By Faith

Been a looooooooong time!

2009-04-12T16:14:00.000-07:00

What's been happening with me?

Well, I was laid off from my job a couple of days after my last post. You'd think that would have allowed enough time in my day to blog more often. Oddly enough, it's been the opposite for me. I haven't been able to make the time to do this in months. Obviously.

I truly feel that this layoff has been a blessing in disguise. I've felt for a long time, now, that God has been calling me to do something else (what that is, I have no idea), but I was comfortable in my job, I loved the people I worked with and it was a good company. Even all that aside, I had a JOB and in this economy, that's pretty amazing in and of itself; so, I wasn't about to risk leaving a job that I was comfortable in and people that I liked being around. ESPECIALLY considering I had no idea what direction to take.

But, let me tell you... as soon as I heard that there were going to be layoffs in our company, I KNEW that I was going to be let go. Not because I was a poor performer, nor would it be because I lacked seniority; rather, I knew it was going to happen because God's will is going to be done and if I'm not going to willingly leave my job, then God was going to push me out of the proverbial boat so that I can walk on water towards Him.

So, here I am. Trusting God to provide for me and to guide me in the next steps of my life and I've never been more excited!

Now, on to more important things... today is Easter! Praise God for the indescribable gift of His Son and the tremendous sacrifice He made on all of our behalf's. If you ever have to wonder if God is good, just look at the cross. He loved, and loves, us so much that He was willing to take human form, come down to earth, live among us for 33 years and then die a criminal's death... all to reconcile us to Him. All to ensure that our sins would be forgiven. And, all to ensure that we would have an eternal home with Him in heaven. How amazing is that???

To top it off, all we need to do is to accept Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior, repent of our sins and ask God into our hearts. We don't need to say a certain prayer a certain number of times. We don't need to complete 'x' acts of service. We don't need to try so hard, period. Not that we shouldn't be the best people we can be and not that we shouldn't live to be of service to others, but those things aren't what will get us into heaven. Only God's grace and mercy can accomplish that feat.

However, I can tell you that I, too, am extremely guilty of trying to 'work' for my salvation. I know how broken I am. I know how selfish and messed up I am. Maybe that's why I can't fathom that God wouldn't expect me to earn my way into heaven in some way. Sure He says that His grace is enough, but He can't really mean that, can He? I surely must need to do something. At least, those are the thoughts that run through my mind time after time... no matter what I know to be God's truth, those thoughts still creep in.

However, today, at Easter services, one of our Pastor's commented on something that I had never thought of before. He was recounting the story of Jesus being on the cross between the two crucified criminals. The one criminal was mocking Jesus, saying that if Jesus was really the Messiah, why doesn't he do something and get them all off of these crosses. The criminal on the other side of Jesus spoke up and said that both he and the other criminal deserved to be on those crosses, but Jesus had done nothing and in no way deserved this punishment. He then asked Jesus to remember him when he came into His kingdom. Jesus replied that he would be joining Jesus in paradise that day. Now, this criminal could literally do nothing. He was nailed to a cross. He couldn't temporarily jump down and feed a few hungry people. He couldn't jump down and preach the gospel. He couldn't jump down and heal sick people. Yet, because he acknowledged Jesus and who He is, Jesus assured him a place in paradise. Notice that? It wasn't because of anything the criminal DID, rather it was WHO he believed in and WHO he accepted as the Messiah. Another great illustration that God provided us of His grace. I pray that I remember the story of that criminal every time I feel inclined to try and earn my salvation versus accepting it as the gift, that it is, from God.

Spring has Sprung

2009-01-31T13:19:00.000-08:00

I guess that Southern California does have seasons.

We just have them at the wrong times of the year. As I mentioned previously, this year we had Fall during Winter , and now this.

Check out these pictures taken today from my backyard.

Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't daffodils Spring flowers??? They certainly aren't Winter flowers, I know that much. You can't blame the flowers, though...it's been, on average 80 degrees the past couple of weeks. I think our screwy weather has confused my tulip and daffodil bulbs.

One Cheeseburger, Animal Style

2009-01-30T15:29:00.000-08:00

Seeing as I have nothing better to talk about this evening, I'm going to keep going on my topic of things that I would miss if I ever moved out of state...

Cheeseburger, Animal Style**
Fries
Small Diet Coke

That would be my typical order.

**Animal Style = Mustard is grilled on the burger and it is served with grilled onions (no thank you), extra sauce (think- thousand island dressing) and pickles.

So, what is it about In-N-Out that makes them so popular? It's obviously not their extensive menu (3 items). For me, I love that the hamburger bun is a little crispy, the meat patty is thin and the sauce and pickles make it extra delicious. Everything is fresh- even their fries. You see them using this machine to julienne sack upon sack of potatoes. Plus, everything is made to order. Nothing is standing around under heating lamps, and, come to think of it, they don't even have heat lamps. Additionally, the joints are always kept clean and the staff is always exceptionally friendly. No matter how many times I go, I always check under my soda cup to see if they still print them with John 3:16 and on the burger wrapper (I think?) is a verse from Revelation.

One heads up, though... if you are ever visiting CA and going through their drive thru, you may be asked the question, "is that for here or to go?" The first time I heard that in the drive thru, I looked over at my sister with this dumbfounded look on my face and mouthed, "here or to go???". Wouldn't the fact that I'm in my car just naturally lead to the presumption that this meal was 'to go'? I have come to find out, however, that when they ask you that, they are really asking, "are you going to be eating your food in the car or waiting until you get home?" Because if you are eating it in your car, they will wrap the burger so that only half of it is wrapped up, thus allowing ease of consumption and the place it in a box top, versus a bag, for easy accessibility. They will also provide you with a paper tray liner so you can lay it across your lap and avoid spilling all over yourself.

The only downfall to visiting an In-N-Out is the wait. If you come during peak times, the lines in the drive-thru can, easily, wrap around the building and the lines inside aren't much better. Because everything is made so fresh, you also have to factor in a longer wait to receive your food. But, it is SO worth it!

I Heart Trader Joe's

2009-01-27T17:49:00.000-08:00

When I contemplate the future and where I'm going to live, I can't help but think about the things that I would miss about California. I'm not talking about family and friends, because that's a given; rather, I'm talking about those things that I've taken for granted as my everyday part of life. Of course, there's always the weather. I love the snow and experiencing the different seasons, but would I want to live in the snow? Shovel myself out of my driveway every morning? Drive to work on a sheet of ice? (or maybe it would be more accurate to say 'slidding' to work on a sheet of ice) Probably not...it would get old really fast. Recently, while friends across the U.S. were experiencing weather that registered in the negative degrees, I was out and about in 80+ degree weather.

Aside, from those things, I'd have to say that one of the things that I would miss the most would be my Trader Joe's. Notice how I said 'my'? I'm very possessive of it. But, honestly, I don't think that I would ever miss it, simply because I could never move to a state that didn't have TJs. It ranks right up there with Target for me. I actually look forward to and get excited to go to TJs because they have so many different types of foods and there have been few, if any, things that I haven't liked. Everytime I go, there's something new to try.

Similar to Target, it's one of those places where I go in with a list of 3 items and I come out with 15 additional items, aside from what was on my list. Take today for example. I went to TJs to purchase eggs and Vanilla Bean Joe Joes. I came out with a plethera of items that included...

Vanilla Bean Joe Joes. One of the items I actually went to TJs for. If you haven't tried these, you really must. I could sit and eat an entire box in one sitting. They're even organic. Before eating these cookies I held the firm belief that organic should stay in the food groups it was made for- vegetables and fruit. To me, organic + cookies = tasteless cardboard.

Veggie Chips...again two words that don't really go together, but they are addicting. (and I can validate eating an entire bag because they have 'veggie' in their name)

And don't even get me started on their frozen Mac and Cheese. Y-U-M! There are 3-4 different cheeses and I just heat it up, add a little salt and I'm good to go!

One of the new items they had this week was the frozen Snickerdoodle Cookie Dough. Now, I absolutely LOVE to bake. If I could do it all day long, I would. But, when it's midnight and I have a cookie craving, I can just pop one of these out of the box and have warm, homemade-tasting cookies in 8-10 minutes. Can't wait to try them out!

Did I mention that I love Trader Joes???

I actually don't even go to the grocery store anymore unless I need something that TJs doesn't carry. I will drive 20 minutes to go to my local TJs vs. walking down the street to Ralph's... I love it that much! And, don't even try to distract me with those imitation Trader Joe's...you know... those stores you call "Whole Foods".

Please.

Next time I want to spend $5 on one apple, I'll go to Whole Foods. Until then, you can find me perusing the aisles of TJs; and, for those of you who don't live near a Trader Joe's, you have my condolences.

No Room to Complain

2009-01-26T15:39:00.000-08:00

I was initially going to say that if you feel like you have it rough or if you’re having ‘one of those days’, take a look at this video. But, on second thought, I really don’t want this video to serve as a vehicle to make you feel better about your life. Grateful- yes. Humbled- yes. Angry- yes. And, I’m sure that it will make you re-evaluate your day and the problems you may be experiencing, and that’s fine- things do need to be put into perspective. However, given the choice, I’d rather that this video disturb you. I’d rather that it anger you because it sometimes takes those emotions to motivate us to action.

Please realize that I’m really not trying to come across as condemning or self-righteous because I’m just as guilty as the next person, if not more guilty. I make assumptions all the time. I assume that someone else will take care of it. I assume that it’ll just get better on it’s own. I assume that one person can’t make a difference. But, really, I’m just making excuses and it’s not even that I’m making excuses to anyone in particular, rather it’s like I’m trying to justify my lack of action in my own mind. I’m trying to make myself feel better.

I’d really encourage you to watch the video all the way through. It can be easy to press ‘pause’ and turn away, (I did a couple of times) but these kids and so many others like them around the world, don’t have the option to press pause and turn away from their lives. They are faced with these circumstances all the time and not just for the 9 minutes you’ll spend on this video.

I don’t have answers. I don’t know what I’m going to do with this information yet and I pray that God will give me some insight as to the next step I should be taking. I did, however, want to provide you with a couple of links to world-wide organizations that offer you the opportunity to sponsor a child in a third world country, if that's something you feel led to do. These are reputable non-profits and they truly do some amazing work around the world. Just click on the banner below and it will route you to the website(s).

World Vision (having trouble with the banner)

Happy (Belated) Birthday to Me!!!

2009-01-23T18:34:00.000-08:00

I’m definitely not in the category of draw-attention-to-myself, all-eyes-on-me type of person. I’m very comfortable being in the background, persay …. but, not in a pathetic-wallflower sort of way. I just don’t need all eyes on me. It’s too much pressure. If they’re looking at you, then they’re judging you- whether good or bad, and I don’t want to be on the receiving end of anyone’s critical eye. I’m more than critical enough of myself… I don’t need someone confirming my insecurities, thank you very much. I do a fine job of that on my own.

But, there is one day of the year that I don’t mind attention. My birthday. I certainly don’t need over-the-top attention, but I like it when people acknowledge it and I LOVE it when it lasts over several days (i.e. birthday dinners, get-togethers). I definitely do cringe a bit at turning another year older- not so much by the number, but I just have always had ideas in my head of where I would be in life by this point and this ain’t it! But, I can also look at the things that have happened that weren’t expected, and, really it’s pretty cool the route God has taken me, the opportunities He’s afforded me and the multitude of blessings He’s given me. I really can’t complain.

This birthday did not disappoint. I had a great time!

Although my b-day was several days ago, I’ve delayed posting about it, not because I’m upset over it, but because of the ridiculous amount of time it takes me to upload photos to blogger! It’s 2009. They really need to offer a drag and drop option. Instead, we have this tedious process of browsing for the photo, uploading the photo (and you can only do 5 at once) and then you have to look at the mess of html coding (or whatever it is) and try to figure out which picture is which and then place them where you want them on your blog. It’s a pain. Ok. My rant is done. (for now)

So, here’s my birthday in pictures, or as it’s better known- the I-didn’t-stop-eating-for-five-days-tour. That tour is done. I visited several cities, ate in numerous restaurants and just finally finished the last of the leftovers last night. :)

The family was in town prior to my birthday, but before they left, we went out for a birthday dinner to OC Mining Company. If you’ve never been there- go. It’s up on a hilltop overlooking several cities and it’s beautiful at night. Most of the restaurant is set up so everyone has a view. The food is good and plentiful as well!

My wonderful co-workers also got in on the birthday action. They decorated my cubicle and brought in this A-MA-ZING cake. It was some combination of three layers of marble cake, filled with cheesecake filling and chocolate mousse filling. It was all topped in ganache, whipped cream and strawberries.

Went to Disneyland on my actual birthday and spent about ½ day there. During which time, we rode on several attractions, people-watched and if you’ve never people-watched at Disneyland, then you haven’t ever really people-watched- the most ‘interesting’ people come out of the woodwork to go to DL…and it’s not just locals- you have a veritable parade of freaks from around the world at your disposal…you simply have to take time when you visit just to watch everyone walk by. And, of course, ate more food. We went to Café Orleans for lunch because I love love love their Monte Cristo Sandwich. It’s, essentially, a heart attack on a plate. Turkey, ham and cheese on white bread (you’re probably thinking that doesn’t sound so bad, but just wait)… said sandwich is then fully dipped into a batter and deep fried to perfection. It is sprinkled with powdered sugar and you are given raspberry preserves to dip it in. YUM-MY! Then the kind waiter, who knew it was my birthday because of the donut-sized button DL gives you to wear all day (yes, of course I could opt out of wearing it, but what’s the fun in that? I want people to say ‘Happy Birthday’ to me). As he brought us our bill, he also brought a Mickey Mouse shaped beignet (another deep fried delicacy) dessert over and a birthday card that was signed by the Café Orleans staff. Very nice touch!

Before leaving the park I stopped at the Candy Palace and picked up the most adorable Minnie Mouse themed caramel apple. Don’t ask how much it cost. I’m embarrassed that I bought it for that price, but it was a one-time thing, never to happen again.

Later that evening, my sister and her boyfriend took me out to dinner to a Mexican restaurant where I proceeded to have a 4-item combo dinner with a taco, enchilada, tamale and a couple of flautas…not to mention the obligatory chips and salsa we had beforehand. My sister’s boyfriend gave me a bouquet of flowers at the restaurant, so the waitress knew it was my birthday and, again, as we are waiting for the bill, she and 4 other employees walk up, slap a sombrero on my head and sing a birthday song. Did I mention that they brought along with them an ice cream sundae. What was that ice cream sundae sitting in? Why a deep fried bowl of course.

We then made our way over to the movie theatre and saw Bride Wars. Cute movie – I liked it. It was a no-brainer, which is what I was looking for. Then presents and lemon cake.

The next day I met up with friends for church and they took me out to dinner at Chili’s for my birthday. I had these chicken crispers (aka small pieces of fried chicken). The girls obviously told the waitress we were there for my b-day. So… at the end of the meal, they brought over a chocolate-molten-cake-ice cream-sundae-piece-of-heaven.

The next night a couple of my girlfriends took me out to Italian food- SO good and such a cute location. The dessert that night was a chocolate chip cannoli.

Lastly, on Wednesday I got a call from the front desk at work and my lovely friend sent me flowers! They are so pretty and they brightened up my day significantly.

I hope that everyone has as great of a birthday as I did this year!

Grace

2009-01-21T18:42:00.000-08:00

I've been thinking alot lately about how I truly don't fully understand or comprehend the gift of grace. And, I'd be willing to wager that I'm not alone.

Grace means that the price for my sin has already been paid, and try as I might, there is literally nothing I can or could ever do to earn my salvation.

Yet, I still try. I try to say the right things. I try to do the right things. I try to think the right things. But, there's always that voice telling me, "you don't deserve this- you need to prove you're worthy", aka earn my way to heaven. Well best of luck Julie, because I'm right- I, in no way, deserve God's grace. Nor will I ever be deserving of it. Today, I was reminded of this scripture:

"But God demonstrates His own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us."

Romans 5:8

"While we were still sinners."

God didn't wait for us to 'measure up' or become deserving before He saved us. It was in the midst of our messiness, in the midst of our brokenness...that's when He chose to save us.

Not only did He reconcile Himself to us while we were still sinners, but He reconciled Himself to us in the most sacrificial way possible. He sent Himself to dwell among us- to suffer through pain, heartache, betrayl, hardship and degradation. Then He paid the ultimate price in dying a horrific death on the cross.

For us.

Not only for you and me, but he died for the people who caused him pain, who put him through heartache, who betrayed and humiliated Him. For the people who nailed Him to the cross. I don't know about you, but if someone degrades me, my first response is not one of love and it's certainly not one of being willing to die for that person. But, thankfully for us, Jesus was willing. Wow- He must not only like us on occassion, but He must really love us with a love that can never be understood by a human being.

Why, then, do I have such struggles? Why do I think God has given up on me- not because He's unloving, but because I'm so unworthy of His love. I mess up on a daily, if not hourly, basis. I mean, really...exactly how many times can I expect God to forgive me? How many times can I count on Him to extend grace to me?

I can't help but know, in my heart, that God's response to that question would be:

"How many times? Every single time, that's how many times."

I like the analogy I've heard at church several times of imagining grace as a gift under the Christmas tree. Imagine it was your gift to your child. You'd sacrificed your time and energy to pick out the perfect gift for them and couldn't wait for them to open it up. But, then they open it and get a forelorned look on their face, immediately hand the gift back over to you and say, "I don't deserve this- take it back". I would imagine you would be a little disappointed and upset at their reaction, and perhaps irritated. Now, picture that your child opens the gift, breaks into a huge smile, jumps into your arms, thanks you over and over and immediately begins to play with the toy. Wouldn't that reaction be better received? Wouldn't you be thrilled and filled with joy? I'm sure so. Don't you think God would rather we be the excited child in this story vs. the one who tries to hand the gift back?

I think that you and I (especially) have to just stop trying to figure grace out, because grace is inherently unexplainable and indescribable to begin with. We just need to accept it for the free gift that it is and say 'thank you'.

God's Riches At Christ's Expense

New President

2009-01-20T15:50:00.000-08:00

I obviously can’t let this day go by without at least acknowledging it.

Our 44th President has come into office. Our first African-American President.

I recognize that this day is, as everyone’s referring to it, ‘a historic moment’, but for some reason I don’t feel…I don’t know what you’d call it… excitement? awe? pride? that I see many people experiencing today. Don’t get me wrong- intellectually I recognize the significance, but I’m just not emotionally there. I’m sure that I can’t fully comprehend the depth of the moment as much as say, someone who is African American. But, when I think to myself, ‘what if it were a woman up there being sworn in?’ Sadly, I still don’t think that I would feel that overwhelmed or emotional.

It’s sad. I wish that I could feel something more than just a mild interest in today’s activities.

I would have taken the time to watch my TiVO’d Inauguration Ceremony if the friggin' frackin' TiVO had actually done the job it was created to do!!! It claimed to be recording the inaugeration, but what did I end up with????? An infomercial, that's what! But, thanks to technology, I watched most of it on the computer through CNN.com. I thought his speech was good, but I'm going to have to go and actually read the text of the speech. I swear I must be a little ADD, because I cannot focus on anything for too long...it's frustrating...and, thus the reason I need to just sit down and read through it. If I'm being honest, I was more impressed that he seemed to have the speech all memorized. Were there teleprompters??? Even if there were, you'd never know he was reading from them. And, if it was memorized- kudos to him! Good memory.

I also enjoyed Pastor Rick’s prayer and it was nice seeing a man who has been, for me, the personification of integrity, humility and generosity, get to have that amazing opportunity. Poor Pastor Rick. Sometimes I think that he has been bashed just as much as any of the political candidates. He’s been threatened with numerous lawsuits, from various groups, claiming that if he used “Jesus” in his prayer, they were going to sue him. The latest papers he was served, last week, stated that they were going to take him to court if he mentioned ‘God’ in his prayer.

IT’S A P-R-A-Y-E-R PEOPLE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

If ever there was a time to mention God, a prayer would be it!

So, I found it to be especially amusing that, not only did he say ‘God’ and ‘Jesus’, but he invoked the name of Jesus in a couple of other languages and/or names that Jesus is also known by. Loved it!

I will say that it’s nice to see people feeling hopeful. I was not an Obama supporter and I vehemently disagree with him on several things, but he has been elected into office and no one is elected into a leadership position without God allowing it; so, it’s now our responsibility to pray for him. I’m hopeful that God can change Obama’s heart and I’m hopeful that Obama will listen to God’s promptings and callings on his life. I pray and God will do the rest.

I Give In...

2009-01-16T21:16:00.001-08:00

Over the past couple of months all I hear about at work, in small group, on the tv and on Facebook is this book 'Twilight'. I had no idea what it was about and had assumed that it had something to do with aliens and outer-space...I guess I made that assumption because 'twilight' makes me think of the sky...that's really all that I've got to back up my original theory on the book's contents. It's pretty weak- I realize that now.

So, anywhoo... I did, via word of mouth, find out that it was about vampires and, specifically, about the relationship between a vampire, Edward, and a human girl, Bella. This realization still didn't make me feel like I wanted to run out and buy a copy and read it because I'm not really into mythical creature-type of stories...never got into Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter, so I figured that I'd just go ahead and avoid this one as well. Plus, nothing ever lives up to the hype and I always end up disappointed.

Go back to Christmastime... I'm shopping in Wal-Mart and looking for gifts to buy and I head down the book aisle. You really can't help but notice the Twilight series. The covers are all black with something bright red on them (an apple, a flower, a ribbon, etc.). That and the fact that they took up about six shelves of bookspace. I've been wanting to get back to reading and that, coupled with the fact that it was only $8.88, I figured, why not? If I read through the first chapter and am utterly bored, I can always return it. (I would feel, ethically, okay doing this given that I would have only read 1/16th of the book :-)

The majority of the book is about introducing the various characters and their history. The author did a really good job of character building and you have no problem envisioning the town and the people in your mind. So, nothing terribly exciting, but interesting none-the-less.

THEN... about 3/4 of the way into the book, it took a twist, and for those 12 people out there who haven't read the book, let's just say that I reached the 3/4 mark around 11pm at night (when I should be going to bed) and stayed up about 3 more hours to finish the book. The next day I went to the bookstore and bought the second in the series, "New Moon", which, as of last night, I finished and I am 100 pages into the third book, "Eclipse".

And, again, I know that I was previously out of the loop on this book, but I seriously had no idea that it was classified as a 'Young Adult' book... I only found that out when I went to Borders last night and there was a large display of the books and the sign read "See What Your Teenagers Are Reading".

?!?!?!?!?

I almost felt embarrased walking up to the display to look at the books! When I was a tween I was reading 'Sweet Valley High' and 'The Babysitters Club', not 600+ page books. So, I again, have to give kudos to the author because the book really does appeal to a large audience and I never would have guessed that I was reading a book geared towards teenagers.

I also went and saw the movie a couple of weeks back and although you hear the usual, 'it wasn't as good as the book', I thought that it was entertaining...althought I still struggle with some of their choices of actors, based on looks. Edward, Bella, Carlisle, Esme and, especially, Annie are all fine...I think that they picked the right people...but, for those of you who have read the book and seen the movie....Rosalie??? Looked nothing like the book described her. I'm looking forward to the other movies and I'm glad that they're bringing back the same actors (for the most part anyway :-).

Go Ahead and Laugh All You Want...

2009-01-16T08:30:00.000-08:00

One of my resolutions this year is to be better about taking vitamins. I've got nothing against vitamins and, in fact, I've, medically, seen my health improve when I was taking them on a regular basis. Part of my problem is that it's just not a regular part of my routine, so I forget. But, truthfully, it wouldn't be difficult to work them into my routine and make it a daily habit because I've successfully done it before. Why I don't want to do it now is because, honestly, they can make me feel sick. Either it's taking them on an empty stomach, or trying to take too many different kinds at once...inevitably I get queasy. And, then there are the vitamins that look like they would be more appropriate going down the throat of a horse vs. a thirty-something female...those are always a kick in the pants.

But, the good Lord saw fit to send me a saving grace in the form of L'il Creatures Gummy Bear Vitamins for kids.

This is the part where you can go ahead and laugh at me all you want, but I can tell you that I haven't missed getting my recommended daily dosage of Calcium since I purchased these puppies at Costco. Now I just need to go back and buy the Multi-Vitamin Gummy Bears.

