in my mind, i hear all these words

2011-12-30T20:52:00.002-05:00

"Perhaps I seem to you rather fanatical and mad about a number of things. I myself am sometimes afraid of that. But I know that the day I became more "reasonable," to be honest, I should have to chuck my entire theology. When I first started in theology, my idea of it was quite different--rather more academic, probably. Now it has turned into something else altogether. But I do believe that at last I am on the right track, for the first time in my life. I often feel quite happy about it. I only worry about being so afraid of what other people will think as to get bogged down instead of going forward. I think I am right in saying that I would only achieve true inner clarity and honesty by really starting to take the Sermon on the Mount seriously. Here alone lies the force that can blow all of this idiocy sky-high--like fireworks, leaving only a few burnt-out shells behind. The restoration of the church must surely depend on a new kind of monasticism, which has nothing in common with the old but a life of uncompromising discipleship, following Christ according to the Sermon on the Mount. I believe the time has come to gather people together and do this."

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy by Eric Metaxas

2011-12-11T00:54:00.004-05:00

"The greatest grace you can walk in is the anointing to receive the love of God and to return it."

--Mike Bickle

"The success and power of our life is found in walking in this anointing [to love God]." --Mike Bickle

2011-11-28T05:40:00.001-05:00

2011. This, the year God heals me of anxiety.

On December 31, 2010, I experienced the most radical physical experience of my life to date. God healed me of TMJ!!!! God fixed my jaw! In one fell swoop, I felt in my own body exactly what a living God can do, the full extent of an actual miracle unparalleled by anything I've personally ever seen or felt.

According to MedicineNet.com, the temporomandibular joint is the area directly in front of the ear on either side of the head where the upper jaw (maxilla) and lower jaw (mandible) meet. These two joints are complex and composed of muscles, tendons and bones; and because muscles and joints work together, a problem with either one can lead to muscle stiffness, headaches, bite problems, clicking or popping sounds, ear pain, or locked jaws. TMJ disorders are a group of complex problems of the jaw joint.

Causes of TMJ disorders include:
Teeth grinding and teeth clinching
Dental problems and misalignment of the teeth
Trauma to the jaw
Stress
Occupational tasks

I don't exactly recall when the pain started for me. The way I remember it, high school was primarily pain free, except that my jaw popped. Harmless enough, I thought--odd, but harmless. If there was any pain, it was localized pain, which is only important because in light of future developments of my own disorder, this localized pain--even sharp, localized pain--was mere child's play. I think that after eating tough or chewy foods in high school, I hurt some, but not much. It progressed throughout college until I had met my match in a chronic pain that threatened to be my lifemate, TMJ, that once-innocent pop of the jaw. I'll explain what it felt like by my last year in college. By senior year, the pain in and around my jaw was dull but constant, giving me the equivalent in headache form as well, and the jaw was most obviously out of line in a more thorough way than it had been in the past. I'm telling you, it was uncomfortable in the worst kind of way. No one specific spot of pain, but an entire head, jaw, and neck of non-localized ache, and also sort of like a muscle that was always suspended and never at rest.

In the past, my jaw had popped, but the indication here (by a popping jaw) is that your jaw is more or less in place, meaning by extension that the muscles in my jaw and neck were more or less in working order. By 2008, not so. I could feel the misalignment because there was literally no way to relax my jaw completely. So it was like having a muscle that was always contracted; I could not let it relax. And to have a constantly contracting muscle in your head wreaks havoc on the muscles in your neck. Every other muscle has to adjust when there is one that is not working properly. I once received this comment verbatim from a masseuse: "You have way too many knots in your neck to be twenty-two years old." That pesky TMJ! it aged me well before it was my time to concede knots and back stress. I understand now that the muscles in my neck were working overtime to compensate for the misalignment of the muscles around my jaw joint. So, by end of college, I hurt the length of each day, from start to finish, especially at night, and especially in conversation. The only time I was without pain was right after I woke up in the morning, and sleeping. I had lived that way for so many years by that point that I had started to forget that it wasn't supposed to feel that way.

