3 Men & a Lady!: The Beginning

The new interns are here! They are a small, but mighty team, 3 Men & a Lady! They hail to us from, Washington state, North Dakota, the Ozarks, & Wisconsin! Darn Yankees! We'll work in Joplin, Chicago, KC, Oklahoma City, Springfield, & mostly Thailand!

Night one: Traditional Chinese food and awkwardness! :)

Day two: They signed their lives away, no drugs, no dating, and the infamous no "any unspecified egregious behavior!"

 Then it was the Springfield Scavenger Hunt - The Mazda vs. The Lexus - Matt put some interesting items on this term's list:  Someone who looks intelligent:  we had fun finding a bunch of people who did NOT look intelligent, but I found this very intelligent looking crew at MSU:

 incidentally this is the largest number of African Americans I've EVER seen in Springfield, MO. (Evidently they  still practiced hangings on the square into the 80s here?!) That's only a slight exaggeration.  He also wanted us to find a woman OR pet who could be over 90! (For a man that is so political he's not very politically correct!) So I hung out in the Depends aisle forever, but that was no luck, and it seemed in appropriate to converge on the Maranatha Village and do a photo shoot or hit up a funeral home! The end result was we found 7 coffee shops, 15 pay day loan places, 39 churches (when the rapture comes Springfield will be full, I mean empty!), and 7 colleges!

Day 3:  We went to Greekfest, I learned what Eucharist means, Opa!

              Oh yeah, we hit up the nature center, and the boys have not shut up about how fast Nancy walked! I think it's the last time they let her set the pace! ha! Reminds me of when we let Sandy set the pace for PT in the desert and she took off sprinting! Never underestimate the grey hairs!

Day 4:  We hit up 20/20 for church- Pastor Jordan did a great job! Then Essjaydubb and I made an amazing lunch! Then we napped!

Day 5:  We hung the summer team on the Legacy wall- man we had a lot to say about that amazing bunch, & we prayed for each of em too! Then we learned about the mission of God, the Biblical mandate for Compassion & heard from some Amazing men that run this place like Kary Kingsland, Jim Batten, & our founder Hal Donaldson! We are Blessed!

Did you know that Convoy of Hope started with Hal and a pick up truck full of groceries in Southern California?

I'm sure you're tired of reading (imagine how tired we were from DOING!?) So, I'll start listening to this session on health & hygiene:  Matt just added some great insight, "How do you know if you have diarrhea?  If you're in the shower and you feel a shot of power, diarrhea!" This session is going downhill fast!

How Patton Changed My Life!

About 4yrs ago, when I was 25, I had vision insurance so, for fun, I had my eyes checked.  Dr. Pearl Vision said, "You're slightly near sighted blah, blah, blah and sent me home with some spectacles for driving & such.  Give yourself 2wks to get adjusted!"  Sure thing, Doc.  On the first day I felt disoriented, like I needed to step up on the curb, but there wasn't a curb! So I figured I didn't really need them.

Over the past couple of years I've asked more than once for presenters to focus the projector better because I was having trouble making out the words. However, when I would get up from my seat to go forward & assist them it seemed every time by the time I reached the first row the projector had self corrected!

By this past Spring, I was at Step 1: Admitting I have a problem.  (Until then I just wondered why the Department of Transportation continued to put out signs with teeny, tiny, blurry print! It seemed very irresponsible!) Unfortunately, I no longer have vision insurance and who knows where those initial spectacles went to!  However, I just happened to be in the Philippine Islands this spring! You haven't seen a mall until you've been to the Mall of Asia.  Oddly enough, free eye exams caught my eye! (Must've been in bigger and better print than those DOT signs!) Or possibly, missionaries are just drawn to the word FREE!

I took my eye exam like a champ, puff of air and all. Dr:  "You have a stigmatism." Me:  "Is that a Tagalog word?"  He explained it, but it was all Greek, Tagalog to me! I left with $50 Gap frames prescriptionized for my stigmata.  My team had been out doing something super spiritual like watching the Hunger Games or something.  My co-workers convinced me no one would even notice.  Corey saunters up first thing out of his mouth, "Sweet! Now we can get the senior citizen's discount."  Needless to say, my new glasses didn't make too many other appearances!

At 29 years old I don't need to be mistaken for a grandma! So, I turn around a lot, I can finally see the street signs when I pass them so I just turn around at the next available spot! It's a small price to pay.

