the BBQ in tweets

take a chicken. cut off its head. let it run around. that is what i resembled the morning of the BBQ.

praying, Lord, please just let this be a success in your eyes, and let me not measure it with my own 'success-stick' for fear of it falling it terribly short. let it be just as you want it to be.

it is dang hot out here. can someone turn the A/C up outside? and yes, i AM cooling off the whole neighborhood. heeh.

a few guests arrive and we haven't prayed yet. eeps! finding a private spot outside to pray over the event. some of our guests end up in the prayer circle. thank you, friends.

we have an 'info hub' set up right as people come in. it consisted of four laptops showing the Village of Hope website, a Village of Hope video, the VOH facebook page and the jonandtrace facebook page. we've also got some copies of my mission letter and a place to drop donations. a lot of people seem very interested in finding out more about what we are embarking on.

the grillin' guys bring in the first of the burgers and dogs and kevin blakely prays a blessing over the food and our time together. the loading of the plates begins!

we put on a video of village of hope on the big screen tv so people can learn more about it while they eat.

jon and i take turns greeting people at the door, making sure they have a ticket* and giving them a brief tour of where to find things. it was great to be able to see people as they came in, i just wish i had more time with everyone.

*the tickets are given out, one to each family, for several drawings we had during the evening. some wonderful folks donated items for us to give away:

• two 1-hr massages
• one 1-hr personal training session
• 1 dinner for four prepared in the winner's home by deborah
• 1 room painted (winner supplies the paint) by damon
• a framed photograph - jon's handiwork
• a framed drawing - grethel's handiwork
• 2 wire-frame beaded crosses made by lynde
• 1 bracelet made by sue
• several bracelets made by jo

it seemed like whoever won an item, that it was a perfect fit between winner and item. i was so pleased to see people getting to benefit with these generous gifts. i wish everyone could have won something!

the chicken with no head running around? yeh, that's still me. grateful, though, for my family who is helping to care for the details so i can hobnob and talk with our guests.

then a very special guest walked in. someone i hadn't seen since the late 80s. someone who lived with us for a while. someone whom i call 'brother'. it was an unexpected delightful surprise and, yes, i cried.

answering questions about village of hope and the children there. one person was very concerned for our safety and talked about the many dangers there. i replied, not for the first time, "yes. imagine how those children must feel." Father, may i never put my safety above obedience, may fear never paralyze me from serving you. may i prefer death and ridicule and tidal waves over staying too close to the shore you've called me away from. and Father, may i never choose safely resting outside of your will over serving you, regardless of any peril or pain that awaits me.

i looked around me. these are my dear friends, my loved ones, who care about me and care about this ministry we are sent on. God bless them all as they bless me by simply being a part of my life.

finally a chance to grab a veggie burger. i get through a third of it. called away to greet more guests.

a few more drawings. a few more winners.

i am introduced to tam's friend who is sponsoring a child in africa - she showed me some pictures. she sent him money for his birthday and he used it to buy a goat. this goat provides much needed dairy products for his whole family. i think about what i spend my own money on.

i'm trying to visit with everyone. i know i missed getting to sit with some of them. "please forgive me! i love you and am delighted you came!"

some of my friends there are going on a mission trip of their own this summer. i know they have their own funds to raise, so them being there and contributing to our trip means all the more to me.

the evening is winding down and we give away the last door prize. hugs, kisses and farewells at the door. i turn around to survey the cleaning up to be done. my eyes land on a basket full of envelopes. each envelope contains a gift toward this mission and a story of its own. my heart has growing pains.

i finally finish my partially eaten veggie burger.

it is just family and a couple of dear friends left. we sit outside and sip on some wine and talk and laugh and drown in the goodness of one another's company.

i update my facebook profile status: i have blessings bigger than my heart can hold. they overflow.

the BBQ that i fretted over seemed like it was just as God had intended it to be. i felt honored to be a part of it. what did i do to deserve such great friends? nothing. it is a gift from God that cannot be earned, only treasured. and treasure it i shall. i see all of your faces. i recall our words and the smiles we shared that day, and i treasure it all.

thank you.

i wish i could say it better than that. grander than that. to really get my feelings out on the page. but... i guess more really isn't better. hah. so... thank you.

we have less than $800 to raise. but greater than that,... we are marinating in God's goodness and your friendships.

