Aiming for the Jewelry-School dream!

Many of you know I'm going to Jewelry-making school this year to become a better jeweler for my ministry! If you want to know more about it and how to help, here is all the information!

Why:

-The mamas are ready for new techniques, and so are the people that I'll be teaching in other parts of the world in the future! My dream is to use Techniques and materials that suit the culture I spend time in. The Pemba mamas' coconut techniques would be so much more professional and beautiful with metal and stones! And the next place I believe God is calling me to will be Asia, which has a lot of metal and stone resources!

The mamas are waiting for me to return with new techniques to learn - they have all been praying for me excitedly and have said, "Make us all pretty rings while youre there!" 

- The government in Pemba is also asking for more certification from Iris volunteers, and getting a certification in jewelry-making would likely make it a lot easier for me to get a Visa next year!

-God has been speaking to me since last year about THIS YEAR being the year to go to school. Ive had prophetic word after prophetic word saying, trust Him for changes and new huge things to have faith for in His provision, Ive had words about it being a season for me to get new tools, learn new things, and eat from the table of foods that Ive been preparings and serving to others! Very neat metaphors saying that it's time for me to learn!

When! And How to give:

I know He always makes a way for the promises He gives, and I truly believe He will make a way for me to be there NEXT MONTH (Oct. 13th). Right now I still dont have all my tuition costs, or plane ticket to get there. At the moment I'm lacking something like 6,500 dollars. This burden is not on you or me, it's on God. But if you hear Him saying to give towards this, I am happy to see that being one of the ways He provides for me to get there.The way my life is set up, it's hard for me to save much money or work for long periods of time. Ive managed to save a litle, but I still need a lot. 

Another way to help is to be praying that I get the scholarship that I applied for! 

- You can donate through Paypal to tcierpke@gmail.com, or push this handy little button to go straight to the donation page:

- I am selling paintings of my mommas, and am also happy to be hired out for odd jobs if you need some gutters cleaned or gardens weeded (if I can arrange a way to get there)!!

If you are buying a painting through paypal, please contact me through email and I will mail it to you!! The prints I will frame for you and I'm suggesting about 15 dollars, the small original paintings Im suggesting for 50 or more, and Im working on some bigger originals that Im suggesting for about 200 dollars. 

Back story:

For 7 years I've had the dream to learn Metal Jewelry-making, ever since I took a college course in Florence, Italy through a Study abroad program and fell in love with the technique. It was an "aha" moment when I saw that this form of creativity suited my passions and talents perfectly and seemed destined for me to learn! 

I was going to go to Revere Academy in 2009, the year after I graduated college, and learn amazing Metal Work techniques, but I didnt have enough money, and didnt get the scholarship I applied for. At the same time God was speaking in huge, incredible ways about loving poor and hurting people, and He spoke to me more clearly than Id ever heard before about me being someone that was made to GO to third world countries. 

I put my Jewelry School dream on pause, and I WENT to the poor! I then, ironically, began teaching Jewelry-making to widows and ladies who had been abandoned by their husbands over there in Mozambique - and the desire to do metal never left, but has grown stronger. God has said Now is the time and Im going for it!

I hope that my life smells nice.

Ive been thinking about sacrifice. I was singing a song the other day to God: "Youre worthy of it all", and the words were becoming so real to me - My daily challenges and sacrifices came to mind and I could say,with tears in my eyes, that He is worthy of all that Ive given and done. Thinking through the sacrifice of distance from loved ones, deaths of Mozambican friends and their children, cultural confusions, hurts, and misunderstandings, floods, worms in the toes and parasites in the tummy, ants, rats, and snakes, heat rash and sunburns, power and water-outages, lonely times, overwhelmed-by-people times, missed

opportunities for work and doing or eating "normal" American things...He is worthy of all that I do and I do it because I love Him. Being in the middle of the place He carved out for me and my talents, and pouring my love out for Him in the ways He perfectly created for me is all I want to do. It hurts and isn't fun sometimes, but it fills me with such joy to think what my life must smell like to God, with the sacrifices it includes. 

