Prophecy

Plans, plans, so many plans! I will topple them all. What happens is what I want. There will come a time and I will put everything in its place.”

This was God’s message to me last Sunday, spoken through an old woman visiting our church.

I’m an analytical person, thinking, analyzing, evaluating. These words hit me hard. I do make many plans in my head, often traveling to distant lands, photographing, speaking at churches, writing articles or books in my thoughts. In my plans, my children are grown, I no longer homeschool, I don’t have to work any more, and I’m free to travel – and some Christian organization wants me to do so and pays my way so that I document their missions in photos and words. Sort of “work for food.” I’m off traveling in my thoughts frequently since I feel that I’m in home stretch of teaching and home stretch of my working life. Just three and a half more years of homeschooling, and a few more until I can retire – or perhaps resign?

Granted, my health has had its ups and downs, and sometimes I question whether I’ll be able to travel at all in the future. But the family joke is that when Mom is done homeschooling, she’ll send everyone a postcard from Africa.

But will I? According to this prophecy, perhaps not. Or could it be referring to something else? Maybe I’ll travel, but elsewhere? Or do something I haven’t even thought of yet?

So my analytical mind is churning out possibilities.

We were invited to dinner to a Ukrainian family’s home this week. The working mother so wants to go to Haiti with me and was disappointed to learn that the team is formed and there’s no chance of her coming. The Ukrainian churches don’t run many mission trips. They don’t have the connections to foreign lands (other than Ukraine) or the organizational experience. And there’s a language barrier for many of the new immigrants. I organized our church’s first ever mission trip last spring. (We went to Mexico.) With my experience in missions and travel, and my skills of organization, is organizing missions for this community what God had in mind? Only time will tell. But most likely, it's something I haven't even thought of yet...

Haiti!

Ten days ago, I got the call: I will be going to Haiti next month as part of a relief team! After the phone conversation, I fluttered through the house, giddy with excitement.

“I wish I could come with you,” lamented my daughter Alexandra. “Maybe you could book the same flight for me and I could just tag along and not be officially part of the mission team…”

The minimum age for this trip is 18, which disqualifies all my children. Jacob will turn 18 in April; the trip is in March. But he’s not the one interested in going; it’s my 16-year-old middle daughter who inherited the same love of going to the hard places. And from what I’ve been reading, Haiti may be the hardest of all places I’ve been to.

Before I travel to a foreign country, I read about it. So I logged on to the local library’s website and typed in “Haiti” for a keyword. That’s how I found Angels of a Lower Flight: One Woman’s Mission to Save a Country… One Child at a Time.

I finally forced myself to put it down at 1:30 AM. Between the horrific conditions described in the book and the heart-tugging poverty shown in this YouTube video, I’m wondering what I’ve gotten myself into.

But I still can’t wait to go. I just wish that Alexandra could come with me.

Got carried away

“Do you have any assignments to turn in, like your vocabulary or American Government?” I asked Jacob. Every evening I devote a couple of hours to correcting the day’s assignments and creating the next day's schedule.

“No, I don’t have anything to turn in. I got carried away reading.”

“You what?”

“I got to a really interesting part. I must have read a hundred pages today.”

This was not like my son, who reads only what he has to and how long he has to. Jacob does not read for pleasure.

Sixteen-year-old Alexandra was as surprised as I was. “What are you reading?” she asked.

“Slave.”

If he’s that captivated by this part of his Exploring Social Injustice through Literature curriculum, I made a good choice.

Haiti?

Disaster relief work. Not exactly everyone's cup of tea, but every time I hear of a tsunami, hurricane, or earthquake, my heart beats faster. I ache to go there, to reach out, to help somehow. I don't know how I'd help - I'm not a doctor - but I believe that through hugs and love, physical labor and prayer, through acts of kindness, and with my photographs and written words, I'd make a difference somehow.

I so want to go to Haiti!

I've wanted to go to Haiti ever since I read Mountains Beyond Mountains. I want to go to Haiti all the more because of the earthquake.

And I might get my chance!

