Tuesday, July 29, 2008

Like Seeds Sown

Look we made the front page of the GBGM Website !!!

So I am now officially a GBGM United Methodist Missionary. Kinda crazy to think that, but hey its gonna be an adventure!

Here is an excerpt from my journal:

Over 3 weeks ago, I came to NYC as a recent college graduate, bored from a summer of nothing much, unsure of what to expect, having answered the call but not sure what that entailed. Now I'm sitting here 3 weeks later in the park looking over the Hudson River, and my emotions have got the best of me...so I have just begun to cry & reflect.

Yesterday all 8 of my fellow US's got on a plane an left NYC to head home. I was supposed to join them, but due to airlines really not liking me I got stuck in NYC for another night. All i really wanted yesterday wa to go home and recuperate a little before beginning the preperation for the big move on Aug. 14th. Yet for some reason I must stay for an additional day.

It was lonely waking up to no roommate, no one to eat breakfast with, and no US-2 to make me laugh. Honestly, I cried int he shower. I think it was because all my emotions of yesterday had been building up and I just let loose. I wasn't at home, so there was nothing to distract me. Naturally I immediately tried to figure out something that would keep me busy all day so I wouldn't get upset or frustrated. I went to Barnes and Nobel, The Strand, the bank...but on my way to lunch I saw this gorgeous old church, Grace Church, and saw a sign that said, "come in, rest and pray". It appealed to me so I went in. The sanctuary was beautiful, it was similar to Duke Chapel only a little smaller. I found a pew and started to rest and pray, to reflect on the last 3 weeks. I think maybe God wanted me to take this time to be by myself, to reflect on what has happened and what is to come, and to rest because there is a long journey ahead of me.

A lot has happened in 3 weeks. So much to cry happy and sad tears about, so much to laugh about, so much to be challenged by, so much to frustrate me, so much joy. I wouldn't trade these last 3 weeks for anything. My ignorance was shattered and there is no turning back not.

I will stand up, I will be an advocate, an activist, a lover, a neighbor, a friend.

And there is no doubt in my mind that my fellow 8 US-2's will do the same. We are in this as a family. As you see in the picture above, these are my brothers and sisters, and we will fight for social justice and liberation for all of God's children.

"If you have come here to help me, you are wasting your time, but if you have come here because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together"

Wednesday, July 23, 2008

My US-2 Family:) Class of 2008-2010

From Left to Right: Top- Greg Little, Meg Koach, Elyse Christensen, Bonnie Monk, Fawn White
Bottom - Krista Dover, Carolyn Marcus, Brooke Newsome, Sarah Martindell

Well look at us, aren't we cute??? But in all seriousness, we are about to venture out into various parts of the country but we leave NYC not as complete individuals, but as a beloved community of US-2's. I will always cherish each one of these fellow US-2's! More to come soon...

Sunday, July 20, 2008

A new community

We have had the afternoon off today and I am very thankful because I think I needed sometime to process at least a little bit of what has been going on. I know I will only continue to need to process over the next 2 years, but hey I can start now. I said I would write more about my experience at Potter's Field but I was reading my fellow US-2's blog and she has written it well so you can read her words, that are similar to my feelings http://wist.wordpress.com/ (Thanks Sarah).

These experiences and sessions have changed all of us. We have now been shattered of our ignorance and there is no turning back. We must fight these social injustices and we will. I find so much comfort and hope in the fact that 9 of us are about to go out to various parts of the United States and fight social injustices together. Our eyes have been opened and with God's help we will begin to help to open others eyes. It will not be easy, we are all pretty humble about that, but we do have each other. We made our class covenant last night and I will not disclose any specifics but we will be holding each other accountable each month and pretty much daily on how we are each addressing those social injustices and how we are serving God. We have built a beautiful new community of believers that want to go out and serve God through fighting social injustices...how wonderful is that?

Yet over the last few days I have been reminded of the communities of my past, communities that I was apart of for years, or just months, communities that embraced me and that I learned so much from. Those communities I love dearly and have brought me to where I am now.

There is my family community, my parents, brother and sister, and grandparents that have taught me to love and how to love others. They have been there with me through so much and will always support me.

Then there is the community of friends from college, my loving support network of friends that were there to challenge me, allow me to act silly, let me cry, scream, dance, and love. I will cherish each moment that I spent with them.

I was lucky enough to also have a wonderful community of Reach Workcamp Friends that will always be a special family to me, where I met my good friends Megan and Breck and where I will always know I have a place as a "red shirt volunteer" in the summers.

Another community that means a great deal to me is my community from Philadelphia, my dear friend Trish and her hospitality to let me live with her last summer, and everyone from Cornerstone that welcomed me with open arms to serve alongside of them and teach me how to be a missionary.

