The newest member of our family...

In a moment of insanity, we bought a cat today…not only did we buy a cat but we bought a cat from a duka (local shop) for 3,000tsh (about $2.50)! I still cant believe that we actually bought a cat…we are so random! I am not really a cat person, but I must admit that it is kind of cute.

So here is our new little friend...

These pictures were taken right when we got home with the cat and before we discovered that our new friend was very "high maintenence" and very loud...he whinned the whole night and it is not a cute little kitten whine...it is a loud and shrill noise. Thank goodness Melissa likes the cat or else it would have gone straight back to the duka! Not to mention the fact that my allergies have already started acting up...what were we thinking...???

Choose Joy!

I think the thing that God has been teaching me most about this year is that joy is a choice. I keep coming back to this over and over again as God has been teaching me to live with joy despite the pain that I live with. While I am not there yet and some days are more difficult than others and it is hard to choose joy, I live by faith that God has a purpose for my life and I have hope that one day I will be pain free and run to Jesus' open arms.
Joy is a choice that I need to make every day...through the questions, through the pain - so I choose to live with joy and to allow God to refine me through the rain.

When I need a reminder, I listen to the song Bring the Rain by MercyMe which has been a huge encouragment to me in the last year and is a reminder that I need to choose joy.

I can count a million times
People asking me how I
Can praise You with all that I've gone through
The question just amazes
Can circumstances possibly
Change who I forever am in You
Maybe since my life was changed
Long before these rainy days
It's never really ever crossed my mind
To turn my back on you, oh Lord
My only shelter from the storm
But instead I draw closer through these times

So I pray
Bring me joy, bring me peace
Bring the chance to be free
Bring me anything that brings You glory
And I know there'll be days
When this life brings me pain
But if that's what it takes to praise You
Jesus, bring the rain

I am yours regardless of
the clouds that may loom above
because You are much greater than my pain
You who made a way for me suffering
Your destiny so tell me whats a little rain

Holy, holy, holy.
Holy, holy, holy
is the Lord God Almighty
is the Lord God Almighty
I'm forever singing

The following is part of a talk that I gave in assembly at the beginning of the year. Our theme for this year is R U 4 Real? and challanging students to be real about their faith. I was real with them about my struggle with pain and God working in my heart to get me to the point when I can choose joy...I hope that it can be an encouragement to you...

I have had people ask me how I can still praise God with all that I have been through – I sometimes feel as though people put me on a pedestal because I live with pain and they tell me that God has a plan for all of this – and while I know that I God has a plan for my life and I desire that my life glorify God through this time of suffering – there have been many days when I have questioned why God has caused this in my life, many days when I have been discouraged – but even through those tough times, I am reminded that God is good – that the things I go through in life don’t change who I am in Christ – Nothing can change who I am in Christ – In Christ I am forever loved and forever being shaped into the image of God. God is with me every step of the way and he is the only one who can give me the strength that I need to get through every day.

God is my only shelter through this storm and he has drawn me closer to Himself through my pain because I cant do it on my own – I don’t think that I could make it, living with this pain, if it were not for the hope I have in Christ that He is with me and the faith that He will see me though. It has not been easy and while there may be many tough days ahead, I cling to the hope that the God who created my inmost being (extra bone and all), will continue to perfect me for the work that he has called me to.

Through all of this suffering, God has been teaching me to respond with JOY to choose to live with Joy everyday. It is easy to have Joy and to praise God when things in life are going good but we are called to praise God at all times.

The chorus of this song has been my prayer – something I pray every morning when I get up and every night when I go to bed. This is a scary prayer for me – if I ask God to bring me anything that brings HIM glory then I am choosing to accept with joy what God brings in my life and to allow God to continue to mold me and refine me. The Bible does not tell us that life will be easy and that we will never have pain – but it does offer us a joy, peace and freedom. The things that you are going through or will go through, don’t change who you are in Christ – the Bible tells us that God will never leave us nor forsake us – we need to run to him with open arms during our dark times and He promises to give us joy and peace and freedom and he desires that our lives be glorifying to him.

