It Made A Difference 2

Here are just a few excerpts about how trips in college made a difference for people:

In the summer in 1990, I went to Haiti with a group led by our CCO staff person. Also on that trip was Lynette, my girlfriend at the time who is now my wife of 16 years. The trip served us in an unexpected way.
A small residential college is something of a "relationship incubator." That is, when we met and started dating there, things always happened in the warm fuzzy confines of the campus. We got to know each other well, but only in that context. To know how a girl experiences the stress of finals is, though interesting, not that useful in the rest of life. The mission trip was one thing that broke us out of that. We were with a group, in a foreign country doing tasks that we NEVER did in the college setting. We got to see one another in a new context that was challenging and revealing. If I am ever tempted to disrespect my wife, there is always the knowledge that she can lay brick better than most men.
On other fronts, the impact of the trips are hard to measure. I can remind myself daily what poverty really looks like. I can know that I don't know what suffering is. My job now is about helping others and treating them with dignity while I do so. All things I learned on those trips. Ken '93

I went on two mission trips with Messiah – they all made a difference!
Not that I was very material-driven to begin with, but these experiences made me even less so. I became appreciative of hot water, cold milk, and lettuce – and basically all of the luxuries that we in America have. I’ve encouraged others to LEAVE THE COUNTRY AND VISIT A 3RD WORLD COUNTRY. I think EVERYONE should.
Now that I have 3 kids under age 4, I won’t travel, but I do support folks who are going on missions trips. I believe in it so strongly that I can’t so no to someone raising funds so that they can attend a trip. Stephanie '99

I attended the Haiti trip in 1991 via Issachar’s Loft. The trip made a profound impact on my life and I still to this day remember some of the commitments I made to serve Lord. During that time by God’s grace and the faithfulness of many Godly ministers the Lord gave me an opportunity to help in starting a Classical Christian School in New Jersey. This school has over 50% minority representation and we never intentionally planned that but we are very grateful for the ethnic diversity in Christ represented at the academy. Ralph, '95

Its funny that I just received this email from you. I was just commenting the other day how thankful I am for running water and hot water. I often think about the challeges people face where I served in Honduras with no portable or hot water. I am often reminded of the simple things that we take for granted like taking a hot shower every day or drinking water out of a sink. Nora '99

Did it make a difference?

Alumni,
Did your service & mission experience change your life? Or not?
It's important for us to hear both! Please leave a comment!
Tell us who you are, how you served, and what God did.
Did God use your experience to:
-make you more grateful?
-humble you?
-make you a more committed follower of Jesus?
-forge long-term relationships?
-give you passion to do justly, love mercy and walk humbly with God?
-open your heart to service?
-help you discover the richness of other cultures and nations?
-instill generosity in giving to service and missions organization?
-make you less materialistic?
-call you to some kind of life-long service?
-give you new perspective on poverty?
-give you courage to reach out to neighbors and friends?

The only wrong answer is no answer, and its never too late!
Reflect on your trip NOW and God may still use it.

grace and peace,
Matt Hunter

ps- check out other posts to read about alums in mission, student testimonies and this years plans.

An Oasis in Belize (with IPod Worship)

Guillermo (Billy - top left) spent 10 days in Belize and really saw God move in incredible and unexpected ways.

"I think the coolest thing I learned in Belize is that God is interested in every single part of our lives. Pastor Ron Braaten (PR) and his wife Linda, run the Oasis Ministry full-time. Oasis really shows love in an incredibly holistic way that reflects the overwhelming love the Lord has for all His children.

Oasis has a mobile library ministry that allows children to borrow from a trailer full of books they regularly bring to local schools to encourage reading. They also find people to sponsor Belizean children's education. In Belize, there is no free public education. So families must pay for all levels of their children’s schooling. Most families can afford the relatively inexpensive primary school tuition, but the large majority cannot attend secondary school or pursue higher education because it simply costs too much for them.

Apart from Oasis, PR founded a church for the local Belizeans that provides a lot for the people's spiritual and social needs. The church is like a little community spread throughout the nearby towns. PR and his workers use two school buses to pick up the entire church body before every function, which was just remarkably cool the first time I saw it in action. God moved powerfully through their Monday night worship services, where there are no live musicians and the people literally sing their hearts out with recordings off an iPod! Despite this major difference in the set-up of their service, it was awesome to see the Spirit invade our space and help to renew and restore all of his broken children, both Belizean and American.

I really cannot say enough about how impactful this mission was to my life and my faith. I learned an incredible amount about myself and about God’s heart for all of humankind around the world.

