In 1974, Chinese farmers in the area of Xi’an were digging a well when one of them unearthed a clay body. Villagers at first believed it to be the Pottery God—but turns out the statue was only one of an estimated 8,000 terra-cotta soldiers, buried in battle formation and charged with the task of guarding the tomb of Emperor Qin, the first emperor of China. These soldiers are over 2,000 years old, since Qin died in 210 B.C.

We visited the Terra-cotta Army Museum with Sunni, a sweet and knowledgable guide whose Mandarin-accented English I found difficult to understand. Here she is pictured with Chad and me on Xi’an’s ancient city wall, another historical highlight.

Sunni told us that each of the thousands of warriors were modeled after real soldiers, though the artists and criminals who crafted them made them somewhat larger than life-size, in keeping with the emperor’s wish for an imposing and invulnerable army to protect him in his afterlife. Each soldier was given detailed dress—even down to shoe strings—and at one time carried a bronze weapon. However, the army was pillaged, their weapons stolen, and their trenches partially burned within a few years of the emperor’s death. So much for their protective abilities.

Emperor Qin’s tomb still remains intact, however, protected by the Chinese people’s respect for an esteemed ancestor and by the government’s wish to delay excavations until sufficient technology exists to preserve what is excavated.

Emperor Qin ruled during a bloody age, and Sunni told us it is believed that many of the thousands of artists and criminals who created this army were buried alive with the emperor at his death, to preserve the secret of their design.

The soldiers were originally painted in natural-looking colors which faded immediately after being exposed to sunlight. Because of this, the government wishes to delay excavation of the majority of the soldiers until science has discovered a way to preserve the paint. Only about 2,000 of the 8,000 soldiers have been excavated so far. Many soldiers are in fragments and piecing them together is a time-consuming task.

While the idea of the terra-cotta army fascinates me, I was disappointed that the size of the crowds in the narrow spaces around the pits made it difficult to get a good look. A front-row position was possible only with patience and a little shoving.

After our day of touring the Terra-Cotta Army Museum and another museum called the Banpo, our  guide dropped us off at the Xian ancient city wall, initially built during the 1st century Tang Dynasty, enlarged during the 14th century Ming dynasty, and restored beautifully in modern times as the most complete ancient city wall of China. Nowadays, it serves as a dividing line between the Xi’an city center and the rest of the city. We rented bikes to bike around the top of it, a distance of 8 1/2 miles.

Some people rented tandem bicycles and rode two by two, although I’m not sure where this man’s partner is.

The wall provided a great view of the city below.

For supper, we walked to Muslim Street, just a few blocks from our hotel.

China gives a whole new meaning to the term “countless masses.”

Muslim Street is popular largely because of its many delicious eating places. And, as the name implies, many of them are run by Muslims.

The Muslim women wear their Islamic dress with a distinctively Chinese flavor I found intriguing.

These young Muslim women look almost like young Mennonite women with a unique Chinese twist to their dresses and veils. :)

By Nervous Light Photography.

We stopped to eat a dish that had been recommended to us: “yóng ròu pào mó” or “bread soaked in lamb soup.”

It was delicious.

We stopped at a booth where a young man was selling personalized wire keychains. I wrote down the names of each of my sisters and, using a needle-nosed pliers, he twisted the names from wire in the color of my choice and attached it to the shape of my choice. A souvenir gift perfectly lovely and perfectly small. Since Chad and I had packed all our luggage in a backpack apiece, we didn’t have a lot of extra room for big stuff.

We saw some people enjoying a foot spa where fish clean your feet by nibbling off dead skin cells. I wanted to try this! but never got around to it.

Near the entrance to Muslim Street and smack in the center of the city is Bell Tower. Lit up at night,  it is a picturesque sight. With so many young people relaxing on this stairway which leads to a shopping plaza—talking, leaning against each other, taking selfies—I felt as if I was on a college campus.

For breakfast the next morning, we went back to Muslim Street, where we finally got to witness the creation of some of Xi’an’s famous hand-pulled noodles. This young man took his dough from this…

…to these thin and perfectly uniform noodles in a matter of minutes.

