Hearts for Ecuador 2012

October 2012 marked my 3rd year of participation in Hearts for Ecuador with Penn State Hershey Children's Hospital.  I know that I've posted a blog about it in the past, and this year I've done something a little different.  I've been inspired by my friend Jo to create a video commentary.  It actually turned out to be fifty minutes, which was longer than expected.  It took a bit of time to create but I hope that it gives you an idea of what we do while we are there.  I hope you are blessed.

https://vimeo.com/54999173

In other news, last weekend a good friend of mine from work got married.  It was a fun wedding to attend.  (Actually, I think all weddings are.)

 Congrats Misti and Zach!

Next weekend I'm staying at the "Hilton," in Ohio, with my dear friends Karlee and Eric.  I cannot wait to visit them.  Then by the time I get back from that and work over Christmas - I'll be off to Seattle, Washington to see some friends and attend GYC.  

Until next time friends, 

Many Blessings and Merry Christmas! 

Wherever you go, go with all of your heart.

David Livingstone sacrificed his life to tell the people of Africa the story of Jesus. While there he buried his wife.  After lowering her into the ground he knelt beside the grave, weeping and he is heard to have prayed: "My Jesus, my king, my life, my all, I again consecrate my life to thee."   By now you must know that none of us are exempt from pain whether it be spiritual, physical, or mental.   Difficult times find their way into our lives and one of the best solutions is to pray...  

Here is a life altering quote from the book Patriarchs and Prophets:

The greatest victories to the church of Christ or to the indiviual Christian are not those that are gained by talent or education, by wealth or the favor of men. They are those victories that are gained in the audience chamber with God, when earnest agonizing faith lays hold upon the mighty arm of power.

As for me and my life - I've been staying busy!  At the beginning of October I took the plunge and jumped out of a perfectly good airplane.  The one way flight put me 2 miles up above my destination...(Earth).  How measly 2 miles seemed after watching Felix Baumgartner take on a 23 mile high sky dive!  After watching him make history I thought to myself 2 miles was plenty for me! 

Right after the jump...

                   

After the parachute opened.  Probably the best view I've ever seen in my life...

After my skydiving adventures I went into the city of Washington D.C. to hang with some good friends Tristan and Ariel.  I got to visit the Capitol Memorial SDA Church and see some friends I haven't seen since the Brambles' wedding.  It was an all around blessing!

As for this week I have two days of work and then I'm gearing up to leave for Ohio on Thursday.   There I will spend the weekend hanging with the Bennetts, Brauns,  Elizabeth and Jo.

  The following weekend I will be off to Ecuador with an amazing team to complete corrective heart surgeries on the kiddos.  This is one of the joyous points of my chosen career path.  This year will be my 3rd with the team from Hershey Medical Center and I will be making a video to share the experience of The Children's Heart Group in action.  

*Wherever you go, go with all of your heart*

A borrowed blog...

I know an amazing girl named Jackie.  Jackie and I go back to 2009.  While our friendship seemed passing at the beginning, I've recently, this year, have grown close to her in a way that is virtually indescribable.  She is a fantastic person.  I know that God put her into my life for a specific reason, possibly a specific season.  I won't go into all of the details, but I was reading her blog entry from right before I went to Africa.  I love the ability that God has given her in regards to writing and expressing words in a way that I cannot.

Here is what she has to say...

THERE WAS A TIME. THEN IT ALL WENT WRONG.

“I just knew he was giving me lip service, Jackie,” one of my friends said over the phone last night, “I just didn’t want to believe it.” 

Why is it that when Fantine sings “I Dreamed a Dream” in Les Misérables it forms a lump in the throat? Perhaps the sting of being wrong about something we believed in enough to hope for is a hard thing to swallow. We struggle with disappointment when what we fight for still is just beyond our grasp. 

I find it dumbfounding how the same people keep coming into my life with different faces and names. Because it wasn’t just my friend cocking her head to the side with her “Really?” face on. Especially when games are still being played well after school is over. But, what can you do? I’ve been around the block. I’ve been around this block. 

After getting off the phone I watched Kathryn Schulz’s TED talks On Being Wrong and Don’t Regret Regret. Clearly I need an education on why history keeps pulling one over on me. But as soon as I stopped letting the steam cloud my vision, I heard something major. There’s a fact of life that is painfully true: sometimes we’re wrong. Our timing was slightly off. We retreated when we should have ran toward. We give the benefit of the doubt too hastily. We believe that this situation will turn out differently even if all signs point to a result that is just as bad—or worse. And it’s a stunner because at one point we had no doubt that we were right. 

