Never Once Did We Ever Walk Alone

6/5/14

Tomorrow's the day! We leave at 4:30 am, will meet with the rest of our team in the Atlanta airport, and head to Guatemala from there!!
I wanted to share one of the verses that we have been dwelling on this week.
"Have I not commanded you?
Be STRONG and COURAGEOUS.
Do not be terrified,
Do not be discouraged,
for the LORD your GOD
will be with you WHEREVER you go"
Joshua 1:9
As we talked today about actively surrendering our plans and our cultural mindsets that may hinder us from serving in humility, we talked about the difference between desiring success and desiring to bear fruit. I kept thinking of how Joshua 1:9 related to John 15, specifically verse 4 which says,
"Remain in me, and I will remain in you.
No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine.
Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me"
We ind life when we abide in Christ who is our life! He calls us to abide in Him so we will be attentive to His voice and courageous follow wherever he leads. Please pray that we will be listening to His voice and abiding in His love, forever for the glory of His Holy Name!

Rainbows of Hope: Day 1!

We are currently at the Rainbows of Hope Office which is located in a beautiful old farmhouse in South Carolina. We have not yet met the three Westmont interns who are in California at the moment but we are excited to meet them when we arrive in Guatemala on Friday! Right now I have known Kyla, Carol, Sarah, and Sarah Bollinger (our team leader who we call Biz) for just barely 24 hours and I can’t believe how much laughter has filled this house since we all met. This week is dedicated to training which includes everything from learning the rules of Casa Bernabe to a training in the practice of prayer. But the training also is a chance for us as interns to be intentional in getting to know each other better, and this morning we each shared how the Lord lead us to this awesome opportunity. He has brought this team together from so many different places but as we shared some of our stories this morning, I realized how God has taught us each to surrender our plans to Him and  learn every day how to live life in thankful praise in light of the Lord's faithfulness.   

Although I've experienced it before through the amazing communities that I've experienced at places like my church, and Kanakuk, and Joni and Friends, it never ceases to amaze me how quickly people with a shared love for our beautiful Savior can get to know each other deeply. One of my very favorite verses is John 4:11-12 which says, "Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and His love in made complete is us." God doesn't need us to make His love complete, but He has chosen to give us the joyfully duty of loving each other so that they world will know that we are His! What an awesome God we serve!

I can barely contain my excitement for these upcoming months!! I am glad y’all have read this far, I hope y'all will continue to read, and I pray that you might be encouraged by what you read here in the coming weeks!

You are the God of this City

How do I begin! I have so many memories and stories from our journey to Haiti and I am still processing all that I experienced in that country full of strong, perseverant, beautiful people. Beginning at 11:23 am on the day that we expected to depart California, I learned to give up my expectations and instead learn to rely completely and joyfully on the plan God had for us. In succession we were told to check out of our hotel rooms 5 hours earlier than expected, leave the hotel an hour earlier than expected with bags that quickly became 10 lbs lighter that expected, leave LAX 3 hours later than expected, leave from Miami instead of Ft. Lauderdale to arrive in Haiti over 24 hours later than expected, figure out activities for 3x as many kids as expected, and I could go on but I think y’all get the idea! God blessed me with an absolutely WONDERFUL team of girls who prayed with and for each other, looked out for one another, learned from and with one another, served our Savior together, sang His praises together, and loved His children together. There is a quote by Henry Ward Beecher which says “Children are the hands by which we take hold of heaven” so I want to tell you about several Haitian children that took hold of my hand and taught me to do the will of God on earth as is done in heaven.

