I have officially decided to take a role with Heaven Fest, an upcoming worship/music festival in North Denver presented by Worship and the Word Movement.  I was approached and asked to be the Director of Operations for this event and am hugely excited to have said “Yes!”

I will still continue on with my work at Confluence Ministries and Get the Word Out.  The duties for this music festival (on July 26th) will be additional to my duties at these other ministries.

 God is setting this festival up for Him.  The leadership spends countless hours praying that the manifest presence of the Lord will show up on that day and we’re working to make this fest attractive to Him.  We not only want to get thousands of believers and unbelievers, but we want the Lord to show up in a big way.

Please check out the website for more details on this non-profit festival and how you can volunteer.  This thing is huge in the spirit and I’m extremely honored and grateful to be a part of it! 

www.heavenfest.com

Please keep me in your prayers!  The Enemy certainly doesn’t want this thing to happen and is waging war against it already.

Check out my new “Videos” page (at left) to see clips from South Africa and Venezuela!

Every time I go to Venezuela, I forget a little more that the kids we’re ministering to have the pasts that they do.  With every trip comes new areas of healing and growth for them.  I delight in these children.  They are children, just like my nieces and nephews are.  They understand when they do good and they are disciplined when they are naughty just like children all over the world.

Here’s a story about discipline:

The guard that Tony hires to protect the orphanage during the nights had a cell phone stolen the second to last evening that we were there.  We, as a team, didn’t know about it until we were on our way into the local town on foot.  My black sandals were a dull gray from dust by the time I arrived at the small one-room church that could barely contain children and American visitors from the Home of Refuge orphanage.  There would probably have only been ten people at the service if we hadn’t joined them that day.

We noticed a handful of the boys from our Home of Refuge family were missing from this excursion and later found out that ten of them were sent to their rooms due to the stolen phone incident.  Stealing is, obviously, not acceptable.  Just as we would teach our kids how wrong it is to steal, Tony teaches his kids the same thing.  He wants these children to understand that they don’t have to do that anymore.  These children are used to lying, cheating, manipulating, begging and stealing to get what they need.  Unfortunately, these are habits learned living on the streets as Tony knows too well, growing up on the streets himself.  Though these kids know that all of their needs (and a lot of their wants) are provided for at the Home of Refuge, old habits die hard.  Like they do in all of us. 

The ten boys became known as the Dirty Diez.  Hopefully I don’t have to tell you that that’s a spin off of the Dirty Dozen.  What made this situation comical was the fact that the boys’ rooms have a normal door and a type of screen door without the screen.  It’s really a barred door that allows you to leave the normal door open in the hottest months so that a breeze will come through.  This day the normal doors were open and only the ”screen doors” were closed allowing plenty of air to blow through.  Anytime a team member would pass by the rooms housing the Dirty Diez, a passel of skinny brown arms would shoot out between the bars of the door as though it were a prison cell and they would holler out wanting you to come see them while they enviously watched the other kids play at will.

A few memorable photos (one such above) were taken of those being disciplined, peeking their faces out through the “prison bars”.  It reminded me of getting in trouble when I was younger.  Going to your room felt as bad as being sent to prison.  You couldn’t understand why you were made to sit in there, bored out of your mind, for hours (in reality only 5 minutes) when you really just wanted to go and continue to play without receiving the consequences of being bad.

Finally, Tony, being the tender-hearted Father that he is, let the boys come out after the phone miraculously turned back up.  They’d all learned the lesson of how severe it is to steal.  The boys ran out hooping and hollerin’ and ran circles around the other kids in incredible bursts of delayed energy.  Since this was our last day at the orphanage, we were happy that they had been released on good behavior so we could spend time with the naughty ones before leaving.

We’re really all the same, aren’t we?  We all need people to love us, touch us, encourage us, show us the right way, provide for us, protect us and discipline and rebuke us.  No matter where we come from or what we’ve been through, we can’t develop in a healthy way without these things. 

Proverbs 3:12 “because the LORD disciplines those he loves, as a father the son he delights in.”  The next time God ’sends me to my room’, I will remember that it’s for my good, to learn to be different than I was when I was an orphan who desperately needed rescuing.