All of those communities have led me towards this community of Young Adult Missionaries that I am apart of now. I urge everyone to reflect upon the communities of support you have had throughout the years, they are a big part of your journey. And it is, the journey that defines us...

Saturday, July 19, 2008

S'mores and Comedy


Subway rides

After a few tries we got a good one!

S'mores???Inside, is that legal?

Elyse and Silly Sarah
Krista, Meg and Elyse

Greg and I with our s'mores

Look at the cute roomies...

Last night we had the night off and we all went in various directions. Meg, Elyse, Krista, Sarah, Greg and I went to an organic restaurant for dinner, then s'mores at Cosi for dessert (it was a nice reminder of Philly) and then we went to the Broadway Comedy Club. It was a blast and hope you enjoyed the pictures!

Thursday, July 17, 2008

Meet the Family....and Potter's Field

Finally a Roommate picture!!! This is Elyse the best roommate and friend to have pillow talk!
This is Greg on the long subway ride being silly
Oh Sarah you make me laugh so much!!!
The Family being silly
Fun times with the US-2 Family....dinner...
Sarah and Meg riding the dolphin
The group...L to R...Fawn, Greg, Meg, Me, Elyse, Bonnie, Carolyn, Krista, Alycia, Sarah
Krista and I on the subway


Today we started the day off speaking with Willie Baptist, a former homeless man who is part of the Poor People's Initiative from Union Theological Seminary. He was a great source of knowledge and a wonderful person to hear first hand about the struggle the poor and homeless face. He was challenging the church to MOVE to change this issue and he told us that all great change comes from the church initiating it. I will be writing more on this later. But I wanted to share about an experience we had this afternoon that correlated to this mornings discussion. The picture above is of a sign we left at Potter's Field in NYC on Heart Island. The sign says, "We have come to remember our brothers and sisters who have gone on before us. We recognize them as sacred, now and forever more. Amen". We went to this place because it is where the homeless and "unbefriended" people of NYC are sent each year to be buried. There have been over 600,000 buried there and over 8,000 a year and 1500 of those are infants. We know we need to address this problem, so we began by holding a service for the people buried on Heart Island. You cannot actually get to the island unless you are part of the department of corrections or with this organization that is working to bring justice to this issue http://www.picturethehomeless.org/ . I urge you all to learn more about the injustices that involve the homeless in the US. I have so much to say about this but I need some time to process.

Wednesday, July 16, 2008

I needed to speak up....


Hand in Hand, we the people of Park Slope United Methodist Church - black and white, straight and gay, old and young, rich and poor - unite as a loving community in covenant with God and the Creation. Summoned by our faith in Jesus Christ, we commit ourselves to the humanization of urban life and to physical and spiritual growth."

-- The PSUMC Creed

Tonight we went to a wonderful church in Brooklyn for a Taize service of silence, prayer and meditative songs. It was wonderful experience. What caught my eye as we entered the church was their creed on the outside of the church. That is what you see above. It just made my day. Some of you might be reading this and do not agree with the creed due to your feelings on homosexuality. I do not mean for this to be a time to argue or disagree. It is something I wanted to share because this Creed is how I feel each church should approach ministry and community. It was refreshing to know that there are churches out there that do. I guess I have been afraid for a long time to speak up for how I feel ministry should be approached because I felt I was younger and did not have a voice or I wanted to avoid confrontation and conflict. Yet today I feel empowered to bring this up and to share how I feel. Today we discussed power and gender in one of our sessions and I decided to take some advice from that. Some days you have to pick your battles but sometimes you just have to stand up for what you believe is right. Today I am standing up, I am using my voice. Not to be a voice of conflict but a voice to cause people to ask the hard questions of why? To open dialogue. To let everyone have a voice at the table. So my opinion is this....

We have no right to judge people, that is God's job. Jesus went into mission and spent time with the marginalized. He went where everyone else would not dare. He embraced every community he came into contact with. I feel he is calling us to do the same. We should not exclude the GLBTQ Community (Gays, Lesbians, Bisexual, transgender, and queer community) from being in worship and community with us and we should not exclude them from leadership. It is our job to love our neighbor no matter their sexual preference.

Everyone needs a place at the table (and at sunday morning worship), and they need to feel safe and welcomed there.

You might not agree with me, you might be mad at me. I hope you will still accept me in our communities we have made together. I cherish each community I have come into contact with over the years. Let us all learn to be in an open, loving and excepting communities.

Tuesday, July 15, 2008

Reflections on what Mission is...

We had a speaker come talk to us today about what it means to be in Mission and what Mission is. So here are some random thoughts and things we talked about I thought I would share. First off here is the Wesleyan Prayer that I find is beautiful and want to share it with you...