Kevin: I met this sweet little boy on the first day when he was searching for a place to sit on the front row bench. His big dark eyes were filled with tears. I held out my hand to him and he hurried over and grabbed it and soon wanted me to hold him. After that if I ever had set him down, he followed me around and grabbed my hand as soon as it was free. I loved having a little shadow but I wanted him to get involved with the various games and crafts and I really wanted to see him smile. The next day we were up at the front leading some songs and I saw my little friend wandering down the center aisle scanning over all our faces. When his eyes reached mine he hurried over to me again and held out both of his hands, wanting to be picked up. Of course, my heart melted right away and I quickly scooped him up and sang the rest of the songs, encouraging him to do the hand motions and sing along. After the songs and Bible story, our team had decided to try running the activities in stations which ended up being rather chaotic. Since I was in charge of one of the craft stations, he kept getting pushed around in his attempt to follow me. I was a little worried about him till I saw that Rachel had picked him up and was looking after him. After the stations were finished, I looked around for my little friend and I saw him sitting on Victoria’s lap. I went over to say hi and he reached out his arms towards me again, completely forgiving the fact that and hour or so earlier his attachment to me had caused him to be smack dab in the middle of an energetic and rather chaotic mass of kids. So I picked my goal back of to try to make him smile. On Monday my little friend found me again and I finally figured out that his name was Kevin. He was much more talkative and was very interested in the prizes that some kids were winning through some games so I got him to participate a little bit. After a while I saw him looking around so I went over and scooped him up and gave him a hug (just like I had many times before) and for some reason this time he broke out into a big bright adorable smile. I was so surprised I burst out laughing and his smile got even bigger. I don’t know what clicked but after that he would often flash his bright adorable little smile when I came over to him. One of my teammates said that she had learned that it must bring God pleasure when we cling to Him as she thought about how she loved when these precious children clung to her. I love thinking about that and little Kevin taught me about the joy that comes from seeing someone take delight in our presence. It our privilege to smile in the presence of God and it is amazing to think that when we delight in Him, we bring Him joy!

Sophanie: I fell in love with this precious little girl at the Delmas 31 orphanage where my half of the team was blessed to spend our last day in Haiti. She has a heart-warming smile and contagious laugh and it was my joy to make her laugh and smile all day long.  I never heard her speak a word but thank God that laughter is universal! She does not let her body or her physical abilities, which others may deem limited, hinder the way that she spreads joy and invites others to smile with her. God has given Sophanie an unquenchable spirit of joy. She is a sweet reminder to me that we are called to set out mind on things of the Spirit for they bring life and peace. When we keep in step with the Spirit we are free to receive and spread the love and joy that Christ lavished upon us!

Carlo: Carlo is energetic, curious, persistent, and playful. He came into the church on the first day looking to have a good time. His mother came with him but sat on the side resting and watching us interact with Carlo. Although there is not much capacity to diagnosis the disabilities of many of the children in Haiti, Carlo displayed many qualities that are characteristic of Autism.  At the end of the first day I was playing catch with Carlo with a brightly colored ball.  Carlo was laughing and just consumed by the thrill of throwing and bouncing the ball. Carlo's mother came up to me and, by pointing to the ball and then to her son, she asked if it were for him. Before I really understood, I responded positively and she got the ball from Carlo, wrapped it in a scarf that she was holding, and denied Carlo’s efforts to get the ball back. At first I was confused but I worked to interest Carlo in a different activity and began to process what had just happened. To the best of my knowledge, the mother had seen that her son took joy from this simple toy and was concerned that he might lose it as he threw it around in a church full of 100+ children. She was willing to let her son be unhappy for a moment so that he might later re-receive the gift that had brought him joy in a more protected environment. This made me think that my perspective, so often limited and narrow-minded, hinders me from understanding why God may take something away or tell me to wait. But this interaction with Carlo’s mother was a good reminder of how God has the best in mind for us. Later on in the week I was able to describe to Carlo's mother some of the strategies that I used to help Carlo focus and interact with us. Becca and I were also able to provide her with some simple training on sign language that might help ease communicate between her and her son. More importantly, we were able to encourage her and tell her that she and her son were loved, by us and by The Lord and that His love gives us strength and honor!

I learned so much from such a short time. I firmly believe that God has a plan for the country of Haiti. As we drove through one of the tent cities one day, Becca started singing “God of this City” by Chris Tomlin and I could not think of any better summary.

You're the Light in this darkness 
You're the Hope to the hopeless 
You're the Peace to the restless 

There is no one like our God 
There is no one like our God 

For greater things have yet to come 
And greater things are still to be done in this City!

Wake up, Today is the Day!