At midnight on January 1, 2011, I brought in the new year with a healing encounter. A few days after Christmas I drove to Kansas City, MO with a group of people from South Carolina--eighteen hours (one way!) in one car with eight people. OneThing is organized by a ministry called the International House of Prayer (IHOP) based in Kansas City [www.ihop.org.]. This is a community of people whose lives revolve around 24/7 prayer and regular fasting, combined with works of justice (outreach and service) and regular study of God's Word. They prioritize a commitment to ushering in Jesus' return by corporately fasting and praying after the model of the tabernacle of David that is found in the Old Testament. For worship and intercession they use what is called the "harp and bowl model", intercession coupled with worship through music.

"At the International House of Prayer of Kansas City, we are committed to prayer, fasting, the Great Commission, and to living as forerunners, preparing for the unique dynamics of the end times. The work of our ministry includes equipping and sending out missionaries as dedicated intercessors and evangelists who work to see revival within the Church and a harvest among those searching for God. We take seriously the mandate to train believers to love Jesus and others wholeheartedly as together we go forth to preach the Word, heal the sick, serve the poor, plant houses of prayer, and proclaim the return of Jesus across the earth. The heart of our missions base is night-and-day prayer with worship."

My healing was not IHOP's doing; there was nothing special about the syntax of the sentence that was formed at the mouth of the two individuals who met me to ask God to heal me. The power was, and is, in the man of whom they spoke when they claimed Jesus' blood and my healing in His name.

So on Wednesday, December 29th, 2010, I entered and rested in a room of fellow believers. I took communion and sat quietly in God's presence. After about twenty minutes, I moved to a circle of chairs where two women sat to meet me. They asked for God to heal me in Jesus' name, to release the pain in my muscles by setting my jaw straight. I woke up the next day feeling surprisingly good, and so I waited it out to see how I would fare the rest of the day. Still good, so far. Friday morning, I woke up, and this time I allowed myself to feel more excited; the jaw was feeling too good. This couldn't be real, right? By Friday late afternoon I was walking around by myself in between the conference sessions laughing, giddy, for not only was the pain gone but I could feel the novelty of my correct bite and released tension. By Friday evening, I was reporting my healing and I was ecstatic. I excused myself from my seat, found an IHOP staffperson, and told her how God had healed me. She directed me to a table where others were writing down similar stories of healing that they had experienced that week, like 20/20 vision restored, asthma erased, bone spurs gone in a moment. How strong is Jesus' blood, because He's alive! He really did die so that you and I could be free, not just from sin and Hell but from physical pain, sickness, and disease. By this time it was nearing midnight, and a new year. It is the best of any of my new year's celebrations to speak of.

It's been almost a full year since my healing and I still think about it every day. At this point, I can't imagine going a day not thanking God for a working and pain-free jaw. Sometimes even now when I'm driving I stop and laugh/cry in new, fresh joy over how much He loves me, that He would care to remove my pain. The morning we drove back to South Carolina I had a bagel for breakfast and I can still remember how carefully I chewed. I remember noting how completely different it felt with my brand new bite; I almost didn't believe it. Almost.

A good word

2011-11-12T13:36:00.003-05:00

http://cultureflock.com/2011/04/how-to-control-your-facebook-addiction/

just a friendly reminder to myself and everyone else :)

For the encouragement of my brothers and sisters.

2010-03-30T20:54:00.026-04:00

"Is my hand shortened, that it cannot redeem? Or have I no power to deliver? Behold, by my rebuke I dry up the sea, I make the rivers a desert; their fish stink for lack of water and die of thirst. I clothe the heavens with blackness and make sackcloth for their covering."

Isaiah 50:2b-3

I have a story. Parts of the story are embarassing. Parts of the story are muddy. Some things in it don't exactly resolve. Much of it I've not yet acknowledged as mine in the absence of any formal telling. Here I claim the story as my own; I recognize the Author. So then I guess it's not really, though I live and recount it, my Story at all.

