One year

I've been blogging for Erika for one year as of today! You can read how it all began here.

I'll point out that since August 30, 2011 I have gone to the dentist, gotten my first smart phone 20 years ahead of schedule, and just last week started reading The Shack four years earlier than planned.

I still hate skim milk.  That is not going to change. But I am actually ordering it sometimes in my white chocolate mochas because I realized that I can't really tell it's skim milk when there's so much white chocolatey goodness floating around with it. So even there, the blog has worked wonders in pushing me well outside of my comfort zone. You're the best, Erika.

I wonder what else I can speed up between now and August 30, 2013 since I've blown all of my other expectations of myself out of the water. I was planning on waiting until 2022 to become a millionaire, but why put it off?

In other news, today was our annual retreat day at work. The Camps department is nice enough to let Dave and I go with them on their retreat every year and today we all went to Boondocks in Denver. Someone had the brilliant idea that we should play laser tag, guys vs. girls. I'm all for men and women being equal but when it comes to laser tag, I would much rather run with the boys. Take a look at our final score and you will understand why (guys were red, girls were green):

That's right. We lost 27,125 to -70. Yes, that's negative 70. As I reflect on the next year of blogging, maybe I'll make it my number one goal to become a better laser tag player. Erika and I have talked about laser tag a lot in the past; I think it's time to make those conversations reality.

Happy anniversary, blog! Thank you for letting me write you. And thank you, Erika, for telling me to.

God in a motocar

I got back on Tuesday afternoon from an 11 day trip to Peru.

I love Peru. It's my first boyfriend when it comes to international travel. The first time I went to Peru was when I was 17 and it was the first time I had ever traveled to another country. And just like your first boyfriend or the first guy you kiss, your first international experience will always hold a special place, a fondness, in your heart.

Thus is Peru's place in my heart.

This trip was my fourth visit to Peru and was definitely a memorable one.  First, I had the honor of spending a week with some of the most amazing 37 people I've ever met in my life.  They were a hard-working, God-loving, and just plain fun bunch of people and it was a joy to be with them. Second, I got to see my dear friends Ricardo, Gloria, Segundo, Edwin, and Betsi again.  Wonderful people with big hearts and from whom I learn a lot about servanthood, humility, and how to pound in a nail the right way.  I also got a big hug from sweet little Mariceli, who made me swear last year that I wouldn't ever forget her. I have kept my promise so far.

But the moment that will last the longest in my heart from this trip is the moment that I saw little Joseph in a motocar in Pucallpa on Friday morning as we were getting ready to leave for the airport to fly back to Lima.

See, I think one of the reasons God sent our group to Villa Esther last week was so that we could find Joseph and help save his life.

The first time we saw him was Tuesday afternoon.  You have to understand that to get to Villa Esther we had traveled by boat for about 6 hours and then walked 2.5 miles from the boat to the village.  Finding Joseph at all was a bit like finding a needle in a haystack.  But there he was on Tuesday afternoon, nestled in his mother's arms. 

I saw him from the corner of my eye and immediately did a double take because he was the most malnourished little child I've ever seen in my life.  I've seen pictures of kids living through famines and Joseph could have easily stood in for one of those kids.  His arms and legs were sticks and his belly protruded alarmingly. 

We were blessed to have a doctor and multiple nurses serving on this team, so I called the doctor and his nurse wife over and the three of us introduced ourselves to this young mother holding this very sick little boy.

With my limited translation skills, we were able to learn that his name was Joseph, he was a year old, he hadn't started walking yet but could stand, and for some inexplicable reason, he had stopped eating when he was 11 months old, just a month earlier.  When you're only 11 months old and you decide to stop eating, it doesn't take long for you to waste away.  We knew that unless Joseph received professional medical care, and very soon at that, he would die.

His mother knew we were concerned and she seemed to be near tears herself as she told us about the last month.  I always come home from these trips with a deeper understanding of how blessed life really is for me, no matter how much I may whine and complain and cry about it, and standing there with Joseph's mother made me realize just how much I take for granted here in my posh American life.