Global Expeditions is running a mission trip to Haiti. I signed up immediately. But will I get chosen to go, to help to set up and serve in a refugee camp, rebuild an orphanage, and facilitate medical care for orphans? I can't think of a better way to spend my time. My only regret is that Alexandra can't come with me because she's not 18 yet, a requirement for this trip. She so wants to come with me. I think that there's a lot of me in Alexandra, and, like me, she enjoys going to the hard places. She was disappointed that we had to stay in a hotel during our mission trip to Honduras two years ago instead of in tents as originally planned. Turns out that the field where we were to set up these tents was flooded with over a foot of water after a deluge halfway through our trip. That certainly would have made for an exciting trip...

I'm sure that a trip to Haiti would be even more exciting. I'm praying that I get to find out.

Serving

“I’d like to volunteer at the Mission,” said Alexandra about a week after we came home from our Dallas mission trip.

Since working with homeless and inner city kids in Dallas during our Global Expeditions trip, both my daughters came home changed. They returned on fire from meeting other godly teens and young adults, people passionate to serve the Lord. And they were blessed by working with a church that not only reaches out to drug dealers, addicts, prostitutes, gang members, and prisoners, but also fills its church pews with ex-dealers, ex-addicts, former prostitutes and gang members, and ex-cons. What a place!

After getting a taste of what it’s like to serve in Dallas, Alexandra wanted to serve here at home. It was her initiative to volunteer at The Mission, a soup kitchen, but I made the call (she's still a bit timid) – and left my name and number on an answering machine. Twice. But my calls were not returned.

As I was putting away groceries around 5 o’clock Saturday evening, the phone rang. It was Candy from The Mission apologizing for not getting back to me. Could I serve there tonight? She’d had a cancellation and although she knew we hadn’t volunteered there before, could I fill in...? I told her that four of us would be glad to serve – my two daughters and I, and a special girl from our church youth group, the only girl from the youth group who had gone on the Mexico mission trip with us last spring. (Three guys had gone, but only one girl.) Helen and I had been corresponding via email since that time. Ours is a special relationship. She’s really my daughters’ friend; I consider myself her mentor and have a warm place in my heart for her.

“Now I know why our neighbors couldn’t come to dinner tonight,” observed Alexandra as we rushed to get ready to go to The Mission. We had tried to invite a widow neighbor to dinner tonight, but she turned us down, stating health reasons. So we invited a divorcee for dinner because, after all, we were baking a whole chicken. But she’s a nurse and had to work 3 to 11 PM. Had either of them come, we wouldn’t have been available to go to The Mission.

How can setting out 78 salads, setting tables, dishing out food, and carrying it out to the long tables of homeless men be an exciting way to spend the evening? Because it’s work done for the Lord. Captain, the chef at the soup kitchen, was an interesting guy with a sense of humor. As I suspected when I met him, he’s been on the streets himself. We heard his testimony as he showed us the room upstairs that houses 40 men in 20 bunk beds. He’d been one of those men until about six years ago. Oh, he’d had a 26-year career at General Motors, then worked as a painter and roofer, but drugs and alcohol ate up his pay and ruined his life. It was through the sermons given right there at The Mission night after night that eventually touched his heart. He had a powerful experience of coming to the Lord in the middle of the night right there at The Mission, where he now serves with all his heart.

I felt blessed to serve at The Mission, and delighted to share that experience with Helen and my daughters. I hope to have many more such evenings there and to introduce other girls from the youth group to the joys of serving.

As the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without deeds is dead. - James 2:26

It could have been his last day

When my husband George was leaving for work this morning, I said an extra prayer for his safety on the road. He covers so many miles driving to his clients’ homes and schools to tune pianos or do home renovation. Today he was to tune four pianos in a school 50 miles from home. That's a long drive. Then 50 miles back.

I didn't realize that Jacob had said good-bye to George twice, and asked for extra prayer. Jacob had a dream last night that George died. He kept dreaming it over and over last night, but we didn't find out until later.

At 8:30 AM the phone rang. I saw George's cell phone number on the caller ID, but George didn’t respond right away when I said, “Hello?”

“Hello?” I said again. “Hello...?” Larissa came closer, trying to listen in and figure out who was calling.

Finally, George’s voice came on the line.

“Hi, how are you?” Hm, this wasn’t a typical before-work conversation. And he didn’t normally call me at this time.