Stephanie Grace. A testament to Grace, with a capital G, the heavenly kind. A year and a half ago I was living in my aunt and uncle's house in Liberty, SC, rent-free because they live abroad and simply wanted a house where kids, nieces, and nephews could stay in between semesters in college or stages in life. I was living with Tara, best friend and college roommate. Two of us sharing a house, both working at separate YMCA facilities doing work with after-school, and jointly wrestling with Liberty, SC for something, anything, to do on nights or weekends. But let me recap. I had graduated from Clemson in May, and spent my summer around Clemson, where I worked 25 hours a week at a deli. I rarely went home to Columbia because I didn't have the money to fill up my gas tank. To say that I was stressed out about money is an understatement that I probably couldn't convey to you in words. I had enough to pay rent, but I didn't know what to do about a job or about the future for crying out loud! I remember sitting at a local Clemson coffee shop one afternoon looking for jobs online, just after wrapping up a tearful phone conversation about finances with my father. I went to the bathroom to wash off my puffy face and went back to my seat to stare again, blankly, at a hopeless computer screen. Stephanie, I thought, if you could just identify it. Identify what it is that you want to do. I honestly didn't know, and I don't suppose there is anything more difficult than not knowing what you want to do. For those who are limited by circumstance or timing, finances or education, at least they can claim a passion. Nothing is more internally panic-inducing than to confront the possibility that you are so different than normal human beings that you don't get excited about anything. It's so awfully frightening that I began a mental juggling of potential Me's, I was clawing at a passion, and I wanted something to claim that would make me worth something to other people.

I went to Indonesia for two weeks in July of the summer that I graduated, with 6 others from a church in Greenwood, and I did not want to go. I remember trying briefly and unsuccessfully to convince myself it would be worth it. I finally confronted the facts: I'm into Latin American culture, not Asian, right?--and I know I'll never live there--and I'm a poor recent college graduate so I don't really have time to give to this when I've got my whole future and my whole life hanging on the line here. Pissed off, but because my name was printed on a piece of paper, I went. When I got back the plan was to live with my sister in Greenville, look for a job, and save money for Nicaragua. As it turns out, I'm glad I went to Indonesia. The Lord turned a sour attitude sweet, and began a process of seeing my firmness through into a new pliability. But that's not what this story is about.

After Indonesia plans got rearranged: by September my sister had taken a job in Greenwood, and I was living in the house in Liberty with Tara. I was scrupulous with my money-saving, putting virtually every penny away to raise the roughly $1500 it would take to move to Nicaragua for 3 months. I worked some days from 5:30 am to 6:30 pm, opening at Starbucks and then heading to afterschool at the Pickens YMCA, jacked up on espresso.

I had never known quite what depression could feel like until I experienced it so dynamically in December of 2008. My flight for Nicaragua was to leave on January 12th, just weeks away, and I was in a panic, my mind in uproar. When it began, it was a vague and eavesdropping sort of melancholy. When I saw it, I pointed a shaking finger at it and argued with it because I thought that's what I was supposed to do. I thought I could make it go away. I grew crazy and frantic trying to stalk it and uproot it, and I began to search out help. I found solace in a few meaningful conversations, but nothing slowed the mounting darkness I felt. In my most poignant memory of this season, I had driven my car to a park near my house and made sure no one was nearby and cried until I was almost sick. I'm sure I've never cried that hard in all my life. I eventually fell asleep, and when I woke up, I simply started the car and drove home.

At Christmas at home a week or two later, I was literally sick, throwing up on Christmas day. I remember feeling honestly grateful to be sick for the respite it gave me from the mental pain. My prayers were scattered and unsuccessful. Somehow, only God knows how, by this point I still had not addressed and admitted what was happening to me. Characteristically, I ignored the problem and refused to talk about it. I wanted to know whether or not to go to Nicaragua as planned, and God told me yes. I wanted to have my pain taken away immediately, and to that God said no.