Women’s day

     (First thing I need to say is that yesterday was a monumental day: I carried a bucket of water on my head for the first time and walked a good 5 minutes with it without problems!!!!!! ...I AM NOW MOZAMBICAN OFFICIALLY!) And onto the blogpost:

Women’s day  - fun and difficult.(sorry Ill have no pictures for a while!)

April 7^th was the holiday, Women’s Day. This was the most fun and difficult day of my year here so far.

Fun; because this holiday celebrates the beautiful women of Mozambique who are so close to my heart. All women were wearing kapulanas and headwraps even a lot of the white Missionaries, including myself (just the kapulana- can’t quite get the headwrap tied correctly). We danced in church and were celebrated. After our church service we had a party for the women involving dancing, cheering for women, singing songs I’ve never heard but are apparently normal for the holiday with words like,” Who has the children? Women! Who washes clothes? Women! Who cooks food and carries water?! WOMEN!?” And other fun things like this. I, of course joined in the circle dance they were doing, even though I didn’t know the moves. My friends helped me, and also retied my Kapulana when it would repreatedly fall off! HA! I don’t understand how they keep them tied on and do everything that they do. Anyway, my heart was FULL to bursting with Joy and love for my ladies on this day and during these festivities.

The hard parts included: For the two weeks before the holiday, my ladies in each class were not only jokingly asking me what things I was going buy for them, and telling their lists of requests to which I would respond that I, personally, wasn’t providing the gifts for their Holiday party ( there are 95 women in our class and 350 in Mercy ministries’ program and I didn’t feel God tell me to spend the hundreds of dollars need for that). They were also speaking of this one item that they didn’t want: “Kashka”. This means a kapulana that’s lower quality. I’ve learned this year that Mercy ministries usually buys kashka. I had no idea that there were different types of kapulana until this experience, but I now know this fact very well. I responded to the ladies saying I would look into what gifts Mercy was buying  and see if they could get a different type of kapulana. I talked to Mercy about it; they’d been given a budget for gifts but it was enough to buy Kashka kapulanas – to buy high quality for 350 women would cost 20,000 meticais more (700 USD). This made me sad, but we agreed it’s still a good gift that brings beauty to their life – even if it’s not the best quality.

So I reported this news to my classes. I said I’d heard their requests but unfortunately Mercy Ministries can’t do a different gift but the gift is still nice and FREE! The responses were as such: “We don’t have husbands, you are our husband and you need to buy us good kapulanas”, “this type of kapulana is so stiff it can cut baby’s neck when you use it”, “We call that type of kapulana ‘careful with fire’, because it catches fire easily.” They were somewhat joking, but it was also…heartbreaking to see where their hearts were about the gifts Mercy was wanting to bless them with. Finally I tried and explain to them that this attitude was amiss. I used an example saying, “What if you had a party and you bought sodas for everyone (this is a common thing for a party, but would be expensive for them), and everyone that came said that they didn’t like the flavor that you bought. How would you feel? You would think, ‘why did I buy these at all?’” And you’d feel like buying the gift was pointless. They seemed to hear that and quieted down.

But the day of the giving out of the kapulanas was a different story: there was a slight riot over getting their “kashka” kapulanas that they had said they don’t  like. I know some of the older women really wanted and needed these kapulanas, but even some of my jewelry ladies who had been vocal were being ugly over getting their gifts. I felt so disappointed and was wondering how they haven’t figured out how to think of others before themselves after all the times that Heidi has preached to them about being Samaritans to our friends and neighbors.

Also, at the party we had big plates of rice with chicken cabbage, bon bons and sodas. After the food was done, some of my best friends and women with usually great character started yelling because they wanted to take leftovers home with them and were saying the food they got wasn’t enough. They were still hungry and they had children at home to feed.