Truth be told, those gummy bears are GOOD! Just as tasty, if not tastier than their candy counterpart. So, while I now have no problem whatsoever with taking my vitamins, I now need to worry about ODing on them.

Day Trip to Julian

2009-01-15T07:23:00.001-08:00

It's crazy. I've lived in California my entire life, yet there are so many places, in my own backyard, that I haven't visited yet. You hear that a lot from people...we typically never experience the 'touristy' areas unless someone comes to visit us and then we go. I don't know why that is...I think, in part, I just have the mindset that, 'well, it's there, it's not going anywhere and I can go at anytime'. Problem is, I never go.

This past Sunday, I was able to check one of those places off of my list- Julian. Now, I wouldn't really consider Julian to be a 'tourist attraction'. As you're driving into San Diego, you don't see billboards advertising the city, nor are there even major hotel chains in the nearby area, but it's a place that it more known by southern Californians. Julian is a historic gold mining town that was founded during the Civil War. It's a very small town with only a couple of hundred residents, so you know that everyone knows everyone's business. It's unique in that it does experience all four seasons- tons of blossoming flowers in Spring, a lot of hiking and star gazing activities in Summer, Fall brings all of the beautiful fall colors along with apple picking season and it even snows in Winter.

Julian is really well known for their apple pies and along Main St. there are at least four bakeries that specialize in variations of the apple pie (keep in mind, Main St. is only two blocks long). We stopped at "Mom's" for some homemade apple pie and it really lived up to it's reputation.

When you arrive in Julian, on Main St, you really feel as though you've stepped back in time. They've kept it looking as authentic as possible, as you can see from the pictures. It epitomizes "quaint". I really loved it and I plan on going back in the Spring and Fall so that I can get me a little 'seasons' out here in California.

Here are some pictures from the trip...

New Year, New Furniture

2009-01-14T08:15:00.000-08:00

The New Year is supposed to be one of fresh starts and new beginnings. Something new to our home, as of this last weekend, is new living room furniture. Yay! I'm so excited!

You see, my sister and I have been living together for the past 12 years and we have had the exact same couch the entire time. It's not like we haven't tried to find new furniture. I've visited department stores, Living Spaces, Thomasville, Pier 1, Cost Plus, Pottery Barn, etc. etc. etc. over the years and to no avail. It completely baffled me that friends would tell me that they were going furniture shopping on a Friday and by Monday they have a completely new furniture set...just like that! It's seriously been years of looking for something that not only looked nice, but that was reasonably priced and that both my sister and I could agree on...just trying to satisfy one of those requirements would be difficult, but to have to meet all three was becoming impossible.

I was so tired of our old couch. Not that it hadn't been a good couch- I mean, it still looked pretty darn good after 12 years of use, but I just felt like I should have furniture in my home that wasn't furniture I had purchased back in college. Plus, with the addition of cats to our home, several years ago, we found that apparently our couch's function was not only to provide seating, but to attract every stray cat hair in our condo. I think that we may have, single-handedly, funded the college tuition for the children of the inventor of the Pet Hair Lint Rollers. And with it being a solid dark green couch, it's not like the couch disguised the fact that there was enough cat hair on there to knit a small sweater.

I had all but given up hope of finding new furniture. Until... I went to Costco last week to look for a cookbook and, there, in between the books and the gardening supplies was a row of furniture and nestled amongst the bar stools and race car beds, was the couch . I loved it. Perfect size, color and price, and, after sending my sister to take a look at it, she loved it too! Hallelujah! Not only that, but we also found two really nice chairs to go on either side of it. The couch was purchased last Friday and delivered on Saturday afternoon and we are now the proud owners of non-college, grown-up furniture. (or, I should really say that my sister is the proud owner as she purchased them... I just get to reep the benefits)

Our old beloved couch. May it rest in peace...or out in our garage until we can donate it somewhere.

Our new furniture...

Our new furniture when we leave the house and don't want the cats to get their grubby paws (and claws) into it.

Yes, it looks funny, but it all comes off when we get home. I just draw the line at putting plastic slipcovers over it.

I know, I know, call me crazy...how could I not love the way the light reflects off of the plastic, or that anyone within a 100 ft radius could hear the slightest movement I make while sitting, or let's not forget the fact that if I were to sit down, on a hot day, I'd be permanently stuck to my couch. I'm weird that way.

Birthday Celebration

2009-01-13T17:40:00.000-08:00

As you can tell from my last (very brief)post, it was my Mom's birthday. She, my Dad, and my Grandpa came down for the week to celebrate her b-day.

She started out the day with Creme Brulee French Toast that I had made the night before and, let me tell you... it was GOOD! You have to enjoy sweet food, but if you do, I can guarantee you'll like it and it's SO simple and you make it ahead the night before and just pop it in the oven in the morning. Here's the recipe for you cooks/bakers out there: (disclaimer- this is not my picture nor my recipe :-)

Ingredients:

1/2 Cup Unsalted Butter
1 Cup Packed Brown Sugar
2 Tbs Corn Syrup
8 slices of French Bread (approx 1 1/2 inches thick)
4 Eggs
1 1/2 Cups of Half and Half Cream
2-3 Tsp Vanilla
2 Tsp Brandy-based Orange Liqueur (Grand Marnier)
1/4 Tsp Salt
Cinnamon

Directions:

- Melt butter in the microwave and add brown sugar and corn syrup. Stir until the sugar is dissolved. Pour into the bottom of a 9X13 baking pan.

- Arrange bread, in a single layer, overtop of the brown sugar mixture in the pan.

- In a bowl, whisk together eggs, half and half, vanilla extract, orange brandy and salt. Pour over the bread. Cover and chill at least 8 hours or overnight.

- Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Remove the dish from the refrigerator, sprinkle top with cinnamon and place in preheated oven.

- Bake uncovered for 45-60 minutes in the oven, until puffed and lightly browned.

After breakfast, everyone, minus me, headed over to Disneyland for the day.

I met up with them, after work, for dinner at PF Chang's at Gardenwalk in Anaheim. Afterwards we came back for presents and cake.

A very busy day for everyone, but I think that all in all it was a good way for my Mom to spend her birthday.

Happy Birthday Mom!!!

2009-01-08T14:59:00.000-08:00

Unexplainable

2009-01-05T08:42:00.000-08:00

One of my daily blog reads is Stuff Christians Like. It is a hilarious look at the Christian life and some of the habits we have ... i.e. 'the side hug'. Rather than give a 'normal' hug, facing one another and wrapping both arms around one another, we come up to someone, take one arm, put it around their shoulder and only the side of the hips touch. I would say that this is moreso when it's someone that you aren't overly familiar with or if it's a boy/girl hug and either/both the boy and/or girl are married to someone else, because with my girlfriends, I give 'normal' hugs...but, I've definitely been known to side hug. The blog author is great at painting a picture in your mind with his words and oftentimes the comments from readers are equally hilarious. Every few blogs, he'll usually quip in with a more serious-toned blog, that isn't poking fun at anything/anyone and today was one of those. He made a New Year's resolution for himself and it's definitely one that I need to be more active in pursuing. So, here you go...

"...I think that each day, God gives us all a chance to be the unexplainable. To help someone when it doesn’t make sense. To love someone who is refusing to love us. To share something that, on the surface, leaves us with nothing of our own.

That is what evangelism is to me, the simple act of being the unexplainable.

That is my goal this year.

When cool goes right and God asks me to go left, I want to do the unexplainable.

When easy is up and God asks me to go down, I want to do the unexplainable.

When fake is free and honesty is expensive, I want to do the unexplainable.

I want to live my life in a way that raises questions. I want my actions and my attitude and everything I am to encourage people to think, “There’s something else.”

That’s my hope for you this year. That’s my hope for me this year.

Let’s be the unexplainable.

Fall!!!

2009-01-02T18:35:00.000-08:00

Can you believe it??? Southern California actually has a season! Look at these pictures of the beautiful Fall colors in my own backyard. Sure it's Winter, but who cares...

Elf Yourself

2009-01-02T10:55:00.001-08:00

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

Christmas in Pictures

2008-12-31T20:27:00.001-08:00

The drive back home.

Christmas Trees and Decorations

Setting up the train around the 'Disney' Christmas Tree.

Decorating sugar cookies.

Christmas Eve Candlelight Service

Our cats hate us...

Opening gifts.

The night ended with a lot of Wii Bowling...so much fun!

I hope that you and yours had a very Merry Christmas!!!

Lion Reunions

2008-12-31T10:36:00.001-08:00

I was reading the OC Register and they had a list of memorable stories from 2008. This video is one of them and I thought that it was way too cute!

Here's another lion reunion... this is the story behind this brief newsclip:

This woman in the video found this lion injured int eh forest ready to die. She took the lion with her and nursed the lion back to health. When the lion was better, she made arrangements with a zoo to take him and give it a home.

This video was taken when the woman after some time went to go visit the lion to see how he was doing.

Christmas Traditions

2008-12-19T08:11:00.000-08:00

I've filled out these email questions before, but saw them again on this blog this morning and thought it would be fun to put it out there and see what others might have to say...

1. Wrapping paper or gift bags? I've done both, but prefer wrapping paper because something is missing if you can't rip open a present

2. Real tree or Artificial? Probably artificial... you pay once and you have it for countless years and nowadays it's difficult to tell the difference between the two (with the exception of the pine smell). Plus my artificial one is pre-lit- wonderful!

3. When do you put up the tree? Typically within two weekends after Thanksgiving... mine went up this past Weds.

4. When do you take the tree down? Few days after New Years

5. Do you like eggnog? I'll have a couple of sips, but I'm not really into thick drinks. But, Eggnog Latte's from Peet's are my favorite!

6. Favorite gift received as a child? That's really hard...I have so many... probably Big Wheels and definitely when my parents bought a swingset for me.

7. Hardest person to buy for? Grandpa...always tells me not to buy him anything, but I can't do that :-)

9. Do you have a nativity scene? We have one in our home, but it's my sister's, so I guess, no, I don't have one.

10. Mail or email Christmas card? Mail...I prefer things being a little more personalized, but any Christmas wishes are appreciated

11.Worst Christmas gift you ever received? Never rec'd a bad gift. Unless you count those 'white elephant' games at Christmas parties, and in that case, I rec'd a CASSETTE tape of someone I've never heard of, playing songs I've never heard of on a piano

12. Favorite Christmas Movie? Can't chose just one..."It's a Wonderful Life","A Christmas Story", "Nat'l Lampoon's Christmas Vacation" and all of the old school clay-mation movies (Rudolph, Santa Claus is Coming to Town, etc.)

13. When do you start shopping for Christmas? Beginning of November

14. Have you ever recycled a Christmas present? Yes, one time. I prefer not to because I'm always worried that I'll give it back to the person who gave it to me in the first place. I typically will donate them vs. re-gift.

15. Favorite thing to eat at Christmas? Grandma's Sugar Cookies

16. Lights on the tree? Are you kidding me? Of course!

17. Favorite Christmas song? Can never pick just one... O Holy Night, All I Want for Christmas is You, I Wanna Hippopatamus for Christmas (I know- random, but it always puts a smile on my face)

18. Travel at Christmas or stay home? Depends on where my family is each Christmas

19. Can you name all 9 of Santa's reindeer's? Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, Vixen, Comet, Cupid, Donner, Blitzen & Rudolph... as long as you know the 'Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer' song, you're set

20. Angel on the tree top or a star? Angel

21. Open the presents Christmas eve or Christmas day? Both... it used to be that we'd go over to my Grandparents house and open all of their gifts to us on Christmas Eve and Christmas morning would be stockings, Santa's big gift and all of my parents presents

22. Most annoying thing about this time of the year? People caring more about a great deal than the person they are trampling over, in a rush, to get that great deal.

23. Favorite ornament theme or color? Santa, Reindeer, Snowman

24. Favorite for Christmas dinner? Prime rib, yorkshire pudding and all the fixin's

25. What do you want for Christmas this year? Not a whole heck of a lot- I don't need anything... I always like receiving books.

Your turn!

And I thought my Christmas lights were cool...

2008-12-17T17:35:00.000-08:00

Door of Faith Christmas Party

2008-12-16T17:41:00.000-08:00

I’m going to try and capture the highlights from our trip to Door of Faith Orphanage and if I miss anything I’ll just add it in another blog.

The day started out EARLY. We’re talking alarm going off at 4:30am early, but we did it. We drug ourselves out of bed and met up with everyone at the church. There were a lot of people- it’s been amazing to see these trips grow in numbers and this is only our third trip. The first trip there were 11 of us, the second trip we had around 15-20 people and on this trip we had approximately 30 people sign up to volunteer their time. I have to say that I was surprised that so many people were willing to give up an entire day, so close to Christmas, to drive 2-3 hours down and back up from Mexico…but, surprising in a good way. We ended up taking 7 SUVs/Vans down to Mexico…and, we really needed that much room… people aside, we also had somewhere in the neighborhood of 250-300 gifts with us. It was Kristen, Alex, Lisa,
Suzanne, Farzad, Brandon, Greg and myself in one van and we had a good group. We made it down to the border without any issues or any traffic (yay!) and we stopped at a McDonald’s just outside the border (you could literally see the border walls right behind McDonald’s). We wanted to take a brief bathroom break and give everyone the opportunity to grab something to eat. This was also the location we were meeting up with a couple of other volunteers who lived in the San Diego area. One of those volunteers was Santa Claus. You think that I’m joking, but just wait until you see the picture…this guy looks like the real deal and, as you’ll soon find out, he really has that Santa Claus spirit about him as well.

This is the story...

We had arranged for one of the volunteers to play Santa and he was going to rent/buy a Santa suit and bring it down with him. Well, a few days before we were going to leave, he backed out of the trip. So, now we have no Santa or Santa suit. Other volunteers began asking around to see if anyone knew where we could borrow a suit. One of our volunteers, Annie, actually knew a gentleman who plays Santa during Christmastime, so she asked if he knew where we could borrow a suit. He said that he wasn’t sure because he owns his own suit, so he never rents one. He asked why she was looking for one and she explained what we were doing and where we were going and the next question he asked was, ‘do you have a Santa to put in the Santa suit?’ She told him that we did not. He then asked if we wanted to have him go down to Mexico with us and he would bring his suit and play Santa. Being that we are on a tight (really non-existent) budget, Annie asked how much it would cost. He said, ‘can you afford free?’ Isn’t that great? This is someone who normally gets paid $175 just to show up at a location and then also gets paid $100 per hour. He was with us for approximately 11 hours…for those of you mathematically challenged like me, that’s $1275 that he could have been earning…especially during the busiest time of year for his business.

It was hilarious to see him walk into McDonalds…he didn’t have the full suit on, just a red turtleneck, but all of the kids heads just turned around and they stared at him, mouths opened. This guy’s beard, white hair and everything else are completely real…he even has the Santa spectacles.

So, off we went into Mexico…no issues getting over the border or arriving at the orphanage. As you can see from the pictures, the orphanage was all decked out for the holidays.

Of course, we had to get our pictures with Santa before the kids mobbed
him.

Then we began the process of unloading all of the presents and making sure that each one was accounted for and that each child had a gift. I have to say that I was really amazed by the amount of restraint the kids showed… they came over and were looking at the presents and trying to find their names, but I was expecting that, like most little kids, they would come up and grab a present and walk away, but they were all really good. Next we had some of the girls set up stations and they did
manicures and face painting.

Then there was the bounce house and potato sack races.

Even Santa got in on the action with the bounce house!

In the meantime, we had a few buys BBQ’ing lunch for all of the kids and us…hamburgers, hot dogs and chips.

As you can see it was a bit chilly… after lunch we used the BBQ as a ‘warming station’.

Next came the long awaited gifts. Santa sat down and as each child’s name was called, they went up, took a picture with Santa, took their gift and went off to open them up.

After gifts, we had two piñatas. Apparently, once the piñatas busted open and the candy fell to the ground, the kids piled on top of one another, in true football fashion, trying to get at the candy.

The last event of the day was the Christmas cookie decorating. Once again, I was surprised…I mean, I’ve seen how these kids love their candy, so I figured that they’d probably come in and just eat the candy and the cookie and, sure, there were a couple who did that, but for the most part, the kids really took their time frosting the cookies and then methodically laying the pieces of candy on the cookie. They were really creative and they were so proud of their cookies! I even saw a couple of kids walk out of the room with their cookies on a plate and they were taking them back to their rooms. Really cute.

Now, it was time to head back home. This is typically the only part of the trip that I don’t like. Not only because I have to leave the kids, but because I know that a long wait is ahead of us at the border. Remember how, earlier, I said that it was no problem crossing over the border from the U.S. to Mexico? The same cannot be said for the return trip back to the U.S. Once you approach the border, you are talking about a 2-3 hour wait to get up to the checkpoint and then you have to
just pray that yours isn’t one of the cars that they choose to do a secondary check on…cause if that’s the case, you’re talking about adding on another hour. (it happened to me in Canada but, knock on wood, it hasn’t happened in Mexico) We chose to use our wait time wisely by doing, what else but eating. There is definitely not a shortage of vendors along the streets near the border. They are selling verything
from 3 foot long statues of a crucified Jesus to ceramic frogs, to fruit and churros. I think that the only thing that they don’t sell in the carts is alcohol…and trust me, after 3 hours of waiting, I wish that they did serve it (being that I was not driving the vehicle of course). I could have gone for a bottle of beer at that point. But, like I said, we made the best of it. We bought some sort of seasoned corn on the cob which was, apparently, delicious and I, of course, went the sweet route and bought churros. Seriously some of the best churros I’ve ever had-
they beat Disneyland’s by a long shot… not to mention that they cost about a sixth of the cost of a Disneyland churro. :-)

Finally, we did make it over… but, not before some guy in a car next to us, peed into a bottle and then dumped it out his car window. Really. You can’t make this stuff up.

I definitely plan on going back and being there has given me even more incentive to relearn the Spanish language as most of the kids only speak Spanish and I’d really love to be able to talk to them. The party was great and the kids were beyond adorable and I’m so glad that I went!

Easy Way Out???

2008-12-12T18:29:00.000-08:00

My plans always start out big, have a lot of attention to detail and
involve a lot of work. Then I realize that I only have 24 hours in a
day and if I actually want to take time to eat or sleep, then I need to
modify my plans. And, so the story goes with baking the sugar cookies
for the orphanage this weekend. I had planned on baking 10 dozen
cookies from scratch, but then I went to Costco and found this
wonderful purchase…

I seriously stood at the Krusteaz Sugar Cookie Mix display for 10
minutes going back and forth as to whether or not I should make the
purchase or if I should suck it up and go back to the original plan of
making them from scratch. At $5.67 a bag (which makes 15 dozen cookies), the cookie mix won out- there would have been no way I could have baked 10 dozen homemade cookies for under $6 and the time-savings was definitely a plus. So, I threw the
mix and the other ingredients into my KitchenAid Mixer (which is the
BEST THING EVER!!!)

Then rolled out the dough, cut them into ornament shapes (although they
bare a slight resemblance to little pumpkins) put them on a cookie sheet
and slid them into the oven.

And, what good is a sugar cookie, if you don’t add more sugar to it???
I’m specifically referring to frosting and candy decorations. So, we’ve
stocked up on a bunch of those items and will be taking them down to
Mexico with us so the kids can decorate Christmas Cookies at the
Christmas Party.

I’m anticipating a HUGE mess, but I think that it will
be fun nonetheless.

Cookie decorating aside, as mentioned in a previous blog, we were able to get all 115 kids sponsored so that each one would have Christmas presents this year. Take a look at the stack of gifts I had going in the garage (and keep in mind that this stack of presents is only for 15 of the kids)

Here are some of them loaded up and ready to go in my car.

So, we are off to Door of Faith Orphanage tomorrow morning... bright and EARLY. Actually we are meeting up at 5:30am, so it's technically going to be DARK and EARLY. Please pray for no 'hiccups' in the last minute planning. Please also pray for safe travels on the roads and in Mexico, for safety (in general) in Mexico, for good weather, for all of the kids to have a great day and just for us to have an impact on the kids and for God's will to be done. Thank you all and I'll be posting soon with an update on the trip.

Franciscan Benediction

2008-12-12T07:58:00.001-08:00

I saw this prayer on another blog and thought that it really summed up what we should really be praying about. It is from a Franciscan Benediction. We (and I'm looking in the mirror when I say this) oftentimes pray too much about things that are directly effecting us and we pray that those circumstances improve/change. We certainly don't pray that our hearts be broken or that we feel any sort of discomfort whatsoever. This prayer goes against the grain of what I typically think about when I think of praying and I think these are the types of prayers that God would like to hear more of.

May God bless you with discomfort at easy answers, half truths, and superficial relationships, so that you may live deep within your heart.

May God bless you with anger at injustice, oppression, and exploitation of people, so that you may work for justice, freedom and peace.

May God bless you with tears to shed for those who suffer from pain, rejection, starvation, and war, so that you may reach out your hand to comfort them and to turn their pain in to joy.

And may God bless you with enough foolishness to believe that you can make a difference in this world, so that you can do what others claim cannot be done.

Spend Less on Gifts. Give More Presence.

2008-12-06T22:19:00.000-08:00

Love that quote. It came from this amazing video.

Deck the Halls Part Deux

2008-12-04T20:09:00.000-08:00

Can't start an evening without some caffeine! Peet's Eggnog Lattes are one of my favorite holiday drinks... thanks to them, I drink more coffee in the month of December than I do all year long.

I tried to take pictures, at night, of the outside lights and I couldn't get a clear picture, but I thought this one came out interesting looking.

Living Room decorations... many of which are brought to you courtesy of Costco.

Putting the faux pre-lite Christmas Tree together(again courtesy of Costco)...part 1...

Part 2...

Part 3- the finale

And we top it off with the Angel

I think that our cats are more excited about the Christmas Tree than we are. They've spent the last 24 hours sitting and staring at the lights and laying under the tree...very cute!

Assembling the Christmas Village...

MAGGIE-ZILLA!!!

The cats were all very wary of the "Frosty the Snowman" singing snowman (he also bobs up and down).

Completely tuckered-out and ready to sleep- but all of our decorations up and our home is completely covered in festive decorations from ceiling to floor.

Deck the Halls

2008-12-01T15:27:00.000-08:00

I had grandiose expectations for myself this past weekend. I had planned to get all Thanksgiving decorations down, put in the box and put back up in the attic and to also get all of the Christmas decorating done. Didn’t happen. I did manage to get the Thanksgiving decorations back up in the attic and the outdoor decorations up- yay me!

I have to say that, for some reason, every year I am utterly shocked at the amount of Christmas decorations we have. I don’t know why. I’m the one who boxes them up and has to haul them up into the attic (with my sister’s help) which always involves a complete rearrangement of the attic set-up, just so I can get all of the boxes to fit… so, I have no idea why I’m continually surprised.

This year I had the brilliant idea of trying to bring down some of the boxes on my own. That effort ended about as quickly as it began… it ended just about the time both myself and baby Jesus, from the manger scene, (not to be confused with the real baby Jesus :-) about fell out of the attic. I did manage to get about 7 boxes down before that happened. Several days later I asked my sister to help me get the remaining boxes down… I told her that I had already gotten 7 down, so there couldn’t be more than 3-4 more. 8 boxes later, they were all down. See what I mean about being surprised by the amount of decorations??? We have 15 boxes of Christmas decorations alone… and our place is not all that big. Needless to say, I still have a lot more decorating to do, but here is what’s been accomplished so far… (I still have to take a picture at night so you can see all of the lights I put up out front)

My Supervisors...

Happy Birthday to Tricia!!!

2008-12-01T15:02:00.000-08:00

I always feel a little bad for people whose birthdays fall either on, or near, a major holiday. I mean, they really get jipped, don’t they? A Birthday is supposed to be the one day of the year that is all about you and to have it overshadowed by another event has to be a bit of a bummer. Especially for those people who love to celebrate their birthdays. My friend, Tricia, is one of those people. Her birthday is December 15th, which is still 10 days before Christmas, but, as a holiday, Christmas is in a league all it’s own… if your birthday even falls somewhere in the month of December, then you are competing with the holiday of holidays. For the past couple of years, our group of friends has ended up combining Tricia’s birthday celebration with our annual Christmas dinner, simply because schedules are booked this time of year and we have to take what we can get. This year we planned far enough in advance and we celebrated her birthday this past Saturday… yes, two weeks ahead of her birthday, but at least it was her night and her night alone.