Benefitting from the Doubt

"Doubt" is a a popular movie and play right now. It is also popular for contemporary theologians to praise doubt as a necessary component of faith. What IS the "benefit of the doubt"?
Have you ever been wrong about someone? Both my wife and one of my best friends have often
been plagued with others prejudices. It's not a racial thing. They really ARE just misunderstood.
The crux of the problem is that they are both good-looking people who happen to be introverts.
Therefore, they are judged as aloof and arrogant. People rarely give them the benefit of the doubt. They are certainly not the only ones victimized by prejudices, nor are they the most severely victimized. Being human, they "no doubt" (?) often prejudge others as well.

I vaguely remember a conversation I had with a Russian Orthodox Priest. He had two sage pieces of advice. First, and less relevantly spouses should not try to be accountability partners. Second, and more relevantly, he quoted an Orthodox Saint who had suggested that to truly forgive someone, the forgiver should try to come up with a humane excuse for why the offender behaved as they did. This is one way of giving the benefit of the doubt. It is assuming that there is some perfectly humane reason why someone behaves badly. At my church, we sometimes say, "Hurting people hurt people." A humorous essay on the male perspective offers this "rule" to women: "If we say something, and there are two ways you could take it, and one of them makes you mad, we meant the other way." That's a step in the right direction.

Taking self-doubt (and faith?) a bit further, we might become agnostic about the thing that leads to our judgement. This is to say, "I doubt that I know why this person is the way they are, but I take on faith that they are a person of immeasurable value and complexity. Certainly, there is a humane reason for their actions (however deplorable) and they are not innately worse than I." The benefit of the doubt does not suggest that we entrust ourselves to those that have hurt us, or even reduce guilt in many circumstances. It only asks that we don't assume the worst about them.
Dealing (as I do) in service, I sometimes have the opportunity to hear people trying to make sense of their service experiences. Since we often serve outside our own communities, we often find ourselves in contexts that we don't quite understand. Given our own experiences, Christian servants can get pulled into the American tendency of meritocracy that suggests that whatever needs are present in the life of any person or community, personal irresponsibility probably lies behind those needs. In this situation, the benefit of the doubt is to say, "I am not from here. I do not know the history of this community, or what it has been through. I do not know that they are any less responsible than I. I have a lot to learn." The old adage has it: "Do not judge a person until you've walked a mile in their shoes." Doubt should also be a call to learning. Even recognizing the permanent frailty of our knowledge does not suggest that we maintain cold ignorance! If you don't know about a person, get to know them better.

What about our relationships with God. Can they benefit from doubt? Indeed. C.S. Lewis and Fyodor Doestoyevsky have both written about scenarios in which God goes on trial. No doubt Job had the idea first. But doesn't faith demand that we give God the benefit of the doubt? I would suggest that if the God you claim doesn't deserve this benefit, then you should leave aside the worship of that "God" until you can imagine a God that does deserve it. That one is God.

Sufjan Stevens, writing "Vito's Ordination Song" in the vox Dei offers these lyrics:
"To what I did and said, rest in my arms, sleep in my bed. There's a design.
To what I did and said..."As incomprehensible as many apparent "acts of God" (or God's non- intervention in acts of incomprehensible tragedy) might be, if God is God, might the benefit of the doubt include these things?

For those of us who offer God the benefit of the doubt without reservation, and desire it for ourselves, it is time to offer it to those around us who are created in God's image.

Is this a Pollyanna ploy for naivete? I hope it is intentional wisdom for healthy living.
When can we move beyond doubt? When we know fully, even as we are fully known.

Service - Learning About Ourselves and Others

If I am not who you say I am, then you are not who you think you are - James Baldwin 1968

How do you know who you are? Probably in part because people told you things about yourself and the group of people that formed the "we" and "us" to whom you belong. In part, that identity was probably formed in contrasting relation to those who were not part of that group.

All experiential or contextual learning implies something "other" than the normal experience the classroom. In reality the classroom provides a context and experience but the creation of these "new" teaching approaches ("pedagogies") imply that something different can be done to expand learning. The idea is to create a context of difference; something that forces the learner to pay attention to different things. Often the goal is ultimately self-knowledge, a crucial part of development as a human being.

