Milked a cow, that’s a first. You cannot successfully milk a cow without then drinking the fresh cow milk-nice and frothy..word to the wise though, when trying to chug the fresh milk, don’t look at the people around you because you will laugh and milk will explode out your nose. Milked a goat also, have yet to milk the dog or kitty, but I’ll keep trying..
Romania is beautiful, livin the simple life this month..workin at getting a camp ready for summer. Here with two other teams, so company is good and life is fun. We knoooww how to wash some carpets..I surprise myself at how much I enjoy the simple months.
The closer I get to home, the more I realize how much I will miss this life and even these people. I really am living a dream here and some of the things that matter month one no longer matter. Priorities have shifted, life has changed, I have changed.
Instead of making my own videos-I figured, I'd just post up other peoples..
1. Open Arms Ukraine..we cooked at a camp for them. Thanks Katy Catron.
http://openarmsukraine.blogspot.com/
2. Philippines..Caleb Hatfield was visiting while we were there and made the video-thanks..
3. Philippines..carnival for streetkids..thanks MelissaDiehl.theworldrace.org
4. Philippines..The lovely Sarahball.theworldrace.org loves her some videos..
5. China worship night with whole squad-just music..thanks NoeRivera.theworldrace.org
also ashleypenny.theworldrace.org has about 500 videos of pretty much everything..shes with me..
So here I am in Ukraine staying at a camp where orphan and village children can come and enjoy life. Most of these kids’ parents are alcoholics-as with a lot of the country. Once the children graduate from the orphanages (in between 14 and 17ish) they are sent to trade schools to learn a trade, but that is when a lot of orphans get into trouble. We have been working on the Sasha House and helping cook when they have retreats.
The Sasha Project is a home that were building for graduated orphans or children in the surrounding villages that don’t otherwise have a good home life and this one can be provided for them. There was a little boy named Sasha, one of five children, his parents are alcoholics, and his dad was drunk and angry so he put him on the hot stove. Sasha immediately grabbed the stove so he not only burnt his backside but his hands also. His dad got a couple days in jail and a stern talking to.
This other guy I met, also Sasha, was an orphan who had graduated and stole an elderly woman’s cell phone and was put in prison for four years. Doesn’t seem fair..
The one girl that got me the most, was the girl that died. ICC and is a private organization that started because they saw the care of the children and needed to do something for the children to survive. Before and without their care, the kids that get brought to the welfare center have an 85% death rate, but with their care it is only 15%. Drastic difference. They deal with basic things like, ‘you have to feed the kids or they will die, and it doesn’t matter if you don’t think they will be adopted and you will not gain a profit off that child, you still have to feed them.’ They judge the kids that come in as ‘adoptable’ and ‘un-adoptable’ and care for them accordingly. ICC has truly changed that place and saved so many children’s lives, and have so many more.
One girl was healthy when she got there, seemingly normal little girl, had a full and good set of teeth. She was left to be forgotten and discarded, to be unloved and uncared for. Who deserves that? She had bedsores on her head because no body ever moved or held her. Her pants were held on by tight rope that had cut sores in her hips. She was the skinniest person I have ever seen.
In the time she was there, before she could be moved over to the ICC she had deteriorated so much that she was literally skin and bones, unresponsive starved. I picked her up out of her bed and there was absolutely no response or recollection of me at all. She started seizing all the time and ended up dying before they could bring her over to care and love her properly.
How can someone starve to death in an office building? How can so many children waste away into nothingness and sometimes unrecoverable disability due to the shock and trauma of the hell they lived in? Where is the love in that place? Who’s to judge who lives and dies? Who’s to say this one is not worth trying to feed? There was no shortage of food by any stretch, there were beds in the staffs’ offices because they take their after lunch nap in their office. Snacks and donations were brought in by people touring the center almost daily, and yet I witnessed a little girl, somebody’s beloved child, somebody’s sister, granddaughter, friend, die. Why? What is so different about her than me? Why do I get to be loved, why do I have joy and hope, but hers was taken from her?
So we were working at the ICC (google it) this month with orphaned and abandoned children, some with disabilities, some physical, some mental, some completely healthy. I was overwhelmed with disability the first day, taking a tour of the place walking into all the rooms and seeing all the kids. Then it just became the norm and life as usual, but at first it smacked me in the face and I didn’t know how to respond.