I finally did tell my family what was happening to me. I also told close friends who met me and heard me and loved me. My Nicaragua bags were filled with journals and C.S. Lewis non-fiction. I set my mind to go and pursue the reason for my depression in the halls of a Nicaraguan orphanage. The answer came a lot more slowly than I had imagined, with a tenderness in the way that God began to reveal to me my latent anger and bitterness towards my family. About halfway into my time in Nicaragua, I decided that when I returned to the States in April I would go home to Columbia to be with them. That I would not run from my feelings towards them any longer. The day we flew home, a delayed connecting flight made us miss our return flight to Charlotte, so the 3 of us--this was myself, Tara, and our friend Jennifer--camped out at the ankles of those in line to get on the next flight. I guess we hoped someone would look at us and take pity and have a touch of mercy and give us their ticket or something crazy like that. A young man did it. He offered to wait and let us go home. We were giddy and so grateful. The only catch was that this plane flew into Columbia rather than Charlotte; we didn't care. We called our ride and told them: get to Columbia. In the air, circling the Columbia airport, the pilot announced his inability to land due to inclement weather. A thick thunder and lightning storm enveloped Columbia, my home. I could feel it in my bones, in the thick of me. The pilot turned and flew to Greenville, to wait out the thunderstorm on an airstrip there before eventually heading back to Columbia a final time to land. At this point in my story, because it is so significant and so solitary in the movie reel of my mind, I asked the airline staff for permission, hugged my friends goodbye, and walked off the plane alone--a single departing passenger--and more scared to be home than I had been to arrive in Central America. I maneuvered through ropes and locked doors, asked a security guard for further direction, and finally made my way to the late night pickup area on the first floor. My family, who happened to be in Greenville for the weekend, had gotten my phone call about the flight changes and they were at the airport to pick me up. Shortly after, we drove home to Columbia, into the storm.

Today, I went on a walk around my parents' neighborhood. I'm not living in this neighborhood anymore. Today, I live in a house that I'm renting that is about a ten minutes' car ride away. But today I wanted to walk here. When I was finished walking I went to the backyard and lay on my back on the family trampoline for about twenty minutes. I was practicing relaxing, and praying, and looking at the sky. While I was watching the sky, a bird flew across the open patch of blue in between the trees, and I'm not sure what kind of bird it was but it was beautiful to see in extraordinary detail the underbelly of this bird as it passed. I caught a glimpse of nature, simple, kind, sweet.

In two days it will be April first, just about one week short of a full year that has passed since my stormy flight home to Columbia. Here is an excerpt from a journal that I wrote after the summer, my first summer home.

i guess my last entry was in nicaragua. well, now i'm home. at home. in walt and jan's house kind of home. i am currently unemployed, though for the summer i was a part-time nanny for alexandra hahn, my newest best friend. i nannied alexandra monday, tuesday, and wednesday from 8 to 5 and the rest of the week i worked on cleaning and organizing the house here at home. over the years it has gotten a good bit out of shape and there just was a lot to be done. i felt proud of the progress i had made in the weeks between april and late june / early july, and then i hit a breaking point. it seemed like i was doing everything in my power to fix, clean, salvage, and NOT just the house. but to no avail, apparently. turns out old habits die hard and these just aren't my battles to fight--trying to run a one-woman circus of saving the world. along the way i met some angrier sides of me and watched them try to work themselves out without wreaking havoc on the rest of my family in the process. i also met the Lord the One who fashioned me in moments i never could have predicted, sprawled out on the floor in worship on carpet literally wet with my own tears. this summer has been a summer of getting on back to the roots. God, you work in such creative and almost comical ways. i would have sworn until i was blue in the face that i'd never live in columbia again...now i know that i could never have gone anywhere else until i re-learned how to live as a member of my family.

Now that I'm finished with the house, and ready to let it go, my heart is able to really love them again. My relationships with each of the six other people in my family have improved infinitesimally, and there is nothing in the world that could please me more than this. During my mornings cleaning, I found old pictures of my mother just a few years younger than me, beginning nursing school, and the letters her mother wrote to her while she was there. I read notes my father took from sermons he listened to on how to lead his family well. I remembered the stories behind jewelry boxes and pieces of artwork, music tapes and Barbie dolls. Each day that I cleaned and sifted through the "junk", I mourned and I rejoiced in a dance of emotions I can't speak of. I was finally allowing myself to feel real pain and to grieve real loss. It felt like something very very sharp, raking itself across my mind and emotions, reaching grossly deep into the soil of me, and what it left was something undone, tilled, turned. But finally healthy, ready, right.