In adventure education, the "outdoors" or "wilderness" is a major part of the context. By encountering the created world more deeply, or alternately, by presenting "participants" with uniquely disorienting challenges and problems in an outdoor context, we teach them something about themselves individually and as a group of people. The isolation and unique subdivison of the groups as well as the unique problems that present themselves (or are presented) create a unique social environment (thanks Dave Tanis). We may learn about nature ("the environment") and survival skills, but for the most part, outdoor skills are for the educator. Minimal competence and experience is an advantage to the learning experience because the learning relies on UNfamiliarity. If a "participant" is familiar with a particular challenge, they are also familiar with how to overcome it and thus, their capacity to learn something "new" is diminished, though not eliminated. This reality (as well as a playful sadistic streak) is what drives the amazing creativity of outdoor educators.

What about service-learning? The context may be rural or urban, national or international. Since most student (in the college environment of Messiah at least) don't serve where they live any of these contexts may be sufficiently "other" to provoke new ideas. However, service-learning faces a unique problem in the way identity can form in service. "Service" always implies a "served" other. Rather than "participants" who are there to learn something by finding and pushing against their own limits, one is the designated "servant" and it is implied that there is a need out there that the servant can meet.

A dichotomy is set up:
On one side is the "servant" - competent, responsible, theoretically need-less.
On the other is the "served" - they are uniquely marked as possessing a need that they lack the capacity to meet themselves.

Thus, "servants" are prone to approach the "service" context looking for problems that need the application of their existing competencies. Things that are not a problem (community assets), or not a problem that we the servants can remedy right now (systemic inequity), may be overlooked, but these MAY be the exact things that would provoke LEARNING. Those of us involved in service learning are obviously intent on the needs of the "servant," many of which correspond to and complement the needs of the "served." The dissolution of the dichotomy I described above and a growing sense of reciprocity and role-swapping is the key to learning.
We might begin by assessing our own deficits and critiquing our assumptions with questions like this:
Does MY community need service? Why or why not? What needs do I and my community have? Why do I think THIS community "needs" service? What could I learn from the community I serve? What strengths does it possess?

Christians are called to be disciples of Jesus. A disciple IS first and foremost, a LEARNER. One cannot be a disciple without the humility to admit that one has needs, even if they are only a deep-set and inarticulate sense of deficit in one's soul. Maybe we need to learn something about ourselves to figure out what that deficit is, and maybe we can't do it alone. God may intend to teach us these lessons through other "needy" people.
The irony of the whole arrangement of being a disciple is contained in the parable of the sheep and the goats in Matthew 25. Jesus calls his disciples to serve the most "needy" and he tells them that when they serve the "least of these," they will be serving Him. Jesus also communicates that this is something we "need" to do to experience the salvation of the kingdom of God. So when we serve, we must be mindful that there in the one we serve is the one to whom we attach ourselves as LEARNERS. We need to become the disciples of the "least" of these, in order to understand who we really are.

Next: the benefit of the doubt

Loving God in Uganda

(Mary Kate traveled to Uganda with Global Expeditions)
God worked in so many ways this summer during my time in Uganda (Kampala and Gulu). We partnered with the local church called Makerere Community Church. This church amazed me! The services were 5 ½ hours long, and so on fire for God. The Pastor and various members went with us everywhere we went and became not only our translators but our good friends. Because of the AIDs epidemic in Uganda, one of the ways Makerere Community Church is trying to fight HIV, is through teaching about purity and abstinence. The majority of our ministry revolved around a God-centered abstinence program called “True Love Waits”. Before we left for Uganda, we learned and practiced the program in Texas during a few days of intense training. In Kampala and in Gulu, we presented the program at many secondary schools. I was amazed at how easily some of the girls opened up. They asked all sorts of questions about relationships, anger management, parents, friends, faith and so many other topics. There were times when I had no idea how to answer, but God gave me words of encouragement that these girls appreciated.

At one school we presented the program and our leader shared the Gospel. The girl who was sitting next to me said that she wanted to accept Christ. After the presentation, I was able to talk to her and pray with her. She is 17 years old and like many people in Gulu, she was affected by the war in Uganda. She had friends who were abducted by the LRA (Lord’s Resistance Army). I was able to give her a Bible and welcome her into the Family of God. She is now my sister in Christ and the smile that lit up her face when I told her that was priceless!! I gave her my email address and hopefully I’ll be able to hear from her again sometime soon.

We also went to an IDP (Internally Displaced Persons) camp in Gulu. It is a camp for war refugees. While some people were starting to return to their home village, many people were still in this camp. There were many elderly people. Some of the members of my team and I were able to help an elderly man clear his front yard of rocks and fill in a hole. It was a very unique experience, but very rewarding when the man told us, in his few words of English, that he loved God. Each day presented a new exciting challenge. It was awesome to see God at work!

