Five for Five

Ian wrote our first blog entry (read it here) about our move to Atlanta on April 11^th 2009. We will use this date, April 11th 2014 to mark our 5^th Anniversary in this work. We have a goal and maybe you would like to help us meet it! You can set-up monthly support or make a one time gift of $60 ($5x12) to help us get there!

I will keep you updated on our numbers here: Refugee Beads currently has 11 out of the 500.

“Not all of us can do great things. But we can do small things with great love.” 
― Mother Teresa

We hear questions about "sacrifice" on a regular basis. People want to know how painful it is to do what we do. They want to know about the dramatic "calling" that drove us from our comfortable lives into the turmoil of ministry.

As our neighbors join us in the work of nurturing community, welcome us into their homes, and weave their own lives, we're finding it more difficult to follow that narrative.

The artisans of Refugee Beads offer us their stories, share recipes, and open their homes to us. La La, a player who has been with our soccer team for two years, has now taken responsibility for leading his fellow players. Miguel, who attended the afterschool program as a student, is now leading the afterschool program together with us.

We spend one evening a week visiting with Nico in jail. Wearing his orange jumpsuit and sitting across the thick glass with a black handset, he does his best to orient us with his world. At the end of each visit, he asks us how he can pray for us. There are no prayers I value more than those Nico offers on our behalf from his jail cell.

We moved into this neighborhood and began this work in hope of giving and receiving with neighbors from around the world, and the realization of that dream means a deep kind of joy to us.

We prefer the term "escape" to "sacrifice." We slipped the hold of a life ill-fitted to our hearts and entered a richer landscape of love for our neighbor.

We were certainly called by Christ to live as good neighbors, feeding, helping with homework, and visiting in jail, but that calling continues throughout the work, as we are drawn deeper into the work of living God's love for this neighborhood.

You can escape too, and pursue the Kingdom's constant call with us. How would you begin loving your neighbors? Would you take our neighborhood into your heart as well, and join us in praying and giving so that our work here could deepen? 

We are currently looking to pay stipends to our post-high-school student leaders to acknowledge the value of the work they're doing here. This takes consistent support.  We also need a vehicle, as the Refugee Beads-mobile died on us recently, and fixing it seems to outweigh the value of the car by a wide margin.

Please keep Nico in your prayers, as he's been sitting in jail for over seven months, with no sign of progress toward a hearing. His heart, however, is showing signs of God’s transforming love. He has been reading the New Testament and drawing pictures of God rescuing him from the clutches of evil.

Thanks for reading. Please let us know if we can offer any more information about what we're doing here and how you can get involved.

Grace and peace,

Ruthie and Ian

Letter to the Church

A few Sundays ago,  as I sang out loud with my brothers and sisters in Christ, I thought about our voices together and how powerful they can be.

As I drove home, I felt this heavy weight, a sinking feeling. I thought about the kids from our neighborhood who weren't there. I felt pressure and anxiety from all that needed to be done for Refugee Beads and the After school Program. There are so many kids, so many problems, so many needs. There seems to be endless amounts of work to be done.  

The teenagers we work with have loud voices in their lives trying to pull them the wrong direction.

Poverty tells them that they aren't worth anything. Their place in society tells them that they have no options. The educational system tells them that they aren't worth investing in. Guys tell the girls, if they can just look pretty and play the part there is hope for happiness. The cholos tell the guys if they sell drugs, and steal, then they can finally earn some respect and money, because they aren't going to get it any other way.

These kinds of voices only lead to dead ends and dark places. 

I do believe my God is powerful! He can use one small voice to impact the life of a teenager. BUT! I believe the Church, the body of Christ at work, each person singing their part, should be a chorus in the lives of these kids, showing them, telling them, that they are loved, that hey are worth dying for, that they are welcomed in God's family and that they have purpose. 

I have discovered after a long hard season of this work that I have been shouting and screaming out of desperation for these kids I love so dearly, trying to be the voice of a crowd instead of just my own. I want them to know how much God loves them. I want them to know there is a different way! But if you have ever tried shouting anything at a teenager before, you know that doesn't work, and your energy doesn't last very long!

