I felt while standing there encircled by structures that are thousands of years old is truly indescribable. I cannot even comprehend what my eyes have just seen. Ancient is an adjective that could never even approach doing justice to this place. I can't imagine how they built such GINORMOUS edifices with these intricately detailed carvings SO LONG ago. It's unfortunate that modern architecture lacks much of the beauty and character that ancient architecture provides.
We went for dinner and had fresh, homemade pasta-so good! We followed that with some super yummy gelato. Gelato is truly a gift from God and I'm sure that in Heaven I will just sit and eat gelato all day every Thursday. I'm really excited about my diet of pizza, pasta, and gelato for the next 4 days. No good for my bod, but REALLY good for my soul!

So that was our first evening in Rome. Here are a couple of pictures from the old city and our first gelato with flat Stanley :-)

Sunday was the only sunny day we had and I was so happy! We walked a lot. We went down to Palatine Hill, which is a hill covered with the remains of the first palace. We get our word 'palace' from Palatine. Then did a tour of the colosseum. It's so huge I can't even explain it! It's kind of like the Eiffel Tower-way bigger than you could possibly imagine without seeing it in real life. It's amazing how much of it remains to this day (it was constructed in AD 72-80). Walked around a lot more and visited some monuments, fountains, statues, piazzas, etc. We also did some shopping of course! As Darren always says, "Women be shoppin." Indeed.
Next day we went to the Vatican City and into the Sistine Chapel. It was truly amazing. I wish I could describe it, but of course I can't!! It's just incredible how the artwork remains to this day. So beautiful. The ceiling is completely covered in the murals...with no breaks at all. That in itself just floors me. And at the very center is The Creation painting...which I so badly wanted to photo, but they asked us not to speak or take photographs. However, there were only about 5 of us that actually had enough respect to follow those rules. I was appalled at the people and extremely frustrated by the fact that they simply could not just their mouths and turn off their cameras so that some of us could experience silence in that incredible place. It was also very packed, which is always annoying, but expected. I wish I could have spent more time inside viewing the various artwork throughout.
Monday night we headed to Pisa and stayed overnight there. The leaning tower was beautiful! I couldn't believe how bright and clean it looked, seeing as how the building of it began over 800 years ago (and carried on for 200 years). I thought it would look dirtier and more blackened, like many of the other old buildings I have seen, but no. Maybe they cleaned it recently. Our view from dinner that night was great; we ate outside at the first restaurant on the road near the tower. I probably never thought I would have a meal while staring at the leaning tower of Pisa. Pretty cool. I also hadn't realized that the tower was built next to a cathedral. It was really gorgeous altogether.
(I am trying to add pictures, but it won't let me for some reason. So if you click here, hopefully it will take you to the page with the pics and you can view them as a slideshow...but there are a lot of pics because it's the combination of my pics and jody's pics together.)
The next day we went to Florence. I loved Florence. It's a really beautiful city full of gorgeous architecture and history. I don't remember the names of anything there though because they're all Italian and without my little guide book, I am lost. The cathedral there has to be one of the most impressive I've seen. We didn't go in, but the outside of it was amazing and quite different than any I have seen. I also loved the bridge across the river, which reminded me somewhat of the Rialto bridge in Venice. They are both full of shops and are very interesting sites. I'm a big fan of bridges anyway, but when they have loads of shops (especially jewellery shops with lots of sparkly things!!) they're even cooler. This bridge was particularly amazing because of the way that there were these buildings basically hanging over the side of the bridge...I can't really describe it at all, look at the pictures.
Went back to Pisa and stayed over there that night...and back to Rome the next day to fly out. It was a great trip and I was incredibly blessed to have been invited to join this wonderful family.

Mi Vida Loca

2006-04-07T02:01:00.000-07:00

I was talking to someone the other day and they asked if I was leaving for Swaziland this Saturday, and I replied: "No, this Saturday I'm going to Rome and next Saturday I'm leaving for Swaziland." WHAT! What in the world? Who says that? Sometimes I cannot believe the life I lead. Why has God blessed me soooooo much? HE is so good to me. Five years ago did I ever think I would be saying I'm going to Italy and Swaziland for the next two weeks. And the most amazing thing is that it's all FREE!! The Italy trip (Rome 2 nights and Florence and Pisa for 2 nights) is free because a family from church invited me along with them and of course said that it would be of no cost to me. The Swaziland trip was paid for by another family from church-an answer to prayer-which you know if you read my blog normally because I already posted about that. Anyway, it's all amazing to me and it's humbling because I so do not deserve it. But God is gracious. I'm so excited about the next 2 weeks of my life!!!

Anyway, I have become lazy these past few months and I hardly ever post. I don't know why. I guess I just never feel like it...but I am going to try and post more often. I hope anyone reading this finds themselves healthy and happy and loving life! Good things.

Fair Trade (again)

2006-04-04T07:37:00.000-07:00

Since this is my website, I can post whatever I want, okay. So if I want to keep putting RELEVANT articles, that's okay! You don't have to read them, but when I feel passionately about an issue, I want to educate others about it! Fair trade is something I feel very passionate about, so I want others to be wise and knowledgeable about it...because it's hugely important and beneficial to those involved. This article is basically informing the reader about this book that's a great resource for fair trade education-and it's a short read. I've just ordered it and it's ridiculously cheap! I actually ordered a few so I can give some away to friends. Please read on. And GET INVOLVED!

The Conscious Consumer by Heather Dillon

With the help of Coldplay’s Chris Martin and other celebrities, Fair Trade has become one of the hottest buzzwords on college campuses and in faith-based organizations. Yet many don’t understand how the Fair Trade movement actually works. A deeper understanding is worth pursuing, especially for Christians. The Word makes it clear that our God cares deeply about justice for the poor and the oppressed. Since our God cares, we should, too. The Fair Trade Resource Network recently released the fourth edition of The Conscious Consumer: Promoting Economic Justice Through Fair Trade. For those looking to learn more about Fair Trade, this is an excellent place to turn. Author Rose Benz Ericson introduces readers to basic Fair Trade concepts, while also highlighting the deeper issues of the movement. The 36-page publication is the most trusted source for comprehensive information on Fair Trade. Since its first edition in 1999, The Conscious Consumer has sold more than 60,000 copies. The most recent edition alone received pre-orders for nearly 20,000 copies. Readers can look forward to gaining a better understanding of how Fair Trade works and why it is necessary, how the movement has grown in the last five years, what Fair Traders are currently doing throughout the world and what challenges the movement faces.
There are a ton of valuable facts and stories packed within this short publication. Ericson begins by noting the problems with traditional trade and explaining how Fair Trade differs as a viable alternative. She then explores the principles to which Fair Traders are committed, the benefits to consumers as well as producers, Fair Trade’s history, the pronounced benefits of Fair Trade for impoverished women and much more. Those who are unfamiliar with Fair Trade become more conscious of world trade issues, while readers who are already knowledgeable receive an update on the movement’s progress. Recent years have seen leaps in awareness and acceptance of Fair Trade. In North America alone, money spent on fairly traded goods nearly tripled between 2001 and 2004. Americans have especially embraced Fair Trade coffee and food products. This growth can be partially accounted for by advancements in certification. Ericson explains that with recent accessibility of an identifiable Fair Trade certification seal, products are no longer confined to Fair Trade retail and wholesale stores. They are available in mainstream retail outlets such as grocery chains and Sam’s Clubs. Awareness has also been raised through the help of faith-based groups, motivated students, educators and the use of the Internet. With advancements, there also come trials. The final portion of The Conscious Consumer is dedicated to the challenges Fair Trade is currently facing. “By touching on some of the difficult questions, I hope The Conscious Consumer will illuminate and help shape the larger conversation about the future of Fair Trade,” Ericson said. Among these difficult questions are how to motivate consumers and overcome resistances, how to determine a fair wage for artisans as well as acceptable certification procedures for products, how to reconcile debates about where Fair Trade products should be sold and how to resolve unintended political and economic results in developing countries as well as organizational staffing and funding limitations. Ericson’s writing reflects well-informed and insightful coverage of appropriate issues. The Conscious Consumer accurately sheds light on what is working and what challenges remain. Undoubtedly, readers will walk away with a broader, more comprehensive perspective. Perhaps the only shortcoming is that Ericson does not propose a specific, practical challenge for readers. The back cover encourages individuals to “Take the 5 Percent Fair Trade Challenge,” but this challenge is not mentioned within the pages of the publication. Although Ericson certainly proposes holistic challenges for the Fair Trade movement, none of these speak directly to individual readers. Still, The Conscious Consumer is an ideal resource for those interested in learning more. It is also inexpensive and a quick read. Copies can be purchased at the Fair Trade Resource Network website (www.fairtraderesource.org) for less than $7 ($3.95 for the publication, plus $3 for shipping). Not only will readers walk away better informed, but the money spent will be funneled back to support one of the movement’s cornerstones: Fair Trade education.

Psalm 103

2006-03-29T04:32:00.000-08:00

Praise the LORD, O my soul; all my inmost being, praise his holy name.
Praise the LORD, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits- who forgives all your sins and heals all your diseases,
who redeems your life from the pit and crowns you with love and compassion,
who satisfies your desires with good things so that your youth is renewed like the eagle's.
The LORD works righteousness and justice for all the oppressed.
He made known his ways to Moses, his deeds to the people of Israel:
The LORD is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love.
He will not always accuse, nor will he harbor his anger forever;
he does not treat us as our sins deserve or repay us according to our iniquities.
For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his love for those who fear him;
as far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us.
As a father has compassion on his children, so the LORD has compassion on those who fear him; for he knows how we are formed, he remembers that we are dust.
As for man, his days are like grass, he flourishes like a flower of the field;
the wind blows over it and it is gone, and its place remembers it no more.
But from everlasting to everlasting the LORD's love is with those who fear him, and his righteousness with their children's children-
with those who keep his covenant and remember to obey his precepts.
The LORD has established his throne in heaven, and his kingdom rules over all.
Praise the LORD, you his angels, you mighty ones who do his bidding, who obey his word.
Praise the LORD, all his heavenly hosts, you his servants who do his will.
Praise the LORD, all his works everywhere in his dominion.
Praise the LORD, O my soul.

My dad is here

2006-03-22T12:34:00.000-08:00

My dad is visiting me in England. He is my first visitor in a year and a half. He arrived yesterday morning. I hadn't seen him since June! That is, by far, the longest amount of time I have ever gone without seeing him. He's excited to be here and he went into London today all by himself because I had some other things to do. But tomorrow we are off to the Southeast-Salisbury and Bath and who knows where else...then Hay-on-Wye in Wales, which is a precious little village full of used book shops. There are around 50 used book shops in this town, it's amazing. Wye is the river, so the town is just on the river. I went there for about 2 hours once on a Wales tour...and loved it!! Always have wanted to go back and am looking forward to visiting it again. We'll stay overnight around there and then go to Warwick castle and some other places on Friday-possibly head up to York (another of my fave places) and stay another night. There's just so much to see and do-it's really difficult to decide on what to do or not do. Plus everything is expensive and my dad has always been very frugal, so it's interesting! But we are having a good time and talking and talking! I told him he talks too much. He said he's NEVER heard that before :-) He leaves Wednesday.
Hope you are well and happy and loving life!

A Wonderful True Story

2006-03-14T03:31:00.000-08:00

I just read this story and watched the film and it really touched my heart, so I wanted to share it with you. Please take a moment to watch the video, it's a precious story.

GREECE, N.Y. -- Alone in the gym after practice, Jason McElwain went through his elaborate pregame ritual.
The 17-year-old senior, manager of the Greece Athena High School basketball team, drained a 3-pointer, a double-pump layup and a free throw, kissed the back of his ring finger at center court and sped off to the dressing room to exhort and amuse his teammates.
"You've gotta give it everything you got!" McElwain sang in rap verse. "The winner goes home all happy/The loser goes home and says/'Mommy we lost the game, wah wah wah!"'
McElwain, who is autistic, was back in his role as an all-around motivator on the eve of a sectional semifinal game Tuesday night -- handing out water bottles, dispensing tips, helping run drills. Two weeks earlier, he suited up for a game and delivered a jaw-dropping performance.
His play drew national attention, and a flood of calls from Hollywood. His parents have received inquiries from about 25 production companies ranging from The Walt Disney Co., parent of ESPN, and Warner Bros. to independent documentary filmmakers.
"I don't know what I'm walking into," McElwain said.
In his team's final home game of the season, McElwain entered with four minutes to go. It was his first and only appearance for the Athena varsity team in this Rochester suburb. The 5-foot-6 manager hit six 3-point shots and a 2-pointer and was carried off the court on his teammates' shoulders.
His triumph was captured on a student video that made the rounds of the television networks. The school was besieged with calls and e-mails from parents of children who have autism, a little-understood developmental disorder.
"We have an obligation as a society to find a way to include people with different abilities," said the school's athletic director, Randolph Hutto, whose 12-year-old son, Joshua, is autistic. "This, hopefully, will help open doors for some people, or open some eyes."
McElwain, who didn't begin talking until he was 5, still lacks social skills but has learned to cope well in his teens, said his special-education teacher, Diane Maddock.
"He might talk a little loud, laugh a little too long or not be able the read the body language or even the tone of voice of a person, but it's not a big difficulty," Maddock said. "If you call him on it, he will acknowledge it, say 'OK, you're right, I shouldn't have said that or laughed when I laughed."'
"This couldn't happen to a nicer kid," she added.
Considered too small to make the junior varsity, McElwain signed on as manager, then took up the same role with the varsity to stay near the sport he loves. Amazed at his dedication, coach Jim Johnson had him suit up for the home finale. There was no guarantee he would play -- Athena was battling for a division title -- but he got in when the Trojans opened a large lead.
"It was like a big old bucket and I was just hitting them like they were free throws," McElwain said. "I just felt relaxed."
The coach couldn't believe what he was seeing.
"He's been my right-hand man, he's there every day and just getting him the opportunity to suit up was emotional enough for me," he said. "For him to come in and seize the moment like he did was certainly more than I ever expected. I was an emotional wreck."
Because he played in just one regular-season game, McElwain was ineligible for sectional play. But he's not bothered.
"I just want to win as a team, not individually," he said.
What's more, he prides himself on having a lot of friends.
"I'm not really that different," he said. "I don't really care about this autistic situation, really. It's just the way I am. The advice I'd give to autistic people is just keep working, just keep dreaming, you'll get your chance and you'll do it."

I love salmon

2006-03-13T13:12:00.000-08:00

Who knew? I've been living a lie for so long believing that I was a salmon hater because I hate the taste of fish...and I tried salmon a few years ago and it tasted fishy, so I hated it. Tonight I made some grilled salmon because I really wanted to like salmon since it's so ridiculously healthy and everyone else around me loves it! So I tried again and it was WONDERFUL. It did not taste anything like fish. It just tasted like perfection. I'm so happy now because I really have wanted to like salmon for so long. This is excellent news to me.

How Great Is Our God

2006-02-14T03:00:00.000-08:00

So most of you probably know that my heart is burdened for Africa and has been for years. I've wanted to go there and serve as a missionary, but I've always been scared!! Scared that I wouldn't know what to do, or how to share the gospel with them, or that I would be ineffective, or that I just wasn't trained enough...etc. But after the past year of my life, I know that God can use me anywhere if I just let HIM. If I submit to Him and just say "Okay, I'll go," then He will be faithful in providing me whatever I need to do His work. Now I am ready to go.
So I have decided to move to Swaziland (South Africa) in September to work with a missionary called LeeAnne, whom our church supports. I met LeeAnne last summer and absolutely loved her and told her then of my heart and that someday I might want to come and serve with here there. So here we are many months later and LeeAnne just returned for a brief time before she transitions into a different location in Swaziland. I spent a lot of time talking with her about me coming there and working with her. She was all for it and said now she's gonna hold me to it! So I plan on moving to Swaziland in September and staying for about 3 months. So back to how great God is...LeeAnne put together a short missions trip for families of our church-for one week in April, during the Easter break. Well, I really wanted to go on this trip...but the flight to Johanessburg is not cheap-around £600. The accommodation and everything is really reasonable, only £350 for everything once we're there (including a day safari trip thing)...but the flight jacks the total cost up to about £1000. That's a stinkin lot of money. I don't have that much money. So anyway, I started praying specifically that if God wanted me to go, He would provide the money. I told God that I wasn't going to ask anyone for any support in this, and that if He wanted me there, He would speak to people's hearts and they would come forward and help me bring down the cost. God answered in a big way, because He is FAITHFUL. Sunday morning after church, a couple called the Herberts told me that they wanted to pay for me and Andy (my co-worker) to go on the Swaziland trip. Pay in full...not a portion to help us, but the entire thing. I was astounded. I almost started crying, and thought I was going to. I mean, how amazing is that. How do you say thank you to someone for that??? I just told her straightaway that I had been praying specifically for this. Lynn (Mrs. Herbert) did the talking and her husband, John, just stood there with a smile on his face, looking very content. It was so precious. God has blessed them so much financially, and they are generous enough to bless others with it. How great is our God.

My days in England are coming to an end...