“We wake up every morning needing Jesus desperately. What changes our life is when we wake up every morning realizing that we need Jesus desperately and living in His strength every second of the day” –paraphrase from Joni

The second week of my internship consisted of travelling to a Joni and Friends Family Retreat in northern California. I have served at 9 JAF family retreats in the past 6 years so I know that camp is too amazing and surprising to get used to. However at family retreat, I have always encountered a beautiful picture the body of Christ as it was meant to be because camp is a place of complete acceptance and genuine love. It is also a place where I wake up everyday realizing my desperate need for my Savior and realizing that I can only serve in the strength that He provides. Many people talk about JAF camp as a glimpse of heaven, but I agree with one father who said that he saw it as the genuine body of Christ in action on this earth. (if you have any interest, hear more about family retreats! http://www.joniandfriends.org/television/joni-and-friends-family-retreat/ ). I only wish that it was not only at camp each year that the body of Christ displayed this type of acceptance, but the only way I can change that is to start with myself. Family retreat inspires me to persevere in praying and seeking to genuinely accept all people through Christ’s love as He has accepted me!

Marlin was my buddy at Family Retreat this year! He is twelve years old, has a hilarious sense of humor, and loves everything to do with water (from swimming to drinking to washing hands). Marlin has autism and is comforted by schedules so we always went over the plan for each day. But that meant that sometimes we struggled to focus on what was happening right in front of us. So I decided to try to teach him a song that we could sing to help focus on the present. I tried out a few which he quickly dismissed (probably in part because of my below par singing voice). But then, while we were playing at the pool one day we found a song that he liked: “Lean on Me”. I would sing it to him while we played with some of the toys in the quiet room or while we were sitting taking breaks from running around on the lawn. One of the highlights of my week was when I was singing quietly to myself and suddenly I realized Marlin was softly singing all the words with me! Needless to say, after that we had lots of sing-alongs much to both of our delight. The song “Lean on Me” is a touching example of how we can support each other in our times of need. Two are better than one for each can help the other succeed (Ecc. 4:9-12). I have been blessed to experience this type of community in the team of interns with whom I have been learning and serving these two weeks!

 These past few days we have been debriefing and preparing for Haiti and I can finally say that today is the day!! When we arrive, we plan to lead VBS and parent training at a special needs orphanage and at churches in the surrounding area! We have gathered and prepared all the supplies but more importantly we have been preparing our hearts and minds for the work that God will do through us as we seek to strengthen His kingdom in Haiti! We are so excited! Please keep us in your prayers, that we may live according to the Spirit for “to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace” (Romans 8:6), that we will wake up every day recognizing that we need Jesus desperately, and that no matter what obstacles we may face God will shine through us so we might share the hope that “in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us”!! (Romans 8:37)

The Banquet for the Broken

            I wrote this post on our drive up to the Joni and Friends family retreat in Scott’s Valley at Mission Springs last Sunday but I did not realize that once we arrived at camp, I would not have access to Wifi until we arrived back at the hotel in Thousand Oaks late last night, so anyways here is my post from last week! And this week’s post is on the way!

This first week of my internship has been simply and yet extravagantly blessed. When I first learned about this internship, I was uncertain of this week of textbook learning from a book called Beyond Suffering. I prayed that I would have an open mind and let my heart be prepared for the upcoming weeks of service. I could sum up the week by saying that our God is absolutely and incredibly faithful!! But I want to share more than a sentence about everything that I have learned this week so I hope your looking for more than a summary J

            Through my experiences and through the lectures I heard, I grew in my understanding of the importance of stories. My heart is captivated by the stories of the incredible people who surround me. I’ve heard stories of surrender, healing, conviction, passion, trust, and generosity, all of which originate in brokenness. In Luke 14 the Great Host tells us His servants to go out into the alleys and byways to compel the blind and lame, the outwardly broken, to come to His feast so that His house might be full. Now this took a while to fully register for me so I’m going to say it again: Our God wants His house full of people with disabilities! We need humility to admit our own brokenness before we can come in and help fill our Lord’s house, then also we can go out in love to help gather those who feel ill-equipped and invite them to the great banquet for the broken. “The only fitness God requires is that we feel our need of Him!” Praise be to the One who says it’s ok not to be ok, who invites us to come empty so that we may be filled with His grace and love. The community with disabilities is the largest unreached people group in the world, but the fields are ripe for the harvest and the differences between their struggles and ours are not so different as they once seemed.

 God has given each person a story, but in this fast-paced world we can get too caught up in comparison (which so often turns to pride or self pity) and we forget that when we share our stories, we are less likely to criticize or judge and more likely to trust and understand how to best encourage each other. Our stories are often filled with suffering, maybe because “God is not as interested in removing the problems that we see as He is in removing the selfishness to which we are blind”. Suffering could be described as “a splash-over from hell,” and sometimes God might use suffering to grab our attention or wake us up from complacency. But if hard times are a spoonful of hell, then are easy times a spoonful of heaven? No, rather “it is when we find God in the midst of suffering that we taste the joy of being in the presence of God”. For “the more we lean on our Savior, the stronger we find Him to be!”

