Accountability is not a bad word!

In such an independent society, I think this word has gotten a bad rap; along with responsibility and submission.

I’ve thought of it as a bad thing, myself.  Maybe that’s why the leader started out talking about good vs bad stress.

Bad stress being that which slows us down or makes us ineffective.  Good stress might be a deadline that gives us just enough tension to get the work done.

Accountability can very much be a good stresser in our lives. 

To know someone will be asking me about, say, my devotional time with God; following up with me about the prayer request I made; or just calling me on what I just said over coffee.

If you’re like me, you crave healthy relationships, friends and mentors.  Part of that is allowing those I’ve come to trust, the permission to speak into my life.

Not just anyone, and not someone that doesn’t know me; but someone I’m going to intentionally allow close enough to my struggle to become a part of my growth and development.

A Year's Acomplishment

I know I’ve given you a few false starts about when, but not intentionally.  I’ve been eager to show you what I’ve been learning and doing over the last year, along with my other duties.  I’ve made some false starts and had to backup to learn about things that left me clueless.

 

However, March is the month!  Everyone has assured me that the timing is right and we can revel the upgrade to our own ROP website!

I’ve had help all along the way with editing, photos, and a great WordPress website design partner in John Fitzpatrick who is volunteering his expertise online from Arizona.  Communication has always been a passion of mine, yet I’ve had a lot to learn in this new age of website design, Twitter, and Facebook.

I’m sure I’ll be making a few mistakes along the way, yet I know you’ll go easy on me, right?

So, come on over and check it out next week!  Let me know what you think, share a suggestion, or look us up on Facebook or Twitter.

I’m a bit scared, but I think God has something great in mind for this!

It’s just a great new way to get Relational in Ministry!  =)

Twitter:  ROPministry

FB: Restoration Outreach Programs

Love can bring a plan together

     I’ve known D~ for five years.  I met her when she came to Colorado at  age 13 to live with her grandmother.  Her story is fraught with drama;  alcoholic mother,  a father & step-fathers that abused her, two siblings each with a different dad from hers.  She was passed around in the family a lot    because mom always chose men, alcohol and drugs over her children.

     When I first met her, she was withdrawn, quiet and a veracious reader, unless she got mad, her temper could burn you to the ground, but it was never her first choice.  She was never a fighter, she craved peace and stability.  She is the first in four generations to graduate high school, and she did it on time.

     I met T~ only after they became parents together.  I had heard about their relationship for over a year, through D~.  She didn’t paint me a glowing picture, but even I could see there was a connection and a growing love .  When the pregnancy was shared with her family, she was disowned.  Their ultimatum was, they would help her, only if she got rid of T~.

     T~’s past is filled with a grandmother that cares but couldn’t take him in from his meth addict mom, so he was in the foster care system by age seven.  This system could have helped him, if he hadn’t run away from several homes and made a lot of poor choices without support.  He spent a lot of time in detention with misdemeanors and bad roll models.  Yet, his heart wanted more.  He completed high school and chanced upon a young woman that had faith in him.  They fell in love.  His family is supportive of their relationship, but the family has no resources and addictions and drama of their own.

     One of the first things God taught me in ministry is key; listening, a lot!  Through the 10 plus years I’ve been a missionary, I know that sitting down with a teen to write out a list of their dreams and goals tells me a lot about where their head and heart is, as well as what they value and cherish.

     Sitting down with T~, just getting to know him, we made up a list, with no ideas from me until he was done, or only to answer a question.  He is passionate about finding work because the money will help solidify his future and take care of his past.  His first goal: earn enough to pay for a marriage   license.  Then he wants to take care of restitution and probation fees that he owes to Adams County for his juvenile record, etc.  So we talked more about options.  He’s excited about Joshua Station’s Transitional Housing program because it gives them two years, with classes on parenting, job skills, budgeting, etc.  His words: “I can learn what my family never knew.  I want to take care of D~ & their daughter the right way.”

     I might be ministering to this young family and answering a lot of their questions about resources, God & faith.  Yet, Jesus is using this little family, fighting the odds, to grow me and my faith.  He never stops drawing us closer to Him, using our willing hearts to learn through the relationships He draws us into, what His heart for us really is: just to be His loving family.

God Remembers

Sometimes, we find ourselves in the middle of storms.

A consequence of an action catches up with us.

We hurt someone or get hurt by someone.

We lose our jobs, our marriages and hope.

We land in the middle of a storm.

Recently, I read about someone who understands that.

In Genesis 8:1 it says, “But God remembered Noah and all the wild animals and the livestock that were with him in the ark, and he sent a wind over the earth, and the waters receded.”

That is amazing. Why?

Well, the earth has 196,939,900 square miles of surface area.

The ark was 450 feet long and 75 feet wide.

It would have been easy to misplace something so small and insignificant. I lose my phone all the time and the   surface area of my pockets is less than 196,939,900.

But God remembered.

He remembered.

And he sent a wind.

And the waters receded.

That’s my prayer for you and I, that we will remember he remembers. That we serve a God who remembers us in our storms, sees us in our small boats, and recedes our waters with a gentle wind.

Lost in Translation

If you didn’t already know this, North Aurora has made some dramatic changes since we first moved onto the block five years ago.  The cultural breakdown is now roughly: a third predominately white transient poor (living in the motels or worse); a third, immigrants from Mexico; and the last third are the refugees from war torn countries around the world.  Predominately from Burma, Nepal and Somalia, though there are others as well.

We are a rainbow of cultures helping each other become more at home in this beautiful country of ours.  Our programs are filled with faces beaming from under “hijab” (muslim head coverings) or above bodies swathed in “sari” dresses, even in winter, so excited to experience free education (even for women) and the lovingly supportive community we share with them.