To be honest, I have made myself sick trying. I look around and listen and I don't hear many positive voices other then my own and sometimes none at all. So I feel responsible, and carry a burden that should not be only mine to carry. 

 I am learning that God does not expect my voice to make up for the lack of other voices. I am just asked to sing my part, and Ian his, and you yours. 

God desires for our work to be filled with joy not with worry or guilt. So I have to trust Him, trust that he sees all the needs, and all the problems, and that he cares. I must have faith that God is working through his Church to make broken people and places new again.

We just came back from an amazing trip to New Orleans with four student leaders from our neighborhood. They got to hear the voices of God's people sharing about the work they do in neighborhoods like ours around the country. We were all inspired and encouraged by the gospel and how it is taking root and changing lives because of their willingness to share their hope, time and resources with those in need. 

While I have been sick these past couple weeks, Miguel and Guzman (two of the teenagers we brought to New Orleans, 18 and 19 years old) have been running the After School Program. They have encouraged me to trust God more. I see their care for this neighborhood and the kids grow. Mrs. Pam, who has been faithfully teaching Bible stories to the kids for 4 years now, is coming today to tell and show God's love to 30 children who will enter our 2 bedroom apartment. My heart is warmed when I open the door and see her face and my my burden feels lighter. 

This morning I read some verses from Colossians 1 and was reminded of some very important and solid truths by the apostle Paul in his letter to the church.

Our message of hope in Christ is as true today as it has always been. And as that hope grows in us it will also grow stronger and bear fruit around us! 

So today, like Paul, I pray for you, for me and for the Church that God would give us wise minds and a spirit attuned to God's will, so that we can understand how God works, can live well, make God proud, and work hard for him. 

I pray that we have the strength to stick it out! Not the kind of strength that comes from our own ability to grind our teeth and get it done but by a strength only God can give, the kind of strength that endures and spills over into joy and thankfulness. 

God has rescued us from dead ends and dark places. He can do the same for the kids and families in our neighborhood. Through his son Jesus, he has brought us up out of the pit that we were in because of our sin, that we were doomed to keep repeating. And he can do the same for those we love so much. 

We can look at Jesus and see God's original purpose in everything created. Absolutely everything  was started in him and finds purpose in him. We can now see God's purpose for Guzman, Miguel and many others beginning to shine. 

It might be a mystery to us, but God holds it all together. 

We can find rest in him.  

It's in Jesus we find peace even in the mist of chaos. 

A Few Things about Pain and Love

I sat across the table from a friend I hadn't seen since I was 18. He and his girlfriend came into our neighborhood to reconnect, and we sat over a dinner of dal, pratha, and mixed grain rice, talking about how God had shaped our lives.

At one point, I mentioned that I wouldn't wish our life on anyone. This was true in its own way, but it bears some explaining.

I spend a lot of time talking and writing about the beauty of living a life defined by the love of Jesus. We have made a serious gamble on the idea that we were created for love, and that our lives are best invested in loving God and our neighbors.

I believe that this is true. But what I was thinking about when I said this, is that apart from God's activity, and His faithfulness in bringing fruit out of the chaos around us, our life is stupid.

We live as aliens in our own country. It is hard to know our neighbors, and knowing them, it is hard to trust them. Someone broke into our house when we were gone. Another kid we invited into our home keeps stealing from us. One kid writes on our door. We are always on call for the neighborhood, and we carry burdens much larger than our shoulders were made to bear.

But the fruit of a life like this has been good because God brought us here and wrote a rich story from our struggles. Apart from that, we're a sinking ship.

So while I can't go back to a comfortable life, and while, knowing what I know, I wouldn't want to, I wouldn't wish the circumstances that I face on anyone else. I'd hope that everyone I know can find fulfilling, moderately challenging jobs and make piles of money. Sincerely.

Of course, God calls us to where he wants us, and I wouldn't wish a life outside his will on anyone, either, so it's hard to know what I would wish upon anyone.

