He is doing Great Things!

This is so very cool. My friend Susan is just weeks away from heading to Timisoara, Romania on a misison trip with church. I know mission trips all have a specific purpose, but this one is something HUGE. The wonderful cast of people God has pulled together is going to be putting on a huge 722 style event in Piata Unirii, the big square smack in the middle of town. Timisoara is a university town, so this will be a prime audience. I have stood in Piata Unirii when I was there in 2006 (photos above). God will do an amazing work on October 25!

As of now, the team is still at about 50% of their financial needs. Because they have to take a band with them, they have to be able to fund all the band's equipment to travel as well, and when you have to take a 50 passenger plane into Timisoara, this can be very interesting! They are not designed for lots of luggage! If you feel you'd like to donate towards the trip, please contact my friend Susan via her blog (Susan in Romania on my favorite blogs listing). Finally, here is the link to a video commerical they are broadcasting in Timisoara on TV to promote the event. Hope you enjoy it!

So today I was working with first grade on sentences. They are supposed to begin to understand what constitutes a complete sentence as opposed to a fragment. So I would give them a fragment (basically, a simple subject), and they would have to complete the sentence to make it make sense.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EVBumXDAOIo

My Dad...

So today I was working with first grade on sentences. They are supposed to begin to understand what constitutes a complete sentence as opposed to a fragment. So I would give them a fragment (basically, a simple subject), and they would have to complete the sentence to make it make sense.

So I put things up on the board like, "Miss Ginn..." and "My friend and I..." and "The ball..." Later on, I put up one that said, "My Dad..." I hesitated to put this one up, and apparently should have hesitated more. One child put, "My Dad is ossume!" (Which of course translates to "awesome"). Someone else wrote, "My Dad wrestles." Still another child said, "My dad is big." I look over at this one little boy who isn't writing anything. I prompt him and he comes up with, "My dad is a cheater! He cheated on my Mom!"

What do you do with that? Then the kid next to him says, "My dad is a cheater too. One time, we were playing Monopoly, and he cheated!"

We promptly moved on to "My mom..."

Clarisa

Just joined up on Facebook and my friend Clarisa from Romania found me right away! So cool. Anyway, she had this quote on her page that hit home with me, as it was what I wrote about recently on here. Thought I'd post it along with a picture of me with Clarisa.

"Sometimes it seems like God is difficult to find and impossibly far away. We get so caught up in our small daily duties and irritations that they become the only things that we can focus on. What we forget is that God's love and beauty are all around us, every day, if only we would take the time to look up and see them!" (Matthias)
I'm in the middle and Clarisa is immediately to my right if you are looking at the picture, in the white shirt. She's a cool girl!

All for Love

Guess I wasn't the best one to ask
Me myself with my face pressed up against love's glass
To see the shiny toy i've been hoping for
The one I never can afford
The wide world spins and spits turmoil
And the nations toil for peace
But the paws of fear upon your chest
Only love can soothe that beast...
(excerpt from Love Will Come to You by the Indigo Girls)

Tough stuff, loving. The more I talk to people---no, the more I listen---the more aware I am not just of what Jesus said when he casually mentioned that we should feed the poor, love the unloveable, help the sick, the widows, the orphans, sell our posessions, etc...but rather, I'm suddenly aware of what he meant. And interestingly, it's not really all that hard. When He said, "Feed the poor," I think what he actually meant was to FEED the poor. And, when he says things like, "Help care for orphans and widows," I think He actually meant us to do that, physically.

Some parts of the Bible are metaphorical, but I think when Jesus gave commands to the disciples and the crowds he wasn't just being metaphorical when he was talking about life changing love. The simplest things we do can actually alter someone else's life. Improve life.

I think as a westerner---particularly as an American---I spend far too much time thinking about how I want to be loved and what that looks like in my world. Not that God doesn't want wonderful things for me, or for any of His children...but wouldn't my time be better spent loving other people than worrying about myself? Like for example, hugging my student who this morning looked like he hadn't had a bath or clean clothes for a few days, and saying, "Hey, good job, buddy. You were really helpful today. Thank you for being a good listener." Or maybe it means having a Trade is One gathering at my house. Maybe, it's going to Africa to be the hands and feet of Jesus by handing out life-saving antibiotics or clean water. Or maybe even just learning the name of the guy who serves us every week at Fellini's.

The bigger I realize God is---that He is the God of all people, everywhere---the more intentional I think I am becoming in my pursuit of loving the other people. Because to God, they are just people. And it may cost something. It may cost time, money, emotions...it may cost letting go of one thing to gain another.

Love is hard stuff. Really.