Yet I find myself relating more to who God is. Not that God is ever wrong, but it’s in what seems to be a fool’s hope that what is broken inside of me can be made whole. And though I often try to pull the wool over His eyes, I’m sure God probably makes the same “Really?” face that I do. So when I sat down this morning thinking I finished writing this blog after that last sentence, my hurt melted into a smirk. When I opened My Utmost for His Highest the verse staring me in the face was John 2:24-25 and a sentence in the paragraph below it read this, “If I put my trust in human beings first, I will end in despairing of everyone; I will become bitter, because I have insisted on man being what no man ever can be—absolutely right.”

Yes, God. You ain’t no fool. I know that what you make right won’t pass me by.

I chose to share this specific entry with you because I was the "friend" that she mentioned in her post.  There was a time and then it all went wrong.  It is painful when we realize that we were wrong about something we wanted and hoped so much to be right about.  In a way it is comforting to know that we can never be "absolutely right".  It makes us fully dependent on God.  Not only God, but His plan, and His plan according to His timing.  Jackie, I couldn't have said it better myself, "Yes God, You ain't no fool.  I know that what You make right won't pass me by."  Amen to that! It's comforting to know that we have a God that is in control, a God that knows what He is doing, and a God that has our best interest at heart.  

People come, and people go...

           One of the most heart wrenching things about the world we live in, I find, is that we too often have to say the word "Goodbye". While some of you may think it is pretty insignificant, it's not to me. "Goodbye" is so powerful and it often leaves an empty place in my heart. There are many different reasons for having to use the word goodbye. At times one will say it to people that live a world away, while other times one will have to say it to people that live close to home. On the rare occasion people will have to hear it from those they don't want to hear it from. When I think of the pain that the heart endures when they let someone go, I can't help but look forward to heaven. Heaven, a place where the word goodbye will never have to be used again. Where we won't have to keep up with our close friends and family via facebook, twitter, and skype. Don't get me wrong, all of these modern technologies have made things a lot easier but the heart still longs for something different. I can't help but think about all of the people that have come into my life and all of the people that have exited my life. It is forever changing in relation to the different chapters of people's lives. Some are in the chapter of school while others are in the chapter of full-time ministry... The list could go on and on.

            A couple of weeks back I was at a wedding, Karlee and Eric's wedding!

                                   What an awesome team for God these two make :-)

At the wedding, I was blessed to see my good friends Scott and Heather Bennett. I wanted to stop them in their tracks and make them stick around a little bit longer. I only got to see them for about ten minutes. It almost made me feel selfish for wanting them to stay longer! Ten minutes was WAY better than no minutes, for sure! :-) Hugging them goodbye was difficult. When they left a little piece of my heart went along with them. If only they didn't live so far away.


           As most of you know I was in Africa, Kenya and Tanzania to be exact, for most of the month of June. I developed strong, everlasting friendships with the people that I was privileged to work with. What an amazing team they were, and what phenomenal work was done for the Kingdom. Medical Evangelism, Children's Ministry, Adult Ministry, and Door-to-door Evangelism. It was incredible to see the reality of God's hand in everything that took place. Every obstacle was according to His timing and His planning. He revealed Himself to us every step of the way. The miracles that took place left us rendered speechless and in awe of the amazing God that we serve. After my 3 weeks there I was sad to say "goodbye" to people I am blessed to know. The people that I developed lasting friendships with. Eternal friendships. My friend Joanne put it nicely, "Our social network in heaven is going to be awesome!" I couldn't have better stated it myself. I may not see them again on this earth, but I know for sure that I will be seeing them again in the eternal earth. Even so, Come Lord Jesus!


                       Here are some pictures that I have to share! Hope you enjoy! :-)



                                            Me with some kids at the orphanage

                                                                     Esther :-)

                                            Jo, Berenice, and I at the medical clinic

                                                           Seeing peds patients :-)

                                                                 Dynamic Duo!

                                   VBS activity! I loved the kids, they stole my heart!

                                     Learning about how germs spread... with glitter!

house

Daryl and Gerald praying with a family at the clinic!

