"It Takes a Village"

Mom would certainly stand in protest of my concession that our former first lady and Secretary of State had something right (or partially so) but recently I was reminded of this Life-reality:"It Takes a Village." Well ok, Mom, maybe one is not absolutely essential for proper child rearing, but both my past and present experience in preparing for foreign missions tells me that a healthy, helpful community is critical for such undertakings. So here's my shout out to my Village Peeps!

Rachel is my Tech and Social Media Coach

Mamma is the Copying Queen!

Tabitha concentrates on cutting

Daddy tackles the return labels

Even Drew got into the action

Thank you to my Support Team!

My Family really pitched in... Everyone, except for Lucy!

New Adventures Underway

Dear Family and Friends,

Hello! May I tell you a story? And may I invite you into it? It is a story still being told. The Main Character is incomparable, both Protagonist and Author. I am in the story, though I play only a supporting role. Many of you, too, appear within the narrative, which is why I thought it appropriate to write you.

You are probably familiar with the story up to the point of January, 2010. I was teaching at Three Angels Children’s Relief, a Christian orphanage in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. God shook the earth and within 60 seconds time 300,000 souls stepped into eternity. For reasons I do not know, I was not among them. I, and the 26 children at TA, came home to the US, to our parents and families without a scratch. God was our Protector, Provider.

God is also the opportunity Giver. He then gifted me with a 22-month time-out and reset at a residential treatment center in Lafayette, IN. I checked myself into Vision of Hope with the goal of walking free from an eating disorder. God, the soul-Restorer, graduated me from VOH last June with gifts of even greater value- a thankful affection for Him and a delighted curiosity in discovering and participating in His plan and work in the world.

The Questions I have put before God in my hunt for His plan and work are How? and Where? can I be involved? Last year He responded to the former question with a word: teaching; with this answer I then embarked upon the journey to determine Where. My thought: I will land within a Francophone African nation. So that is where I focused my search. But God’s thoughts are not my thoughts and He offered a very different opportunity.

In March of last year an NGO called Servant Group International lost a seven-year veteran teacher to the bullet of one of his former students. WorldMag delivered the news story to me and immediately a strong desire was conceived in my soul to go. Fool-hearty? My parents thought so, when I casually mentioned SGI to them at home one weekend. Daddy’s reaction (“You would be stupid to do that”) to my scheming to teach with SGI shocked me as he is not a man led by his emotions. But he is an informed man and an authority figure in my life. If he disapproved of the Where to which teaching with SGI would lead me- to northern Iraq- then I would acuiesque. I abandoned the mid-eastern dream and resumed my search. Perhaps God was not calling me to such a foreign land. But I kept the news article.

For seven months I searched. Then in November God arranged a meeting. He orchestrated a weekend trip with my parents to Nashville, TN, to visit our family friends, the Farris’, in celebration of their daughter’s wedding. We celebrated Friday, observed my birthday Saturday, and went to worship Sunday. Around the breakfast table Sunday morning Mrs. Farris had inquired, “So Abbey, what do you want to do with your life?” Dramatic foreshadowing: “I’d like to teach in a third-world country.” At the small country Presbyterian church that morning the minister introduced a guest speaker: Dave Dillard, the founder and executive director of Servant Group International. I wept. What was God up to? From Dave Mom and Dad heard the SGI story, and on the drive home to Indiana Daddy declared, “Ab, if you still have an interest in that, you should do it.”

SGI serves the Kurdish people in Northern Iraq by staffing a series of English-speaking primary and secondary schools. It offers a classical-style curriculum which, amazingly, is biblically-based. Students earn a diploma upon the completion of their studies which makes them competitive in the international market. Because of the demand for English acquisition and the opportunities a Western-style diploma opens to graduates American Christian teachers –and their gospel message- are welcomed by the Kurdish Muslim community. Teaching is the medium through which Christians live out and speak of their faith in Jesus to their Muslim students and neighbors- an unprecedented opportunity as it occurs on Muslim turf.