2006-02-07T02:51:00.000-08:00

So I finally decided that I will not be returning to my current job after summer. A week ago I was really undecided still and praying about it...but I feel that God let me know last Thursday that it was time for me to move on. He just has really put a peace in my heart about it. I'm excited to get onto my next adventure....which will be: a) going to Africa (Swaziland) in September for probably 3 months. b) becoming an au pair in Australia/New Zealand for a while. I will probably go to Africa because I can do Australia after that. I have been looking at au pair jobs with Australia in mind, but I have found a couple of pretty cool opportunities in the states. One is in Oregon and looks like awesome, the other is in southern California, right on the coast. There's another au pair job in the Cayman Islands that looks pretty sweet as well. So who knows what's in store next. I do know I'm not ready to be back in Texas yet...still have too much other stuff to do before I settle into a career of any sort. The way I see it-I will be in a career for years and years after I settle down, so probably will not have these kinds of opportunities...so as long as I'm still single I think I'll continue on with some other adventures. Basically, what I'm saying is that I'm a Yeppie (Young Experimenting Perfection-Seeker - they are all about collecting as many experiences as possible). Yes, I am a yeppie. I am an "experience junkie." I had never heard of yeppies until Megen showed me an article from the London Times describing what a yeppie is-because she thought that we were yeppies (except not completely, only somewhat). There are 2 articles about yeppies from the Times. The shorter one is here and this the longer one. They define yeppies as people who "are life shoppers who browse careers, relationships and lifestyles in search of the dream existence, putting off grown-up decisions and commitments until they are satisfied they have exhausted all the options. " This is why I say I am only somewhat a yeppie...I am an experience seeker, but I realize that there is no "dream existence" and I know that I will be happy wherever I live because I will always be walking with the Lord and I trust that He will always bless me with great friendships and His provision. That's all I have to say about that.

Bizarre

2006-01-11T07:11:00.000-08:00

Woman Who Died in '03 Left in Front of TV

By TERRY KINNEY, Associated Press WriterTue Jan 10, 4:48 PM ET

The mummified body of a woman who didn't want to be buried was found in a chair in front of her television set 2 1/2 years after her death, authorities said.
Johannas Pope had told her live-in caregiver that she didn't want to be buried and planned on returning after she died, Hamilton County Coroner O'Dell Owens said Monday.
Pope died in August 2003 at age 61. Her body was found last week in the upstairs of her home on a quiet street. Some family members continued to live downstairs, authorities said. No one answered the doorbell at Pope's home Monday afternoon.
It could take weeks to determine Pope's cause of death because little organ tissue was available for testing, Owens said.
An air conditioner had been left running upstairs, and that allowed the body to slowly mummify, he said. The machine apparently stopped working about a month ago, and the body began to smell.
"Standing outside, one could smell death," Owens said.
Police went to the house last Wednesday after receiving a call from a relative who hadn't seen Pope in years. They found a staircase behind a door blocked by a basket and climbed to the second floor, where they found the body.
It was not clear if any crimes were committed, Owens said.
Authorities did not identify the caregiver, a women in her 40s who apparently lived in the home with Pope, Pope's daughter and her 3-year-old granddaughter.
"The caregiver is not someone you'd think was from another planet or really seems off the wall — (she's) a pretty normal kind of person," he said. "But I think out of loyalty, friendship and love of her friend, (she) decided to keep the body at home."

re:ignite

2006-01-11T02:29:00.000-08:00

So, our high school youth group-Ignite-has been redefined in 2006...and has been introduced to the world wide web. I have to say, I think our website is awesome. Brittany worked really hard on it!! Our Tuesday nights will now run a little bit more like a magazine show-so every week we will have certain components. First, as always, pizza and chat time, followed by THE HOT SEAT-where one lucky person sits each week and gets drilled with rapid fire questions, all while wearing a sombrero. Then we have BEHIND THE MUSIC-a review of a Christian band/cd. Basically, one person will be given a cd to take home and listen to over the week. They have to listen to the entire cd and then rate it and answer a few q's about it-just like their fave song on the cd and it's theme, key lyrics, how it impacted them, how it relates to them, and a verse/passage in the bible it relates to. Pretty sweet, eh? Then we have a God talk and who knows what after that...it'll probably change weekly. But those things are our definites.

Middle School youth-DV8-has also been revolutionized to focus more on the word. It's more about God now than ever, so that's awesome. We have some fun stuff too and will definitely be using THE HOT SEAT, but no website to speak of yet...still thinkin on that one. This month we are doing a series of testimonies. So, hopefully the kids will be able to relate and be challenged in their daily lives to live for Christ.

Mental Combustion

2005-12-22T15:08:00.000-08:00

One of my very good friends, Torie-her husband created a blog to type his random, strange thoughts and encourage discussion. He asked me to add it to my friend's links and also make a note so that people would know about it. That's what I'm doing now. Now you all know, so you should go visit his blog when you have a moment. I'll post it as a link so you don't have to type it in, but just so you know, it's mental combustion-minus the vowels. Therefore, it is mntlcmbstn. Jon is weird. Enjoy.

Chill

2005-12-21T10:25:00.000-08:00

My time in A town thus far can best be described as "chill." It's been really calm and relaxing, zero stress. Nice. Yesterday was fun...Monday night I stayed over at Nikah's apartment and we watched "The Family Man," which I highly recommend-especially this time of year of course! We got up early Tuesday morning and met her mom and another friend/bridesmaid for breakfast at Cracky, and then we were off to look at wedding gowns all day! First we went to a place called Brides, which is just local. Nikah found her dress there and it's gorgeous. It's actually ivory and carmel. It's very elegant and she's tiny so she looks perfect in it. It's a gorgeous dress. She tried on several others, but none of them took our breath away like that one. We went to David's Bridal as well, but nothing seemed as great as the one at Bride's. There was one that she tried on there that I absolutely loved...it brought tears to my eyes actually...but that might also be because she had the veil on and everything for the first time. I'm normally not very emotional, but she's my best friend and she's getting married!! Everything changes. It was fun looking at all of the different dresses, but when I get married I am going to be so indecisive about everything!! I already am about most things, but I like so many different types of dresses and everything, I have no idea what I'm gonna want! Anyway, enough about that. This morning was my nephew's Christmas party at school, so we went to that. I now remember why I am NOT a 4th grade teacher. Anyway, the principal of his school was my high school AP English teacher, so I went and said hello to him. I don't think I've seen him since I graduated 6 1/2 years ago. I always liked him, but he was way too easy. Anyway, if I do move back to Amarillo and teach, he will give me a job, so that's good to know. It's always nice to have back up. That's about it for now.

At the Airport

2005-12-18T13:39:00.000-08:00

Thursday morning I was at Gatwick very early, so after falling asleep in a chair for a little while, I decided to go to the Starbucks upstairs. I was next in line and the guy in front of me, American I believe, ordered his beverage and then said "120 degrees please." And the barista said, "sorry, how many degrees?" And the man said "120," in all seriousness. When he first said it I thought that he was joking around, but no, this was a completely serious matter. I was thinking, "I wonder what 120 degrees is like, is that hotter or colder than normal? What's the normal coffee temperature here? Maybe I should order mine at 120. Sometimes I get it and it's not hot enough. Interesting." They are serious about having it your way at Starbucks. Anyway, I got my eggnog latte at whatever normal temperature is, and then was about to sit down when I looked up and noticed one of my middle schoolers across the way. He happens to belong to one of my fave church families too! So I walked over to them and found out that we were on the same flight! I just thought that was crazy because the kids still had 2 days of school left, but they were just missing and leaving early. Then we realized that we were assigned seats ON THE SAME AISLE. How crazy weird is that! What are the odds?? God is good and He even cares about the small details. He knows I'm not a huge fan of the 10 hour flight and He blessed me with a friend sitting right next to me. So we had some good convo during the flight.
I got to Dallas Thursday afternoon and hung out with Brandon. We met my friend Wendy for coffee and that night I went to bed at 8! That was really stretching it too because I was ready for bed around 5. Friday Bran and I went to breakfast at Cracky, which was excellent and then we met Darren at the mall in the afternoon. I did some good shopping at New York and Co. and then hung out with the boys some more. It was so great to spend time with them. Friday evening I flew to A-town and spent some time with the fam. Saturday morning we went to look at the house grandma bought and then met Torie for lunch at Kabuki. After lunch, Torie and I went to get my hair cut and then hung out a bit more. Saturday evening Nikah and BJ came over to my house for dinner and stayed for a while, so that was nice. They just got engaged a week ago and I have to say that she has one of the most beautiful engagement rings I have probably ever seen up close and personal. It's amazing. This morning I went to church with my fam FOR THE FIRST TIME EVER, me, mom, Tom, and gram. This has never happened in my life and, therefore, should always be remembered. And then this afternoon I made some Christmas goodies that my mom asked me to make. It was fun. Gram helped me out. So that's pretty much the summary of my time in A-town thus far.

Two of the Greatest Nights of My Life

2005-12-16T06:38:00.000-08:00

Monday and Tuesday night were both spectacular in the life of Lindsey. A while back I bought a couple of tickets to see David Gray on December 12th. Well...about 3 or 4 weeks before the concert, I offered one of the tickets to my friend/the boy I like Jordan. He wanted to go, and finally, Monday night it was finally time. We were really excited! The concert was awesome I thought, I really enjoy Dave's music and I think he has a remarkable voice-fairly unique and really beautiful. I could listen to him sing for a long, long time. His drummer was pretty interesting, in fact, the whole group was quite eccentric. Dave used the f bomb a little too much, like every other word, but he only spoke briefly so whatev. One of the highlights of the concert was when the people standing next to us almost got into a fist fight-a man and woman-over who knows what. All I know is, that woman saw David Gray at Wembley Stadium!! She like yelled that, amongst other things. Gotta love middle aged drunkards at a concert. I also enjoyed it when she was dancing a while later. There's nothing quite like a drunk 40 year old woman's dance. Good times.
Tuesday night was an actual date! I was pretty excited about it. Jordan invited me to go to a show with him, but he wouldn't tell me which one-it was a surprise. Surprises are so fun! We headed up to this Moroccan restaurant that I love and had some seriously great chicken and cous cous...and some seriously great conversation. Jordan asks really good questions and he's an excellent conversationalist. After dinner, we walked around Oxford Circus/Regent Street looking at the spectacular Christmas lights in the area. Very beautiful! The window displays were not, however, so beautiful. They were kind of strange actually and not exceedingly Christmassy. But it was really nice walking around looking at the lights, while being on a date with the boy I like. The time went pretty fast and suddenly it was like pretty much time to be at the show, but we were still at Oxford Circus...so we hailed a taxi-which was not easy at that time of night in that area, and barely made it into the show on time...a couple of minutes after it started. We were both worried that we wouldn't be able to get our tickets, but it was all good and we were on the end of a row, so none of that having to walk in front of all the people and disturbing everyone on the row. The show was The Rat Pack: Christmas Special. If you read my blog, you may know that I went to the Rat Pack regular show a few months ago and loved it. Jord knew I loved it and really like that type of music, so he did well choosing this show. It's such a fun one! After the show we just walked back to Waterloo station-crossed over one of the bridges on the Thames and looked at beautiful London at night. I love London! I'm so blessed that I can just hop on a train and be there in half an hour. It's awesome! So, these were 2 stinkin great nights...great because of the shows, but even greater because of the company.

Coming to America

2005-12-14T06:27:00.000-08:00

Tomorrow I'm going to America, home sweet home. I'm so excited I can't even describe my feelings with real words. I will fly into Dallas and Brandon will pick me up and we will eat Chipotle. I'm so happy to be seeing my homeland for 2 whole weeks!!! Happy Christmas to you all!

Christmas Shopping

2005-11-09T14:19:00.000-08:00

So I made a decision this year to buy only fair trade and/or "giving" gifts, and I want to encourage you to do the same as much as possible. Fair trade is more popular in the UK than in America, I realize, but I bought several fair trade gifts from The Hunger Site (breastcancersite, rainforestsite, etc) that are really great gifts. I know that if you search online you can find places to purchase fair trade gifts from...plus it's super easy to just make the purchase from your computer and have it shipped to you...don't have to deal with the crowds or lines or anything. I got in a shipment from Traidcraft in England, and the things I purchased are so great-great quality and beautiful items-I think I'm going to have trouble parting with some, and may have to order a couple of things for myself. The reason I find it so important to buy fair trade is because of the way it supports less fortunate people by allowing them to actually use their talents and abilities to produce a great product, which is bought at a fair trade value, and the workers are able to be paid fairly and build a better future for themselves. What a great way to spend your money! When I said "giving" gifts earlier, I was referring to those gifts that you are able to purchase through World Vision or other organizations that are given to a child or family in need...such as a goat, some chickens, sending a child to school for a year, child immunizations, clean water, fruit trees, etc. There are many, many options and many different levels of cost, so you are able to spend what you want. It is INCREDIBLE what a difference these gifts make in these peoples lives. We are all so blessed and well taken care of, so I encourage you as you purchase gifts this Christmas, to really consider giving gifts that will help others, rather than gifts that will just sit at someone's house or be of no real use, just for the sake of giving a gift. This is one way that we can be of help to people in need.

Amendment to "Rear-Ending"

2005-11-08T11:25:00.000-08:00

I forgot to include some very important information in my previous car story. Interestingly enough, the only car "incidents" that I have been involved in before the roundabout love tap, were all in car parks. I have put 2 large dents in 2 different vehicles when parking. The first was my stepdads massive truck, which I always referred to as "big rig." I was parking in between 2 poles and the hit the pole on one side of the massive truck. It was a four door diesel, what do you expect? I was a senior in high school at that time. Then when I was a senior in college, I was parking my little camaro-Cherry-in the school parking garage because I was about to be late for class...let me just say that I almost never drove to the school, I always walked, but it was like the last day of school and I was in a rush, so I happened to be parking at the school...anyway there was only 1 spot left in the whole place, and it happened to be between a pole and another car that was parked on the line. I hit the pole and put quite a nice dent, with white paint to accent, on the side of the car. The other incident was not my fault, but was in the church parking lot of the church I attended during my freshman year of college. I was leaving the parking lot and this kid from the youth group decided to cut through some empty spots and ran right into the side of Cherry. She's been through a lot. Anyway, he put a big dent in it and it was completely his fault. Went through all this insurance stuff, but the kid lied and so nothing happened to help me out. I was mad. He was in the youth group! What a punk. Anyway, when we called his mom, she didn't even know about it, cause he was in her car and hadn't even told her. Her car was fine, that's why he didn't tell her. But don't you think that if he was honest and it wasn't his fault, he would have told her to just let her know!! He didn't tell her because it was his fault and he didn't want to get in trouble. What a mess that was. Anyway, that's all for now.

Rear Ending

2005-11-07T12:29:00.000-08:00

So on Tuesday my friend April was rear-ended when getting onto the Motorway. It's really crazy busy in the morning, lots of traffic, and the lady behind her hit her and then waved her on. She went on and then wasn't able to get the woman's info, which was unfortunate. So that was bad day #1. On Wednesday morning as she headed to work a different way, (wanted to stop by Starbucks) a car a couple of cars ahead of her had to quickly stop, and then the one in front of her quickly stopped, and she wasn't able to stop in time-so she rear-ended that car, which then hit the one in front of it. The front car had like no damage, the second had a little I believe, and hers was totalled. Her car is the car I used to drive, affectionately known as Darla. It's sad to know that Darla is now dead. Anyway, there are many other details involved that made the whole thing even worse, and poor April was pretty distraught about it all. She's only been here like a month and a half, and driving in the UK is quite an adjustment. It can be stressful, especially with the RIDICULOUS amounts of traffic. So anyway, back to Wednesday. She spent a lot of time on the phone with insurance trying to get everything worked out. Our secretary, Penny, got her lined up with a different car to use the following day. So we left work that afternoon and she was riding with me. We were in the car driving along talking about her last two days of suckiness. She was talking about how she has NEVER in 9 years of driving, had any kind of accident. Perfect record. So we're chatting away and we come up to the roundabout. There is one car in front of me and I'm looking to the right to see when it's clear for us to go. Well, it's clear, so I'm thinkin the guy in front goes ahead, and I give a little gas. But no, he hadn't moved. So I love tapped him. I mean I barely touched the guy. But let me say that I started laughing hysterically! Both of us did, because it was just so ridiculously funny! I mean, come on! How could that happen?? It's just plain funny, you gotta laugh. When choosing between laughing and crying, I choose laughing. Release some endorphins and feel better!

Jesus Isn't Cool

2005-11-03T15:50:00.000-08:00

This is an article I just read on my friend Erin's blog. She is also a youth worker, living in Bonn, Germany and working at an American church there. I think this is an excellent article that speaks my heart as I work with this generation of youth. Everything about the youth I work with and about our youth group is different from my own youth group and my youth years. Our youth group was less "fun" and more focused on worshiping God. It was real and we appreciated it for what it was and for what our youth minister made it. It was centered on God-and that was fun for those involved. We didn't play lots of games, but truth was taught there and lives were challenged and changed. I often find it very difficult to make church stuff fun and cool...and to make it something that kids really want to join in on and don't want to miss. It's no easy task and sometimes can be taken personally when certain kids aren't coming and things like that. It's also hard because there are always pressures...people want to see the numbers grow, we want more kids involved, we want to be relating to more kids and telling more kids about Christ and about a new life in Him. But I do not believe in watering down the Truth or making youth group just a fun thing, with no real emphasis on the scriptures. I believe that Jesus stepped on people's toes, he confronted sin, he dealt with issues, but he also encouraged people and changed things; and he did it all in love. That's all I hope to do.