We went to Bar Louie at Gardenwalk in Anaheim. It’s a relatively new restaurant and it’s located at the back of Gardenwalk, so it seems to get a lot less foot traffic than the more popular Cheesecake Factory, P.F. Changs and Bubba Gumps located at the front the center, so needless to say, there was no wait.

I have to admit that as soon as I opened up the menu, I was regretting that I had a late lunch… there were so many yummy sounding dishes (all horribly bad for you, but yummy none-the-less) I mean, they had pizzas and sliders and burgers and mac & cheese and the list of bad food goes on and on!

And it probably would’ve been really good, had we gotten what we all ordered.  There were so many mix-ups with the food. Food had to be sent back because it was never ordered, there were tomatoes on sandwiches when we ordered no tomatoes, one order didn’t arrive until half way through the meal and I was given tater tots instead of fries (horror or horrors! ). Oddly enough, it actually gave us all a good laugh on several occasions during the meal and I gathered, from everyone, that the food that they did get was pretty good and all in all, we had a great time catching up with one another.

Oliva & Tricia

Me, Tricia & Dana

Dana & Dorell

Seems that most of us thought that clothing was the best gift… I think that Tricia acquired a small wardrobe on Saturday night.

We really had a great time and I definitely don’t get to see some of my favorite people often enough! (and crazy to think that I’ve been friends with them for 9+ years!)

Few of My Favorite Things...

2008-11-28T21:04:00.000-08:00

In the spirit of Thanksgiving, I decided to create a list of some of the things I'm grateful for. Of course, I'm grateful for and to God, my Dad, my Mom, my sister and my Grandpa, as well as all of my friends (I won't even attempt to name you all here because I'll surely forget someone). Of course I'm also grateful for my health, that I have a roof over my head and food in my cupboards. But, those major things aside, I created a list of the 'little things' I'm grateful for this time of year.

* Thanksgiving leftovers
* Sitting in the dark with just the Christmas Tree lights on
* Sound of rain on the roof
* Leaves changing colors and the crunching sound they make when I walk on them
* Baking my Grandma's Christmas Sugar Cookie recipe
* Time off from work!
* Christmas music playing 24/7 on the radio station- especially the old school Bing Crosby, Nate King Cole, Irving Berlin, etc.
* Seeing the Christmas ornaments I made back in elementary school
* Houses decorated with lights- especially the over-the-top decorations
* Eggnog Lattes
* Christmas movies- especially 'It's a Wonderful Life', Christmas Story and 'Nat'l Lampoon's Christmas Vacation'
* Animated/clay-mation versions of Frosty the Snowman, Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, Santa Claus is Coming to Town, etc.
* Sound of jingle bells
* Putting up the Christmas decorations

Those are a few of my favorites this time of year...I'm sure there are many more that I'm forgetting.

Gobble Till You Wobble

2008-11-28T19:43:00.001-08:00

Thanksgiving was yesterday. My sister had to work all day, so rather than sit around the house by myself, I signed up to help with the set-up of a couple of local community Thanksgiving Dinners. Both were in Placentia, where I used to live and I have to say that I was pretty surprised at the state of several neighborhoods in Placentia. You basically make a right turn, where I would have normally gone straight, and all of a sudden you are in a run down neighborhood, with bars on the windows and gangs on the street corners. They blocked off an entire block, cleaned it up and set up tables, chairs and just as I was leaving, the caterers (who donated all of the food) arrived. Then on to the second location, the Placentia Boys & Girls Club, where I helped to move tables/chairs around and decorate the location. Then back off to home where I spent the rest of the afternoon making a modified, scaled down version of Thanksgiving Dinner... really the only difference was that I just cooked a Turkey breast vs. a whole Turkey... the rest was the same. Here are a couple of pictures...

My first attempt at Sweet Potato Pie... turned out pretty yummy!

Had to have the Cranberry Sauce from a can... for nostalgia's sake.

Suzy getting the turkey ready for serving.

Hope that everyone had a great Thanksgiving!!!

2008-11-25T20:57:00.000-08:00

Thanks to the generosity of many people, we have already found sponsors for each of the 115 children who live at the Door of Faith Orphanage! So, from me to you... THANK YOU!

Door of Faith Orphanage

2008-11-19T13:38:00.000-08:00

In the first part of December a group of us from Saddleback Church will be heading down to La Mision, Mexico, for the day, to throw a Christmas Party for the 115 kids who live at the Door of Faith Orphanage.

We’ve partnered with this orphanage several times over the past year and have found that many of the children have been taken in by the orphanage due to abuse/neglect from their family members or their family is simply too impoverished to provide for their children’s everyday needs. It’s fairly rare that children are adopted out of Mexico’s orphanages because of the laws put in place by the Mexican government and the fact that if you adopt one child, then you are required to adopt all of their siblings as well- a task which most adoptive parents aren’t prepared to take on. As a result, these kids typically spend their entire lives in an orphanage.

Door of Faith does an amazing job of making the orphanage as much of a home as possible and providing for a sense of normalcy and hope in these kid’s lives. DOFO’s main focuses are:

Family- to provide a family atmosphere for their kids For example, they have someone act as the Tooth Fairy as the younger kids begin losing their baby teeth. They also ensure that each child has their own cake on their birthdays and as the girls turn 15, they each have a Quinceanera party for them.

Education- each child is placed in school. School is considered a luxury in this part of Mexico and many children grow up with minimal education. Not only does DOFO provide for schooling up to age 18, they have also helped provide financial support for those DOFO ‘graduates’ who are looking to go to college- they currently are financially supporting one of their kids as they go through Law School in Mexico City.

Community- DOFO is committed to providing back to the community they live in. If they ever receive a surplus of supplies or food, they ensure that it is distributed amongst the other orphanages in the area who may not have received as many donations. They also go out into the community and, in a fashion similar to Habitat for Humanity, build homes for those who have no homes.

As you can tell, DOFO is a wonderful organization who is committed to bettering their community, educating the next generation, and, most of all, in words taken from their website:

“The very reason we are here is to serve our Lord Jesus Christ through serving and seeking Him; our ultimate goal here is to raise responsible Christian adults.”

If you have any interest in providing a Christmas gift for one of these children, please go to this blog for instructions on how to do so.

http://www.loveinaction318.blogspot.com/

If you would prefer to provide a monetary donation, please click on this link and all proceeds will go towards helping the Door of Faith Orphanage.

http://www.firstgiving.com/dooroffaith

Thank you and God Bless!

Jul

Firestorms

2008-11-15T20:59:00.001-08:00

Southern California Fires

The apartments off of our exit that burned down.

I know...you're probably wondering why in the heck I'm blogging after having been evacuated because of the fires. But, it's either do this or sit and continue to watch the news which is just serving to confuse me because in the dark, all you see is fire...I can't tell where the fire is located. My thoughts right now are too fuzzy and jumbled to begin to explain today, so I'll have to do that at a later time, but I have to say that it's been so incredibly humbling and I have such a, really indescribable, feeling of gratitude. Everyone, both family and friends have been so incredibly supportive and caring. I think that I may have already used up my monthy text message allotment in just one day :-) So many people have been texting and leaving me voice mails to check in and make sure I'm okay, to see if I need a place to stay, to let me know that they are praying for me and I still continue to receive texts into the night of people checking in to see how I'm doing. I've never really doubted that I have a wonderful family and great friends, but I have just been truely amazed by everyone's support, love and concern.

I can say that I've truely had one of those experiences where I've felt others' prayers. As we were forced to leave our home and I was driving away, I couldn't even hold it together...I actually made wrong turns about 4 times trying to get to my sister's boyfriend's place, just because I couldn't even think straight. But, within 1/2 hour of sending out a prayer request, I had an inexplicable calm come over me. So, thank you all for your prayers and, please, continue to pray that no more homes would be destroyed, no lives lost, that God would give a supernatural amount of endurance to the firefighters battling this blaze and that He would cover them in Him protection, that the weather would turn favorable (rain would be fantastic!) and that God would comfort those who have already lost their homes. All of these things I pray in Jesus' name. Amen.

Must Read

2008-11-12T18:23:00.000-08:00

I read a lot of books. I would guess that I'm currently in the middle of 3-4 books. I would say that I'm rarely disappointed in a book and that's mainly thanks to Amazon.com and their wonderful reader rating system. If it's anything below 4 stars, I probably won't read it; and, this method has proved to be very successful for me thus far. Case in point... "Same Kind of Different As Me". I purchased a book on Amazon and it came up with the screen, "If you liked this book, you'll probably like these books" type of thing, and this book was one of those listed. Out of 200+ reviews, "SKoDM" was rated 5 stars. I'm already impressed and I haven't even purchased the book yet. So, I did buy it and read it within a couple of days and, I have to say, it was a REALLY good book.

It's a true story and it's narrated from the points of view of the two main characters, Denver and Ron. Denver was, essentially, a slave working a plantation long after slavery was abolished. He ultimately leaves the plantation to find a better life and ends up destitute and homeless, living on the streets of Fort Worth. Ron, on the other hand, was an upper class art dealer living in TX. Their lives intersect when Ron's wife, Deborah decides that they need to do something with their lives and signs them up to serve meals at the Union Gospel Mission in Ft. Worth.

The story is about the impact these two men had on one another's lives and the deep friendship that they formed. It's truely a testament to divine appointments and seeing God use people in the body of Christ. Whether you believe in God or not, you won't be able to help but love this book and fall in love with a man who, by society's standards is uneducated, but whose words are enormously full of wisdom and insight, whose actions are full of love, and whose heart is full of grace and forgiveness.

Just a couple of my favorite 'Denver quotes':

"Whether we is rich or poor or something in between, this earth ain't no final restin' place. So in a way, we is all homeless- just workin' our way toward home."

"Just tell'em I'm a nobody that's trying to tell everybody 'bout a Somebody that can save anybody."

If I cant' have the real thing, I'll enjoy my virtual puppies...

2008-11-12T12:15:00.000-08:00

Our Hope is in You

2008-11-06T20:12:00.000-08:00

I’ve been trying to sort through these past couple of days since the election. I’ve just been feeling tremendously sad about this election and trying to figure out where that sadness was coming from. I’ve concluded that it’s stemming from a few things…yes, I’m not happy that Barrack is our new President and I DEFINITELY do not agree with him on numerous issues, but I’ll save that for another post. But, I’m not even as much concerned about him only because his power is limited. He can only do what God allows. My sadness stems from the public’s reaction to him winning the election and their reaction to Barack himself. On the news, out in public, on Facebook, on tv I keep hearing people make statements that are just downright disturbing to me. That’s what I want to talk about in these next couple of paragraphs:

“I’ve never felt to proud to be an American”, “I feel so patriotic”, etc. …. really? Prior to Obama being named President, you weren’t patriotic? The USA absolutely has it’s problems, but you’re telling me that the love you felt for our country on November 5th is so much greater than it was on November 4th? I certainly know that I take my country for granted, and apparently many other people do as well. If you really feel that you didn’t have reason to be patriotic prior to Obama, then I recommend that you go visit another country. Go to a country where 95% of the police are corrupt and they take bribes to look the other way when children as young as 5 years old are being prostituted out to the highest bidder. Go to a country that, 14 years ago, was ravaged by a genocide where almost a million people were slaughtered in the course of 3 months, while the government either looked the other way or participated in the killings themselves. Or how about an article I read today about a 13 year old girl in Somalia who seeked help from the government because she had been raped by 3 men. Their reaction??? Accuse her of adultery, drag her screaming and begging for mercy, in a pit in the ground where 50 men proceeded to stone her to death, all while 1,000 people looked on. Maybe before we start bemoaning how bad our government is, let’s think of the options available to us in the rest of the world. Our patriotism shouldn’t be based on a man being elected into office.

I’m also constantly hearing how ‘historic’ this election is…we now have an African American President. Sure. Absolutely. That is historic. It just makes me question people’s motives for who they voted for. Were we more concerned with making history or electing the right person? Just as much as the color of someone’s skin doesn’t make them a bad person, it also doesn’t make them a good person either, or the right person in this case. I’m certain that most people didn’t vote based on race alone, but I have heard several people and groups, prior to the election, proclaiming that, if you were a minority living in the U.S. you have no excuse to not vote for Obama. That’s one of the most ridiculous statements I’ve heard. Basically, they were telling us to vote based on skin color… how is that any different than if I were to vote for someone simply because he/she was white? There is no difference and I think that way of thinking is dangerous.

Lastly, and probably the statement that upsets me the most, is hearing people say that they now have ‘hope’. Hope for our country, hope for their children’s future and for themselves. I don’t get that… did they really have no hope before??? And, if that is the case, then don’t you think that they’ve been putting their hope in the wrong thing/person? I certainly wasn’t putting my hope, or planning on putting my hope, in McCain. My hope was, and is, in God and I was hopeful that McCain would willingly let God guide his actions and decisions. It really breaks my heart to hear people felt hopeless prior to Obama and now, all of a sudden, they have hope. Well, I hate to break it to ya, but Obama is not the Messiah. He’s not perfect and putting your hope into anything that is imperfect is really taking a risk, because you’re going to be disappointed when Obama can’t live up to your idealistic expectations of him.

I truly can’t help but think that God is grieving…not over who won the election, but over the fact that all of the praise, faith, hope, attention and trust that He is worthy of, is all going to another.

It's really important that we all start praying for our nation. Praying for the people of this nation and for our new President. I pray that he would allow himself to be guided by and make decisions according to God's will, not his own or the popular majority.

No Excuses.... VOTE!!!

2008-11-03T20:32:00.000-08:00

The message of this post is short and sweet.... VOTE!

You have absolutely no excuse not to. We so often forget that it is a PRIVILEDGE to vote. In so many other countries people are just now earning the right to vote and you find many of those people willing to walk DAYS to get to a place where they can cast their vote... and they are excited to do it! In many of these same countries, women still don't have the right to vote and there was a time in our country when we didn't have that right either. I think that we, as women, often take that for granted. We read in our history classes about women's suffrage and how we earned the right to vote...but, do you realize what some women endured to earn us that right? This is an excerpt from an email I received several months ago (I've already verified on Snopes.com that it's true :) :

*************************************************************************************

Why Women Should Vote

This is the story of our Grandmothers and Great-grandmothers; they lived only 90 years ago.

Remember, it was not until 1920 that women were granted the right to go to the polls and vote.

The women were innocent and defenseless, but they were jailed nonetheless for picketing the White House, carrying signs asking for the vote.

And by the end of the night, they were barely alive. Forty prison guards wielding clubs and their warden's blessing went on a rampage against the 33 women wrongly convicted of 'obstructing sidewalk traffic.'

They beat Lucy Burns, chained her hands to the cell bars above her head and left her hanging for the night, bleeding and gasping for air. They hurled Dora Lewis into a dark cell, smashed her head against an iron bed and knocked her out cold. Her cellmate, Alice Cosu, thought Lewis was dead and suffered a heart attack. Additional affidavits describe the guards grabbing, dragging, beating, choking, slamming, pinching, twisting and kicking the women.

Thus unfolded the 'Night of Terror' on Nov. 15, 1917, when the warden at the Occoquan Workhouse in Virginia ordered his guards to teach a lesson to the suffragists imprisoned there because they dared to picket Woodrow Wilson's White House for the right to vote. For weeks, the women's only water came from an open pail. Their food--all of it colorless slop--was infested with worms.

When one of the leaders, Alice Paul, embarked on a hunger strike, they tied her to a chair, forced a tube down her throat and poured liquid into her until she vomited. She was tortured like this for weeks until word was smuggled out to the press.

*************************************************************************************

And, we don't vote why???

I pray that we each pray about these votes we are going to cast tomorrow. Prayfully consider each candidate and each proposition and rest in the fact that

"Everyone must submit himself to governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God." Romans 13:1

God is in control. Regardless of whom our next President is or which propositions pass/fail, God is sovreign and He can bring good out of anything that we might initially see as bad. Apart from God, neither of these men can do anything, so why get stressed out, worked up or angry tomorrow??? Like Pastor Rick said yesterday, "I'm not counting on any politician to be my Savior."

Happy Halloween!!!

2008-11-02T17:29:00.001-08:00

I don't think that I'll ever be too old for dress up...

Here are some of my wonderful co-workers... what a great costume, right???

I, literally, decided to wear my costume at 9pm the night before. I hadn't really given any thought to what I wanted to be for Halloween and just figured that I would take advantage of the denim day at work. But, I know me and I would have been disappointed if I hadn't dressed up...it just doesn't feel quite like Halloween without the dress-up piece.

It was a fun day at work. My company has Halloween costume contests and pumpkin carving contests and some people get REALLY into it. There was a department who dressed up like the Verizon Wireless Network. They had one guy dressed up as the main guy and a bunch of people following behind him with laptops and periodically he would stop and say, "can you hear me now?". Then there was the bowling ball and pins. They all went out onto the lawn area and the 'pins' lined up in formation and the 'bowling ball' ran towards them and they all fell down to the ground...it was classic. Then in the pumpkin contest there was one entry that had a couple of pumpkins who were screaming and in front of them was a pie crust, cinnamon, whipping cream and a recipe for pumpkin pie. People are really creative...they come up with such amazing ideas! Anyway, it was a great Halloween.

I'm Lazy

2008-11-01T19:46:00.001-07:00

I haven't posted in over a week and this post isn't really going to make up for it :) I just wanted to attach a YouTube Video that I really like. It's called 'Cardboard Testimonies' and I think that it speaks for itself.

Least of These

2008-10-23T21:35:00.000-07:00

Contrary to popular belief, I'm not (and we're not) here for ourselves. That's not a popular concept, especially in Southern California where everyone wants the newest gadget, the namebrand clothes, the big house, the expensive car, etc. We've taken on the mentality that we have to look out for 'number 1' and that we have to try and have as much fun as possible. While I know that God wants us to enjoy our life, I know that He's called each and everyone of us to a much higher purpose than being able to afford the latest Louis Vuitton bag. We are supposed to be helping the widows, orphaned, oppressed. Day after day I keep thinking about Matthew, where Jesus tells us:

"For I was hungry, and you fed me. I was thirsty, and you gave me a drink. I was a stranger, and you invited me into your home. I was naked, and you gave me clothing. I was sick, and you cared for me. I was in prison, and you visited me."

The righteous ones then ask Him when it was that they did these things... they didn't remember helping Jesus in this way, and Jesus' response is:

"I tell you the truth, when you did it to one of the least of these my brothers and sisters,you were doing it to me!"

BUT, the opposite is true as well. For when Jesus told them:

For I was hungry, and you didn’t feed me. I was thirsty, and you didn’t give me a drink. 43 I was a stranger, and you didn’t invite me into your home. I was naked, and you didn’t give me clothing. I was sick and in prison, and you didn’t visit me.’

And, again, He is asked when it was that they ignored Jesus' when He was in need, and His reply is:

‘I tell you the truth, when you refused to help the least of these my brothers and sisters, you were refusing to help me.’

I can't stop thinking about those words. Of course, all of us would agree that if we saw Jesus lying on the street, we'd see what we could do to help him, but here Jesus is saying that when we fail to recognize the needs of someone or fail to help them, we are failing to help Him. There are so many times when I walk past a homeless person on the street and I just feel sad, because I begin to wonder, 'was that Jesus that I just passed by?' Was that a test to see if I would help 'the least of these' and I completely failed? There's a song out now by Monk and Neagle titled "21st Time" and there's a section of the song that always sticks with me:

Nowhere to live
Nowhere to fall
He used to have money
But he’s wasted it all
His face is a photograph burned in mind
But I pretend not to see him for the twenty-first time

He sleeps under stars, it’s all he can afford
His blanket’s an old coat he’s had since the war
He stands on the corner of Carter and Vine
But I pretend not to see him for the twenty-first time

He may be a drifter who’s grown old and gray
But what if it’s Jesus and I walk away
I say I’m the body and drink of the wine
But I pretend not to see him for the twenty-first time

I say I'm 'the body', but I'm beginning to recognize how little my actions reflect what I say. Because, in reality, if that homeless person on the street is a believer, then they have God's spirit in them, so I really am just passing by God, Himself, and doing nothing.

I've always fallen back on several excuses... there are too many people in need, so how can I give money to one person and not the other 50 standing on that street? So, I do nothing. The other excuse is that if I give them money, they'll probably just use it to buy drugs and/or alcohol. But, really... is that MY concern? God calls me to give to the needy, not give to the needy, but only if I can be sure they won't spend it on drugs. I'm called just to give. Period. What they do with that gift, is really between them and God and I need to remove my 'holier than thou' self from the equation and let God work in them and on changing their hearts.

I haven't quite figured out what I'm going to do about all of this, but things have got to change and I have to continue to pray for God's direction and guidance and I've added a couple of other things onto that prayer... I pray that God would give me His eyes to see everyone as He does, His ears to hear the cries of those in need, and His courage to get off of my behind and do something about it.

Praying About the Little Things

2008-10-20T13:45:00.001-07:00

Don’t worry about anything; instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need, and thank him for all he has done. Phil 4:6

God cares about the details. For those of us who are followers of Christ, chances are, you’ve heard this scripture countless times. Anytime we start to worry about something, we are reminded that God commands us not to worry and, instead, we should pray. But, do we really think about that second part of the verse, “pray about everything”?

Everything.

There are no guidelines or parameters as to what falls within this category because everything means everything. So we know, in our minds, that God wants us to pray about everything, but how many of us actually take that head knowledge and translate it into heart knowledge? How many of us really apply this principle? Sure, we’ll pray about the ‘big’ things… for someone who is battling a disease, someone whose child has died, for people starving around the world, for an end to violence, etc. But, what about the seemingly ‘little’ things? Lost car keys, to lose those 10 lbs, for a front row parking spot?

I can’t speak for anyone else, but, for myself I know that I never used to pray about the little things. My reasoning was that God had bigger fish to fry than to help me find the earrings I misplaced and that it was foolish to even take up his time with such prayers. Looking back, I think that I saw prayers almost as though they came to God through email… they would come in order of request and God would read through them one by one and answer them in order. So, my way of thinking was, here was my “lost earring prayer” sandwiched in between a prayer for healing of someone dying and someone praying for a job so they could put food on the table and if God had to read through and answer my prayer, that meant a delay in responding to the person praying for a job and their prayer really was more important than mine. Apparently, I thought God was only capable of doing one thing at a time.

Talk about putting God in a box. I was trying to put human limitations on a God who has no limitations.

However, over the course of the past few years, I’ve gotten better about remembering to pray about all things and, you know what? God shows up time and time again, being faithful as He always is. Just last week I was having trouble finding my camera. I needed my camera that night and it wasn’t in any of the usual spots… camera bag, computer desk, kitchen table or my car. I could feel a mild panic creeping in. Now if you’ve known me for long, you probably know my track record with cameras- they don’t live for long when they are around me, and now it appeared that one had gone missing. I had to tell myself to not worry and I was reminded of Phil 4:6; so, I prayed about it. Nothing elaborate or fancy … no “Oh Lord of Lords, King of Kings, if it’s in thy will, please help me findest my camera” (I’m cracking myself up because I never pray like that- I’m not that eloquent), but it was just a quick, “Lord, please jog my memory as to where I left my camera.” Then I went about busily getting ready to go out. I was going up and down the stairs and into various rooms, gathering everything up that I needed and I walked out to the garage and I just stopped, looked around me and, for the life of me, I couldn’t remember why in the heck I had come out to the garage. I looked around, figuring it would come to me. It didn’t. So, I turned around and started to walk back into the house and there, sitting on the workbench, was my camera. God cares about the little things.

Not only is it important to pray about the little things, but you also have to remember to acknowledge and thank God for responding to those ‘little thing’ prayers. Don’t brush it off as a coincidence or, worse yet, pat yourself on the back as though you solved the problem. Instead, take a second and thank God and find joy in the fact that GOD, the Creator of absolutely everything, wants to be that involved in your life because He loves you that much. That’s definitely something to smile about.

Minor Change

2008-10-19T01:06:00.001-07:00

This blog was originally created to journal my trip to Thailand and while I did do that, as you can see, I've continued blogging, so I thought that it was about time that I changed the title of my blog and the description... so, that's why it looks a bit different.

"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing."

2008-10-17T22:12:00.000-07:00

God gives us His Word.

