Well, preparations are going well for our trip to Haiti in December! We are still in need of about $1500 by next Monday to finish funding the trip/paying for lodging, etc.! We know that this will require a lot of friends & family stepping up to the plate. We're also confident that God will provide... He always does! If you want to partner with us for this trip with a financial donation, you can now do so online through Paypal by the "Donate" button on the right! This donation will be personal and not tax-deductible. We'd love your help and partnership as we continue to venture out into the world, working with the poor and helping to re-build this poor country! We love you!
We hope and pray that everything is going well for you – the fall has kicked off and up here in Western Pennsylvania we’ve already turned our heaters on. Chris is thrilled and I, well, I am and always will be a southern girl… so I endure what I have to. ;)
Soon enough, though, we’ll be headed south because December 29-January 6 we’re going to head down to Haiti for a mission trip! We’re taking some people from our home church here in PA (Christ Community Fellowship) as well as my little bro Jason again. We’re partnering with an organization called Mission of Hope that is a little outside of Port Au Prince. They are in a unique position of having both urban and rural refugees from the earthquake.
An amazing amount of work remains to be done in Haiti since January 12 when the earthquake hit. As you remember, I was there in June and came away with a strong sense of urgency that we have to keep Haiti at the forefront of our minds. Unlike a monsoon in Indonesia, Haiti is very close! Refugees from Haiti are still coming into the US and, frankly, if the global community doesn’t continue to unite to rebuild Haiti, it will lie in ruins.
So, we are going with some guys who do construction, a nurse, and a couple of teachers. We’ll work in food distribution, an orphanage, and anywhere else we’re needed. We’ll again be tent camping to keep costs down and so really we’re only raising money for airfare. Chris and I will need to raise about $2,000. If you can help there is a donation slip with this letter. If you can pray that is the most welcome form of support! We’re all in this together… let’s do all we can to pitch in and get Haiti back on its feet!
Friday night at the Joy Bar-(that's it's name). Halfway along the strip, the brazen girls yell at the passers by and join the frivolities...drinks, games, bright lights... so much fun!
A thick girl with pouty lips grasps our hands and hugs and kisses us for coming back to see her. I pull her aside and she cries in my shoulder.
A slight girl with a black and white dress finishes off the bottle of whiskey. We laugh raucously as a replacement bottle is brought. She dances at the pole and knocks another shot back. Then she collapses in my arms and says, "I have to drink so much because I am so sad on the inside but I have to be happy on the outside." I pass her a tissue and she goes and sits on his lap.
The one with the angular facial features pulls out a game and tells me about her son, pausing only to make eye contact with the old Aussie man at the other bar. The short, fat one comes by and kisses her breast. Oh, this is such a fun, sexy place... no rules... just fun!
But then the slight girl is back to throw up in the sink. She pulls my head close: "why doesn't he want to sleep with me?" Her out of place tears keep falling.
He has been a woman since s/he was little... I can barely have a good conversation because she keeps catching her reflection in the mirror. We laugh as she compares our chest sizes. She thinks I'm fat and that's funny too. It's all funny. Then she whips around, grabs my face in her two large hands and asks earnestly, "am I pretty?"
She's too sick to go on. I chase her unsteady,weaving steps down the road. "Will you be okay? Let me get you a motorbike. No, don't drive. Be safe. You are beautiful. You are special."
I'm working in Patong, Phuket (Thailand) - a southern vacation destination. There're tons of tourists and foreigners lolling around, beautiful beaches, and bright & colorful strips of bars.
S.H.E. (Self Help Empowerment) is a micro-enterprise organization started by Mark and Sharon Biddell from England. They work primarily with bar girls or prostitutes by providing them with friendship, mentoring, Biblical education, and a job (jewelry-making).
I just like the girls. The ministry is my element and I actually feel useful and excited... it's such fun meeting new girls and guys in the industry and thinking of God's lovely heart for broken people.
The indomitable nature of the feminine spirit is truly awe-inspiring. God did a wonderful thing when he created the amazing paradox of woman - no wonder Adam was so smitten. I wonder if there's anything a woman can't heal from... or hurt from. But God is such an ever-present help to women. And our instinctive humility and gentleness WILL out in the end to turn our hearts to the cross.
We work with 4 girls who have left the bars for good and now work full-time at S.H.E. - Glong, Gae, Gung and Wan. They are so much fun - it's a joy.
More pics to come (this place really isn't "suffering for Jesus" unless you count the oppressive heat & humidity - it's so gorgeous here).
Love you all.
Yesterday I got help lead my first international worship service. Thankfully, Meagan knew the spanish lyrics to a couple of the "american" worship songs that I've been playing for years now and while I have played these songs many many times before, this time things seemed different.
I'm used to getting together with our worship team once during the week to go over which songs we are going to play, then Sunday mornings, we get there early, set everything up, run sound checks, make sure all the levels are right, get the guitars sounding good, then practice the songs through once before we do them for the service. Yesterday was different. We picked the songs out about 20 mins. before the serivce, ran through them a little bit, then headed out to play. I borrowed one of the guys guitars here so I could actually plug into the system, but we didn't run any checks or practices or anything, we just plugged in and went.
There was no EQ on the guitar, it sounded awful, no level checks, I barely had time to tune up. Half way through the set, the high E kept dropping out of tune, I would forget chords here and there, mess up and go to the wrong part of the song (it's hard to follow the words when they're all in spanish) and over all, had it been a service back home, I would have felt terrible.
So why is it that while I was playing, I felt wonderful? Nobody cared that the guitar sounded bad, nobody cared that I messed up on a chord here and there and actually, I don't know if it's that they didn't care or if they just didn't notice. Everyone was so focused on worshiping the Lord, that they could care less if there was even a guitar playing. It really struck me, that in the midst of some of the poorest people on the planet, people who literally have next to nothing, can be so joyful and so willing to seek out the Lord. Some of these people actually walked 2 hours to get the the service!
A friend of mine once told me when they came back from a mission trip that "You never realize that God is all you need, until God is all you have." God is all that these people have, and they are loving it. They don't need a fancy band, or expensive instruments, or even the ability to clap on beat. These people were there to just worship and sing praise to the Lord with all their heart no matter what it sounded like. It's things like this that help me to realize that while this world is so huge and complicated, at the same time, it's quite small and simple.
Well, preparations are going well for our trip to Haiti in December! We are still in need of about $1500 by next Monday to finish funding the trip/paying for lodging, etc.! We know that this will require a lot of friends & family stepping up to the plate. We're also confident that God will provide... He always does! If you want to partner with us for this trip with a financial donation, you can now do so online through Paypal by the "Donate" button on the right! This donation will be personal and not tax-deductible. We'd love your help and partnership as we continue to venture out into the world, working with the poor and helping to re-build this poor country! We love you!
