The packing is almost complete. The clothes have been rolled and safely tucked into my suitcase. My extra bag has 3 months worth of anything I think I may need. There is a pile on the floor of my photo gear. I have a few extras to pack too, but I will wait for the day of my departure.
I have been taking about Togo and Mercy Ships for so long, that I am so excited that it is actually happening. In just a few days I will be on a plane for Africa via Paris, and Lord willing by this time next week I will be in Africa. Togo. I will reside in Togo for the next three months. Wow.
My hope was to have finished packing before the game, but unfortunately, it didn’t happen. I started to pack at 11:30pm and finished at 1am. That’s not bad! Well technically, I’m not finished yet. But I will be a bit more done tomorrow, and totally finished by noon on Tuesday.
Tuesday I’ll be off to SFO!
The Saints won tonight. It was their first time in the Superbowl, and they
won! Yahoo. I kept thinking New Orleans could use some good news this year. They have gone through a lot, and triumphed in so many ways throughout these last few years. The superbowl trophy is just the cherry on top. I haven’t had the opportunity to make New Orleans my home town yet, but I am looking forward to that day. I can brag that I saw the Saints defeat the Colts in 2010. Yeah baby! Who Dat!
As I was packing I decided to watch Titanic (only thing on TV). I love Kate’s costumes in this movie. But began to wonder…I’m about to live on a ship…is this a sign? Ugh, Lord, I hope not!
Monday, February 08, 2010
Packing/Saints/Titanic
Saturday, February 06, 2010
what do you pack?
An old friend once pointed out that there is a specific ritual when it comes to packing from travel that I have adopted. It’s a routine that can take 3 days or can take 30 minutes depending on the adventure that is at hand. Either way, I can’t say no to a new adventure, and am quick to pack, and plan.
This adventure to Togo is a bit of a different one. For one, I have never been out of the country longer than a couple of months. Secondly, I have also never lived on a ship. Third, what do you pack for 100 degree weather and super humidity, when it’s only 47 in Milpitas?
So I have adapted this ritual and have made the following routine. I am sure there are things that I will forget to bring, and there are things that I will pack that will never come out of my suitcase. It happens for every trip. When I was a child I would pack a whole suitcase of shoes, fourteen to be exact. My dad still brings this up to this day. “Got your fourteen shoes packed for a thirteen day vacation again?” And even now I am wondering if five pairs of shoes are too many for Togo.
There are two travel packing heroes in my life. When it’s time to edit my packing options there are two questions that I ask myself. The first is “What does Amanpour put in her bag?” I also think about Carrie, and how she managed to fit ten outfits and a blow dryer in an overnight bag. I was in shock. I took careful mental notes, and knew that Carrie’s packing techniques would come in handy. So after I wonder what Amanpour would pack, I begin to think…’how did Carrie get all that stuff in that little bag?’
My routine du jour is as follows. Friday, get last minute items (black pants, meds, film), and do laundry tonight. Last load is currently washing. Saturday lay out a suitcase? Two suitcases? Or one suitcase and overnight? Ugh! This is where I am stuck. Sunday, I shall pack; hopefully before I watch the Saints win!
This morning I thought, how would God pack, and what did the heroes of the Bible pack? And I remembered Noah and the two by two packing he was instructed to do. And then I thought about how Jesus sent out the disciples two by two, and thought this is a good number, and idea. So I will take 2 buttoned up shirts, two t-shirts, two dresses, two dress pants, two jeans, two shorts, two work out outfits, two bricks of 220vc 400, two bricks of 220 delta100, two…, two…, two… I think this will be a good rule of thumb for packing. What do you think?
We shall see tomorrow, after the laundry has been washed and put away, all shoes neatly placed in the closet, all jewelry tucked in its box, socks folded neatly, room cleaned (vacuumed). Soon after all these other to dos are accomplished, the packing will then commence.
Friday, February 05, 2010
Some of you set sail in big ships...
Psalms 107
23-32 Some of you set sail in big ships;
you put to sea to do business in faraway ports.
Out at sea you saw God in action,
saw his breathtaking ways with the ocean:
With a word he called up the wind—
an ocean storm, towering waves!
You shot high in the sky, then the bottom dropped out;
your hearts were stuck in your throats.
You were spun like a top, you reeled like a drunk,
you didn't know which end was up.
Then you called out to God in your desperate condition;
he got you out in the nick of time.
He quieted the wind down to a whisper,
put a muzzle on all the big waves.
And you were so glad when the storm died down,
and he led you safely back to harbor.
So thank God for his marvelous love,
for his miracle mercy to the children he loves.
Lift high your praises when the people assemble,
shout Hallelujah when the elders meet!