The Bible is a guide to understanding what matters to God, and what should, therefore, matter to us. And we find that some of the people-groups God cares most about are: widows, orphans, the poor & the oppressed. Oftentimes the reason someone will fall into one of these categories is due to some form of injustice that has occurred in their lives. Evil. I don't even like to watch the news anymore. All it does is confirm and multiple my fears about how evil is pervading our lives. These fears build upon one another until I am completely overwhelmed and rather than do one thing, I feel paralyzed and I do nothing.

I've been reading this book, "Just Courage" that is written by the President of the International Justice Mission. IJM is responsible for locating injustices within the world and going in and trying to 'right the wrong'. Sometimes this is through offering free legal services to those who are seeking justice, other times (and what is more often the case) it means that they are physically going into the brothels, the rice mills and factories and literally saving people by sneaking them out and getting help. It's definitely not a 'safe' job.

Several things, in this book, stood out to me and I'll mention a couple.

In response to people thinking that they can't make a difference in the face of crushing evil, the author of "Just Courage" states, "...while our arguments against the impracticality of doing justice are understandable, they are ultimately not very interesting to Jesus. Nor are they very helpful to the slave boy or to the prisoner being tortured or to the widow brutally thrown off her land. Imagine yourself enslaved in a rice mill or handcuffed on a concrete floor or violently chased from your own home, and then picture yourself listening to millions of Christians explain why there is nothing they can do to help you."

Ouch.

Oftentimes I can think up good, even great, excuses as to why I don't do something. I need to keep myself safe, I would probably just mess things up, and there's nothing I can do, are but a few of the excuses I oftentimes generate in my mind to avoid doing something that causes me fear. But, ultimately, if I were the one enslaved and forced to work 6 days a week, 16 hours a day in a rice mill, how would those excuses look to me? Would I be, "oh, okay, sure, I understand why you did nothing. No big deal." Of course not. My initial thought would probably be, 'well, why didn't you at least try to help me?'

Fears about personal safety aside, we also have fears about what will happen to our stuff or how will others view us if we step out to stop evil.

"We fret over what might happen to our stuff, our reputation, our standing, our children, our ideology and our investments, and in the process we forget that we have these things so we can live fully for Christ. All the things we were given were never meant to be safeguarded. They were meant to be put at risk and spent, for we are in a life or death battle."

"Blessed to be a blessing." I've heard that phrase countless times and have always believed it to be true; however, I don't know that it ever really hit me, until reading this passage from the book, that EVERYTHING we are blessed with is to be used to live for Christ. There's a reason I have the job that I do. There's a reason I have money in my bank account. There's a reason I was born in America. There's a reason for my gifts/talents. It ALL is to be used to fully follow Jesus and to serve those around me. I wasn't given these things to sit back and live a comfortable life while, halfway around the world, there are 5 year old girls being sold into sex trafficking. And I'm by no means saying this is easy. I'm writing this post to myself as much as anyone else. But, I truely believe that all of us want to be courageous. All of us want to make a difference. All of us want to have a life of significance.

So, the choice before us is: Do we want to be safe or do we want to be brave? We can't be both at the sametime. I think, in our heart of hearts, that each one of us wants to be a Shadrach, Meshach or Abednego and be able to stand before an oppressor and say,

"...we do not need to defend ourselves before you in this matter. If we are thrown into the blazing furnace, the God we serve is able to save us from it, and He will rescue us from your hand, O king. But even if He does not, we want you to know, O king, that we will not serve your gods or worship the image of gold you have set up." Daniel 3:16-18

We mistakenly think that if we're scared, that must be God telling us not to do something. We forget that Jesus tells us that his disciples will suffer for following him. However, as mentioned in "Just Courage", "...we will avoid a lot of suffering because we are following him- the suffering of guilt, of self-destruction, of addition, of hell...In fact, if following Jesus does not feel dangerous, I should probably pause and check to see if it is Jesus I'm following."

Passion Conference World Tour - Vancouver

2008-10-14T19:22:00.000-07:00

Jamie and I in our 'lovely' neon green Passion T-Shirts

So I've finally made it to Monday, the last day of my trip to Canada and the day of the Passion Conference.

Jamie and I arrived at the GM Place around 9am. They only had a few of us volunteers arrive there at that time in the morning because they didn't have a lot that needed to be done in the morning- we asked to be able to come in early because, after all, we were in Vancouver for the purpose of serving at the conference, so we wanted to spend as much time there as possible.

We immediately met several other volunteers all of whom live in the Vancouver area and a couple of which were local Pastors. It was interesting talking to them because they really gave us some insight on Vancouver. Vancouver is a very liberal city and faith is not something that is overly 'popular' I guess you could say. Every person who I met who lives in Vancouver described it as a 'dark' city, in that it's spiritually lacking in a huge way. Our first task was to fold up t-shirts to be sold to the students and thanks to one of the other volunteers, I learned the 2-second t-shirt fold technique (you too can learn it if you go to YouTube :-) I really could have used that technique when working for Disney. We helped with other small tasks throughout the day and we took sometime to go down into the stadium seats to pray for the conference and the students who would be attending that evening.

This is the GM Place:

Back of one of the t-shirts we were folding (there we are!):

Finally it was time for the students to start arriving (heck, some of them had started arriving around noon to line up),

so we got ourselves set up and I was working the registration area which meant that I had to be standing outside and it was SO cold. I was out there for about 1 1/2 hours and it finally got to the point where I was in physical pain because of the cold... my toes, hands and nose all felt numb! I was finally able to go back inside and found out that Jamie was dealing with the opposite problem... she was assigned to seat the 'special guests', so she was having to run up and down the stairs and from backstage to front of the house and she was overly warm. But, we were able to successfully get all of the students settled in their seats and ready for it to begin. I didn't spend as much time, as I did in the past, actually watching the conference...but, I was completely fine with that...I had the opportunity to meet a lot of wonderful volunteers; and, don't get me wrong... I did get myself into the conference for a bit of Louie's talk and also for several of the worship music sets. I think one of the things that struck me was, when they were singing 'God of This City', the students went crazy! I mean, you could just tell how much that song meant to them. Being that they live in a spiritually dark city, to sing that song, declaring that they know 'greater things are yet to come and greater things are still to be done in this city.' you could tell that it meant so much to them and that they really took that song to heart. The other moment, during the worship music, that really stands out to me was when they were singing the last song "Sing Sing Sing"... the students went CR-A-ZY!!! From where I was positioned in the GM Place, I had a great view of the entire place and there was just a sea of students jumping up and down and all over the place- they got into that song more than any other conference I've ever been to. Really amazing to see students just losing all inhibitions and just celebrating their faith with all that they have.

OH!!! Also, Mike, one of the volunteers we went to dinner with the previous night...he brought a sign that read "God Bless You Seoul" (the next stop for the conference). They put the camera on him and there's a picture of it on the 268Generation website. He was SO excited!

At the end of the conference, the students filed out really quickly (which could have been 'thanks' to the security guards 'strongly encouraging' everyone to leave...another story). We were able to get things cleaned up quickly and I met up with Jamie backstage and it was really cool because Mike had been invited backstage, so he had a chance to meet Louie and the worship leaders...you could tell that he was having a great night!

Thus, ended our night and our stay in Vancouver :-( Got up super early the following morning, had an uneventful drive back to Seattle (no stop at the border this time) and were at the airport in plenty of time to grab one last Starbucks drink and muffin before we all had to say bye.

This trip was such a blessing in so many ways... seeing a new country, meeting so many wonderful people, being able to relax, getting to know Jamie better (a bit scary how alike we are in some ways), and of course, another opportunity to serve with the Passion team is always thrilling for me.

Well, I think that I about covered it! Hope you enjoyed reading about it :-)

Oh Canada! Part II

2008-10-12T21:53:00.000-07:00

So, I had us caught up through Saturday night…

Sunday we got up and went (again) to Starbucks and opted to head out, first, the Capilano Suspension Bridge as it was supposed to rain that afternoon. It was AMAZING!!! I seem to use that word a lot to describe my trip, but it really was amazing! The bridge was originally built back in 1889. It’s 450 feet across and 230 feet above the Capilano River in North Vancouver.

Isn’t it cool looking??? We both thought that we’d be nervous walking across a bridge suspended over a rushing river, but it actually wasn’t all that bad. When there were a lot of people on the bridge it would sway a bit back and forth and that just made it more difficult to walk, but if there was just a couple of us on the bridge it was more of an up and down bouncing type of motion. I can’t even adequately describe the view. Huge trees as far as the eye can see and the sounds of the breeze blowing through the trees as well as the river below our feet. Completely breathtaking! You really felt as though you were up in a tree house because once you crossed the main suspension bridge, there were a bunch of lookout points and several other smaller suspension bridges that went between the trees. There was even a large treehouse at one point! At some points on the trail, when you were on one of the suspension bridges, you were literally walking up amongst the trees…the ground was far below you, but you still couldn’t even see the tops of some of the trees. We had a great time and both of us agreed that it was probably the highlight of the trip thus far.

Here are a couple of pictures taken while we were in Capilano.

We drove back and picked up Angela and then headed off to Queen Elizabeth Gardens. I don’t really know any details/history about this park, but, of course, it was gorgeous. You would have thought that it was still Spring. All of the flowers were in bloom and all of the trees were green and there were small waterfalls throughout the park, along with a Conservatory and Rose Garden. Pictures say more about this park than I ever could (and even they don’t do it justice).

Next, we were off and running to meet up with a couple of the other Passion Vancouver volunteers to have dinner and go to an evening church service. We met up with Kimberly, Michele and Mike. Kimberly and Michele were also volunteering with Jamie and I and Mike had been assisting with a couple of volunteer items, but he had just graduated from high school, so he was actually going to be attending the conference, verses volunteering at it…which was really so important given his age and that he had never experienced one before. It was so great getting to know him better. I think what really struck me was the heart he has for God. He was uber excited about the conference…more so than I had seen anyone in a long time. He is so hopeful that the Passion Conference (Vancouver has never had a collegiate Christian conference before) was really going to stir people’s hearts and that God was going to use it in a mighty way. It was really exciting for all of us to see his excitement because he is what Passion is all about; and, yes, I do see a lot of college-aged students at these events and I do speak with some of them, but it was really exciting to be able to spend some time getting to know one of them and to hear how God is working in his life. After dinner we went over to a church service and we were about 40 minutes early, so we were able to arrange to borrow one of their prayer rooms and we spent the next 30 minutes or so praying for the Passion Conference the next day and praying for Mike and the students on his campus. It was another favorite part of my trip. I used to always be very anxious about praying out loud with others around. I suppose I was afraid that I wouldn’t sound ‘holy’ enough or something. So many people are eloquent speakers and their prayers always sounded so polished and thorough. I used to absolutely dread the beginning and end of small group because I’d be holding my breath wondering who was going to be picked for opening and closing prayer. It still isn’t something that’s super easy for me, but I’ve found that I pray (before I pray) that God will speak through me and give me the words and that He’ll help me to let go of my fears and anxieties and just speak from my heart…after all, God knows what’s in my heart, so even if I can’t articulate myself well, He still knows what I mean and I have to make His opinion of me, the most important one- above everyone else’s.

I’ll finish up with Part III tomorrow… I have to stop doing these late at night…too tired :-)

OH Canada! Part I

2008-10-10T22:41:00.000-07:00

Where to begin…

I am SO glad that I decided to go to Vancouver!!! It was a blast.

Things went smoothly on our way to Seattle. Our flights actually got in early, our bags were there and we had a cheap rental car waiting for us. I also have to say that this was my first time flying into Seattle and I thought that it looked beautiful. LOTS of green colors and small ponds/lakes all over the place. Plus, with it being Fall, all of the trees were changing colors. We don’t get seasons in S CA, so it was nice to see those colors. The drive up to Vancouver, from Seattle, was fun (for the most part). We had an opportunity to catch up and the time went by quickly. Everything was all fun and games until we got to the border. As is usual at any border, they took our passports and started asking question after question after question…. ‘why are you here?’ ‘where are you going?’ ‘you’re visiting your old college roommate…okay, where did you go to school?’ and on and on and on. We finally thought that we were free to go and then the border patrol lady handed us a slip of paper, told us to park our car along the side of the building and to go into the border patrol building. Yay! Given that neither Jamie nor I look like hoodlums, I figured that we were just lucky to have been randomly selected for a check. So, we go inside and just wait. Probably about 20-30 minutes we spent waiting around for someone. Then they call us up and it’s at about this time that I remember I have pepper spray in my purse (oddly enough I went through OC Airport security and they didn’t notice it- not sure how I feel about that). Well, I didn’t want them to do a purse search and then find the spray and wonder why I didn’t say anything, so I immediately told the officer that I had it and they ended up having to confiscate it. Then they take our passports and we are told they have to ‘conduct a routine examination’. Examination??? Excuse me??? My warped mind automatically thinks body cavity search. I believe it was at that moment that the color drained from my face and I was ready to turn on my heels and head home. Turns out that the officer whom we were speaking with was not a native English speaker… he was French. Apparently ‘examination’ to the French just means a background check. Thank the good Lord. So we sit for another 20-30 minutes while they check our background. But, it was rather entertaining. One guy came in with 10,000 dollars in CASH on him. The officers had him empty out his pockets and turn them inside out. He said that he always carries that much cash around. He doesn’t use credit/debit cards…he only deals in cash. Sure… I often carry around 10K in my stinkin’ pocket! What??? Even if you do only deal in cash, why on earth would you have that amount on you?

Once Jamie and I were cleared we were back on the road. We got into Vancouver a short time later and headed to a bistro/café to grab something to eat. Good food. Nothing unusual. If you didn’t know better, you would think that you were in San Francisco or Berkeley… very similar vibe. We then met up with her old college roommate, got settled in her condo and then got ready to go out. She took us on a driving tour of the different areas in Vancouver and then we went to Granville Island, to the Sandbar to grab dinner. Well, Angela grabbed dinner… I grabbed myself some Crème Brulee and Jamie grabbed herself a piece of Chocolate Pecan Pie. At that point we were barely functioning, so we went off back to Angela’s and fell asleep almost immediately.

Granville Island

The next day we made our obligatory stop at a local coffee shop for breakfast and coffee for Jamie and Chai Tea Latte for me. Know what we were supposed to do that day? We were preparing to go on a hike up Grouse Mountain because there are, apparently, stunning views from up there. We were all dressed in our exercise-type clothes and ready to go. That was until we stepped outside into the cold, drizzly weather. We opted to hold off on the hike until the next day when we might have better weather. So we went off to walk around the beach… not really a S CA, layout all day type of beach…again, think San Francisco beaches; but, a great place to take a walk/run or to sit and read a book. Next we drove through Stanley Park. This is an ABSOLUTE MUST if you ever visit Vancouver. Absolutely beautiful! Trees everywhere and many of them were changing to the Fall colors. The park is out next to the ocean, so you also have the water element as well. Bunch of different things to stop and see along the drive… totem poles, statues, bridges, etc. It’s in places like that where you are just struck by how amazing God is… how incredible His creation is… you can’t help but be awestruck.

Oh, and Grouse Mountain??? Yeah, we saw a diagram outlining the local mountain ranges and Grouse Mountain was on there. Was it high? Let’s just say that the top of it was literally covered in clouds. We both started laughing… Angela apparently had much more faith in our athletic abilities than were warranted. The idea of climbing that mountain was not discussed again for the entire trip. Our next stop was at the Cupcake Shop! Yum! So many different flavors… Red Velvet, Mint Chocolate, Lemon, Coconut Cream, Dulce de Leche to name a few. Thankfully, they had mini-cupcakes, so we could have a variety to try. I was so happy :-)

We had to run by Sears to pick something up and, let me tell you, Sears ain’t the same as it is in CA. It’s like a Nordstroms. Fancy schmancy. I’m used to walking into Sears and feeling like they haven’t changed a thing since I first went to one in the 70’s.

We also went through Chinatown. The smells reminded me of Thailand… not pleasant. Perhaps it was the dried shrimp, squid, mushroom combination in the vendor’s boxes out on the street. I felt like I was getting food poisoning just by looking at it.

One very sad part of Vancouver is the homeless problem. Lots and lots of homeless… mainly seemed to be men. Especially on this one street- Hastings Street. It was pretty overwhelming. To me, it didn’t really seem to be more so than L.A. or San Francisco. I would just say the main difference is how blatantly drugs are used. You pass by one street corner and there are 30-40 people on the corner and they are just exchanging money for drugs and in the alley next to the corner, you could see people using drugs. Very surreal.

Next we went back to Granville Island and did some shopping and, let me tell you, if I lived in Vancouver I would, easily, be 50 lbs heavier.

The market at Granville was AMAZING! Any type of food you could want was there… just a ton of small little markets within the larger market. You could buy Italian food, seafood, Chinese food, desserts… literally anything! We stopped and picked up a snack of Red Pepper Hummus with bread and a Caprese type salad… both were really good although one of them had so much garlic that both Jamie and my mouths were burning. Sorry to the folks who were anywhere near us!!! At this point it was pouring rain and so we made a dash for the car… we kept ducking into stores to try and get warm and then we’d run as far as we could before needing to duck into another store. At one point, we were in a scuba shop checking out the dive gear :-). That night we went out for pizza… that was really good as well… it had sliced apples, bacon, tomatoes, green onion and drizzled with ranch dressing… I was in heaven!

Well, that’s all that I can go into for now… getting tired. Will finish up tomorrow.

I'm Back!

2008-10-08T19:11:00.000-07:00

Had a great time touring Vancouver, but still really tired and, frankly, too lazy to post all of the details yet, but I found this video on YouTube that was taken at the Vancouver Passion Conference. It's "Amazing Grace (My Chains Are Gone)". You can't see much, but I love listening to the students sing along to this song...but, the video could never do it justice...it's amazing to hear 8000 students singing this song at one time.

I'll follow up in the next couple of days with details on the trip. Thank you for all of your prayers!

Less than 1 day to go.... yay!!!

2008-10-02T22:14:00.000-07:00

About 12 hours from now I'll be meeting up with my friend and we'll be starting our mini-vacation. I am SO excited and grateful for this opportunity to see another part of the world. I've heard great things about Vancouver and I already know that we'll have a great time serving at Passion.

I just ask that you pray for safe travels to/from and while we're in Vancouver, that I maintain a good attitude, we all stay in good health, that I have patience and that I allow myself to live in the moment. Please pray that God will place me, at the conference, where I can best be used and to please give me the courage to do whatever it is that He asks me to do.

With that said... as I mentioned in yesterday's post, I wanted to end this countdown with the song "God of this City". It's really been the anthem for this past year's conferences and it seems to be a song that really resonates with everyone, no matter where in the world Passion is at (this Fri/Sat they are in Mexico City - 17,000 students scheduled to attend!).

It's getting a little late and, honestly, I'm being a bit lazy... so here's a video that explains where the song came from (if you don't already know) and the second video is of the actual song.

Enjoy and I'll update everyone when I get back to CA. Have a great weekend everyone!

2 Days to go...

2008-10-01T19:28:00.000-07:00

The other day I was driving home from work, I had just gotten off of the toll road and this particular road does not have much of a shoulder to it. As I'm driving along I see this bicyclist riding his bike along that narrow shoulder. Mind you... cars, and there are a lot of them, are traveling at Indy 500 speeds along this road. I thought to myself, 'that person is going to get himself killed riding his bike there'. All someone has to do is take their eyes off of the road ahead of them and he'd be toast because it seems like, whenever you focus your eyes on something, in this case the bicyclist, your car starts heading in that direction. My mind immediately went back to when I had taken a ski lesson many years ago. I was having so much trouble trying to stear myself on the skis...I couldn't get myself to go right or left for the life of me and I was leaning as much as I could and trying to swivel my feet in the direction I wanted to go. Finally, the instructor came over to me and told me to not try so hard at turning; rather, turn your head the direction you want to go and your body will follow. I was pessimistic and thought there is NO way that I'm going to turn just by looking at where I want to go. But, sure enough...I'd look to my right and I'd turn right, I'd look to my left and I'd turn left.

That principle really applies to our walk with God. Whatever we focus on is what we naturally move towards. If we choose to take our eyes off of God, we will struggle and strain to try and get going in the right direction, but no matter how hard we try, we're never fully there. On the other hand, if we quit thinking and focusing on our circumstances, other people and the world around us, and instead choose to focus on God, we will naturally gravitate towards Him and, not only that, but we'll be headed down our God-ordained path for our lives.

Okay...video time again! I'm actually going to double up again, because there's a particular song I want to put on tomorrow night..."God of This City". It's been the theme song for this whole Passion movement this year and I think that it's fitting to end the countdown with it.

First video is Chris Tomlin's "How Great is Our God".

Now, you will not be watching this video for your viewing pleasure... it was taken by someone at the conference and it's not clear and it jiggles around...so, if you want to avoid motion sickness, I suggest you look away. So, why include it??? I couldn't complete these videos without you being able to hear "Hosanna" by Christy Nockels...it's a beautiful song and she has a beautiful voice to go along with it.

3 days to go...

2008-09-30T19:15:00.001-07:00

I really cannot believe that it's coming up so quickly! Time flies by so quickly. As I'm typing this I'm in the middle of starting to pack my suitcase (a girl has to start several days in advance). It's supposed to be raining while we are in Vancouver, which isn't ideal, but I'll go anywhere that currently has consistent weather- while I have no room to complain, the weather in S CA has been nuts. Sunday it was hot and sunny. Monday I walked out to my car in the morning to be greeted by thunder, lightning and, shortly thereafter, rain. Now today its' back up to 90+ degrees!

But, that's off topic... my prayer has been that God will use me on this trip and at the conference to have an impact for His kingdom. I pray that He will place it on the event coordinator's hearts to place me where I can best be utilized and, probably most of all, I pray to develop more of a servant's heart. My natural tendency is to think about how something is going to impact or effect me or what's going to be the most fun for me. I pray that, as each day passes, there's more of Him and less of me. I've been focusing on the scripture in Ephesians 4:23... "Let the Spirit change your way of thinking." That's my prayer. Change the way I think. That God would give me His eyes to see, His heart to love, His ears to hear the cries of others and that He would work through me, so I can be His hands and feet.

Video Time!

I still have four worship leaders to go and only 3 days, so I'm doubling up today. The first song is "Shine" by Matt Redman and the video was taken at Passion 2007.

This video is of Charlie Hall singing "Marvelous Light" from Passion 2005.

4 Days to Go...

2008-09-29T23:21:00.000-07:00

I couldn't pick one from this next group, so I'm posting two youtube videos from The David Crowder Band.

The first one was taken at Passion 2007 "The Glory of It All" and the second one is "O Praise Him"- this video was filmed at the 2006 Harvest Festival in Anaheim, CA.

I can't write anymore...it's 11:25pm and I have to be up in 6 hours...be happy I even got one out today (lol).

Enjoy!

5 Days to go...

2008-09-28T14:33:00.000-07:00

This is a clip of a talk by Louie Giglio who started the Passion Conferences. He's a phenomenal speaker and I especially liked this two-part series on having hope in Christ when you are going through the difficult times in life.

If you have a chance, click on the title of this post and it will link you to a site where you can watch both parts of the 'Hope' series.

This video is from Passion 2005.

6 days to go...

2008-09-27T15:08:00.000-07:00

This video is from Passion 2006. It's Kristian Stanfill singing his song "Jesus Paid It All".

I was reminded, last weekend, of how powerful this song is... we sang it at the Fuse Service at Saddleback and when it gets to the chorus, you can't help but raise your hands to the only One who is worthy of our praise.

I hear the Savior say
Thy strength indeed is small.
Child of weakness watch and pray
find in Me thine all in all.

Jesus paid it all
all to Him I owe.
Sin had left a crimson stain
He washed it white as snow.

Chorus
Oh praise the One who paid my debt
and raised this life up from the dead.
Oh praise the One who paid my debt
and raised this life up from the dead.
Jesus.

Countdown to Passion Vancouver

2008-09-26T18:11:00.000-07:00

It's officially less than ONE WEEK before I leave to travel to Vancouver. I am excited beyond belief!!! Can't wait to meet up with my friend, who I haven't seen since we met at the Atlanta Conference in April. I can't wait to meet and make new friends, to travel to a new city (and country for that matter)and, of course, can't wait to be a small part of something that is so much bigger than myself...to see God move in the lives of the students, volunteers, event organizers and myself is such an incredible gift and I pray that I am allowed the opportunity to continue to be a part of the Passion movement.

