Easily Amused

Me and my sisters took our cousin out to a movie and lunch as a Christmas Eve date, and...well...we had extra time...so we went to Petland and played with two super cute puppies (one a little more hyper than the other...lol).

Christmas!

So, I fail at this whole blogging thing lately, but "Merry Christmas!"

As we celebrate the incarnation of Christ, I pray that you would be awed by the power and might of the king and God who lives in heaven, interceding for us before the face of the Father.

(And, if you live in the Tri-Cities, enjoy the white Christmas!)

Snow

Wow. It's not often we get the promise of a white Christmas in the Tri-cities, or very often that it gets this stinken' cold.

It's beautiful though, and, in some ways in makes internship (Kenya) seem all that much closer.
A) I don't tend to think of things as "soon" until I'm there, and
B) Being home has helped kind of push internship further off into the distant future because of all the stuff there has been to do here
But, cold means Minnesota. Minnesota means school. School means internship, and internship means Kenya. (Yeah...welcome to the mind of Jessica. Freezing my rear off makes me think of deserts on the equator. Right... )

Enjoy the snow, and make sure you get some sledding in -- slippery roads mean slippery hills after all...

37 days!! (and some housekeeping details)

Sorry.

I just got really excited all of a sudden at the idea that I really am going to Kenya! (And, that led me to realize that I need to catch you all up on what's going to happen with this blog starting in January.)

So....here's the deal.

Because of the nature of the trip, our site supervisor has requested that we treat an information about where we are and what we're doing as sensitive -- which makes me feel like Jason Bourne (minus the amnesia...and the assassin training...so...maybe not so much like Bourne...but...whatever.)

Therefore, starting in January, you will not be able to access this blog, unless I send you an email request (every time you want to read the blog, you'll need to sign in using your Google account -- if you don't have one already, the email will guide you through setting one up. It's really easy).

This means that, if I don't have your email, you need to somehow get your email address to me (comment, Facebook, telepathy, etc), so that I can send you the invite come January.

If you don't get my newsletters, I probably don't have your email....

Thanks, guys!

<><

Do You Have It?

I'm still not sure what Africa smells like. It all just smells like set pieces to me, but the exhibit it pretty powerful nonetheless.

You go through the experience with headphones and an mp3 player that narrates "your life" for you, encouraging you to become that child for a few minutes as you look at pictures and artifacts that immerse you in the sights and sounds of the story.

At the end, you enter a health clinic and find out whether you are positive or negative for HIV. All of the children featured have lost at least one person to the AIDS virus.

I know that quite a few people came out of it feeling like they really had lived the life of the child whose story they heard.

By far, the most fun group to send through the experience was the high school kids from church. Instead of having normal Intersect this week, they all went through the exhibit.

I think that some of the World Vision staff were concerned at first when they heard us giving the kids a bad time both before and after the exhibit -- doesn't really fit with the whole "smile, and be kind and welcoming" thing -- but they eventually figured out that we knew them and weren't just being rude to random exhibit guests. (Really, after a four hour shift of greeting people and trying to help them get signed in on the computer, what are you supposed to do with a massive line of high school kids, stare at them somberly in preparation for the stories they are about to hear? Not so much.)

Quite a few high schoolers decided to sponsor children, though, and it was fun hearing them talk about what they were going to send in their letters and whether they were going to write to the child's whole family or just the kid themselves.

There was a lot of, "Look at my kid." "Look at the one I got." "Did you see mine's name?" etc going on. Terri's response to Malia picking out a child to sponsor was "Oh. I feel like a grandma now!"

<><

It's December!

The kids at the drop in center came in all excited after school yesterday announcing, "It's almost Christmas!" so, we spent the rest of the afternoon decorating with lights, trees, ornaments they had decorated, and swaths of red and green fabric, and coloring paper Christmas trees to hang up on the walls.
By the time we were finished, it looked like someone had given Santa's elves too many candy canes and then set them loose.
(The rainbow colored paper chain that dips and stretches all the way around the room makes an interesting contrast with the red and green that came out of the craft closet yesterday...)

This December is a little warmer than the one I experienced last year.

While Minneapolis is buried in snow and below freezing temperatures, it is still warm enough here to have spent the last Saturday night in November outside, playing capture the flag, in a t-shirt and a pair of jeans -- at least for those of us who are warm blooded.

And, in a month and a half, I'll be someplace even warmer.

It's supposed to be 85 or 90 degrees in Kenya when I get there! In January!