Mary Jean Powers and I will be taking a team of 9 young adults to the Home of Refuge orphanage in Venezuela in two weeks to:

• Build a kitchen to improve their current facilities.
• Teach English, Computers and Art to the children.
• Teach their nightly chapel services.
• Love the kids by giving plenty of affection, touch and speaking words of life to them!

For this kitchen project, we’re looking to raise $10,000.  We already have half of that but need help to raise the rest of the funds.  Please take a few moments to go and read some of the stories of the children that the Home of Refuge orphanage serves: www.homeofrefuge.org.  If you’re interested in donating toward this project, make checks out to the “Home of Refuge” and mail them to me (info under “Donate” at left) or donate online by going to their website.  If you donate online, please click “Email Tony” after making the contribution and specify that the funds are to go toward the “Colorado team kitchen project.”  100% of donations go toward the project.

Please also keep us in your prayers!  Pray for safety and provision and that we would be led by the Spirit.

If you’re interested in sending me on this trip, please see where and how to send donations by clicking on “Donate.”  All donations through Home of Refuge or Get the Word Out are tax deductible.

One of the last nights we were in South Africa, we returned from a grandiose shopping mall in the area.  We took a nine-year-old boy named Reggie from the 6th Avenue camp there to buy him some more clothes since he only has two pairs of shorts that are ratty and always dirty and his shoes and shirts aren’t much better.

Reggie’s mom died of TB which basically means that she had AIDS.  His dad was never in the picture.  At his mom’s funeral, his aunt and rest of his family told Sister Rebekah (who had lived by Reggie and was taking care of him after his mom’s death) that they would be by to pick him up in a week or so.  That was last September and they’ve never come for him.  They’ve promised a few times to come and get him and never show up.  His father came to see him for the first time since the funeral a couple of weeks ago.  He gave Reggie 2 rand (equivalent to $0.30) and then left him there to get drunk with other men in the camp.  Needless to say, he was horribly despondent.

Sister Rebekah has taken him in as one of her own and the Lord has placed a special love for him in Ben’s and Alicia’s hearts.  They don’t feel like his life should be upset further by them attempting to adopt him.  So they’re going to do what they believe the Lord would have them do by becoming partnering parents with Sister Rebekah.

A man donated some money for this trip to provide food and clothing for anyone we met who needed it, so we determined to spend a little one-on-one time with Reggie and took him out to get some more clothes.

For someone who lives in the poorest type of community in South Africa and only gets out long enough to go to a local school and church, he was fascinated by everything he saw on our way to a richer area.  We wondered if we should take him into a place of such wealth or if it would be overwhelming or make him self-conscious.

We decided that that was the only suitable place around.  He couldn’t sit still in the car, but was constantly moving, looking at all the sights and sounds around him.  His excitement was contagious.  When we were walking indoors, Ben threw him up on his shoulders and Reggie asked if we were still in South Africa…it looked so completely different from where he lived.

Riding the escalator was fun.  Reggie is a go-getter, but tentatively held onto Alicia’s hand as though he were a two-year-old, afraid to fall.  After he did it once though, he proceeded to do it a few more times and raced up the stairs and bounded down them, knocking into several affronted rich people:)  It was hard to scold him.  Why not let him have his fun?

We allowed him to pick out some shoes for himself.  He got the same kind he had on, though much newer and cleaner.  We got two outfits, ones that weren’t too flashy, but practical for where he lives.  We know they won’t last long and will be extremely torn and dirty soon.

He played and played in the mall.  It was fun to watch him with Ben who gave him his full attention the entire time we were there.  They did things that would be considered disruptive and inappropriate to do in a mall such as this, but he was having the time of his life.  Especially with the sole attention of four adults who adored him(especially one such as Ben with such a tender father’s heart toward him).  He marveled at a Bible in a Christian bookstore that was small enough to fit in the palm of his hand and raced to find me and Alicia to show us what he had discovered himself.

After getting him some clothes, we went for some frozen yoghurt (that’s how it’s spelled there).  While the three of us women went to run some errands, Ben took him into a part of the mall where the Disney Channel was set up doing some advertising and had big blow up games for kids.  They went and bounced in a bouncer and slid down a slide several times.