Jesus Isn't Cool by Chanon Ross

Cramming more than 50 high school students into a small room for weekly Bible study is challenging, but getting them to talk about sex is not. When the questioning hand of one 15-year-old boy shot up in the back of the room, I braced myself. "Is masturbation a sin?—I really gotta know."
I was proud of him, but not for his honesty and openness. Talking explicitly about sex is easy for MTV-watching teens. Using a word like sin is much harder. As Christian Smith and Melinda Lundquist Denton, authors of Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers, observe, few teens think seriously about theologically explicit words like resurrection, redemption, sanctification and sin.
Smith and Denton's findings beg for a response from those working in youth ministry. They describe teens as "incredibly inarticulate" about their faith, and they say mainline teens are "among the least religiously articulate of all teens." Most Christian teens are "at best only tenuously Christian," having confused Christianity with "Moralistic Therapeutic Deism."
Given this state of affairs, what does effective youth ministry look like? We must help teens think about, practice and experience the theological details that make Christianity distinct.
A recent encounter with a pair of street preachers in our gentrified, suburban downtown illustrates one such important detail.
"Turn from Hell! Believe in Jesus!" said the huge sign held by a man whose booming voice reiterated this refrain to hundreds on crowded sidewalks. His younger partner on the opposite corner shouted equally obnoxious phrases.
"What do you think of them?" I asked one of my high school students.
"I don't like it when people are too religious," she said, visibly irritated by the preachers. Her comment suggested she is one of the many teens who described themselves as "religious but not too religious" to Smith and Denton.
"What does 'too religious' mean?" I prompted.
After several attempts at being more descriptive she concluded: "Well you know what I
mean . . ."
"No, what do you mean?" My unwillingness to appease her annoyed her a little.
"I guess it's just not my thing," she said, as if it was a matter of consumer preference.
"It's not a very good way to attract non-Christians," she suggested.
"What is a good way?" I asked."
I just think they should be a lot nicer about it," she said. "They're sort of offensive."
"Right, sort of offensive," I said. "Like when Jesus preached his first sermon and made everyone so mad they tried to kill him. He was, like, sort of offensive. You know what I mean . . ."
It turned out, she did not know what I meant. She knew Jesus was no bombastic street preacher, but this new detail challenged her previous conception and invited her to rethink her image of Jesus as someone who would "go along to get along." Her furrowed brow revealed a storm of mental dissonance—the hard thinking that precedes theological insight. Perhaps there was more to Jesus than she thought.
We often fail to help teens think carefully about their faith and about the details of scripture, worship and Christian practices. Getting kids to like church is itself an accomplishment, and parents want ministers to succeed at that. Not surprisingly, Smith and Denton describe youth ministers as under great pressure to keep kids entertained.
One common strategy involves front-loading youth programming with fun activities, hoping to sneak in a little Bible teaching at the end. The point is not to do anything too weighty that would turn kids off. Keep it light; keep it fun. Large youth events, like Christian concerts, appeal to youth ministers with their ability to entertain kids while simultaneously conveying a positive, family-friendly alternative to things like MTV. This stuff works to a degree: as Smith and Denton show, "religion actually does influence positive outcomes" and religious teens tend to do better than nonreligious teens.
But teens don't need Jesus to be crucified and raised from the dead to have positive outcomes and pursue family friendly alternatives to MTV. Values like being positive, encouraging and tolerant are already widely available in the culture. When kids realize this, and many do, they struggle to articulate the difference that faith makes. It didn't surprise me that many teens told Smith and Denton, "I guess it'll be more important when I'm older."
One student I know didn't want to wait to know this difference, so he participated in his church's "40 Days of Purpose" campaign, hoping that an exploration of Rick Warren's popular book The Purpose Driven Life would help. Instead, he reached this conclusion: "I don't understand why you need God for a sense of purpose, self-esteem, or whatever . . . lots of people have that without God." This young man was onto something.
Religion may help teens find a sense of purpose, stay focused on schoolwork, avoid drugs, drive responsibly, and so on. These are good and important things and they are all part of the "religious package," but they are not the point. They are like the paper bag you get for free if you buy the groceries.
Christian faith takes root and begins to matter to teens when they discover the difference the details make. In the Christian story, we discover a fiercely loyal God who creates, loves, lives, dies, lives again, and calls teens into the passionate grace of the baptized life. That is something teens can get excited about and sink their teeth into, but these details are available only in the Christian story as told in the Bible and creeds. Seeing these details alive in the lives of other baptized people ignites youthful passion in teens more than any youth event or personal sense of purpose ever could. Living these details of the gospel is not supposed to be easy, or necessarily safe, but it's what Christians do.
That Christianity is not supposed to be easy is another important detail that distinguishes Christianity from Moralistic Therapeutic Deism. "The God of Moralistic Therapeutic Deism is not demanding," say Smith and Denton. "Actually, he can't be because his job is to solve our problems and make people feel good. In short, God is something like a combination Divine Butler and Cosmic Therapist."
A few months ago a confirmation teacher asked to meet with me. "Can I talk to you about an issue we're having with one of our students?" Immediately I imagined a long list of possible teenage offenses. "Is the student disruptive?" I asked. "Well, sort of," she said. "The student keeps saying, 'This is too easy; it must be the easiest religion in the world.'" In light of that comment I had to wonder if the confirmation program was teaching Christianity or Moralistic Theraputic Deism.
Twice each year, I take two busloads of high school students on retreats at which they worship, walk labyrinths, talk in small groups with adults who care about them, and "hang out" in Christian community. Upon arrival, low-cut jeans, exposed mid-riffs and tight tank tops were exchanged for hooded sweatshirts and sweat pants. The girls breathe more easily, the burden of being cool and sexy having been lifted from their shoulders. This doesn't happen because of an imposed dress code. It's their idea. Youth group is a different community. The usual social hierarchies have no traction here, because this is Sabbath time. Here everything begins and ends with prayer, and the distinct message of the gospel permeates everything. "Hear and believe the Good News," I say to them, "Jesus is not cool."
Teens respond to the message that their faith offers an alternative to the world. But this realization requires a community of adults who embody this difference. Explaining that life in the Body of Christ is different is insufficient. Adults must show how to live this difference. Where are the adults and trained ministers capable of leading youth and their parents into the particular story of God's work in the world?
Good youth pastors are difficult to find. Seminaries do not usually encourage their students toward youth ministry, and most young pastors avoid youth ministry like the plague. Church members and older pastors think of youth ministry as "entry-level" work, which only encourages younger clergy to climb the ladder toward something worth their time. Besides, youth ministry is hard. I lose more battles than I win.
After a particularly difficult night, I shared my struggles with a young woman interested in becoming a youth minister. "I'm not sure you want to get into this," I said. "There are other things you could do." She sat in a moment of stunned silence. Then she told me about her college years.
"My faith was no match for college," she said. "Youth group was fun, but no one taught me anything." She recalled those years marked by drugs, broken relationships, an eating disorder, sex, pregnancy and eventually abortion. Finally, with tear-filled eyes, she said, "Don't you see? If I had grown up in a youth group like yours, I would have had a fighting chance."

Stockholm, Sweden

2005-11-01T16:00:00.000-08:00

Last week we took a bunch of high schoolers to Stockholm for an International Church retreat. We headed out Wednesday and returned Sunday. We (myself, April-coworker, Andy-other youth worker, and Greg-pastor) took 16 kids. It was awesome. There were kids from Madrid, Paris, Stockholm, Bonn Germany, Oslo, The Hague in Amsterdam, Berlin -- I think that's about it. Most of the kids are American, but some have hardly lived in America at all. Some were from different African countries too, which was cool. The retreat was great-the theme was 24/7-Love God Love People-Nothing Else Matters-24 hours a day 7 days a week. Had talks on following Jesus, love, justice, wilderness, and unity. Good stuff. So Thursday we had a free day all day until we had to be at the church at 5 or 6, so the girls went to lunch and shopping after the whole group had gone to the Vasa museum. The Vasa is this MASSIVE viking ship that was built in like 1625-28 and sank on its maiden voyage. Didn't even make it out of Stockholm actually. Then it was pulled up some 300 years later in the 1950's! This thing was crazy huge, unbelievable. Anyway, shopping was fun, but Sweden is expensive!
Stockholm is so beautiful-the city is set over 14 islands, so you get lovely water views all over the place. My favorite part of Stockholm was Gamla Stan-Old Town. It was gorgeous! Tons of little narrow roads flooded with cafes and shops. Reminded me of Italy and France. The cafes were cool-you could go downstairs and they would have these seating areas that were sort of like cellars-bricked and sort of arch shaped, if that makes sense. I don't know how to describe it all! Friday all of the groups were broken up into mixed groups to play The Amazing Race, all over Stockholm. That was fun! If you've seen the show, you know what I'm talkin about. We were racing from place to place finding clues and doing little "roadblocks" (random things the team had to do before we could get the next clue). We got to use the buses and underground there, and the underground was really nice. Nicer than London's underground! Saturday we had more free time, so again the girls were shopping, but this time in Old Town. Other than that we spent a lot of time at the church for the sessions, and there was a mean game of Spoons (card game) going on every night during free time. I would like to say that I am a Spoons champion-only once defeated, but even then I got down to the top 2. Oh, I also am a ping pong hero-I went down to play ping pong on the last night-so I breezed in and beat everyone there and then left. It was short and sweet. But I beat this kid twice and then I felt bad so I left instead of playing him again. So I have found the 2 talents that I have-ping pong and Spoons. I'm not musically or artistically gifted, but at least I can hold my own in these two games! So that pretty much sums up our time in Stockholm. I would definitely enjoy another trip there, maybe in the summer.

The Most Miserable Experience of My Life

2005-10-25T16:00:00.000-07:00

Maybe that sounds like an overstatement, but it is in no way an overstatement. No. This past weekend truly was the most miserable experience of my life. I went backpacking in Wales. Let me just say that I went on my maiden voyage this summer to the Lake District in England, and had a splendid time on my backpacking trip there for a few days. I wasn't so sure about the whole backpacking experience, but it was so great! That had a lot to do with the fact that it was sunny the whole time, no rain, daylight until like 9:30, and we were next to a beautiful little stream. Okay, this weekend in Wales...not quite the same. Started off Saturday...got to Wales and we were pumped...loaded up the packs and headed out. Well, apparently we started off going the wrong way-had a map, but somehow the guys leading read it wrong or something, I do not know...but we got sort of lost. To make a long day short, by the time it was dark we were still searching for a camp spot and ended up having to hike up this steep hill covered in ferns and gorse, in the dark, with huge holes everywhere that were little streams, etc. etc. I wish I could describe to you how unfortunate this was, but words can't help you imagine or feel the yuckiness of it. Not to mention the fact that we crossed a little river and my foot slipped and went in up to my knee-my boots and socks were completely soaked through and I was pretty cold by the time we got to camp and set up in the dark. Our leader gave me some hot things for my hands and feet which totally helped, and I was warm all night. The next morning we had to tear down everything and load it all back up to hide it in the gorse because we had camped on the top of this small mountain/large hill next to a path. We left on our hike and the weather was pretty good for the most part. Emily and I returned early from the hike because we got to a point where we would be hiking on a ridge for a prolonged period of time, and the ridge was just above the very steep hill, so I felt very very uncomfortable with the heights and the steepness. We decided that since we were early, we would go down for water. We had to find the running water, which meant we had to climb down the hill to the stream...no path, just a whole lot of gorse scratching our legs...to the bottom where there was water. Then, we filled up the 50 gallon jug and proceeded to carry it back up the steep hill. This little adventure must have taken at least an hour. 50 gallons is kinda heavy, so it was slow goin. Great workout for the arms....and legs as well. Got back up and set up our tent and hung out waiting for the others to return. That night was great, had a nice hot meal and socialized. Good times. Went to bed around 8 p.m. since it was pitch black and there was nothing to do, plus we were pretty stinkin tired from the hike. Storm set in a little later and there were galeforce winds and rain ALL NIGHT AND INTO THE MORNING AND AFTERNOON. Didn't get a lot of sleep that night since the tent was being blown so hard by the wind that it was almost touching me laying down and the water was leaking in. The loudness of the rain pelting the tent and the excessive levels of wind noise didn't help either. Miserable. So I wasn't in the happiest of moods when I woke up Monday morning, and I really just wanted to leave and go home where it's warm and happy. But our leader wanted to try and wait out the storm because it would be nearly impossible to tear down and pack up in 70 MPH winds. However, it only got worse through the morning. A few of us were sitting in "the cook tent" drinking hot chocolate and the tent was being blown so hard that the side was caving in. Well, this tent has many, many poles because it is built to withstand HIMALAYAN MOUNTAIN STORMS. It could not, however, handle the Wales mountain storm, and one or two poles actually broke. Some bent as well. This wind was beyond anything I have ever experienced. It was just such a bizarre feeling to be standing there on top of this hill in the wind and rain, and know that you could do absolutely nothing about anything. You could do nothing about the wind and rain, you had to pack up, you had to potty outside in this weather, you had to be cold, you had to put your backpack on and scale down the side of the mountain with no trail to get back, you had to be soaked completely through. So strange. So miserable. After we packed up, we really did just go straight down the side of this steep hill/mountain thing, which was crazy. I fell 5 times with a pack on, no good. It was just so slippery!! Unbelievable. Then we had to climb over a couple of fences, so I'm thinkin we were not on completely legal property the whole time. But I made it through!!! And I have to say there were some enjoyable moments too...I mean there are some things that you can only experience in a setting such as this. Do I regret going? Yes, definitely. But such is life.

Who Knew Dean Martin was an Alcoholic Comedian?

2005-10-20T14:48:00.000-07:00

I thought he was just a great singer, but Deano was pretty funny as well I guess. Last night, April and I went to "The Rat Pack" show in the West End and it was excellent. I mean, seriously excellent. We went into London for the day-started off at Chili's in Canary Wharf...but my tummy has been yucky this week so I only had a boring dinner salad. £3 for a little bowl of iceburg, that's unfortunate. But I do love the atmosphere and Chili's holds so many great memories. I was telling April many of them yesterday. Beginnings, endings, celebrations...good times. Anyway, then we went to Greenwich and walked around-went up to the Prime Meridian and had an amazing view from there. The park there is fantastic-massive green hills and loads of trees. Then we had some cheap cobbler at this place I go to for cobbler when I am in Greenwich.
Then we went to ASDA. ASDA is the wal-mart of England--wal-mart actually owns ASDA, so they have George clothes like in Wal-Mart, but that's about the only thing they both have. This was my first ASDA experience and it was pretty good. It had the Wal-Mart feel to it, but still England so you see things like Jammie Dodgers (some kind of cookies) and stuff like that. But I got 2 cute, cheap George sweaters!
After all this we went to the half price tickets booth at Leicester Square-got there at 7 p.m. and were able to get tickets for "The Rat Pack" at 8. We felt like we were in America-the theatre was different from many other London theatres and the music playing up until the start of the show were American classics. Could not believe how excellent the show was. Frank was the best-very classy and cool. Dean made lots of cheesy jokes, a couple of which were actually kinda funny. And they talked a whole lot about Dean's drinking addiction-which I guess was just part of the show and not necessarily true. The guy who played Sammy Davis Jr. was interesting. Yes, that is how I have to describe him. He moved in interesting ways-jumping around and dancing and such-very very entertaining. I don't know how accurate it was because I don't know Sammy Davis Jr.'s style too well. The singing was fabulous. I would definitely see it again.
I am going on another backpacking excursion this weekend. I cannot believe I am going backpacking again. I really thought it was a one-time experience for me. I am already semi-regretting my decision to go, but I'll just be praying that it doesn't rain and that it isn't too cold. This journey is way easier than the other one though-the hike in isn't nearly as long and the altitude isn't as high. The hike up on Sunday won't be as difficult either. We have 14 people going, so it should be great. Several of our youth are going. Then Wednesday we're off to Stockholm, Sweden for a few days for the annual high school retreat with other International churches. So that's what's on the calendar.

Middle School Retreat Addendum

2005-10-17T13:51:00.000-07:00

So last week after coming back from the MS retreat, I wasn't sure how much the kids really took from it or learned...or would apply to their own lives. But Tuesday morning I got a call from a mom to tell me that she had gone up to wake her son up and he was already awake-had set his alarm and gotten up-to do a quiet time!!! How awesome is that! She said after he finished breakfast he had 10 minutes extra time so he grabbed his bible to continue his quiet time. She was so excited because this is something she wanted to see happen, but didn't want to push onto him. So that was super encouraging! Then on Wednesday, another mom was telling me that on Sunday night her daughter was writing down scripture memory verses onto 3x5 cards to memorize. Then she saw them in her backpack. Later that afternoon I was driving that same girl home from her soccer game and she was telling me about that and she said that she was using her time on the bus to look at the cards! How great is that! So those were two very encouraging reports to hear! Just reminded me that I have no idea what kids are being reached or when or how....but things are happening.

