Sunday, May 27, 2007

Youth in Mission, here I come!

To all:

This is the first of multiple emails I will be sending this summer to update you on my Youth in Mission trip. As most of you are aware, I will be heading to El Paso, Texas and Juarez, Mexico for almost two months for a missions trip (If you don't know where that is, it's in the western part of Texas that kind of pokes into New Mexico).

Here are the basics, as I knew in January, of what I'm doing. I heard that things can change at any time, so you'll hear later if this is not what I'm actually doing:
~Partner with a Latin American YIM team
~Facilitate evangelism training and outreach
~Involvement with compassionate ministries (I wonder if I will see any banana boxes, School Pal-Paks, or Crisis Care Kits!)
~Participate in Work and Witness projects
~Assisting in leadership training for Nazarene leaders in Mexico
~Train, coordinate, and lead a short-term missions trip for Latin American youth (Maximum Mission) in Mexico

After a flurry of emails between our team and our site coordinators, I can also share this with you:
"We want this time for you to be different than what you're used to - we want you to be stetched - spiritually, socially, emotionally - etc. You will gain new things this summer. You will sacrifice things this summer. We want to come into this totally open to something new from God.
You will be asked to share your testimony (your journey with God); you will be asked to lead church services; you will be asked to integrate with the Hispanic community; you will be asked to LEAD teenagers in a deeper spiritual journey with God; you will be asked to do things you're good at and to do things you've never done before. You will asked to do things that are very mundane. You will be asked to do things that don't have a lot of direction/explanation. You will be asked to experience your journey with God in a whole new way."

I fly out Tuesday to Kansas City for my week of training camp with all the other YIM students. We will then disperse on the 3rd for our various sites around the world! I will be keeping a journal (those of you from my Belize/Guatemala trip know how I journal!) and taking plenty of photographs, so that you can get a glimpse of my experience.

Great news: All of my trip funds have been raised, and I will even be reimbursed for my airfare to and from Kansas City! It was awesome to see God provide all my funds, even if it all happened at the last minute!

Prayer requests:
~safety in general, as well as during travel
~keeping us healthy
~for God to enable our team to reflect Him to the people there by the border
~working in the hearts of those at our site

I'm wicked excited to see what God holds this summer for me, and will keep you all posted throughout the summer (possibly with pictures too)! I will have internet access every so often, so emails/messages will be muchly appreciated. :)

Thank you to all have supported me and my trip over the past few months, whether it was through financial contributions, sharing ideas, or by simply praying for me. I appreciate your generosity and prayers, and can't wait to see what happens this summer!

"So right here and now I am all in
'Cause I'm letting go of everything I am
And I'm holding on to everything You are
I'm letting go of everything I once was
I'm all in
I'm fallin' into Your arms again" (by TobyMac)

Friday, May 18, 2007

current glimpses

*~*
from Down by the River: "Marketing people learn that Mexicans believe the truth must be something bad, something constantly claimed by their government and therefore something very suspect." What does this mean in terms of ministry to them and sharing verses from the Bible, especially John 14:6 (Jesus is the way, truth, and life)?
*~*

*~*
I have this sense of sacredness in certain places, that where I am is holy ground, and to do anything but move and speak softly (or in some cases, to even enter) violates such sacredness. To name a few places, the New England Holocaust Memorial, some bedrooms, and old or empty churches. I felt like it was only proper to simply walk through the Holocaust Memorial silently, reading the information, and thinking about it. If I am ever in some family's house, and walk slightly into the parents' bedroom, I feel like I'm intruding. "Marriage should be honored by all." It's as though that's their space, and that's where the mystery of marriage is. Something like that. I visited the Trinity Church this past weekend (that's the one at Copley Square, right?), but only was in the foyer and downstairs in the bookstore. I couldn't help but want to tread softly, and speak softly if at all.
*~*

*~*
How can we alleviate the suffering of illegal immigrants? What are churches down there doing to help? What is the general church attitude? I'm pretty sure that "the least of these" includes those that the government refuses to help before they boot them out of the country.
*~*

*~*
Humanity is falling to pieces. We break each other and tear each other down. This brokenness is sin. Christ is the "glue" that will put us back together. Holiness, wholeness, comes when we allow Christ to put the broken pieces of our lives back together, when we can can help others put their broken lives back together. Whether it's relational or financial or personal, we're all broken in some way. We cannot be useful until we are whole again at the most basic levels (thank you Maslow).
*~*

*~*
As I've been learning about different situations, I cannot help but wonder, "What does this mean in terms of ministry? What can be done to fix this?"
*~*

What are your thoughts?

Friday, May 04, 2007

Being a college student is fun. Most of the time.

I am 99% finished my 10 lesson plans for Ed Psych. All I have to do "tomorrow" is tweak one a bit, do some formatting, and then print it to hand in. After that, I'm done most of my work!

At about 1 am, I decided that I needed to get the oxygen moving in my body again, so I ran around the front lawn twice. Where else can you do crazy things like that except at college?

Next week before I take my finals, I have to do some Arts and Music papers, study for Linear, and study for Christian Tradition. Then I'm DONE!!!!

I can't wait for the end of the semester to really be here, because it means I will be moving out of the dorm and into the KP's house for the rest of the month. I won't have any homework to do, but will be able to read FUN books again! I'll put that reading list up shortly.

On May 29th, I will be heading to Kansas City for my YOUTH IN MISSION trip to Mexico!!!!!!!!! I honestly haven't had time to be excited, or at least I haven't allowed myself time, due to school stresses. Not to mention, I've been trying to practice my Spanish, work on figuring out how to raise the money for the trip (but that's all done now! Yay God! Thank you for providing for me!), and a whole host of other things. Maybe the rest of this month will be a nice time of relaxing and preparing!

Last weekend was quizzing Regionals, and the short summary of the weekend is this: crazy, intense, stressful, fun, and we stayed in a sketchy hotel. But that's another story for another blog.

It's almost 2 am. I need to go to bed! I'm a little loopy right now, in case you can't tell. At least I can sleep in tomorrow till who knows when.

(yes I know I just typed this blog after writing about 7 pages of a paper, but I really just needed to do SOMETHING before I went to bed. it's a really pointless entry, I'll admit.)