-The Message
Thursday, February 04, 2010
her story
The visions and the dreams have begun. I thought they were results from the doxycycline (malaria meds), but it’s not. About a week ago the Lord told me to anoint my head and my eyes that I would know that He’s the Lord of my dream hours and sleep. That no man made drug would alter the trust I have had with the Lord in the gift of visions and dreams. "I will pour out my Spirit on every kind of people: Your sons will prophesy, also your daughters. Your old men will dream, your young men will see visions. I'll even pour out my Spirit on the servants, men and women both. - Joel 2:28 (The Message)
What I am about to share with you is a dream that I just woke up from. The dreams are starting now. The travailing for Africa has increased. My intercessory dreams have begun.
I was in waiting to have dinner in a village. It looked the the wharf in San Francisco, but instead the village was made up of a bunch of aluminum huts. There were people from every nation and tribe present. There was such a waiting list that people were gathering around the parking lot of a town square. Some were waiting to see a dentist and others were waiting to have a bite to eat. Others were there wanting to see a lawyer about land rights, others were waiting for friend that they had not seen in a very long time.
My mom and I were waiting to have dinner and for our name to be called. When all of a sudden we realized that they entire village had left. They all had been called to the appointments, and they all had been asked to their designated regions. My mom quickly ran to the front desk to make sure we still had a spot for dinner.
An Asian woman approaches me, grabs my hand, and tells me, I know where your mom is, she wanted me to call you. She pulls me through stair wells, homes, ocean’s edge, and through a dirt alley, and I could hear the wailing. I enter a small commune of mud homes that have square holes for windows, but there are no glass coverings, and there are no wood shudders.
There are no floors; it’s only all too familiar red clay dirt. There are no doors just a small man made lip of mud to announce a threshold. I am not sure where I am, or where my mother is located, and the Asian woman holding my hand turns to me and tells me she is suffering too. That she didn’t have time to cut the umbilical cord and it rotted her insides. And she shows me her belly and it is bloated and hard as a rock, and she winces with just the tap of my hand. And then points into one of the rooms, and I begin to walk towards it.
As I walk into the first threshold, I notice that there are people all around me walking in and out. Medics/nurses on an onsite trauma unit. My mother runs out of a threshold and says,
“Do you really want this?...Are you sure you want to go in there?...It’s bad! Really bad!...My God! My God!”
She says this as she’s trying to catch her breath and when I walk over towards her, I can see through the threshold of one home that there are seven beds and nine African women wailing in pain. The smell coming from the mud hut is so overwhelming that I want to throw up, and other nurses and medics are throwing up while they are assisting the patients. There is a testimony of bodily fluids that show evidence of many day’s worth of pain and suffering in these rooms. I am convinced by what my eyes have seen that Death truly was present. I walk back out of the room to find my mother in shock, still standing just outside the threshold in the hall. I give her my purse and my bomber jacket, and say, ‘pray mom, pray.’
And I walked back in. When I walked in, I notice that the women are covered in some type of disease that is eating away at their bodies. It wasn’t leprosy, but a water born disease, uncommon to other regions. One woman is naked and her breasts have been eaten by a termite like disease. She didn’t have a nipple on one breast to feed her child, and the other nipple was barely attached to the rest of her to even be able to feed her child. One nurse had completely embraced a soon to be dead woman, and the patients’ skin was so dry, her body emaciated, soared, that she could only shake. Someone swung by me with an IV, and was trying to give her fluids but the fluids ran out like a river between her legs. She could not hold anything in her system. A local woman was on her knees next to me praying. She too was ill, and knew what symptoms were coming to torment her soon. Right next to her was a heavy set African woman. She was fully dressed with a pair of cotton summer pants on, and a loose cotton pull over top. It has been soiled from her tears, and the red clay dirt. She was sitting on the dirt, crying.
She told me,
“Sister, they gave me the title, but they didn’t give me any help. What am I suppose to do? Pray? I have been praying every day, every minute, every every every…”
She begins to cry.
“Never in my life have I won an award, or a certificate, I never have accomplished a thing in my life, and now in my resume shall I claim, director of a death village?”
She goes on to weep some more. I go to her and want to hug her and pray for her and she rejects me.
“No, no, no Sister, it’s of no use. These women will die today. The widows will die today!”
I look around the mud huts and realize that they are actually four homes that belonged to a local village and had been given to the woman crying on the floor to look after the widows and their children. The four homes were used as a small income generating business (seamstress), school, and living quarters for the widows left vulnerable to the deaths of their mates. But a disease came upon the village and they were all quickly dying. The woman sitting on the floor were giving up, and didn’t know what to do but die.
I stood in the center of the room, looked around, lifted up my hands, and began to just pray in tongues, cry, mourn, and weep alongside the women. Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn. -Romans 12:15 (NIV) The medics began to pray too. I told the woman on the floor to try, try, try, to sing to her Creator. Sing Him a song of sorrow, and sing! Soon more medical attention arrived, and more IV’s.