I am no longer my own but yours.
Put me to what you will; rank me with whom you will.
Put me to doing, put me to suffering.
Let me be employed for you, or laid aside for you, exalted for you, or brought low for you.
Let me have all things; let me have nothing.
I freely and wholeheartedly, yield all things to your pleasure and disposal.
And now, glorious and blessed God, Father, So and Holy Spirit, you are mine and I am ours.
So be it.
And the covenant which I have made on Earth, let it be ratified in Heaven.
Amen.

I just really feel that this is a beautiful call to mission and our life with God.

Mission Is...
  • Multi-directional and polyphonic, multi-centered, not linear
  • moving from the center to the margins because God always moves to the margins
  • linking people, opening the dialogue between the rich and marginalized people
  • to hear the cry of God, identify the "sinned againstness"
  • to scratch where it itches
  • saying NO to alienating people from their culture
  • working WITH the people to address the negative aspects in their areas
  • saying YES to being God's people with all God's people
We also learned a lot about the Israel-Palestine Conflict and I am so thankful I am learning about the injustices that are taking place in this world. I hope I will become and advocate for this and much more. Things are going good...I have had to take a lot of time for myself lately but I am feeling refreshed. We have been here for about 10 days, it feels like 20! But I am glad we still have a lot more to go. This is definitely where I need to be.

Sunday, July 13, 2008

2 Trips to Chinatown, Talks in the park, sunsets, and the piano bar...


So I have had 2 experiences in Chinatown this week. We did a community Mapping Activity and split up into a few groups and went to various locations around Manhattan Island. I got the opportunity to learn about Chinatown and the lower east side where there has been a long history of immigration. The Irish were the first to settle in that area and then came the Italians and now it is the Chinese. But right now the government, big corporations and developers are coming in and taking back the land where there are low income housing and making it into million dollar properties (it is waterfront property). This causes the people in the area to become displaced and loose their homes the place they have come to to try to achieve the "American Dream" or come to have a better life. It makes me sick how we treat people that are coming to our country. I could go on a soup box about immigration and how we have completely missed the point on how to handle "foreigners". Maybe everyone needs to re-read Exodus. Besides all that it was a great experience to see different cultures and also I enjoyed worshiping at a UMC church there this morning. I am a little sick of chinese food though..

Talks in the park...well let me just say that is one of my favorite things about this training is the people and the wonderful conversations. The other night we took another trip down to the pier to watch the sunset and we also sat and talked for 2 hours about relationships and life. I love hearing other people's stories and learning from them. Today I had a blast going to the park with Meg. We went to just relax and read...turned out we talked the whole time but had some much needed conversation. It was a beautiful day and hundred's of people were enjoying the beauty. We enjoyed it under a tree in the shade laying down looking at the sky and feeling the breeze.

Tonight we are headed to a Piano Bar down on Christopher and I am pretty excited. We have been exhausted from so much going on but a bunch of us decided a nice adventure would be good for tonight. So there will definitely be a post about that in the near future.

Overall each day I want to sing, dance, shout, cry, yell, run, jump, hide, love, and dream. It's a lot of mixed emotions, but its wonderful.

Thursday, July 10, 2008

I need some energy...

The days are long during training so I am trying to pace myself by giving myself time in the mornings to be alone walking/jogging down by the river. It's beautiful in the mornings and I love watching the hundreds of people that are on their journey of the day running past. I have found a coffee place, 11th Street Cafe and I am not a regular customer for some Hazelnut coffee in the mornings. They are really nice there and have asked me why I am here and everything...I think I will continue the morning coffee routine.

There is a lot to take in, some long sessions of tons of information, emotional discussions, and also just lots of fun and fellowship. I am enjoying it so much but I also know I need to make sure I don't overdo it. So today was a little harder than the other days for a few reasons I am not going to share right now, but just pray if you would for the times when you really just don't have words. Pray for my friend Trish in Philly, she needs prayers for discernment.

I would just like to thank all my wonderful US-2's for listening to me and being there to talk, I cannot express my gratitude.

Tuesday, July 8, 2008

Sunsets are beautiful:)

Me and Sarah at the River

Greg looking at the Sunset
The 3 of us on our night adventure

This is down on the Hudson River at sunset. Greg, Sarah and I went down to the river tonight to just talk and relax, feel the breeze and enjoy each others company while watching a beautiful sunset. We had an intense day but a wonderful one....we made candles, heard more sharing of our lives, went to Queens and went through a labyrinth. It was extremely spiritual and challenging but so peaceful. Our subway ride was fun with jokes and songs:) Then Sarah, Fawn and I cooked dinner for everyone "Grilled Cheese and Tomato Soup" it was lovely. I love serving people!!! Then I met a homeless man names Ray and I gave him some food before we ate. Last night we had a fabulous bible study about Exodus 1:8-22 I will share more later. I have just so enjoyed amazing conversations with people and just sharing life together. Life is good, challenging and beautiful...