unexpectations

i smell brownies. a huge batch of them were baked and cooled last night and i'm finishing up with the rest of them now.

they're for the BBQ. a fundraiser event jon and i are having this evening to raise support for our mission to village of hope, uganda.

it's hard to concentrate as chocolatey wafts of brownie pass under my nose. so tempting.

where was i?

the BBQ. this has been a challenge of faith for me, this BBQ. i know, right?,.. it's a BBQ!!!

but it's been so much more than that.

when we first received some wonderful items that were donated to be raffled off, we looked into the whole raffle idea and concluded that we cannot, legally, hold a raffle. so we prayed together about it and no sooner had we amen'd than we had thought, let's have a BBQ to raise funds and give these donated items away as door prizes.

so i called my mom and asked her for some guidance - she's so good at stuff like that - and the next thing we knew we were planning this thang.

as an aside, my family was so great - very supportive, very generous. they always are. and i just wanted to put this out there publicly and thank them from my whole heart.

we invited everyone we knew. and some people we didn't (my bro and sis invited their friends, too). but as we tracked the "yes's" the numbers just weren't there. and i began to get discouraged. i thought, 'is God not behind this?'

and i prayed [and worried] for the BBQ attendance to grow.

then i checked again. and although the yes's still didn't amount to much, the maybe's were over 50. what do i do with that? how do i know how much food to get with over 50 maybe's?

back to the praying board.

here's the thing, though. i was counting on the numbers to be there (pardon the pun). i wanted to see God be so big in the BBQ that we would fill the house to overflowing.

but what if God's idea of success for this was that someone would learn about God, or draw closer to him? what if the 'numbers' were in moments of belief or raised awareness of orphans?

what if this BBQ has nothing whatsoever to do with uganda or village of hope or even *gasp* me... but that it was fashioned by God to reach out to someone in a way they needed to be reached out to and they come to know Christ as their Lord and their Savior. would it be worth it to me then to have 8 people at a BBQ where someone becomes a citizen of Heaven? ...YES!

then why, oh why have i been troubled by something so menial? i guess i just needed to know that God has his hand in it.

so i asked for forgiveness for such little faith. i asked God to help me to rely fully on him. and to be obedient to him no matter what the outcome appeared to be. and every time i started to doubt or worry, i would ask God to remove it from me.

then... unexpectedly, yesterday aka the day before the BBQ!!... i heard from a friend of mine. she asked if we'd gotten drinks yet because she just received coupons that will get 11 free 12-packs of soda. "i'll take them!" i said. and immediately realized that God's hand is, indeed, in this. and in ways i didn't imagine them to be.

maybe, as i took the first few painful steps to let all of my silly worries behind me, God decided to reward me with some assurance and so let forth a small display of his control and concern. he provided in a way i never though he would: sodas. i thought it would be in the numbers.

silly me.

so as i continue to try and let God do his thang and i try and stay out of it until he directs me, i am in delightful expectation of seeing how else he is going to creatively provide - in ways i don't expect and cannot possible imagine.

Father - i believe in you. please forgive my unbelief.

gracious sinners

it seems that all around me lately are situations where someone was responsible for someone else's "stuff" and something happened to that "stuff" but the someone responsible had trouble owning up to it to the someone else.

cryptic, i know. but for the sake of those i love dearly and wish to protect that's all you get.

it's really gotten me to thinking - what keeps us from admitting a wrong, even when it's an accidental wrong? what is so difficult about owning up to a mistake? why do we have such a hard time saying i'm sorry?

we act like we are frightened to death to appear to anyone anything less than perfect. but who are we kidding? we all know that we make mistakes and we all know that people are going to know we make mistakes whether we admit it to them or not. so if we are already seen in the very light we dread, what's the point of hiding it?

why don't we man up to it rather than hide what is already obvious?

i think we are a generation of avoiders. it seems we fear the discussion so much that we determine it's better not to have it. but what is to fear? looking bad? we've already established that no one knows we are perfect. people's reactions, then?

someone came to me in tears telling me of some trouble they were having with friends of theirs but they didn't want to tell them about it because "they knew - they just knew - that their friends would blow up in anger and yell and take the opposite side and... " (the fear went on and on.) it turned out that they had already had the discussion in their mind and had created an entire scenario that was the worst they could imagine and then they convinced themselves that their imagined response was exactly how it was going to play out.

we talked about it. we prayed about it. and then they finally decided they would have that conversation even if it resulted in their worst fear.

guess what.

it went great!! and everything was smoothed over and in the end my friend was thanked for bringing the issue out in the open because they had no idea that my friend was feeling this way.

the imagined scenario never happened!

my friend wallowed in and tortured themselves with something that wasn't even real.

i've been on both ends of the problem. i know the fear. but i also know what it feels like to have someone avoid me. and oh!.. the thoughts and feelings that result from being avoided. things like...

