Ninth Day Home

Well, I've been home for over a week now, and I think that it is finally starting to sink in that I am actually going to be here for a while. (Something about saying it at least a dozen times between nine and noon on Sunday morning seems to have helped...)

The last week has involved picking one sister up from the airport, saying goodbye to another one as she left for her sophomore year of college, one Sunday morning church service, one funeral, a little over an hour of hanging with Sunday school kids, being jumped on by a half dozen middle school girls, playing with my new sewing machine, helping my mom plan out a "Night of Nets," enough boredom to prompt the making of pitas and hummus, and the discovery that, when pre-writing blog posts...it helps to set the date for the correct month. (Go figure...there was a reason that they were not showing up as intended.)

Why so Long?

The focus month is double the length of the longest ministry trips I've been on, triple or even quadruple the length of some of them. Most middle school trips don't last more than two or three days -- although camp lasts an entire week.

I can't tell you, though, how many times I have watched people, both kids and adults, come back from that sort of short term experience totally at a loss for what to do with themselves next. They have been inundated with new ideas and new realities, but what often has not been formed is the lasting community that is necessary to bring those realities to life.

Human beings were designed to function best in community, and, because of that, the purpose in setting aside an entire month is two-fold.
A) It gives more time for teaching, learning, and finding passions
B) It sets apart the time necessary to build a family with a common purpose

Time = relationships, and, in this case, relationships = the ability to take what we have learned and apply it outside of the Focus Month, in a way that we would not be able to as individuals scattered across the Tri-Cities.

Why Teenagers?

It seems like a little bit of an odd thing to do, after all. Teenagers don't have the resources that adults do. They don't have the influence, or the respect of society. Even in pure numbers, they are massively overshadowed by the baby boomers.

But, at the same time, things will not always be the way that they are now. Someday, these teenagers will grow into the generation that is running our country and our society. Someday, the generation that can not remember a time before youtube, will be making policies that will shape the world.

But, long before someday, an understanding of justice is important for teenagers now.

Injustice doesn't need to be explained. They see it in their schools, during extracurricular activities, and sometimes even at church. They know wrong when they see it.

What they need is a chance to see what could be right.

Pulling out for a month will give them a chance to find their passions and their voice, to begin to understand what it might mean to right some of the injustices in their world (whether that means in the halls of their school or across the globe).

Teenagers might not have the resources that adults have, but youth carries with it a passion for change that can be a powerful tool. There is a reason that the Bible is so full of stories of God using teenagers to accomplish His will.

Why the Focus Month

Why try to gather a group of teenagers and preteens and remove them for a month from everything that normally makes up their world?

I mean, after all, aren't there a thousand other ways to make a difference in the world, ways that might even have better long term results?

Service projects are easier to arrange, and it's hard enough to ask someone to give up part of a weekend. Americans are busy. No one would begin to argue with the fact that we have responsibilities and commitments coming out our ears -- even more so in the middle of the school year. We work hard to carve out time for church and youth group, because they are priorities.

But, maybe that's the problem.

When Jesus was on the earth, He gathered a group of young men (most of them probably teenagers) by simply telling them to "follow."

As a parent, what would you do if your sixteen-year-old son or daughter left their job mid-shift in order to follow Jesus? As a teenager, what would you do if He came into your school and simply said, "Follow"?

What would you do when it became clear that following was going to cost you everything?

Not four hours on Sunday and three more on Wednesday night; not twenty minutes a day to read from the One Year Bible; but everything.

I can't explain the logic of the Focus Month perfectly, although, over the next few days, I will give it my best shot. But, I know that He told me to follow, and I know that there are others who hear that same voice.

Why take a group of teenagers and preteens away from everything that they know as normal?

Because, for some of them, that is what it means to follow.

Do One Thing

I've kind of dropped the ball on this one, and this month's challenge actually has more to do with next month. The only things you need for this month's challenge are a pencil and a calendar. How simple is that?

Seriously.

Turn to Friday, September 10th and mark off the evening as reserved for a Night of Nets.

