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

Jugares Nuevos

Penarol: this game was like nothing I have ever experienced before. We got to the game over an hour early and everyone was already decked out in black and yellow and singing and chanting. Right before that game started, everyone started singing really loud, setting off fireworks, sparklers, and yellow smoke bombs. My favorite thing was that there is a rule with Penarol fans that win or lose they are always on their feet, always cheering. Even though Penarol lost the game that we attended, the fans never stopped encouraging and cheering on their team.

Symphony: It was a fun night, we all got dressed up and took some pictures and headed to the show. The conductor was exactly the person I would draw up the perfect conductor to be. Long white hair and a handle bar mustache and he got into the conducting so much that he jumped up and down for emphasis at least a couple times per song. The first songs were from the nutcracker and were absolutely amazing. The whole experience was just what I needed after a long week and right before a fun but tiring weekend. It was wonderful to listen to the music and think of nothing else.

Speaking of this past weekend, it was the most unplanned but most wonderful adventure. Once we got off the bus at our campsite, (which was an adventure in itself) the first thing I noticed were the stars. You could see the Milky Way easily and the constellations were all so bright and seemed so close. If nothing else good had happened, the weekend for me was already made. The campsite centered around a couple pools that were fed by the hot springs. Eric went to check them out the first night while Mal, Jamie, Whitney, and I went to bed in our tent and stayed up talking. The next day was Mal’s birthday and we went to a water park about 30 minutes away from the campsite with this wonderful family that Eric had met and befriended the night before. They had been camping there for about three weeks and three of the sons ended up coming back on the same bus as us back to Montevideo. They were so patient and easy going and it was so much fun hanging out with them. The park was right across from Argentina, and it had hot pools and cold pools, it was the perfect day of relaxation, adventures, new friends, practicing Spanish, eating ham sandwiches, drinking fresh squeezed orange juice, and sharing Maté. I love how easy it is to make friends here. Everyone is honest and the relaxed nature is so different and a nice change from the fast-paced life of America. The next day we spent some time looking at some local markets and going down to hang out by the river. I went down closer to the river and found a beautiful little shaded place right by the water that was so peaceful that I just sat there taking everything in and enjoying the quietness. After a while there we went into Salto to find the free zoo that we had heard about. Once again, on the bus, everyone was so willing to talk and so patient, we followed a family from one bus to the next that would take us to the zoo. There were some pretty awesome animals including lions and tigers and bears and all sorts of colorful birds and these cute little animals that we could never find a sign for but looked like a mix between a raccoon and a puppy and an anteater. When we were waiting for our bus that was to leave at around midnight, we made friends with a Pastor and Professor who lives in Montevideo, he knew like 5 languages and wanted to learn English, he had written a book but apparently needed another doctorate before it could be published. We had a wonderful conversation with him and started singing worship songs at a bus stop in the middle of the countryside of Uruguay. Although the fact that we had not planned almost anything the whole weekend was a little stressful, God had a perfect plan for us to learn more about His people and made me become less worried about scheduling my time and rather giving it up and recognizing that it is His time that he has given to me so that I can learn to glorify Him in new ways everyday.

The Paris of the South

We left Montevideo for Buenas Aires early on Friday morning on a charter bus headed for Colonia where we would take the Ferry to B.A. Our first stop was this really random museum of world record collections of pencils, key chains, and perfume bottles. Personally, my favorite part of the place was the playground outside with some legit merry-go-round deals and a seesaw on springs. It was awesome. We got off the bus again to see an old bull fighting rink and to have a picnic by a beach. The bus trip ended in Colonia where we wandered down by a beach through cobblestone streets and then climbed a lighthouse where we could barely make out part of the skyline of Buenas Aires across the ocean. Whitney, Ben, and I went down to the pier and sat and watched the water and the ships, got coffee in miniature coffee mugs, wandered through an artisans market and simply enjoyed the relaxed pace of the town.Then we headed to the enormous ferry to go to Buenas Aires! We couldn’t figure out if it felt like we were on a plane or a bus or really moving at all the ride was so smooth.
After arriving in Buenas Aires we got on an air-conditioned bus to ride to our air-conditioned hotel. This hotel was literally in the center of downtown. There is a massive obelisk that marks the center of a 20+ lane street (one of the biggest in the world) that runs through downtown and our hotel rooms each had balconies overlooking the street. Buenas Aires is an incredible city with many many different interesting things to see and explore. Here are a few of my favorite parts of Buenas Aires:

La Boca- an old, beautiful, colorful neighborhood with lots of vendors, salsa dancers, painters, musicians, and restaurants.

Puente– a famous, white, modern looking  bridge over a beautiful river. The River walk is pretty posh and one night Brady, Ben, Whitney, and I went down to a little park to people watch and talk.

The Ferria- a street filled with a long market. There were beautiful embroidery crafts, colorful shoes. Whitney and I spent a few hours walking down the market and finding all sorts of beautiful things and trying to have little conversations in Spanish with some of the vendors.

The last thing I want to mention about Buenas Aires are the wonderful friends I made there. I met Marisa and Ashley at the church service in the morning  and then Whitney and I met up with them after we wandered the Ferria and they showed us a 5 story mall and took us to one of their favorite restaurants served family style. We had such a wonderful conversation about how the youth of different countries can represent Jesus to the world. The way that a common love and a common purpose can unite God’s people across countries is inspiring in a way like nothing I have ever experienced. It is a bond that grows stronger with differences and is more pure as it combines cultures. The love of our great God unites us and this friendship gave me a taste of the joy that will be ours when together with followers of Christ from all over the world we will all praise or King and spend every moment glorifying Him.  