I explored the depths of God's very real power to heal by finally obeying Him when He told me to go home. For this reason, I can look back at the depression, and say with confidence, "It was good for me to be afflicted, so that I might learn your decrees. The law from your mouth is more precious to me than thousands of pieces of silver and gold (Proverbs 119:71)." Nothing has ever, ever hurt like that feeling in December hurt, but without that pain I may not have learned that there is One who loves more fiercely than my pain hurts. The reality of the situation is that for my whole life, I will have to remember this, that God loves more fiercely than my pain hurts, time and time again I will have to remember it. It may sound unrealistic or untrue, but the feeling of depression that I felt in December 2008, was, though more intense, the same feeling I have felt many times in my life. Previously, I was either ignorant, ashamed, misinformed, or too disconnected to my feelings to have never, never told a soul, nor myself--I never even told myself!--I was depressed.

I am well acquainted with sadness. She is a friend who accompanies me often, typically unannounced, though now I know better when to expect her. I have learned how to give her my ear, rather than ignore her and pretend she will go away. I have been humbled to find that I can learn a lot from her.

My understanding has been that I am made a certain way. God didn't "make me" struggle with depression, but I do. I am Stephanie, I am me. Young Stephanie, even elementary-aged Stephanie, she felt it from time to time as well though clueless as to what it was and though she had reason to feel nothing but happy and anxiety-free. For the past year and a half I have been studying it, talking much more about it and how it makes me feel, getting to the heart of this ridiculous beast. I've read books, I've journaled. I've seen counselors, I've made a counselor out of myself. And here's what I'm saying to you: I am not a step closer to understanding it. I simply do not.

I wish I could explain in full detail each of the startlingly specific answers to the prayers I've prayed over my family. God has entered and intervened, in my life and in all of our lives. My cry came to His ear and He heard. He's incredible and very, very real. I have been blessed to see His love for me overflow and this through my very precious family. You should take heart to know that He paid much too high a price to see suffering and sorrow prevail. True, sorrow and suffering are not without purpose: I'll be the first to admit that my sustained depression in December of 2008 was most likely, as I see it, meant to turn my selfish search for an Identity on its head and redirect me to places, both spiritual and geographical, that for me would mean healing and restoration. Sorrow and suffering are also a part of life. I know that more than anyone, arguably. But let's just say that now, months after beginning to write this piece, I'm having my thinking on the subject of depression re-routed. Tempered. Tethered to a new Hope.

Sometime over the last month, I believe God touched me and healed me of my lifetime struggle with tendencies toward depression. Anxiety and depression, both close companions, are making their way out of my house. Anxiety--did I mention it? It is a formidable opponent. My last two weeks in Nicaragua I experienced the first taste of what would begin a solid year of labored breathing, off and on, totally unexpected and utterly faith-wrenching. I thought at first it was something medical but as time wore on I had to concede anxiety as the true cause. I covered it up well, except with those closest to me, but chances are if you know me you probably had a conversation or hung out with me on a day that I was battling to breathe well. I prayed and I had others pray. But it seemed so random, so not linked to external factors, because it would rear its ugly head at the most unexpected (and inopportune) times. Praise God, I mean literally praise Him. After a stint of difficulty breathing, full breaths were worship in its simplest and most beautiful form. I was worshiping with every breathe I took, thinking on Him and whispering a thank you with each rise and fall of my human chest. And as he has healed me, I have never been so bodily, physically aware that I cannot do such a simple thing as breathe without Him.

