My Sweet Eva

This is difficult to write, but it is needed, at the least, for myself.

Nakakande Eva is this beautiful girl you see above.

Eva, Sharif (the boy below), and the other Alma house kids were playing outside on Monday.
Sharif threw a stone, just playing around.

That stone hit Eva right in the head.
It created a deep wound.
She was taken to the local hospital, then referred to large state hospital where she received some CAT scans.
The doctors said there was a crack, but it was nothing serious, though Eva was in a tremendous amount of pain.

Sharif has been extremely depressed.
He is one of the most sensitive, tender-hearted boys I've ever met. He never played rough. He loves to dance and sing. He is a beautiful care-giver and 'mother hen' for the other children. They call him "little girl" as a nic name. He is a born evangelist and does not understand why anyone could not be in-love with Jesus. Seriously, he asked me many times. He loves Jesus more than life.

So he has been feeling much guilt and shame about hurting her.

Uncle Francis and his wife have been talking to the Alma house about forgiveness.
He asked Eva yesterday if she was still upset with Sharif and she said yes.
So he talked to her about forgiveness and asked her to forgive him.
It sounded like she did.

Last night, Eva died.

She was still at the hospital and complaining of a lot of pain. The doctors misjudged the situation as she should have received an operation urgently, according to Uncle Francis.

I can not even describe what I have been feeling today.

Except of course: broken.

I was very close to all of my girls in Alma house, but Eva and I had a special connection, especially the last few weeks. She just started openning up to me more. We laughed and joked around so much towards the end. She was one of the older ones so we could communicate pretty well. She was not very confident, but she should have been because she was SO smart! And a wonderful dancer! Oh, and boy was she witty. Even in her last letter to me, she was cracking me up with her jokes. She was the best at keeping a straight face when she was being funny. Yet, she was shy and pretended she was no good.

But towards the end, she 'let go' so much with me.
You can see some of this in the videos below.

And then, on the day I left Uganda, she was the hardest one to say goodbye to.
Everyone was very sad, acted so depressed, and many tears were shed--
but Eva literally sobbed in my arms.

That moment broke deep into the core of me.

The only way I was able to leave Bethany Village without completely falling apart is because I knew that I would be back some day. I didn't know when or how, but I just knew this was not the last time I would see them.

And its true, its not the last time I will see Eva.

I will see her dancing and cracking up with our wonderful Papa in our true home--one day.
And for that, I am comforted.

But honestly, I want to see her again here on earth.
At Alma house.
Where I left her.

But I won't.

And for that, I am broken.

As usual with this death thing--it seems so surreal.

I have dealt with death intensely recently, but never the death of a child.
This is a whole new ball game.
And not the death of one of my precious 12 children from Alma house whom I am just waiting to see again.
And not the one that I had such a unique, dear connection with.

Don't get me wrong, though. This girl was ready to be with her King. She loved Him dearly. When we joked around about what happened if you were dying, her answer was always, "Ok. I am ready. I will die." As if to say, "who cares if something happens to me? I know this place is not my home."

And then there's Sharif. . . .
Oh how my heart breaks for this sweet boy who loves to garden, cook, learn, dance, and sing.


Any one of us in America would feel awful about such a thing happening to us, and then you place this situation in Ugandan culture and it just intensifies matters.

Guilt and shame are heavily embedded within it.
If you do something bad, you are a bad person.
If something like this happens to you, you are cursed.

Now, the children at Bethany Village are seeking to follow Jesus so they do not believe and act in the ways the culture in general does, like the things stated above, but nonetheless, these battles will be intense for someone like Sharif.

Please join me in praying against the lies the enemy is going to use on him.
Pray the enemy does not steal
the joy that exudes from him.
the confidence that attracts all who encounter him.
the love that embraces every soul he meets
and the belief he has that he is dearly loved by His Father and that his Father has good, good things in store for his life.

My first instinctual emotion was "I need to be there. I need to be with Alma house."
But being the rationale that I am, I quickly dismissed such a thought and told myself "that's just emotions talking. You're here. Grieve here." And I moved on.

But later that day, as I was praying and thinking about all of it, I stepped out of my usual mindset, and tried to be more open to the Spirit.

I should never just dismiss any idea, simply out of habit.