Since you all can't be there, I'm starting a "Countdown to Passion Vancouver" series of posts. Each day I'll post a video that will highlight something about the conferences. Some will be videos talking about what Passion is about, others may be brief snipets from talks at the conferences and others will be of the various worship leaders who participate.

First, a little about Passion...

The Purpose:
Passion exists to glorify God-uniting students in worship and prayer for spiritual awakening in this generation.

The Vision:
From the beginning Passion has been rooted in the confession of Isaiah 26:8: “Yes Lord, walking in the way of Your truth we wait eagerly for You, for Your name and renown are the desire of our souls.”

As a result, Passion seeks to gather college and university students across the nation and around the world to seek the face of God, asking Him to ignite in our souls a passionate pursuit of Jesus Christ and a desire to spread His fame to everyone on earth.

We believe God is calling out a generation of college students committed to the glory of His name in all things. God longs to bring awakening to every campus, mobilizing the students of today to finish the task of global evangelization in this generation. God is calling us out for this purpose, in this moment, for His renown.

For more information on their history, click on the title of this blog and it will take you to the Passion Website.

Until tomorrow, here are a couple of videos. One is a brief synopsis of Passion and the other was a video taken by a student at the opening of the Atlanta Passion Conference this past April. Enjoy!

Plan B

2008-09-25T22:29:00.000-07:00

Plan B.

For major events we always have a Plan B, don’t we? If you’re getting married outside, you always have a Plan B in the event that it rains and you need to move it inside. At church, if they have too many people, they always have a Plan B for overflow attendance and where they will move them to. It’s hard to imagine not having a back-up plan for important events.

However, God didn’t have a Plan B with us.

And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”
—Matthew 28:18-20

We were God's plan.

Heck, we still are the plan.

We are to go out and spread the Good News and to share the Gospel with others who both have and have not yet heard about the saving grace of God and the Savior He brought to us, in the person of Jesus Christ.

Numerous times I’ve heard Pastor Rick comment on this very topic… that according to God’s Word, we were God’s plan. Nowhere in the Bible does it mention anything about what God’s plans were if we failed to follow through on this command; and, being that God is perfect, I don’t think that He simply forgot to include that in the Bible. I don’t believe that God forgot to mention His Plan B, and that’s because there isn’t a Plan B. We have been commanded to share the Good News…that’s our job and purpose. That’s why the Bible calls it the Great Commission…not the Great Suggestion.

Like I said, I’ve heard this topic over and over, but, you know how you can hear something over and over and over again and then, for whatever reason, it finally sinks in and hits you??? Well, for whatever reason, it sunk in last Sunday at church. I began to think that if we were the plan…if God was planning on working through us and He didn’t offer up a Plan B…then He must have a lot of faith and trust in us to do so. And, these are PEOPLE He is having faith in. Fallible, messed-up, unreliable, self-centered, dishonest people. Yet, He believed, and continues to believe, in us. So, why then, do I have so much trouble trusting and putting my faith in God??? Perfect, faithful, trustworthy, loving, all-knowing God. The One who doesn’t change like shifting shadows and Who’s promises hold true.

Last Sunday, I really felt God speak to my heart. He reminded me that He trusts Me with the most precious gift and honor of sharing His story with the world. So why, everyday, do I show such a lack of trust in Him?

You Know You Grew Up in the 70's if...

2008-09-23T10:57:00.001-07:00

I never get tired of reading these... they bring back memories.

You know you grew up in the 70's if...

* "All skaters, change directions" means something to you.

* You wore the little bootie socks with the colored balls on the back.
* You remember when Ricky Martin was a member of Menudo.
* At one point during your teenage years, you walked with a noticeable tilt to one side due to the number of plastic rings on that arm.
* You rolled the sleeves of your suit jacket up
* You yearned to be a member of The Babysitters Club, and tried to start a club of your own.

* You're doing absolutely nothing with anything pertaining to your major degree
* You owned at least one Choose Your Own Adventure book.
* You had top-of-the-line Commodore 64s in your jr. high computer lab
* You had to stay after class to scrub your desk because your silver Outliner pen leaked through.
* You wore a banana clip
* You owned a Big Wheel

* There were days that the homework just had to wait until the ABC Afterschool Special was over.
* You have heard of "Garbage Pail Kids" (and perhaps still have a collection of them).
* You remember when McDonalds served their burgers in styrofoam boxes.
* Atari was the ultimate gaming system to own.
* You made shrinky dinks in your oven.
* You remember and/or owned any of the Care Bear or Muppets glass collections from Pizza Hut.
* Pierce Brosnon will always be Remington Steele, not James Bond.
* This rings a bell: "and my name, is Charlie. They work for me."
* Your first Walkman weighed about as much as a brick.
* You used to own a Snoopy Sno Cone Machine.

* You wanted to be a Solid Gold Dancer
* You ever had a Swatch Watch, and a Swatch Guard for it.
* Four-square was THE playground game.
* You wore French rolls on the bottom of your splatter painted jeans.
* You hid out behind the gym during recess to read "Are you there God, it's me Margaret?" with your friends.
* You know what leg warmers are and probably had a pair.
* You just had to have a Trapper Keeper to stay organized at school.

* You can remember the words to the theme song of "The Greatest American Hero." ("BELIEVE IT OR NOT, I'M WALKIN' ON AIR... I NEVER THOUGHT I COULD FEEL SO FREE-EE-EE...")
* You wore 3-8 different colored socks in layers and thought that the more you could wear the cooler you were.
* You were not allowed to see The Blue Lagoon when it came out.
* In your sophomore class picture, you're wearing a shirt with the collar "up".
* Your parents paid $2,000 for a top-loading VCR that was almost the size of a coffee table.
* If you ever made/wore braided barrettes

I love Jesus but I drink a little...

2008-09-20T22:24:00.001-07:00

This is hilarious... funniest thing I heard today

Cleaning House

2008-09-15T22:19:00.000-07:00

Lately I've really felt the need to just get rid of, or give away, all of those things that I no longer use and that are just taking up gobs of space. A week ago I began the process of going through my things and, as it turns out... I've got a LOT of stuff!

How on earth did I not know that I had a lot of stuff??? Because I hid it, that's why. It was in storage bins in the garage, in my desk drawers, and even under my bed, in those all-too-convenient Rubbermaid under-the-bed storage containers. So, what I thought might take a couple of days, has turned into a week now and I'm still not done. Part of my problem is that I have the 'what if' syndrome...

What if I get invited to a party and I need this dress?

What if I ever get married and have kids...wouldn't they like these princess frames? (assumming that I have girls...oh, and assumming I get married- details you know)

What if I decide that I want to make homemade french fries and I've given away my potato slicer-thingy that cuts potatoes into the perfect fry shape?

And on, and on, and on...this went on for a while and then I started realizing how ridiculous I was being with regards to the things I was holding onto. I mean, really Julie??? Yes, sure, maybe you'll re-read that book in the days to come...that book that had so much dust on it, that when you fanned through the pages, you started choking on the cloud of dust that rose up. Or how about that Sony Walkman??? Yes, I said Walkman. The one that plays cassettes. Yes, I'm sure those will make a comeback any day now. Oh, and especially having worked in both Disneyland Park and in HR for Disney, I've got quite the collection of buttons. They are constantly giving you buttons/pins (or 'Flair' for my Facebook friends :-) for EVERYTHING. "It's the 5 1/2 year anniversary of when we repainted the Norway children in the 'It's a Small World' attraction" here's a button! I'm obviously exaggerating (a bit), but you get the idea.

Here are a couple of the things I came across... try not to be jealous.

This book was so good that they made it into a movie... a bad movie, but a movie nontheless

"ohhhhhh.... the claw..." (you have to see Toy Story to get it)

Boy Bands through the years...

I began looking at these piles of unused stuff and realized that there might be people out there who could, and would, actually use it now. That coupled with the fact that, over the past couple of weeks, I keep seeing scripture after scripture about possessions and giving to others. When everywhere I turn, I'm reading about something God has to say about giving, I get the idea that He may be wanting me to apply that in my life. (I know...I catch on quick). Besides, too often I let possessions become all too important in my life...things oftentimes get flipped around and I don't own my possessions, they end up owning me because the more things I have, the more things I have to take care of.

As I'm oftentimes reminded by Pastor Rick, 'you never see a hearse with a U-Haul behind it.' I'm not taking any of this stuff with me. Our stuff will usually give us brief moments of happiness, but it's never lasting... we always want more. However, I've found that it's not this way everywhere. Having been blessed with the opportunity to spend time with some of the 'poorest' people in Africa, I've found that I've never met people with so much honest-to-goodness joy in their hearts. Possession-wise, they have next to nothing...over the span of two weeks, I would see women wearing the exact same dress everyday and they didn't own one single pair of shoes, much less the 5 pairs of black shoes, alone, I have. Not only do they seem to have more joy, they also have stronger relationships with one another. They actually know their neighbors, and I truly believe that they demonstrate a stronger level of love for one another; and, they are able to do this simply because they don't have all of that 'stuff' to get in their way.

This weekend, at church, Pastor Rick was commenting on our tendency to put all of our things, our tasks, our errands first in our lives and whatever time we have leftover, that is what we give to our relationships with people; and, really, it should be the reverse. We should devote as much time as is needed in our relationships, showing people our love by giving them our time, and whatever time is leftover after that, that would be the time we give to our tasks, errands, etc. That comment really resonated with me and got me to thinking about how many times I have said that I couldn't do something with a friend/family member because I just 'didn't have the time and I had too much to get done'. I'm always reminded that when we're on our deathbed, we won't be asking for someone to bring us our jewelry or our trophies to look at one last time; but, we will be asking to have those we love around us. If people are what is most important to us when we are dying, shouldn't they be what is most important to us while we're living?

Defining Moments

2008-09-11T18:51:00.001-07:00

Defining moments...we all have them. Both as individuals and collectively as a group. Those moments where you remember exactly where you were, what you were doing and who you were with when you 'heard the news'. I was thinking back, over my lifetime, and there are a few events that occurred where I could tell you where I was and what I was doing at the time:

1986 Challenger blows up shortly after take off
I was on my way to Middle School and the DJ on KMEL radio station came on,
in a very somber tone, and announced what had happened. My first class
of the day was English and they rolled in a TV set so we could watch the
news.

1995 OJ Verdict (fyi- I do not consider this anywhere near the significance of
the Challenger Shuttle blowing up, but it's still very memorable)
I was in my Junior year at UCSD and I had Biology class at 10am when they
were scheduled to read the verdict. The professor began class and minutes
into the class, you hear everyone around you whispering and the professor
stops class and asks for someone to announce the verdict...and then I felt
like throwing up.

1996 Princess Diana killed in a car accident
I was working in Disneyland, on Main Street, and I had just gone on break
and went back to the 'Inn Between' Cast Cafe for food and the TVs in the
breakroom were making the news announcement.

These were all major events, although I don't know that I, personally, consider them 'defining moments',they were obviously memorable all the same.

To me, defining moments are moments in time when there's now a sharp distinction between my life before 'it' happened and life after 'it' happened.

It seems that every generation has at least one of these events. My grandparent's generation had the bombing of Pearl Harbor, my parent's generation had the JFK assassination and, unfortunately, we of course have Sept 11th. I think anyone could tell you the when/where/who of that day. For me, being on the West Coast, it was around 5am, our time, that everything started happening, so I was in bed and my radio alarm had gone off and I just remember hearing the DJ say, 'wow, this is a happy day' and then they cut to a statement from President Bush speaking about 'an act of terrorism'. At that point I new something had to be going on, so I got up, went downstairs, turned the TV on and saw the first WTC Bldg with smoke billowing out of the middle of it. I figured a bomb had gone off. I woke my mom up and then I then went upstairs, woke up my sister and turned her tv on and it was during this time that we saw, what we thought was a second explosion, but it turned out to be the second plane hitting the other WTC Bldg. Even when I found out it wasn't bombs, but planes hitting the towers, I took that to mean those small, two seater planes, not passenger planes- that wasn't even a conceivable thought in my mind and it was when I found out that they were passenger planes, that I cried for the first, of many times, over that day. I remember mass confusion as to how many planes there were, where they had hit, etc. And then weeks upon weeks of tv coverage.

Now, when someone reminds me of something in the past, my frame of reference, as to when it happened, is 'did that happen before 9/11 or after 9/11?' And, while I think that it's easy to get sucked into the sadness of it all, I think that we also have to remember the good that we witnessed in the aftermath. While our buildings were falling, heros were rising. People became more selfless than I've ever seen them. People put aside their best interests, some to the sacrifice of their own lives, to save someone else...in most instances, a complete stranger. We saw countless people step up and serve others- not because it was convenient, but because it was the right thing to do. During one of the worst trajedies in our nation's history, we truely saw the very best come out in people and we never felt such a sense of community or felt so much pride in being an American.

Today is a day when we need to pray for those directly impacted and ask God to continue to give them strength, peace, hearts of forgiveness, joy, hope, faith, and comfort. We should never forget that day, but we also shouldn't focus on it. On that day, we saw what we were capable of becoming- selfless, sacrificial, servant-hearted people, and while I know God wept with us on 9/11, I'm also certain that He was smiling down on us as He saw us become the type of people He made us to be.

Vancouver Passion Conference

2008-09-08T16:58:00.000-07:00

I am SO excited!!!

I have the opportunity to go and help out at the Passion Conference World Tour stop in Vancouver, Canada- YAY! I’ve so enjoyed, and have been so incredibly blessed to help out this past year at three of their regional events in Los Angeles, Washington DC and Atlanta and to now be able to be a small part of this amazing World Tour they are doing… well, it’s incredible.

It’s difficult, if not impossible, to put my experiences with Passion into words. It’s an overall feeling you get just by having the privilege to be there and serve the students. You are able to visibly see an invisible God in everyone you come into contact with- from the students to the volunteers to the worship leaders to the speakers… everyone. As is usually the case when you volunteer your time, I’ve always walked away feeling almost guilty because I feel like I got more out of it than I could have ever given. Seriously. In L.A., I walked away from it with the certainty that God had specifically showed me that He wanted me to go to Pattaya, Thailand that summer; and, that weekend I came to the conference with doubts upon doubts with regards to the trip. In DC, I had the opportunity to witness students being the hands and feet of Christ when I helped out with “Do Something Now”, where the students donate towels and socks to be given to the local homeless shelters. The students had been very generous with their donations, but prior to the dinner break on the second day, the students were told that we were several thousand towels short of the goal they had wanted to reach. Those students went out to the local Wal-Marts and K-Marts and practically bought the stores out of their stock of towels… it was amazing… stacks upon stacks and garbage bags full of towels were brought back after dinner. I can’t remember the exact numbers, but it was incredible. And, finally, in Atlanta, I had the chance to see my Mom and sister experience the conference for the first time and God had me walk away from the conference with the gift of a new friend :-)

It really is an experience and there have been very few times in my life where I would say I physically felt the presence of God, but it’s happened at every single one of those conferences… again, impossible to explain, but you can just feel it. (now I’ve got DC*B’s “Can You Feel It?” song stuck in my head)

Each and absolutely every time- L.A., DC and ATL- God has cleared the path for me to go. For ATL, I was able to get a great airfare deal and was struggling with finding hotel/rental car that were reasonable; however, Orbitz was having a special and I was able to get the hotel/rental car combo for a cost that was far below what the hotel, alone, would have cost. And, DC… well, talk about a drop in airfare prices… I was able to get a non-stop flight from LAX to DC, taxes included, for $140 and came to find out that my uncle lived 15 minutes from the college it was being held at, so room and board were free, plus I was able to visit with my family and see the east coast. With Vancouver, I honestly had decided that I was 99% sure I wasn’t going. There were too many obstacles that were presenting themselves- ridiculously high airfare, no matter how you tried to book it, my job was having a college event that day that I was heading up, etc. I told God that it seemed that the doors were closing on me and that He obviously didn’t want me to go and I wasn’t going to try and go around Him and do it anyway, so I was fine with not going. Literally, the next day, the college event at work was delayed to a later date and I came to find out my friend, who I’m meeting up with, was actually flying into Seattle and driving into Canada- a flight that was $200 cheaper than the other ones I was looking at. Okay… now I was leaning more towards going, but, true to myself, I still wasn’t 100% on board because I had been so sure, previously, the doors had been closed. A couple of days later I was visiting my parents and still trying to make a decision when I read this prayer in a devotional that spoke about following in God’s will and asking for guidance. So, I prayed that God would provide me with that guidance and made the promise that I would trust Him to do so and I wouldn’t worry about it anymore. Right afterwards, I went with my parents to their church and had, honestly, completely forgotten about the prayer. The worship team comes out and they begin playing. At the fourth song I leaned over to my Mom and made the comment, ‘that’s funny, they just sang songs from Charlie Hall, Chris Tomlin, David Crowder Band and now their starting a Matt Redman song- those are all Passion people’. I turned back to face the front and my words literally just replayed in my mind, ‘those are all Passion people’. It felt like God gave me this push and my stomach felt like it dropped to my knees and my breath caught and I, then (finally) realized what I had just said and the prayer I had, earlier, prayed. I’m not a ‘certain’ person… I tend to lean on the side of doubting way too often, but in that moment I absolutely knew that I should be going. That night I signed up to be a volunteer, prior to even arranging my flight/accommodations, and just decided to take that step of faith that everything would fall into place, and it has been falling into place and I’m thrilled to say that I’m going!

Car Brakes

2008-09-03T18:52:00.000-07:00

There seems to be a common theme lately between my friends and I. We all feel like we're in some sort of holding pattern. We've never felt like we've had so LITTLE to do in our lives! We are all used to a fast paced way of life where a spare minute is rare. Ironically, it's during those super busy times that I pray for just a moment of peace and quiet...one night where I have nothing to do but sit in front of the TV, eat nachos and watch meaningless reality TV shows.

Right now I feel like I've watched more reality TV than I can handle and I'm feeling very anxious and impatient and would just love it if God could give me a sneak peek as to what He has planned for me. I'm thinking that is not going to happen anytime soon.

I was sharing with a friend today that I was driving back from a Dr. appointment today and I was pulling up to a stop light and I really started to question why I can't trust God more. Oddly enough, what made me think about it was when I was braking at the stoplight... I began to think that I don't stress out everytime I put my foot on the brake...I don't clench my hands on the wheel and hold my breath hoping that the brakes work. No. I'm trusting that my car will stop and I don't even really think about it. I'm confident my car will stop. This is a car. Cars are not reliable- they break down all the time; yet, if I honestly look at my faith, I put more faith in my car than I do in God. I trust that my cars brakes, even though I can't even see them, are going to do what they are supposed to do; but, I have trouble when it comes to believing God's promises for me. It's really insane, isn't it? Maybe it's because God's promises, at least in this world, seem way too good to be true. But, they are true. They are true for everyone who puts their faith in Him. And you don't have to worry about Him changing His mind- God is unchanging, He's 100% reliable and trustworthy, and, really, He's the only one who is worthy of our complete trust. I think that I need to start trusting my God more than I trust my car.

New CD's! (and other things)

2008-09-02T18:33:00.000-07:00

So excited because three GREAT new CDs were released, all bands/worship leaders from the Passion Conferences- Charlie Hall, Chris Tomlin and David Crowder Band. You should definitely check them out and you can order them online on the Passion website 268generation.com (still haven't been able to insert a link... sorry! If any of you knows how to do that on blogspot, please let me know)

All of that aside, things have been pretty mellow. I haven't had a whole heck of a lot to do it seems like. Work has slowed down because, with the economy, we're not hiring like we always have; so, instead, now we are doing more project oriented work, which is a nice change, but it's just different- I'm used to being able to go on autopilot and now I actually have to think... I know... scary :-) But, even outside of work things have been really slow. I feel like I'm not doing anything worthwhile. I like planning things and, well... I have nothing to plan right now and it's driving me nuts. (this may change within the next couple of days and I might have something to plan... more to follow) Funny thing is, I've got this sure sense, from God, that this is a waiting period and I just need to trust that He's working on my behalf. I haven't gotten any signs indicating that is what is going on, but do you ever have that feeling that you know that you know it's a period of waiting??? Nothing more than a feeling of certainty. I don't know... can't really explain it well.

I did go home (N CA) this past weekend and it was nice to be back home. There are so many memories in my house and in the city seeing as I spent most of my life there. My elementary school is across the street, we passed by the streets where my middle and high schools are...I see a Trader Joe's and remember how it used to be a K-Mart and I remember (I have no idea why) going to Swensen's one night for dinner with my friends and we ended up in K Mart taking turns riding in the shopping carts up and down the aisles as fast as we could. I see Shadow Cliffs, a small park with a man-made lake and remember being SO excited when we would take trips to that lake with our next door neighbor friends. We'd pack up things to eat and we'd all pile into the back of our neighbor's station wagon and off we'd go to swim in the water until we had to leave. Thinking back on the water in that lake, I don't know that I'd even want to stick my feet in it today, but when you're little, you never think about those things. Even at home, I was glancing up at the ceiling in one corner of the room and remembering that we used to hang those countdown to Christmas paper chains in that spot... you know... you take strips of green and red paper and make circles and link them together and at the start of December, you cut one ring off every night until you get to Christmas and Christmas' ring was always made out of gold colored paper. It's weird how many random memories will flood your mind and many of them are SO random and you have no idea why that particular memory is stuck in your head.

I'm not the best flyer in the world. I've gotten better recently, but I still get nervous. Of course, I always pray for safety and protection on the flight; but, the words I used in my prayer on my trip back to S CA struck me for some reason. I was praying, and part of my prayer was "Lord, please let me get home safely." All of a sudden I felt like God emphasized the word 'home' and I felt reminded that because of the Lord's grace and my faith in Christ, I will make it home safely. But, not home in the sense of four walls and a roof in S CA; but, 'home' in the sense of heaven. It really gives such a sense of hope that this is God's promise to us, as believers, and, unlike people, God always keeps His promises and has guaranteed me a safe journey home one day. (of course, I then had to clarify my prayer to God, 'God please get this plane safely to S CA'... you know... just to clarify as to what I was asking :-)

Civil Forum

2008-08-23T14:17:00.000-07:00

I'm a little behind... one week to be exact, but I have to make a couple of comments regarding the Civil Forum between Barrack Obama and John McCain at Saddleback Church. First, I really enjoyed watching it! And, I am NOT into politics at all... I avoid it as much as I can because I cannot stand the mudslinging that goes on because I don't really care what negative thoughts you have on the other candidate, I want to know what you stand for. It was nice to watch these two men be able to talk about their views, both politically and spiritually, in a respectful, honorable way. I thought that Pastor Rick did a wonderful job and I would like to see him interview them each more at length. He didn't tip toe around the candidates, he came straight out and asked them difficult questions.

Oddly enough, I had never really heard either one of them speak about their views. It's true what they say about Barrack- he is a very charasmatic speaker and he sounds very educated (and I'm sure that he is). However, if you ever take the time to listen to what he's saying, often he doesn't seem to be answering the question asked of him. Specifically, when asked when he thinks an unborn baby has human rights. What was his response? "That's above my pay grade." I'm sorry... what was that? I had to rewind and listen again because I thought for certain that I had misheard him. No. That's what he said. Not only that, he never answered the question... he went into this speech of how we need to lower the number of unwanted pregnancies and realize that this is a difficult decision for women to make. Ummm... okay. Great. You didn't answer the question, but thanks for sharing. I found McCain to be much more direct. I felt like he knew where he stood on the topic and he didn't have any shame in sharing that view. McCain also seemed to address the audience whereas, Barrack always looked at Rick. I really liked the story McCain told about when he was a P.O.W. in the Vietnam War. His dad had connections and he was going to be able to be released before another prisoner, who had been there longer and, thus should have been the one released first. They made the offer to McCain and he declined because of the military code and the other man was released, and McCain remained in the prison for 3 more years. I just felt that the story really demonstrated character and the attitude of a servant. He sacrificed his freedom so someone else could be free. I don't care which side you are on... you have to admire and respect that.

If Only...

2008-08-22T22:55:00.000-07:00

I was reading a daily devotional this morning and it just really resonated with me and I really felt that God was convicting me in this message and I wanted to pass it along to you all.

Heart Whispers

"A word was secretly brought to me, my ears caught a whisper of it." Job 4:12

If only I had called her.

If only I had listened to that little voice in my head that nudged me to call her several times over the past few months. Although we were casual acquaintances whose paths did not cross very often, I still considered her a friend and a dear sister in Christ. She had been fighting cancer for years, but had recently been in remission and in good health. More than a year had passed since we had spoken, but we would still smile and wave at each other at church.