In April God responded to my Where question. I applied, and have been invited to teach with SGI this fall in Erbil, Iraq (also spelled Arbil and Irbil). The term is a traditional school year: August to June. I will be assigned four teaching blocks, have approximately 80 students, and instruct most probably at the high school level. (I’m praying that my subjects are neither math nor science but nothing is guaranteed until my boots are on the ground!) My home will be an in-town apartment shared with two other single American women. Our team will include one or two other couples, their kids, and perhaps a single guy or two. Our boss is an Iraqi Christian, the visionary and founder of the Classical School of the Medes, the school with which SGI partners.

How will you enter this story? Will you pray for my preparation spiritually, physically, financially? CSM will pay me $8,000 for the term; my expenses to get to/return from Iraq (tickets, med insurance, orientation/training) and live there will be $20,000. The difference between income and expense is $12,000. Will you give to help me reach this goal by July? When I am in Iraq will you follow my blog and offer encouragement through email? Will you remind me then that the story is not finished and ask God to perfect the work He began?

More to come!

Back to Blogging

This little entry was written on the 2nd anniversary of the Haiti earthquake. It is dedicated to all the first responders but especially to Kez, who was exactly where God wanted her to be at that moment. Right next to me.

It didn’t rain. All day it had looked of rain, and night was usually the time of day when the look became reality. The heavens would open and -if we were so fortunate- flash too, thundering, crashing, pouring wet and light down upon the streets of Port au Prince. Lightning storms in the rainy season: God’s unrestrainable exhibition of power, danger, mysterious beauty. But it didn’t rain.

Tonight snow falls. And unlike that night I will be warm, I will sleep in a bed under a roof, and the world around me will be as silent as the snow. And I will remember the earth that trembled, the women who sang, the nurse who labored, broken bodies, peanut butter sandwiches, January cold, sky that broke, the bright silver loneliness of a moon looking down upon our chaos. And it didn’t rain.

Thank You, God, for your mammoth and miniscule provisions. For circumstance and routine, community and conversation. Thank You for presence and absence, for limitation and ignorance. Thank You for adrenaline and exhaustion and grief.
Thank You that it didn’t rain.

Please Look at this Link Re: Haiti Cholera Epidemic

Please Read This:

http://goatpath.wordpress.com/2010/11/22/cholera-reaches-port-au-prince-as-victims-are-left-in-mass-graves/#more-553

An Open Door

A few weeks ago I was challenged by a conversation with a new friend. I was describing to her how my life felt like I was pinned up against a wall, suffocating, with no direction and no end in sight. I didn’t even know what to pray. Jen counseled me to start asking God for an open door. So I did.

Very shortly thereafter I received a phone call. An answer!

Back in February I when had been home from Haiti for about a month a good friend spoke into my life. She said she was seeing things in my life which she felt God was pressing upon her heart she needed to talk to me about. I’ve struggled (Ha ha ha! What a mild word. “Been engulfed by” is a more fitting description.) with an eating disorder since I was a teenager but I thought I’d had victory over it last year before I left for Haiti. Apparently, I was wrong; coming home from Haiti that became very evident. My friend felt strongly that I should admit myself into a residential treatment center to get help.

So we researched my options and pursued several paths but all paths became blocked except one. (And, boy, did that one drag on, and on, and on!) Six months later, I received my phone call! I had a move-in date! An open door!

On Wednesday, 18 August I am walking through that door. I will be living in a residential treatment center with 19 other girls who, like me, are there to work on an assortment of addictions, disorders, and issues! The program we are going through is called Vision of Hope. It is a ministry of Faith Baptist Church of Lafayette, IN.

How long will I be there? As long as it takes. (The staff says anywhere from 6-12 months.) Initially, the program is very restrictive so forgive me for not returning emails and phone calls. I will be allowed one personal phone call a week and you can bet I’ll be using all 14 minutes to talk to my mamma (and Daddy, and Taba, and Drew)!!! I will have no internet. I think I will be allowed to send and receive real mail, though. If you write, I will certainly write back!