This all hit me hard. I see the women being incredibly selfless in some areas: they invite people to their homes and share the little food they have, they never have enough food for themselves because theyre always sharing with their family and even neighbors. They make it a point to visit people when theyre sick. If I give someone a bread roll, they usually split it up and give part of it to their neighbor or a nearby child. And yet, whenever there are free gifts from Iris I see this ugly thing in their hearts show itself. It surprises me every time. I’ve been thinking a lot about it and here is what God has put on my heart to do about it:

I want to start talking about the differences between our cultures vs. the culture of God’s Kingdom –We don’t aim to be American, Colombian, or Mozambican - we aim to be like Jesus. I started talking about it last week in my classes, starting with the scripture Philippians 2:3-7: “Do nothing from rivalry or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant…”

I think it’s easy for me to have pity on them because of their poverty and dire situations and therefore excuse ingratitude and selfishness. I’m getting the guts to realize that this isn’t ok – Jesus himself lead a low income lifestyle but didn’t act like He had the RIGHT to be selfish. Rather, He became a servant for others. This has been a hard one for me to have boldness about but I think it’s going to be amazing for us to remember who Jesus is. I don’t think a lot of them really truly know what Jesus is like. I want to explore this with them.

         

Christmas thought

Christmas thought:
 I've been really enjoying giving presents for Christmas this year
because theres a rapture that comes from giving to people who truly
NEED things! Most of my friends here get excited about things like:
one of my old skirts, a plate that I don't need, forks and knives
(that they have to learn how to use because they usually eat with
their hands), a bottle of toothpaste, packets of chicken stock, their
first pair of tennis shoes....things that to us we can find duplicates
and duplicates of lying around in our houses or kitchens.
It makes you shake your head and want to ask "Why?", doesn't it? God,
why do some have so much and some have so little? Yet, I think for us
it's easy for that thought to bring shame, which is equally not a
burden for us to carry. Yet, it's SO important for us, friends, to
REMEMBER that people like my friend Emilta, who I just gave a water
bucket to this morning because she has no running water and nothing to
carry water in from the wells for her and her 5 kids, EXIST. And
remember that there are ways to give to people like her instead of
give your neice a 30 dollar BRATZ doll like Oxfam who can provide
goats or ways or school books etc. to people who have nothing or
Project Ak-47 who provides for kids who have been rescued from being
Child soldiers. Or even IRIS Ministries who is about to give christmas
presents to hundreds of children all over the world including Pemba
and feeds thousands of hungray children every day!
But  there's even more to this issue...I think my real point is this,
friends: Don't get taken away by the stuff - remember that we can
exist without the "STUFF" of this world. While I'm so happy to bless
my friends here with stuff, I'm even more happy to see that THEY HAVE
BEEN LIVING WITHOUT STUFF that we often feel we can't I live without
and are even...HAPPY! And for me Christmas always fills me with joy
over remembering that it's possible to have what Jesus died for:
ABUNDANT LIFE, with or without the "stuff". IT IS POSSIBLE to have
joy, contentment, and ABUNDANT LIFE through HIM who gave it all for
us.
And that's enough for me. I pray you find it too if you haven't.

Light overcomes dark

Im realizing that Ive been somewhat avoiding or ignoring writing nd sharing about life here, and Im trying to analyze why. I believe part of it is that living here is...mote likfe regular life than ever before and its harder for my mind to isolate stories or thoughts to compress into a blog post. ! The other part is that Ive had some really trying experiences and realizations in this season that I subconciously am not desiring to share. God, restore to me that love of sharing life on the Mission Field with others!

My friends, this place Has some very real darkness. It is heartbreaking. Ive had some sobering situations , challenging realizations and come face to face with yucky realities of the area that have made me feel...that I need God to be the source of my hope for change in the women and the culture I love here. Yet I know Im bringing light.

DARK:The hardest thing for me has been a realization of how deeply sexual sin affects this culture. Starting with my close friend who sexually contracted AIDS even though she has been incredibly mature and passionate for Jesus as long as Ive known her, learning more about Ceremonies, which is a non-optional (except for kids that have the blessing of getting a ceremony through Iris) time of preteen girls getting often times raped as well as taught about the "wisdom" of having more than one man in their life because of reasons like having more financial support, and finally seeing how many of the single, husband-less mothers I know are getting pregnant. People actually believe, and doctors sometimes subscribe, having sex is good for your health and you can get sick if you dont do it regularly.