Nevertheless, it is hard to reconcile the fact that God is all powerful and yet suffering still exists in the world. Timothy Keller once explained this in his book Reason for God saying that if we believe that we have a God big enough to eradicate the world of suffering then we must also believe that we have a God big enough to have a purpose for suffering bigger than our mortal minds can comprehen. When questioned about why she trusts a God that has allowed her to suffer quadriplegia for 40 years Joni responded that she has faith because Jesus knows the pain of this world. He was paralyzed physically when His hands and feet were nailed to the cross, experienced the relational poverty of misunderstanding, betrayal, and rejection and was a homeless wanderer on this earth. And He calls us to follow Him. We need to realize that “the promise of suffering is found in bold not in the fine print when we sign up to be in the army of the Lord”.

Beyond this, our “God is a Healer” as Mike Hoggatt’s daughter proclaims. She a precious little girl whom he and his wife adopted at age 3; she is a cancer survivor and has been diagnosed with autism. I believe that our God is in the business of healing. But to understand that healing, we must understand that God’s value system is not like the value system of this world. Our value in the eyes of God comes from our Savior. God already loves us infinitely and cannot love us any more or any less than He does at this very second. And since our value is based on what God has done, we come back once again to the idea that God invites us into His presence just as we are, with our stories of brokenness and healing. “Suffering is the textbook for learning our own identity” and for bringing us into a place of community. 1 Thessalonians is a story about perseverance through suffering and remaining steadfast through affliction as Paul encourages the church of the Thessalonians. I want to conclude this post as Paul closes his letter:

            “Now may the God of peace himself sanctify you completely 

and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless

 at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. 

He who calls you is faithful; he will surely do it… 

The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you” 

 -1 Thessalonians 5:23-24,28

*Most of the quotes in this post are from when Joni came to speak to us while we were in class at the IDC!

Radically Inclusive

I am excited to start up my blog again to write about this amazing internship opportunity that I am blessed to be a part of for the month of June! This Missions and Ministry internship is through the Cause for Life program with Joni and Friends International Disabilities Center. The past two days have been a lovely whirl-wind of putting faces to names. I have encountered and come to personally know people and places that, prior to Monday, were only familiar to me by way of the words of others. In the short time since I hopped off the plane at LAX, I have been overwhelmingly blessed as I strive to be attentive to the specific ways that the Lord has prepared my heart for this time. My desire is that I may praise Him with purity, love Him deeply, and serve Him faithfully.

            I prayed that our team, all with similar passions and hearts may be encouraging to one another. This prayer I based on Romans 1:12 where Paul expresses his longing to come to the Romans so that they “may be mutually encouraged by each other’s faith”. There is a special type of friendship that forms in times like these when we know we have only a month to be in each others company, and I love how people become vulnerable when we know that we have to trust each other in order to form community so that we can minister to others. Our conversations have truly been blessed, and have been an encouragement to us all. In introductions, something that stood out to me but was the beautiful balance in each person’s story between surrender and persistence; each person advancing God’s kingdom to reach this broken world in our own individual way.

            One phrase that remained in my mind after the many lectures and speeches that we heard on Tuesday was “radically inclusive”. This defines God and it should in turn define His church. Joni Eriksson Tada lives this radically inclusive lifestyle in a most beautiful way. On our tour of the IDC, we passed a small side room which beautifully depicted and explained Joni’s story and all the ways that God has allowed her to be His hands and feet even more through her own limited use of her earthly hands and feet. We then passed the radio center hearing more about all the ministry outreaches in which she participates and then walked by her office where we glimpsed through the office window that she was recording video. We passed by, being told that we would get to meet her later, but before we had made it around the next corner she comes out and asks if we had missed her office and welcomed us in with a warm and heartfelt smile. I do not think that Joni will knowingly miss a chance to invite someone in and cover them with the ridiculously radical love of Christ. I want to become more like Christ by learning to live a life full of love and radical inclusion.

