Archive for February, 2008
teddy needs you
EDIT: Thank you! It appears that all three children have been sponsored. You can still sponsor children in Uganda by clicking here!
There are three children in Uganda who have been waiting over six months for sponsors.
last time when i posted two children who had been waiting over six months to be sponsored, you guys stepped up and both of them had sponsors within an hour! that is incredible.
i looked around on compassion’s site a few minutes ago, and found teddy. she lives in uganda. and she’s orphaned. with her two siblings, she lives with her uncle, who is occasionally employed as a farmer.
teddy is ten years old, and has been waiting for a sponsor for over six months. she is approaching a very significant time in her life as she hits adolescence. for her to know you are praying for her will change her world.
CLICK HERE TO BE TAKEN DIRECTLY TO TEDDY’S SPONSORSHIP PAGE. please don’t let her wait any longer.
Francis is nine and has four siblings. He has been waiting over six months for a sponsor. CLICK HERE TO GO TO FRANCIS’ PAGE AND SPONSOR HIM IMMEDIATELY!
Hakiza is twelve and also has four siblings. CLICK HERE TO GO TO HAKIZA’S PAGE AND SPONSOR HIM IMMEDIATELY!
YOU GUYS ARE FREAKING AWESOME!!!
i LOVE the invaluable feedback you guys have provided when i ask little questions for mad church disease. so, here’s another…
what, in your opinion, makes an environment healthy?
from flibbityfluent…
“Serve the stranger not as a strategy but as an act of love.”
my book deadline is february 28 march 14.
i sent this letter to my agent a few moments ago.
Oh, my dear Beth.
I’m sure you have a calendar for each of us. And on that calendar, with all of your experience, you probably have certain days circled in red. These days would represent days like today when I email you and say I am having looking-my-deadline-in-the-eye-induced-panic-attacks.
Breathe in, breathe out.
My brain has locked up. My fingers have locked up. And (breathe) I (breathe) have (breathe) two (breathe) weeks?
I don’t know what agents do on these days. But you do.
Please send xanax, stat.
Sincerely yours,
Anne-Going-To-Hide-Under-My-Bed-Jackson
your role in this, bloggyfriends? pray…hard…for me! being sick/asleep twenty-one hours a day lately isn’t really helping my schedule.
i’ve been home sick today (not with infectious stomach parasites like some of my ugandan-travel-mates, rather what i have dubbed a “fire breathing demon baby” that has taken residence in my throat). i have left my bedroom once to get soup and that is it. no energy.
yet still needing to kind of function for a conference call at 4 pm today.
here’s what that looked like.
i can honestly say i have never had a conference call in sweats with a cat sleeping on me.
and i must be so overridden with ick that i am actually posting that photo….? with no makeup? eek.
anyway…
i’ve been playing around on twitter a lot today. so…if you tweet, add me!
shaun wrote an amazing post today. and i can promise you. he is so right. and your prayers are so needed. for all of us.
**HIS POST IS BELOW**
A few years ago in El Salvador I saw real poverty for the first time. At the end of the week we gathered just off the hotel lobby, circled up in metal folding chairs, and talked about how we were feeling. Diving so far, so quickly, into poverty can nearly drown the heart and mind of an affluent American and so this is the standard way of ending a Compassion International “vision trip.” Depressurizing a little in a group before the plane ride home is safer for the soul than being yanked to the surface alone by the sights and sounds of the O’ Hare food court.
When it was my turn to talk about my feelings all I felt was insignificance and so I vomited that emotion up everywhere. (With a lot more words) I said just didn’t care anymore.
About what? About what color we paint the den. About whether my song is climbing the charts. About who the president is. About the gig next week. About what kind of cheese I can get on my Subway sandwich. About seeing that new movie. About that new laptop I wanted. About telling the interviewer what kind of animal I’d like to be. About mowing the yard.
I just didn’t care anymore. It didn’t feel significant – none of it – not standing back to back with feeding kids, teaching them to read, giving them life-saving medicine, teaching their moms how to sew, telling them they matter to God and to me. Nothing in my whole life back home seemed as significant as my week in El Salvador with Compassion International. Nothing.
I changed my job, politics, theology, church, closet, free time, budget, house, parenting, show. I sought, and am still seeking, to make my life here in America as significant as one week in El Salvador.