I have a precious and sweet naivete in regard to these sexal issues that Im not embarrassed to have but am rather thankful for. It took me a long time to learn or believe that these things happen underneath the surface of the amazing culture and beautiful people I interact with and love so deeply. But the realization has sunk in.

Ive been wondering how My life experience can be used to affect this culture - my  mind doesnt naturally..go there or understand the level of attachment one can have in a society that's so sexual, because by God's grace Im a virgin who's never been raped or sexually abused. My world doesnt involve a struggle to stay abstinent, and my first thought is how can I speak into lives of peoplewho I cant relate to at all. But surely it would be an amazing thing for them tohear my testimony of abstinence. Im not sure if they would even believe it! Im going to pray and think about how to talk about it, please pray with me for this.

And pray for my heart that sometimes feels discourged and wonders how to know if I know what I think I know to be true about my friends and daughters here. Or if any progress is being made in our discipleship.

LIGHT!!: last saturday night I went to the beach at NIGHT for the FIRST time ever since Ive been here!! Ahh sigh it was So wonderful. I have always loved the beach at night, and somehow Ive never even thought of it as a possibility to go to this Pemb bech at night over these two years. Why? Because "you dont" go anywhere outside of your house at night. mozambicans dont either. Its actually not very wise. Some parts of the beach are apparrently where prostitutes will go to do their business after being purchased. There are "banditos" out at night (robbers). Etc etc etc. And somehow, Ive become more fearful than remembering that...I LIVE in Pemba. 

How did I get there - harvest students went in a group (of 5 or more) to have some worship. Oh my goodness, I cant tell you whwt this did for me. Its the most beutifl, awe-strickening sight to stare into the ocean at night with the moon reflecting and the waters rushing toward you, dark but very present. We didnt see any "banditos" any prostitutes, or any partyers. We BROUGHT the presence of the Lord to that place, claiming territory, we saw angels hovering over the waters, and we changed the atmosphere there, AS WE SHOULD BE, instead of hiding away in our little western style homes. By the end of the evening I felt a freedom that was bursting out of me. I started skipping along the water edge and eventually just purposely fell flat on my back, fully clothed, at the shoreline letting the dark waves crash over me. Ah! Haha! I started laughing like a crazy person and having a blast - letting go of all things that I think I "know" about life, especially how to live here in this place. I welcome more uncomfortable things, Lord. I welcome less cushion. I welcome a loss of control in this culture and life here Jesus. 

FRIENDS!:

My amazing Russian friend from my Harvest School, Eugenia, is here and it's been an immense blessing for my heart. We've been talking about our last two years of life. I loved hearing about her experiences, because they were difficult just as mine have been in some ways, but her outlook hs been amaxing. I remembered the thing that so impressed me about the russian friends thwt were in my Harvest school was that they truly have difficult life scenarios and have to live with incredibly huge faith to be travellingand living the missionary lifestyle that Im also living. Everyone Eugenia knows is low income and yet they share and give to each other. I remember inmthe hwrvest school they would always give out of thelittle they had. 

Eugenia went on to tell me a story about how recently she had gotten an email from one of our Iris missionaries in the Congo who had some refugee children come to him asking for food and he didnt have enough for them. She said she only had 30 dollars at the time, but with tears decided to send most of her 30 dollars to feed these kids. She mentioned it also on a blog or something online, as well as to her other Iris Russia friends, and by the end of the week people of their own accord and out of their little also donated and they had about 1000 dollars! 

SELF SACRIFICE:

Confrontation with people who truly live in selfless sacrifice is one of the most encouraging and refreshing thing. I sometimes blame my culture that I grew up in for my selfishness and clinging to "my" stuff, but I think in reality I have the choice to include sacrifice in my life. If I truly listen to my Lord speak, He is often asking me to do things that involve selfless, uncomfortable, sacrifice. God, let me relearn how to be uncomfortable wnd sacrificing. Some of my happiest and most content times in my life have been when Ive been obedient to do something that I really didnt want to do.