Middle School Retreat

2005-10-10T14:40:00.000-07:00

This weekend was the annual Middle School Retreat. So we went to the Isle of Wight, which is just a wee island south of England-about a 40 minute ferry ride from Portsmouth. The place we stayed at was an old Victorian house built in 1870 that has been redone as a Christian Retreat Centre. It was really beautiful and so close to the water. We walked down to the beach Saturday afternoon and it was such a nice day! The view from our rooms was so great-straight out onto the water. We had 18 middle schoolers, Brittany our helper who is on a gap year, The Serranos-a married couple with 2 middle schoolers and a 7 year old, and me and Andy. It was good fun for the most part. We played lots of fun games and talked about basic Christian disciplines. The kids were divided up into 4 teams for the weekend, to encourage them to mix up with some kids they might not otherwise, and they had to make up a team cheer for the whole weekend. I decided to use random countries for the team names, so we had Yugoslavia, Ethiopia, Argentina, and Malaysia. I thought that would make the cheer making up process more fun. And it did. Yugoslavia's cheer one first place...Andy hummed "Chariots of Fire" while one girl ran in slow motion and the other kids all pointed at her one at a time saying "you go"...then they rewound and she ran backwards and then ran forwards faster and they all said together "YOU GO YOU GO SLAVIA" with their weird hand gestures as well. It was awesome. I wish you could see it as it was. Anyway, teams got points for good deeds, games, sportsmanship, memorizing verses, kissing up to the judge, and other things like that. I encouraged creativity, so whatever they could come up with was good. Argentina won in the end, barely. They cheered a lot. Malaysia was a very close second. Saturday night some kids broke a bed, so that was unfortunate. But apparently it was an easy enough repair. I gotta say though, I was embarrassed for their behavior somewhat. The staff at St. Rhadagund's probably has quite an interesting view of Americans now!! But all in all it was a good weekend!

Life as a Youth Worker

2005-10-04T14:17:00.000-07:00

So life as a youth worker is interesting...a youth worker does many things. Yesterday I added a new thing to my list...driving instructor. Yes. Brittany Taylor is 17 and is learning to drive. Here in Britain you can't drive until 17. She had only taken 1 lesson and she asked me to take her to this neighborhood called Burwood Park-where I used to live actually-and let her drive around in there for practice. Wow. Scary. She sometimes drove in the grass and the turns were probably the scariest part. It was really funny. Very interesting to be in the car with someone that had only ever driven once before...and had never even reversed. She reversed once and that was...fun. But I really believe that by the end of the 20ish minutes, she had improved a bit.

Image Worship

2005-10-04T12:23:00.000-07:00

Another Relelvent article that I thoroughly enjoyed. The stuff she listed so applies to me and to our worship, I believe. I say that as a generalization and not an all-encompassing truth. But I feel like I am often not able to express myself freely in worship; probably just because of the parameters and hindrances I place on myself.

Image Worship
by Jessica Lenington

Sophistication, education and experience only go so far with God. In our culture, image is worshipped, and we are inundated constantly with a flood of this worship—words, pictures, stories, sounds, music, statues, artwork—all carefully crafted expressions of worship to this idol. In our culture, in the Church, too often worshipping God has been badly polluted by this sin. So let me share what’s been happening to me: though I’ve been abandoning the purer worship I used to know, God is bringing me back. As I invited the Holy Spirit to meet me today, I got stripped of sophistication.

My spirit has been set free, like an unaware, trusting child. I am so thankful.

As I prayed, I wondered: Why is it that we fail to really enter in? Why do we remain trapped, unable to taste the purity of worship, unable to totally worship and let it all out? What is the root of this problem? I wonder if it isn't, more often than not, the sophistication of our self-consciousness that holds us back, this pollution of image-worship and the resulting cloud of confusion, self-absorption?

If I get emotional when I’m singing a worship song, then I will be faking myself out, immature.
If I even sing a worship song, it will not match my life, which doesn't worship God as much, so I will not sing. I don't know how to sing or worship in my heart.
If I stand up to worship when no one is around, I will just be religious, trying too hard.
If I stand up to worship when others are also worshipping, I’ll just be copying them.
If I lift my hands, what will that matter?
If I dance, I might tread into the realm of weird or flakey.
If I worship in silence, how will I know it is real? I have too many fleeting thoughts.
If I point my spirit to God and thank Him while washing the dishes, cleaning, driving, working, taking care of the kids, it won't be enough—I should do more. So I won't, because what I have to offer isn't enough. I should do more good works—that is more acceptable to God.
If I ask God to meet me, He won't come. I haven't been consistent.

I think each of these lies comes from a root of the worship of image, the extreme self-consciousness of our culture. It puts us on a perpetual stage; it entices us with fantasies of having others watch us do great things, or having headlines written about us, or having movies made about our lives—we end up living to what we want our legacy to be. We try, as the philosophers say, to create our own lifestyles. This idol, this lie, this sin imbeds itself into our concepts of our own purposes, our concepts of who we are. We put our focus on ourselves as though God was responding to who we are. This pervasive lie tries to make us believe that unless others are impacted or see what God is doing in us, there is no value in our lives—and there is no value in worshipping.

Fortunately for us, there is a way out of this trap, and I think I’ve started to see how to escape. We can be freed from this problem, and we can return to worshipping and praying in unseen closets instead of the public places of our hearts (and blogs). Back when Jesus walked the earth, He asked His disciples a question while traveling along the road with them: Who do people say I am?

According to the Gospel of Mark, they responded, "Some say John the Baptist, others say Elijah, and still others, one of the prophets." And Jesus asked them another question: But what about you, who do you say that I am?

Jesus seeks our response to who He is. In letting go of the idol of image, we can, free of self-consciousness and self-absorption, say as Peter did: "You are the Christ" (Mark 8).

We are not in charge of creating our own lifestyle or our own legacy after all. We can relax and feel His love. We can worship. May each of our eyes be opened, and may we truly respond, unafraid and unashamed, to the One who transforms us, who loves us, who is our only judge.

The imagination, filled with the Holy Spirit, can brilliantly set us free to worship without shame or holding back. I pray for each of us to be stripped of sophistication. I pray for God's holy mercy to light our path.

Dig Deeper
John 8:12-30
John 10:9-18
John 11:1-45

How Incredible Is This!!

2005-09-16T10:34:00.000-07:00

This is Romans 38-39 (NLT)
"And I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from his love. Death can't, and life can't. The angels can't, and the demons can't. Our fears for today, our worries about tomorrow, and even the powers of hell can't keep God's love away. Whether we are high above the sky or in the deepest ocean, nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord."

I just read chapter 8 and was impacted by it-the whole thing-but these last couple verses especially grabbed me today. I love how alive God's word is-and that you can read the same thing many different times and something will stand out in a new way each time. Or one particular word or verse can captivate you and you just have to meditate on it in an effort to better grasp it. Amazing isn't it? Do you realize how exciting it is that NOTHING can ever separate us in the least bit from the love of God? Wow, I am astounded. That's huge. Not easy to fully grasp.

Weekend in Cheltenham

2005-09-12T18:41:00.000-07:00

I went to Cheltenham to visit Pete this past Thursday through Saturday night. It was my first time to go visit him. I have been to Cheltenham once before for a church conference, but we didn't actually go into Cheltenham at all, just stayed at the conference and our hotel which was close to the racecourse where the conference was held. So this was my first time to really visit Cheltenham...and it's pretty much like every other English town. Most of them are really, really similar. It was a good time. Thursday evening I got in and he picked me up and took me back to his parents house. We all had a lovely dinner together that his mother,Wendy, made. She's a great cook! I really like his parents a lot...they're very warm and welcoming. After dinner and "pudding" (dessert-not actually pudding) Pete had a football (soccer) game. He plays on a league for fun, not too competitively. I like to watch sports live, so that was enjoyable. The next day Pete and Wendy both had to work and Richard had to leave early in the a.m. to pick up John (Pete's younger brother, 21) from the airport. He was returning from Houston, TEXAS where his new fiance lives. They just got engaged while he was out there, but that's another story. Anyway, I slept in which was FAB because I never get to, and had a nice, quiet, slow morning before I headed into town. I went in and found a great little fairtrade shop and bought some goodies...and met Pete for lunch at Subway! We love Subway. Then I went to Costa coffee and sat there for 3 HOURS working on my Sunday school lesson and DV8 (middle school youth) talk for Sunday night. I was just so excited about it all and about the scripture I was reading...so the time just flew by. It was so nice to just sit and relax and chill for a good chunk of time. I headed back to the house and finally met Pete's brother John, whom I had heard sooooo much about! After viewing all of his pictures from his Texas trip, the 3 of us went to the grocery store and bought the makings for a wonderful dinner. Pete had planned on making chicken stir fry for the fam...and the boy can cook. It was super yummy! After dinner and pudding, the boys and I played a competitive game of LIFE. The G of L as it's known in the Hills' house. Pete and John like to make fun of their dad a lot, so there was much laughter, but he takes it well. Apparently he usually loses pretty badly, but this time he came in second I believe. I love LIFE! So fun! Saturday was yucky English weather. The boys went to a men's breakfast at church, so Wendy and I went to a few shops in town. Then we met up with them again and Pete, John, and I headed over to Jill and Heath's house. Jill is John's fiance's cousin. Heath is her husband. They are from TEXAS and will be living in Cheltenham for a couple more years as Heath finishes school there. I think he is getting his PhD maybe. Anyway, Jill was born and raised in AMARILLO!!! She graduated from Tascosa high school! How weird is that! Then her fam moved to Lampasas and she went to A&M. It was so great to meet this awesome couple and talk with them. I seriously love Texans. Then Pete and I went to this really good Tex-Mex restaurant called "That Mexican Place." It was actually quite good and I was fairly impressed, but hear me now people, no Mexican food will ever be as good as the Mexican food in Texas. That is truth. Later we went to see this movie "The Longest Yard." I thought it was pretty good, but Pete just thought it was okay.
I think that's pretty much it for the weekend. That was quite an in-depth account I just gave. Hope I didn't bore everyone out too much with details!
Oh, then Sunday was the first DV8...so I thought it would be fun if we had MESSY GAMES NIGHT. And it was. I laughed so stinkin hard at these kids, they seriously crack me up! First we had a whipped cream pie fight; then 4 kids had to dig there faces into a plate of chocolate pudding and get out the gummy worms; next was pass the SPAM (their fave)-just like pass the orange, but with SPAM-absolutely disgusting; then this toothpaste game; and an egg toss to finish. They were incredibly grossed out when I pulled the SPAM out of the bag and explained what the next game was. It was awesome. The girls were like "It smells like cat food, I'm not touching it. GROSS!!!" But they somehow got over that really quickly and everyone played...then they commenced to throwing the spam at each other. Oh, to top it all off, it was raining the entire time. Not really raining, but sprinkling I guess. Or maybe just a heavy mist. In any case, it was wet and messy, smelly, disgusting. Lovely.

Lately...

2005-09-05T15:18:00.000-07:00

So it's been a couple of weeks since I have posted-things have been super busy busy since school started back and all the kids are back. Getting back into the swing of things is a bit tough after summer! My free time quickly fills up and leaves a very small amount of "Lindsey time" open. But I think that's the way I like it. What's been going on here? Well 0ur new youth worker, Andy, got here about 3 weeks ago. He is from Belfast, Ireland. He's awesome! Really excited about being here and working with these kids, and great to work with. We get along well and have a lot in common, so it's a good working environment. Sadly, Megen is out. She has finished her time of employment with ICC and is doing a bit of traveling before heading back to Cali the end of September. She will be GREATLY missed!
Had our first Ignite (high school youth) last week at Starbucks, and it went really well. Didn't have a mass amount of kids, so just kinda chilled out and chatted about summer and life in general. My boyfriend Pete played a bunch of his songs and some other covers for us, which was awesome! Kids, coffee shop, live music...what's better?
Yesterday was incredibly beautiful and perfect weather-and it just so happened that we were having a pool party and bbq in the afternoon at the Zinsmeisters MAGNIFICENT new home. God totally blessed us with the weather cause today, not so good. But the 3 previous=perfect. Anyway, we had around 30 kids come out and swim, play volleyball, tennis, and eat some skinny England size hot dogs. It was a great day. The day before was my 24th birthday...which was also a great day. Pete came down Friday and we hung out in London-went to Camden market for lunch and shopping...he got me some great new Aldo leather flip flops for my bday. Then we hopped on a little boat for a cruise on the canals down through Regent's Park and on to Little Venice-then back to Camden. It was really nice. Then we went for a drink at Belgo's-they have a bazillion types of Belgian beers, many fruit beers...I had mango. Yum. I don't actually like beer, but Belgo's fruit beers are fab. After that we headed back home to the Mellgard's to celebrate my bday with the fam. Emily and Erica (one of my youth) made me an awesome dinner-Pasta with mushrooms, homemade focaccia bread, the best salad ever, and CARROT CAKE for dessert. My goodness was that wonderful. Then we had a competitive game of UNO attack, in which I was badly defeated. I was the big loser. Saturday Pete and I headed up to London and did a London Walk around Little Venice. It's such a beautiful area. Got to see where J.K. Rowling and Michael Flatly, Lord of the Dance, live. Saw where lots of other famous Brits live too, but these were the only 2 names I recognized. The walk was cool. That evening we met up with some other friends for dinner at the Texas Embassy. I love that place...just like being in America again, almost. After the embassy we were supposed to go swing dancing, but it started at 8 and I had actually hoped to be there around then, but that didn't happen-plus we couldn't find the place FOREVER so we didn't end up going. We actually did finally stumble upon the Rhythm Lounge, but opted not to go in so late as it was £10. We will be back, that's for sure. So the bday was good times.
I guess that wraps up what's been going on here. Hope your day is full of SONshine!

Another great Relevant article

2005-08-17T15:30:00.000-07:00

This article is my heart. Since living in England my whole worldview has changed. My eyes have been opened to so much more in the world, what's happening and what I can do about it. My awareness has grown. As a Christian, I am called to be Christ-like, and Christ was all about helping the less fortunate. How many times in the Bible is there scripture that mentions the "widows and orphans"? So many!! We are called to go above and beyond just taking care of ourselves and putting ourselves first...we are called to "look not only to [our] own interests, but also to the interests of others. [Our] attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus..."
Phil 2

And from "Mountains Beyond Mountains":
RE: the poverty in Haiti- "How could a just God permit great misery? The Haitian peasants answered with a proverb: ‘Bondye konn bay, men li pa konn separe,’ in literal translation, “God gives but doesn’t share.” This meant, as Farmer [the doctor whom the book is written about] would later explain it, ‘God gives us humans everything we need to flourish, but he’s not he one who’s supposed to divvy up the loot. That charge was laid on us.'"

God's Ambassadors

“The sick and maimed are not hot spots of contamination but potential reservoirs of God’s mercy.” —Philip Yancey, What’s So Amazing About Grace?

Some say that their spiritual road is laden with themes, and I realize how true this is in my own walk. What’s my theme lately? Missions. Serving. Loving. OK, so there are a couple of themes, but they are each interrelated. And when God moves, I don’t want to hesitate in following. Recently, God has shocked me into the reality of how blessed my life truly is. Martyrdom. Enslavement. Homelessness. Forced prostitution. Starvation. Genocide. All of these I’ve never known. In even my darkest hour, I can honestly say it was no true obstacle compared to what most face on a daily basis. And I think God is making me aware of the responsibility that comes with the grace He has shown me. In such a blessed nation, I think it is our responsibility to reach out to the world. Faith without action is non-existent. In James 2:23 and 26, James writes, “You see that his faith and his actions were working together, and his faith was made complete by what he did … As the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without deeds is dead.” When we truly kneel before God and ask Him to make our priorities His, a servant’s heart will surface.

The striking thing is the fact that we are only vaguely aware of the sad situations around the world. And why? Do I even have to mention the ridiculous and redundant obsession with celebrity court cases? The coverage tends to occupy every news station and creates a buzz around the nation. But it is my belief that what American media today considers important is peanuts compared to the under-publicized atrocities that people all over the world fall victim to. But going straight to the media is not going to solve the problem. I think it’s our personal responsibility to make an effort to get informed and take action. I realize that complaining will get you no where, while proactive strides toward change make the lasting impact.

I’ve read a lot of articles and heard many sermons lately that emphasize how we as Christians fail to act on the calling God has placed on us. While this is true, I want to acknowledge that there are those who obediently follow God’s prodding nudge to compassionately serve others in the name of our Father. And part of my desire is to get the names of these organizations and groups out in the open. I want you to get connected. I want to see a revival. I’m talking huge. A wave of impact that lets future generations know we are fighting for truth, justice and mercy. I want every person to know where we stand not only as a generation, but as the church. I want to break the priorities America has come to stand on.