I woke up from the dream at 5:50 this morning. I sat in the dark for a moment, and I could hear the whisper of the Holy Spirit tell me.
`“The funding stopped”
He got my attention.
“People stopped giving money. There are places all over the world that promised to support the vulnerable widows and children, but because of this economic fear put into the minds of my people, they stopped giving. That woman sitting on the floor is a Director of a woman’s village, and has been left to fend for herself. There is no one else that was going to help her, and she knew that these women were soon going to die. The medicine had run out, and the food had run out, and the diseases never stopped. This is happening all over the world. Because there has been a pause in care for the very vulnerable and forgotten of this world.”
I spent the next hour crying and praying in my room. I will never ever forget this dream.
Never ever forget.
Daniel 1:17-As for these four youths, God gave them knowledge and skill in all learning and wisdom, and Daniel had understanding in all [kinds of] visions and dreams. (The message)
Monday, February 01, 2010
8 days - Mama the cure to empacho
Maybe I’ll always have an old school missionary heart. For when I start to think of suffering children, I want to help and do all that I can. When I was a kid, my grandmother and I would watch the Feed the Children or St. Jude hospital commercials. I would just start to uncontrollably cry. I would bring the phone over to my grandmother and make her donate. I would run for my piggy bank and ask her to break it, so we could send them money. And yet even today in our “modern’ world there are babies that are suffering. The commercials worked but a quarter of a century later, those commercials still air on TV. Babies are still dying. Babies still suffer. Parents still spend restless nights worried over their children. Children are orphaned and left vulnerable because the available preventable medication isn’t made available to the third world nations. This is happening daily, everywhere, in Haiti, in Togo, in Indonesia, and even in the US.
I keep thinking what baby is currently suffering tonight, that will soon be touched by the hands of the volunteers on Mercy Ship? What child out there tonight, will soon receive a miraculous surgery that will transform them wholistically for the rest of their lives?
Tonight, I have been praying for open channels of communication between all the medical fields all over the world. For the scientists and doctors sitting over their microscope, that Divine inspiration would come over them and guide their mind, hand, heart, and eye to that right experiment for the right solution, and a step forward to a cure. For the pharmaceutical companies to be a participating healing agent and not to disrupt life. For Christ’s ever working miraculous power to bring a cure to these illnesses today!
I look forward to hearing the media sharing the new discoveries of alleviation from pain, sickness, and suffering. I look forward to hearing the media share stories of how pharmaceutical supply companies united and create instruments that would easily aid the third world nations. I look forward to the future awards given to the scientists, researchers, and doctors that found those long awaited breakthroughs, and for school systems to tell students that they really will be the next life changers of the world, and for the kids to walk out at 3:20pm when the bell rings, and believe that this is truth.
And I see blog posts that the Africa Mercy is on its way to Togo even now. The crew has settled in, the cargo has been loaded, and I will soon meet them on Togo’s shore. Wowie! In just 8 or so days, I will have the privilege of arriving in Togo and residing amongst a crew that represents 44 nations, that represent Him, that represent a unified heart of compassion, and will join the past, present, future history of the nation of Togo.
Sunday, January 31, 2010
9 days
This trip has been a definite faith walk, and even if I don’t make it on the gangway in Togo, I am so thankful for the experience of attempting such a trip. I know I have mentioned it before, but I read the stories of so many volunteers on the ship and the tears just start to flow.
When all the doubts and insecurities would arise, I did not want to give up. Opportunities such as the one I’m about to embark on, have only come up once in my whole life. I did not want to give it up, or wait for another one to come. My only prayer that I could utter at times is a simple sentence.
‘I know my future is on that boat.’ And that’s all I could whisper to God.
As of today, 9 days before my departure the trip is still a go! I have sat over my post-its and my opened suitcase and have made all the final decisions. I have received every immunization known to man. I found incredible discounts on items that I needed for the trip, to the point where they were practically free. God has even warmed up my arms to hold babies again. I think the last babies I held were my neighbors’ daughters (lil sisters) who are now in college. Joel, a good friend of mine, has offered to take on the role of Office Manager at Westminster while I am away. He and his wife gave birth to such a cute little girl a few months ago, and she comes into the Westminster office with her daddy. While Joel is learning the every dayness of Westminster I get to hold Melody. The good thing is that she doesn’t cry in my arms and I think she kind of likes for me to hold her too. And even in a detail as minor (grand) such as this, I think of the babies that the nurses get to hold on the ship, and I’m looking forward to helping out too. Baby holding time! YES!
Thursday, January 28, 2010
Just Bought My Ticket to Africa
just signed the credit card release, and should have a confirmation soon! I'm on my way to Africa!