“Uh, I’m OK. I’m getting ready for work…”

“I, um, I had an accident. I totaled the van. A woman pulled out in front of me and I honked and tried to avoid her, but I hit her kind of head on.”

I could feel my face drain. “Are you OK?”

“I have some pain in my stomach.”

“And the woman?”

“She’s OK. We’re both outside waiting for the police to come.”

“Well, you won’t be able to get to work today, not unless I come and get you, then you drive back 50 miles and drop me off at the office, then you drive back again…”

“Come and get me and we’ll sort it out. Take exit 7 from the highway and then just follow the road south. You can’t miss me. It’ll take you about 40 minutes to get here.”

Not exactly the way I hoped to start my work week with deadlines that I can't possibly meet looming this week and, of course, homeschooling to do while in my spare time I prepare for the Dallas mission trip. But thoughts of deadlines and mission trips faded from my thoughts as I wondered what shape George was really in. Would I find him by the road waiting for me – or in a hospital? Could the pain in his stomach be from internal bleeding?

"What's going on?" the kids wanted to know as soon as I hung up. My end of the conversation hinted that things weren't quite right, so I filled them in on the details. Then I called my boss and left a message that I would be in late, and why.

When I was ready to leave, I gathered the kids for prayer – for George's well-being and for my safety. We couldn't find Jacob at first, and when Alexandra finally located him in the basement storage room, he told us he'd been praying. It was obvious that he'd been crying as well.

The drive south was beautiful this sunny, late fall morning – over hills, past corn fields with yellowed stalks, by farms, horses, cows. I kept wondering just how far south I needed to go. I hadn't thought to ask. Is it possible that I passed the accident site? Could the cars have been towed and victims in the hospital, and I would just drive by and not know where to find them? After all, I'm one of very few people I know who does not have a cell phone, so I couldn't even call my husband from the road unless I stopped in a store or a house.

Worry gnawed at me, and I kept driving until, at last, I came upon a tan sedan whose front end was demolished. Our green van was nowhere to be seen, but there was my husband, pacing, cell phone in hand, beret on his head, talking apparently to the insurance agent. I parked on the side of the road in front of a large, white rural home. I got out of the van and got some information about the accident from Don, the father of the 16-year-old girl who had pulled out from her driveway right in front of George's van. She'd had her license three months and was rushing off to school. She was late and didn't look.

Later, on the drive to see the van in its final resting place where it had been towed, George filled me in. "I was driving along about 55 miles per hour when I saw this car pulling out of the driveway. I thought it would stop. I honked the horn, slammed on my brakes and kept honking, then I pulled into the left lane to try to avoid it, but she kept going right into that left lane. I hit her almost head on. Fortunately, I was going only about 35 at the time. If I hadn't gone into the left lane, I would have crushed the driver's door – and the girl. I don't think that she would have lived.

"Before I hit, I knew I was going to hit and I wasn't sure if I was going to live. There was smoke and smell of plastic and a terrible odor. All the engine fluids leaked. The airbags went off. And then I just walked out. I walked out of the van like nothing happened. And she walked out."

She got a cut on her lip. George is bruised from the seat belt cutting into his chest. But, oh, it could have been so much worse!

This evening at dinner and afterward, we surrounded George with extra hugs, and I shed a few tears of joy. Praise God that we still have George with us today!

Visit to a city mission

A few days ago I left a message for Lily, the head of one of the city mission agencies that I visited two weeks ago on the tour of outreaches to the poor, the immigrants, the drug addicts, the homeless, and the ex-convicts.

Lily and I used to work together more than 20 years ago, she as an engineer designing spectrophotometers, I as a technical writer writing the documentation. I worked freelance at the time, so I eventually moved on, but we stayed in touch through lunches and Christmas newsletters. But I never expected that we'd get back together in the basement of a church as we did yesterday.

Several years ago in her Christmas newsletter, Lily announced that she'd quit her job – retired she put it – and started an after-school program for city children where she worked for $1 per year. Wow, I thought, my curiosity piqued, I should visit her. But I didn't follow through for many years, not until yesterday.

I brought along Alexandra and Larissa so they, too, could get the detailed tour and to hear the story of how the mission began.

