NEW BLOG

Since I no longer live on Harvard Avenue   I thought it was time for a new blog.

These posts will stop and you can find me at:

http://soulahsystem.blogspot.com

Thanks for the laughs, Xanga! 

Missionary Care/Prep

Hi everyone!

Here are some good sites for missionary care:

Evangelical Missions Quarterly (you have to subscribe)

MissionaryCare.com

Missionary Care also has a database with links to lots of articles/books.  Luckily, I work in a Bible college above the library, so I searched for the articles and then checked out these books:

Collins, Marjorie.  Manual for Accepted Missionary Candidates

Foyle, Marjory.  Honourably Wounded: Stress among Christian Workers.

Lockerbie, Jeannie.  By Ones and By Twos: Single and Double Missionaries.

O'Donnell, Kelly and Michele, Eds.  Helping Missionaries Grow: Readings in Mental Health and Missions.

I've been craving to talk to people I trust who have been missionaries themselves.  However, most of my friends are not missionaries (although many are ministers) and most of the missionaries I'm acquainted with I am still getting to know. 

I do have one dear friend Ginny who I've known for 8 years.  We met in Fiji as high schoolers and since then she's been to visit me in Waynesboro, I've stayed with her family for Thanksgiving, she's stayed in my dorm rooms in college, I've stayed at her homeless mission in the Tenderloin District of San Fran.  But for the last 3 years she's been living in Asia as a missionary.  She sent me this email:

"i know what it's like having to leave everybody and everything.  and it's not going to be easy to live in the thai slums...and life will be harder than it's ever been and you'll cry more than you ever imagined...but it makes life so much sweet, so much deeper...i can't explain it.  but i know you'll love the adventure-(although some days it will feel like torture) and the waking up in a strange place with strange friends and speaking a strange language...and a lot of days it will feel like you're doing nothing and that you should just give up and go home...but then one day something will happen and you'll feel such peace and you'll feel like you're changing the world.

it'll be hard and you'll have to give up so much...but it's worth it in ways you'll never imagine.  and it'll make you come alive in ways you never imagined... 

i guess i'm just excited for you because you sieze life and every opportunity and i sincerely believe you are going to change the slums of bangkok!  "

I don't know about me changing anything.  But it was great to hear this encouragement from someone I know and love who has gone ahead of me.  It's true-- before we make sacrifices for God it seems too painful, almost impossible, but after every sacrifice we say, "Wow, that was WORTH IT." 

Nice things so far this week

1) listening to Juanes RIGHT NOW.  juanesjuanesjuanes.  saying his name makes me feel like we're going out.

2) my bed.  It feels even better in the new place.  How is that possible?

3) Andrew offered to drop off my books at the Prison Library drive for me.  and while I was there..

4) Bart and Kristen invited me to stay for their delicious whole grain/organic everything dinner! yum.

5) Lydia drove by wearing a scarf I gave her with a bag of winter things!  yay! 

6) My roommates prayed for me on Tuesday.  I love them.

7) Mrs. Foose, who taught me Sunday school when I was about 3 years old, sent me the sweetest package.   She clipped my article in the newspaper, and also sent a donation to my missions work from her fixed income.  She also sent me possibly the most encouraging note I've ever received, saying that being a missionary to the very poor is "the best position in the world.  You got it!"  It made me cry. 

8) I prayed about fundraising yesterday because I hadn't heard anything back yet from my first round of letters.  Yesterday morning I got 5 responses in the mail!!  Each person who responded was special to me-- a former student I led in InterVarsity who I love, a good friend, my grandfather, Mrs. Foose, and a dear friend from high school- we've had a bumpy road over the years but her note enclosed was so loving.  It was such an encouragement. 

9)  I found my Cher CD that I thought I lost!  Cher is so awesome. 

10) My parents sent a beautiful bouquet to my office yesterday!  It has roses, daisies, astromeria, and some stunning pink lilies.  It's so exciting to receive flowers!!

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Anyway, it's been a crazy last few days.  There's a lot going on.  But God knows just what we need, just what we can handle, and He knows exactly how to speak to our hearts-- through flowers, friends, Cher-- God is so good! 

holla if you love change!

Ok, most of us hate change.  Transitions are hard.  Some people out there get antsy, feel claustrophobic in when they stay in one place for too long, hunger for the next adventure. 

That ain't me.  I LOVE stability.  Feeling "settled".  I love knowing everyone in my community, being able to welcome new people, host, etc.  That's why I've made the choices I have: small college, small church, small denomination, small office, staying in Claremont for three years after I graduated. 

