October Newsletter

Dear Friends,

Pray for me. If you're in the Santa Cruz area I invite you to come to any of the three services at Vintage Faith and First Pres on Sunday. The leadership of the churches have offered to pray for me and would love to see you there. I will also be prayed for Monday night at Genesis Upperoom Church in Saratoga. If you're available for any of these services it would be a blessing to see you there and have your prayerful support.

By this time next week, Lord willing I will have my footprints marking the African soil once more. There is so much I have to do between now and my departure. For those of you that have never visited me at my office, I love post-its'. I have mountains of post-its' wherever I am. This morning I woke up to a post-it attached to my lamp. It simply read. NEWSLETTER. I've spent the majority of my morning drafting words that will appear before your eyes in the next couple of paragraphs and I began to pray and seek God for what I should write. So here we go.

This morning I wake up thankful to Christ Jesus for his mercy and patience. I don't know the deep answers to Christianity. I wish I did.But I doubt that I will know everything. No one does. But the new discoveries of my faith are incredible. I spent two days with my church staff on a fantastic retreat where we laughed, joked, and shared our experience of Christ. And I'm learning so much about Christianity. I am learning about the beginning, the middle, and the currently how most of us view things. But when we get into the meat of our experience of faith and relationship with the living creator there is so much grey in our oral expressions. I think it turns grey because God is in the middle of everything, and yet invisibly visible. Splendid.

In our conversations this week I've strategically seen how God put all of this together. When I type all of this, I mean, my family, church, loved ones, co-workers, friends, clients, and strangers together. When you sit around sofas and have people who have experience and knowledge of Christ, the supernatural takes place. He begins to provide. He begins to heal. He begins to coat us with a salve of forgiveness and creates room to grow. It's Him who does it. Always Him. So splendid, so very splendid.

Part of the homework that CRWRC has given me is to re-think. That isn't an easy A type of thing to do. I've read several perspectives about poverty and how it affects an individual, family unit, community, nation, or even a continent. I've sat across from a man whose office has seen 20,000+ people served yearly with questions/needs/fears/illness related to HIV/AIDS or any other sexually transmitted diseases. I had no clue what was going on in Santa Cruz County. And what was even taking place within my own Latino community. When I sat across from him and explained that I was a single woman attending a Christ based church and I wanted to learn, and potentially see how I can help, I wasn't refused. I was welcomed. Something opened at that precise moment too. I will blog more about my thoughts and responses to that particular time soon.

As I write this I keep thinking about what will take place in the next couple of days to prepare for my journey. I have to check on my camera gear, clothes, bug spray, etc. But most importantly I've been setting time apart to pray. That has been the biggest preparation to this trip is to just get some time alone to pray.

To envision Africa and pray for it.

And to pray for it.

And to pray for it.

Thank you for joining me