PASSION:

Eugenia also reminded me of the passion I had in my Harvest school and reminded me of how I got a group together on one saturday to help one of my friends build her house. She had materials but no laborers, so we went and helped. I completely forgot that I had thought of organizing such a sweet event. I think of how I now work with the people that help organize work for our ladies' houses and how most of the ladies have to wait so long to have their houes built...If a harvest stuent organized doing something like that under my watch Id be so incredibly thankful and blessed. God,thank you for using me - will you help me not forget my passion that I started with! 

VICTORIA:

I visited her yesterday - A few weeks ago she was close to death and her cheeks and temples were hollow. I had been wearing myself out trying to figure out ways I could help her, wading through cultural issues eith her family, figuring out if she was getting all the medecine she needed, seeing at she was running out of hope and joy. I brought a nurse from Iris to see her a few times and we got her ome medecine for CANDIDA that was causing sores in her mouth and stomach which made her not want to eat. She hadnt eaten for four days the first time we went to visit her together. W knew the medecine would help, but My nurse friend said that coming out of her malnourishment would truly need a miracle.

I was considering getting her to  maputo hospital or paying to have live-in nurse because she was so extremely close to death. I kept thinking, if this were one of my friends at home dying in front of me! I wouldnt be satisfied until I did all I could to help her. 

Then something miraculous happened, and it truly is mirculous. I made these arrangements to bring her to  wedding of one of the Iris missionaries whom she had had a close relationship with and I felt it would really cheer her up, though I was nervous bout her getting overheted. I was finding an umbrella, finding smething for her to spit in (becuse she needed to spit every few minutes), and was going to bring a ton of ice water ne only birng her for half an hour. It was a bit of a scary but important thing I was trying to do for her. But last minute my car I had arranged fell through. I prayed and decideed the best thing would be for me to visit her insted of go to the wedding. So I bought some chicken and fries, ketchup, cookies, and brought a friends laptop that had some movies on it nd walked through the village 30 minutes to her house. I was amazed to see that she ate some of the chicken and one of the cookies. This was  huge difference for her. The nurse friend of mine had said we should try bringing her food she likes so that shell at least try to eat (she hadnt been wanting to eat and would sometimes throw up whatever she got down). After that saturday something has dramtically changed to where she has gotten her apetite back and I believe it was miraculous. A few days after I was getting messges from her saying that she was hungry all the time and wanting to eat chicken every day. She has been eating really well since then and is actually gaining a little weight! I brought a whole chicken to her yesterday and will continue doing so as much as I can. She actually has her personality and I felt like I was spending time with my friend yesterday and not  hollow shell of her. Hallelujah!

Im going to see if I can spend the night at her house next week! Im excited over the thought and she got very excited too!! Itll be my first time to sleep in the village and its something Ive been wanting to do for a long time.

Big news!

I have news. News you may have expected -Or may not have. Its something that Ive known for a while. Its a bit hard for me to tell in some ways because its bitter sweet news for most of us. As many things wonderful in life there is a sacrifice involved: I am now officially a long-term Pemba Missionary! Sacrifice being that we will continue seeing little of eachother for the next year and a half! My commitment time is basically outlined for as long as I think necessary to get the Jewelry program self- sustainable. At this point I am planning and feeling like mid-2014 is that amount of time. So Im coming home for Christmas, will return here in February, stopping in Tete, Mozambique to do a short jewelry workshop with women on the base there and every 6 or 3 months as a Pemba Missionary Ill need to renew my Visa (6 are issued in the U.S. And 3 in south africa).

The classes and amazing things happening in them do feel like they are just getting started and Im so excited to see where it all goes! 

 I will miss you guys, you dont even know. Here is something I wrote last week:

First november in my life when Ive been sweating and no need of socks. Obviously this is an intriguing and iconic difference between life here and my usual life in the U.S, but really the oddness for me comes from the lack of change. For someone so used to change, dramatic weather changes in fact, beginning to live life in one basically unchanging season leaves me feeling as if something got stuck in the clock gears and time has paused. Yet in my mind I know that things have changed. Not just the seasons but lives are changing at home. Relwtionships are changin due to little communication or understanding of one anothers' lives. 