This whole post is getting rather confusing, even for me. Basically, readers, may God guide you to the life that he wants for you. But before you dive into ministry of any kind, count the cost. And the cost is high.

Expect to be molded into the kind of person who would put her/himself on the cross for her/his neighbor. And the kind of pain it takes to train us to love that much is great. I've only seen its fringes, and it's already almost too much to bear.

The Creek Kingdom (pt 1)

I dreamed nightmares, one after the other. I was pinned to my bed, unable to breathe, trying to call out the name of Jesus, but there was no air in my lungs. Each time His Name came to me, the torment slowed, I awoke muddle-headed, and I drifted off to the next horror.

The first one I remember with clarity had me suffocating under my sheets as they ballooned around me. I watched shapeless shadows play across the translucent fabric. I knew if I could reach Ruthie, I would wake up, but I was paralyzed.

In the final dream, I prayed for God to open my eyes to His truth, and the room flashed before me violently like a caught reel of film, on and off, meaningless and horrifying with the silhouetted outlines of pines and empty branches clawing at the walls. I couldn't breathe. Then I woke with one bright flash into a dark room.

When I came out of the dream, I went to the book of Acts, where I have been reading sporadically. It seemed like the thing to do.

The story goes that when Jesus was here on earth in skin, he did his own work and teaching. Then when he had died and risen, and it came time for him to get sucked back up into the sky, he promised that something better was around the corner.

No one knew what to expect, especially his followers.

Then, in a rush of fire, they found out what had been promised. That the kingdom, the power, and the glory that Jesus had held in his person was now loosed in them. And that through them it would overturn the world.

And when they went out and preached, their message was some variant of this: The Kingdom is here.

On Sunday after we heard a sermon on Acts, a police officer nearly ran Ruthie over in his haste to bully a homeless man for blowing bubbles in a parking lot. We saw the policeman slam on his brakes mere inches away from the homeless man, get out of the car, and charge over to establish his kingdom in that parking lot.

It was an injustice like all the others I witnessed during the week. I have been worn down by the laws which guarantee that kids we love will never be able to find legal work in this country. I am oppressed by the collapse of families all around me. The damage done by physical and sexual abuse to the kids and adults we work with will not go away. And despite all our hopeful stories, money pretty much tells us what we can and can't do.

Everything that I see suggests that what is broken must remain so, and that everything is broken.

And the church nowadays seems mainly interested in getting people zapped up to Heaven instead of announcing that The Kingdom of Heaven is here. It seems like they've admitted that Jesus, while He can do some pretty cool things in the unseen forever, is pretty much impotent for now.

I'm sitting in front of the computer now at 2:28 AM, contemplating my nightmares, trying to understand how they fit with the distress I feel.

Are they my mind's way of grieving and letting go of a false faith? Some physiological result of the Indian food I had for dinner? Are they God's Spirit, awakening me to know his power? Are they demons, come to torment me so I will be impotent for the Kingdom work?

As I write this, the answer is out of my reach. I feel though that writing this entry is the task before me. I stare at what I have written. I wonder how it will be read. With no conclusion to draw, I commit the final words to my readers and place the period that ends this moment in the story.

Cycles

I just finished a phone conversation with my younger brother, wherein we discussed the possibility of starting a saltwater aquarium-themed hip hop posse called the "Blue Tang Clan." We decided in the end that we are both too busy to make this dream a reality.

Back to the grind.

Melvin, although he has his share of issues (explosive temper and a total lack of filtration between his brain and his mouth), is generally open-hearted with Ruthie and me.

David and Omar go through cycles. They open up to me and have a good time at the activities center and at Communicycle, then they tend to rebel for one or two weeks after getting in trouble for picking on other kids (the main offense that Ruthie and I don't tolerate), then, after stewing for a while, they come back with or without apologizing, and we start over.

These little cycles have been testing my faith in our purpose here in this neighborhood, where it's hard to track any impact the gospel is having in the lives and hearts of the kids we work with.

But when I listen to the stories of my close friends and think back on my own journey, there were several mentors who showed patient, steadfast love to me without any results until years later. In fact, many of them probably have no idea how their love impacted me.