I'm 100% confident the Lord's power to heal both depression and anxiety is real and available. I understand the topic of depression can be touchy and a bit controversial as there are multiple schools of thought on its origin, meaning, place among believers. I understand that thought, "This runs in my family, and it will be my cross to bear." But I'm becoming risky in my prayers, bold, if there's nothing to lose. Can you heal me?, I've asked Him. I'm not sure how it happened exactly. It blindsided me really. I just know that depression's grip on me is loose. Ask me to tell you more and I will try my best, but the generational curse (real), the genetic predisposition (real), the situational demon (real), they are crushed under the heel of the man Christ Jesus. That confusion I was talking about, the failure to understand? Answered--done--in this one Man.

hooray vacay

2009-03-10T11:50:00.005-04:00

i am going to honduras to see chrissy!

there is a team here right now, so when they leave i will ride with them down to los cedros / managua on wednesday morning, spend one night with miele and tara in los cedros, and then find someone to take me to the bus station thursday morning. then to tegucigalpa. then on to san pedro sula, wooo yea.

yesterday, i went with the team to one of their clinics in the surrounding area. what started out as an ambitious day for me quickly spiraled into a hunger headache and a bad attitude. i purposefully ate a big breakfast at 7 before we left but by the time 10:30, 11:00 rolled around i was ready to cut off an arm for a granola bar. lunch came and went and i felt better, but then the point in the day came where people are no longer being selected for a medical exam based on their ticket number, but based on their spot in line (all the people with tickets had been seen). im literally by myself at the "gate", or entrance, trying to hold back the entire community of tomatoya from charging the doctors. ive got most of it under control but kids are sneaking under my legs and fiesty old ladies are pissed. ahhahah, i wished someone could have shared this moment with me. truth be told i had a nicaraguan health care worker helping me most of the day, but at some point she left to go help translate for a mentally ill patient. at some point someone put a stack of stickers in my hands so i started handing out stickers through the fence. this gentleman is bleeding from the head but maybe sir you would like a sticker?

by the end of the day we did what we could and saw as many people as we could. i say we, i mean the real doctors. i am glad that i went and was able to help. please pray for safety as i travel this week! love,

stephen keefer lives here

2009-02-28T23:04:00.003-05:00

miele, tara, and a few others spent some days with us but then tara stayed on and made it a whole week. while she was here we had a talent show.

best performance ever = andres aka stephen keefer danced around to the entire length of a reggae song. he loves to sing and dance and i love watching it. geeeeez. better to leave this alone and not try to do it justice by explaining what all this entails.

i had english class on thursday and tara sat in on my class, my oldest group of 3 boys: jonathan, jose, and ricardo. in trying to answer my question with "motorcycle" ricardo said "motor-freaker".

last night i watched pocahontas on dvd.

on thursday night, we invited the teenage girls to a little devotional?, at least for lack of a better word, with coffee and hot chocolate. out of an effort to try and steal more alone time with these girls and away from the kids (a trip into town weighs heavy on the wallet), we decided to keep them here but make them feel more set apart. so we literally turned a table on its side and pushed it in front of the doorway, to keep the boys out. then we portioned off a corner of the dining hall with sheets like a little private room, and put mattresses and pillows on the floor. ahead of time we came up with questions to provoke discussion--tara is invaluable to me for this type of thing, such a huge help and inspiration for the remainder of my time with the girls. most were really receptive and this would be an area for which i would greatly appreciate your prayers.

today, we played a little bit of baseball in the field behind the orphanage and i got slammed in the ankle with a grounder. before i came i imagined the kids playing lots and lots of soccer, but apparently it is not the hit and what is more common lately is roller skating around the inside halls of the orphanage in a loop. this past week our two german (and oustanding) interns were on vacation so mornings were much more difficult. by day 2 i had already outlawed the skating, without exception, before 10 am--they literally would be getting ready for school as fast as they could so they could squeeze in a few skating loops before breakfast. with yannas gone i have had to do a lot more with the boys in the way of getting them ready. because we have to lock their room doors at night so they cant skamper about the orphanage, the boys keep a bottle in their rooms in case they have to pee and one morning this week i came uncomfortably close to slipping in a bit of pee that didnt make it into the bottle. i think those are most all of the highlights of the week. i love these preciouseventhoughsometimestheymakemewanttobodyslamthem children!