Great Alumni

In this post I thought I would profile some great alumni that are making a difference in the service and mission world. Many Messiah alums are making a positive difference in their own ways, but these folks are carrying on the particular kind of work I do in this office beyond graduation.

Peter Greer - President of Hope International

Peter graduated with me from Messiah in 1997. After years of international development work in Cambodia, Rwanda and The Democratic Republic of Congo and an MPP from Harvard, he joined HOPE in 2004. HOPE is a Christian faith based non-profit dedicated to alleviating spiritual and physical suffering through microfinance.

Peter is also a co-author with Phil Smith of The Poor Will Be Glad:Joining the Revolution to Lift the World Out of Poverty, to be released in November by Zondervan. He's kind of like Bono in a dress shirt. And he might hate me for writing that.

Melissa Davis - President of Jesus Politik

Melissa graduated from Messiah in 2006. While here she led the International Justice Mission and Invisible Children chapters through the Agape Center. She also worked with several NGOs in Thailand and led stateside service trips for her fellow students through the Agape Center.
"JESUSpolitik works with local missionaries overseas in areas where there is a lot of need, and often, not a lot of resources. We connect them to larger human rights and missions groups that want to reach the same people in the same area and we get the word out about these collaborated projects in America."

Greg and Bethany Glidden - Priority One Ministries

Greg and Bethany graduated from Messiah in Before joining the P1 team, they taught English in China for three years, earned their Master's Degrees in Missions and Intercultural Studies, and taught in a public school.
"Priority 1 Ministries is a Christ-focused, Bible-based, interdenominational short-term missions ministry providing cross-cultural mission trips for Christian youth through adults who have a sincere desire to assist with the greatest "search and rescue" plan in history."

Come back next month to see 3 more service and mission alumni featured!

Mucca Pazza - The Unlikeliest Missionaries

The 15 member punk-rock marching band entered the Student Union in mismatched uniforms with individual loudspeakers strapped to their hats. They marched in front of the stage and then turned to face the audience; playing loudly. In a single broad line, they advanced toward the 70 or so students in attendance, who appeared to not know what to make of this spectacle. When they got to the edge of the "crowd" they didn't stop. They marched. Stepping up onto tables or anything that was in front of them and stomping their way into the audience while tactfully avoiding fingers and toes. Everyone laughed. The performer/audience barrier had been breached.
Being on the "sending" end of the missions experience I am deeply aware that we need missionaries as badly as the people and countries we are sending teams to. Mother Theresa used to speak of the spiritual poverty of the West. Sometimes I see spiritual poverty here at Messiah too. It manifests itself in insecurity and complacency among other things.

Mucca Pazza played at one of Messiah's Wednesday Night "B-Sides" concerts that showcase artists that haven't quite "made it." Its not hard to see why on one level. MP could have a unique appeal. I was at the Union talking with representatives from Food for the Hungry when they marched in. I only stayed for 10-15 minutes, but I was delighted with what I saw and heard. Here's what happened...

Mucca Pazza continued to play (loudly) and to intermittently march around the Union. They were always making music together, but sometimes they were literally together and sometimes members of the band would take off through the crowd on solo missions. One fellow was the "cheer-leader." He wasn't cross-dressing. He just had pom-poms. This guy would get in people's faces, shake his pom-poms, dance, and grin like a maniac. At one point he was standing on top of a wall, by himself, 15 feet up, shaking the pom poms like crazy (I heard about this later, I don't know how he got up there).

At first, 5-10 students moved to the front of the stage and sat down. Other students were texting and twittering away and the Union filled up. So did the area in front of the stage.
People were laughing and smiling.

NOW, you have to understand that at the few "B-Sides" I've been to (the concerts start at 10, so unless I'm on campus for a missions meeting... I'm out) the usual protocol seems to be 5 enthusiastic fans up next to the stage and everyone else hanging back. Their mouths are rigid horizontal lines. Their heads bob slightly in rhythm. It's like everyone is too cool to show that they are enjoying the music. Mucca Pazza blew that apart.

They were so fearless about what they were doing that students seemed to drop their own insecurities. By the end of the show (this is hearsay again) EVERYONE was on the floor in front of the stage, jumping up and down and dancing with enthusiasm. The whole spirit of the thing was positive, communal and free without being rebellious or hedonistic and Mucca Pazza set the tone for that. These crazy people were ROLE MODELS.