At Breakneck Speed

Wow. I can't believe how much time has passed already -- or how long it's been since I've updated this thing. A month and fourteen days until I leave for Kenya, and almost that long since I've posted anything...

Life seems to be running past at breakneck speed around here, so, a quick update is in order.

Shoeboxes are over (8,925 boxes went out from the "greater Tri-Cities area." Just over 1,500 of those were Bethel boxes, which means a ship load of other churches and groups got very involved this year.) We lived down in the church for a week and, with assistance from a couple of clusters (who just happened to have leaders *cough* Gary and Phil *cough* who didn't want to load everything by themselves...), plus whoever else we could get our hands on, loaded three semi trucks full of packing cartons.

NaNoWriMo is over, and, after lots of frantic last day typing, I am the proud owner of a 50,000 word novel -- which now needs an ending and some serious editing before it sees the light of day...

Monday night childcare is over until February, so, me, Katherine, Tyson, and Shannon no longer get to torment children, and said children no longer get to torment us. Not real sure which direction around is more accurate.

CHECK is still going, and the World Vision Experience AIDS exhibit is right around the corner. Set up for it starts tomorrow! There will soon be an African village in the Fellowship Hall at church. I've been told it even smells like Africa, although I'm not real sure what Africa smells like.
I guess I'll find out tomorrow!

Now that I've overloaded you with information, hopefully, I will get back to more regular (and more interesting) posts.

Deadlines and more deadlines

Deadline #1:

November 30th is the "ideal" date by which my team is supposed to have fund raised 100% of the budget for our Kenya internship. I'm currently at 76%, so, I'm getting there slowly but surely. Please be praying for the rest of my team though. About half of us are really struggling to get the finances together.

Everyone still believes that it is God's will for them to be on this intern team, so we are just waiting to see how He provides. Pray for peace and wisdom regarding how to get the word out.

Deadline #2:

November 30th (this seems to be the magical date for some reason) is the final day of NaNoWriMo, which means that myself and thousands of other nutty folks will have officially each written a 50,000 word novel in the month of November -- hopefully.

If I seem a little extra insane this month, this might be the reason. (I'm at 9,000 words so far. Whoot. Whoot! -- Although that means at least another 1,000 words need to be written before midnight tonight, if I'm going to keep on schedule....)

Darfur

For more than five and a half years the people of Darfur have lived under a brutal reign of terror. The government-sponsored genocide has taken hundreds of thousands of civilian lives and driven more than 2.5 million from their homes. In 2008 alone, violence forced more than 230,000 civilians to flee—sometimes as many as 1,000 per day!

Strong action from the next president can bring peace and protection to the people of Darfur. That's why the Save Darfur Coalition is bringing together people from all faiths and political beliefs to raise their voices and call for Darfur to be a Day One priority for the next president.

Be a Voice for Darfur. Go to www.AddYourVoice.org to send your postcard to the new president, demanding that this humanitarian crisis be a Day One priority in the White House. Add your voice today!

Human Pin Cushion

There are some parts of being in other countries -- like actually BEING in other countries -- that are just incredible, and then, there are parts to being in other countries -- like getting shots before you go -- that are...not so fun...

I'm going back to the Travel Nurse today to get my fifth shot this week. Oh joy. *rolls eyes*

Oh well, at least I already got a bunch of shots when I went to Nicaragua and Mexico, so I don't have to worry about getting all of those now too. That would have been mucho fun.

I'm getting my yellow fever shot today, with a bunch of people who are going to Rwanda with The African Children's Choir, so I'm actually kind of excited to get to hear about their trip.

Rwanda is a small country to the west of Kenya, (from right to left it goes Kenya, Tanzania, then Rwanda) so they wont be super far from where I am.

Whatever

So, you could just say that I'm just a bleeding heart who refuses to believe badly about people, but, spend five minutes around me, and you'd find out that I'm sarcastic, and all too willing to glare daggers at you if I think you're a threat -- not that I'm related to my father at all. : P

You could say that I'm bad at following authority, so I automatically like people who challenge the status quo, and you might be closer to correct.

Whatever the reason, the "tough guy" act, especially in elementary and middle schoolers cracks me up. Or, should I say, the fact that adults believe their act cracks me up (and ticks me off, depending on the mood I'm in).

You know, the kids who are little punks and think that, if they just act gangster enough, you will automatically distrust them -- thereby proving their point that authority figures are blind, stupid, and shouldn't be trusted.