            Well, I am off to day 3 but I will update again later!!

trampolines and skydiving

My fault in blogging is my long windedness. I never had a problem reaching the minimum word counts for analytical papers in high school or in college, always enjoyed writing the papers, but I do admit to being a bit of a procrastinator (the majority of my papers were written within a few days -or hours- of the dead line). The problem with blogging is that even though I love to write, there’s no deadline, so several half written blogs sit in lonely word documents that I simply never got around to finishing…

All that to say, today I was reminded about Skydiving from the book I am reading and really wanted to blog about it so here it goes (please and thank you for bearing with my wordyness!) The book is Velvet Elvis by Rob Bell. Although I read it some years ago, Bell explains in his book that just like “we instinctively understand that art has to, in some way, keep going… keep bringing new perspectives” so it is with Christians. No one person figured faith out. Rather we are all “exploring what it means to live in harmony with God and each other… Times change. God doesn’t... We learn and grow and the world around us shifts, and the Christian faith is alive only when it is listening, morphing, innovating. Letting go of whatever has gotten in the way of Jesus and embracing whatever will help us be more the people God wants us to be.” (10-11). God and the ways He is described in this book have not changed since I last read it, but I have. And though others may have discovered and re-discovered the truths many times before, what I am learning from this book now is new to me because I have grown and experienced new things. For example, I had not been skydiving the first time I read this book, but now that experience helped me learn in a new way (more on that later).

Bell describes a trampoline as a symbol for the Christian walk. The “statements and beliefs about our faith” are represented by the necessary springs which can stretch and bend and be seen in new perspective (22). The bricks of a brick wall do not accurately symbolize the doctrines of our faith for if a brick changes shape or grows, it no longer is a useful part of the wall. Furthermore, a wall divides and encourages a defensive standpoint; but a trampoline is about community, and about enjoyment. However, if I spend my entire time on the trampoline clutching the edge, examining the springs to see if they will hold, I have missed the joyful taste of flying that a trampoline offers. Bell says, “Jesus invites everybody to jump… the invitation to jump is an invitation to follow Jesus with all of our doubts and questions right there with us” (28). But sometimes in life I have found that God has answered my questions right before tossing me into the sky to test whether I have really learned what I think I have. This to me is like skydiving. For a personal example, on the upswing of an eating disorder, I felt like I was falling through thin air as struggled both to remember what I learned but God had prepared me to be open to share my story with two friends who I saw spiraling into the same patterns from which I was still learning to accept freedom.

In skydiving, you cannot be worried about the parachute the whole flight up and dive down. If you are, there is no joy in the experience. To be sure, there is a time and place for learning and checking, re-learning and re-checking, for doubts and questions, and for using accountability and caution all to protect us and prepare us for the road ahead. But once it is time for a journey, you are free to climb, to fly, to share the joy of discovery and adventure with those you are with. Then, when the time comes, to risk, to jump, to fall, to experience, to smile, to test, to trust, to watch, and to be thankful. And to invite others to join. But the importance of those times of learning, the times on the ground, cannot be overlooked. I love adventure and but as I learn to be intentional with the time God gives me to rest and to prepare, I have experienced that the preparation is just as wonderful as the jump. With each step, anticipation grows. I learn to keep my eyes open to watch for the way God acts and the glimpses of His ever present beauty and grace and love. I could try to describe more how I see Him, but as Rob Bell says, “this is something people have struggled with since the beginning: how to talk about God when God is bigger than our words, our brains, our worldviews, and our imaginations.” (23).

And because the song fits where I am right now, this is a song called “who you are” written by the wonderful college minister at my home church. (he has written many other honest, beautiful songs that have impacted my life. sadly, not near enough of them are recorded but you can look some of his songs up on iTunes under Robby Higginbottom and Empty Handful!)

“WHO YOU ARE”

Bigger than our thoughts, Higher than our sweetest dreams can soar

You are that and even more

Words cannot describe, The wonder of a King who stooped so low

Who left His throne that we might know

Who you are.

Infinite the gap, between the God reflected in our days

And the Glory we were made to praise

Cleverly deceived, eyes you made to glimpse reality

When focused on ourselves will never see

Who you are.

You say “I am who I am”,

You’re the Lion and the Lamb

Lord of Heaven and of Earth

Infinite in Worth

You are Word becoming flesh

Conqueror of death

God of Wrath and God of Love

Reigning over us

May our lives go far,

In showing who you are

We want to love the truth, we want to long for you

In you we finally see our identity