Jun 18, 2013
You know it’s spring when………
The grass starts turning green, temperatures rise, birds fly back from the south and flowers start blooming everywhere!!
These are all wonderful signs of spring and the Lord has given me a new appreciation for them, but they have nothing to do with the sign that I’m talking about. Everyone’s “favorite” sign of spring is when mom says “Guess what? It’s time for Spring Cleaning!! ” Groan!!!!!
If this has always been your perspective of Spring Cleaning then you should try it at the Gospel For Asia Canadian office! The whole family, aka “staff“, takes the afternoon off once a year to clean the entire office. You know what they say, ” Many hands makes light work.” This is such a true statement! We all cleaned our own personal spaces first and then it was off to help others clean the common areas in the office. We had a blast!! I even got to stand on the kitchen counter to clean in and on top of the counters!! It’s not every day that you get permission to do that, now is it?? I didn’t think so!
Now, even though the cleaning was a lot of fun, all good things still come to an end. So, instead of ending our day together with cleaning, we had a barbecue outside and more Gospel For Asia families showed up for a great time of fellowship. The excitement didn’t stop there though, first we got blown inside and rained out by a surprise shower. After rushing inside it was time for some dessert and arm wrestling!! ( I may or may not have participated in those) Okay I did win a few arm wrestling matches, but who’s counting?
Then, we watched Toy Story 2, enjoyed a few laughs and some hyper children, and went home to a comfortable air conditioned house. Praise the Lord for spring and a wonderful loving family at Gospel For Asia’s School of Discipleship!
I wonder what the sign for summer is, don’t you?
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Jun 15, 2013
This past Saturday a group of us Gospel For Asia peoples went out to have a nerf war at a playground near one of the familie’s house. It was a great form of exercise, and I rediscovered some muscles that have long since been dormant in my body. Pushing through the pain, I must say that playing with nerf guns outside when it’s slightly windy is a challenge. I had near perfect aim…when we were inside…but then add the element of teams, adrenaline, and wind… I was lucky if I could hit one person each round!
Though I did find out that my husband and I make a pretty good team. We played where if you were shot, someone on your team had to come and tag you to unfreeze you, but if both of you were shot, then your team was out. So much like how a medic in Team Fortress 2 stays right by a heavy so you can annihilate your foes without much harm done to the dynamic duo, I was Tim’s medic and we made a really good team! (see you can learn life lessons from video games! Like how to survive in a nerf war!)
I’m looking forward to the next nerf war, and I’ve even brought my nerf gun to my desk at work, and it’s already played a big part in the sanity of our little web department. Here’s the story:
Adam came by to work on my computer and while he was here, I was playing around with my nerf gun. One of my co-workers sees Danny down the hallway and says “aw! Danny was just in the hallway… I know! I’ll email him!” So she proceeds to email Danny. Her email was something along the lines of “Could you come to the web department; if you can?” A few minutes later, Danny comes into Web and I release a stream of nerf darts at him. To which he says “I knew there was something up, my coworker would never email me that. I should have come around the other way so I could have seen you too! (referring to me standing near my desk out of view of the door)”
You know you work in an awesome place when you can shoot the vice president of the organization with a nerf gun and he thinks it’s cool 🙂
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Jan 18, 2013
Today was an interesting day. Starting off at 1AM I woke up and couldn’t really get back to sleep, save maybe a few 15 minute naps here and there, mainly just staring at the ceiling thinking and praying and such. Around 8:30ish I got kinda bored of my attempts to sleep that I got up and decided to check all the boxes of my Xbox, Playstation, and Wii games to try to locate some of the ones that were missing. I found one!! HUZZAH! At this time my roommate had woken up (another roommate was already at work), and she lay on the couch as I cleaned my gerbil cage and talked about potentially going to check out all the yardsales in the area (since we were up early enough and had been talking about doing that for a while now). My roommate, barely awake attempted to wake herself up a bit more, got dressed, and I toasted some bagels for us and we were off to check out garage sales at around 9:21AM.
We found quite a few garage sales, but as we were looking for bookshelves or dining room chairs, we were kinda out of luck. However, we did discover a few older games, a book, two rubber duckies, and after a stop at the ReSale, I got a little book holder for my bathroom and a few reeeeally old CD-Roms (all for under $10 total). Score! We also had the chance to say hi to a few Gospel For Asia people who were also having a garage sale.
Nearing the end of my roommate’s energy levels, we stopped by Chick-fil-A (since we knew we would be craving it tomorrow on Sunday, but it’s not open on Sundays… sad!!) refilled our energy and had some time to chat and catch up for a bit. After a few hours, we headed back home and it was only 2PM!! So productive for a Saturday! A little time passed and two of my roommate’s mom came over and I went to clean/organize/get rid of/and consolidate all the stuff I have, while listening to the audio Bible on my iPod. I consolidated a LOT! and got rid of a LOT! and discovered some really cool letters from friends and some nice pictures, and some stuff that I forgot I had, like my Pokemon Card collection, and learned a lot from God’s Word. 🙂
So now my room is clean, stuff is organized, an Up for Grabs pile is accumulating in our living room, and I’m just now starting to feel tired. Where did this energy come from?? WHY DID I WAKE UP AT 1AM???! Praise God for all the productiveness and for catching up with friends. 🙂
I wonder what will happen in the next two hours or so before bed… hm… the possibilities are endless!!