They may very well have a close relationship with the Principal's office and the school's demerit system, but, once you get past their facade -- which seems to take approximately one encounter and thirty seconds or less -- they're just little boys who want to belong, to be cared about and to be seen.

It might take longer than that before they really trust you, and they will keep tying to push your buttons in order to prove that you don't really care. But, people know when they are seen, and it doesn't take that much looking to see a glint of gold underneath even the most troublesome little -- or not so little -- punk, prep, emo, or goth.

Maybe I'm a bleeding heart. Maybe I'm anti-authority. Maybe I just like kids.

Rafiki??

"Asante sana, Squash banana, Wewe nugu mimi hapana."
"It means, you are a baboon, and I am not."

No, I'm not crazy -- well, that's debatable, but not the point right now -- that really is Kiswahili, and it's also from "The Lion King."

Rafiki ("friend") is quoting part of an African playground chant. It means, "Thank you very much, Squash Banana. You are a baboon and I am not."

So, asante sana for not calling me a nugu. You now know almost a much Kiswahili as I do.

Time Warp

Do you guys ever feel like time is moving at a different speed than what it normally does? The last five minutes of a class can seem to take forever, but, when your mom tells you you have five more minutes with your friend before you have to leave, it seems to be over before it started.

That's kind of what the last two months -- and the next three months -- feel like to me.

Because I've been doing lots of stuff, it kind of seems like I've been back in the Tri-Cities for a long time, and it seems like I have lots of time left before I go to Kenya. Three months sounds like a long time, right?

But it also seems like I haven't been back hardly at all. I was gone for way longer than I've been back for, and lots of things have happened while I was away.

This Sunday, the fourth and fifth graders are going to be talking about how it's sometimes hard to follow Jesus. Sometimes He asks you to do things that just aren't easy.

Going to Kenya is one of those things for me. I'm really excited to go, and I'm really excited to see what God is going to do. But, leaving all of my friends and my family again -- for sixteen months this time -- is going to be hard at first.

It's a good thing that we can know that, wherever God sends us, that is the very best place that we could possibly be.

It's Fall!

B-day Pics

Apparently the singing really was that bad...

Happy Birthday, Melissa!

So, I'm a few days late, but, my little sister just turned eighteen.

How crazy is that? It kind of makes me feel old, and it means that, by the time I get back from Kenya, she'll be off to college somewhere, learning how to be a movie star. I swear it wasn't that long ago that we were coloring the edging around our entire yard, in an attempt to convince our parents that we really were out of chalk and needed a new bucket of it; or melting chocolate bars with magnifying glasses, so that we could "make" candies to give to our mom. But, apparently, it was.

Now we pay my dad gas money at the beginning of every month; Melissa leads a small group of middle schoolers; and, well, I just watched one of our friends drill a hole through an M&M with his knife, so that he could dip it in the chocolate fountain. ...Maybe things haven't changed so much after all...

Happy Birthday, Melissa!

Animal Abuse?

Mom: (after Mariah has been talking non-stop, literally, for the past fifteen minutes) "Mariah, shut up."
Mariah: "Huh?"
Mom: "Nothing, just stop talking."
Mariah: giggles
Jessica: smack on the leg
Mariah: "I'm calling the - the - that's animal abuse! giggles ...wait...I'm not..."
Five minutes of hysterics

Three minutes later, while putting away the laundry.
Mariah: "Do you ever feel like a ninja when you go up the stairs?"
Jessica: "Um..."
Mariah: "'Cause I just did."

Hyper-what?

Q: What consists of four colored "targets," one hand held "plunger," and can keep kids entertained for a good forty-five minutes with minimal teacher instruction

A: Hyper-dash

The "plunger" directs kids from one color target to the next, correcting them when they don't follow the instructions, and keeps track of their time, so that teams can compete against one another. It's really simple, but it's a lot of fun -- as you go up the levels, it adds "trick" instructions that make sure you're paying attention.

And...if you let Katherine and Tyson set up the targets, the kids practically run a marathon to get from one target to the next, so they're amazingly still and quiet during movie time. Lol. (The distance between the nursery counter and the middle of the foyer is quite a sprint when you're only eight years old -- and even longer when the plunger tells you to do it three or four...or six...times.

I'm just glad the teachers didn't have to play...lol.

Worship and Grasshoppers

Ha! I love fourth and fifth graders.

The KidMo (hyperactive video curriculum for 4th and 5th graders) lesson in Sunday School this week was about worship. We talked about how worship is anytime you are awed by God -- anytime you see something that makes you say, "Wow, God!" and how we can have
Awesome
Worship
Every
Day
if we just look for things that wow us.