Next week, we're moving and though it's certainly my choice to move on from this place, and God is calling me to go, I'm feeling sorry for myself because "other people" are good at change and "my gifts" emerge when I feel settled.  boo hoo! 

But lately i've been wondering if that isn't just a bunch of crap.  Sure I like to feel settled, but what I don't like is to feel VULNERABLE!!  EEeek!!  Moving to a new place means: disoriented, don't know my neighbors yet, unable to host because of boxes everywhere and who knows what kind of furniture, etc.  In August there are two weeks where I won't have any place to live so I'll be sleeping on friends couches and stuff and I hate that idea!!!  Do I hate change?  Or do I hate to be needy?

Hmmm.....

I love a good princess story as much as the next girl (ok, possibly more.) When I was a kid, I was obsessed with heroines-- beautiful, smart, courageous girls who were kind to strangers and saved the day.  My mom, who is a great feminist, bought me books of "alternative" heroines where there wasn't always prince but they didn't differ from traditional stories in this one aspect:::  They were all basically perfect.  I loved these heroines-- everyone from the Little Match Girl to Rapunzel-- because they represented the perfect woman that I hoped I would grow into.  As I got older and drifted from fairy tales to romantic comedies, it was basically the same story, except that "quirks" became a part of the "perfect woman"-- they were merely a part of her perfection, a la Meg/Reese/Drew: a love of crosswords, someone who wears a lot of baseball hats, and the ol' standyby: an ice cream jones (combined with skinny genes of course).  A lot has been written about what it means to be female in both myths.

But now I want to talk about a popular Christian princess myth.  I know that so many people have been blessed by John and Staci Eldredge, the authors of "Wild at Heart" and "Captivating".  There is a lot of Biblical truth in these books, and I'm so glad that this couple has been a blessing to so many people.  But one idea rests uneasy with me:  the idea that a woman's basic, core need is to feel beautiful (captivating)-- to be a princess worth rescuing etc.

Here's the problem: I AM NOT A PRINCESS.  I am a human being.  Here is an incomplete brainstorm:

It's so much more rewarding to be a PERSON than a princess. 

Jesus is so much more than a knight in shining armor.  YES He is a savior!  He is also a mirror to our souls, cutting straight to the ugly parts and bringing them out of the depths of shame where they were hidden.  YES He loves us and will stop at nothing to have us by his side.  He also takes us out of living the lie that we are perfect or can even come close on our own.  YES, we are beautiful, truly-- we are the work of God's own hands and our spirits reflect the Lord-- but our beauty comes from the reflection of God that He put in each one of us--- not the I'm-making-you-my-captive-with-my-hotness kind of beauty that "captivating" implies.

Moreover, God's words about his rushing gale of love for us, His eagerness and joy at committing to us forever as his flawed and straying metaphorical bride, His sacrifical fighting and dying for our sake--- family of God, that's for us as a WHOLE community! -- teenage boys, old ladies with Alzheimers, Bill Gates, the celluloid, the glamazons, newborn babies, drug-addicted homeless men.  God sees this all, his heart is for all of us.  He died and rose for us- the broken- and he gives us his peace and He doesn't stop there:  He gives us His Holy Spirit and he invites us to take part TOGETHER in building a Kingdom of God here on earth as we follow in this process of risking daily in trying to love other people (and probably messing up and hurting their feelings sometimes), striving for righteousness (and being honest and free to confess + repent when you make the wrong choices), and building each other up as a messy-but-always-growing body.

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Sorry!  Whew had to get that off my chest.  Here is a caveat to the above:  I haven't actually read Captivating.  I bought it and read the first chapter but then (this is so stupid and even more proof I am not a princess): I had also bought a candle at the bookstore and I left both in my car on a hot day, and the candle melted all over the book so I couldn't open it past like, page 30.  So.  This is not really even a rant against the book since I didn't read it.  But I'm glad I didn't read it because I was like, really vulnerable when I bought it, and there are ways I am so tempted to buy into the whole princess thing... that's why casting it off feels like, "HA!!" 

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 **** In other news!!!!  ************

:::(this is a totally different topic):::::

PLEASE TAKE PART IN MY NEW PROJECT

Do you ever email documents to yourself?  I know that you do.  My question is:  What do you write in the message space, if anything?  I am not referring to full emails to yourself, but just when you need to attach a document and that is all.  The blank space represents an opportunity.  Do you take it?  Do you write affirming notes: "Here's your essay, hot stuff!"?  Stream of conscious: "I am so tired." ?  Nonsense: "alsdkjrferuinv"?  Jokes?

Please share this information with me.  I am eager to hear your voice.