My mom is working through World Vision to put on an event that will raise awareness -- and funds -- for efforts in malaria prevention and eradication. 2,000 children a night die from mosquito bites. By blocking out a few hours of your evening, you can save some of their lives.

Do one thing. Write "Night of Nets" on your calendar.

50 Ways to Become an Answer to Prayer

Yes. I shamelessly ripped this off from the Simple Way's site. But, I thought it was good enough to share. Some of them are short term actions. Some are long term commitments. All of them are worth taking a moment to consider.

1. Fast for the 2 billion people who live on less than a dollar a day.
2. Contact your local crisis pregnancy center and invite a pregnant woman to live with your family.
3. Ask your pastor if someone on your church’s sick list would like a visit.
4. Join an open AA meeting and befriend someone there.
5. Adopt a child.
6. Mow your neighbor’s grass.
7. Volunteer to tutor a kid at your local elementary school. (Try to get to know the kid’s family.)
8. Grow your own tomatoes—and share them.
9. Ask a small group in your community to meet regularly for intercessory prayer.
10. Build a wheel chair ramp for someone who is homebound.
11. Read the newspaper to someone at your local nursing home.
12. Plant a tree.
13. Look up the closest registered sex offender in your neighborhood and try to befriend him.
14. Throw a birthday party for a prostitute.
15. When you pay your water bill, pay your neighbor’s too (they’ll let you… really).
16. Invest money in a micro-lending bank.
17. Ask the next person who asks you to spare some change to join you for dinner.
18. Leave a random tip for someone who’s cleaning the streets or a public restroom.
19. Write one CEO a month this year. Affirm or critique the ethics of their company (you may need to do a little research first).
20. Start tithing (giving 10%) of all your income directly to the poor.
21. Connect with a group of migrant workers or farmers who grow your food and visit their farm. Maybe even pick some veggies with them. Ask what they get paid.
22. Give your winter coat away to someone who is colder than you and go to a thrift store to get a new one.
23. Write only paper letters (by hand) for a month. Try writing someone who needs encouragement or who you should say “I’m sorry” to.
24. Go TV free for a year. Or turn your TV into a pot where flowers grow.
25. Laugh at advertisements, especially ones that teach you that you can by happiness.
26. Organize a prayer vigil for peace outside a weapons manufacturer such as Lockheed Martin. Read the Sermon on the Mount out loud. For extra credit, do it every week for a year.
27. Go down a line of parked cars and pay for the meters that are expired. Leave a little note of niceness.
28. Write to one social justice organizer or leader each month just to encourage them.
29. Go through a local thrift store and drop $1 bills in random pockets of the clothing being sold.
30. Experiment with creation-care by going fuel free for a week – ride a bike, carpool, or walk.
31. Try only reading books written by females or people of color for a year.
32. Go to an elderly home and get a list of folks who don’t get any visitors. Visit them each week and tell stories, read the bible together, or play board games.
33. Track to its source one item of food you eat regularly. Then, each time you eat that food, pray for those folks who helped make it possible for you to eat it.
34. Create a Jubilee fund in your Church congregation, matching dollar for dollar every dollar you spend internally with a dollar externally. If you have a building fund, create a fund to match it to give away and by mosquito nets or dig wells for folks dying in poverty.
35. Become a pen-pal with someone in prison.
36. Give your car away to a stranger.
37. Convert your car to run off waste vegetable oil.
38. Try recycling your water from the washer or sink to flush your toilet. Remember the 1.2 billion folks who don’t have clean water.
39. Wash your clothes by hand, or dry them by hanging to remember those without electricity or running water. Remember the 1.6 billion people who do not have electricity.
40. Buy only used clothes for a year.
41. Cover up all brand names, or at least the ones that do not reflect the upside-down economics of God’s Kingdom. Commit to only being branded by the cross.
42. Learn to sew or start making your own clothes to remember the invisible faces behind what we wear. Take your kids to pick cotton so they can see what that is like (and then read James).
43. Eat only a bowl of rice a day for a week to remember those who do that for most of their life (take a multivitamin). Remember the 30,000 people who die each day of poverty and malnutrition.
44. Begin creating a scholarship fund so that for every one of your own children you send to college you can create a scholarship for an at-risk youth. Get to know their family and learn from each other.
45. Visit a worship service where you will be a minority. Invite someone to dinner at your house or have dinner with someone there if they invite you.
46. Help your church congregation create a Peacemaker Scholarship and give it away to a young person trying to avoid the economic draft, who would like to go to college but sees no other way than the military.
47. Eat with someone who does not look like you. Learn from them.
48. Confess something you have done wrong to someone and ask them to pray for you.
49. Serve in a homeless shelter. For extra credit, go back and eat or sleep in the shelter and allow yourself to be served.
50. Join a Yokefellows ministry at a prison close to you. Remember that Jesus said he would meet you there (Matt. 25).