We walked into this large, brick church built in 1907. In the basement, the smell of food and the sight of dozens of rather bedraggled-looking people sitting at tables greeted us. I scurried around the building looking for Lily, peeking into the kitchen, the medical office, and the thrift store before I found her.

Lily's soft-spoken voice was sometimes had to hear above the ruckus as we toured the facilities for over an hour.

"You started all this?" I asked her, incredulous.

We saw over 100 people in the fellowship hall eating breakfast and dozens of volunteers cooking and distributing the meal. We observed a wheel chair bound woman coming to visit a social worker. We chatted with a medical technologist, who described how she serves the area's children with virtual medical visits via a computer and cameras, and a link to the local hospital where a doctor communicates with her. "He sees all I see via the cameras and equipment I have connected to the computer." We walked through the store in the church building that sold used clothing for a pittance. And we glimpsed into the food pantry supplied by the local food bank. We saw children darting through the halls, on their way to be picked up and driven on a day trip to an area park or museum, or apple picking. "We take them places every other Saturday that they'd never have the chance to visit with their families," said Lily.

Upstairs Lily showed us the rooms for the after-school day care program for grades 1 though 6. The videography classes for teens. Sewing classes. Bible studies. Men's Bible studies. My head swam with the details.

"How on earth did you start all this?"

"I didn't know what I was getting into," Lily laughed. "I first started the store that sells used clothing. I did that in 1998 while still working. In 2002, I quit my job and first started the after-school program for kids to keep them off the streets and away from the drug dealers. Many of these kids come from homes where the parents work and they would be coming home to an empty house – or to the street."

One thing had led to another as more and more people suggested additional ministries. In fact, we talked with the woman who suggested – and now heads – the weekly Saturday morning breakfasts. "And we also serve dinner once a month," she added. "By the way, Lily, I want to talk to you about an idea…"

"Oh, no," smiled Lily. "Another idea? Later."

Just then a stocky black woman insisted on getting food from the food pantry even though she didn't have the proper documentation. "I don't have any food at home," she claimed. She was kind of belligerent, not meek or polite as if asking a favor, but as if she were demanding a right. She did get her food, but frankly, I'd have a hard time working with people like that.

Still, you could tell by looking around that these people had been beaten down by life. We heard many stories, but the ones that touched Alexandra's heart most were about the Nepali immigrants. Bill, a tall, paunchy man with graying hair, had interrupted Lily's description of some ministry to tell us about these new immigrants.

"These kids get really picked on in the city schools. I would call them assaults. The first day in one of the city high schools, one Nepali was eating lunch in the cafeteria when someone threw a condom in his lunch! Hardly a day goes by when one of these kids isn't thrown up against a wall and frisked for money. One kid had a trashcan emptied over his head in the men's room! Welcome to America. The thing is, these boys come from refugee camps and they've had a life that is way rougher than any of the kids in school ever experienced. They're time bombs waiting to go off. Push one of them too far and they're bound to explode."

What a way to be treated in an unfamiliar culture. My heart broke for them.

Back home, Alexandra couldn't get this conversation out of her head. What school did this happen in? How old were the victims? How could this occur? This kind of thing never happened in their suburban public high school…

My main question was: How can we get involved with Lily's ministry?

The best option I saw was to come to the after-school program and give special presentations. "Show them something from Ukraine – dress in the traditional outfits, talk about the food, anything," Lily had suggested.

Although I've done many such presentations in the past for my kids' classrooms when they were young, my challenge will be to get the girls to do the presentations. We have to take it one step at a time. Perhaps it will be the beginning of something.

Giving hope for Christmas

The kids still remember their presents from last year. It's not because they received fancy gifts, but because each of them had the chance to choose a gift for someone in need. And each of them remembers just what they picked.

Praise God, this year we are still employed and not struggling financially like so many others. So once again, I'm not going to rain needless gifts upon my children, but I will once more give each a wrapped catalog and a check made out to Partners International. They can read and reread the catalog, ponder the needs of others, and select a gift from their hearts. What better way to celebrate the birth of Christ? Would He really want my son to get a video game in honor of His birth - or for him to choose education for three kids in Sudan, feed four poor families, and more...

Harvest of Hope™ - Gifts That Change Lives from Partners International.