So... we took our kids outside and told them that we were going to worship by looking for things in creation that made us say "Wow!"

Our biggest "wow" was a grasshopper that traveled around with us for a good ten, fifteen minutes -- without being squashed no less.

One of the girls looked up at me mid-way through and asked, "This isn't really worship. Is it?"
"I don't know. Do you think the grasshopper is cool?"
"Yes."
"Did you tell God that?"
"Yes."
"Then it's worship."

How Did You Get Here?

My World Building kids just turned in a two page creation myth for their world, and I'm not sure if they have more fun doing the homework or I have more fun "correcting" it -- there is only so much correcting to be done, when the whole point of an assignment is to use your imagination.

So far I have a world created by everlasting raindrops who spontaneously form new life within themselves when they get super excited, several worlds formed by different pantheons of competetive (and often interrelated) gods, a world formed artificially by beings escaping earth, at least one caused by a divine sneeze, one formed from the body of a dying creature, and just about anything else you can imagine.

Said worlds are populated by everything from fairies to giant reptiles, from to gnomes to castaways, and from cavemen to highly advanced humanoids.

They are currently working on illustrations for their creation stories, so, if I get their permision, I'll try to scan some of the pictures in for you to see.

The amount of thought, logical thought, that they have put into these things, even just so far, is pretty impressive. It's amazing how much of what's going on in their heads comes out when you let them write and create.

"I write to find out what I'm thinking. I write to find out who I am. I write to understand things"

-- Julie Alvarez

Welcome to Kandar

I seem to have a knack for ending up in imaginary central Asian countries. This time, though, I wasn't being locked in prision by hostile gaurds. This time I was trying to uncover a plot and find a nuclear trigger before it was passed to the wrong hands.

My family and I went on vacation to New York City and Washington D.C. While we were in D.C., we went to the International Spy Museum and became spies for an hour.

Our mission was to hunt down a nuclear trigger that had been stolen and try to break a ring of international terrorists. The first assignment was to get through a door -- a hidden door -- but a door none-the-less. After we finished celebrating the fact that the ten of us could, in fact, open doors, the real mission started.

We tracked suspects through a hotel using security cameras, un-garbled bugged phone conversations, snuck through hidden doorways, disabled security cameras, dodged gaurd dogs, broke into an office, picked the lock on a safe, ran a lie detector test on a suspect, rode in the back of a delivery van during a car chase, hid in a safe house, got picked up off the roof by a helicopter, and scored a four out of five on our mission.

A little imagination is an amazing thing.

Country and Language Please

How would you like to invent a fantasy world or create your own language -- and have it count as school?

That's pretty much what I'm doing as a teacher at CHECK (one of the local homeschool co-ops) for the next four months. I get to "teach" middle school and high school students about linguistics/grammar by having them write a language and about sociology by having them imagine a world and then write it a mythology.

We had our first classes this Wednesday, and, personally, I had a lot of fun. It makes my nerd side happy, and, hopefully, the kids will actually learn something, even if they don't realize it.

--Now I just have to figure out how to keep four new languages and fourteen new worlds straight...

Home Sweet Home??

I'm finally back in the Tri-Cities, and I'm quite sure what to think. In some way it feels really good to be home and I can't picture myself trading it for the world, but, at the same time, it's really just odd and I'm not certain of where I fit into things.

I don't feel that much older than when I left, but the people around me are older. Kayla is the same grade that I was when I went to Denver; Melissa's a senior; Mariah is the age I was when I did the MARK (Motivated Acts of Random Kindness) group in SOS. My Sunday School kids are in Middle School, and people who were students at camp when I was a counselor are at CBC for Running Start.

Not that I really have much to base my lack of certainty off of. We left for New York and D.C. before I had even finished putting away all of my stuff from school, and I've only been really back for three days since then.

The trip was really fun though, and we took five billion pictures between the six of us. Some of mine are on my facebook page, so you can see the D.C. ones here and the N.Y.C. ones here.

Umm...I think it's done...

Me and Susanna (one of the girls who is thinking about coming to Kenya with my team) went camping over the week of the 4th of July. It was Susanna's first camping trip ever and she had a lot of fun.

Things went great...





Until we tried to make cormbread dutch oven style...

That round, black lump...that's our cornbread. I'm not sure what kind of metal WalMart mess kits are made out of, but, whatever it is, it burns up.

Yep. We burnt up a metal pan in the process of making dinner.

Oops!