Well how would I get the money to go?
I have money I could use on this, if the Lord is clear with me about that.
Check.
When would I go?
Well I have very serious obligations this weekend and June 10-12.
So could I go May 30-June 10th????
I start a new job June 1st.
Do I say, "forget that job. I'm not that excited about it anyway. If I'm really suppose to have it, they will wait for me. The main reason I want the job is to make money for Alma house. Maybe I'm just suppose to go to Alma house during this horrible time?"
Or do I try to go for 2 weeks in July?
Or do I stay?
This is irrational and impractical.
I don't do those kind of things.

Please pray with me in this decision.
I do not want to make this decision alone.
Input is welcome.

Now I must share some things that capture the beauty of Eva that stole my heart. . . .


Yeah, don't ask about this last one.
Just laugh.
And enjoy Eva's excitement and moves.

Lose two gain one

Check this quick, but powerful story out!!
http://jmchoul.spaces.live.com/Blog/cns!F04579021E6249A3!1260.entry#comment

This just made my day

Less than 10%

I just read a quote that Americans spend less than 10% of their income on food, less than the citizens of any other nation.

Isn't that incredibly interesting?

We are the richest in the world, but we spend only 10% of our richness on food?

So what does that mean?

For one, it means we are spending lots of money on non-necessities. Abundance. Things we think we need but we just want. Better known as, crap.

For two, we are buying cheap food. Cheap food means it has bad quality. Bad quality means it was grown or produced in ways that are lethal to our body, the ground it came from, the animal it came from, the air it grew in, the world system we live in. We're buying lots of cheap, crappy food.

For three, we spend less than any other citizens of any other country spend on food. Other people are either too poor to spend money on anything but the basic necessities or they are wise enough to spend more money on good quality food. (and by good quality, i mean, not processed)

For four, we complain about spending so much money on health care and get all roweled up about it, yet we ignore one of the major causes of our health problems that leads us to need so much health care--> bad, processed, not real, food. Let's spend more money and time on good food and not so much on health care issues. Let's change the food industry and maybe we won't need to worry about health care quite as much.

Basically we do not know how to spend money, nor how to eat well.

This makes me sad.

Real Food

I highly recommend this book to anyone who is ever so slightly interested in food, health, or the present day food industry, etc.

If you want to be more connected to food--this is a great tool.

Its not one of those that you walk away thinking, "Uhg why did I read that, now I will have images of all this gross stuff from the food industry."

Its really easy to read.

Its crammed with back-up information and evidence to support her ideas.

Its extremely insightful, and rather revolutionary for some.

Its inspirational.

I feel like I understand food so much more. I understand what is good and bad for my body. (and its not what you think, so get prepared)

I feel closer to how God intended the world to work in relation to our bodies and the earth and nutrition.

I am in awe of how God created the world and designed it for us to live in, find joy in, and see Him in everything.

Food is live-giving! Food is a gift! We were meant to be connected to our food--to grow it, to understand it, to love it, to be nourished by it, to share it, to have our fair share of it, and to eat it as God created it!

Baby steps, my friend, that's what its all about! (and the hokie pokie)

And speaking of which. . . .our garden is growing!!!!

I got this making stuff for you

I heard a story about some followers of Jesus recently who attended a rally against overseas sweatshops.

They had not invited the typical rally speakers—lawyers, activists, and academics.

Instead, they brought the kids themselves from the sweatshops to speak.

The people listened as a child from Indonesia pointed to the giant scar on his face.

“I got this scar when my master lashed me for not working hard enough. When it began to bleed, he did not want me to stop working or to ruin the cloth in front of me, so he took a lighter and burned it shut.

I got this making stuff for you.”

The people were suddenly consumed by the overwhelming reality of the suffering body of Christ.

Jesus now bore not just the marks from the nails and scars from the thorns but a gnash down his face, for when we have done it to the ‘least of these,’ we have done it to Christ himself.

They wondered, ‘How could we possibly follow Jesus and buy anything from that master?’

The statistics had a face. Poverty became personal. And that messes with you.

Notices that they didn't say they were 'consumed by overwhelming guilt.'

They were consumed by the reality of the suffering body of Christ. HE bears their scars. HE suffers with the sweatshop workers. HE bears the sin that we've all participated in, in one way or another.

Not guilt, just reality.

Early Christians in the Roman empire faced many similar issues that we do when it comes to economically supporting a global empire that works in a way that we don’t agree with.

It wasn’t easy to resist the empire of Rome and all its dazzle, luxuries to spend money on, and entire economic system that did not reflect the nature of Jesus.