For several weeks recently, this friend kept coming to mind. I had felt God laying her on my heart, and I kept intending to call her, but would get busy and forget. Then I arrived at church one Sunday morning, only to read the shocking news that she had passed away. I was stunned. I had seen her fairly recently, buzzing around the sanctuary, and she looked great, but now she was gone. Now it was too late to call her. The door of opportunity to hear her kind voice had slammed shut.

If only I had listened to that inner voice of the Holy Spirit prompting me to pick up the phone to call and check on her. I was unaware that she was sick again, but God knew.

If only I had stopped whatever I was doing, and taken just a few minutes to let her know I was thinking of her. I was unaware of her need to be remembered, but God knew.

If only I had called her, and let her know how her unshakable joy had impacted my walk with God. I was unaware of her need for encouragement, but God knew.

Tears filled my eyes as I considered not only the loss of this sweet, precious woman, but my own remorse for not listening to God's whispers to my heart. God's ways are not our ways, as we are told in Isaiah 55:8, and I have learned through this experience to always listen to the quietest of voices, and recognize that this voice is holy.

I now understand that when I suddenly feel the need to call someone whom I haven't thought of, spoken to, or seen in months or even years, that it may be God Himself whispering to my heart. When I have an urge to tell someone I love them, even though I am sure they already know it, God is whispering to my heart. When I find myself dropping by to visit someone in the hospital that I don't know well or possibly do not them at all, God is whispering to my heart.

God knows what His children need, and He uses each of us to meet those needs. Just because we don't have all the answers yet, or do not know why God is prompting us to do a certain thing, doesn't mean we should ignore the whisper. His ways are not our ways... but His way is the best way... and the necessary way.

When I learned of my friend's passing, I made a commitment to myself and to God that I will never again ignore even the tiniest, quietest whisper from the Holy Spirit. I will pray for discernment and whether He tells me to make a big sacrifice, or simply make a phone call, my hope is that I will step out in faith and obey, without delay.

If God has been whispering to you about someone or something, listen to those whispers. Don't discount them. Pray for discernment and be willing to take action, even if you don't fully understand the reason yet. Unfortunately, the consequence of not listening to those whispers, could result in you having to say, "If only ..." just like me.

Have you heard His whisper?

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

God is never in the loudness and busyness around us. You have to turn off the TV and radio, you have to make the choice to go up to your room and close the door, you have to ignore the ringing phone or the emails calling your name. Once you do that, you have to, as this devotional suggests, be willing to listen and act on those promptings, no matter how little sense they make. If you don't, you might be left with regrets or missed opportunities to experience God working in your life. There have, unfortunately, been so many times that I didn't listen to God's whisper. Several times they ended up in injury, severe regret, and/or missed opportunities.

I remember one time when I was back in High School, I was leaving the house to run an errand, and I just kept having this feeling that I shouldn't be leaving- it was something that I couldn't shake. But, I ignored it and went along my way. The feeling wouldn't leave me and, because of that, I was driving much more cautiously and slower than I normally would. Well, I turn the corner and there are two parked cars on either side of the road from me. I'm approaching one of the cars and a little boy in his boy scout uniform dashes out from behind one of the cars, running over to his mom in the other car. I slammed on the breaks and stopped just short of hitting him. Had I been going at the normal speed, I probably would have hit him. Thank the Lord that, even though I didn't listen to Him, He still saved me from having potentially injured (or worse) that little boy.

I think that I should, also, set things straight in that I'm not hearing an audible voice of God. Not even what you would, technically, call a whisper. It's more of a thought will just come into my mind, out of nowhere, or I'll remember something or a piece of scripture will come to mind that applies to the situation I'm praying about. Sometimes I wish that I heard an audible voice... but, then, knowing me, I'd worry that I'd developed another personality :-) kidding...

I don't think you're going to fit...

2008-08-21T19:30:00.000-07:00

Check this progression out...

Poor Jack thinks that he's still a kitten and can fit in the basket. Made me think of us girls and how we try to fit into our 'skinny jeans' from high school :-)

The Dark Knight

2008-08-19T20:35:00.001-07:00

Finally went to see the Dark Knight, if you hadn't already guessed by the blog title. I have to say, for someone who initially had no desire to see it, I was really blown away by it. The first weekend it came out, all I heard was how, well, how 'dark' it was and I really wasn't in the mood to go see a movie and walk out feeling horrible. But, then one by one, friends and co-workers were going to see it and everyone thought that it was really good... the only complaint I ever heard was that it was too long. (2 1/2 hours) Oh, and everyone raved about Heath Ledger's performance as The Joker. Now, this is the pessimist in me...people usually have the nicest things to say about someone once they've passed away, so I was pessimistic about how really "amazing" his performance really was. Well, I have to eat my words because it really was an amazing performance! With the exception of one brief shot of him without make-up, you would never recognize him by looks or his voice. And he really did give an Oscar-worthy performance. And, really, everyone's performance in this movie was incredible.

I think one of the reasons this movie was so interesting was the storyline. With this Joker, he wasn't creating havoc for the sake of power or money or drugs, rather, he was creating havoc for the sake of creating havoc. He loved to see 'civilized' people get pushed to their limits and how these so called moral people, if it came down to their lives or someone elses, they are capable of committing horrible evil acts upon one another. He puts them in situations that make them have to chose 'him' or 'me'. One particular scene (I won't give anything away), there were two ferry's out on the water and suddenly both of their motors died and they are stranded. Next thing you know, people on both of the ferrys find these gold boxes with purple ribbons wrapped around them. They open them up and inside is a detonator. Only, they come to find out, from the Joker, that the detonator is rigged up so that if ferry A presses the button, then ferry B will blow up. They have until midnight to make their decision, otherwise the Joker was going to blow both of the boats up. To put a little something more in the mix, the one ferry is full of prisoners who they are evacuating from the city and the other ferry is just everyday ordinary civilians... so, who deserves to live? Basically, whoever pushes the button first will live or both boats blow up if no one presses either button.

The movie was more of a psychological thriller and it really keeps you thinking about it long after you've left the theatre. I kept thinking back to the three part series Kay Warren did on her book. I remember her saying how we all like to think that everyone is 'basically good at heart'; but, that we really aren't. Our natural tendency is to look out for ourselves and that if we are put in the right situation and under the right circumstances, we are all capable of committing evil acts (nice thought, huh?). I mean, on a smaller scale, if someone cuts you off on the road, what is your initial response? Is it to shout, "God Bless You!" or is it to shout something else? Or even better, try to get in front of that car and cut them off? The only thing that keeps us from doing horrible things to one another is our sense of right and wrong, our morals and ethics, all of which were instilled in us by God.

I highly recommend the movie and if you haven't seen it, you should... just be prepared for a very intense movie :-)

Answered Prayer

2008-08-15T17:53:00.000-07:00

Amongst all of the animal drama these past couple of weeks, between Jack's swollen gum, cancer-scare and Smallz couple of days on this earth, it was a bit emotionally exhausting. I seriously don't know how parents do it with their kids. I was completely distraught and stressed and I can't even imagine how I'd be if these were my children going through these things.

Jack is doing well...

He's back to his playful, lovey-dovey self.

Smallz, unfortunately, didn't live very long, but he was a really sweet little thing who liked to squeek a lot.

But, back to the topic of this blog. I have a happy animal story today. One of my friends at work was telling me about one of her co-workers and how he was stressed out because his 13 year old cat had, somehow, escaped their home and they hadn't been able to find her for several days. The cat is old and had never been out of the house, so it wouldn't know how to take care of itself. We said a quick prayer that the cat would come home and then I completely forgot about it for the rest of the day. Yuree IM'd me at the end of the day with the news that his cat had wandered back home and was safe and sound.

It always amazes me when God, so quickly, answers prayers. It's also such a good reminder that God cares about everything that we care about- no matter how seemingly big or small. I used to only feel validated in praying for the 'big' things... someone's health, the safety of someone, etc. It's only been in the past few years that I realized how much God cares about everything. I pray over all sorts of things now. Everything from someone's cancer to be cured to finding a close parking spot at the mall. Granted, the more 'monumental' the situation, the longer the prayer tends to be, whereas, for a parking space, my prayer is pretty much, "God, let there be a close parking spot. In Jesus' name, Amen." and that's that... nothing fancy. I don't believe that God cares how you talk to Him, as long as you talk to Him.

2 Posts in One Day! Lucky you :-)

2008-08-13T18:09:00.000-07:00

I've been meaning to post this video from YouTube and I kept forgetting and then I saw it on someone else's blog today and I was reminded to do it.

This is a small segment from an interview Larry King had with Steven Curtis Chapman and his family, with regards to the untimely death of their little 5 year old girl, Maria Sue. (not Mary Sue as Larry kept referring to her... good grief... you're a world renowned journalist/interviewer and you can't even get her name straight? Okay, I'm done with my rant)

There's a lot of great statements made in this small piece from the interview, but I'm posting it because of the "SEE" story...really amazing to hear how God comforts those who are grieving.

Sad Day

2008-08-13T17:25:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was a sad day, as you can probably gather by the title. Smallz, our rat/mouse died. We had been feeding him Pedialyte and Kitten Replacement Milk, as suggested by the 'Rat Specialists', and I had just fed him that morning and went back to feed him again about 4-5 hours later and he had died sometime in between. I felt like I had instantly time-warped back to when I was a little kid and we'd find injured birds or baby birds who had fallen out of their nests. We'd always do our best to keep them warm and to feed them, but, ultimately, none of them ever made it. We had this one little area in our backyard where we'd have our little bird funerals and we'd put them in a small box and bury them (not that we had that many experiences with dying birds, but I know that it happened 3-4 times at least). I even started crying like you do when you're a kid... you know, that type of crying where you sound like you're hyperventilating and you're just focusing on trying to breathe... that exhausting kind of crying. I've never really cared for anything that helpless before. He couldn't do anything for himself. He had to completely rely on me, which is a scarey thought all it's own, considering I have a knack for breaking and/or losing things.

Part of the reason I was so sad was because when I really needed to step up and do something right, I completely failed. Not only that, but during the couple of days that we had him, there were several times when I was ticked off at God for putting him in my path... why did I have to take a different path on my walk that day? Why did I have to look down and see him? Why couldn't someone else have taken on this responsibility? Or, the bigger question, why did he even have to be born if you were just going to make him suffer? What it boiled down to, was that I was being inconvenienced. I wasn't able to go and run my errands or go see a movie, as planned on Sunday and, now, who knew how long I would need to take care of him... I mean, was I going to be inconvenienced for months? Trust me, I'm not proud of these thoughts and I even remember, at the time, when I was having those thoughts, 'Julie, you'd better stop thinking so selfishly... what if he dies? Then you'll really feel horrible.' Well... he died and I do feel horrible. I can't help but think that I must have done something wrong or not done something that I was supposed to do. I do feel that God has given me comfort in knowing that I tried. I didn't just leave him on the sidewalk to be burned up by the heat of the day and eaten alive by ants. At least he died a peaceful death, and maybe that was my only purpose in finding him. I mean, God is in control of absolutely everything... even something as small and simple as a mouse and I know that God doesn't want to see any of his creation suffering and maybe I was just there to remove that suffering.

Several people have told me that they don't know if they would have done the same thing that I did. But, I really find that hard to believe. The way I look at it, even if you've never had pets or, for that matter, maybe you don't even like animals, it really doesn't matter. It's very clear in the Bible that God has given humans the earth and dominion over ALL of the creatures of the earth. He's given them to us as our responsibility to take care of. It doesn't matter if you like to do it or not, you have to do it. I mean, God even commanded that animals rest on the sabbath and the Bible tells us that no sparrow falls from the sky without God knowing about it. In Psalms, it reads:

"Your righteousness is like the
mighty mountains,
Your justice like the ocean
depths.
You care for people and animals alike, O Lord."

Oh my gosh... this was appropriate... this is the Message paraphrase of this same scripture:

"...Yet in His largeness
nothing gets lost;
Not a man, not a mouse,
slips through the cracks."

Then, lastly, in Proverbs 12:10, it reads:

"The godly care for their animals,
but the wicked are always cruel."

I really don't think that I did anything that special...really... at all. My prayer is that this experience will make me less selfish and put aside my own agenda and be open to whatever God may have in store for me.

I didn't suck as bad as I thought I would...

2008-08-11T21:36:00.000-07:00

I opted to not go to small group tonight and, instead, I took a card-making class at a local scrapbooking store. It was fun :-) I always feel anxious going into these things because, odds are, most of the people there are going to know much more about whatever we are doing than I do. I'm really bad that way- I put way too much pressure on myself to be a perfectionist and I don't give myself any patience or time to learn something new. I was pleasantly surprised, though... I really didn't think that I was going to do well, but the teacher sat down with me and showed me a couple of tips and, for the first time making cards, they came out fairly well... here is the finished product for 3 of the 5 cards we made (the other two are still in production :-)

Oh, and an update on 'Smallz' (our mouse/rat/creature)... he/she is still alive and kickin'. He/she has been taking in a lot more fluids and seems to be doing okay.

Rats! Or a mouse... I'm not sure...

2008-08-10T17:11:00.000-07:00

While I absolutely love animals and I've always had a heart for them, I've never been a huge rodent fan, or any creature of that variety- mice, rats, guinea pigs, hamsters, etc. I didn't grow up with rodents as pets and one of my earliest and only memories of rats was having a couple of them as pets in my third grade classroom and one day, hearing a scream from one of the boys, looking over and his finger is gushing blood. That was enough to keep me at arms length from the little creatures. (although, looking back, the little boy whose finger was bitten was a bit of a punk, so he probably did something to anger the rat in the first place and the rat was probably more than justified in sinking his teeth into the brat) But, I am a sucker for anything that is seemingly helpless... thus the reason I now have a newborn mouse/rat (still undetermined) in my garage.

I was out for a walk this morning and I noticed something off to the side of the sidewalk. I looked closer and all that I could tell was that it was a creature of some sort that had, obviously, just been born within the past day or two because it had no hair, was probably 3-4 inches long and it's eyes were still shut. There were ants starting to crawl all over it and it was shaking, so it was obviously still alive. I can't imagine anyone could see that and just walk on, so I picked up a couple of leaves and brushed the ants off of it, scooped it up into one of the leaves and carried it back home. I put it in a box and took it to the vet down the street and they confirmed that it was either a mouse or a rat, but it was too early to tell which one. They said that I could leave it with them and they would 'take care of it'. I know what 'take care of it' meant. They weren't going to be nursing it back to health, they were going to euthanize it. So, now I have a mouse/rat (temporarily) in a mouse house in my garage. Mind you... this is NOT a new pet. It's going to take God to get this mouse to survive the next couple of days. We're trying to give it Pedialyte and Kitten Milk Substitution (what the vet and a Rat/Mouse Rescue organization (yes, they do exist) told me to do), but we can't be certain that it's even taking any of it in. But, I have to, at the very least, give it a chance to survive and, if it does, I already had an employee at Petsmart tell me to come back in and she might be able to find a home for it, or, at the very least, because it is not a domesticated mouse, I can release it back into the hills. Even if I wanted a mouse as a pet (and I don't), I couldn't keep it... I have cats who would think that it's their new playtoy.

This was definitely not in my plans for the weekend...

So sad it's over...

2008-08-08T17:34:00.000-07:00

Last night was the season finale of "So You Think You Can Dance?". I'm bummed. I really like that show and, for some reason, this season I really liked all of the finalists. I feel like I get emotionally invested in them... I almost find myself holding my breath every week when they are announcing who will be leaving the show.

Like I said, this was one of my favorite seasons. They were all amazing dancers and all seemed to be very humble about their gifts. I'm not a dancer by any means, but I love watching other people dance...well, professional dancing. I don't go out to the local clubs and watch a bunch of twenty-somethings dancing around. But, because I have two left feet, I enjoy living vicariously through others who know what they are doing.

Joshua ended up being the winner of the competition, and the amazing thing is that he has NEVER had any dance training. He's a hip hop street dancer who decided to try out. I thought that it was great, at the end of the show when he was announced the winner, he said something to the effect, "don't let anyone ever tell you that you can't do something. God is in control and He can make anything happen." I love it when I see younger people (he's 17) professing their faith to millions of people. You always hear such negative things about todays teenagers and it's gives me such a sense of hope when you see someone who really seems to be grounded.

Another one of my favorite dancers was Twitch, who is also a hip hop dancer. One of my favorite dances of the season was with Twitch and Khyrington (both from North Orange County no less!). I don't even know what it was about the dance... I thought everything about it was perfect- beautiful costumes, lighting, music, the story behind the choreography... like I said, everything. Here's a video clip of the dance. (if you just want to see the dance, fast forward to 2:20.

This was another favorite with Katee and Joshua (the winner).

"To Do" Lists

2008-08-07T19:21:00.001-07:00

So, I'm a very big 'to do' list person. I love making lists. Not that I ever get everything done on them, but I like to have them. Why? Because I can be forgetful...I'm not sure if it's a memory thing or if it's just that my mind runs 100mph, so the chances of me remembering everything that I want to remember are very slim. Lists relieve me of the worry that I'll forget to get something done, call/email someone, get a chore done or forget to buy something at Target- this happens probably the most- I have ONE thing that I need at Target, so I go, walk out of the store with TEN things, not one of which is the thing I purposely went to Target for in the first place. I love love love being able to cross things off of my list and it's even better when the entire list is done and I can throw the post-it away...it just gives me such a sense of accomplishment! So, it wasn't surprising, yesterday, when I was going through my folder at work and ran across an old post-it note with a 'to do' list on it. This was the list:

* Buy stuff to make cookies
* Mail birthday gift
* Mow lawn
* Spend time with God
* Call for haircut appt
* Clean bathroom

...what was that fourth 'to do'???? Yes, that's right- "spend time with God". Right in between mowing my backyard lawn and calling to make a haircut appointment, there God was. I actually did a double take when I first read the list... I mean, I didn't actually put God on a check off list, did I? Not only that, but He wasn't even the priority, the first thing on my list... He was fourth on the list! I let out a laugh and really had to wonder what God thought of all of that. Did He appreciate being put on a list? Or, how about the fact that "Spend time with God" wasn't even crossed off of the list, meaning it probably didn't happen. I have to say that the old list really has convicted me these past couple of days. I've been thinking a lot lately about how I put God last. I used to always think that, 'oh, I've got SO much to do, there's no way that I can sit down now and read the Bible... I'll be too distracted. I'll just get everything done and then I can be focused and present before God. But, what happens time and time again??? Yes, I get all of my work done, I sit down to read and within 5 minutes I'm asleep because I've exhausted myself. And, honestly, I know better. I can't even tell you how many times I've chosen to stop what I'm doing in the morning, read a little out of the Bible, prayed and my day goes SO much more smoothly. I feel a sense of peace and happiness and I'm in a better mood (which is beneficial to everyone :-) and I've noticed that on those really busy Saturday mornings when I have 10 errands to run, all before noon, if I stop and talk to God first, it seems like I'm able to get everything done and even afterwards, I don't see how I was able to get to where I needed to go so quickly, or how easily I found the product I was needing to buy or how short the lines were in the grocery store. It happens every single time.

It's kind of like when you hear couples talking about having a baby. You always hear them say, 'now's just not a good time...we're going to wait until things are more settled'. And, I think that we all think the same thing when we hear that- there's never going to be a perfect time! You'll never be 100% financially or emotionally prepared for parenthood- you do it despite any perceived obstacles. We have to be that same way with God. There will never be the perfect time to sit and think, reflect, pray, read or whatever you do in your quiet time. In all honesty, we have someone who wants to make sure that never happens. Pay attention next time you sit down or are getting ready to go and pray/read. I notice that my phone has never ringed so much, I notice a smudge on the carpet that needs to be cleaned up, I'll drop and break something... be prepared for distractions, but also be prepared for the blessings and insight and peace that will come if you push those distractions aside and focus on spending time with the most important One of all.

Faithfulness

2008-08-01T21:39:00.000-07:00

This past weekend I had a good reminder of God's faithfulness in all of the circumstances in our lives.

I don't know about you, but I find that it's really easy to believe that God is present with me when everything is going well. I can sit and thank and praise God all day long when I'm happy and things are going the way I believe that they should go. But, the moment a wrench is thrown into 'my plans', freaking out is my first reaction. By 'freaking out' I mean that I get sick to my stomach, and thoughts just begin to snowball in my mind. All of a sudden, I've gone from receiving news that something might be wrong to the worst case scenario of what that news actually means. But, once I start, it's almost impossible to stop... it'd be like trying to step on the tracks and stop a speeding train by holding out your hand.

Last Friday night, at about this time, I noticed that Jack, my sister's cat, looked like he was holding his jaw funny. Looking a little more closely at it, we could tell that the one side seemed to be swollen. My sister had to work at the hospital the next day, so I took Jack in to see the vet in the morning. Prior to even taking him in, I had a bad feeling. There was really no reason to have a bad feeling because it looked like Jack might have just played rough with the other cat and this injury was just the result; but, nonetheless, I just didn't have a good feeling. The vet takes a look at him and she starts to feel around on his jaw and all she said to me was, "hmmm... I'm not sure that I like this". Great. That's encouraging. She ran x-rays to get a look at the lump and she seemed less than hopeful after those results... basically, telling me that she was concerned that it looked like cancer. She said that it could possibly be a really bad infection, but you could tell by the tone of her voice that she really didn't think that was what it was and she was just trying to give me some shred of hope (or maybe she was trying to stop me from bawling... not sure which one) She starts throwing out at me all of these different things that they want to do and what our options would be if he did have cancer and I really wasn't processing any of it. All I could think about was having to call my sister, at work, and tell her that her 7 year old cat has cancer. The vet left me in the exam room to call my sister, but because she works in a hospital, she can't have her cell phone on, so I wasn't able to reach her right away and I left a message. While I was waiting for her to call me back, I was pleading with God that Jack wouldn't have cancer and pleading that He wasn't going to put us in a position where we'd have to decide Jack's 'quality of life' and be put in that position where we had to make a decision regarding Jack's life. I've been involved in those situations before and, actually, absolutely every pet I've ever had has had to be put to sleep due to illness and I was angry that God couldn't just let our pets die a natural death and not put us through the agony of that decision. I felt like I wasn't getting any answers from God or reassurance from Him and I was feeling really alone and just really wanting someone else to come in and take over- I didn't want to have to be there on my own. Around that point in time, the Vet Tech came back in the room to explain the procedures they wanted to do and once he was done, he told me that he was going on his lunch break, but that if we had any questions, to go ahead and ask for him. He started to walk out the door and I stopped him to ask him what his name was, so I would know who to ask for. I glanced at his nametag and his name is "Immanuel" - 'God With Us'. I thought that it was so amazing that God would reach out to me at that time and remind me that I wasn't alone and that He was with me in that examining room.

These are a couple of pictures of Jack right after his surgery:

Yesterday we found out that Jack doesn't have cancer. It turns out that it was that really bad infection that was a slight possibility, previously mentioned by the vet. So, he just needs to stay on antibiotics for a while and he should be fine. :-)

In this picture, he apparently doesn't realize his actual size...

Shake Rattle & Roll

2008-07-29T21:11:00.000-07:00

And, that's exactly what Southern CA did early this afternoon. Myself and one of my other co-workers were sitting up at the HR Lobby front desk covering lunch and we were just chit-chatting when it hit. For those of you who may not have experienced an earthquake before, it's a pretty unique experience. I've found that I notice noises before I actually feel the earthquake. I hear the shaking and rumbling and shortly thereafter, I start to feel the vibrations and then, this one, it really started to shake. At work, our buildings are on rollers (as are most buildings in CA), so rather than feeling sharp jarring movements, it's more of a rolling, seasick kind of a feeling. You could tell that we've lived in CA all our lives... minimal reaction to the fact that the earth just moved. We both just looked over at one another and said, 'huh, that's actually a pretty strong one' and I just sat there waiting to find out if I was going to hear something fall or break and, if it did, that would be my cue to dive under the desk. That didn't happen, so I just stayed in my seat and waited for it to pass. Almost immediately after it ended, I was on the internet searching sites trying to find out where it was centered and the magnitude. I actually found myself to be getting irritated that within 5 seconds of the earthquake, there was still no information on the web about it :-) Shows you how used to immediate communication I am! Turned out to be a 5.8 and then it was downgraded to a 5.4, with an epicenter of Chino Hills. Irvine, where I work, is further away from Chino Hills than where I live, so I called home to see how everything was and I guess that it was fairly bad in our town. No injuries or major damage, but it was just felt much more strongly. My sister said that she couldn't even keep her balance and that she could hear things crashing in the room next to her (my room, fyi). Turns out a lot of things fell, but nothing was broken. When I came home, the Pavilions near my home was closed, so I couldn't get groceries and there were some challenges with trying to call on my cell immediately afterwards, but other than that, no harm done. But, I know that there were a number of people at work who were really shaken up (no pun intended) by it.