Catch Up

Sorry about the lack of updates, everyone. For some reason the last month has seen a lack of being able to access Blogger from on campus computers as well as a lack of being to access the Internet from my computer -- it's going to the computer doctor this week to get its poor brains fixed.

Anyhow, a quick update on life:

1) I'm coming home in 22 days!!!

2) I got in a camping trip during my one week of summer vacation... and managed to melt a WalMart mess kit in the fire while making cornbread...

3) I have 68% of my support budget raised / pledged -- a thousand thanks to all of you who have given and prayed!

4) I just got done with a Business as Missions class that was a ton of fun -- and a ton of work.

The idea of Business as Missions (BAM) is to go into a country or community as a legitimate, for profit, business and work to transform that area through Christ centered business practices. A BAM or "Kingdom Business" venture operates on the quadruple bottom line of economic, social, spiritual, and environmental transformation and can serve to advance the Gospel even in countries where traditional missions is illegal.

Our assignment was to create a culturally and financially viable business plan in three days time. --If nothing else we learned why it is that people spend a year or more putting together business plans.

I was the CFO for The Re'ah Partnership ("Re'ah" meaning friendship in Hebrew), a Kenyan based Kingdom Business that partners with local farmers to sell shade grown, organic, just trade, Kenyan AA coffee. (Of the 24 hours directly before our presentation, I spent 15 hours researching numbers and working on financial spreadsheets...ahhh!!!)

Somehow though, mainly by the three corporate officers working 'till 2/3:00AM and the getting up at 5:00AM to start working again, we got it finished and presented. Now we're just waiting for the grade...

Only in Kenya

One of the girls on my team worked her rear off putting together a fundraising video for us to use, and I think it turned out really well. (This is the youtube version, so the quality isn't amazing, but feel free to pass it around)

As a random aside, we found this video highly entertaining -- mainly because there is an intern team from my class leaving for Norway in September.

Little Earth

Okay, I should totally be doing homework right now, but...

Instead of going to the church downtown for a normal Friday night kids club, we handed out fliers, with the help of a bunch of the kids, for an event that will be going on next weekend. The development we were in -- where a lot of the Friday night kids live -- was called Little Earth, and it's a Native American housing complex. It's actually a nice place, although packed really tight for the number of people living there, and, my word, Jessica is in love.

Going made me miss the Rez so bad, but I definitely have a new favorite place in the Cities. Those kids are gorgeous, and I very much did not want to leave after only being there such a short time. If Nicaragua didn't have such a strong, strong pull on my heart, I could easily settle down on the Rez or in a place like Little Earth and spend the rest of my life just living there and loving on those people. (If anyone has a cloning machine or some other magical way to reconcile the two worlds, please, let me know. It would make life a gillion times simpler.)

The rest of my team was very much in culture shock mode -- even more so than after a normal Friday night -- which shouldn't have surprised me as much as it did. Something about realizing for the first time that being white can be a detriment to ministry can take some processing -- I think it was the first time most of them had heard the phrase "I hate white people" come out of a kid's mouth, or any one's mouth for that matter.

Maybe I'm nuts for not being as shocked and appalled as they are, but, if I am, I never want to be sane. I never want to see those kids as anything other than beautiful. I never want to let the rough elements of Native culture and history prevent me from binding my heart to theirs. I never want to feel the need to apologise to someone after they spend time in Little Earth. I always want to remember, and I always want to care.

If I am insane, may God use it to his glory.

Pay it Forward

Have you guys ever gotten something -- maybe a piece of candy or a prize from your Sunday School teacher -- and then given it to somebody else instead of keeping it for yourself?

Sometimes people refer to doing that as "paying it forward," and I just got a chance to see God arrange a really cool incident of paying something forward.

God told me to give a specific amount of money to a friend, but I didn't have it with me at the time, so, I gave him an IOU and went back to my room to write him a check. Now, when you write a check, you have to put the person's first and last names on it, so that the bank knows that it really is theirs.

Well, I forgot his last name, and God told me not to give it to him with just a first name, so I gave it to him without any name in the "for" part.

The cool thing was that, before I had even given him the IOU, God told him to give a specific amount of money to a friend, and he knew he didn't have the money -- not in his wallet, not in the bank, not anywhere -- but he told God that he would do it.

It was the exact same amount that God told me to give him.

Not only that, if I had put his name on the check, he would have had to mail it to North Carolina before the money could get to his bank account to be given away, but, because that part was blank, he could write his friend's name on the check and give it straight to them.