I may never know why God has allowed me to suffer, but I do know that I am changed as a result of it. I am not there yet – there are still very difficult days when I don’t want to have joy and when I don’t want to praise God, but the hope and trust that I have in God is stronger and it is through God’s grace that I am allowed to suffer and to be refined.
My journey is not over yet…
Some days are very difficult but the only way I make I through is by having hope and praying daily that God brings me JOY.

One of my favorite books is called Hinds Feet on High Places and it is an allegory or a story that is about a girl named Much Afraid who is called by the Shepherd to go to the High Places with him. Much Afraid as you can tell by her name is afraid because she is lame and does not think she can make it to the high places where only hinds can go (deer). Throughout the story Much Afraid learns to accept how she was made and allows the Shepherd to be her strength. I think one of the reasons that I like this book is that I can relate to Much Afraid because I too needed to learn to rely on my Shepherd for my strength.

In the sequel to this book there is a passage where Much Afraid (whose name was changed to Grace and Glory after reaching the High Places) is talking with the shepherd about Joy. This is what the Shepherd says…

There is absolutely no experience, however terrible, or heartbreaking, or unjust, or cruel, or evil, which you can meet in the course of your earthly life, that can harm you if you let me teach you how to accept it with joy; and to react to it triumphantly as I did Myself, with love and forgiveness and the willingness to bear the results of wrong done by others. Every trial, every test, every difficulty and seemingly wrong experience through which you may have to pass, is only another opportunity granted to you of conquering an evil thing and bringing out of it something to the lasting praise and glory of God. You sons and daughters of Adam, in all your suffering and sorrow are the most privileged of all beings, for you are to be perfected through suffering and to become the sons and daughters of God with his power to overcome evil with good. If only you realized your destiny, how you would rejoice at every experience of trial and tribulation and even in the persecution that comes your way. You will “count it all JOY.” You would take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in necessities, in persecutions, and distresses for Christ’s sake “for when you are weak, then you learn how to be made strong.”

Psalm 86:4 – bring Joy to your servant, for to you, O Lord, I lift up my soul.

Joy is a choice…Choose JOY today and watch God work in your heart.

Student Council Food Drive

The student council was made aware of a need last week and they responded...

We are currently in the rainy season and while the rain is much needed (my first year here we were praying for rain because of a drought) too much of it is also bad. We have had a particulary hard rainy season this year where it will rain almost every day for at least a bit but aften will rain for several days in a row. This causes flooding of the roads here and lots of mud. In the villages of the Kyela district in southern Tanzania, these hard rains have completely devestated the villages. There were mud slides and many houses were washed away and the crops that they had planted were destroyed. People were left with nothing.

A HOPAC family that works in this region asked the school for help and student council took on the project. The students (with a little help from their faithful teacher...me!) organized a food drive to collect things to send down to these people. They divided the things that were needed (beans, maize flour, sugar, cooking oil, clothes) between the primary and secondary classes and then challanged each class to donate a certain amount that would bring the schools total to one ton (1000kg). The students responded and brought above and beyond what we imagined. Over the course of 4 days HOPAC students brought in food and the piles continued to grow. This morning we all carried the food to the basketball court and were all blessed by seeing the generosity of the school. We have so much and it was nice to see our students give to those in need. I dont know the total amount collected yet, but we were well above our school goal! Our school motto is service-leadership-stewardship and it was amazing to see our students gather and grow in all three areas. The student council did an amazing job of organizing this by themselves and motivating the students to donate.

Here are a few pictures of the truck loading this morning...

The total amount of food that the collected...amazing!

Kyung-ho, our president, showing off the food that we collected

Even the little primary kids got involved carrying the things to the basketball court...actually, I think the primary school brought more then the secondary students!