matching t-shirts

2009-02-11T11:34:00.004-05:00

since i wrote last we have had 2 medical teams from the states come through for about a week at a time each. fascinating. for the most part they are not around--they leave early in the mornings and get home a little bit before dinner. still, the whole environment around the orphanage feels different when they are here. the kids have been in school for a few weeks now and i must admit it feels good. getting up at 530 to have them ready for devotions and breakfast feels bad, but then we have our mornings free basically until they get home at 1230 and that is nice. so, 4 kids and counting have now had chicken pox. little luz was the first and we had her quarantined until we realized that was impossible with a medical team coming (we barely had enough beds for everyone)...so she ran free and we took our chances. luz is better and back at school but 2 boys now have it and an older girl.

last week catherine and i went with about 6 of the kids hiking up the farther-away mountain (there are a few nearby). my first clue that this might not be legit came to me when jonathan, our fearless 10 year old leader, sent us one at a time through a barbed wire fence explaining that at this point its better to run. i looked at him like he was crazy, let me stop and explain something right now...ive never been much of an animal lover, and nicaraguan dogs SUCK. they are ferocious and ugly. and keep in mind we had 2 six year old girls with us. i honestly cant remember what happened at this point, i think i may have carried one girl under each arm and sprinted but we made it alive. the dogs barked a lot but didnt attack. after hiking up the mountain for at least a good 45 minutes we look norah, a 14 year old, straight in the face and tell her if shes leading us the wrong way as a joke it wont be funny and she will be in trouble. she immediately stops and says "oh wait, im sorry, i think we should be on that trail right over there i forgot where i was going, my mistake." bull crap. so, then we picked some really pretty flowers on our way back down the mountain, later. nearing the end of our escapade we let a few of the boys run farther up ahead of us...suddenly they come screaming back up the trail, running past us, and we realize there are 4 or 5 bulls coming up the trail in our direction. norah is telling the six year olds to cover up the red they are wearing, theyre both crying, and everyone is in a panic trying to get off the trail and up the side of the mountain.

i am learning my way around town a little bit better! i like going when the opportunity arises because otherwise i would just always be here, in the same place. its nice to get out. joy just told me that in a few months she will have solar panels put in here at the orphanage, so that they can support themselves with solar energy rather than pay ridiculous energy prices! so cool. another recent event around the home: the ministry of family from jinotega unexpectedly dropped off 3 new children here a couple of weeks ago. they only stayed a week before the ministry of family came back to place them somewhere else (we would have had to send the youngest 2, ages 5 years and 10 months, down to los cedros and the M of F wanted them to all be together and closer to the mother). they were ages 8, 5, and 10 months old...found alone in a house somewhere in jinotega. we immediately had to treat them for lice, scabies, worms, and get them bathed and fed. then we had a cake the next night and a little welcoming party. during the days they were here i kept finding joel, the middle boy, outside with his pants down, relieving himself in the yard. when they had to leave we packed up little bags for them with some of their new clothes and a toy each, and saw them off. i hope they are safe and well cared for.

ill write more when i can...

NICARAGUA

2009-02-04T22:39:00.004-05:00

friends and family, i hope this blog will help you keep up with me and understand what my life is like in nicaragua. i hope it facilitates the process of keeping in touch.

its been 3 and a half weeks now since my arrival! first, tara, miele, and i flew into managua and made the short ride to nearby los cedros, nicaragua. this is where the infant orphanage run by globe international is located. they house newborns to age 5 as well as the teenage boys ages 6 to 18...mostly separated for all daily-life activities and all practical purposes...makes for an eclectic type of ministry for those interns serving there, ie jennifer renee miele and tara beth "the boss" oates. ive since left them behind in los cedros, and i hear from the girls that their days are full of both changing diapers and playing capture the flag. they sweat a lot, they tell me.