Well, I read a book that dives into some of the things John was saying in the book of Revelation. I'm not going to go into a Bible study or even quote verses . . .its Revelations, who knows. And I don't have them memorized. One thing he brings up is that perhaps John was basically calling them out of dependence, infatuation, and support of that empire and that system.

The question he was posing to them is one I think is worth posing to us today.

Do we think there is no other way except the "filthy rotten system" we have today?

Is it possible we can’t see the destructiveness of our economy not because we don’t know it’s terrible but because deep down we feel that it’s necessary and that therefore it’s hopeless to criticize it?”

I'll end with this quote:

"Jesus is ready to set us free from the heavy yoke of an oppressive way of life.

Plenty of wealthy Christians are suffocating from the weight of the American dream, heavily burdened by the lifeless toil and consumption we embrace.

This is the yoke from which we are being set free!

And as we are liberated from the yoke of global capitalism, our sisters and brothers in Guatemala, Liberia, Iraq, and Sri Lanka will also be liberated.

Our family overseas, who are making our clothes, growing our food, pumping our oil, and assembling our electronics—they too need to be liberated from the empire’s yoke of slavery.

Their liberation is tangled up with our own.

The new yoke isn’t easy. (it’s a cross for heaven’s sake)

But we carry it together, and it is good and leads us to rest, especially for the weariest traveler."

Healer

I was given "a word," sort of, by good 'ol Jesus the other day.

First it started with just the idea of "Healer."

The Lord is the healer of all my friends who are hurting, who are broken, who have experienced painful situations, who have broken relationships.

He is the healer of me. And I have seen and experienced it first hand.

Well, all these people started coming to mind and I was just speaking "healing" over them. Praying for that healing.

Then, all of the conversations about ethical shopping and how we spend our money that I've been having with different people lately came to mind. And the same thing was "spoken over it."

"Healer."
Jesus is the healer of our broken economic system.
His new and perfect kingdom doesn't have a place for a broken, fragmented, disconnected economic system.
So he wants to make what we have whole.
He wants to connect it all. Meaning, connecting us to "it."
He wants to heal the system.

Because, remember, Jesus has inaugurated a new Kingdom. A Kingdom that is vastly different then the one of this world. And we do not have to wait till we die to see glimpses of this kingdom. It has begun. We may not see it in full right now, but if you know this man, Jesus, you are certainly part of this new Kingdom and can see it even now.

And in case you're wondering, yes, I believe the economic system is broken--according to where the Spirit has led me in my own research . . which is dependent on lots of other people's research, both Jesus Kingdom followers and non.

Note: when I refer to 'economic system' I am, in the simplest form, referring to every monetary transaction we make and everything that goes into that transaction. You could say, 'the thoughts, motivations, concerns (or lack there of), and actions that go into purchasing something.'

Or you could say, as Wikipedia does:
An economic system is the system of production, distribution and consumption of goods and services of an economy. Alternatively, it is the set of principles and techniques by which problems of economics are addressed, such as the economic problem of scarcity through allocation of finite productive resources.The economic system is composed of people and institutions, including their relationships to productive resources.

Think of all of that when you hear "economic system."

So I got this thought-image of Jesus healing the fragmentation we experience from the things we buy; the disconnect.
The whole system is broken--from food, to clothing, to cleaning supplies, to pens.
And that simply does not have a place in His Kingdom.
Things are whole in His kingdom.
People are connected to the things they purchase in His Kingdom.
"Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also."
That is not just a poetic, spiritual little line to quote.
It is truth.
It is truth whether you know Jesus or not. Whether you've read the bible or not.

And when Kingdom people are really connected to the things they buy, unethical items/production simply will not be bought.
And the system will begin to be restored.

When Jesus looks at us and sees the way we spend our money, every single transaction we make, it is not ignored.
It is very significant to Him; it is significant to who he wants us to be; to who he is forming us into.

And just like everything else we do, he does not look at our unloving transactions and hate us for it or hang guilt over our heads. He never does that.
He looks at it and wants something more for us; for His world.
I think he looks at it and thinks, "This does not have a place in my kingdom. I will root this out from the bottom-up."
As always. With everything.

Just like the Lord gave the Israelites a long lists of guidelines to set them apart from the world in the way their economic transactions took place (as well as their sexual, legal, sanitary, etc. relations)--He has the same heart with us today!