However, this week a stand up guy changed my life in the Convoy of Hope warehouse. I had left my office and someone had locked the door to the warehouse and my key doesn't fit that lock so I was frustrated.  I went around ran my errands in the upstairs offices and was making my way back thru the very, dimly lit warehouse.  About 50ft from my office I see a tall slender man standing right by that door that got locked! He was just standing there staring.  It was creepy! "Hey!", I greeted (more because I had a bone to pick with the chump who locked me in more than out of friendliness!)  He evidently was hard of hearing because he didn't even flinch.  I shouted louder, he was kind of unnerving me! It wasn't until I got about 20ft off did I realize this was not a man at all, but a very tall fan!

I of course shared my startling experience with my BFF, who would never mock me! Sara walks out to the warehouse & introduces herself to said fan, & proceeds to have a conversation with him, "Oh you already met my friend Mary Beth?  You guys talked a bit earlier? Nice, nice."  And since then has made herself laugh with lines like, "He's a stand up guy!  He's your biggest fan!  He sure gets turned on easily!"  The fun is never ending around here! So, thanks to Patton, here's my new look!

S & M, the Interns & my Wii Fit

 I've always gotten the words Sadistic & Masochistic confused.  It's not like in Bible college they said, "A Pharisee is someone who is all about following the rules they were 'Fair-is-sees' and the Sadducees did not believe in  heaven therefore they were 'Sad-u-see'; oh! And by the way, a sadistic person derives pleasure from inflicting pain & a masochistic person derives pleasure from receiving pain!" Yes, I also have my masters in counseling, but I still get these words confused; so when I want to employ those words I just mumble the first part and end with a bold ISTIC.. "saaamaaaassssISTIC Jerk!"

At the end of each intern term we debrief as a team and each person answers the following questions:  1)what was your God moment?  2) your funniest moment? 3) what will you take away from this experience?  & 4) A shout out?

This term the God moments ranged from:  The miracle of a woman getting up and walking out of her wheel chair to (possibly also a miracle) Aaron holding a baby and realizing, "Hey I don't really hate kids!" Each category usually holds a wide range of answers like these; people are different!  However, one category had little to no range this term, the funniest moment category! It went like this:

  "When Jess fell down in the middle of the clean water skit & couldn't walk afterwards!"

  "When Ashley stepped off the curb and had to go to the hospital!"

"When we had the kids act out the Good Samaritan story and somehow the Samaritan ended up being the fattest  (healthiest) kid there and Richard was the donkey and she had to ride on him!"

"When Morgan challenged Mary Beth to the pull up contest in the back of the canter and MB jumped rather than pulled and busted her head on the steel top likely resulting in a concussion!"

"When we had to run thru the Miami airport and Marissa was turned around running backwards to tell everyone where to go and she literally bounced off that big column!"

Then I realized in terms past it has been very similar:  "When your face swelled up!"  "When Cameron got smacked in the face with the poop rag!" "When Corey was stuck hanging from the wall with his very uncomfortable harness on!" "When Debby almost smacked the tree zip lining!"

The interns are SADISTIC, it's Sad-u-cee! Who enjoys seeing others inflicted with pain?  I mean I'll admit I've viewed The Grape Lady on YouTube more than once and gotten a decent ab workout in, but I don't DVR "Wipe Out" or anything! So I've been left wondering am I the OTHER one! Do I like to inflict pain? (No comment from the peanut gallery, it's a rhetorical question!!!)

Last night I had a revelation:  I turned on my wii fit, all the Mii s came out, one of which is my skinny little sister & more than one of her men friends who have been around long enough to create Miis.  The only Men Miis that belong to Mii are  (is) my dad! So that's pain infliction #1 & #2.  Then MY Mii comes out, (your height + your weight = your shape!) equalling pain infliction #3,4, & 5!! THEN I step on and the Wii (which is obviously a practicing SADIST!) has the audacity to moan "ooohhhhh!" Then it says other nice things to you like, "That's Obese!" "This mind challenge was obviously not your thing!" "Your wii fit age is 39!!! That's 10 years older than your actual age!" "You are unbalanced!" (Pain inflictions: #6-10)

Sooo, to sum it up: Sadducee = Sad-U-see, Pharisee = Fair-is-see, Sadistic = The Interns & The WiiFit, Masochistic = MBK.

(Nope you really can't get these last 5 minutes of your life back!!!)

Helen's House

Joplin's F5 tornado caused unimaginable destruction; calling for an unimaginable need for response.  Convoy of Hope was on the ground while the winds were still blowing and are STILL on the ground today. Over the last 15 months our Disaster Response department has taken each of our intern teams  out to be a part of our work there.  From setting up the warehouse, to assisting victims, to debris removal, to clean up, we've gotten to be a small part of the whole response, but our Summer 2012 interns got to be a part of the coolest part of this thing yet!