We as Christians should not be advocates of stagnancy. The truth is, once we get our hearts right, God begins to reveal His plan by moving us up, out and forward. And I strongly feel a sense of urgency and think He’s asking our generation to be a part of one of the greatest movements. Some say a Revolution. God has always been ready and desiring to use us, but most people have no idea what this really means because we float in stagnant waters instead of proactively and obediently submitting to God’s calling. We have to make an active decision to let God lead us if this is going to happen.

In our time of great technology, the access we have to networking provides us with the greatest opportunity to take the matter into our own hands. Making political changes in countries or just providing a meal for the hungry are both ways to touch lives as ambassadors of God.

Unbelievers have asked me the question, “Where’s the goodness in God if He let’s so many bad things happen?” The answer to counteracting the heartless acts of man is responding to the call God places on us. He wants us to intercede. That’s the goodness of God. During our weekly meeting of twentysomethings at my church, we began to fervently pray over our “one more life” campaign. My friends and I prayerfully expressed our faith in His provisions as we continued to raise money for starving nations. Then a woman in my circle cried out for God to tell the hurting people that their prayers would soon be answered. I began to weep as the reality of this sunk in. Imagine coming face–to-face with malnourished families in an oppressive country and hearing them tell you that God is good because He provides. Then you realize that you were the ambassador of the ultimate Provider. You were allowing God to work through you! We have the power to show God’s love and mercy. That’s our command and our calling.

I want to provide a network for the army of God and spark a revolution for change. Now, of course, as the body of Christ, we are not all called to physically be full-time missionaries, but I think it is important to earnestly pray and evaluate God’s call on your life. The Spirit of God is moving: He’s encouraging us to do more. How can we sit back and not let our Creator use us in the way He intended?

As God reveals His purpose in me, I’m encouraged to reach out to you. Let’s shake this nation and this world. What can you do? We are looking for articles (600-1,000 words) that spotlight mission organizations that are making an impact, detailed personal accounts of what’s really going on out in the world and pieces that rally for change. What is God revealing in you? How can we fight for truth and justice? Let’s create an army with the strength and confidence of David in a world full of Goliaths.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY BROTHER

2005-08-15T14:30:00.000-07:00

Today is Shane's 25th birthday!! And he is just about to celebrate his 4 YEAR WEDDING ANNIVERSARY with Beth. So Happy Birthday to Shane, hope it's a great one, sorry it's on a Monday. I hope all of the street lights turn green for you and that your dental patients are joyful and thankful for you and that you have a fab dinner with your beautiful wife! You have become a great brother and someone that I admire, appreciate, love, and look up to. I am so proud of you and the man that you have become.
Congrats on 4 great years of marriage, well done you! Love you and miss you lots and lots.

Good times

2005-08-15T14:27:00.000-07:00

This weekend was full of good times! Pete came down to visit for the weekend, so he got here around noon Saturday and left Sunday night at 8. Unfortunately, he was feeling sick all weekend, but he still wanted to come down. We had a great time despite his feeling yucky. On Saturday the Millisors (awesome fam from church) called and asked me if I wanted to go to Mary Poppins-the musical- that night. I saw it with Megen a few months ago and LOVED it, so I really wanted to go...but I said Pete was coming over, so I couldn't go. But LeeAnne (Mrs. Millisor) said they would see if they could get enough tickets cause her husband Dan was on the phone getting tickets at that moment. So they got the tickets and we were able to go, their treat!!! So it was the Millisor family-Dan and LeeAnne and their 2 teenage kids Kristen and Eric, and then Emily Mellgard whom I live with, and Pete and me. We went to dinner first at the Texas Embassy-which actually has really good Mexican food and awesome atmosphere. I love that place! Then to the musical which was FANTASTIC! It's so magical and happy! It was the last big fun thing for the Millisors because today they are flying back to the states today(Cincinatti, Ohio); their time here is finished.
Sunday was really nice and chill. Went to church in the morning, then Pete and I went to a Nepalese restaurant called The Sherpa Kitchen. It is sooooo stinkin good. Great great great food and really good prices. Also nice atmosphere, very clean and well presented food. Pete and I both get really excited about food, so we fully enjoyed ourselves. Then we went for a long walk in the heath and got a little lost wandering around-I don't have the greatest sense of direction apparently. But it was good and we found our way back easily enough. After that we played 2 games of ping-pong which I WON. I won both!! Close games though. Pete's probably better than me, but I think I got lucky. Watched some Top Gun and realized how many cheeseball moments that movie has, but I will still always love it. I don't even really understand half of what's going on with the flying and the bogies and everything, but that's cool. And then Pete left and our weekend of fun ended.
This morning was the first morning of Vacation Bible School. I got to do a puppet skit! I have never done puppets before, so it wasn't the greatest puppet work ever, but it got the point across and the kids seemed to enjoy it. And we sang lots of little fun kid songs, yay! It's a beautiful day outside, gorgeous weather. Hope everyone else has nice weather too! May God's love encompass you this week through your surroundings and friends and life happenings!

New Interests

2005-08-12T13:00:00.000-07:00

"Books just wanna be free" is the motto of bookcrossing.com, a new website that Megen introduced me to a couple of days ago. Basically how it works is that you read a book and then register it on BookCrossing to get a special ID code for it, then you send it out into the wild and wait for someone to claim it and hopefully visit bookcrossing themselves to register where they found it and so on. It's like this massive community of book lovers all over the world releasing books to be found and enjoyed by others, for free! It's really fun, like a game, because you can go hunting for books in your area too. I'm excited about setting some of mine free...but which ones I do not know because I do love my books.
The other new interest is Blood:Water Mission. This mission was founded by one of my fave bands, Jars of Clay, to provide clean blood and water efforts in Africa...in order to help the ongoing HIV/AIDS pandemic to decrease. I urge you to visit this site and become more aware and involved. I didn't realize that only $1 provides 1 African with water for 1 YEAR. How incredible and easy is that. A dollar. Just one. Get involved!

"The Blood:Water Mission is a non-profit organization founded by the members of the multi-platinum, Grammy Award-winning band, Jars of Clay, to address the HIV/AIDS crisis in Africa. Blood:Water Mission exists to promote clean blood and clean water efforts in Africa, tangibly reducing the impact of the HIV/AIDS pandemic while addressing the underlying issues of poverty, injustice and oppression. Blood:Water is building clean water wells, supporting medical facilities, and focusing on community and worldview transformation, both here in America and in Africa. We recognize that numbers and statistics are hard to grasp, and that sometimes a step back is necessary to conceptualize the enormity of the HIV/AIDS crisis. Yet we also know that simply standing from a distance with arms thrown in the air is not a solution. We believe in pressing inward, in building relationships and bridges with communities in Africa. We believe in hearing personal stories and walking alongside brothers and sisters who have demonstrated strength and faith in the midst of desperate and tragic situations. We hold fast to the conviction that we are all responsible for being good stewards of our time, our resources and our compassion in a broken world. Every person has something to give in return for what has been received. Please join us on this journey."

Perfect Moments...

2005-08-11T15:50:00.000-07:00

This morning at our bible study with the kids we were discussing sort of like hard times we go through-and perserverence type stuff. But the first question in the study was about moments that you just want to freeze and keep forever. There are bits of time; moments that can hold so much in them for a person for whatever reason. I have like a bazillion of these moments because God has SO blessed me!! Some of them are when I am alone-just me and the Lord, some are with family, with friends, in various cities or countries. One of these moments was when I went backpacking a few weeks ago-on the first morning I got up and left the tent and was walking when I noticed the sheeps faces on the hillsides, just these dots of white I could see from a distance-the sheep were still all laying down. Anyway, I felt such peace and serenity because I was surrounded by the field we were camping in and then these massive green hills and a blue sky...no civilization, no noise, and not a care in the world. Incredible. Another was just having lunch with my brother over Christmas break last year...just sitting at Jason's Deli visiting with him was so so good after not seeing him for so long, and not ever really getting quality time just the two of us. Another was last week in Switzerland after Pete and I had hiked up to the top of this mountain. There was a bench sitting on what seemed like the edge of the world, and he went to sit down and check out the view of the lakes down below, but I was afraid because it was quite close to the edge and I do not like heights...but I went and sat down and it was a perfect moment. The view was unbelievable and it was like being in a dream. I wish this picture could do it some justice, any at all, but it CANNOT. This so doesn't capture it, but it's all I've got!

One Year Anniversary

2005-08-11T14:16:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was August 10, 2005-my one year anniversary of life in England. Looking back I feel like it has gone sort of fast, but at the same time not. It's weird that a whole year here is finished now, but I have had so so so many experiences over the past year that have impacted me and continued to develop me spiritually and intellectually. It's been good. Looking forward to another one.

Churfirstenblick, Flumserberg, Switzerland

2005-08-09T14:07:00.000-07:00

Got back from Switzerland Monday afternoon after a full week there. It was an amazing week that I cannot sum up with words. I wish I could, but as always, it's just so hard to paint a picture of what my eyes saw, or my heart felt, or even what God taught me and showed me in my life. All I can say is that Switzerland is incredibly beautiful, the Alps are truly majestic and so different from many other mountains I have seen. There were fields of wildflowers in yellow, orange, and purple mixed with the green green grass. There was a massive lake at the bottom, which we visited a couple of times and took a boat ride from place to place. There were sharp peaks that looked so powerful and some that were more peaceful and welcoming in appearance. But pictures can't do anything for the reality of the beauty-gotta see it yourself! The massiveness and depth and colors are lost in pictures.
I played a lot of ping-pong, learned a couple of notes on the guitar-had to cut off my nails :-(
did a lot of walking, talking, and praising God. We visited Liechtenstein and a town in Austria on a very beautiful, sunny day. It was a pretty chill holiday for the most part, which was exactly what I needed. I met a really nice guy named Pete Hills. He is awesome! We got to hang out a lot and get to know each other, which was super great. His parents were there as well and they are fantastic too! So I will be seeing him this weekend :-).
God taught me more about him through the people I was with and through his beautiful creation. How anyone can look at this incredible world and not praise their father in heaven-the designer behind it all-is beyond me. My excitement and love for Jesus was renewed and strengthened! It was just an amazing week really. And now it's back to real life...no more holidays for a while!

DennisinMalawi.com

2005-07-28T17:30:00.000-07:00

This man from my church, Dennis, is currently on a 6 week stint to Malawi, Africa to work with an organization called Opportunity International. I guess they have a bank there that helps the poorest people in the region. The bank was founded by a group of Christians and it's not for profit. I don't know much about it at all, but I do know that Dennis took his tenure time that he earned from work to spend serving others. He went with our youth back in March to Romania on that missions trip to help us out and he is such an awesome, integrable man of Godly character. Anyway, I was just reading his site dennisinmalawi.com and was touched by some of the stories of the locals there that he has met. So I wanted to share a bit with you.

Working with Opportunity International Bank of Malawi
Where do I start?After arriving at OIBM I have spent the last 3 days getting to know the staff, their clients and their vision for the future. They are looking for me to help them develop a marketing and brand strategy for the bank to allow them to plan the next 6 to 24 months advertisements. So the past few days have been mostly information gathering for me. I have met 10 of their micro lending clients in the market here in the city and in the village about 25 miles in the bush. My experiences are one of such sorrow and yet hope. It’s best to share this with you in just a few stories of some amazing women.

Agnes- This woman started out making donuts in her kitchen and having two boys sell them in the market. She also did hairdressing in her home. When the hairdressing began to expand, she wanted to open a shop so here home would be less noisy. First she rented a space in a building and later she bought her own little shop outside of the city centre. Her hair saloon was a big success and she started to offer various goods in her shop to allow the locals to buy things from her instead of having to go into town. This later developed into a small convenience store which later expanded into a small grocery store offering food, soap, cold drinks and other household goods. Not finished yet, Agnes returned to her cooking roots by opening a restaurant near her shop where she serves food from 11:30 till 6pm. This is managed by Irene while Agnes works behind the counter of the store when she is not cutting hair.She came to OIBM when the bank she got her first loan, turned her down for her second. She is motivated by her responsibility to the poor in her country and as she says it “looking for something nicer than I have”. She employs 18 people in her three shops and has bought land nearby which she hopes to open an even bigger grocery store someday.

Mrs. Chunda – This miraculous woman started out carrying baked good on her head to the market everyday. One day she asked the government for the piece of land adjacent to the main bus station which they were using as a dump site. She cleaned it up and set up her own restaurant. She now served people from 10am – 6pm cooking on open fires and serving a simple choice of meat or chicken with maze or rice. The price is about $1 and the customers sit under a plywood roof on tables and chairs. She says she has served over 17,000 per day and hopes to someday put down a cement floor rather then the dirt one and get electricity and a refrigerator to serve cold drinks. She has 7 of her own children and has taken in 18 others from her brothers and sister who have died. Their ages range from 21 to 3 years old. She heard about OIBM from a friend and decided to become a customer and then a client to expand her business. She has 10 people working for her cooking, serving and washing up.

The village meeting – I sat with over 60 men, women and their children this morning as a member of OIMB gave them a presentation under the meeting tree. Brown told them of the importance of working together to make their business grow and to help each other if they were to continue to be successful. These people are borrowing between $10 and $15 in order to buy more food or soap to sell in the small stall under some cardboard or in their small hut. Some used the money to buy galvanized steel to make water pails or wood to make chairs and beds there in the village. These people greeted me and my colleagues from OIBM with songs and smiles. The women of Malawi love to sing and so quite often when they are together the just break out in song. The village chief was there to monitor the presentation and to participate. I was introduced as a man from Britain coming to help them. For my part I took lots of pictures which I am hoping to get uploaded into the site soon. Email and other forms of communication can be quite spotty. As I took their pictures I would show them the results on the TFT screen and they were all amazed. For some this may have been one of the first times they had their picture taken.But what really impressed me was their faith in Jesus. It stared this morning at 7:15 at the OIBM satellite branch which opened in Oct 2004. (These were 3 containers they crafted together and created an amazing place with air conditioning, and ATM machine and a garden to have their customers sit outside in comfort.) The whole staff met for morning devotionals before opening the bank at 8. When we went to the village we also opened and closed with prayer and sang songs of praise. These people have so very little yet they have the love of God and the feeling that the Holy Spirit is with them. The children are full of smiles and joy. I was saddened when I realized that one out of every 4 would not make it to their 5th birthday. Yet through this all they were amazing friendly to me and I never felt threatened in any way. This was the same the day before when I walk around the market where 10,000 people work and try to survive in this very poor country.You get the sense of how poor when all day long you see people walking barefoot, picking up wood along the road, trying to sell a fish or a pigeon they just caught. People selling all sorts of things that they hope will get them some money. Yet there does not feel like there is hopelessness in the air or with the people. They want to work, to earn a living so they can get shoes or a better roof on their house or just to have some other clothes to wear. And they all feel a sense of obligation to each other. They know they are a poor country but they are also looking for ways get out of this poverty.

Relevant Rocks

2005-07-22T17:00:00.000-07:00

I just read a great article that I wanted to share with you and discuss! So post and give your two cents!