The model that Jesus gave us of caring for our neighbor requires a great deal of faith, because it doesn't normally create immediate results. While we do hear incredible salvation stories, and while the market-driven-church would lead us to believe that these stories are normative, my experience and much of what I read in the New Testament seems to call for something more than immediate results: we are expected to show faithful, whole-life care, tending consistently to all needs, from the spiritual to the physical, without expecting any thanks.

In short, it takes a lot of love to lead a soul home.

To Our Readers in Timbuktu

To the reader sitting in Timbuktu who really digs the blog but cries herself to sleep every night on her native-made Timbuktu pillow (she apparently is a big supporter of local business) because she can't receive our newsletters,

Rejoice! Our newsletter is going out today and tomorrow, and you can even get it in Timbuktu at no cost. Here's why: The thing is going out via e-mail.

You'll laugh. You'll cry. You'll wish that Timbuktu was closer to the United States so that you could come over to our house and give us a hug and tell us how inspired you were when you read this beautifully-designed, heart-breakingly well-written masterpiece of a missionary update.

Anyway, if you'd like to get a copy and you haven't recieved our previous ones, just drop me an e-mail at northpapers@gmail.com and let me know you would like to be added to our list. That goes for our readers in Costa Rica, The Philippines, Canada, and the US of A too.

Sharp Instruments

I went to high school in the Philippines, and I joined the rugby team as soon as the sport was available. I still remember the feeling after the first pickup game we ever played. It was a revelation.

I grew up playing soccer, where you use your feet to manipulate the ball, but it felt nothing like rugby in terms of purity. The sport demanded that every muscle work together, that every sense moved into high gear, that speed meet agility meet power. And there were no gloves, bats, pads, bases, helmets, etc to slow you down or make your job easier.

In a far less adrenaline-fueled way, I feel like relational ministry offers a similar fulfillment. It strips away the mechanisms, the shortcuts, and the complex tracking methods, and puts a pure demand on the person engaging in the my inistry. It gets directly to the heart, and places its hope in what lies there.

That's why, when I looked at other missionaries doing this kind of work, I thought it looked like a pretty easy gig. Just spend time with people, right? I could do that.

Since arriving down here to do the work myself, I've realized the corruption of my own heart. There are areas where I am not willing to open myself to people, things I am not willing to give away, pains I am not willing to share.

For the most part, I love what we do. We help people and build loving relationships in the name of the kingdom of Christ. And for the most part, we see deep changes in the people we work with.

However, I have wrestled with small failures recently. A relationship with another missionary went cold, and he reached out to me before I opened up to him. A refugee I am close with expressed pain, and I did not go to him.

This is a 24-hour, inside-out gig. It's the most rewarding and demanding form of ministry, and I love it. When I finish with the immigrants and refugees, I come home and seek to open myself to my partners and supporters on this blog.

Thank God that when I hit the end of my resources, when I find those areas that are dark, and when I feel as if I have nothing to offer to the needy, his glory moves. Even now, I know that these failures are being used to turn my eyes to the Eternal for hope.

Pandemonium at Huntington Creek

My friend Jonathan Kotulski and I did a lot of songwriting together in Chicago, and right before I left, we compiled an album called Ghost Town Revival.

We approached Jonathan's brother, Joseph, about helping us develop a blog for the music we were creating. He agreed, and as we planned it out, the vision shifted from a music blog to one that would feature off-kilter-Americana in different media, created by all three of us.

The blog went up today at http://ghosttownrevival.wordpress.com. Joey posted a great picture of a fallen tree, and I wrote a short piece to set the mood for things to come.

Also, on a more ministry-related note, we had quite the event today. My sister Lisa taught a lesson on the good shepherd that captivated the kids for 30 minutes (with this crowd, that's an achievment).

Next, thanks to the creative genius of Jeanne McLarty, our arts and crafts leader from Mt. Zion Baptist Church, things got pretty crazy.

The one rule of our shaving cream free-for-all was not to get it in anyone's face. I can't say that one was too strictly enforced.