Monday, July 7, 2008

Listen, listen, listen to my heartsong...

I thought I would give a quick update about training so far, I'm up a little earlier than everyone else and thought I should take a little time to process the last 48 hours. I got to NY and began to meet some wonderful people that are passionate about social justice and God just like me..it was really nice. My roommate for the training is Elyse who is just amazing and we have had 2 nights of wonderful pillow talk and I definitely cherish that time with her. The first night was rather low-key we got money and the schedule and had a vespers. Today we got up and went to The Church of the Village, a wonderful church near where we are staying that was so completely welcoming and just such a great place to worship. They were so glad we were there to worship with them and they wanted to know all about our placements and were just so affirming and encouraging. We all really enjoyed the music and a few of us got to help serve communion and it was just such a blessing to serve the Lord's supper to a bunch of welcoming brothers and sisters in Christ of all ages, races, and backgrounds:)

After church we came back and discussed the process of "sharing" which we will begin today. We each get around 30 minutes to tell our story of our life...the hard times, the good times, who gives me energy, my relationship with the creator, just a celebration of each of our journey's up until now. I am excited to learn more about these wonderful people I am building a community with. Pray I am open and honest in my time of sharing.

The rest of the day we spent time creating a visual to assist our sharing...I made a children's book and a slideshow of pictures. This time of creating with just a blast sitting and listening to one another talk and just be in each other's presence. We broke for dinner at this all Vegaterian resturant that was really yummy:)

We had a "centering" activity last night where we did Lectio Divina an ancient way of reading the scriptures that is just so wonderful in my opinion. We read Philippians 2:1-8 and focused on a word or phrase the first time, then more each time. I really love how it says "christ emptied himself" or other translations say "he became nothing". Reflecting in silence upon the scripture I really just stuck with the image and idea of completely emptying myself of everything (worry, doubt, frustrating, fear....) We sang a chant that just left me with so much joy and peace and I will leave you with this....

Listen listen listen to my heart song,
listen listen listen to my heart song
I will never forget you and I will never forsake you
I will never forget you I will never forsake you (repeat over and over, while placing your hand over your heart)

Saturday, July 5, 2008

I am here in NYC!

I just wanted to let everyone know I am here safe and sound in NYC:) My flight was good and I had 2 US-2's Meg and Greg waiting for me when I arrived, after a cab ride we arrived to our destination and have had a few hours to just relax and grab lunch. I am excited about this new adventure, not really sure what to expect but I'm doing a lot better with just waiting on what the Lord has in store. So I say..Bring it on!

*side note but really funny...last night my family and I went to see Kevin Costner's band play at the Durham Bulls stadium to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the movie Bull Durham. There was a huge crowd that showed up and it was lots of fun. As the band finished and they begin to prepare for the fireworks this crazy rather intense storm came out of no where and everyone got pretty much trapped into the stadium, which lost power! We were all getting soaked and could only laugh at that point. Needless to say we saw all God Made Fireworks last night! It was a good family bonding experience:)

Friday, July 4, 2008

Off to Training...

And the training begins...I am off to NYC in the morning to begin my training to be a US-2 missionary for the United Methodist Church's General Board of Global Missions. I will be joined in NYC by 8 other recent college graduates, and our 2 supervisors. We will be living in the Alma Matthews House that is owned by the United Methodist Women and is located in Greenwich Village. We will be there for 3 weeks and will be commissioned as missionaries on July 27th, 2008. I am not sure as to exactly what we will be doing throughout training but our boss described training as this:

The goal of training is to encounter issues that you will face during your term of service as well as provide some tools to better equip you for the work you are about to engage in. We will give you methods to process and help you form relationships with those who can be there to support you during your time as a Missionary.
· Expect to form a community of young adults among those who are seeking a similar experience and who share similar passions
· Expect a little spontaneity so bring your flexibility
· Expect days that encourage you
· Expect days that anger you
· Expect to go home with more than you came with so leave room in your suitcase or bring an empty bag
· Expect to want to write stuff down so bring a notebook or journal
· Expect the unexpected


So as I head off I ask for your prayers that I will allow myself to absorb a lot of information, be open to building a wonderful community, be flexible & spontaneous, and grow. I am excited and yet a little nervous. I will post updates and also upload pictures on my phanfare site! Feel free to leave me messages! NYC Here I come!!

Please pray for the other US-2's & their placements...
Elyse Christensen - Atlanta, GA
Krista Dover- Detroit, Michigan
Carolyn Marcus- Superior, Wisconsin
Fawn White- Nome, Alaska
Greg Little - Baltimore, Maryland
Meg Koach - Chicago, Illinois
Sarah Martindell - Salt Lake City, Utah
Bonnie Monk - Alabama