Grow Up and Give Up

Twenty years from kindergarten, and we’re still publicly bombarded by one inquiry: “What do you want to be when you grow up?” Except, now it’s been not-so cleverly morphed into the weightier “What are you going to do with your life?” If you’re like me, you look blankly at the asker and rattle off whichever occupation seems cool at the moment. (Did I say “cool”? I mean God-inspired.) The problem with this question seems to be a conflict of considerations. The first, and most obvious, is money. Whoever doesn’t have student loans or other forms of debt, raise your hand. Unless you want to live out of your parents’ basement, downing Pixie Stix and chili-flavored Ramen for the rest of your life, money’s important. So we listen to the chants around us: “Be successful! Make more money!” and our parents: “Put me in a nice nursing home!” and think, “Hey … I could use more money. I should find a job that gives me money. More money.” And it really starts and ends there for a lot of us. We want it, we need it, and it’s the only way we’ll get a nicer car, a nicer home and those 10 new CDs we want (and those five DVDs, and maybe a couple books and some nice soda crackers for the pâté party on Saturday). It’s the only way we’ll be able to buy (I mean “provide for”) a nice spouse/family … and that’s important … so money takes precedence in our lives. We believe if we seek it, we will get it, as long as we can tolerate the job that puts it in our burning pockets.Then there’s this other notion, floating behind the images of Benjamins and sugarplums in our heads. Rumor is it’s called happiness. OK, so maybe a fair number of us believe in doing something we enjoy. The problem is, a lot of the time the things that make us happy don’t make us wealthy. So, we discard them to go make money, or we decide the sacrifice is worth it, suck it up and tell ourselves for the rest of our lives that we could be making the big bucks if we wanted to, but our work is just too meaningful and enjoyable to give up.And really, those are the two biggest factors that our generation, in order to form a more perfect lifestyle, considers. They’re the factors our parents, our relatives, our professorsall want us to consider. And that’s cool for most of us, for a while, because as we pursue our lives, liberties and bigger DVD collections (and happiness), we get the feeling that we’re finally growing up, we’re finally maturing and moving out. And that’s life. We keep up the good work for another 60 years, bite the bucket and send posthumous donations to the American Heart Association in lieu of flowers. And most Christians are satisfied with that definition of life, as long as you’re “glorifying God” in the process.But I have a problem with that. I think a lot of people do, but they don’t realize it until they’re writing articles like this one. Where’s the sense of purpose in that? What does my pursuit of my inalienable rights contribute to anyone, or anything, but me? Sure I tithe. Sure I get involved at church. But honestly, at this point in our lives when we’re deciding what to do for the rest of our lives, do we really want something that will just make us money or just make us happy? Or do we want more?I think there’s an X-factor required in all this to make our striving finally significant … we need significance itself. Meaning. Purpose. Seven-letter words with big definitions. But all the greenbacks and feel-goods in the world are crap unless we have meaning first. And to take it one step further, let’s talk about eternal meaning. About doing something for God with significance beyond the confines of our bipolar planet. Because when God asks me to account for my life, I don’t want to tell Him, “I worked a day job in an air-conditioned office … for You!”Often the greatest feeling of significance in our lives comes from directly serving Him. I’ve talked to numerous Christians who return from missions trips and other various services to tell me how awesome it was—how they left their hearts back in the village, or in the soup kitchen, and I can’t help but think, “If your heart’s there, why aren’t you?” I know there’s a lot of factors. We think we have to worry about money. We think we have to worry about our happiness. But we don’t. We don’t have to worry about anything; even the sparrows are covered by God’s providence. The only thing we should worry about is doing something worthy of the name of the God who saved us. And at this point in our lives, when we’re young and not stuck in mortgages or other long-term commitments, why not send a giant “screw you” to the consumerist powers that be and do something of eternal significance? Why not give our lives over to the God that’s brought us here, now, before we’re weighed down by all the anchors “maturity” brings?Some heads are nodding (mine was), until I realized that if I truly seek to serve Him and do something of eternal significance, I just might lose myself and my right to my desires. And that’s completely true. With God, there’s no promise of inalienable rights. And that, coupled with the notion of devoting my life to what He wants to do with me, not my wants and wishes, scares me crapless. There’s so much to give up. But this life isn’t about what I want. It’s about what He wants. And when we do what He wants, we’ll slowly see His wants become our wants, and that’s when the “eternal significance” wheels really start rolling.

[Peter Hypki is a 21-year old former English major and InterVarsity Press intern with an impressive knack for sitting quietly, tripping loudly and falling for the most amazing girl he’s ever met.]

6 miles...42 minutes

2005-07-22T14:43:00.000-07:00

Reasons I hate England:

Traffic-it just took me 42 minutes to drive 6 miles at 2 in the afternoon. Now if this were a once in a while occurance, okay, but this happens practically ever day.
It takes 4 days to deposit a check. You CANNOT cash a check ever apparently.
You cannot park at the store you want to go to, you park in a garage, which you usually pay for...and it can be almost impossible to find a spot in these garages much of the time.
Petrol costs about $5 a gallon-making it about $75 to fill up my '89 VW Golf
I now FULLY understand the reasoning behind the large plate of glass that separates the customer from the bank teller. I almost had a thrown down fight today with the teller over the fact that the back of my credit/debit card says "see i.d." as opposed to just signing my signature. My reasoning behind this is that if my card gets taken ANYONE can easily forge my signature, so I like to sign with a little reminder for the cashier to ask for the i.d. in which case the alleged thief would be caught!! But she was very adament about the fact that I did NOT read the fine print under terms and conditions and if I had, I would know that my card is invalid because it is not SIGNED.
Ridiculously narrow roads in which massive trucks drive down toward me...basically the whole driving thing and everything it entails. Except roundabouts, I LOVE roundabouts!
The weather
The lack of Mexican food
Drunk people on the trains/tubes at night

That's about it for now I think. Luckily there are many more reasons why I LOVE England and the whole UK!!!

My heart belongs to Scotland

2005-07-19T01:27:00.000-07:00

If only I could marry a Scot, ay! Scotland might be the most beautiful place my eyes have ever seen. But "beautiful" seems so unappreciative of the indescribable land I have just encountered. Breathtaking, majestic, incredible, awesome, brilliant, amazing, splendorous, unreal, GREEN...some of the words that rolled through my head as our bus scooted across the country from loch to loch and mountain to mountain. I wish I could describe what it looked like and I wish my pictures did it justice, but no...there is just nothing to say or show for it...it has to be viewed by your own eyes to fully understand.
We left for Scotland Thursday morning (july7)-had to rise at 4 a.m. to be at Megen's for 5 to go to the airport! Edinburgh was pretty sunny and warm when we got there so we walked down the Royal Mile, which is the historic high street of Edinburgh. At the top is Edinburgh castle and at the bottom is Holyrood house, which is the official Scottish residence of the Royal family. If you choose to continue past Holyrood house and to the right, you will reach this huge "park"-Holyrood Park- and there is this massive hill. At the top of the hill is Arthur's Seat. It's quite a little hike up there, but Meg and I took it on and got some great views of the city and the sea. After that we went to the cutest little tea room for cakes and iced coffee! During the afternoon sometime we got the news about the attacks in London. It was pretty crazy and strange because we know so many people in London...just weird...so we watched the news for a while and contacted a couple of people in London to make sure they were fine. Then, that night we went out to a pub-The Malt Shovel-for some local Scottish music. We had a crackin' good time.
The next 3 days we were on the Scotland/Isle of Skye tour all over the place! Saw incredible sights, the true Scotland-outside of the city. We stopped in precious little towns, lunched at a loch, took a boat ride on Loch Ness, heard loads of legends, went to Saucy Mary's pub in Kyleakin for some more live music-all on Friday. Saturday we went on a seal cruise and saw lots of seals and lots of jellyfish-who knew there were jellyfish up there?? Went to Portree-the Isle of Skye "capital," fairyland which is my favorite place in the world, hiked on a mountainside in the rain-I got scared of the heights and this nice boy Simon offered to hold my hand so that I could make it up :-), had to hold Meg's hand on the way down. Sunday we took the ferry from Skye to mainland Scotland, went to the beach and got some shells, grabbed lunch for a picnic and then ate next to a river at Glen Nevis (bottom of Ben Nevis which is the highest mountain in the UK) where some of Braveheart was filmed, on to glencoe overlook with beautiful waterfall/river views, to another waterfull near a town called Callander, saw a hairy coo named Hamish...and ended up back in Edinburgh that evening. We went to this awesome African restaurant called NDEBELE. I love African food! The next day we bought the souveniers we had previously picked out and since it was the most beautiful day ever!!! we grabbed food from a supermarket and picnicked in the park for lunch. Then we ended up spending the rest of the afternoon laying out in the park reading...and also had a picnic dinner there as well! It was a great day under the sun and I read a book called Purple Hibiscus-which is by a Nigerian author and takes place in Nigeria-really good story. Then we flew back to London and our wonderful holiday was sadly finished.

Finally a free moment...

2005-07-13T16:52:00.000-07:00

I got back late Monday night from Scotland and haven't had a minute to blog about the best place in the world yet...and still don't except for a moment. I cannot do my full blog at this moment, but Megen has done a highlight which you can check it out if you so desire on her blog. I will write all about everything soon.

Back in town

2005-07-07T10:06:00.000-07:00

I would like to say that I arrived safely back to England with minimal problems. Had an airport issue when I went to fly out-apparently my reservation had not been paid for and was canceled, so I had to fork out $940 for one way on the spot. It went to my credit card. Don't worry, it will be reimbursed, but it just stinks cause I had booked such a cheap return trip that didn't get taken care of. No comment. Anyway, my time home was great. Sort of bittersweet though-time in Texas was great, but South Dakota was just okay. I just wish I had more time with my grandma and other fam from Arizona, but it was great to spend some time with them at least and a lot of time with my immediate family. Kinda boring, but not horrible-other than the breakdown in Liberal, Kansas. My 2 days in Amarillo flew by and then San Antonio was the highlight. I really like San Antone a lot. It was good fun and Sofia came which was greatness. Shane and Beth are just so fun and we have a great time together. I look forward to living near them in the future and hanging out lots and lots. The best part was floating on the Guadalupe for 3 hours. My shins got extremely sunburned (for me) and hurt for a week, but man, that was the best day ever. The other greatest thing was eating tons and tons of Mexican food all weekend in preparation for coming back to the country that is void of any great tasting Mexi. So thank you Shane, Beth, and Sofia for allowing me to choose the restaurants all weekend and eat Mexi every meal! Being back in London has been okay, but a little lonely since Dustin and Travis are gone. I was in the office all alone for a couple days and it was pretty uneventful. But now I am in Edinburgh! Just arrived this morning...so now I will go off and explore the city!

Watermelon Jim and the BEST day ever!

2005-06-11T09:42:00.000-07:00

Watermelon Jim? Wait for it, we will get there. This has been an incredibly busy week. My last week in England before I go home and I have not yet started to pack. It will take FOREVER. Anyhow, a recap of the week....Tuesday something quite interesting happened. I had parked my car at our little parking lot at work; had reversed in to a spot on the second (and last) row which is sort of on a little hill and also which ends just as a person's side/backyard fence begins. So it's the row of cars, then the fence, then the yard and house. Well, I always use my parking brake there of course, and I know that when I put the brake down and release it, the car will roll back...so I was ready. I put the brake down and had my foot on the brake when I released and put the car into gear, then I hit the gas to take off so that I wouldn't roll back. But I had put the car in reverse, not drive. A little mistake really, just a slip up like calling someone the wrong name, but it cost me £40. Yeah I put a nice massive gash in the fence. It kind of gets worse-because I was running late, as usual, and I knew I would be back in a couple of hours, so I thought I would just go talk to the people who lived there when I came back. So I left, came back and parked again, and went in to ask Penny (our English secretary) what to do. She knows all the insurance info and everything. I said I thought I should go then and knock on the door and tell them what happened. She said, "No, just leave it." I said, "Are you kidding, don't you think I should tell them?" "No, once they burned down the fence and WE had to pay for it, so just let it alone." Alright. Against my better judgement I did not go. But I still thought maybe when I left work that day I should go and tell them. Well, an hour or two later one of my co-workers phoned and said that there was a note about the "incident" on my car. I was scared. When I left work I went to my car and read the hate note, which did tell me that if I did not come and talk to her that day with all of my insurance info, she would report me to the police. So I went and knocked on the door, told her exactly what happened and I apologized profusely; that when I left I was running late but worked there and knew I'd be back, etc. But she did not want to be friends and was not nice about it. She said it would be £40 for a new panel for the fence. The next morning I paid the £40 and she was actually nicer to me that day. The thing is, I work there, I park there every day, it's not like I was gonna try and run from it or something. But it's all done with now, so that's good. Tuesday night we had a Starbuck's night for Ignite. It was really great-had an old ACS student who's now a sophomore in college come sing for us. He's really good-Bobby Hamrick. And Megen and Travis did lots of Top 10 lists such as: Top 10 moments for Megen, Lindsey, Trav, Dustin...Top 10 things we say to Travis, Top 10 things Travis says, Top 10 reasons to come to Ignite...and so on. It was really funny stuff. My car incident that very day made number 1 on my list I believe. Wednesday evening my friend Ang from London came down and we went to dinner and then to a musical-Thoroughly Modern Millie. It was so great! I had wanted to see it back in New York forever ago, so was really excited to finally see it. We loved it. Thursday night Megen, Travis, Dustin, and I went out for our "final hoorah." Since I leave Monday and the boys leave 2 days after I return, we won't all get to hang out again together. So we went to this Japanese sushi/maki place in Kingston that I had been to once before. It's greatness. Then we went to the Ram Jam Club!!! It's a little building behind a pub that has live music on the weekends. It's a pretty cool little place actually. Went and watched Bobby play. And then, Bob Cheevers. You probably have never heard of Bob Cheevers, but he's straight outta Nashville. Sounded very much like Willie Nelson and had the same kind of hairstyle too actually. His first song was about a man that lived behind him when he was growing up in Alabama...this man sold watermelon off the back of his truck and his name was Jim. Watermelon Jim. That song was followed by Ragged Bone Man...then Spoon Man...etc. Love the songs about the random influences of Bob's life. Very interesting. Yesterday was Friday and I thought I would go cycle along the river and see how far I could get. I have wanted to cycle to London for a while now, but was pretty sure I couldn't make it, as it is some 20 miles. Not sure exactly how far. So I left the house at 11 and rode down to the river which is about 4 miles from home, then along the river path for the next like 4 hours!!! I cycled to London. Past Kew Gardens to Mortlake. Then I turned around and headed back...stopped to journal in Richmond-upon-Thames...got to Kingston and my quads and knees hurt pretty bad so I decided to just get to Surbiton and catch a train there. Took the train to Weybridge and cycled about 3 miles back home. The hardest part was the last bit in St. George's Hill going up Old Avenue because it's a gradual hill, a long one. I had to get off and walk for a couple of minutes. When I got home, my quads were excruciating, with a different kind of pain than I had ever felt. I was scared I had damaged myself. But after a few minutes of standing they were pretty good. It's just that I had been on a bike for like 4 hours of repetitive motion. Anyway, Megen had texted earlier in the day and had been offered 2 free tickets for Third Day, so we got to go to Third Day in London last night...making it the BEST day ever! We both LOVE Third Day and were stoked to go. Courtesy of Kevin Lowry, our youth council member. The concert was amazing and we had such a great time! Sorry this is the longest blog ever. Thanks for taking the time to read!

Toepath or Towpath?

2005-06-03T09:42:00.000-07:00

Today is Friday, so the American Women's group went on one of their long walks as they do each Friday-and I joined in. I brought Kristen Millisor (senior) along too. I think this was my third walk with them. They're about 6-7 mile walks starting at 10 a.m. and finishing around 12:30 at a pub/restaurant. They are always fantastic and usually out in the country, but today was a different walk. It followed along the river beginning at Hampton Court Palace and ending in Richmond-upon-Thames (where Mick Jagger and numerous other famous peeps live). Anyway, we walked along the towpath...or is it toepath? When I first heard them say towpath-I imagined in my mind "toepath" because we were walking-and usually the paths are called footpaths, so this made sense to me. But then I wondered why this one was called a toepath and not a footpath like the others. Anyway, as we arrived into Richmond, I saw a sign next to the path that said "towpath" and so I said to Kristen Millisor, "Oh, I thought it was toepath, like as in toes...why is it towpath? What does that mean? Who's towing what along the path?" She had no answer. Turns out its towpath because it's along the water and they towed boats or something like that. The ladies found it quite amusing that we thought it was toepath. In any case, the was was wonderful! The weather was like a true summer day (even though rain was predicted). Blue skies, warm, fairly sunny. It was just so beautiful all the way...I loved looking at all of the houses whose backyards end at the river. What a great backyard. Many of the houses were really fantastic too. And so many different kinds of trees along the way. I think I said out loud at least 3 times that "I love this country." We ended at a restaurant right along the water. It was a really pricey place, especially for lunch...but I found a cheap way out and just got a side salad as a main-for £5!! The mains were £13-£19 so I felt pretty good. Kristen was even cheaper-she just got chips (fries) for £3! After lunch we hopped on a boat for the ride back to Hampton Court. What a fantastic day.
This week has been great and breezed by. Wednesday I headed into London with my ladie's bible study group for a sort of "send off" to the 3 women from our group that are moving this summer. We went to this art museum for lunch. It's actually in a mansion though, so it's this pretty amazing place. Didn't have time to view the art, so I'll have to go back. The food was pretty great-pricey of course-but my ladies are so kind and generous and I did not even have to pay a pence. They're great. Anyway, I found another new favorite place in London. It's right off of Oxford Street and it's called St. Christopher Place. The next street, James street, is my other new favorite. We walked down James street to the Wallace museum, and walked back up St. Christopher's afterward. James has tons of little bitty street cafe's and St. Christopher's has lots of unique, but expensive, boutiques. It's just a super cute area. I found one store called Marimekko that made me ever so happy because it's my bedspread store!! The bedspread that I have on my bed in Texas is Marimekko-it's these huge red and hot pink poppies and I love it so much! It's so beautiful and bright and happy. So I saw Marimekko and peaked in and there was my exact bedspread design on a raincoat!! And on dinner plates and cups and all sorts of other things. Soooooo expensive though. So anyway that was a super fun time. And then that night my high school girl's Bible study group had our little dinner party. It was our last time together and Emily made cookies and brownies and Singapore noodles with prawns and chicken. So good! Kelly also brought these fantastic little white chocolate raspberry cookie bar things that were incredibly yummy. We had a good time.
Now I am just about to go to Megen's house for French night. We planned this ages ago after we went to Paris together, but it's been rescheduled and rescheduled until now! We are going to watch Amelie and make crepes for dinner and read all of our haikus that we wrote in Paris. I'm pumped!