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Nov 28, 2012
Boot Scoot Boogie
I awoke that morning on the train, on a bed that was to short for a 6’ 1” White guy (my feet stuck off the end). But that was okay, I was in Asia BABY! This was the day a lot of us were looking forward to, why? Because we were going to visit our first Bridge of Hope center that evening! Almost my entire background in ministry is children’s ministry, so needless to say I was AMPED. But nothing I had ever experienced before could prepare me for that evening. The day went by like a blur, our schedule was packed full, and I was so focused on what we were doing that it seemed like time doubled its speed. When we arrived at the center, I saw them, dozens and dozens of smiling, laughing, joyful kids. This didn’t surprise me, we were here to see kids, what did surprise me (maybe even shock) was how joyful these kids were, my heart melted right there! Here in America whenever you hear of “poor children” or “underprivileged kids” there is always a sense of depression and hopelessness associated with them, but not here!
We hurried inside and sat down so they could start their program. And so began the most epic night of my life. A few kids came in first and shared a memory verse, and after that the man who was announcing said that it was time for the dancing. The children danced to three songs that night, multiple times! The first time through the songs we sat there and watched, the second time through, somebody in our team started dancing too! Then everyone joined in! We all started jumping and dancing around! Needless to say the kids were delighted, and so was everyone else. But in the back of my mind there was this little voice asking me one question: “WHY ARE YOU DANCING?” That kind of caught me off guard, why was I dancing? If any of you know me, I have probably told you “I DON’T dance!” or more precisely I can’t dance, nothing in the world (I thought) could ever get me to dance, so why was I? Plain and simple, these kids were dancing for Jesus, I wanted to praise Him too, so I started to dance (although it probably made Jesus laugh more than anything else). It made me think of a verse: “And whatever you do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through Him.” Colossians 3:17.
Even though this may be a funny story, it does have relevance for me everyday. Do I do everything for Jesus? Or do I go through the day and complain about every little “unimportant” thing that I have to do? Am I filled with joy when I get to serve Jesus, even in the small things? 1 Corinthians 10:31 says this: “Therefore, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.” I am so thankful that God gave me this story because it gave me a permanent defense against pessimism and complaining! Now whenever I start to feel like I want to complain about how “normal my job is” all I have to do is think of those kids laughing, singing, and praising Jesus, and that makes my whole day better!
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Oct 25, 2012
This past October I had the privilege to travel with Gospel for Asia to man a booth at a blogging conference called Allume, in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. My last day at the Allume conference was interesting indeed. After spending the morning in sessions, enjoying lunch and an inspiring keynote speaker, I decided to walk to the CVS down the street to collect some packing tape for the boxes we would send back to Gospel for Asia.
I was looking forward to my walk so that I could take some pictures of the city life in Harrisburg from ground level. Slowly I approached the CVS, discovering that it closed an hour earlier. A little bummed I decided to just walk to the end of the block to get a few more pictures before heading back to the hotel. As I was taking pictures of this really cute cafe’ this couple that was sitting on the steps called me over and proceeded to tell me all the interesting things I could take pictures of in Harrisburg. Which was interesting because I dont normally get people that stop me on the street and talk to me at length, quite exciting if you ask me.
While I was discussing pictures and arcitecture with the couple, this cute little boy who couldnt have been more than 2 or 3, came up to us and posed for the camera a few times, then his mother came and took him by the hand to lead him in the other direction. Every few steps though, the little boy would turn around and pose again.
A few minutes later I was back on my way taking photos of Harisburg. I saw a few painters painting this brick building red, so I took a few pictures of them. After those pictures, the three ladies sitting outside another cafe asked me if the painters looked safe enough. I said that Im sure they know what the are doing, and went on my way.
Soon I decided I should probably head back to my hotel and started on my way. On the way back i saw a sign with the history of some guy. I took a picture of it and then heard the guy from that first couple call to me from across the street asking if I liked history, then he crossed the street to talk to me more. He told me about the Whig part and a president that was elected at the church down one block, and how that president died and his vice president wasnt part of the Whig party and then they disbanded. It was very interesting, but as he was talking I saw a RiteAid behind him!
After he stopped talking, I asked if I could take a picture of him. Then I headed to the RiteAid for packing tape. When I got the tape, I decided to take a picture of the church the guy was talking about since it was at the end of the block, and this old lady asked if I had some change she could have. I was about to say no when the Lord said to give her something, so I gave her the $5 bill I had in my wallet and smiled at her wishing her a good day. I took a picture of the church then started back to my hotel again.
As I neared the hotel a homeless fellow that I had passed a few times that day asked if I took a picture of the oldest church in Harrisburg that is by the river a few blocks from where we were. I told him that I haven’t, but I would see if maybe later I could.
Finally back at the hotel, I gave the packing tape to Sara and Rachael and started running through the happenings of my outing. Things like that almost never happen to me, but Im so blessed that it did! I loved smiling at people and taking the time to listen to them. Im sure they dont always have people that will stop and treat them like real people, so I was glad the Lord would allow me to be that person that could stop and listen and smile.
Now there were only an hour or two left before my mom would pick me up from Harrisburg to stop by my aunt Kristie’s house to congratulate her on her wedding and then stop by my brother’s calvacade for marching band. So I went upstairs to my room and became a master packer and fit all the millions of free gifts I got at the Allume conference into my carry on suitcase. Then went out to find my mommy in front of the hotel.
Talk about an interesting day! Things like that never happen to me, but I’m glad I got the chance to let people know that I cared about what they thought and gave them the time of day.
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