This is a statue of Jesus holding the hand of a mother who lost her child. It's in the middle of Timisoara, Romania outside of an orphanage. The statue was specially commissioned to show Romanian women of Jesus's love for them, particularly in a culture where abortion is rampant. Through a crisis pregnancy center sponsored by Vox Domini Church, thousands of women are counseled each year, most of them electing to have their babies and end up gaining support from and being cared for by the church. (PHOTO AT TOP: Taken by Kelli in Kenya...local Samburu children)

With the Sibs in Orlando

The thing about life-long friends is that you can be absent one from the other for quite a long time and pick up right where you left off the last time. My trip to Orlando this week was a perfect example. My English friends, Steve and Joy Atkins (brother & sister) have been my UK family for nearly 10 years now, and we always get on like brothers and sisters. Joy and I are often mistaken for sisters in public, as we were today in one of the shops at the outlet mall. We obviously share the same tastes, as when I met Joy right off the plane, we discovered this:

Yes, those are my feet on the left, and hers on the right. In exactly the same pair of Rocketdog, brown flip-flops! Crazy. So now you probably want to see pictures of us, the sisters. Well here you go:
That was taken this past summer in London when I was there with People to People. So now we were here in my semi-territory. We went to Universal Studios yesterday, and today it was off to the Premium Outlets. A good time was had by all. Pictures follow. Enjoy!
















How about Steve & Autumn in the rickshaw? We barely fit two adult-sized bottoms into it!


And there we are...me, my "sister" and my "brother." Final moments at the Orlando International airport, where you can park your car outside ticketing without being shouted or whistled at and you can take last-minute pictures with your friends. Good times!

Realization

I was lying in bed tonight after reading a portion of Don Miller's Blue Like Jazz, talking to God as I often do right in the midst of those moments before sleep takes me over, when something struck me. It was as if something BIG had been realized by me, and it's kind of sticking in my brain so I felt I should write it down. So here it is: Probably the one thing I desire most in the world is to be loved and understood and to be held and cared for in tough times, listened to, etc. In essence, to be known. I don't think that this desire in me is one that is unique. In fact, I think most of us have this same yearning to some degree. Don Miller would probably say that what we are looking for is for someone else to validate us, when in fact it is God who wants to do so in the first place. But tonight, lying there, a new thought entered my mind: the desire God has put in me to feel loved by another person is, in fact, the same way he feels about me. He wants to be known that deeply by me. It's a blessing that God puts people in our world who can show His love tangibly to us, but that in itself is not enough. He desires it back. And He desires sincerity, our whole heart in this relationship with Him, not just the "leftovers" as Francis Chan so beautifully illustrated by eating that chicken leg a year ago during one of his talks. He wants the first bite, not the bone left at the end. I'm reminded of the passage in Revelation 2 where God says to the church in Ephesus, "You have forsaken your first love...repent and do the things you did at first!" (NIV). In The Message it reads, "Recover your dear early love." Wow. I don't think the word forsaken is exactly one I'd like God to use when I think of how I related to Him while on earth. But I love the romance in "dear early love." God wants to romance me, and He wants some love in return. I'd better get busy!

P2P Reunion!

I got to spend the evening in Ben's Party Barn with these fantastic students and their families. The rain could not stop us from reminiscing, listening to some good music, and enjoying a fabulously soundtracked slide show of our travels! It was good to be back together with our People to People family once again on this side of the pond. We won't soon forget all the fun we had in Scotland and England last summer. We hope to take some of these same students with us on our journey back to the UK next summer. Another adventure awaits! (Above photo taken at the Glencoe Center, Scotland)

At Stonehenge
At the William Wallace Monument

God

God is so amazing. He is good. He is enough. He is tangible through others. He loves us.

This picture is a testament to exactly that. It was taken on the beach at Labor Day Retreat last weekend. I'm so blessed that these people are in my life.

Thanks, God!

Want & Need

A friend of mine recently wrote an article for Paste in which he reflected on the state of our world today in relation to the lyrics of various John Lennon songs from the 60s and 70s. We always knew that lyrics weren't just to be taken at face value. Some people feel John Lennon was a bit of a flower child freak, and to a degree I guess I'm one of those people. But "all we need is love" was a hard message to be conveying back in those times, and is even now. It seems that in the darkest places on earth---places he mentions, such as Darfur---love and peace are exactly what we need a quadruple dose of.

Ironic, isn't it? The distance between need and want is vast. I need food, shelter and safety. I want a new pair of shoes, new kitchen cabinets, or a trip to Europe. Fortunately, because I was born in America, my needs are met with little effort, thus allowing me to pursue my wants at my leisure. The difference is, in the third-world, needs aren't being met for many, which leaves little room for desiring things beyond the most basic of human needs. What do we do about it? More importantly, what do we, as Christians do about it? Therein lies the real question.