My Passion for Purity

2005-05-31T21:22:00.000-07:00

Tonight I got to release some of the fire out of my bones! If anyone knows me well, they know I am passionate about abstinence and educating our youth about it. It's my soapbox. Well, it's one of my many soapboxes. Megen had planned for a 3 week series on sex for Ignite...but she was on vacation last week so Dustin talked...then she was planning on talking tonight, and I would wrap up next week. However, we bumped up next week to this week because we needed to have a coffee house night next week before our seniors go on their senior trips. So, I had been planning on talking next week and had hardly started preparing when I found out this very morning that I would be talking tonight. Megen is so gracious and she totally let me decide if I still wanted to...because she was more than willing to talk tonight as originally planned. But if you're sitting on fire like I am, you gotta get up and speak about it! So my week was crammed into about 4 hours and I did the best I could. I used Josh McDowell's "Why True Love Waits" and some statistics I found online. He breaks it up into 4 main reasons for waiting...physical consequences, emotional consequences, relational consequences, and spiritual consequences. He also states at the beginning that sex is a great thing that God has for us, but because he loves us and wants to protect us and provide good for us, it is to be done only in the right context-marriage. So all of the 4 main reasons are then broken down into God's provision and God's protection. That book is fab and so incredibly informative. Great resource. So I got up there and gave it my best shot....and I think it was okay. Not great, but okay. I did say "um..." a whole heck of a lot, and my face was burning and I'm sure I had some nice red cheeks, but I feel like I got the majority of what I wanted to say across. I just get so fired up about it!!

I haven't posted in a week so I will give a little update. Friday was the stinkin best day ever! I had to drive about 1 1/2 hrs. to a place in Kent (county) to look at a couple of retreat centres for our fall middle school retreat. It happened to be 30 deg C that day which is about 90 F!! I think I saw more sun that day than in my last 6 months here. It was sooooo beautiful! I don't have a/c in my car so I opened up the sunroof and rolled down all the windows and jammed to some Randy Travis, oddly enough, and cruised. I was driving and just thinking about how much God has blessed me and how incredibly beautiful this country is...and I came up sort of over this hill on the motorway...and there before me were massive emerald hills covered with trees and fields of thick grass, and the sun was shining and it was just breathtaking. I wanted to pull over on the side of the motorway about 15 times to take pictures, but I didn't. Man, it's just incredible how beautiful this place is. I wish I could capture it somehow, but there's no way. I hope I never forget. I got to drive down some sweet country roads too...it was just so nice being by myself on this mini road trip, because I never do things like that. It's interesting how much I enjoy my time now...I used to always want to be with people for everything, but I do really enjoy doing things alone more now. I still love being with people most of the time, but it's like I don't rely on it as much as I used to. Something like that. After I looked at the centers I had to drive through this town called Tonbridge, so I stopped and walked around on the high street for a little while and had lunch there. I bought a few old records at a charity shop and took a few pictures of a cute bridge over the river...and was on my way. I felt so happy and so energized! Sunshine sure does amazing things for me-as does Sonshine. God is so great.
Yesterday Erin and Darren came down and we went to Hampton Court Palace, which is called the greatest palace in Britain. That's one incredible place. It was Henry VIII's last I think and he really made it into something amazing. I learned a lot of history that I did not retain-the usual. The gardens are really fantastic and the sun was actually shining while we were outside (it rained in the morning) so that was nice. There is also a maze there which we conquered. When you get to the middle you're supposed to get a sticker that says you found the middle of the maze, but yesterday there were no stickers!! Erin and I were really bummed about that.

Last night was the "goodbye" barbeque for Trav, Meg, and Dustin. It was at the Millisor's of course and was extremely well attended. Well over 100 people came for the bbq/potluck festivities. Several people spoke thank you's for each of the interns...it's so awesome how much God has used each one. It's sad to think it's coming to an end for them and I will miss them sooooo much!! But they're my forever friends. I enjoyed sitting there looking at the massive circle of people that makes up my community, in every sense of the word, and felt such a strong sense of belonging and love. And as I listened to people sharing their thank you's I realized what an amazing ministry we have here and I realized again that God has given us-a few ill-equipped twentysomething's-the opportunity to bask in his love and share it with all of these wonderful kids and families. I felt so inadequate when I came on staff in February, and still do much of the time, but I decided that I would bloom where I was planted. I felt that this was and is exactly where God wanted me and so I would just do my best to let him use me...and the longer I am here, the deeper the relationships get-more honest and comfortable and all-and the more God is using me and the more I love it.

Parliamentary Procedure

2005-05-24T16:55:00.000-07:00

When I was a senior in high school, I was class secretary, and I remember one of our teachers always talking about following "Parliamentary Procedure" when we were in meetings. And I would just think "What in the world does that really mean anyway? Why is it called Parliamentary procedure? " And now I know. Yesterday I went on a tour of the Houses of Parliament. It was great! We got to go all through the place, into the normally restricted areas and everything. Went into the Queen's Robing Chamber where she goes in to change before entering the House of Lords...apparently that room is only used once a year. Crazy. Saw the House of Lords and the House of Commons and Westminster Hall and various other places. Learned a lot of history that my poor mind cannot retain. It's so interesting to learn about the various traditions that are still performed. Some are so random and funny. Upon entering the House of Commons there is a large Churchill statue made of bronze. The whole statue is black now, save Churchill's left foot-toe rather-which is shiny and gold. Apparently it is good luck to rub the toe upon entry-supposedly some of Churchill's great oratory skills would rub off on those entering to speak. Anyway, after that tour we were outside of parliament talking, and I guess Dustin asked another man that gave tours of Big Ben and the clock tower, if he could take us on that tour. So he took us. There are something like 350ish stairs in the tower to the top, where Big Ben (the bell) is. I'm not so comfortable with heights, and I was thinking that it would be sort of a closed staircase-spiraling but stone in the middle or something closed. However, the middle was open, so as you would climb the stairs you would be able to look down and just see straight down to the bottom. No thanks. I went up just a couple of flights and was done with that. Too creepy. Pretty soon after I decided not to partake, Megen's parents made the same decision and sat with me at the bottom. They weren't okay with the height either. Again it was the problem with the middle of the staircase being open. So that was a bummer because it would've been a really interesting tour. They got to see the mechanics room and the inside of the clockface and Big Ben and everything! Who knew there were 4 other smaller quarter hour bells that rang, and that Big Ben only rang on the hour? And that Big Ben weighs 13.5 tons. And that there are 28 light bulbs behind each of the 4 clock faces which are made with opal glass. There's even a prison room a third of the way up the tower for any member of the House of Commons or the House of Lords that had to be detained for misbehavior during a debate...it was last used in 1880. Great tour.
So that was my Monday. But before Monday was Friday-when Darren got to England to embark on his 3 month adventure. We hung out Friday, didn't really do much, and went to a high school play Friday night. Saturday I took Darren into London and tried to show him around a bit. It rained pretty hard part of the day and was sunny another part. That's England. Saturday night we came back down to Surrey and had a really great barbeque with the fantastic family I live with...and then headed to Heywoodstock at the school. Houses and some buildings here have names, like I live in Breton Hill...and Heywood is the name of the school building I guess, so that's where the name Heywoodstock came from. Obviously Heywoodstock was a huge concert. Basically it was middle school and high school bands from the 3 ACS schools in Surrey. It was interesting. We didn't stay all that long. Sunday Darren felt sick-nerves-and didn't get to go to church with me. But it was a great Sunday. During both morning services we had senior recognition and in between during the Sunday school hour, had a brunch for seniors and their families. Parents were invited to share a story or memory about their senior. It was a very emotional hour for all of us!! Sunday night was the End of Year banquet-which was my baby. Much planning and prep went into it, but I was a little nervous about. My youth bands had cancelled the week before and I was worried about the food situation-pot luck. I didn't know how many people were attending or anything. Just kinda nervous and stressful. But it was fantastic! We had well over 100 people, which was crazy-way more than expected! We played Name That Tune during the time that the bands would've played. Travis planned for and facilitated that, and did a spectacular job. Had like 4 categories of music, clues for every song, a whole weird host costume to carry out the gameshow in. Good times. We had a fantastic slideshow made by one of our seniors, and several kid and parent testimonies. It was such a great night. We had a 50's theme and had coke and d.p. floats. All in all it was a huge success!

David Hasselhoff stole my wallet?!

2005-05-15T21:21:00.000-07:00

Well, maybe HE wasn't the one, but all in a day I did see David Hasselhoff at a market in London and my wallet did get stolen. It was an eventful day. Got up early Saturday a.m. and went to the gym at 8 o'clock, but I guess I forgot that this is England and the open hours of businesses are not necessarily for YOUR convenience. So sadly, the gym was not open. Now, I could have gone home and jogged or something, but I was so close to Starbucks...I thought, "I could go to Starbucks and sit and read for an hour." So I did. What a lovely morning. Then at 11 I headed into London with my new friend Erica. We were making our first ever trip to Borough market. This is an all food market that I have been hearing about for some time now, and I was quite excited to go. You see, I had heard about these incredible grilled cheese sandwiches at Borough market, made with this specific Montgomery cheese and sourdough bread-only available at Neal's Yard Dairy store. There are a few other special ingredients. Anyway, Erin and I were desperately searching for the grilled cheese stand, but had no luck. Then we saw the Neal's Yard Dairy store like a beacon in the night, and headed directly over. Upon arrival we were told that the grilled cheese sandwiches were no longer being made-as of 2 weeks ago-and wouldn't be back until September! Serious bummer. We settled for a chorizo sandwich instead. Chorizo sandwich-doesn't sound yummy does it? But this chorizo was very different, actually nothing like the chorizo I know (thankfully) and the sandwich was fantastic. It's a small roll with the meat and some rocket (a type of lettuce stuff) and roasted red pepper. Surprisingly great. Anyway...I forgot to say that right after we exited the tube and were on the street next to the market, just about to start in, was when we saw David and some other guy. I looked up and there he was. Much taller than I would have imagined. Handsome, but aged. He said to the other guy, "I wish I would've brought my hat." That's all. Then over the next hour as we scanned the market we heard random people making comments about David Hasselhoff. He was the talk of the market. Apparently he and Brooke Shields are in the Chicago musical in London. After the market we headed to Oxford Circus because Erica wanted to do some shopping. Unfortunately, I ended up doing most of the shopping. So what's new? I only made a purchase at H&M, but seriously, everything there is well worth the price. Well, about 3 hours later we were at Dorothy Perkins (my other fave store) and I was getting a new purse (an amazing bright pink huge awesome wonderful perfect in every way purse) for only £18!!!! So I reached in my little purse for my wallet-but it didn't seem to be there. I searched my bag and my purse, but the wallet was gone. So I immediately called and cancelled the cards. One credit card, my bankcard, and about £40. It could've been so much worse, it could've been my driver's license and all sorts of stuff, but I carry that stuff separately. Don't worry, I still got the pink purse-Erica's great and she loaned me the cash.

Jamaican me crazy

2005-05-13T23:12:00.000-07:00

I have a friend in London called Nicola-I met her on a trip to Wales back in September. We've hung out a lot since and been pretty good friends. Went to Brighton and Amsterdam together, and have done lots of stuff in London as well. Anyway, her time here has come to an end. She's been here about a year and is heading back in a couple of weeks. So, last night we met for dinner for the last time we were gonna see each other :-(. And we made it a girls night out, as usual, and Erin, Megen, and Angela came along as well. Well, I LOVE to try new foods, different foods, multicultural foods. A few months back I found a fantastic Moroccan restaurant that we have been to a couple of times. This time I decided we should try Caribbean food-and more specifically-Jamaican. I found a place called Bamboula in an area of London called Brixton. The place was tiny-only seating about 24 people in its entirety, but was decorated so cute! It was like a little beach hut. The workers-and I assume owners-were Jamaican. This was not like your average chain restaurant in the states, such as Bahama Breeze, but true Jamaican. The four of us each ordered something different and shared. We tried the jerk chicken and fried sweet potatoes, a vegetarian lasagne bake and plantains, saltfish with pumpkin, sweet potatoes, yams, and an aubergine (eggplant) bake with caribbean salad. EVERYTHING was fantastic. I actually liked mine the best-the veg lasagne and plantains. So good! Not like your ordinary veg lasagne, somehow very different. Good portion sizes as well-and fantastic prices. You may wonder how I found this random place. I did my research. I like to look at a london website, choose a genre of food, and then look at the various restaurants' reviews and websites if possible. Then I narrow it down to the one. So far we have had success. We decided to try a new place every week, but it'll probably be more like every month, which is fine. So that's the new goal. I'll keep you posted on my diverse culinary experiences.

FYI

2005-05-09T19:12:00.000-07:00

Just in case you didn't know, anytime you see a word that is highlighted in any of my blog entries, that means it's a link, so you can click on the word and it'll be a link of whatever I was talking about in the blog. Someone I talked to didn't know that, so I thought maybe other people didn't know it either. It's cool because I try and put links on places I go...like when I went to Paris I put in a lot of links to pics and info about the various places I talked about in my blog. So click away!

Another great weekend

2005-05-09T16:02:00.000-07:00

I was talking to my dad last night and telling him about my great weekend, and how I had realized that practically every weekend I say "this was the greatest weekend!" Things must be pretty good if I feel that way practically every weekend. I thought, "I had so much fun this weekend, it was the best weekend, but Paris was the best weekend, and Wales was the best weekend, and when I'm home and I just hang out with friends and work out and catch up on laundry, that's a great weekend too!" How great to find enjoyment in so many different things. But this really was such a great weekend! Thursday night my friend Erin came down from London and stayed over night. We got up Friday morning and went on a walk with this women's walking group. Lisa, the mother of the family I live with, is a hike leader. She goes on great, long walks every Friday. They're usually about 2-2 1/2 hours long, out in the English countryside. This particular walk led us by blankets of bluebells in full bloom. They were amazing. The walk also took us to a little tea room in the country. You can get to the tea room only by walking! It's only open by reservation now though. We had a nice lunch there with sandwiches and tea and cakes! It was such a lovely day, so we were able to sit outside. Then it was straight to the grocery store and home for cooking! We had to prepare for our big Cinco de Mayo party that night. Erin and I had planned on making chicken enchiladas, layered dip, and dessert empanadas. She did much of the cooking because I was busy driving a couple of kids back and forth from their house to the school. Anyway, the party idea originated between Erin and myself because we so love Mexican food and can't find great Mexi food here...so sometimes when we get together we cook Mexican. So we had decided to invite over a couple of friends for dinner-chicken enchiladas. I asked Lisa if that would be okay, since it is her house, and she said it was fine but could she invite a few people. Heck yeah, the more the merrier! So we actually ended up with about 25 people! It was so great because those women can cook, and they all brought different things! Sort of a Mexican pot-luck. So awesome! Then Saturday I went with the Mellgard's and a few other couples/families to point to point horse racing. This was some serious fun. It only happens once a year-at least this particular one. Everyone drives out to this area sort of in the country where the race is, and have huge picnics. There were tons of people. So we got together and everyone put out their yummy picnic foods (breads, cheeses, wines, salads, pastas, etc.) and we indulged. About every 45 minutes or so there would be a race. Point to point racing means that the horses aren't racing on a track like normal, but out in the country on a 3 mile course. This one was 3 miles anyway. So you could go bet on the horse you thought would win, then go watch the race and see. Most of the race was not visible though because it went way off behind trees and came back around to where we were. Many of the horses didn't finish for various reasons...3 miles makes for a long race and apparently there was a sort of ditch thing where several of the jockeys fell off of their horses. So then after a race, we would eat some more, dessert....and then cheese and crackers. Good times. There were also lots of stalls selling things-lots of jackets, sweaters, horse riding gear, etc. It was an all day affair. So that was really great. Wrapped up the weekend Sunday at ACS family fun day! We have a youth booth there that sells burgers and dogs...so I worked all day at that, which was so much fun. I love doing stuff like that! We sold a heck of a lot of food. So, you see, it was a great weekend!

Relevant

2005-05-09T15:45:00.000-07:00

I just read a really great article on relevantmagazine.com, my fave online mag. My fave print mag too really! Anyway, the article is about how we as Christians do not have to live a traditional, ordinary life. An ordinary life is great; finish school, get a good job, settle down and get married, have kids, etc. This is perfect for so many people and that's commendable! But for some, it isn't their right path. It isn't what God necessarily has in store for all of us. Or maybe it is, but for a little later on in life. So the article is about stepping out on faith to follow what God has for us...which could be anything, anywhere! Sometimes the future is so unclear and many of us experience this "fear of the unknown;" the unsettling thoughts about the future and what it holds. I especially felt this way when I was graduating from university. But so many times we just have to make ourselves completely open to what God has for us, even if it is way different than what we had planned for or thought it would be...Lord knows I absolutely did not see myself in the position I am in now. Yes, I definitely wanted to live overseas and experience life elsewhere, but I sure never thought I would be working full time for a church as a youth intern. That took a step of faith for many reasons, but especially because I wasn't sure that I was really equipped for the job. Could I really prepare and give talks to groups of teenagers? All on my own? But that's just it...I am not all on my own. God gives me the strength and the words and everything I need to do this ministry. He leads me. I decided to take that step of faith, out of the ordinary, and to bloom where I am planted. And because of it I have been extremely blessed.