That meant that, instead of getting the money next week, his friend got the money yesterday.

How cool is all that.

Romans 10:11-12

Gut Check

Wow! That's a lot of money!

Reality check number two of Jessica's week: Internship is coming faster than I thought it was.

In so many ways, the six months between now and Kenya feel like eternity, but deadlines are starting to creep up on me. By June 30th I have to have 25% of my budget raised or pledged, and the end of the month isn't as far away as it seemed a few weeks ago.

God is good though, and I'm excited to see how He brings in funds, both for myself and my classmates as we get ready for our internships with Bethany International Ministries. It should be good.

Old Man River

Call me naive, but, whenever I read about "muddy, brown rivers" as a kid, I would picture something like the Yakima -- kinda murky in a greenish blue water sort of way. I guess it never made sense that rivers could be actually brown without essentially being natural sewers.

I stand corrected. Rivers in Minnesota most definitely come brown.

The Road goes ever on and on
Down from the door where it began.
Now far ahead the Road has gone,
And I must follow, if I can,
Pursuing it with eager feet,
Until it joins some larger way
Where many paths and errands meet.
And whither then? I cannot say.

Kenya Facts 101

• Home to the largest population of Quakers anywhere in the world


• There is a traveling library that goes through Eastern Kenya -- on the back of a camel
  
• The Kenyan people's idea of casual clothing looks about like an American's idea of office wear
• 
  
• The Lion King is set in Kenya -- Pride Rock is an actual land formation

Singing Spies

I spent last weekend doing a simulation (kind of like a giant game) of the persecuted church.

It was pretty crazy, and I had tons of fun crawling through bushes, hiding stuff in my pockets to bring into the "peace camp," and sneaking around in the dark going on "missions" to get stuff that we needed. About a third of the way through, though, I got caught and sent to "prision." That was when things started getting really cool.

Even though we weren't allowed to talk to eachother most of the time, we were allowed to sing worship songs if there weren't any gaurds in the room. --If they came in while we were singing, they would bang on our cells and yell until we quit.

At one point, they came in while we were singing with all six of our leaders from the peace camp, the people we had elected to plan missions and keep an eye on the rest of the group. No matter how much they yelled, we just kept singing worship songs straight to Jesus.

In the prison they made us do things like push-ups and sits anytime someone did something wrong, so they told all of the leaders that they had to do push-ups until we stopped. For almost twenty minutes they did push-ups and sang with us. Even though their arms hurt and even though it was only a game, there was joy on their faces. They knew that they didn't have to be there, but they wanted to be.

Their arms hurt because they loved Jesus, and they loved that.

We never did stop singing. The gaurds put them into cells with us and left the room, because the power of God was so strong in that "jail."

We may have been captured as spies, but our most powerful weapon was a song and a prayer.

36 Hours to Reality

This past weekend, my school partnered with The Honor Academy (HA)-- the other organization that shares campus with us -- to put on a simulation of the suffering church. The simulation is an annual thing that HA has its interns go through, and they refer to it as the World Awareness LTE (Life Transforming Event).

Thursday night they gathered all of us together to watch "Hotel Rwanda" and then sent us back to our dorms "for the night." Night only lasted about three hours before the facilitators stormed our dorms and herded us out onto the front lawn, bleary eyed and clutching water bottles. Knowing what was going on did nothing to slow the adrenaline that was coursing through our bodies as they marched us to the gym and had us remove "everything" from our pockets -- several people had found creative ways to hide things directly on there persons, so we still went forward with quite a few items they did not know we had...

We were told that the new government in the "glorious Republic of Ceylan" had decided that our "cult" was in opposition to the state and that we were each being rehabilitated either by nature in the "peace camp" or by force in the "prison camp."

I, along with the majority of the group, was led to the "peace camp" out in the back 40, where we were given a few tarps, some rope, a stack of bowls and spoons, a first aid kit, and a map highlighting the places where food and additional water were hidden -- not exactly a UN approved refugee camp, but it was a start.

Anytime we set foot outside of the camp, we were fair game for the facilitators. If you got "shot" you went directly to the prison camp. Our only "job" was to go on missions to collect food, water, sleeping bags, and "bus parts." The "bus" we were building was big enough to hold fifteen people and would see them across the border -- and out of the LTE -- once we completed it. Most watches, cell phones, ect had been confiscated by the government, so time pretty much became a non-issue unless we were on our way to a required movie session. -- We watched movies like "Invisible Children" to try and raise awareness of different world issues.