We finally took him home, but not before he went through the revolving entrance with Ben three times.  Being as it was rush hour, it took us a while to get there.  It was chilly in the backseat with Mary Jean, Reggie and me so Mary Jean and I had our jackets covering us.  Reggie scrunched in between us and covered himself with both of our jackets and laid his face against my shoulder while looking out the window.  I was determined to give him all the love and touch we could.  He insisted on counting the cars on all 6 trains that we saw.  Luckily none were over 13.  We all hung out in Ben and Alicia’s flat for a while and gave him some snacks and showed him pictures of the elephants at the elephant park.

Then it was time to return him to his home.

As I think of what that one trip did for him, I’m humbled that I was there.  We didn’t particularly want to bring him into the “rich” world, because there’s such death in consumerism and gorging oneself on “things”.  We didn’t want him to see how others live and desire that life.  We want him to desire something so much greater.  There are many rich people in all of Cape Town (primarily white) and too many poor people (black and colored - that’s how they specify themselves there) still living in shacks that flood with water everytime it rains.  There are still millions of kids like Reggie who run around barefoot sometimes in his “backyard” which is an empty lot along the edge of the camp that is positively filled with broken glass and debris.  His nose is always running and he’s always dirty.  The only food that the adults can afford to buy are things like little bags of cheetos and candy.  That’s what they eat and that’s what they feed the children.  They’re highly uneducated about nutrition, but even if they were, how do you tell people whose husbands lie in bed all day and only come out to get drunk or abuse them that they need to buy healthy food which is more expensive?

At the prayer meeting we had one morning, Sister Rebekah told us how they had had nothing to eat one day that week, but there was a boy in the camp who had come to see her and was sick and she desperately wanted to feed him.  So she knew God would provide something to eat…..for him.  And God did.  This is normal for them.

New clothes are good for Reggie.  He’ll enjoy them, but not because he’ll look good which is the reason the rest of us would enjoy new clothes.  He’ll enjoy them because he’ll remember that four adults took just him to the mall that day.  He’ll enjoy them remembering how special he was to four people he loves and he’ll remember how much the four of us love him.

Lord, plant more Reggie’s in my life.  Plant kids who need me to just love them.  To wrap my arms around them or to share my coat and shoulder as Jesus does for me.

Back from South Africa this past week, where I spent 4 weeks ministering alongside a couple from Denver who recently moved there.

Top five favorite things about South Africa:

• The people in the 6th Avenue Squatter’s Camp.
• It is the most beautiful place I’ve ever been!  Town after town is picture perfect and looks different everywhere you go.  God’s creativity is mind-blowing!
• The wildlife!  Baboons on the side of the road, elephants, lions, ostriches, warthogs & more.
• The pace - Being a relationship-oriented country, things are much more laid back and generally centered around relationships.
• Christians call other believers, “Sister (or Brother) ”.  Helps me remember that we’re all a part of the same amazing family.

Check out my photos page for pictures!

Well, we’re either on our way to South Africa right now or we’re already there depending on when you’re reading this.  We’re so excited to see what the Lord will do through us and in us on this trip.  Please pray for our safety, protection against sickness and divine appointments with those who we need to minister to and with those who need to minister to us!  Look for updates along the way…

Our team returned safely, albeit two days late, from Venezuela.  Check out my “Photos” page for pictures and “Newsletters” for an update on the trip.  Mary Jean Powers and I will head for South Africa for four weeks, November 7th.  To hear more about what we’ll be doing in South Africa, check out my “Upcoming Trips” page.

Are you looking for ways to reach the lost? Check out my “Partners Place” page to see upcoming outreach opportunities. If you need help finding a place to use your specific giftings and talents from the Lord to serve, please contact me! I will help you find a place to do the ministry that the Lord has placed on your heart!

Thanks for stopping by!

• Check out my Photos page to see pictures of recent mission trips to Venezuela and New Orleans, as well as outreach events at Confluence Ministries.
• Find out more about what I’m up to by going to About and Upcoming Trips!
• Click on Donate and Pray! to find out how you can partner with what the Lord is doing in my life.
• Be sure to check out the Newsletters link for the latest update on what I’ve been up to!

I’d love to hear from you, feel free to Contact Me!