Over the course of our time, I made some true friends, learned how to love people in the way they needed to receive love. It didn’t matter if they drooled on my pants, it didn’t matter if they could/would bite me or if they completely invaded my personal space, because they needed love. We worked with a lot of the older girls doing arts and crafts, which was completely different than what was expected, but they loved it. Paper chains, beauty day, snowflakes were tricky, pipe cleaner animals and glasses and really anything that can be done with pipe cleaners, coloring, painting, glitter day tested the patience, the whole thing.
It was cool for me to connect with some of the girls that were harder to relate to-one was a biter so a lot of the carers (people who care for them) are hesitant around her, but she is so smart and receptive and so it was good for her to understand that I was there to dance with her or just hold her hand.
On our 30-40ish minute hike up to the orphanage and back everyday we are blessed with the sights and smells typical tourists might not see when they visit China. Good thing I am not a tourist, but I lived here for a month.
Acid rain. Smog. Smoke and spit anywhere and everywhere, inside or out, bus, car, train, restaurant. Hawking loogees should be a professional sport here. Exhaust from cars. Honking from every car or bike that passes. Trash heaps. Pigpens. Urine is constant because kids pee anywhere.
We pass through the cattle bones-big heap of cow bones right outside of the big shack they kill and drain the blood of the cows. That smells like rotting animals. Just after that, walk in between two ponds-both black, both full of trash, one with stagnant algae on top-which are either fish ponds or irrigation lakes-either way you’re eating the filth. For this corner, I usually have to put my gloves over my nose because this ones the worst one, its just rancid. We cut through backyards (concrete slabs) and vegetable farm pathways.
The sun does not shine, on the one day you could actually tell which way was east/west because you could faintly see the outline of the sun, everyone runs to the park. It was the first ‘sunny’ day in three weeks. Corporate aerobic dancing is a daily commonplace at any park or place of gathering. Smog I will not miss you.
This is our life back in Cambodia...Scotty made a video (thanks Scotty) of our elephant ride extravaganza. I was teaching English class when Cameron ran up and interupted our class to tell me an elephant was walking through the village, so we took a class fieldtrip to see her. It was glorious and exciting and it was one of those moments when I said "this is my life right now.."
Had a 5AM prayer meeting at the church today-they do it every Wednesday and most of the congregation attends every week. It was not for the spiritual leaders of the church, not for the select few prayer warriors, but for the body-for the kids and the parents.
Radical things are happening here, and its because they ask for it. They pray for miracles and miracles happen. We prayed for Malaysia, for Jerantut, for the church, for the future generation, for education in the kids, the congregation, for encouragement, for ourselves, for the pastor. We prayed for anyone and everyone and it was refreshing.
Church, wake up. Wake up and pray. Of course we were tired, but God showed up and it was good. I don’t remember the last time I woke up early and got on my knees and prayed. I have never seen a church back home pray like that together.
We think we come to bring Jesus everywhere we go, and yes we do, but Jesus was already here..God is bigger than that, Gods been everywhere weve gone and when we leave, we don’t take God with us, God remains. God’s everywhere. It was cool. Wake up and see God everywhere and in everything.
So here we are in Malaysia. My body decided to get sick for a day or two which was not good but you never appreciate your health until you don’t have it. This month we’ll kinda be all over, this week were at the beach and working with an Indian church. Putting on a weekend youth conference, so I am constantly reminded of all the planning and preparation that needs/should go into planning a retreat, (thank you Loveatwork and Crosswild) however we got here Monday and its Friday and it’s starting.
I am exited about it though, I’m talking about what it means to live life on faith and not just living as a believer but stepping out faithfully and challenging them to see what in their life requires faith, so I guess I challenge you the same, What in your life requires faith right now?
I am so many more things here on this thing we call the race than I am back home. Although I do not always say it has been good, it really has been good to stop limiting myself on what I can and cannot do, because when you’re in a random country at a random ministry, you can’t exactly say no. So you have to rely, you have to trust that it’s not you who’s doing the work anyway.
Malaysia’s beautiful. They export a lot of palm oil so there are huge palm trees everywhere. We have been driving a lot going to villages and homes so I have seen a lot of the countryside, which palms. It looks like Jurasic Park meets Pandora. The church we’re working with has planned us to go to lunch and dinner at someone from the church’s house every meal and everyone has been sooo accommodating, it is a good reminder of hospitality.