After the second movie of the day, me and another girl were captured and sent to solitary confinement for a time, before joining the other prisoners in their cells. (There is an empty storage room on campus that is made up of probably a dozen chicken wire and two-by-four "cages," ceiling high and large enough to hold about six college students laying down. They really do look like crude prison cells, so it was perfect.)

I would spend the next 24 hours in this facility, and it was here that the LTE became more than an elaborate game of cops and robbers or capture the flag. Everything we were going through was still a simulation -- push-ups and wall sits are nothing compared to beatings or torture -- but the emotions we were going through, and the moment by moment decisions of whether or not to rebel against our captors, were becoming more and more "real" as the initial adrenaline wore off.

I could tell you story after story of things that happened in that "jail" -- and hopefully will in later posts -- but, for now, let's just suffice to say that there were moments the facilitators could not enter the room where we all were for fear of crying and that, by the end of the event Saturday afternoon, we were all acting far more like Christians than we had been when they drug us out of the dorms early Friday morning.

In some ways, it was one of the longest 36 hours of my life, and, in some ways, I'm amazed that it only took 36 hours to bring us that much closer to reality.

Same story, different page; same journey different mile

I realize that I haven't really posted anything about ministry week besides my random musings, so, here we go.


All of my friends have heart wrenching stories about learning to love from homeless men or amazing testimonies about leading whole families to Christ, and I wish that I could relay something along those lines. I wish that I could tell you that I came to realize what Jesus meant when He said "the least of these." I wish that my eyes would shine as I tell you stories about a homeless vet named Johnny. I wish that God had given me any instructions for the week besides "Wait and listen."

That's a lie though. I don't wish. I don't question that God knew exactly what He was doing. I don't deny the fact that the lessons my friends learned were ones I've learned in the past. On the streets of Portland, on the Rez, in Denver and Mexico, Pasco, Kellogg, and Nicaragua, at Royal Family and through years of Church Camp and teaching Sunday school, I gained much of the wisdom that they did this week. Sometimes, though, I think it would be easier if I weren't always on a different page.

It wasn't that God didn't break my heart this week; the problem was that He ripped it to shreds.


I'm not sure that I have the words to even begin to explain, and, if I have the words, I'm not sure that I have the courage to use them.

The short story is this. If I was discontent with much of the American church before we left, I have no way to politely categorize what I'm feeling now. There has to be some way of phrasing it all without sounding like a revolutionary, some way to make it clear that I don't want to reinvent the wheel simply as an act of rebellion towards the generations that have gone before me, but I haven't found it yet.

I could try to describe to you the passion that churns in my chest at each new sign of consumerism that slips -- sometimes loudly heralded -- into a church sanctuary. I could try to tell you how my heart breaks in agony at the sight of a new piece of equipment, knowing that the money spent there was money not spent on the needs of a hurting human being. I could explain the fear of an almighty GOD who demands the glory that we have given to our things. I could have you watch the end of "Schindler's List," and, next time you get dressed for church, consider how many eternal lives the cost of your ring or your clothes could have saved. I could make you read Isaiah 58, and read it over and over until it becomes a part of you and haunts your every waking thought.

But I don't know how to communicate such things. Church is more than we've made it. Christ is more than we've made Him out to be. And this world is more than we'll ever understand.

If this is just the fire of youth, then I never want to let the flame go out.

Paradox of Eternity

To move from gang graffiti and condemned houses onto a pristine campus where deer droppings litter the grass is mind boggling, to see a business man in his Armani suit cross paths with man who picks up used cigarette butts and smokes them, astounding.

This life we live is astounding, a paradox in all facets. There are rich because there are poor. There are poor because there are rich. Each man's inefficiencies push another higher. We all are participants in this global dance and yet refuse to admit that the steps have been choreographed by the generations before us. We take our places and move as the music demands, straying only a little that we might not collide with another dancer. To insert syncopation requires courage, to dance to the beat of a different drummer, practically a death wish.

And yet, we seek to follow in the steps of Christ, so we do things that society says will condemn us. To look another man in the eyes is to admit that they are no more than pawns in our world, pieces that we can play in order to get ahead, so, we look deep into the pain in their eyes, and we smile. We sit next to those we have been told are to be rejected, and we talk to the distasteful.

We trade the paradox of this world for the paradox of eternity. We become the poor of this world, yet we know that we will be rich in the next. We syncopate because we hear a different song and we have vowed our lives to follow it.

Ministry Week!!