Packing all the food into larger sacks to be sent down to Kyela

The people of Kyela still need our prayers...the rain has not stopped yet so all of their crops for this season have been ruined. Please pray for these people who have lost everything. Pray that they see hope in Jesus as their Savior through this hard time.

Praise Habit

I have been reading this book called Praise Habit by David Crowder and it is all about clothing ourselves with habitual praise. When we think about praising God, we often think of worshiping on Sunday morning or listening to worship music. But God desires our lives to be living praise offerings to Him…every moment of our lives. David Crowder puts it this way “Every second is an opportunity for praise. There is a choosing to be made. A choosing each moment. This is the Praise Habit. Finding God moment by revelatory moment, in the sacred and the mundane, in the valley and on the hill, in triumph and tragedy, and living praise erupting because of it. This is what we were made for.”

Wow...do I see every moment as an opportunity for praise? Do I find myself in awe and wonder at who God is and all He has done? Do I praise God in the valley as well as on the hill? It is easy to praise God when things are going good and when we are feeling close to God, but what about in the valley, through the hurt and the pain? Do I praise God when my back is sore, when I look toward an unknown future, or just when I am doing my devotions or looking at the beauty of His creation?

He goes on in the book to talk about what praise is and how easily we give praise to others and seek praise ourselves. He talks about we effortlessly give praise to the things we like or the things that please us…but what about God. He says “what if we were so moved by who God is, what He’s done, what He will do, that praise, adoration, worship, whatever continuously careened in our heads and pounded in our souls?” Do I live so in awe of who God is and what He has done that praise naturally flows through me? Am I so passionate about loving God that praise is always on my heart and always on my lips?

Next he talks about habit, not only as something that we automatically do but also as the clothing that a nun wears. A nun’s habit is what covers her and defines who she is. A nun does not need to think of what to wear each morning because the habit is what she wears. The same is true for us. “Our habit is Christ. He is what covers us. He is what identifies us. We wear Him into every moment and when we live with this awareness, we PRAISE CHRIST.” What would my life look like if I wore Christ into every moment, if He were my identity, if He covered me? David Crowder goes on to say “What choice is there but to respond in praise? Praise is fundamentally a responding to the initiations and imitations of God. The way of living praise sets out to find God’s revelation, to carry God’s intentions for His creation into our everyday comings and goings. And this way of life should be so compelling and mysterious and other-than that people see us coming from a long way off and it stops them in their tracks and they wait and watch just to see our exchanges and wonder at this life that has been chosen and how to put it on and what is this deeper, truer way of living?” Do my students see Christ in me at every moment?

There is a choosing to be made. I choose to live my life in praise of Christ. I choose to see every moment as a chance to praise God. I choose to praise God for His beautiful creation that surrounds me. I choose to praise God for his loving sacrifice and for his faithfulness. I choose to praise God because He holds my future and He directs my path. I choose to praise God because His grace is sufficient for all my needs. I choose to praise God because I am alive and I have freedom in Him. I choose to praise God because He is who He says He is. I am not there yet, but I desire my life to be a living praise to Christ and I choose today to put on Christ.

If you need an example of what it looks like to live a life of habitual praise, look no farther than the Psalms. David lived a life of praise to God, praise that resounds through the Psalms in shouts, in laments, in whispers, in adoration. The Psalms are full of praise for Gods marvelous wonders and praise for the hardships that He brings us through. You can’t read them without turning back to God in praise.

“I will extol the Lord at all times, his praise will always be on my lips” Psalm 34:1

“He lifted me out of the slimy pit, out of the mud and mire; he set my feet on a rock and gave me a firm place to stand. He put a new song in my mouth, a hymn of praise to out God. Many will see and fear and put their trust in the Lord. Psalm 40:2-3

“Because your love is better than life, my lips will glorify you. I will praise you as long as I live and in your name I will lift up my hands.” Praise 63:3-4

“I will praise you, O Lord, my God, with all my heart. I will glorify your name forever.” Psalm 86:12

“Enter his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise, give thanks to him and praise his name. For the Lord is good, and his love endures forever, his faithfulness continues through all generations.” Psalm 100: 4-5

“Praise the Lord, O my soul; all my inmost bring, praise his holy name.” Psalm 103:1

“Praise the Lord, all you nations, extol him, all you people. For great is his love toward us, and the faithfulness of the Lord endures forever. Praise the Lord.” Psalm 117

Choose today to live a life of praise to God…every moment of every day in living praise to our Savior.