I have more than enough food, I have easy access to free clean drinking water from water fountains in virtually any library, grocery store, or park I may wander into, and if my body stops working correctly, I can get medical help within a very short amount of time, and I have medical insurance that will cover most of my expenses for the help I receive.

Not so for Joseph and his mother in the jungle that afternoon.

Our advice to her was "get your son to a hospital as soon as you can." But we were in the middle of the jungle, in a village that had been inundated with a flood earlier this year that resulted in the loss of 2/3 of their crops for the year.  Crops that would be used for food and to sell for families to earn an income.  We may as well have told this mother to run for President of the United States when we told her to get Joseph to a hospital.

But there were big hearts present in this group.  As word of Joseph's condition spread around our group, one person stepped forward and gave his mom the money she would need to get him medical help.  The next afternoon, she, along with the other women in the village, set up a little craft market for us.  Joseph sucked on a lollipop someone from the group had given him.  Not the best thing for him to be eating, probably, but still encouraging to see that he had some desire for food still in him and calories from a lollipop are better than no calories at all when your body is that tiny and frail. Several people made a point to buy from his mother.

We said our goodbyes to Villa Esther the next day, Thursday, and left with dim hope for Joseph's future.  How could we be sure that his mother would even use the money to go get him help?  I know in America, I'm super hesitant to give money to the homeless guys on the street who ask for it because it's most likely that they will immediately use it to buy liquor.  How could we be sure that Joseph's mother would actually use the money to take him to a hospital? We had to entrust a lot to God when we said goodbye.

Yet you're remembering that I said earlier that the memory that sticks out the most from this trip is that of seeing Joseph in a motocar in Pucallpa on Friday morning.  And that's exactly what happened.

God orchestrated a lot of things that Friday morning when we first got back to Pucallpa for that moment with Joseph to actually happen.

First, there was a holdup at the marina when we tried to park the boat.  Negotations had to be made, money had to be paid, and we were finally able to dock at a less than desirable spot that no one was super excited about having to walk through.  All 43 pieces of luggage had to be carried up from the boat back to the bus. Then all 38 of us had to precariously cross a makeshift log bridge over what was basically raw sewage flowing into the river.

I was the last one of our group to head up the bank that morning, and just as I got to the top, I was distracted by seeing Mariceli and her family (her dad is the pastor of Ricardo's church in Pucallpa).  We had a little reunion, they gave me a gift, we took pictures and hugged each other a lot.  Then I had to find the last couple of stragglers who were wandering around taking pictures of the bustling Pucallpa dock life.  By the time we made it up to the street, we had lost the rest of the group.  It takes real skill to lose a group of 35 Americans in a poor Peruvian city, but I managed to do it.

I called Ricardo and handed my phone to the pastor so that he could tell Ricardo where we were, and as Barb, Susan, and I stood there on the street corner, we saw a familiar face peeking out at us from a motocar on the other side of the street.  It was Joseph and his mother and grandmother!  Right there, in the middle of Pucallpa, driving by at the exact moment that the three of us walked up!

Pucallpa is not a small city - there are over 310,000 people who live there, and probably at least 100,000 motocars.  The odds of us seeing Joseph in a motocar in Pucallpa were about as slim as us finding him in the jungle in the first place.  But there he was.

The memory that brings tears to my eyes is when he stretched out his frail little arm and waved to us from across the street.  It was the most movement I had seen from him that whole week, and just seeing that little wave filled me with so much hope that he would make it.

Every night on most Lifetree Adventures trips, we take some time to talk about God-sightings from the day.  We believe that God shows up in some way every day if we just take the time to look for Him. Seeing Joseph in Pucallpa was my God-sighting for the whole week, that God would send our team to this extremely small village in the middle of the jungle, where we would meet this little boy who desperately needed help, and in faith we would leave his mother with money hoping that she would take him to Pucallpa to get him the help he needed, only to have our last view of Pucallpa to be of him sitting in a motocar on his mother's lap on his way to go get that help. 