Convoy of Hope was blessed on the last episode of Extreme Makeover Home Edition enabling us to be a part of the Joplin rebuild. They've not taken this task lightly, they've gone GREEN in the rebuild, the materials used are energy efficient to help out their new owners, and I'm told that the new homes are to be with able to withstand any storm of the future. The recipients of these new homes have been carefully and strategically chosen, starting first with uninsured elderly who somehow didn't qualify for any other assistance.  This whole process led us to Helen.


One year and some days after that terrible storm took Helen's home, the Convoy of Hope truck pulled into town again, but this time into her driveway.  85 year old Helen was displaced by that massive storm, her home gone, her things destroyed.  She's been couch surfing ever since, finally landing at a home with several other displaced victims. She met us at the door, "They've got dogs, kids, and they smoke! Let's get out of here!" She stopped short, furrowed her brow, placed her hands on her hips, "Where's the muscle?" (I had arrived with about a dozen girls, the men were in another vehicle, & hadn't arrived yet!) I assured, well, I tried to assure her, we were of some use too, but she didn't really ever buy it! The girls hauled out totes, mattresses, box springs, all sorts of big things, yet Helen didn't cheer until the "muscles" arrived a half hour later! I assure you the girls had it, you'll see the "muscle" standing around in this picture.

When all was loaded up we drove the short distance across town & pulled up to Helen's brand new house. It stands on the same plot of land where her previous home stood.  My little worker bees had her unloaded in no time flat.  She leaned in to hug us and began a tearful thank you and good bye. I said, "Oh we're not leaving!" (The interns had come to me as soon as they were done unloading boxes and requested to unpack for her.) Not only did they unpack for Helen they put together the brand new furniture donated from Ashley Furniture, the washed all of her dishes, and put together all her new kitchen appliances that had been donated! I think they would have put her drawers in her drawers if I had let them, but I coaxed them out there with a promise to feed them. Before we left, we prayed over Helen and her new home. What a blessing-to US that is! What a beautiful picture of what God can do when disaster strikes! He's the real muscle- able to clean up, to rebuild, to restore, to redeem!

Monumentous

  We'd been in Haiti about a week. We clunked along the national highway, dust flying everywhere.  My Old Navy t-shirt read "1994" at the bottom, the team teased, "That was the year before I was born! 2 years for me!!"  They giggled and cheered over the roar of the traffic.  Our box truck took a left turn; having been here before I knew we were entering the mass grave site, resting place to an unknown number of Haitian men, women, and children in unmarked graves.  In January of 2010, over 200,000 loved ones had to be hastily buried here, in some of the most undignified burials of all time, but what's an impoverished nation to do when in a matter of minutes, their world literally collapses around and on top of them?  It was an unprecedented occasion to say the least. Monumentous.


  The site, to be honest, it mostly looks like a field & contrary to popular belief you cannot still smell death in its midst, although for a long time you could. I bit my tongue as we parked.  I wanted to shout to the teens, "No laughing. No horseplay.  No talking. Step carefully. Show some respect for the dead!"  But there was no need, as the teenagers and twenty somethings filed off the back of the truck a somberness & silence fell over them without direction, without request.  A small bit of dignity was being given back to those souls whose bones lay beneath us that day.

While the gravesite is still unmarked, small memorials stand, but if you're imagining anything of monumental proportion well, you're likely overshooting.   In a country that is quite literally still digging out of the ashes, monuments do not take precedence over food, water, and basic healthcare. A shrine will have to wait for the orphans to find homes, for new gardens to grow, and for the wounded to heal some more. Those that are still moving forward are really the true monuments of this story.

 When I was here six months ago, a few thousand little wooden crosses stood to mark the area, however, today they're all tattered and worn and lay flat.   I noticed this pile of discarded crosses right at the foot of the hill.

It's a sad sight no matter, how you look at it, but something about where they were placed struck me.  It wasn't that the location was a graveyard, it was the bottom of the hill that got me. I guess all those messages about take up your cross and follow Jesus were not lost on me because an image of Christians carrying these little black crosses flashed through my mind.  As the scene unfolded, they would get to the bottom of the hill and think to themselves, "Making this climb will sure be easier without having to carry this cross," and then they'd lay down their cross and go about their way.


  I began to think of real people in my life, who at one time walked strong and hard with Lord, but not anymore.  I thought, THIS is what it looked like in the spiritual realm, they're walking along and they faced SOMETHING, a moral dilemma, an opportunity of some sort, an obstacle, a tragedy, heck, maybe they won they lottery for all I know, but whatever it was it was somehow incongruent with walking with Christ because the cross became cumbersome & didn't seem to fit into their lifestyle anymore so they laid it down! It was a monumentous occasion.