Who wants to do the Turkish dance of joy with me?
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
Advice from Photojournalists
There are tons of ways to find information about some of our favorite documentary photographers. Most have a website and some other cyber social network too. We can see where they just were and what images they have taken, and the overall feeling of what they experienced is captivated with that lil Nikon. So Amazing!
I receive a publication from Christians in photojournalism, and they do a wonderful job of sharing stories of many photojournalist are currently going through. Careers that are involved in traditional forms of media news have been hit hard. Many have lost their jobs, which has forced them to look for work in other areas, or truly think outside the box and create new forms of communication.
The last newsletter from winter 2009 shared a particular story that impressed me, and arrived at an opportune time. If I wasn’t planning on the Togo trip perhaps it would have gone right over my head, but I devoured every word on this one. Ron Londen conducted an interview with Barry Guiterrez a former photojournalist for the rocky mountain news. The story is an excellent one that shares the often non-glamours side of photography. Ron shares the story of a photojournalist that struggled with a year of both a personal and career loss, and toward the end of the story, Ron quotes barry stating the following.
“God is my photo editor,” he says. “He’s the one I’m looking to for my next assignment.”
Isn’t that the case? I have held many jobs and have worn a variety of hats. In the midst of all the jobs, I always thought God is so good. He’s better able to handle any of these jobs, and I need to trust him as my manager, editor, boss, and professor. He knows what He’s doing, and will supply the gig I need. Not only will He supply the gig, but He will provide a way for me to have the right tools (education/equipment/creativity) for the gig too.
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
I worry...
I made a commitment to myself to write every night. I did this when I was in Kenya and it helped me process the everyday much easier. However, I realize that when I’m more of an extrovert I tend to write less and talk more. I guess I need to just process either way. Please forgive my lack of updates, but I have been subject to my mental state of post-it madness.
I confess to you dear friends I am worried. The what ifs are swarming around me like giant comic book bubbles over my heard. Just picture me with a gigantic questioning bubble over my head with a giant question mark. Yep, that’s me right now. I typically try to have all the answers and feel a great relief when I have them, but I honestly don’t know a whole lot of what’s about to take place.
Perhaps I should just begin to write out what some of the concerns are and maybe that will begin to make me feel better. So let’s give it a try, ready?
Fear no.1: Going through customs ALONE
I realized the other day that I have never flown out of the country by myself. I love to fly. I love everything about airports. I even love packing and waking up at an ungodly hour to stand in line with the crowds.
But, I also have this incredible problem with time and events. I tend to always show up a week, or a day earlier than before. So much so that whenever there is an event my friends write it on their calendars to remind me of the event and to make sure I didn’t show up on the wrong day. It happens a lot. All my good friends have really good stories to attest to this.
So I’m worried that I’ll get my flights/time zones confused and missed a flight. Kristin, was good about keeping time in Kenya/Uganda and I was so thankful for her. But I’m sure I can manage this time.
My biggest fear of the whole thing is going through customs. I hear horrible stories of how people are retained and questioned for a number of things and some are permitted through the country, others get sent back to their home, and others are NEVER EVER to be seen again. UGH! Ugh! Ugh! (Charlie brown style). If something were to happen to me, there wouldn’t be a witness as to where the custom officials took me. The poor folks from Mercy Ships will be standing at arrivals wondering where the heck is Liz cantu, and I could potentially be stuck in customs.
Why am I freaking out you ask? 1. Because of all the Spy movies I watch. 2. Because I travel with lots of electronics, 3. And because I have dry eyes, I will be traveling with tons of small liquid bottles filled with saline and serum. Those are just a few reasons to name!
Fear no.2:
I keep going over and over and over my checklist. I’m cutting corners of what is not necessary since I am still $1100 dollars short of my projected missions’ goal of $6000. However it’s been a miracle acquiring 5/6ths of the money in just short of a notice, and I’m so thankful for the friends I have that share the similar vision. But none the less (at times), I tend to worry. I made a simple list that averaged $6000, and not making that goal cuts some things out that I hope I don’t need.
Naturally anyone would tell me that my glass is more than half full, and to trust in God that it will all work out. So I’m trying!
Fear 3:
That fear 1 and Fear 2 have robbed me of my focus. In the midst of all of it, I am haunted and blessed by the before and after surgery images. And I’m humbled that I have been picked to have a small porthole opportunity to participate in someone else’s miracle. Realizing that an opportunity such as this is my miracle.
While I’m test packing and scratching/adding to my post-it list, something inside of me remembers the ship, the crew, the medical team, the patients that have already heard of our arrival, the partners that are praying for us all over the world, and I repent for the worry. And ask the triune God to keep me accountable to Him, to be mindful of this mission, and to share compassion to His creation.To not let fear 1, 2, or 3 take over me!