Mas Como Mi Casa Todos Los Dios

Sorry for the time lapse! My blog was not uploading and then I had not had time to write but I think it is about time for an update on my semester! This entry was written a few weeks ago so if it seems a little out dated that is why! So many fun things happen every single day I wish I could have time to blog about it all but here are a few highlights of the past week: There is a beautiful park about 20 minute walk from Casa right next to the Rambla (and the ocean) that I am sure we will spend more time in as the semester goes on but I already have so many fun memories that I have to share a few. One of the first time we went was with Martin, his little sister Michaela, and some of the other people from the youth group. We just sat and talked, practicing the little bit of Spanish that I knew, and watching Michaela show off with her handstands and cartwheels. This 12 year old girl is adorable, energetic, and unafraid to try out her English and laugh at and with us as we try to learn Spanish. Speaking of Spanish, I am learning a lot! (8 hours a week plus homework and hearing it everywhere I would I hope I would be!) At the park there are signs explaining the algae in the lake or the various birds around or the monuments and statues (which are scattered allll over Montevideo) so Whitney, Amy, and I walked around translating them as best we could. I was excited that my French background helped me a lot with reading Spanish! Whitney and I have started carrying a little dictionary around with us most of the time we go out and try to talk in Spanish at least some of the time that we are out. One time we were walking maybe 10 feet behind an Uruguayan man, switching around between Spanish and English (and a little French) talking about the beach and anything based on what we could remember how to say. Needless to say our conversation probably seemed extremely random to someone who did not know what vocab words we learned that day in Spanish class. When we finally made a turn and parted ways he turned around with this hilarious amused look on his face and started laughing. Technically, it is improper to smile at Uruguayan men that you don’t know but we did anyhow. One way or the other I’m sure if he had a story to tell went he went home that night. One more thing about the park, there is a couple that sells these delicious doughnuts type things called “borrlas” for 4 pesos. We have gone there a few times already and we want to frequent the place regularly and make friends with the lady who manages the stand.

I have not gone running a whole lot since I’ve been here which is driving me a little crazy! But the times that I have gone running are so much fun. Running on the Rambla and playing soccer on the beach are dreams come true. Seriously. I was planning waiting for things to settle down to a rhythm to get into a running schedule but everything here is still so new and there is so much to explore and since I am coming to Dallas for Steven and Abbey’s wedding on Wednesday, I think I’ll wait for things to settle down to a rhythm here in a couple weeks. We have been to 4 different beaches, two along the Rambla, Carrasco, and we went out to Raquel (our wonderful cook) house for church, beach, burgers, and helado. She is such a gracious, generous, beautiful, servant-hearted woman I love having here in Casa 5 days a week! Many times before meals Wimon or Rosalinda will pray in Spanish or in both Spanish and English. I love hearing it and although I only catch some of it, I love thinking that God can hear us all the same, there is no language barrier between God and His people. Since “yo estudio patelogia del hablar”, this has a special meaning for me, sometimes language barriers can occur even in the same language when people cannot communicate what they need or want someone to know. With the kids that I work with at Joni and Friends, my heart aches to help them learn to express themselves and I love knowing that God has absolutely no difficulties understanding every child that the world finds hard to understand. Our God “is near to all who call on Him, to all who call on Him in truth” (Psalm 145:18)

Oh yeah, annnd classes! How could I forget? There is a ton of reading and writing homework, and plenty of Spanish memorization. Balancing time between wanting to journal, blog, have alone time, go to class, do homework, explore, spend time at the beach or the city, and just be with people around Casa is so hard but it is teaching me to prioritize and to be diligent about scheduling my time. My goal is to blog about once a week but they will be shorter than this post!

One other thing that I want to mention is the Carnival Parade that we watched on Friday night, the parade marks the beginning of carnival month (leading up to Mardi Gras and ending on Ash Wednesday. The Parade had tons of singing and dancing, kids dress up in costumes and run around, ducking under banners, joining in this the dancers, running alongside the floats, and convincing their parents to buy things from the vendors that walk up and down 18 de Julio right alongside the parade. We arrived at 8 and the parade picked up speed at 9 o’clock around sundown. We left at around midnight but it continued for at least another hour after we left. Last night Cory, Ben, Whitney, Brady, and I went to the grocery store and to get some supplies for taco night. One night we made macaroni and cheese which was delicious! The next night we had taco night with most of Casa. We made our own flour tortillas and we had so much fun preparing it all! It is a whole new world buying things in kg and measuring in grams but I’m a pro at guesstimation and everything turned out great! For me, cooking with these people makes them feel even more like family. I have countless wonderful memories of my mom and I baking and cooking, trying new recipes, taste-testing, being excited with successes, laughing at failures. Also, at Kamp the girls that I worked with in the kitchen were my Kamp family, we saw every high and low together and developed unique friendships because we virtually were never apart. washing dishes and cleaning up after meals makes me feel like I am at Kamp again. But the best part about my family, my Kamp family, and the people I am studying with here is that we all have a common focus and a great desire to serve the Lord with all we are and to learn to love Him better everyday. I miss my hometeam Bible study and my heart to heart talks on walks back in Texas, the numerous honest and God-centered conversations that I have had here are so encouraging and make me excited to see how God will work in our group the rest of the semester.

If you hadn’t heard, I went home this past weekend for Steven’s wedding and although the travel was long, everything went smoothly all in all and I would’ve done the travel ten times over to be a part of their wedding again. Everything about the ceremony and the reception fit their personalities so perfectly and it was incredibly beautiful! And I finally have a sister!

Alrighty that is all for now but I will be posting some more here in a day or too all about our trip to Buenas Aires and Tigre last weekend!

“There’s more of the Spirit and more of God than any of us are experiencing. I want to go there—not just intellectually, but in life, with everything that I am” –Francis Chan, Forgotten God