Happy Cinco de Mayo!

2005-05-05T11:49:00.000-07:00

Just in case you think that Cinco de Mayo is a celebration of Mexican Independence Day, let me save you the humiliation of embarassing yourself by stating that misinformation...Mexican Independence Day is actually diez y seis de Septiembre (aka September 16th). Cinco de Mayo is the day that Mexico defeated France at the battle of Puebla!! In celebration of this great holiday, Erin and I are throwing a fiesta Friday night! We love Mexican food, but it is hard to find in this beautiful country. So we are teaming up with Lisa Mellgard (the family that I live with) and making some yummy Mexican food and margaritas. Erin an I invited a few of our friends and Lisa invited several of her married couple friends. It's gonna be an awesome party. The couples are each bringing something, so we will truly have a fiesta.

I am the little engine that could

2005-05-04T16:41:00.000-07:00

I meant to post this yesterday, but absolutely did not have time because I was preparing my first ever talk for Ignite and also had book club in the afternoon. Anyway, yesterday morning I got up early to go for a jog in my neighborhood. I have been doing this 3 mile route for a couple of months, I jog usually about 20ish minutes total, and walk some as well. Unfortunately, I only usually get to jog once every week or two because I go to the gym a lot and do other kinds of exercise, so my endurance doesn't get built up quite as fast. So my end of summer goal was to be able to jog the whole 3 miles, hills and all. It's a tough job for the last half of it because much of it is uphill, and these are not tiny hills. Yesterday I was feeling really good and I told myself at about the one mile point that I could jog the whole thing. I wasn't really sure, but the night before I had been talking with a lady and she said that jogging was about mind games-your mind keeps saying you can't do it or you're just gonna die, but you have to win the mind game and press on! So I decided that I was the little engine that could, and I would fully believe that I could do it. So I did it! I reached my end of summer goal on May 3rd! I jogged the entire thing, even the end part which is the biggest, steepest hill of all. It was an extremely slow jog up the last bit, but I did press on with everything I had. I finished in 32 minutes. I would like to thank Nikah and Megen for their inspiration.
Yesterday was also a big day for me because I spoke at Ignite for the first time. We are doing this series called Film Fest 2005: How Movies Saved My Soul!! Another of Megen's great creations. So each of the 4 of us have had to pick a film to screen and find the sacred in the secular film. Megen did a film called Endless Summer about life's great adventures, Dustin chose Chocolate and had great things to say about our relationships toward people and how we choose to live our lives. I chose the Goonies and talked about our search for treasure and what that treasure is, as well as what our eternal treasure is or should be. I gave the kids each a drawing of a treasure chest (Megen drew it for me because she is a much better artist than me) and told them that they were the chest and they had to write down what they fill their treasure chest or their lives with...what they valued, etc. And I shared the parables of hidden treasure from Matthew 13:44. I was fairly nervous about speaking, but it went okay. Not great, but okay. It's hard because all of the kids aren't listening and some are talking and stuff. And I felt like it was a little fragmented. But there is much time and room for improvement. While gathering info/researching the topic of searching for treasure, I found some interesting stuff. One thing I included was an article Megen had read on cnn.com about these 4 roofers in Mass. that had supposedly found "buried treasure" last week. The treasure was 1,800 bank notes dating something like 1899-1928 with a face value of $7,000, but were appraised at about $125,000. It turned out that the men hadn't actually found this hidden treasure in the backyard like they said, but had taken it from a barn that they were working on. They were arrested.
Another interesting thing I found was the legend of the Beale treasure. There's supposedly some buried treasure in Virginia. Many men have spent time and money searching, but no one has ever located it. Have I found my next adventure...?
I can't believe it's already May!! I'm going home to visit in like 5 weeks! I am so excited! This month will breeze by because it's the end of the year and so super busy!
Oh, Monday night I went to my first bbq of the year. It was at the Millisor's of course. It was good fun. The reason for the bbq was that we have a new girl in the community...Erika. She is 27 and is here for 6 months, interning with a guy from our church. She just finished her masters degree at Wheaton in Chicago. She's living practically next door to me for the next 6 weeks, and then she'll still be close but at another house. I'm so excited to have her here! That's about it for me now. Thanks for reading!

My new second favorite place!

2005-04-29T14:02:00.000-07:00

So we all know that Brugge is my favorite place, but I think I have a new second favorite!! York. I'm in Leeds visiting a friend that I worked with for a summer at camp almost 3 years ago, and today we went to York for the day. There's a really fantastic cathedral there and some castle ruins...but it was just such a precious medeival town. Such beautiful buildings and a river running through, with lots of cute passageways between buildings and, of course, a great outdoor market! Plus the weather was absolutely wonderful, sunny and quite warm, which is not entirely common for this area. I only wish I knew how to post pictures on here...

Dream man...

2005-04-27T05:37:00.000-07:00

Just in case anyone was wondering, my dream guy is Doug Pickett of Wilmington, North Carolina. I first saw him a couple of years ago in a Polo sport ad in a mag...and have loved him ever since. Be sure and click on his name to see his bio, and scroll down for lots of pics!

Best News I've Heard All Day

2005-04-18T15:00:00.000-07:00

I just read that the "Wedding Singer" is being made into a Broadway musical, and will open in 2006. How great is that!! Now I have to go back to NYC! So anyway, last night I gave my first ever talk at DV8. I did the Taco of God-which Megen did at Ignite several weeks ago. I changed it a bit though. The article "The Taco of God" actually came from Relevant Magazine. It's like the best mag ever and you can look at it online or subscribe. It's greatness. So anyway, I cooked tacos again for the kids. We had 20 middle schoolers. They were outta control crazy last night for some reason. More than usual it seemed. The talk went pretty well though, they seemed to really listen and pay attention and everything. I felt good about it, I really wasn't nervous or anything, so it was a good experience overall. I'm glad it went well because I'm going to be in charge of DV8 every Sunday in the fall. In a couple of weeks I have to talk at Ignite, which is really scary for me! But I am sort of excited about it because we're doing Film Fest 2005: How Movies Saved My Soul!! So I am going to screen "The Goonies." And I love the Goonies!!
Had a good weekend. Pretty relaxing and nice. I feel like I've been so busy lately, it was nice to be home and chill out a bit. Friday morning I had breakfast with my friend Chris. That was fun-I love to go out for breakfast, but I never have here because English breakfast really is not yummy. But we went to this diner that has American style pancakes. English pancakes are usually much thinner than American ones. Other than that I did the usual, worked out, hung out, read, watched Felicity, babysat...but then Saturday night was the big highlight! Fajitas at the Riley's. Greg and Vicky Riley are the people that Megen lives with...and they make the best fajitas this side of the Atlantic. They even make the tortillas from scratch. It's an amazing experience. This is the second time I have been so blessed as to experience fajitas at the Riley's. They do it for the youth interns and we love them for it.
That's about all that's going on here...got a busy week ahead as usual. Should be good. Hope you have a great week! Thanks for reading.

Paris: An Unforgettable Weekend

2005-04-12T11:49:00.000-07:00

Megen and I went to Paris this past weekend. We had planned the trip a while ago...the main reason being because Megen was going to run in the Paris Marathon on Sunday. Paris is her favorite city, and I have only been there once, when I was 17...so I really wanted to go back! We left Friday morning (had to rise at 4:15!!!) on the Eurostar. I had never been on the Eurostar and it is really great. It's comfortable and spacious and only 2 1/2 hours to Paris. Plus it's nice to be able to see the countryside through the window. Got to Paris and went to the hotel. The hotel was directly across from Gare de Nord station where we arrived, so that was really nice. Unfortunately, that was the only nice thing about the hotel. More on that later. So after checking in we headed out into the city. Went to the Opera Garnier, which is a magnificent edifice. So beautiful. Especially at night when it's all lit up, but I don't think we made it back over at night. Walked around a bit more and then Meg had to head down to get her marathon stuff for Sunday, so I headed over to the Louvre. The Louvre is incredibly impressive of course, but I got bored after a short time there. I love to read about each piece I like and find out a little bit about them, see what medium was used, etc. Everything about the paintings in the Louvre is in French, so I couldn't find out any information, thus I got bored. Of course I went to see the Mona Lisa; it's such a huge deal to go and see that painting, but why? What's the big deal? I don't think I'll ever fully understand what makes some of these artists and certain paintings so famous and great. Anyway, Megen and I met up again and went walking down by the Seine toward the Notre Dame. I hadn't seen Notre Dame before and it is so majestic! The churches in Europe are really something. You can look at pictures and know that they are beautiful, but until you are up close looking at the intricacy and detail of every inch of the place, you just can't grasp their majesty. We went in and there was a service happening, we thought it had to do with the Pope's funeral being that day. After that we continued on walking around, went to Ile de la Cite and Ile St. Louis, which are the two sort of isles on the Seine river. On Ile St. Louis, we had the best gelato ever made by human hands. It's a wonderful little place called Amorino. There are actually several of them, but I am not kidding when I say that this gelato is from God. So, this wonderful creation sparked in me such inspiration that I had to write a haiku about it. One haiku led to another, and before we knew it, Megen and I seemed to be communicating predominantly through haikus. It was so great, everything became a haiku, and we were constantly counting on our fingers as we thought and spoke. It was awesome. The rest of the weekend it continued. All day at Disneyland, haikus. I would like to take this opportunity to share a couple of the haikus inspired by Paris, with you. Here is a double:
You may ask yourself...
what's so great about Paris?
museums galore...
bistros everywhere
monuments of majesty
splendid cathedrals

ode to croissants:

All butter croissants
layers of flaky goodness
better than ice cream?

in a cafe:

from behind the glass
people constantly pass by
watching in wonder

profound:

with each new question
elements come into play
and change the answer

at EuroDisney:

How funny we are
embracing childhood though adults
alive at Disney

and one from Megen on romance:

A shared umbrella
tilted to cover her head
equally happy

Well, it was hard to choose which to share...there are many more. We are probably going to publish a book. I'll let you know. Um...Saturday went to Euro Disney which was fantastic! We totally were like little kids, so excited when we entered and saw Main Street USA...we were jumping and laughing and running!! So fun! Euro Disney is way smaller than Disneyland, but still lots of fun. Really a day there is enough to cover what you need to cover. I came prepared...researched ahead. So I made a sheet that had EuroDisney broken into the main parks-and then which rides I COULD NOT miss, which were second, and which were third. I did not want to waste time or miss anything. Some of my faves, like Pirates of the Caribbean, were quite different, but still great. Super fun day. Sunday was the big Paris marathon. Unfortunately, Megen had hurt her knee (overuse) during training, and was also sick a bit, so she knew going into the run that she would probably only run the first couple of miles and then have to walk the rest, depending on the knee pain. We went down to Champs d'Elysees where the race started, near the Arc de Triomphe. It was so incredible-there were 35,000 participants running in the marathon! The atmosphere was exhilarating...people so excited and energetic. It was an experience I've never had before, but would like to again. I wanted to be in the marathon so bad, but Lord knows I cannot run 26 miles. I think I may train for one though, I wish to, but it's pretty intense. I think I'll try a 5K first! But what an incredible thing to do. Since there were so many people, the start lasted a good 10 or 15 minutes. After everyone was gone and I had snapped some pics of the aftermath-clothes and plastic poncho type things littering the street- I hopped on the metro and went to Bastille(the 15 mile marker) to cheer people on and watch for Megen. It was awesome-tons of people lining the streets cheering. All in French of course, so I really have no idea what was being said. I loved it! The first 3 I saw were wheelchairers, which is just amazing to me! The first group of runners were Kenyans, black as night and pure muscle. At 15 miles they were running hard, not jogging, RUNNING. Amazing. The first guy in made it in 2h 8min 2sec. I stood there for about 2 hours watching people run-people coming constantly for 2 hours!! Sometimes it was massive herds of people, sometimes more sporadic. So exciting! Things I saw: many clown costumes, some full on with the wig, nose, glasses, one piece outfit; dads with jogging strollers, people pushing handicapped people in wheelchairs, a man in a white wedding dress, bumble bees, man with floatie around waist, men wearing berets...lots of other crazy things. And if I was giving out awards, some of them would be for things like the tallest man, smallest woman, hairest back, most attractive man, sweatiest man, best costume, weirdest hair, and so on. After that I went to the Eiffel Tower and walked around a bit, then met Megen at the hotel. We went up to the Sacre Coeur, which is high on a hill-gotta walk up a lot of stairs. Then went to Montmarte just behind the church, which is quite possibly my fave little area. It's so precious...outdoor cafes in the middle surrounded by artists painting and drawing, then more cafes on the outter rim of the square. Had more gelato and crepes-my goodness I haven't mentioned the crepes! Crepes and croissants in Paris are wonderful beyond belief. Anyway, that pretty much wraps up the weekend in Paris. Thanks for reading-sorry it got so long! I clearly love details!

Romania = Instant Humility

2005-04-05T16:04:00.000-07:00

Returned from the missions trip to Romania on Sunday afternoon. Wow, what an amazing week. I had never been to a post-communist country before, and it was really something. Very unclean and run-down looking; lots of stray dogs running around. Very humbling environment. It's amazing what a blessed life I live. God is so much more than good to me.
We flew into Budapest Monday afternoon and got on a bus for the 6 hour ride to Beius, Romania. Beius is a town of about 12,000 people; many of which are orphans and gypsies. After arriving in Beius we were split (boys and girls) and taken to the places we would be staying for the week. I never saw where the boys were staying, but the girls were at a church, in a building that was much like a regular house. Downstairs there was a tiny kitchen and a large room with a lot of chairs-maybe for some kind of church service-and upstairs were 3 rooms and a toilet, shower, and sink. Two rooms had 2 beds each, and electric heaters. The third room had 7 cots and a wood burning heater. It was really cold because there was miscommunication between the church and Good Samaratin Beius, so the church thought we were coming Tuesday and had not turned on the heaters. Well, we turned the heaters on and began to settle in, and then the power went out. So the pastor came and flipped the fuse or whatever, and it was okay again. After he was gone it went out again, so that was it for the night. No heat and no hot water for showers. This experience in itself was quite humbling for me. I guess I think that I have the right to heat and electricity and indoor plumbing, things like this that we all take for granted. But the truth is, I am blessed to have those luxuries in my daily life. I don't deserve them any more than all of those poor people in Romania and thousands of other places, but I thank God that he more than meets my needs. Throughout the week we did various works such as scraping the paint off of the walls in an apartment, and then repainting; working in a field-shoveling, raking rocks up, chopping wood, laying cement, planting, pulling weeds; playing with children and interacting with the orphans of various ages. It's interesting-no matter what age a person is, if they grew up as an orphan, they are always referred to as an orphan. So if a person is 30 and married with a child of their own, they are still referred to as an orphan. I thought that would be degrading for the orphans, to be introduced that way, but it didn't seem to be at all.
One day we went to this amazing cave/cavern called the Bear Caves. It was awesome! Very beautiful formations of stalactites and stalagmites. We also went to an animal market, for a bit of Romanian culture. That was interesting. The animal market happens weekly and it's a pretty big deal. Everyone comes from the surrounding towns to buy and sell animals, mostly pigs, and buy potatoes and who knows what else. There were many people on the road headed to the market driving horse drawn carriages and pulling carts with pigs in them! One lady at the market had several baby pigs in her car trunk for sale. It was pretty awesome. Another cultural experience we had was the Romanian folk dancing. We were so lucky to get to watch a group of young dancers/singers do their traditional performance. That was one of my favorite things.
Food in Romania is not so good for the most part. Not a huge selection, and not a lot of vegetables really. I ate grilled chicken and boiled potatoes for dinner pretty much every night. And I often had goulash soup for a starter. Goulash is a Hungarian dish and it is fantastic! Romanians also put ketchup on their pizza instead of proper tomato sauce. Not a great idea.
The organization we worked with was Good Samaritan Beius-which was started 12 years ago by Adrian Ciorna. He lived in a big house with his mom and brothers, and saw a huge need in the orphan community. Orphans would come out of the orphanages and have no support system, no real skills to get a job, and basically just hopelessness. So the Ciorna's began taking in orphans and housing them for a month or two, and providing for their physical and spiritual needs, as well as helping them develop skills to enable each person with what they needed to get a job and help themselves. They converted the living room and an upstairs bedroom; stacking beds 3 high when needed! They had varied numbers of people, but sometimes as many as 16 living with them. The house only has one bathroom!! Adrian's mom did all of the cooking for everyone. So our group actually got to go to the Ciorna's house and see where GSB began, meet Adrian and hear him speak about the whole thing. He actually works full time for Habitat for Humanity as their National Director for Romania. It's amazing how much one or two people can change the lives of others. I love it!
Saturday we left Beius and took the bus to Budapest, where we got to spend a good few hours. Budapest is really a beautiful city with a lot of great things to see. We had dinner at this restaurant called Fatal--which means "wooden plate" in Hungarian, which serves massive quantities of food on huge serving plates. Quite a variety of choices as well. Good stuff! Definitely would like to go back there.
Sunday morning we got up early and flew back to London. So that's sort of our trip in a nutshell. Thanks for reading!