I tell you all this because it’s time now for the Uganda bloggers to fight the same kinds of emotions and weigh the same kinds of life changes. So, if you’re part of their life, try to understand they’re quite possibly morphing into something else. And pray that it’s something significant. Pray that we’re not so wrecked that we’re poor teachers, poor communicators and friends, repellant to those we desperately want to introduce to the children and God we’ve fallen in love with.
Pray for…
Shannon
Sophie
Doug
Phil
Anne
Chris
Randy
Heather
Carlos
David
Shaun
since our internet in uganda was maybe 14.4kb/s at its quickest was being consumed by fifteen passionate bloggers desperate to sponsor children, some of us are just now getting a chance to post some videos and other stories from the trip. including me.
first: watch this…
on the second day, we drove into a more remote area of the country to visit a project especially for educating and taking care of pregnant mothers and their children up to the age of three. each mother has a case worker who visits and checks in on the health, well-being, goals, and dreams of the caretakers and their children.
![villagesmall dreams for musa [a video of major substance]](http://rocksinmydryer.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/2008/02/13/villagesmall.jpg "dreams for musa [a video of major substance]")
shannon, shaun, brian, and i took quite a journey on foot through this rural village until we reached the home we were to visit with the caseworker.
the home was immaculate.
way cleaner than my house has ever been.
carefully laid lace cloth graced every bit of furniture. another sheet of lace served as the front door.
the caseworker asked such detailed questions…taking notes in a very full, but organized folder.
she was asking about musa, the youngest child.
is he playing well with others? (yes…he loves to play ball.)
has he had fevers? (no…he’s been healthy)
have you made him any toys? she showed us several toys she made for musa. handwoven dolls and balls made from dried banana husks.
we asked what dreams she had for her children.
“i dream someday…my children will become doctors…”
when you trip over the toys in your house today, i pray you’ll think of the toys this mother made for her son. when you lock your door tonight as you get ready for bed, i pray you’ll think of the delicate lace sheet blowing in a small, ugandan doorway. these sights and sounds and thoughts have never left my mind…and i pray they’ll always remain with you, too.
we have so much. and these children need so little in comparison. just a little bit can truly make the biggest difference in the life…and the dreams…of a child.
over 350 children have been sponsored as a result of this trip. don’t let it end now.
it’s not too late. if you haven’t yet, please sponsor a child today.
it was really, really late on our last night in uganda. shuan, brian, keely, boomama and i needed to get to our rooms…but bats swarmed the outdoor hallways.
boomama, you see, is terrified of bats. and they didn’t like us a whole lot either. especially after shaun popped one in the face with his computer…
we made a mad dash for it…and we were dive-bombed…twice.
so, i’ve been dealing with some stuff over the last few weeks that i haven’t really talked to too many people about. it started just a bit before africa, intensified while i was there, and has lingered around my heart since returning. los wrote a little bit about what he was experiencing tonight, so i figured, what the heck. i’ll share too.
i’m twenty-eight years old. i’ve moved thirty-two times. you can do the math. seven major school changes as a kid. and as an adult, in 2001 i left texas for kansas. in early 2006, i left kansas for texas. in late 2007, texas for oklahoma.
i know beyond a shadow of a doubt god has put chris and me here in oklahoma. no question. but, can i be completely raw with you? this has been the hardest move of my thirty-two. and there were some really difficult ones in there.
i’m not sure why. everyone here is great. we’ve been here almost two months, and we’ve had some really good times with people who have opened up their homes, kitchens, ears, and arms.
i think it really struck me watching the nashville group of bloggers that went on the africa trip interact and talk with each other (that sounds creepy…sorry, guys).
close friendships…those that develop over time. decades of time. and i can’t imagine having friends that close. it’s kind of hard when you’ve never lived somewhere for more than four years.
i know i keep referring to this post on finding my tribe, but i’ve yet to find a better way to express those longings.
intimate relationships terrify me.
but i am completely incomplete without them.
anne has just rolled out of bed, has thrown on some clothes and stares in the mirror. her curly hair yesterday is now resembling something like a 1970’s afro. two bobby pins later, anne turns to chris:
anne: do you think my hair looks really big?
chris: (pauses) not really big…
anne: too big to go out?
chris: (pauses) …. (pauses) …. (pauses) ….
anne: is it too big to go out?
chris: (pauses) …. no …. (pauses) …. well, you might want to …. wet it down a little bit or something.
lesson: husbands, lie to your wives. it will give them confidence.