 They discarded it, they moved forward on their own; free of the painfully heavy cross, it's rough edges were pretty uncomfortable at times, all around just in their way, and it stuck out like a sore thumb so often, not to mention all the times it got in someone else's way and they had to hear about it; yes, it had grown to be offensive. When I thought about those real life people who once steadily followed after Christ and where they are today, I became painfully aware of the grave yard in which I was standing.
(The whole image was so overwhelming that I retreated to the back of the truck, tore open backpacks till I found someone's journal and tore out a blank page to write it all down!)

For a minute I felt defeated and almost began to imagine that I really could STILL smell death here! Then I looked up,  surrounding the mass gravesite, are beautiful mountains, Haitians still trudge onward, even at the sight you can hear the play of children, the sun shines high and bright over the Caribbean sea; the stench of death has been replaced by a faint whisper of hope.  The story remains unfinished for the island nation of Haiti; its truly monumentous days are ahead, may a shrine be built to those instead. The story remains unfinished for those discarded crosses too; (most of them anyway, some found death too quickly.)  I pray for you whose faces I recall with fondness, may you hear the whisper of hope and the shouts of love from Your Father and run to Him in response.  Like Haiti, may your Monumentous days be ahead of you and not behind!

Deuteronomy 30:19: Choices

Deuteronomy 30:19 reads,  "This day I call the heavens & the earth as witnesses against you that I have set before you Life & Death, Blessings & Curses. Now Choose Life, so that you and your children may live.

  This verse was part of my devo today. After a trip to a place like Haiti, your mind can be stretched and scattered a million different places causing a million different emotions.  However, I experienced many of the same emotions after a long day working with TennCare families in middle Tennessee or a long day of ministry in Kansas City, Missouri.

  At the end of the day, it all boils down to choices. I know, I know, there are things we have NO choice about, no one is going to choose cancer, or a fatal car accident of their family member, or choose to lose their job. BUT we DO get to choose how we handle those things, how we conduct ourselves in the midst of LIFE, to get up or lay down and die!

  In this verse above God tells us that He has set before us, life & death, blessings & curses. He instructs us to choose life. I find that He added the "choose life," part both odd and funny, and evidently absolutely necessary!  I saw it in KC, in TN, and now all over the world, people NOT choosing life! Whether, it's the candy bar that leads to obesity, the credit cards that lead to debt, the cigarette that leads to cancer, the  the affair that leads to divorce, the drink that leads to addiction, the gamble that costs us everything; it boils down to our choice; life or death?

  I know it's not simple, I can't seem to grasp the self discipline to choose and apple over a candy bar, when the "which is better for me?" answer is as clear as day! But that choice matters, for me & for my children if God gives me my own some day. Why do I mention children?  Because the verse tells us to choose life so that our children may live. Our choices affect our children, the children of others, children everywhere. Part of me is fighting breaking out into Michael Jackson's, "We are the World!", the other part of me is fighting the urge to make the obvious correlation between this verse   & "Choose Life" over abortion! But whether it's a big or little choice, it matters & will affect those around you & even those far away (it just depends on how many beans you choose to eat!!)

  I'm not entirely sure where I'm going with this, well, I do I guess, you have CHOICES. Maybe life is not going well right now, maybe it's gotten awfully dark for you and your's. You really do have a way out, you really do have choices, if they're not as clear cut as a candy bar or an apple, ask for help, seek True Life, seek Him, you'll find Him on your knees, in His word, & hopefully in His children.

  John 10:10 The thief comes to steal, kill, & destroy; I have come that you may have life, & have to the FULL.

  Choose Life.

 

Flashback

Present day:  Hanging with the interns. Talking about the body of Christ and what part they would be.  I told Sara she's the appendix because most of the time it needs to be removed and you can live without it.  Then I told Morgan she was the Spincter. (Gifts of Affirmation has never been my spiritual gifting!) They, in turn, began to quote The Little Rascals to me, which is fitting because they really ARE Little Rascals!

It was then that the flashback took place.  I was immediately back in my first office at Englewood Ministries. (The one that was a closet before they gave it to me as an office!) I sat down to check my voicemail and was greeted by the voice of a 4 year old)  

 "Dear Pastor Mary,

     I hate your stinkin guts! You make me vomit! You are the scugs between my toes! 

  

Love, 

     JoJo Ross" 

Last week, JoJo and I were on the same island of Hispanola, but hours a part from one another, but serving the same BIG God!