Learning about a new culture can be fraught with landmines and misunderstanding.  Cultures that don’t  run their lives by what time it is are often late to appointments and hold more value in relationships then punctuality.   Especially those that have spent years living in internment/detention camps spending most of their energy to obtain the basics of survival.

Our food bank was the first to be stretched, a few years back, in being Christ to these families.  Many of our foods are baffling and hard to trust for a vegetarian who finds themselves in a very meat centric culture, (with foreign looking produce even.)  Invitations to come explore our food was met with polite resistance.  Until we dropped our need to control and began visiting, accepting the invitations of families.  As a guest, we were treated like a blessing on their house, whatever they have being freely offered, though it might cause them hardship later.  As we showed love, trust and respect of them and their food, so they began to trust us.

Along the way we’ve discovered many things.  The women are familiar with cooking on stove tops, but fear the oven.  Many women calling it a “dragon” (which took a bit of translation to learn)  =)  The mystery of broil, bake, let alone self-cleaning selections, make them suspicious and fearful of it.

Which brings us to this holiday.  Ever thought about how much baking goes into a traditional American Thanksgiving?  I hadn’t. Even if you leave the turkey out of it, there’s a lot!  The first year was a fiasco of explaining a frozen turkey is meat.  Which taught us to offer a King Sooper gift card for a turkey or anything else they might like instead.  We did talk to our families about getting more culturally specific foods, but no, they wanted to celebrate the freedom they found in America with a traditional American meal.  Maybe next year we can plan for a few volunteers to do cooking classes for the oven? lol

Now, you find every ROP program blended with our multi cultural community; from youth ministry & after school tutoring, to GED, ESL and Food Bank.  God’s Kingdom work in foreign countries, is right here in North Aurora.

New Connection & Growth

Writing has always been a very solitary thing for me.  Crafting a thought into words takes space, silence, and a good deal of avoiding  interruptions.

It is the only time I cannot listen to music as I work.  Nothing that might break the mood or the thought that God is leading me to share.

Maybe that explains some of the struggle I’ve had accepting social media.  It’s writing, but immediate and conversational.  One must check back and pay attention and maybe even be quick with a response.  =)

I’m fascinated by my husband, who uses Facebook as a ongoing conversation with his family scattered across the eastern plains of CO, and farther.  He talks with his old high school friends, college friends, and even cousins, aunts & uncles.  For privacy, he has special pages for branches of his family; the Stones, the Ekbergs. I’m in awe.

When I first got on Facebook, he would gripe when I wasn’t up with the conversation because I hadn’t checked it in weeks. I’d also heard about inane chatter about who’s doing what when; “Just made a pizza for lunch.”  Yet, all these classes I’m taking for websites & social sites stress the importance of understanding these places are a new mission field, a place for relational partnerships between individuals and organizations.  The old ways are not gone, but we as Christians should not let technology and “newness” scare us away from places where we can lift Christ up.

I’ve since been trying to exercise new habits of social networking for ROP.  I’m not doing so well but I’m learning.  Yet, God is even faithful in the Internet world.  People have been ‘Liking’ our ROP Facebook page.  =)

Partner organizations on Twitter are reTweeting.  I don’t know exactly what I’m doing yet, but God knows what He has planned.  (Which I find incredibly reassuring.)

I want to create a wonderful place for people to visit and get to know ROP and each other.  A place to share ideas, event news and create new relationships and volunteers.

Please pray as God trains me and stretches me to learn a new way to build His vision.

Layers & Peeling

Whether it’s a line from “Shrek” that Ogres are like onions, or “The Blind Side” describing people that are like onions, you have to peel them back one layer at a time. It feels like life gives us onions rather than lemons, sometimes.

Lemonade never related to people very well for me. Maybe it was the image of squeezing and crushing that gave me shivers. Not that peeling an onion is without its consequences. There’s the whole, "slow so you don’t bruise it" and tears in the process. Yet, that sounds human to me and very relatable to interacting with friends, family, and difficult personalities.

This last month has been all about listening. God’s charge to us all and His indispensable tool for true
relationship. For those of you who have been through our youth volunteer training, I’m sure you remember the emphasis that was put on just listening, active listening, and sharing only when asked.

It’s amazing what a kid or teen will share with you when they really feel heard and cared about by an adult.

Yet, for all I’ve learned and experienced with really listening, it’s one of those lessons in life that I keep having to relearn. With the resent loss to our family of my husband’s mother, my husband needs me to do little else but listen with uncritical love, without trying to “fix it.”

At work, we just went through a team building exercise in, you guessed it, listening! When God is doing great things, it’s amazing how hard the devil attempts to get a toe hold to create discord. As our building is filled to capacity with programs, and heading into the holidays, communication is key, with listening and understanding the bigger part.

With all my experience & training, it is my flesh that keeps getting in the way. Finding that I’m not listening but rehearsing what I might say next, or identifying so much that I take the conversation over and make it about my experience, or even playing “fix it” hearing them shape up the issue only to offer my best advise before they’ve finished. My flesh doesn’t seem to learn that only by listening does real understanding take place. And my heart longs to feel understood, doesn’t yours?

Praise God that He is not quick to judge my failings and throw me away for the hurt I cause. Instead, with grace and patience, He loves me as I get up, dust myself off, apologize and try again. This time seeking the Holy Spirit to guide and direct me, giving me a patience and joy in listening.

I pray this grace for you and your family, too, as we head into the holiday season. The Greek word for Spirit translates, “Breath of God.” So remember to breathe and look for God in the relationships around you. Know that Jesus is in control and seeking to bless us. I will keep the prayer bucket full, so feel free to dip from it as you need.