I hope that you were able to experience some of Africa - Tanzania through these pictures.  It truly was a life changing experience. Praise God for allowing me the capabilities to do His work there! I am blessed!  

He who testifies to these things says, "Surely I am coming quickly."  May the grace of our Lord Jesus be with you until next time!

Running the good race!

“It is one thing to be seen at the starting line of a marathon; it’s quite another to be seen at the finish line,” says David Asscherick in an article written for the Adventist Review.
Pastor David Asscherick shares his experience of training and running a marathon. During the process he realized that finishing the marathon was a bigger quest than just losing weight and strengthening muscles. He claims, “It opened a window to his soul. It has been a call to unrushed prayer, undeferred scripture study, and unfeigned ministry. It has been a call to radical self-evaluation and a thorough spiritual inventory.”

Wow is what I thought! I bet you are thinking the same. How does a marathon evoke such intense revival and feelings? Let me share with you how David Asscherick puts it...

His training and enthusiasm was peak high for the first three months. Glorious even, an exciting blur, he explains. Lungs and legs were strengthening rapidly and times and distances were ahead of schedule. At his preparatory race, the 1/2 marathon, he did fantastic. He mistakenly assumed the marathon would be exactly twice as hard as the 1/2 marathon. Ok, he thought he could handle that. With this knowledge, his training took a hit the last three months. Ran a little less, fooled himself into thinking he was fitter than he was, skipped long runs, stayed in bed under the warm covers instead of getting up for the morning runs.
Suddenly, the race was three weeks away, three months, no three weeks! Somehow he resisted the urge to panic. He said, "Sure, I've trained, but I know inside not enough." Nervousness started to set in as he contemplated rescheduling or canceling. "How can I break it to my running partner, Gerard? Or to my younger brother, Robert, who's training faithfully so he can run with me? The dozens of people I've told confidently and a little too proudly, 'Yup, I'm running a marathon December 5.' How could I face them? How could I face myself?" He canceled his cancellation plans.
Race day arrives. He gets through the first 15 miles easily, then at mile sixteen his leg went into what he referred to as full blown Lucifer mode. It was like his legs stopped against his will. While experiencing cramps and pain, runners, by the hundred, were passing him left and right. Walking and wincing the only thing that he could think of is the last three months of careless preparation.
He began to notice the spiritual implications- and soon it was all he could think about. With each labored step all he thought was had he tricked himself similarly about his spiritual condition as he did his fitness condition? There is no substitute for preparation. A finisher is mostly made alone he says, so too with christianity. "Spiritual health and fitness are procured, largely, alone. The individual soul alone with God - “The work of preparation is an individual work,” wrote Ellen White. This is where real "religion" - "realigion," if you like - is to be found and fostered.
End-time heroics, like marathons, don't just happen in a vacuum. They require time and energy before the shining spotlight flicks on."
He finished the marathon but barely he says.

Wow! Are you thinking what I’m thinking?
Am I what I think I am? Are you?
Am I ready to run this race? Are you?
Am I kidding myself about my own spiritual condition? Are you?

These are the right questions and Jesus is the right answer. "Therefore.. let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith." (Heb 12:1,2)
And he ends, "Because again, it's one thing to stand at the start line and it's quite another to stand at the finish line. Don't be satisfied to 'look' like a finisher. Be a finisher! Prepare to meet your God!"


As for my life...

It's hard to believe the last time I updated was in December. God had been good to me! Ski season came and went. I did get a wonderful pair of new K2 Skis. Thanks to my Mommy.


Spring in Pennsylvania has come early! I'm not complaining! :-) It is nice to have sunny warm weather in the middle of March. I'm in the middle of planning my upcoming trip to Africa. I will be gone for most of June with my wonderful friend Joanne! I'm looking forward to the trip and spending some much needed quality time with Jo!
I also am the newest volunteer for Samaritan's Purse! I will be assisting their team, The Children's Heart Project with the transportation of children with cardiac defects to the United Sates to have surgery. How exciting! Definitely more to follow on this.

This week I have been struck by the profound thought of time. Thought: Giving a person your time is essentially giving someone a part of your life that you will never be able to take back. Time is love. So simple yet so profound! I think time is the best gift I could ever receive. :-) I'm thankful that God gives me His time and time abundantly. Life abundantly. May all that I do bring glory and honor to our Creator and Savior!