You might not believe there is a God. Or you might think it's a waste of time and money for a group of American Christians to go to another country for a week when there's plenty of needy people here in the U.S. Or you may think we shouldn't interfere with other cultures or give handouts. And in some cases, I would probably agree with you.

But I saw God in that motocar in that frail little arm waving goodbye to us.  I remembered that Jesus said that whatever you do for the least of these people on earth, you are doing for Him. Joseph is important enough to the God of the universe that God moved a lot of mountains and orchestrated a lot of unique circumstances to make sure that little boy was sitting in that motocar that Friday morning.

I don't know that Joseph will make it, even now.  But I pray he does, and I hope you will pray for him too.  I will probably never know this side of life what happens to Joseph, but God knows the number of hairs he has on his head, and will walk with Joseph through the rest of his life here on earth.

Joseph and his mama in Villa Esther

Precious cargo

I'm in the drive thru line at Chik-fil-A writing my first ever blog on my phone. That will purposely keep me succinct!

I've been in my car a lot today. This afternoon I drove halfway to Denver to meet Angela to give her a bunch of purses and jewelry that a couple of Colorado Lifetree Adventures' teams brought back from Haiti earlier this summer. It was the final leg of the journey for these handcrafted goods and I was honored to be part of it.

Driving my shiny red Mazda3 down the interstate, I thought about the women whose lives were represented in the goods in plastic bags in the trunk of my car. I don't know their names but I can guess some of their stories.

Teenage mom raped by a family member, thrown out of her house and trying as hard as she can to make a better life for herself and her child.

A woman with four kids who found out about Heartline's program by word of mouth. Her kids have different fathers because as each previous father abandons the family, she has to find another man to help support her and her kids, but now no one wants to be with her because she has so many kids so they are alone. Today, she is learning to read in addition to learning to sew.

A college graduate who defied the odds and made it all the way to her graduation but can't find a job because they are scarce in Haiti. So now she is learning to sew and make jewelry.

So many different stories and lives waiting back in Haiti for these purses to make it to the Haitian Creation store in Colorado, to be sold so that they can receive their hard earned dollars.

And today I got to be a very small part in making sure that happens for each of them.

I am so proud of the women in Haiti who work so hard to rise above the din and chaos and heartache of life, who have stories that I will never be able to comprehend and a dignity I can only hope to someday have.

I've spent a lot of time in the last year thinking and praying about whether or not I should someday go and live and serve in another country, maybe even in Haiti. For now, God is being pointedly silent about that (which I know causes my boss to breathe a sigh of relief) but today as I drove these purses down, I was reminded of a verse in Esther.

At this point in the story, Esther has married the king and become queen, and she has discovered that an evil man has a plan to kill the Jews. Esther, who is Jewish herself, is in a position to do something about it and her uncle reminds her of this by saying, "Who knows but that you have come into this position for such a time as this?"

I'm not on the verge of saving a nation or anything, but I had this clear picture today of once again knowing I'm exactly where God wants me to be. Today that position involved making sure those purses got to Angela so she can sell them and those Haitian women can get food on their tables. On Friday, that position involves flying down to Peru with about 100 pounds of clothes, books, tools, toys, and other gifts to give to a Shipibo village next week, ironically called Esther village.

Who knows what it will involve a month or a year or 5 years from now, but I do know that God knows and He will continue to put me where He wants me for such a time as He wants me there. I'm grateful for each chance I get to be part of something bigger than my safe Fort Collins life, even when that something is as small as carrying precious cargo down to a Starbucks parking lot at Exit 235 on I-25.

If you'd like to purchase some of these beautiful purses and jewelry, and learn more about the women who make them, check out Haitian Creations
(I cheated and finished this at home...but most of it was written in the drive thru, I promise.)

The Haitian Creation women hard at work on manual sewing machines!

You know you want one!