"i don't matter to my friend." only my friend matters to my friend. their self-perception (which we all see right through, including them) is more important than our friendship.

"my friend has no faith in me." they believe me to be a monster who will no longer care for them because i place my "stuff" above them.

"my friend has no [or limited] faith in God." they believe God can handle any problem except this one or that he can only cover the easy stuff.

"i am being punished." i no longer get to enjoy my friend's company because they don't want to be around me for fear of the issue coming out in the open.

i think you get the idea. and i'm sure you could probably add to the list. we've all been there.

and hey - maybe there are people out there who will play right into our imagined scenarios and become the very monster we fear. but i think most of us are kind, decent folk who prefer an honest admission over ...silence.

i think when someone is willing to appear as imperfect as they really are - it heaps integrity upon them. i think it displays their trust in God that if they humble themselves then he will honor them.

i think we are somehow misled into thinking that character is more about succeeding well rather than mistaking well.

when someone avoids - they come across as sneaky. deceitful. i'm sorry - but they do. we do. i'm guilty. i've been there.

but when someone steps up and takes ownership - they come across as honest and as someone with integrity... someone who is willing to take a pride-hit in order to do the right thing. man oh man do i wanna be that kind of person.

i want people to look at me and say, "that's a woman whose faith is in the Lord. she knows he will protect her and bless her for doing the right thing even if that means doing the hard thing. who is this God and how do i get in on that?"




7/7 addition: check out this blog post at donmilleris.com - a great chaser! :)

send a girl to africa, that's my motto

it seems to me that God delights in delighting us. i think he loves it when we pray for a solution so he can show us how he will provide in ways we didn't even consider.

i was asking God for help to come up with the funding for the mission he called us to in africa. i believe that if he's asked us to go there, he's going to pave the way to get there. so i asked him to do just that.

i was ready for my car to take another beating, but this time he used people in our lives we didn't expect in a totally [seemingly] random solution that was the furthest thing from our minds.

see, we were getting a massage. (i know, right? answered prayer on a massage table?)

and we were telling our wonderful masseuses about us going to the village of hope in uganda this summer, and about the kids and what they've been through, and about how God has provided some of our travel immunizations for free, etc. and we got onto the topic of raising support.

and out of the blue, they each offered to donate a one hour massage we could give away in hopes of helping raise awareness of our need for donations for the trip. we would have fallen off our tables had we not already been rubbed into them. i remember being suddenly quiet and thinking, "trace! don't be rude - say something!" but i was in such shock at their generosity and willingness to offer it that i was simply speechless.

jon and i were giddy.

a few days later we started thinking and praying through how we would use their offer to raise awareness and i thought - i'd better call them to verify. i don't want to get the details wrong and take advantage of their generosity.

and when i talked to one of them, they upped the offer and said, i'll also throw in a 1-hour personal training session. i was stunned again and said - thank you. thank you! i am blown away by your generosity. and she said,

hey! send a girl to africa, that's my motto.

so there you have it. two wonderful, unsuspecting people in our lives, suddenly in the vortex of an answer to prayer to send a girl [and her husband] to africa. God chose them to be a part of a plan that is bigger than any of us. and they complied. they joined in.

i'm so blessed in so many ways regarding this trip that i can hardly portray it here. suffice it to say... i believe in You, Lord! for your provision and your creativity and for the answers you have stored up just waiting for me to pray for them so you can rain them down on us. i believe in what this mission stands for: showing the love of your son, Jesus Christ, to a nation who is desperate for him. and i, in my own desperation, get to play a part in that mission. i believe in you - that if you call me there, you will send this girl to africa.

i believe.

sooo... want a massage or a personal training session?