Three sleepovers in less than 2 weeks...

...again I wonder, what was I thinking...but then after I have caught up on my sleep, I realize that I loved every minute of it!

I love being able to hang out with kids and walk life's journey with them, I love it when they feel comfortable enough to share their problems and questions with me, I love being able to point them toward Jesus and the hope we have in Him, I love seeing them grow and learn, I love being around teenagers!

First I had my girls over for one last sleepover (most of them are 10th graders and will start their exams soon). I have been working on making little scrapbooks for each of them from the last 2 years and I wanted them to have a part in it. They loved it and had my scrapbook things scattered all over the living room. I think that they watched 5 movies throughout the night and did not finally fall asleep until 3am...needless to say their faithful leader was in bed long before that!

Then a mere 4 days later, I once again found myself getting ready for another sleepover. This time it was a student council event and was at school. It was a pool party/bbq/sleepover for the grade 9 and 10 students and student council (which means me!) did all of the planning for it. It turned out great and all the students enjoyed themselves...although the sleeping on the floor was not the most fun thing I have done...I did get smart and decided that there was no way we were going to try to do a sleepover for the younger grades...75 6-8th grades...at school...all night...no thank you!

Finally a short week later, I once again found myself trying to sleep on the floor at school for our youth group 30 hour famine. Last year we did this for the whole secondary school, but since we did not have a team of volunteers to come out, we decided to just do it as a youth group this year. It was great...we had about 20 students participate and we had a great time playing games and learning about poverty around the world. Each of us were given disabilities that compared to things that children in Indonesia (the focus country) suffer with - some were blind, some had to carry heavy bags as burdens, some had lost their arms or legs, some (like me) had trouble breathing so they had to cover their nose. It was great to watch the kids work together as teams and learn as they went. We had some good talks about poverty and fasting and it was interesting to listen to their observations about it. We have all been blessed with so much and were able to break our fast with a fun celebration but this was just a reminder to all of us of how much God has given us and how He provides for us.

So when all is said and done, although it was a very long and tiring week, it was all worth it!

Yearbook...what was I thinking?

As I am sitting here at school on a Saturday afternoon, I am asking myself this question. A question that I asked myself last Saturday when I was at school as well. At a school like HOPAC, there are lots of little jobs that need to be done, so you always end up doing a variety of different jobs...so here I find myself doing the yearbook. But as I sit here I am also reminded how much I love my job because I get to do all of these little things. I love that each morning I wake up and do something that I love and enjoy. I wake up knowing that I am exactly where God wants me to be and am blessed beyond words. So when I wonder "what was I thinking" I just look at these pictures and am reminded of how much I love what I am doing! Thanks so much to each of you who have invested so much in my life.

The deadline is fast approaching so I better get back to work...

Staff picture...at least as many as we could round up. We have the most amazing staff here and I have been so blessed by this community of Christ-followers. I will miss them all.

These are just a few of the secondary class pictures...

Grade 6

Grade 7

Grade 8

Grade 9...in case you could not figure it out!

Grade 10...my kids!

Grade 11

We do have a Grade 12 but they still have to take their picture

My Birthday...a little early and a little late...

Even though I was sick on my birthday, I still managaed to celebtrate it twice - once early and once late!

Lisa made me a wonderful cake and we celebrated when I was in Kenya. It was great to be with "family" for my birthday!

Then my girls surprised me and celebrated my birthday at youth last night. They made me a very yummy cake and got me some coffee and a bag. They know me too well!

Trust me...it was SO good!