Christians need to be as fearless, uninhibited, joyful and encouraging as Mucca Pazza was that night. We need to break down the us-them barrier and involve people in the Christian life, even if they aren't "part of the band."

After they finished their second number, one of the band members got on the mike and said:
"Thank you Messiah College, for inviting us and having us here. We really like you. And thanks for being SO into us!"

I shouted back: "NO! Thank YOU!" and walked out of the building.

Come back any time Mucca Pazza, you were the unlikeliest missionaries, but I was blessed by your coming and by what I saw happen in the student body.

Missional Living Requires Connection

I believe that humans are called to live for others. I believe that connecting to God on a daily basis is part of the whole health of any human being. We are selfish creatures in my experience. Okay, fine. I'm a selfish creature. I need to connect to God to awaken me to the fact that I am not the center of the universe.
Notice how limp Adam's hand is in comparison to God's in Michelangelo's famous painting of the creation of Adam? In the Christian scriptures there is a sense that God is the constant animator of life. Paul, quoting a Greek philosopher, states that in God "we live and move and have our being." But in this, we are relatively passive.

My desire is to try to be a more equal partner with God in God's animation of my life and the working out of God's desires for the world. By "partner," I mean that I would not be working against (passively OR actively) God's purposes, but for them. By "more equal" I mean that maybe instead of a 1,000,000/1 ratio of God's work to my partnership, maybe we could reach a 1,000,000/2 ratio (which would double my personal investment). But achieving this takes "mindfulness;" a conscious attention to God's presence and a discerning of what role I might play in God's will for a situation.

I think the reason that I don't make it a priority to connect to God some days is not a lack of time. Time is there (see below). I think it is because I don't always believe that it will matter, or make a difference for me. This means that I am seeing the connection to God as a self-serving device for my gratification or assistance, rather than the possible benefit that might be passed on to those around me if I am more connected to God. Sometimes, I neglect this connection because I am experiencing what Buddhists have called "monkey-mind." I may WANT to connect to God, but my brain won't stop grabbing at things (that I "need" to do, want to do, or am worried about).

Interestingly, the bathroom is the primary place I go to make a brief connection with God every day. It is really the only place where my children MIGHT respect my privacy and need for quiet. It also has a fan, which creates great white noise.

The following "advice" could make me sound like a "real spiritual person" but I assure you...
Well, lets put it this way... I didn't really do any of the following this morning, and when Beth got up, she looked at me and asked: "Are you mad about something?" One nice thing about being alive is that there is always another day to get some small thing right - like in Groundhog Day.

Before kids, I had a pretty rigorous "spiritual" regimen, that sometimes resulted in my falling asleep face-down on my Bible. These days, my connection with God usually amounts to 4 things.
In the morning:
1. Try to be aware of God's presence. This often involves willing myself to belief that God is truly everywhere, no less in my bathroom than in my favorite church or on my favorite hiking trail. It involves rejecting an impulse to look upward for God or to direct my thoughts in some direction.

2. Submit my day. I say something like: "God, take my life today to use as you will. Free me from bondage to self so that my life will show others your love, your power, and your way of life.
Give me wisdom and insight to know you, sense your presence and do your will."

3. Read something thoughtful and think about it. For me this means scripture or something related to scripture.

At night:
4. Thank God for the day and recite either the 23rd Psalm, the Lord's Prayer or something else I have committed to memory, until I fall asleep.

You could also build other connection points into your day. I'm hoping to try a few of these myself:
1. Make it a habit of connecting to God as you go in or out your door. Religious Jews often keep a text of scripture in a small box or mezuzah, that they touch upon entering or leaving. You could buy one or create your own practice. Think to yourself "Let's go!" as a way of reminding yourself that you aren't leaving God at home. Your family members or mates might also appreciate it if you reminded yourself upon arriving at home, that God is still with you all.
Put meaningful statements on your dashboard, refrigerator or bathroom mirror.
Look for things for which to be grateful. The world would be a better place if we recognized that for many of us, it IS a better place than all our complaining would seem to indicate.

2. While you're waiting for anything. Why not just offer up your anxiety or impatience? Some people like the serenity prayer: "God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference."

3. With friends (and maybe enemies). C.S. Lewis, keeping in mind the idea of being created in the image of God, said, "You will never meet a mere mortal." I certainly experience God through other people, whether they know it or not. When you are with other people, briefly invite God to be present also. God IS present. Inviting God is just a way of reminding us and setting our mind to the "welcoming" position.

4. Taking a breather. Is it possible that the frenetic pace we keep is less productive than a pace that allows us to step back, breathe and say a quick prayer before we continue?