after 3 days in los cedros i moved here to jinotega, nicaragua which is about 2 and a half hours away. its nestled away in the mountains, beautiful, cool. i love nicaragua. the people, the food, the landscape, the climate. and its just where i needed to be in more than just the externals, and god knew it. there are 18 kids here, ages 6 to 12 for boys and ages 6 to 18 for girls (the teenagers are separated, COMO SE DICE big problems if they arent). for 3 years now a girl named joy from the states has been the director, plus there is a cook, a social worker, a psychologist, a laundry lady, a cleaning lady, a groundskeeper, and a night guardsmen, all of whom are outstanding, all nicaraguan. they come every day. there are currently 4 interns, including myself. yannas and christine are from germany, here for 6 months and one year, respectively. catherine is from north carolina, here for 4 months. i have found incredible fellowship with these 3 as we find time to sneak away and pray or just talk or eat food or something. i am so impressed with these guys.

unfortunately i am not taking many pictures while im here. its one thing i had hoped to do, but now that im here i find it not so much a thought (or at least very often) since there are so many other things to do. pruitt let me borrow her camera (a gem this girl) but its finicky (was it for you, amy?) and i just find myself not wanting to mess with it too much. how do i explain my days here? the kids just started school back yesterday, so the schedule has now changed, but before i was helping to get the kids ready in the morning--they get up at 7 and have to be ready, dressed, brushed, beds made, rooms cleaned by 7:30 for devotions. they eat at 8 and then work outside for two hours, from 8:30 to 10:30. during the work time i help supervise, assign tasks, or do tasks with them. this was so refreshing for me especially at the beginning (when i was actually working with them) as i found myself free again like a child to be outside in dirty clothes, scratching up my knees and getting sunburned. the trash pit that brian mutter and his crew built in may had become filled to the brim with ashes from months of burning trash, so i helped shovel out and sift through metal and ash to get this in order. after this was done (about 4 days worth of work) ive found myself more recently doing more supervising rather than hands on. i have gardened a little with some of the younger girls....i still think 6 years is too young to get motivated to garden. i think it every day during work hour.

after 10:30 they are free until lunch at 1, during which time we are free to play with them or do whatever. after lunch they have to rest in their beds until 2, and then a teacher comes to the orphanage for study time from 2 to 4. this is when we pull them out of their study time to teach english lessons, usually 3 at a time for thirty minutes at a time. my first go-round was a bust, so i decided to approach it from a completely different angle IE make it a game and we have begun to see the faintest glimmers of success. sometimes i want to pull hair out but other times i feel okay about it.

at 4 they are free again until dinner at 6....after dinner they can play video games for 20 minutes each if they did not, during the day, receive a check (a discipline mark). they're in bed by 8:00, or 8:30 for the teenage girls.

so my only clearly delineated responsibilities are to facilitate mornings (getting the girls up), to supervise work time, to teach english twice a week, and then i also have been asked most weeks to do wednesday night church, where all the kids are together in the living room. the first week francys, a 15 year old, translated for me....but this week i decided to try it myself in spanish and it went ok. i made it discussion, though, and flipped a little bit back and forth between both languages, with francys' help here and there, so as to be clearly understood. i would say that my spanish is "coming along". i am enjoying beginning to have it come together. note: 1 corinthians 13: "if i can speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, i am only a resounding gong or a clanging symbol"....verdad?

i miss you all and love you very much. i will write more soon.

stephanie

can i have it, please.

2008-12-06T01:37:00.005-05:00

today, i feel attacked. the battle for my affections is so strong in my mind that i can barely stand it. i want god to overwhelm me, but i won't let him, and i can't tell if there is some magical formula that i'm missing or if surrender is a thing you can will yourself into. i feel like i'm fighting an uphill battle and, truly, that the theme of my life is 2 steps forward, 1 step back. i'm okay with that, as long as it means i am moving forward; only right now the process feels slow and painful and at a standstill.

right now it is getting late and perhaps i just need to sleep--i believe a new day brings with it a new hope and that is quite beautiful. i've never had so strong a desire as the want-to inside me to live life well, but it is so hard for me. i want to rid myself of this self-absorption that threatens to kill me. i have been unknowingly trying my hardest to live two different realities that are fundamentally at odds with one another and cannot occupy the same space, my soul.