...That is the biggest sacrifice for me. I can deal with taking bucket showers, having less vegetable choices, mosquito bites, finding bugs in any place you can think of in your house, being very hot and sandy, having perpetually dirty feet, and having very loud music playing 24/7 outside of my little house. But it's hard to feel relationships changing. I just have to bealieve and remember that me being obedient to the Lord brings blessing in EVERY area of my life including community. I do believe that. My friends and family are meant to be doing whwt theyre doing, and unfortunately that means in separate places for parts ofour lives. 

Who is my father and mother? Wasnt it...Jesus, that said that? Ha! How very aprropriate (though, I love and miss my mother and fáther, but I had to leave them for this season).

Giving and recieving in Pemba

So much happens in a week, it's hard to put it into organized places in my thoughts in order to share. I feel like Im always neglecting incredible experiences when I share these little bits. But here are some, and that is the best I can give or today. 

 

GIVING

Wednesday I had a very real moment that  I’m thankful for, though it is a bit hard for ones heart to hear it, I find it really amazing because it’s real life and I had an opportunity to love practically as well as remember one of the reasons Im here.

Memuna, A little girl can be a rascal around the base sometimes, invited me to her house and seemed really excited for me to say yes. She doesn’t live in the children’s center here, but she is one of the children from the village who almost seems like she does because she spends most of her time here as well as goes to school and eats at the daily childrens feeding that happens in our church (adjacent to my office, so I hear the singing, shouting and screaming of these sometimes 200 little guys that are usually only eating this one meal for the day). I love that she took a special interest in being my friend, because I think she is overlooked a nd maybe not even liked very often, and Im so happy to love her.

We walked to her house and she didn’t speak very much the whole time. Which is sometimes her personality, but she also just seemed tired that day. I asked her what was wrong, and she said she was hungry.

We got to her house. I know her mom because she used to be in our jewelry class, but moved into the gardening group before I returned this year. She also is one of the women that I truly love but can at times…well for lack of a better way to say it, she can be manipulative. But I truly love her, and it was wonderful to see her home. She has 7 children, and a very sick father living there. She has no husband; this is the all too normal situation of our wonderful ladies here.

Usually when I visit friends int heir homes I can see that they have needs, but we still have a wonderful time together, talking, laughing and enjoying each others company, but this bunch was incredibly somber. Every one of them, even the little ones, were frowning and looked weary, as if they were incredibly tired. I soon found out that it was because…simply put, they were hungry. It was such an eye-opening moment for me. It was one of those moments when you realize that somehow youve found yourself sitting on the inside of a story sometimes told by people in first world countries in a theoretical, sad way about people “starving in Africa”.I know Im around hungry people all of the time, but somehow it isn’t the focus for me most of the time; I’m usually focusing on bigger picture , how to get them skills and jobs to change their entire lives, as well as realize their own dreams, desires, potential  and extreme value that God sees in them different to the rest of the world. But in this moment, it was simple.

These people were hungry, and I asked them the details; they had run out of the food that Iris gives them almost a week earlier than the food is supposed to last. Probably because of the amount of kids she has, and feeding her father as well, and to be honest she probably solds part of it to buy other things. They actually have to pay for water, which they were also almost out of. I asked them if they had eaten anything today, and none of them had. Apparrently Memuna brings some of her food from the children’s feeding home and shares it, but she hadn’t that day because she was waiting for my visit. But that was basically, as far as they told me, all they had been eating since the Sunday before.

.So, I gave them some money. It wasn’t a lot, but it was what I had in my wallet. About 40 mets, which is about 2 dollars. But that can buy some beans, xima, and water. This is going to sound backwards, but it is important for me to be cautious about giving money here. The point of what we’re doing in Iris is to encourage Mozambicans, give them dignity, and opportunity to take care of themselves without dependency on us. As someone a part of the widows ministry, it’s extra important for me because it can be really unfair for me to have special friends within the group. But when God says give, I give. This was definitely a situation to break any “rules” and basically, feed some very hungry friends. I’m also going to check into seeing if she can be signed up for more food because of how many kids she has.