He wants us to be a people set apart in everything--and one of those things is our economic transactions.
We don't have Numbers and Leviticus to give us guidelines today, but we have the Holy Spirit to do that. And we have Scripture to tell us about the character and heart of God, and what he cares about.

Jesus said the Holy Spirit is coming to us and it is even better than having him. I don't fully get that most of the time, but maybe one meaning is that, in complicated times like these, when it is so stickin' hard to figure out how to spend our money in Kingdom-glorifying ways, we actually don't have to worry or feel burdensome.
We have the Spirit to guide us.
We have the Spirit to weave us through the complicated, corrupt system.
We have the Spirit to help us restore the system. To help us be Jesus' light to shine on ALL the darkness in the system.
We have the Spirit to help us be God's hands and feet in a broken system that needs to be put back together; that needs only Spirit-filled hands and feet to connect the dots that have been disconnected.

Without the Spirit, how will we know what dots to connect?
Once you start getting into the murky waters, its easy to see that its broken. Trust me. But its not so easy to see how to reconnect it.
Only with the Spirit will we know which dots need to come back together and how.

And what I have found is that, as I start connecting dots with really small lines, I can already see that what we're actually doing is not just putting back together a broken system, but creating a completely new, whole, Kingdom-system.
Just like what ends up happening to us as people.
It starts out as if He is just repairing whats broken in us, but pretty soon we see that he is actually making us into a whole new creation.

And that's what I've seen in the economic system--He wants to make a whole new creation. But it doesn't have to be overwhelming and burdensome to us because its actually not us doing it. Its His Spirit moving us and guiding us. The huge change is not on us. We are responsible for seeking Him and His Spirit in our day to day economic transactions. But the sweeping change of a new system is His work, not ours.

The God of the Israelites is our same God. He cares about every aspect of our life and he has ways that work best in each micro system of our life. They work best for everyone and everything involved. Not just the "top" one, or the most powerful one, or the majority. The only way we will know what these ways are is if we are seeking His Spirit, learning what He cares about in Scripture, and seeking out what's really happening in our transactions by opening our eyes to the evidence that is out there.

In Texas?????

As most of you know, I've been involved with the organization International Justice Mission for a couple years now. Therefore I'm pretty aware of what is going on in the "sex trafficking" industry.

When I read stories about the thievery of girls' souls in Cambodia, I am sobered, disgusted, and pained instantly. But sadly, I am not surprised.

Well of course I have also "heard" that human and sex trafficking occurs here in the U.S.
But when I "hear" about it, what goes through my mind is something a long the lines of: "They must be referring to the instances when people pick up Mexicans, throw them in vans, bring them over to Texas and other border states, give them illegal work, and treat them horribly."

Well that is definitely happening. But the thing is, there's much more.

First off, my dear friend Emily (whom I should just write a whole other post about soon), has opened my eyes to the very "third world" type sex trafficking that is going on in Washington D.C. . . .and of course in many other parts of the U.S. I say "third world" simply because you don't expect things kinds of things to be happening in incredible cities like Washington D.C. or our very own Houston, Texas. You expect to hear about these things in Cambodia and the like but. . .here? Where we prize human dignity so much?? Here? Land of the free?? Here? Where sex sells and sex controls way more than we can imagine? Oh right.
Here.

Well anyways, check this article out. Right here in Houston. Straight from the Texas Monthly magazine. (yes it is long, but even someone like me who has read many articles about this stuff, found this extremely compelling and insightful, yet simple to understand.)

I really like how it captures what is happening in the heads of these women:

"While you are in this state—dizzy, disoriented—your boss takes you to a place that isn’t a restaurant or a factory and tells you to unpack your few belongings in a dingy back room. He tells you that this is where you will work to pay off your debt. You will be a prostitute, he explains, and by the way, you will be charged for room and board while you are paying off that $30,000. When you protest, he beats you, starves you, or keeps you awake for days on end. Then, just to make himself clear, he holds up a picture of your son or your parents or your sister and tears it in half. Or maybe he just says, “We hear your father has a bad heart.”

At that point, your predicament becomes very clear. You do not speak or read the language. You do not have a cent to your name. You have no idea where you are in this vast country, and you have no way of finding out because no one lets you go anywhere alone. What do you do? Most likely, you do what you are told."

Well shoot. What do you do when you find out this stuff is happening in our wealthy cities who "prize" the dignity of people. . .right here under our noses. . . .down our streets. . . .a whole new world juxtaposed against our country of equality, freedom, law, order, dignity.