I need prayer for transparency. My heart is so deceitful and deceived that I myself am often unsure what to say and do and think. I need Jesus to shine His light on. I need grace to respond to Jesus as He continues to pursue me for a relationship. For the past ten + years of being a Christian, somehow I’ve been totally missing out on that. More than anything, I think I need to feel and become convinced of God's love.

The Beautiful Letdown album seems to be providing the soundtrack to this season of my life. In my preparation, as I vacillate between pure excitement and sheer terror, the chorus of this song repeats itself in my mind…

When everything inside me looks like everything I hate
You are the hope I have for change
You are the only chance I'll take

And I'm on fire when You're near me
I'm on fire when You speak
I'm on fire burning out these mysteries

I'm standing on the edge of me
I'm standing at the edge of everything I've never been before And I've been standing on the edge of me, standing on the edge


Thank You, God, for good friends! and for the Journey You’ve promised to lead me safely on, as long as it takes.

Switchfoot - On Fire Lyrics

Switchfoot - On Fire Lyrics

Twenty Four (Six)

"Ok, what's the next Step?"

July, 2010...
Do you have songs which, when you hear them, immediately bring to mind a specific person, place, or season in your life? I do- in fact, I have entire musical albums which remind me of past seasons of life. Switchfoot’s “Beautiful Letdown” was one that I downloaded (uploaded?) onto my iPod prior to moving to Haiti last summer so when I ran the streets of Petionville for the four and a half months that I lived there a visual track evolved to accompany the music. (I especially laughed at the chorus of one song: “From the third world to the corporate ear we are the symphony of modern humanity”…)

God and I have been talking about the next step. I have officially been home for six months now. “What’s next, what’s next???” I demand, frantically. Back to Haiti? Where’s my passion? Do I have a heart for orphan care? Or is it against the cruelty of the sex trade? Is my calling on the foreign missions field? Should I go back to school? These questions reminded me recently of lyrics in Switchfoot’s song “Twenty Four.” I am a bit past twenty-four but I am still in my twenties so the song speaks personally to this season of my life:

I want to see miracles, to see the world change
Wrestled the angel, for more than a name
For more than a feeling
For more than a cause
I'm singing Spirit take me up in arms with You
And You're raising the dead in me
http://artists.letssingit.com/switchfoot-lyrics-24-hh5pt3w

The gracious sifting and scourging and pruning that the Father is working in me currently is spoken of in the lyrics above. Yesterday the Holy Spirit showed me that, although the Lesson for me has been and continues to be, God, God, God, God, God- more of Him, getting to know Him, desiring Him and enjoying Him more than His gifts- my heart still clamors for some kind of definition outside of Him: a name, a feeling, a cause. The song speaks of something more valuable than even these enviable gifts: intimacy with God and a life made new.

So how can I respond? I am laying down my demands. I will cease striving. I will wait.

Francois Fenelon has this to offer we Pilgrims who find ourselves needing to practice the lesson of walking with God:

LIVE DAY BY DAY
Your spiritual walk is a little too restless and uneasy. Simply trust God. if you come to Him, He will give you all that you need to serve Him. You really need to believe that God keeps His word. The more you trust Him, the more He will be able to give you. If you were lost in an uncrossable desert, bread would fall from heaven for you alone.
Fear nothing but to fail God. And do not even fear that so much that you let it upset you. Learn to live with your failures, and bear with the failures of your neighbors. Do you know what would be best for you? Stop trying to appear so mentally and spiritually perfect before God and man. There is a lot of refined selfishness and complacency in not allowing your faults to be revealed. Be simple with God. He loves to communicate Himself to simple people. Live day by day, not in your own strength, but by completely surrendering yourself to God.
-The Seeking Heart

A recent view along the Appalachian Trail, Dalesville, Virginia