I’ll always remember that somber heaviness in the air over their hut; it was as if the unspoken words were just hanging in the air:“We’re hungry and don’t have food”.  I am soso thankful that I have money and food to share with friends. I’ve never been truly hungry like that in my life. And somehow I was born with the ability to only be that hungry by choice.

God, I don’t understand why I was born with that privelage, but I  thank you for it. And I thank you for the opportunity to feed the hungry. Thank you for Iris giving food and opportunity for life. Thank you for the Jewelry class that will provide money and food for these women.

RECEIVING:

I’ve had a few exciting gifts these last two weeks. My friend Emilda has sent her two oldest sons, Jaime, and Alberto, to my house to bring me sugar cane, Mandioca root, and a strange bean (or I guess it isn’t actually a bean but it looks like one?) two times. For no reason! They were jut waiting outside of my house a couple of times over these last two weeks bearing gifts! I can’t tell you how this touched me. Of course I want to refuse gifts like this from a momma who literally has no one providing for her but Iris. But, she wants to give it to me and it even hurts her for me to refuse. I even offered some to the boys to share, and they refused.

Of course I sent the boys back home with some little gifts as well. This is what we do around here: back and forth sharing and loving. The poorest of poor sharing their little with me, Of course I’m going to share out of my (by comparison) wealth and abundance!

These are the kinds of experiences that aren’t easy to put into words and share with others. What this kind of experience does inside of your heart is truly a piece of the Kingdom of God. It speaks of the truths that exist in heaven, where life is MORE THAN FOOD or what we OWN. I think this is a lesson you simply can’t grasp until you get the blessing of seeing true LACK and seeing generosity and joy inside of it. 

Small group with village girls:

Ive started a small group that’s consisting of about 5 girls from the surrounding villages who come to church but have no one pouring into them, no place to share questions, thoughts, ideas or problems in their lives.

Im really really excited about it. So far we have talked about the possibilities of their lives, abilities to dream, and their value. We have also talked about Jesus being  REAL, real enough to know that He is with us at all times, we can talk to Him, sit beside Him, He has thoughts about us, had plans for us when He made us. Ive shared a lot of my testimony, regarding how I became a Christian when I didn’t really know what that meant, and got to a point of learning for myself in an incredibly real way that God was more than an idea and a concept like a lot of the church sees Him as. And I talked about how I wondered bouth this thing of “hearing God” for so long and wanted it to be real, but never saw proof of Himreally being able to speak of us. And how I now hear Him all of the time. What a joy. I realiyed how amaying Jesus was when we were talking. Especially when reading psalm 139 and hearing about how God truly loves us and took great care in the way He made us.

The girls have been so excited about it. WE have been doing some fun things like making bracelettes and playing games as well and Ive been giving them opportunity to share about any problems during the week. So far they have proved to be shy abot themselves to some extent. I know it will take tim for them to truly feel safe to share things they feel. And to be honest they probabl don’t think much about how they feel, because they are used to not being allowed to….jsut managing through lifes difficulties. Im so excited to get to become like sisters with these precious girls.

 

Update on me:

Ive had some things shaken these last couple of weeks. Normal problems within the minstry in communicating as a team have seemed bigger than they should be have and affected me and at times made me feel doubts about my strength and abilities. But Im having to remember that Ive been here over two months and Im starting to feel tired! I have to remember to not neglect my tim with God that recharges me physically, emotionally, and mentally. Ive started fasting this week for the first tim in so long. I can already see it "working"...amaying how it always does. 

Again, this week is an important one. jane, the visitor from England is leaving and we are evaluating what to add into our prorgam from what she has taught and what to exclude or change from what we have been doing. Please pray for us as w make big decisions.

prayer requests:

_ I wont give into lies that stem from tiredness or basic warfare from being on the "frontlines" so to speak, here.

- Unity in our team and in our vision for the program

- Grace for myself to be God's daughter and nothing else

Thank you all! love you!