After every country, I feel as if I should leave it behind so I can be present in the next one, but the countries are coming harder and harder to leave behind, I now feel more and more that I keep and carry them with me. The people, the smiles, the relationships, the memories, the joys, the smells, the bugs, the ‘bathrooms.’
This world is so much bigger than the life I have back home, there is so much more to it than my egocentric life. I am blessed to see it.
Sunday, while we were out trying to see the waterfall when one of the girls in the village drowned in the pond. She lived right next door to our house and was swimming like always in the pond with her sister. Story goes that she was helping her sister which was what caused her to drown. She was seven and she was the little girl that always poked you and tried to tickle you whenever you walk by.
Nothing about me wanted to go to a seven year olds funeral. Buddhist funerals are different. This one, we paid our respects by lying around her body and praying for her with the incense burning and the money and banana offerings by her side. Her older sister kept putting baby powder on her face. At one point I was terrified we would have to watch her body be cremated so I was thankful when I found out they were burying her.
Everyone was praying for a miracle..everyone praying that should would start choking and wake up again after they finally found her in the deep and murky pond. Everyone wanted this to be that time when the village gets saved because God used her to show everyone in the village that God is faithful. I believe that God still will, just not in the way we wanted. Before, a lot of people in the village thought that Christians and westerners did not morn their dead, and it was good for them to have us there ever though it sucked for us. I believe that God will use us as a light in the middle of the darkness there. I do not understand why things have to happen, why beautiful little girls die when they’re seven, I cannot explain it, I do not like it, but I am at a place where I believe wholeheartedly that God is in it. God is there, working on that family and in that village, but death still sucks.
Cambodia was good to me, I needed and loved this country. Living in village life for a while really helps change perspective on life, although I will admit we were allllll excitedly talking about the shower at the hotel for days. The people went out of their way to love us and welcome us into their lives. We were not the mzungus coming and taking over, we shared life with the village and it was cool. Everyday we played soccer and played games at the school and towards the end the little girls ran up to us with flower crowns and bouquets for all of us. They made you feel like the special princesses we are. They loved. Went to Angkor Wat and saw the ancient temples, good adventure day.
I am fully funded as with the entire rest of the squad we had so much support from people we love and anonymous donors it was ridiculous how much money came into everyone’s accounts. Thanks thanks thanks. Headed to Malaysia today, another country, another place to see Gods hand at work before, during and after we leave it. Its crazy how fast everything is going now that I’m past the half way. It’s February but it seems like September.
No I do not have a life plan, the life plan conversation mortifies me because I have no idea. For me, it’s a day to day, country to country lifestyle and this future talk is just not happening yet..Got to pamper myself in Phnom Penh (capital of Cambodia) yesterday, like eat all the Italian food I wanted, got a massage, good company, good day. Needed and appreciated.
I find myself wondering what the reactions would be if my life were exactly the same however we were in the middle of some neighborhood with an association telling you what you could and could not do. I wonder what the reaction would be when the kids run around naked. Or when the little boys run around peeing anywhere and everywhere they feel like. Or when the cows are the lawn mowers. Or when the fences are made of bamboo and rope. Or when the turtle swims in the water basin. Or when the 11 year old drives the scooter to go get more drinking water. Or when the boy climbs the highest tree without fear or worry. Or when kids can freely play in the mud without scold. Or when the kids have night class and are genuinely excited to be there. Or when the generator stops working, then you go down to the lake to bathe. Or when one of your options of washing clothes is the pond. Or when you’re teaching class and everyone takes a fieldtrip to see the elephant walking down the road. Or when you use lily pads for shade. Or when you are surrounded by rice patties in all directions. Or when babies take their naps in swinging hammocks. Or when you hop on the elephant and let it take you down the road. Or when the rat runs across the classroom and the only reaction is ‘oh big mouse.’ Or when the bigger sister walks to the pond to wipe the little sisters poopy butt cheeks.
Life is simple here. It’s a good simplicity. To slow down and reconnect with life as it should be, without the hustle and bustle that does not even matter. My mind is not clouded or confused here, I eat sleep and do the work of the Lord. It’s hot, were on the floor, flies and mosquitoes outnumber the grass, bathing water is also rain water, rice patties are our view, and I find myself preferring this life to the suburban commotion.
With all that though, I still need around 800$ to continue this thing we call the race, so if you want to help support me, you can. You can click on the support me tab on the left and pay that way. I know I am here because this is where God wants me, and I fully trust that God provides, so this is me trusting that God will and does..