This next week is going to be way different from normal school, and I'm about to jump out of my pants waiting for tomorrow morning.

We're going to be going to downtown Minneapolis to just hang out with people and bless the local churches in any way we can. They are giving us six hours out of every day to wander around in pairs, talk to whoever we can, build relationships, pray for people, and share Jesus -- kind of like what the highschoolers from Bethel did in Bridgetown but minus the sleeping bags -- and I'm really really excited about it. It's a little colder here than it was in Portland, but I'm sure God has all sorts of things planned for us regardless of the weather.

My team is going to be staying (and spending the first part of our day serving at) a church called The Evangelist Crusaders just a few miles from where we go on Friday nights to hang out with the kids. It's a little farther out into the suburbs than any of the other teams but not ridiculously far out.

I had to laugh when the pastor was talking to us last Thursday, because, in his four minute blurb he used the phrase "loving people because people matter" (One of the Bridgetown mottos) as well as "come and see" (which is Sacred Road's motto). Both of those ministries are are ones that I really love working with, and I figure that, if God can orchestrate that level of detail, He totally has this week worked out.

Prayer requests:
*Boldness
*Unity among the team
*Unity of purpose with the church we are going to serve
*Energy
*Passion
*Divine appointments

Blessings!

Jessica MacFarlan <><

James 1:27

Check it Out

I fully fell during work today and chipped part of my tooth off on the tile outside of the kitchen. I keep finding myself playing with the broken tooth with my tongue, because it feels bizarre -- think of what it feels like when you loose a tooth, but weirder and sharper.

Puddle Jumping

Oh dear, I feel like such a little kid right now, but it's totally amazing.

I rained today -- which was amazing in and of itself, because it meant that it was too warm to snow -- and, by the time we got off PT this evening, there were puddles all over the place in the lawn. Me and friend, who also refuses to wear shoes unless there is danger of frostbitten toes, ran around outside like idiots and jumped in puddles until we had mud all the way up to our t-shirts.

It was hilarious while it lasted -- it's only thirty-six degrees out and really windy -- even though our feet were half frozen from the ice / snow / slush that was falling mixed in with the rain and making the ground COLD. But, I think half the campus is now convinced that we are insane (They gave us quite the befuddled looks as they hurried past in their sweatshirts, trying to get out of the rain as quickly as possible.). Most of them were pretty sure of that fact anyways, so, I'm not sure it really makes a difference. Lol.

So... yeah... I'm now in my warm room, eating honey and reflecting on the fact that something as simple as jumping in a puddle can make a week such a beautiful thing.

Blessings,

Jessica Mac <><

2 Samuel 22:30

Hippie Hair 101

Over the last week I have learned two very important facts about my hair

#1. It makes very nice cornrows

#2. When it is taken out of said cornrows, it gets incredibly poofy

White as Snow

Springtime in Minnesota is something more than a little bi-polar. Yesterday afternoon I was walking across the grass in flip-flops and capris, looking forward to a warm -- relatively -- Easter weekend.
I woke up at 6:30 this morning to find this.

The world had been coated in a thick, fluffy layer of snow. The weatherman's "possibility of 1 - 3 inches of snow" turned into closer to twelve inches by the time it stopped coming down, late this afternoon.

My planned, all day, excursion down by the river was shortened to about two hours before I came in and hid away in a storage room to enjoy the peace and quiet.

Word to the wise:
"Springtime in Minnesota is like trying to pick flowers that have been painted onto a brick wall. By the time you get close enough to grab them, you have already jammed your knuckles."
--thank you Peter Burr

Jessica Mac <><

1 Corinthians 12

Just Around the River Bend

How is it that things can be so beautiful from a distance even while they are nasty and mucky up close?


Everything is melting and turning to mud, but the vistas down by the river are incredible.

The weather is finally starting to warm up around here -- although the natives tell us that it is probably a false spring -- and it is gorgeous. I went on a walk and took pictures after work today, and I couldn't help but feeling like God had painted the sky just for me.

I am nowhere near skilled enough with a camera to do the beauty of it justice, but some of the better pictures are here in an online album.

Blessings,
Jessica Mac
1 Corinthians 13:1

Kenya Team 2009

The following crazy people will be spending 16 months together in Kenya starting next January.

Me Melissa Myers
Esther Byington

Jason Wong

Warren Sterling

Rebecca JohnsonAshlet Stewart

Sarah Richey

Heath BrownLaura Stocks

and Natalie and Waylon Clemmons

Yeah, we're an odd bunch. Lol. What can I say?