Two Journal Entries from our L.A. Missions Trip

August 30, 2012

We have been in L.A. for four days now. it is Thursday morning but unlike the other early mornings I am not packing up to head to the DreamCenter with the rest of the team. Em got really sick last night, and I am staying back with her at the hotel. The past few days have been great, but in an unexpected way. It wasn't exactly how I pictured it to be. The first day we loaded trucks full of food and brought it to a community near by. When we arrived there was a line down the street of people with grocery bags waiting for the food. They were mostly all Hispanic, but they differed in age. There were families and babies as well as some elderly people. We unloaded the truck and began to hand out the food to the assembly line of people. Usually nothing more than a "Have a good day." or "God bless" was spoken since there were so many to be served, but it was a prospective killer. Last night we went to the beach and four of our team members got baptized. As we left the beach we passed by all these people, dining and laughing in the fancy restaurants. It hit me there that these people consumed and forgot. That I can consume and forget. Forget the faces that I had seen the first work morning, and what life looks like to them. Even in close proximity it is worlds different. These faces at the beach laugh and forget , and I am struck at the thought of what I will chose. Which faces will I be around, how will I serve and which would Jesus? I truly do not want to go home and consume and forget.


August 31, 2012

I have so many emotions, stories and information to sort through tonight. Today was a complete overload. In the morning we had chapel, then two sessions at the DreamCenter. God has just been speaking to me through every single person I've encountered and I am trying to sort through all of the messages. In our prayer afterwards I just kept talking at God, truing to figure everything out. I finally become too overloaded and I felt God whisper to me "rest for a moment." I laid down and pictured myself how I always do; laying on the forest floor with my Jesus, but this time I turned and saw Mike. Mike was a man I met on Skid Row, a beautiful man who had zero teeth and an amazing attitude. He made promises he would get himself into the DreamCenter, I need to pray he keeps it. Then I looked past Mike and saw Dante, Michelle and Doris and all the other beautiful people I met today. God stopped me in that moment, He made me smile as He showed me He has it already overcome. These are His children and it is not on me to become overwhelmed, it is not on me to figure out. It is on me to trust my Father and to live for Home. I laid there with these people, God continuing to show me His desire is for them as well. I need to share my Jesus, because He is a good daddy and His love is perfect and can overcome all. Trust, Carli, trust.

Click here to donate to our trip to Costa Rica this year: http://www.mosaic2013.com

Missions Trip; Costa Rica

Hello friends&family! 

I am writing this blog post because Ben and I are taking a group of our students and leaders to Cartago in Costa Rica for a missions trip this year! Our church (Parkway Road) has recently partnered with a couple that are down there doing some amazing ministries with the people around them. And we couldn't miss out on giving them a hand and a bit of community as they truly do the work of Jesus.

I am not writing this to go into detail of all we will do in Costa Rica, but rather to share our hearts with you and hope for some partnership with us in this trip. As Ben and I got to know each other and developed our relationship the one thing that really drew us together was our mutual desire to serve and the need we saw to live selfless lives. We have dreamed up and struggled with the ways in which we could really live the radical way Jesus taught and lived out. It always seemed like something that was far away or in our future that we needed to work things out (finish school) to do first- but on our missions trip the dreamcenter in Los Angeles last year, we both had a realization that God was calling us to important work here and now and asking us to be selfless in the things we do on a daily basis, first. For me, working as admirably and diligently as I can with people with disabilities and for Ben (and I) to really teach the ways of that radical hippie, also known as Jesus, and show our passion to the students of Parkway. One way we have really sparked that passion in them is with these short term missions trips. We are now seeing a difference in their lives, hearts and even futures as they come back seeing the impact practical servanthood in the name of Jesus can have. We now are seeing students that are becoming full time missionaries as they leave highschool and one girl that is going to serve at the dreamcentre for the next year or two.

I have been doing some overnight shifts at the group home, and they have become my "inspect who Jesus really is.." nights. I have been overwhelmed and completely convicted on how much Jesus talks against the luxuries I so often feel I deserve. His whole message was about serving, specifically the poor and giving up all worldly possessions. As I read things like "It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God" and the times Jesus asks the rich men to first give up their wealth before they inherit eternal life- I just felt so heavy as I realize I am the rich man in these stories. As Henri Nouwen often states (in multiple forms): I need the needy as much as they need me. I always sit around thinking everything God has for me is in the future, but he has already told me what I must do (serve the "least of these") and when I must do it (well, now).

As we go on another trip and learn from some amazing people down in Costa Rica I hope you will pray for us. As we look upon the many faces we will see down there and as we become, for a time, friends, mentors, moms or dads and as we are able to share Abba's love that brings peace like no other and get to serve in a way that can change perspective and be carried back, I hope you will be there with us as brothers and sisters in faith. It is great to have passion sparked and to see the students hearts as they really just want to gain another brother or sister, or they really want someone else to feel the grace and love they have been blessed with in the Divine.

Financially Ben and I realistically can't do this trip alone. (Trust me we didn't chose ministry and the developmental field for the paychecks). So I will put a link to the website where you can donate online and specify who it is for. There you can also get more specific details on what we will be doing. I am trusting God for all the things of this trip to come together as I become more and more excited!

http://www.mosaic2013.com

On top of the DreamCenter in L.A.

Our team last year at the DreamCenter

Food truck in L.A.

Love over Death

What time the mighty moon was gathering light

Love paced the thymy plots of Paradise,

And all about him rolled his lustrous eyes;

When, turning round a cash, full in view

Death, walking all alone beneath a yew,

And talking to himself, first met his sight:

'You must be gone,' said Death, 'these walks are mine.'

Love wept and spread his sheeny vans for flight;

Yet ere he parted said, 'This hour is thine:

Thou art the shadow of life, and as the tree

Stands in the sun and shadows all beneath,

So in the light of great eternity 

Life eminent creates the shade of death;

The shadow passeth when the tree shall fall,

But I shall reign for ever over all.'

I'd like to believe love wins over death.

Three years ago I felt broken.
I unfortunately had to meet my weakness face to face and had to call my own bluff of strength in the light of truth.
Since that time I found a cure for that weakness; re imagine, or better yet, redefine my identity. By having my identity no longer be found in that brokenness or the faces I used to try and hide the brokenness, but instead in something greater; something more Devine than you or I.

There I was a daughter. There I was whole. There I was loved. And that's the kind of identity that felt peaceful to me.

But that was three years ago, and in the shadow of change I forgot the cure.

As much as I love my life now, it all changed so quickly I sometimes forget I had a part in putting it all together. In a whirlwind of putting this with that and sewing my future together, I now find myself graduated, working, married, and in a new city. And the identity that seemed so appealing three years ago has somehow slipped away with the current as I have been (with furious strokes) trying to keep up with the current.

I feel like it is time to stop swimming and float to where the water is cool and the sun is hot; in the green pasture. That is where love wins over death; every time. Wholeness rules over brokenness, security over confusion, peace over the storm and the spirit over me.
The better of all the paradoxes that seem to rule me take over in the arms of Abba.