No More Homework No More Books...

Okay. I like the books. The books can stay, not the homework, though.

Almost exactly three years after I left for school, the last homework assignment has been turned in, the last class was sat through, and the last work study hours have been logged. I am DONE.

My class leaves in a few hours for our grad retreat (there are benefits to having a class of twenty), my family comes on Thursday to check out the city a little, Saturday afternoon I will finally get my BA, and, by Sunday night, I will be home!

It has definitely been an interesting experience all told, but I'll take a sixteen month internship over sitting in a classroom any day, so it was worth it.

That kind of freedom in learning = happiness in Jessica land. Seriously. You want to learn about early childhood education? Go work on a preschool curriculum. You want to study comparative religions? Go have a conversation with your Muslim neighbor. You want to study a new language? Walk outside. No textbooks required. Plenty of learning guaranteed.

Outside of any classrooms or teachers, we all learned how to pluck chickens, build desks, plan and carry out the painting of giant murals, help lead short term teams, wash clothes by hand, teach cross culturally, design costumes, recognize the signs of malaria, run medical clinics, and appreciate American ice cream.

Plus, I am sure, a billion other things that I don't remember right now.

FAQ

Q: Do you realize how long a month is?

A: Yep. It's four to five times the length of an average ministry trip or church camp, BUT, if you count every moment of that month (waking, sleeping, eating, blinking, every moment of it), you only get up to about half the number of hours that the average American spends watching TV over the course of a year.

Q: How much does it cost?

A: Nothing. Bring your passions and your willingness to learn, but, if you are participating in the Focus Month, you can leave your wallet at home.

Q: That is a lot of school to make up, isn't it?

A: Yes and no. If your educational objectives do not include working all of the way through a specific set of textbooks, then the entire month will be school. If your goals include specific books or class credits, they will need to be made up afterward, because we will all be working through a unified curriculum.

I will be more than willing to tutor students or otherwise help with catch-up work after the Focus Month, if that is needed in order for someone to join us.

Q: Is this only for home schooled students?

A: Nope. Although, students will likely have to temporarily withdraw from the school system in order to get the time off. I would love to help you figure out how to make it work as a public or private school student (and my mom is the home school resource guru!). :)

Q: What if I'm at CBC/in my senior year of HS/etc?

A: Again, if you want to make it work, we can make it work. Educational schedules are more flexible than we think they are, and, many times, required classes can be postponed for a quarter or semester without throwing off graduation requirements.

Q: Will I see my family? We will be in town, right?

A: Depending on how God leads, yes, you will definitely see your family. My dream would be to see families involved in a hands on way at least once a week.

Q: I am not able to participate as a student; how can I help?

A: There are several ways to help out. Thanks for asking!

1. PRAY – pray that the right people would jump on board, that God would light passions and give peace, and that the Lord would orchestrate situations and conversations

2. TEACH – if you have experience in the area of social justice and would like to share some of those passions with us, get a hold of me, and I would love to get you plugged into a teaching time that fits with your schedule

3. GIVE – if you have some fresh veggies you want to unload on us, $5 you want to send our way to help cover food costs, or a vehicle we can borrow for the course of the month, we would love to partner with you to see this project have a greater impact on the Body of Christ

4. SHARE – tell your friends, your friends' kids, or your friends' friends' kids about the project. The more people hear about it, the greater impact it will have