It kind of got me to wondering about fears and how they differ for every person. Having grown up in CA, you'd think that it would be normal for me to be afraid of earthquakes... while nothing particularly bad has ever happened to me, personally, I still have pretty vivid images of strong earthquakes when I was a kid and, of course, from the 1989 San Francisco/Bay Area earthquake. I still remember those images of the section of the Bay Bridge that came loose and partially fell down onto the lower level of the bridge and the video of the car, unaware that the bridge was damaged, driving straight for the hole in the bridge, falling down into it and then the front end of the car coming back up on the other side. I remember the horrible images of the Nimitz Fwy, where a chunk of the upper level of the freeway, literally, came crashing down onto the bottom level- during rush hour traffic- crushing the people in their cars below. Then there was the fire that broke out, as a result of the earthquake, in the Marina District of San Francisco, burning countless homes to the ground. That earthquake was measured at a 6.9. I just remember it all being very surreal. So, for seeing, firsthand, what an earthquake can do, it's kind of ironic that they don't really phase me much at all. I just assume that it's one of the prices you pay for living in CA and I'd much rather experience earthquakes than a tornado or hurricane. So... I don't fear something that has happened and is, pretty much guaranteed to happen again; yet, my greatest fears are typically of things that have never happened to me- some of which probably have a lesser likelihood of happening than an earthquake, yet those are the things that can paralyze me. So, this simple earthquake that happened today has got me questioning my fears and if they are even worth my time at all. We all spend so much of our time worrying about something that might never happen.

"Worry gives a small thing a big shadow." Swedish Proverb

"It ain't no use putting up your umbrella until it rains." Alice Caldwell Rice

"Worry does not empty tomorrow of it's sorrow; it empties today of it's strength." Corrie Ten Boom

"Don't worry if you're a kleptomaniac, you can always take something for it." Anonymous

OC Register Article

2008-07-25T18:22:00.000-07:00

My friend, at work, forwarded me this news article that was posted on OCRegister.com today. It's about law enforcement cracking down on so-called "massage parlors" located around Orange County.

My only objection to this article is that it refers to the girls as 'prostitutes'. I think that word automatically leads people to think that the situation is voluntary- that these girls are choosing this lifestyle. Now, this may be the case with some of the parlors, but a large portion of them are modern-day slavery operations. These girls are being trafficked through these brothels against their will. But, it's an interesting article none-the-less. I'm still having issues with posting links, so copy and paste this link:

http://www.ocregister.com/articles/massage-city-orange-2104360-hours-establishments

Can God use "Evan Almighty" to teach me something?

2008-07-24T21:58:00.000-07:00

I was thinking back on the movie 'Evan Almighty' tonight. I know that there are critics out there who boo hoo such movies because they think that they somehow mock God; but, I truly believe that our God has a good sense of humor and that He probably doesn't get half as riled up over these movies as some of us Christians do. Personally, I thought that Bruce Almighty was hilarious and Evan Almighty, while not as funny, had a really good message behind it. My thought on the whole thing is that if either of these movies get people to think about our God or gets them curious about the stories in the Bible, then I'm all for it. We hardly have any movies out there, much less blockbuster movies, that even bring up the topic of God, Jesus or Christianity. Everyone is soooo concerned with offending someone or pushing our beliefs onto others. I figure, if you don't want to see it, don't buy the movie ticket. That's the great thing about America... you have the freedom to choose. Besides, I can't even count how many movies have offended me on the basis of violence alone; but, that doesn't stop anyone from making violent movies and you never get quite the uproar that you get when a movie about God or Jesus comes out in the theatre. I mean, regardless of your beliefs, I think that anyone would agree that the Bible's teachings are moral and that if people were to follow those teachings this world would be a better place (i.e. defend the widow, feed the orphans, love others, etc.) Even people I know who are of another faith, or no faith at all, believe that the Christian teachings are morally correct and that it's a good way to live your life.

Okay, so I've totally gotten off of the topic of Evan Almighty. I seem to have a tendency to do that- I start off on one topic and it carries me off into a completely different direction. Anywhooo... the reason I was thinking about that movie is because there is a conversation that "God" (Morgan Freeman) has with Steve Carrell's wife. A little background: Steve Carrell's character has accepted that he's the new Noah for this century and that he's to build an Ark and he's building it, regardless of what anyone else has to say. His wife becomes overwhelmed with not only her husband building a boat in their front yard, but he's also started wearing this brown tattered robe, his hair has gone white and it's grown long. So, she's taken the kids and left and she's at this restaurant, alone, and "God", looking like a busboy, comes up to her and asks her what's wrong. She explains the story to him and says something to the effect that she had prayed to God for her family to grow closer and they had just drifted further apart than ever before. "God's" response to her was:

"Let me ask you something. If someone prays for patience, you think God gives them patience? Or does he give them the opportunity to be patient? If he prayed for courage, does God give him courage, or does he give him opportunities to be courageous? If someone prayed for the family to be closer, do you think God zaps them with warm fuzzy feelings, or does he give them opportunities to love each other?"

Honestly, that moment in the movie was one of those 'aha' moments for me. I had never thought of it that way. I figured, I pray for faith, trust in God, patience and I just expected that God would automatically give me those characteristics or feelings. I couldn't understand why, when I pray for those things, things in my life wouldn't get better. If anything, I'd have more things to cause me anxiety, more things to cause me to feel impatient. I felt like, "God, was I not clear? I didn't ask for IMpatience, I asked for patience." (just in the event that He heard me incorrectly, I thought I should clarify :-) I was realizing that, typically, that is not the way God works. One of my favorite stories in the Bible is the account of Abraham and Sarah's life. Abraham was promised to be the father of many nations and Sarah, although older and supposedly barren, was going to have a son named Isaac. But, God didn't immediately grant that promise to them. They had to wait year after year after year, and they had to make several mistakes along the way (one major one involving getting Sarah's maidservant Hagar pregnant to 'speed up the process', before they arrived at that time when God's promises to them were fulfilled. They had to develop their faith and trust in God's promises before those promises came to fruition.

"Even when there was no reason for hope, Abraham kept hoping- believing that he would become the father of many nations..... Abraham never wavered in believing God's promise. In fact, his faith grew stronger, and in this he brought glory to God. He was fully convinced that God is able to do whatever he promises. And because of Abraham's faith, God counted him as righteous." Romans 4:18 & 20-22

God doesn't make us wait to punish us or to cause us anxiety. He does it because waiting, meaning you'll need to have patience and faith, develops our character. It makes us more Christ-like. If everything were to be handed to us as soon as it was promised, there would be no reason to have hope or faith because you don't need to have hope or faith in something that you already possess. But, by sharing with people, what we believe God's promises to us are (even when we have no reason to believe so), we are able to glorify Him when others see the 'impossible' become the possible - they have to admit that this promise couldn't have come true without God being right in the middle of it all.

I can say, personally, that I've prayed a long time to have more trust and faith in the Lord and, at one point in time, I thought that He wasn't answering those prayers. Now, I know that He is answering those prayers through those "opportunities" He places in my life. Opportunities to be more patient, to have more faith and to be more trusting of God and His perfect plan for my life. Sometimes (probably more often than not) I wish that He would just 'zap' me with those characteristics, but it would be pretty hard to have more faith in
God when I've never had to have faith in the first place, rather, it was just handed to me. Besides, I have to admit that most of those 'opportunities' that have come into my life, to help me grow in character, have actually resulted in getting closer to my family and friends, developing completely new friendships, and going places I never thought that I'd go and that's really not so bad :-)

Couple of Odds & Ends

2008-07-20T21:28:00.000-07:00

I keep remembering these random things from Thailand and they really aren't stories or significant events, but they are things that I remember, and want to remember, about my trip and this blog is almost just as much for me as anyone else because I always think that I'm going to remember something, but time goes on and I'll forget.

Odds & Ends:

1. 'Thailand' literally translates into "Land of the Free". Ironic considering thousands upon thousands of people are victims of modern-day slavery in Thailand.

2. Most food items are significantly cheaper in Thailand. For example, you can buy a good sized back of cut up, fresh pineapple for approximately 75 cents, but Starbucks prices are the same as U.S. They don't have as many drink options (i.e. they don't have the Chai Tea Latte or Strawberries 'n Cream Frappucinos I love)as in the U.S. and they also don't have any "Thai" Starbucks drinks... no papaya 'n cream fraps or anything unusual. I think that they are there to cater towards the tourists and that's why they can keep their prices the same. But, there are also other food/toiletry items that are much more expensive. Pretty much anything that they have to import from the U.S. is marked up significantly. So, whereas we could buy a Betty Crocker Cake Mix at Target for @ 1 dollar, in Thailand, they are at least $5 a piece. I was in 7 Eleven one day and they had Pantene Shampoo and this bottle couldn't have been too much bigger than a Target travel-sized bottle, but it cost $7.

3. One night four of us girls decided to go to one of the local hotels and have dinner at a buffet. It was recommended to us by a couple of locals and so we figured it couldn't be too bad.

We figured wrong.

The hotel seemed nice enough. High rise hotel and it was a bit 'Vegas-ified' in that it had a bungee jumping area, they had a couple of roller coasters (never saw any of them running)and then, of course, it had a buffet. The buffet was located on the top floor and we went over and asked if we could go up and see what it looked like. We were told that we could not and you had to pay for your meal first and then they would let you up on the elevator. Looking back, this really should have been a red flag to us. So, we figured, how bad could it be? And, we purchased the dinner tickets and rode the elevator up to the top floor. Now, to focus on the positives... well, really there was only one positive... the view. It was on the 53rd floor and the restaurant overlooked the city of Pattaya. Plus the restaurant actually rotated, so you were able to see all of the city. And, that's where the positives stop.

It was almost cafeteria-style seating in that there were a bunch of long tables with chairs and, I'm assumming, that if it was busy, you'd be sitting with a bunch of strangers at your table. It wasn't busy, so we did have a table to ourselves. We got up and went to look at the buffet. Let's just say that I just came back with fruit on my plate. It really was pretty bad. If Super 8 Motels had buffets, this is what they would look like. First of all, next to every hot dish they had a cartoon picture of the animal that was 'in' that dish. So, they had these cute little cartoon pictures of pigs and chickens and rabbits, etc. So, I look at these pictures and feel guilty about eating the food; but, all guilt aside, I couldn't eat it anyway. It really didn't even resemble food. It was probably one of the only times in Thailand when I really wondered if I was going to be taken to the hospital with food poisoning later that evening. Then, to top it off, right above the seafood was a sign for the patrons that read, "Eating large quantities of seafood can cause stomach upset and diahrrea" It's as if they know people are going to get sick off of this stuff, so they put a disclaimer up on the wall, in front of the food, so that should anyone come back complaining that the food made them sick, the restaurant can say, 'we posted a warning that seafood could do that to you'. No no no... seafood does not do that. Undercooked, week-old, kept-at-the-wrong-temperature seafood can do that and I'm thinking that was what they were trying to serve.

Did I mention the 'lounge singer'? They had a guy at a piano who had this slicked back hair and he was singing 60's and 70's hits from the U.S. All I remember is hearing "Hotel California" and at that point, I just started laughing and couldn't stop. I mean, the experience was so horrible, that it was comical. We never should have paid for a meal without seeing the restaurant first. Lesson learned.

4. One afternoon we were working at the Tamar Center and they asked us to be guinea pigs for a couple of the girls who were being trained on facials (Tamar Center has a beauty shop). I know what you're thinking... 'oh, poor girls... they go on a mission trip and they 'have' to have facials'. Hold that thought. Trust me... you will not be jealous of me in a moment. So, we lay down on these mats and they start applying all of the product to our faces. I actually am not a huge fan of facials to begin with- I don't like a bunch of product put on my face and my skin tends to be sensitive, so it's not a fun thing for me, but, I know that they need practice and I'm thinking that maybe I'll walk away with 'glowing skin'. After rubbing in several lotions/moisturizers, they apply an exfoliator. I'm all for exfoliators- I use them twice a week at home. BUT, I rub them on for a few seconds and wash it off. I must have been laying there for a good 10 minutes, at least, while she rubbed this exfoliator on my face. It actually didn't feel that bad, but I just remember thinking that she was doing it for a long time. Next came a clay mask. She got it on pretty quickly and then we had to wait 5-10 minutes for it to dry. It turns out that it was one of those peel off masks vs. wash off.

Here's where things started to go wrong.

She began pulling it and it kind of hurt. I didn't want to say anything because I didn't want her to feel bad, but I could tell that it was, essentially, waxing my face as it was being pulled off. I also didn't say anything because I was going by the 'band-aid theory'. The theory that it's more painful to slowly take it off vs. just ripping it off in one quick motion. So, I let her get it off as quickly as possible and I could almost feel the skin on my face pulsating and stinging all at once. I was the first one to get it done and one of the girls next to me asked me how it was and I just told her, 'just let her take it off quickly'. The other girls weren't as quiet as I was. For the next 10 minutes or so, you just kept hearing 'ow ow ow ow ow'. Finally, all masks were off.

Get this... after all was said and done, we found out that 'ow' in Thai means 'more'. So, as the girls were trying to verbalize the pain they were in, the only thing the Thai girls were hearing was 'more more more'.

Remember how I said that I have sensitive skin??? Within about 2 hours after the facial, I had small red welts all over my cheeks. I looked so pretty. :-P That night, I seriously prayed that my skin would clear up and, thankfully, by morning, you couldn't even tell that anything was wrong.

The thing of it all was that it really wasn't the girls' fault. The product they were using was just way to harsh, but it had nothing to do with their technique. We mentioned to one of the directors at the center that the masks had caused some 'discomfort' and that maybe they might want to check out a few other products that would work well on sensitive skin. She mentioned that, after we had gotten our facials, she had gotten one as well and she agreed that the mask was quite painful. Hopefully, they'll be able to find some better material to work with.

Here's a 'before picture' of us all getting ready for our facials. We had no idea what lie ahead for us :-)

Sharing Your Faith Without Seeing the Results

2008-07-17T20:15:00.000-07:00

This morning it hit me...a year ago today, I was in Africa on my first ever Missions Trip. I never thought that, in the course of less than a year, I would be going on two of them. Just goes to show you that a lot can happen in one year! A few years ago, I remember feeling that I had never traveled as much as I thought I would have by that particular stage in my life. Well, I guess God heard me because I've done more traveling in this past year than I have in my lifetime!

Africa
Mexico (2 times)
Georgia
Philadelphia
Washington DC
Virginia
Thailand

No wonder I feel so worn out :-) Or maybe my age is just catching up with me :-P

I got off track... I was talking about Africa...

Realizing that I was in Africa last year at this time, got me to thinking about that trip and the experiences and what I took away from it. I remember going into the trip feeling like "I" had to do something big for God. I had to walk away from my trip knowing that "I" had changed at least one life. I remember getting home and feeling like "I" had done absolutely nothing to make a difference. In some ways, I felt like a failure... like I had failed God and myself. Aside from my team members, our translator, our Pastor and our driver, I didn't really form any lasting relationships with anyone. We stayed in the same village most of the time, but we were going from meeting to meeting to orphanage to hospital to one of Rick's speaking events to another hospital to a court hearing and even to a wedding. I never felt that we stayed in one place long enough to connect with anyone. I felt like one of those 'drive by missionaries'. We'd attend a church service, toss a few Bibles their way and we'd be off. Or we'd attend a showing of "The Jesus Film", lay hands on people and pray for them and then off we'd go. We were definitely 'doing' a lot, but I didn't feel like we were accomplishing much. (Now, let me say that I have absolutely no regrets about going to Africa, and, looking back, I know that God was able to use us... I just wasn't able to see it at the time.)

So, when the Thailand trip came to a close, I wasn't surprised, at all, to hear that a few of the people on my team were feeling that way. They felt that we were doing a lot, but not really accomplishing what we set out to accomplish. There was talk of how another person, on a completely separate trip, had led someone to Christ and there was the thought that, because this hadn't been done, that they hadn't been successful in some way. This really got me to thinking about the whole idea of 'leading someone to Christ'. Does anyone really hear the Gospel, for the first time in their lives, and immediately accept Christ into their lives then and there? I'm certain that it does happen. The Holy Spirit is very powerful and I know that God can have that effect on people. But, what about the majority of the people? I'm not trying to be pessimistic, but I tend to have doubts about those people who hear the message once and that's the be all and end all for them and they become a Christian, just like that. I worry about how deep that person's belief truely goes. Do they really believe it with all of their hearts, or are they just looking for acceptance from the one asking them to accept Christ? Or, do they feel pressured to do so? Or, are they just going along with what everyone else is doing, simply to fit in? This is just my opinion, but depending on the person receiving the message, I believe that it takes numerous attempts over the course of time before a person is ready to truely accept Christ into their lives.

I think that this is really what we have to pray about and focus on when we head out on these trips. Don't go into it with the goal of 'leading someone to Christ'. I mean, come on, we're giving ourselves WAY too much credit. We aren't 'leading' anyone. It's God, dwelling in these people, who is leading them to Himself. We are foolish if we think we are 'saving someone'. We can't save ourselves, much less anyone else. Only God can save people. But, we do get the privelege of having Him work through us in sharing His message; and, that's really what He calls us to do. Not to preach a sermon or use scare tactics and threats of hell to get someone to accept Christ. We are to share our experiences and how our life was before Jesus and how it has been after we accepted Him into our hearts. We are to share how He has worked in our lives and how we've witnessed Him working in the world around us. I think the 'Christian-ese' term would be 'planting seeds'. And, like any seeds you plant, some will stick and grow and produce fruit, while others will be snatched away by the birds, for lack of a better phrase. We aren't responsible for making those seeds stick. Only for planting them and then handing that person over to God to do the rest. We are there to show consistency in our faith, to show love to these hurting people and to see these people through God's eyes of compassion.

I do know that when you set out on one of these trips, you really want to walk away having something tangible to hold onto. Realistically, that's not going to happen everytime. More often than not, you are going to go back home not knowing what effect your words may have had and you really have to be okay with that. Truthfully, I don't believe God looks any more favorably upon the first person who shared God with Jane Doe versus the twentieth person who shared God with Jane Doe versus the person who helped lead Jane Doe, through prayer, in accepting Christ. Each person who did so, was being obedient and I think that God smiles down on each and everyone of them the same.

If you have any doubts, you should read the testimony of William Fay, author of "Share Jesus Without Fear". I finished this book just before leaving for Thailand and God really used it to give me such a sense of peace in that all I was called to do was be obedient and that I needed to be okay with not being that 25th person who, ultimately, led someone in the prayer. The cliff notes version of William Fay's testimony is that he was the CEO of a multimillion-dollar international corporation, he had ties to the mob and owned one of the larger houses of prostitution in the U.S. He, admittedly, mocked anyone who dared share their faith with him. Ultimately, his house of prostitution was raided and the only people who showed concern for how he was doing, was a Christian couple. Needless to say, it was NUMEROUS years after having first heard of Christ, that he accepted Him into his heart. What I loved was what William Fay had to say about the people, over the years, who had shared their faith with him:

"Through the years, many people came into my life to share their faith, but I would not receive it. I sent these people away, discouraged, because I either insulted them, antagonized them, or persecuted them. And if they walked away from me believing they had failed, they believed a lie. For I never forgot the name, the face, the person, or the words of anyone who ever told me about Jesus."

If that doesn't encourage you in sharing your faith, either here or overseas, regardless of the 'seen' result, I don't know what will.

More Orphanage Photos...

2008-07-16T18:26:00.000-07:00

When we went to the Pattaya Orphanage, I had taken along a bunch of little knick knacks and toys that had been collected over the 5 months prior to the trip. One of the only regrets, on my trip, that I had was not being able to be there when the toys were handed out to the kids. Unfortunately, the timing just didn't allow for it. The orphanage was fine with me handing everything out, however, the kids had just gone down for a nap and they weren't going to be getting up for 1 1/2 hours and we couldn't wait around because we had to get to Bangkok :-( BUT... I was checking out their website a couple of days ago and they actually posted pictures of the kids when they received the gifts. I haven't been able to figure out how to copy and save them myself, but if you copy and paste this link (sorry, I'm experiencing technical difficulties (surprise) and cannot get the actual link to post) --------->

http://www.thepattayaorphanage.org/updatenews/20080701_1/index.php

you'll be able to see the pictures. I may not have been able to be there, in person, but these pictures just gave me the biggest smile!

Thank You!!!

2008-07-16T18:20:00.000-07:00

This week I went about the business of getting out my 'thank you' letters to the people who supported me on my trip. However, personally, I only have a record of those people who financially supported me and I know that there were many more people supporting me through their prayers and I, by no means, wanted to neglect to thank all of you as well. Your prayers were essential to every part of this trip and God, absolutely, listened and answered your prayers and I thank you all from the bottom of my heart.

Here is the thank you letter I sent out:

Sawadeekah!

Thank you all for your prayers! We made it home, safe and sound, late last Thursday night. Even though it’s coming on one week since I arrived back home, I’m still trying to figure out what to write in this letter. Trying to process this trip has been much more difficult than I had anticipated and it’s difficult to readjust to life back in Orange County. My list of things that seemed so important 3 weeks ago, don’t seem as important anymore. But, on the other hand, I’ve developed a whole new list of what really matters to me and I think that the new list is much better than the old one!

Thailand is definitely a different world. Having been accustomed to being in environments, both inside and outside America, that are primarily Christian, I was now in the minority; and, I mean the minority. Less than 1% of the population is Christian. Ninety-some percent are Buddhist, with the remainder, growing population, being Muslim. You’ve never seen so many idols in your life! Little Buddha statues all over the place and shrines are everywhere. Then, along the beach, you even encounter shrines that are more voodoo-based. At the base of every shrine you’re sure to find open bottles of Fanta soda with straws sticking out of them- they act as some form of offering to the Gods/spirits so that the spirits won’t become angry with them.

To find a Christian Thai person was rare. When a Thai Christian man/woman would notice our cross necklaces, they would be all excited, pointing to our necklaces and saying, “You Christian? Me Christian too!” It was pretty cute how excited they would be to find us. They had such a light shining from their faces!

However, in other of the areas of Thailand, you can almost feel the darkness and oppression surrounding you. But…light shines brightest in the dark and we were blessed to be witnesses to areas where God’s light is shining and prayers are being answered.

• Kaek is the head baker at the Tamar Center in Pattaya. She grew up in Northern Thailand and in her early years, she became a single mom. Now, in Thailand, it is tradition that the youngest daughter is the one who takes care of the family. So, as soon as she is old enough to work, she is responsible for any children of her own, her parents and her siblings. That meant that Kaek was going to have to make a decent amount of money. She had heard that you could make a lot of money working in Pattaya, in the bars. At first she didn’t understand what working in the bars meant, so she picked up and moved to Pattaya. She soon realized what ‘working in the bars’ really meant. She didn’t want to do it, but there is no other job that pays nearly the same amount (about 4X more than any other job). She tried to work in the bars for one night, but she couldn’t go through with it. She had heard about the Tamar Center, so she went to them for help. Initially, she was told that they couldn’t help her because they were there to help the bar girls and she wasn’t a bar girl. Kaek started sobbing and walking away and the Tamar Center employee called her back and asked her where she was going. Kaek said, “well, I guess I’m going to go work in the bars so you can help me”. The employee, obviously, did not want her doing that, so they made an exception to their rule and she started working there. It was at the Tamar Center that Kaek first learned about the Gospel and Jesus Christ. She said that she was at a point in her life where she had hit rock bottom. She had no money, no husband and she had tried to kill herself a few times (she showed me the scars running up and down her arm). She figured that she was at the end of her rope, anyway, so why not try praying to Jesus. She said that was a turning point in her life. She said, from then on, her heart was filled with joy and she felt purposeful. To spend one minute with Kaek is to truly see the embodiment of joy. You see a light in her eyes, she always has a huge smile and she laughs all of the time.