5. Twitter God. Just whatever you might feel like saying. God can handle it. Your friends might not "get it" but who cares? It might be the most interesting twitter all day. If you don't Twitter (I don't) just write whatever you might want to say to God in reply to the most annoying spam email of the day. The point isn't to publicize, and certainly God knows what's going on with us. The point is to be mindful of God by actively directing our thoughts to God at various points in the day.
6. On the drive home. What else are you doing? Minimally, you could say thank you for the music you are enjoying or ask for God's mercy and grace to enter whatever situation you are hearing about on the news.

I hope some of this inspires you to set the bar LOW. You don't need to start some rigorous devotional schedule. Maybe someday you'll want to (and so will I), but it is said that God says:
"When a child of mine comes to me walking, I am already running."

and:
"The Lord knows how we are formed, he remembers that we are dust."

Give yourself, your loved ones and the world a gift today by trying to make some sort of connection to God.

This year's plans...

I'm reminded that the Bible encourages planning while DIScouraging any deep attachment to plans that we make. Who knows what our days hold, much less our months and years?

That said, here are the plans for things this year (so far):

International Trips:

Spring Break -
10th annual youth outreach trip to Lurgan in Northern Ireland.
3rd annual service-learning trip to El Salvador with Siglo XXIII.
1st fair-trade industry service learning trip to Peru with Bridge Builders.

Summer -
4th annual trip to Nicaragua with Food for the Hungry
3rd annual trip to the Dominican Republic with Students International
1st trip to visit Rodeo, Bolivia (our Food for the Hungry community partner)

Fall -
October Break Trips (Oct. 22-25):
Urban Impact - New York
Urban Promise - Camden
Christian Endeavor - WV
Youth Development - Virginia
Joshua Farm - Harrisburg

Large Events:
Mission Awareness Week (Nov. 2-6)
Over 30 representatives from Christian relief and development and church planting organizations will be on campus including Richard Stearns, President of World Vision.

Human Rights Awareness Week (Nov. 30 - Dec. 4)
HRA works to expand campus awareness and advocacy around issues related to human trafficking, health and survival and various injustices around the globe and at home.
World AIDS Day is December 1.

We appreciate your prayers for all of our plans!

Open Arms, Open Lives

The DR was an amazing experience-- better than I ever expected. Down there, I really feel like I saw a picture of what it is like to LOVE, to live like a Christian through actions and not simply words. Because I knew hardly any Spanish, I was forced to reach out to the children without using a single word. I'm still amazed by how God moved through me AND even more so, through the children. Never did I feel so loved, so unique and special. The children I worked with opened their lives to all of us and invited us to share in their community. In the DR, I worked at a site teaching volleyball to little girls. Some of the Spanish words I used numerous times a day were "Corre" (Run!) and "Ven" (Come!). On Sunday, we went to a church service in a nearby village. Naturally, the service was entirely in Spanish so I did not understand it. But the Pastor, quoting Jesus, did say two words: Corre and Ven. The pastor was explaining that Jesus calls us to RUN to Him, that He is waiting with arms open wide to envelope us in His love. The trip really changed my life. I thoroughly enjoyed the Dominican culture, people and atmosphere. Because of this trip, I THINK God is calling me to mission work--- in the DR, we had this AMAZING foot washing service. Each song played in the background as we watched our partner's feet spoke of surrendering COMPLETELY and letting go to Christ so He can work through you.
- Betsy

Sensing God's Presence in Nicaragua

This is the report of one of our team leaders, who traveled to Nicaragua with Food for the Hungry:

My trip to Nicaragua was very beneficial. This was my first time out of the U.S. so I was able to get a feel for how one small part of the rest of the world is living in comparison to myself. I really felt that I am not thankful enough for the many many blessings that I have.

It was very evident that God is at work in Nicaragua.

I found that what the people lacked in physical possessions were often compensated for in their spiritual "possessions." The importance of relationships and genuine care for your neighbors stuck out to me. We visited a pottery company and the owner told us how the economy is hurting and his company is slow, but he still has some work while many of his neighbors are without. He said that he had a machine to work the clay and that machine could do the work in a matter of hours, but instead of using it, he chose to hire help, even though it took much longer. This way he was giving some community members work. This just really struck me as something that we in the U.S. do not do or usually see happening.

There is still a lot of work that can and needs to be done in Nicaragua. I believe that FH is doing a very good job working with communities to improve their lives. I feel that working in a place like this is a very tangible way of seeing God's immense love for his people. -Andrew