• The night we were working with the Nightlight Ministries in Bangkok we went out to the bars to talk to the girls. Our team lead ended up buying one girl out of the bar for the evening for 100 Baht (3 U.S. dollars). She did that because the girl was visibly upset and obviously not wanting to be there. As soon as she started talking to our team lead, she completely broke down crying, so she got her out of that situation. They ended up going to a coffee shop and talking and they got her phone number from her so they could follow up with her and see how she's doing. On our last day there, one of the girls spoke with her and she had made the decision to leave the bars and go back up north to live with her parents. One of the best parts of this story... I'm not sure how it's spelled in Thai, but the girl who left the bar, her name is pronounced "Prayer".

• We heard Apple’s testimony at the Sunday church service in Pattaya. Apple was a Muslim wife and mother. She thought her life was great, but then she started to become ill. Ultimately, she was diagnosed with HIV/AIDS- her husband had, apparently, been unfaithful. She was so sick at the time that the doctors told her and her husband that she had three days to live. Her husband, being the loving man that he is, told her that he was going to go home and that he’d be back on the fourth day to pick up her body. While in the hospital, Apple’s health continued to deteriorate and she felt completely alone. One of her friends found out she was in the hospital and called her. Her friend started telling her about God and Apple made the decision to pray with her. Well, the fourth day came and went, the fifth day came and went, and, much to the doctor’s astonishment, Apple’s health was improving. She became stronger and stronger and eventually was able to leave the hospital. She has accepted Jesus Christ as her Lord and Savior and she now lives, with her daughter, at the HIV/AIDS Hospice.

• The entire time we were in Pattaya, we had taken the Song Tao’s to get around (open air taxis… really, they are just covered truck beds). Several nights into the trip we were in downtown Pattaya and we had to get over to an all night Prayer Session at the Tamar Center. Andrea tells us that she’s going to get a taxi to take us (an actual car). A few of us girls looked at one another and thought, ‘what is she doing?’ Taxi’s are too small and, oddly enough, we felt safer in a Song Tao because if the driver attempted to take us somewhere we didn’t want to go, we’d just jump out. It wouldn’t be that simple in a car. We all had to sandwich ourselves like sardines in the car and we were still muttering to ourselves, ‘now why didn’t we take a Song Tao?’. But, then we started chit chatting and the driver asked Goie, our interpreter, why we girls had so much joy. He had never seen people so happy. I really didn’t think that we were acting any differently than normal… just acting like girls act, but he saw something different. One of the girls told him that we were joyful because we had Jesus in our lives. She asked if he knew who Jesus was and he said that he knew who he was, and it made him sad because he didn’t understand why he had to die. Well, our team lead just breaks out into this conversation and by the time we reach the Tamar Center, she’s shared the Gospel with him and he’s in tears. He did not take the step to accept Christ that evening, but each of us had absolutely no doubt why we ended up taking a taxi instead of a Song Tao.

• One other thing that made me smile was when we were walking down ‘Walking Street’, the red light district in downtown Pattaya. It’s pretty much bar after bar after discotech after bar (you get the idea)… all with very young girls standing outside trying to get the men to come inside the establishments. There are also a couple of souvenir shops and one, in particular, caught my eye. They had a display out in the front of their store of a bunch of black and white t-shirts that had phrases or sayings printed on them. Things like, “Good Boys Go to Heaven and Bad Boys Go to Pattaya” and other juvenile crude statements. I’m scanning the t-shirts and smack dab in the middle of the display is a t-shirt that reads “Jesus is My Homeboy”. I couldn’t believe that a souvenir shop was selling a Jesus t-shirt, given that the Christian population is less than 1% in Thailand. It’s like God was telling me that even in this dark area, God was still in the middle of it all.

Additionally, when we went out to the bars, there were very few men. You’d see, maybe, 5-7 men, tops. Team members who had gone to Thailand in the past said that they had never seen the bars so empty- they were typically busting at the seams. This is very promising because, like in any other business, it’s the law of supply and demand. If the men stop going to the bars, there won’t be any customers to warrant the bars staying in business. I know that it is a sign of God moving, not only in Thailand, but in these men’s lives.

I have no regrets about going and, who knows what the future holds. Maybe, one day, I’ll be back in Thailand. I’ll just have to wait and see where the Lord guides me next. I will say this though… I am not the same person I was when I boarded the plane in LAX three weeks ago. I still don’t understand the ‘big picture’ of my life but, day by day, God is faithful and, while He doesn’t show me the end of the road, He does light up the next step I need to take. Through this experience in Thailand, God’s broken heart for these people has become my broken heart, and I am more certain, than ever, that God has a plan and purpose for my life that far exceeds anything that I could ever dream or imagine. I’m confident that He’s doing the same for you as well.

With Love,

Julie

“Trust in the Lord with all of your heart and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways, acknowledge Him and He will make your paths straight.”
Proverbs 3:5-6

God of this City, Part II

2008-07-09T00:09:00.000-07:00

I found this video on YouTube. It's the song "God of this City" that I've referred to a few times in my posts. Thought I'd just post it here in case you haven't heard it. This song was written and inspired by Pattaya Thailand.

Haunted

2008-07-08T22:51:00.000-07:00

No, no, no, I'm not talking about 'haunted' as in ghosts and haunted houses. :0) I just thought it was a cool picture of the Haunted Mansion at Disneyland and having worked there for so many years, it brings back good memories.

But, I would say that I am feeling a bit haunted. I've tried to come up with another word to use because I feel like 'haunted' sounds a bit melodramatic, but that's the best descriptor I can think of with regards to how I've been feeling. I haven't posted since returning, not because I didn't have the time, but because I couldn't even formulate words to describe what I was thinking or feeling. I couldn't eat, sleep and I just felt like screaming (and I think that I may have done that in the confines of my own room :-) I felt so hopeless and angry and fearful. I was (and am) 'haunted' by the faces of the people who I met in Thailand. The faces of the bar girls, child prostitutes, lady-boys, the homeless, even all of the uncared for animals roaming the streets with injuries and diseases. How could I go back to my 'normal' life? How could I get up, get gas in my car, go to work for 8 hours, come home, hang out with friends, watch tv... how could I go about those daily activities knowing that, at the sametime, halfway around the world (and, really, in our own backyard)someone else's work involved having their bodies sold to complete strangers; or, it involved sitting on a filthy street corner holding out your hand, depending on the kindness of others to feed you, when, in reality, 99% of the people who pass you by, avert their eyes, turn up the volume on their iPods and the only way you know that they notice you is because they either maneuver around you or step over you. When did these things become acceptable? They're not. It just breaks my heart and what strikes fear in me is the understanding that I could be them. I certainly didn't do anything to deserve the life that I have. I could have just as easily been born into that situation. Then how would I feel? Would I be okay with people looking the other way? I mean, I cannot even imagine living that way for 24 hours, much less years on end.

I haven't completely re-read through my blog, but I'm pretty certain that I didn't share a couple of stories about my trip.

This first one isn't so much a story as it's just another thing that shocked me. In Bangkok, we did quite a bit of walking and, like in any big city, there are homeless people. I wouldn't say that there was an abundance of homeless on the street, but those who were on the street were very noticeable. Noticeable because they were all either mothers rocking their small sleeping children or they were horribly disfigured- missing or twisted limbs, or both. Some were sitting, one or two were in wheelchairs others were face down on the street, literally, with their arm outstretched, holding a tin pan for money collections. I began to wonder, especially about those who could obviously not walk and didn't have wheelchairs... how on earth did they get around? Or did they spend their days/nights in that same spot the entire time? I asked our team lead, who had been to Thailand several times, what those people would do. What she told me has made me physically sick. There are Cambodian and Thai Mafia in Bangkok. They specifically pick out people who are noticeably disfigured in some way. They then cart them around and strategically place them in different, heavily trafficked, areas of the city. Then, at night, they come back and take most of the money that person received from passerbys. They do this day after day. And, those mothers with sleeping children? 99% of the time, those children aren't even theirs. They are children whose parents sold them out of need for money and the mafia uses them to play on people's emotions. Why are they always sleeping? Because they are drugged is why. They don't want any problems from an undisciplined child and they solve that by drugging them so they sleep the day away. ?????? How can one person do that to another? I'm completely sick over it.

ugh... okay... I need to move onto a couple of happier stories...

The day we went to the Nightlight Ministries to have an orientation and tour, we were given the opportunity to purchase jewelry that the girls had made. Aside from the jewelry,they had also just started making little velvet gift bags for the jewelry. Each bag was completely handsewn and had some sort of design on the front. I bought a couple pieces of jewelry, but I had decided that I didn't need to buy the bags because, well, I just didn't feel that I needed them. We left that building to go to another and almost the entire time, I kept having this nagging feeling that I should have purchased a couple of those bags. I couldn't logically think why I would need those bags or what I would even use them for, but then I remembered that I was purchasing a couple of things for a friend and she makes jewelry and gives it out as gifts, so maybe she could use a couple of the bags. The group was ready to head back to the hotel and I couldn't fight the nagging feeling anymore, so I asked if it would be okay to run back to the other building and buy a couple of things. They said it was fine, so off I went. I ran upstairs and asked one of the supervisors if I could buy a couple of the bags. She just gave me this look and then got this huge smile on her face. She told me that they had just got done praying that someone from our group would come back and purchase more of the bags. (the reason being that this was, essentially, a new product and they really wanted to offer the girls encouragment and show that their work was valuable) She then told the girls, in Thai, why I was there and they all started laughing and clapping. Rebecca (the supervisor) told me that this encouragement was so important because most of the girls are either brand new Christians or not Christians, so showing them that God answers prayers is a huge determining factor as to their beliefs. Isn't that amazing? Who would have thought that conceding to the 'nagging voice' in my head would have actually been God answering a prayer? I really hope that is an encouragement to all of you... when you feel like you are supposed to do something, but it doesn't make sense and you don't know why, just do it (if it's safe of course :-) I would have missed out on such a blessing had I not obeyed. Not only was I able to purchase a couple of really cute bags, but I also met one of the girls who made the bag I was purchasing and she was so happy that someone liked her hard work.

The night we were working with the Nightlight Ministries in Bangkok, as I previously mentioned, we went out to the bars to talk to the girls. Our team lead ended up buying one girl out of the bar for the evening for 100 Baht (3 U.S. dollars). She did that because the girl was visibly upset and obviously not wanting to be there. As soon as she started talking to our team lead, she completely broke down crying, so she got her out of that situation. They ended up going to a coffee shop and talking and they got her phone number from her so they could follow up with her and see how she's doing. On our last day there, one of the girls spoke with her and she had made the decision to leave the bars and go back up north to live with her parents. One of the best parts of this story... I'm not sure how it's spelled in Thai, but the girl who left the bar, her name is pronounced "Prayer". When I heard that it was just one of those 'wow' moments and evidence of God working.

So, although Pattaya and Bangkok are very dark places, it's changing. And, anyway, light shines brightest in the darkness, right? Just reflecting back on these couple of stories, it fills me with hope and the despair is snuffed out. I know that things are changing all over the world. And, just because I'm not in the same city as those people anymore, that doesn't mean I can't pray everyday for them (and possibly visit them in the future- who knows - I certainly never thought I'd ever take this trip, so who knows what the future holds) and I will continue to pray for them because God answers prayers and our hearts break for these people because of God's heartbreak for these people. I cry over them because He cries over them. These perversions aren't of God. Everything that is good is from God and He loves us so much that He has given us the free will to make the choice if we are going to love Him back; and, isn't that what true love is? Unfortunately, some people have abused their free will and that's why we live in the world we live in. The Lord doesn't desire any of these horrible things that are happening around the world and because of that... because I know who I belong to... I am pushing aside the fear, anxiety and depression and I've been given a renewed hope. After all, the ending to the story has already been determined. God wins.

Home!

2008-07-04T04:13:00.000-07:00

Myself and my team are home safe and sound! On our way to the Bangkok Airport, we stopped at YWAM (Youth with a Mission) to pick up the other half of our team who had opted to spend the night there. YWAM acts as almost a hostel for students who are traveling on mission trips. It's a very simple, plain building and they have Discipleship Leader Training courses and they have Worship Services 3 days a week. The people who run it seem very nice and one of the male leaders is one of the men who took the boys on our team out to the bar areas to conduct the surveys with the men who go to those places. They ask if they'd mind participating in a survey and they ask them pretty simple, non-threatening questions... i.e how long are you visiting Thailand, how often do you visit, what is the purpose of your visit, do you think prostitution is right/wrong, etc. But, they do seem to get a few people who are not too happy to see them- telling them that they need to leave because us Christians are trying to ruin everything for them. We're trying to stop girls from working in these bars and we're ruining their fun. It's almost laughable that they are getting mad at us and accusing us of 'ruining their fun'. Well, maybe you need to find another idea of 'fun'.

After leaving YWAM, we arrived at the airport in plenty of time and we ended up splitting up into groups and deciding to meet at the gate at 6:30pm. My group and I were about 15 minutes late, but there was still no one else from our team there. We waited another 15-20 min and still no one. Finally, they announced that they were going to start boarding and then we saw two other people arrive. We decided that we weren't going to risk it and wait any longer for the other 5 people, so we boarded the plane. Fortunately, about 5 minutes before they closed the doors, they all walked in. Bangkok does things a little differently with their airport security. You first go through the xray machines and take out any liquids you may be carrying on board. Then you go through a second security checkpoint right at your gate where they pat you down, have you empty your carry-ons and, for some of us, take off our shoes. So, you really have to allow a lot of extra time and, of course, our gate was at the very far end of the airport, so you had to allow travel time for that as well. Because of the time difference, we essentially had a dinner meal, then breakfast and then another dinner. We completely skipped lunch altogether. The food was okay. I think that I liked Virgin Airlines meals better last summer. For the first dinner you had your choice of fish or veal and I eat neither, so I had white rice, vegetables and whatever other extras were on the plate. The breakfast also had veal in it - veal sausage - so, that was out of the question and I just had more rice and then the last dinner was some sort of noodle dish and it was fine. Although, I have to say that I'm done with Thai food or noodles for a long time. I've had way too much over the past few days and I could go for some Nachos :-) As with the trip going to Thailand, the plane ride went exceptionally fast considering it was 14 hours long. They have plenty of movies and TV shows for you to watch and I didn't have anyone sitting next to me, so I was able to make myself comfortable and get quite a few hours of sleep and we actually arrived into LAX 45 minutes early. We didn't have any problems getting our shuttle and didn't hit any traffic going back to Saddleback Church and my sister was waiting there for me to pick me up and now I'm home. I've actually pretty much unpacked everything (didn't take much effort considering I pretty much just dumped everything into the washer) and I've already downloaded pictures onto my computer. Now, I'll just have to download them onto KodakGallery and send them out, hopefully this weekend.

I'm too tired to write anymore now, but I know that I'll have additional posts in the next week or two just to wrap everything up and to fill in any gaps I may have missed.

Thank you all for your prayers and support! I could definitely feel them!

On Our Way Home

2008-07-02T22:38:00.000-07:00

We are just hours away from saying goodbye to Thailand. It's gone by so quickly and I know that I haven't even begun to process all that I've seen and done... that will probably take quite a few days to do.

I just got back from taking a Tuk Tuk to MBK... a ridiculously huge shopping mall in Bangkok. Six levels. And not small levels either. The past two days I've only gone through 1 level and I was able to get more than enough souveniers to last me for quite a while. Prior to that, I walked down the main street and found a bakery that sells really unique donuts... green tea infused, pumpkin, etc. I ended up getting a carmelized macadamia donut- really yummy, but very sweet. I was really excited because I had been searching for a particular picture frame for a few days and the last place I looked at the mall, I was able to find it! I was disappointed, previously, because I thought that I'd have to leave without getting one. I have to go upstairs and pack up my new purchases and then I'm good to go!

Yesterday we had a great day! A very long day too. We got up and took a van at 6:30am out to the Floating Market. You board these long boats that almost look like canoes only they are motorized. It takes you through all of these marshy areas and homes that are built over the water. When I say 'homes', they are more like a bunch of plywood nailed together- so, not the OC waterfront homes by any means. Basically, they are poor fishing villages. I keep relating things back to Disneyland, but several people made the comment that we felt like we were on a Jungle Cruise/Pirates of the Carribbean ride... especially the bayou area at the beginning of the Pirates ride. People were floating by us with small boats full of fresh fruits and some people were fishing. It was a lot of fun, definitely. The marketplace itself, sells a lot of the souvenier type of merchandise and it's all over-priced. Even when you bargain it down, it's still way too much money. After the marketplace, we reboarded our van and took a ride on an elephant. It was about 30 minutes and they even take the elephants down through deep water so that it's almost touching your feet as they hang over. Me, being an animal lover, of course sat back and watched how they treated the elephants and they seemed to be nice to them and they seemed to be getting a lot of bananas. They were also rotating the elephants out so that they weren't going all day long. I have to pay attention to these things because I don't want to help fund anything that would be cruel to them.

We made the 2 hour drive back and then went to the MBK shopping center for a couple of hours and we also had lunch there. I found pizza and was SO happy. I cannot eat anymore noodles. I'm done. Watch- that's what they'll have on the plane ride home :-). After shopping, we came back and went out to dinner at one of the local hotels, just something nice for our last night, and they had an amazing buffet. I, of course, made a beeline for the desserts- SO good! After that we went to a Night Bazaar... again... more shopping :-) Then we came back and crashed for the night.

Well, I'm being told I need to go... I'll fill in more of the gaps later!

Pray for safe travels! Love to you all!

Last Night in Thailand

2008-07-02T08:46:00.000-07:00

Wow- it's all gone by rather quickly, but I'm on my way home tomorrow evening! It's been an amazing experience and I have no regrets about coming here. I've learned a lot about the Thai culture/customs and, as is usually the case with mission trips, learned a lot about myself in the process.

Yesterday we went to the Nightlight Ministry and had a tour of their facilities and were given an orientation as to what they do in the Bangkok bars. Then we had to sign a release form saying that we wouldn't hold them accountable should anything happen to us... I hate those things. Then we went out and it was to this 3 level plaza filled with bars, Go Go Clubs and the higher up, in level, you go, the more perverted it gets. It goes from simple bars all the way up to, basically, sex shows, S & M, etc. We didn't go into any of those places, but we did do a quick prayer walk before going into our bar and, all I can tell you, was that I wanted to get out of there as quickly as possible. It's just so dark and you just have this oppressive feeling when walking through there. The girls in the bars in Bangkok wear numbers. They wear numbers so that should a man want to "select" a girl, he can tell the mamasan, "I want girl number 102". They don't even have names. I really think that is all part of the dehumanization process which allows them to justify what they are doing because these girls aren't people just like them. One of the more disturbing things to see was a father bring in his son to the bar. His son couldn't have been more than 12-14 years old. It made me sick. Seriously, how warped is that child going to be as they grow up? What are they going to think of women and how are they going to treat them? On our team, we really didn't have an opportunity to have long conversations with the girls- the music was exceptionally loud and it was hard to hear anyone over it. When we left, I told one of my teammates that I felt completely ineffective in that I don't think I did anything to help. But, then I remembered that I had seen a few men come into the bar, see us, and then leave. And, the father/son team left without taking a girl with them. I know that God can use us even when we don't think we are being used, so maybe we were just there to deter those men from the bar, or from taking a woman back with them. Who knows. I just have to trust that there was a reason and a purpose we were there that evening. I did meet a few girls from England that were staying with the Nightlight Ministry for 1-2 months and they had completely come on there own, without knowing anyone. What courage they have- I really admire that, especially, considering they aren't even 20 years old yet.

I'm going to sign off for now as my time is running out on the computer, but I'll try to update one last time before I get on the plane and let you know about our R & R day today. Please pray for safety and good health and safe travels these next two days.

I have to say that I can definitely say that I feel that I'm leaving Thailand having been given more than I gave and God has truely blessed me.

Bangkok

2008-06-30T17:48:00.000-07:00

Well, we made it to Bangkok yesterday afternoon. This will be the last leg of our trip and we leave back for America on Thursday evening and arrive in America on Thursday evening... very weird.

Bangkok is a busy city. Lots of traffic and high rise buildings. If you've never been to Thailand, I'm telling you, you have NEVER seen so many scooters! They are more popular than cars and I think that it's because they can zoom in and out of cars and that is exactly what they do! As far as the rules of the road in Thailand, the rules are that there are no rules. If there's an empty spot ANYWHERE on the road, someone is going to go there. I road in a Tut Tut (not sure of that's right) last night and it's like a golf cart on steroids. It goes super fast and he just wove in and out of traffic, didn't slow down for people (pedestrians do NOT have the right of way here), and, at one point, was going the wrong way down the street with scooters coming at him! You don't here anyone, for the most part, honking their horns here because everyone drives crazy! It seriously felt like Mr. Toad's Wild Ride at Disneyland. It actually was a lot of fun, but I don't know that I'll do it again :-)

We experienced our first thunderstorm last night at dinner (thankfully we were inside). There was thunder and a lot of lightning and the rain just came down in sheets for about 20 minutes and then it let up and didn't rain the rest of the night. The rain does, however, make for a lot of humidity. After dinner we went to a shopping center in the same area and I was dying- so humid. I really do miss the California weather! I also miss not living out of a suitcase. That's one of the only things that I really hate about traveling... trying to find where I put something and something as simple as a shower, that would normally take me 15 min, takes me 30 min because I have to gather up all of my stuff and get situated.

Yesterday morning I ended up back at the orphanage in Pattaya and had a great time! I was able to drop off a bunch of toys and Goie and I spent all morning there. We first went in and played with the toddlers again. It was so cute because the baby that Goie had been playing with the afternoon before, actually recognized her. Her face lit up when she saw Goie and she toddled on over to her. Thankfully, I did not get peed on this time, but I did bring an extra shirt with me, just in case. After the babies were put down to bed, we were taken over to the building that boards the deaf children. I would guess that the ones we worked with were 5-7 years old. I loved it! It's really not something I probably would have chosen to do on my own, but one of the manager's suggested it and I can't tell you how glad I am that I did! All of the kids wanted our attention and we got to see them learn how to sign 'morning activites' i.e. getting up, brushing teeth, getting dressed They all wanted their pictures taken, especially this one boy. He was such a ham for the camera. Always striking a pose for me :-) One thing that really struck me... a long time ago, I took a sign language course and I have a few books on it, and American Sign Language is SO similar to how they teach in Thailand. During the whole lesson, I actually only noticed one different sign. So, I was actually able to communicate with some of these kids! Not a lot, but a little at least. It was funny when we couldn't communicate, because it was almost a three-way interpretation. I would ask Goie something, she'd have to translate it into Thai for the teacher and then the teacher would have to translate it into sign language. One of my favorite parts was when the teacher asked me if I would like to teach them to sign the alphabet. So, I was able to take these blocks that have letters on them and teach the kids how to sign their ABCs and they picked up on it SO quickly! Next, the kids washed up and went over to the cafeteria for lunch... they had some sort of vegetables, rice (you get rice with EVERYTHING), and fish dish. They also had fruit and an ice cream cone for dessert. One of the little deaf girls had me sit with her and feed her. I think that she just really needed the attention because she is definitely old enough to feed herself. I'm sure that they do need a lot of attention, though... they are one amongst 200 children and there, of course is not a 1:1 ratio between the kids and the teachers/nannies.

Goie and I were picked up by the rest of our team around 1pm and we made the 2 - 2 1/2 hour trip to Bangkok. Stopping at a Starbucks along the way, of course :-) Once we got situated in the hotel (not a horrible hotel, but myself and the other girls did spray a whole can of Lysol between our two rooms), we went out to dinner, as I mentioned, did some shopping (you have to barter here at most places) and came back and went to bed.

Today we'll be going to the NightLight Ministries. They do similar work as the Tamar Center in that they go out to the bars in Bangkok and minister to the girls. One difference between the two ministries is that NightLight teaches the girls how to make jewelry, so I'm excited to see what they have to sell! Tomorrow is the day before we leave, so it will be our R & R day. We are getting up super early and going to the floating market. The floating market is a market that is all on boats (I've heard) and you have to take boats between the shops. It's apparently very well known. We'll probably do other touristy things and then tomorrow our plane leaves from Bangkok around 7pm at night, and I'm not sure what we'll do in the day.

Thank you all for all of your prayers and support!

Love you!