After this amazing display, we went inside the restaurant and ordered biangbiang noodles, a wide, hand-made noodle whose traditional Mandarin character is so complicated it requires 62 strokes to write. If you’re interested in the legend of how biangbiang got its name, you can read about it at ChinaSimplified.com.

Ordering food with only the aid of a pointer finger and a translator app can be tricky. And even more frustratingly, we sometimes met kind and helpful people who BADLY wanted to talk to us and couldn’t get through. This sweet old lady is one example. I shared a bench on the sidewalk with her while I waited for Chad to run back to our hotel for something he’d forgotten. She tried very hard to introduce herself and tell me just who she was and what she was doing in this city, but I couldn’t understand a word she said. We took a picture for memory’s sake, anyway.

We bypassed the famous Giant Wild Goose Pagoda, which came with a hefty fee, to visit the Little Wild Goose Pagoda, which had been damaged in an earthquake and was absolutely free. We were not allowed to climb it, but we wandered through the lovely grounds which surround it and the free museum nearby.

While Chad took photos, I took a fun and simple calligraphy class with a group of German tourists. Our Chinese teacher taught us in English to write the Mandarin character “happiness” and the German tour guide translated her instructions to German. How awesome is that?! :) My cell phone photos are too poor in quality to share on this blog, so my first attempts at calligraphy will be left to your imagination. However, I promise you I have the document here in my bedroom, and it is stamped with an official red seal proving that my art is authentic.

In the evening, after a grueling and grumpy walk across the city because we didn’t want to pay what we thought was an exorbitant taxi rate (It wasn’t, and I’ve proved that by walking it), we boarded a sleeper train which was to take us fifteen hours across the country to Shanghai. But that is a story for another blog.

The post Xi’an: Where Warriors and Noodles Reign appeared first on Lucinda J Kinsinger.

“Though you are homeless

Though you’re alone

I will be your home”

    (From “I Will Be Your Home,” by Michael Card)

To Lori Helmuth, of Beaver Lake Camp, Ontario, these words by songwriter Michael Card reverberate. “Since I’ve been here in Beaver Lake,” she told me, “that song has become one of my songs. I’ve been thinking recently about Abraham: his home was a tent, and he was always going from place to place. He didn’t have a place to call home.”

After moving across the world with her family–from South Carolina to Cambodia–and then leaving them a year and a half later to work at Beaver Lake Camp, Lori certainly knows how it feels to move from place to place. She arrived at Beaver Lake as a long term staff member in March of 2015, and although by now it does feel like home–“to a certain extent”–in many ways she struggles even more with homesickness now than at first.

“I guess it’s more than missing my family that I’ve been struggling with though…it’s more longing for a home–a place to belong–beyond my little room on third floor. Cambodia felt like home away from home while I was there, but I can’t go halfway around the world to visit every time I need a vacation–it’s too expensive.”

The feeling of homelessness became more permanent when her family took the step of selling their South Carolina home and transferring their church membership to Cambodia. Also, Lori’s grandma, who had lived near them in South Carolina, died, and her grandpa remarried and moved to Ohio.

“So where do I belong?” Lori asked. “Where is my home? Some days all I want is a little cabin with a creek beside it somewhere.

“Beaver Lake is home in a way; there’s community all around–but it’s different from a real home, where you’re committed to the people of your community in a long term sort of way. Here, there are constant staff changes and your heart just doesn’t have time to get settled like it would at home. And maybe it would be easier to deal with if I knew where my home will be beyond Camp.

“But like that song says, Jesus will be my home even in the midst of changes.”

Personal Work

In spite of the adjustments and difficulties, Lori loves her job. According to the camp website, Beaver Lake “provides a place where people can learn about God, receive spiritual and emotional healing, and build their relationships with those around them.” Their ministry is among the First Nations people of northern Ontario, many of whose lives have been torn by alcohol, drugs, abuse, and suicide.

“I’m the personal worker, and my main focus is working with the families who come in for counseling,” Lori said. “I do child care and have craft time with the ladies. That’s my favorite part of my job. The other day I was having craft class with a lady, and listening to her tell her story, and I thought, ‘It’s not even fair. This is my job, and I LOVE it!’ ”

Lori also helps with a girls’ club in town, reaching out to girls  ages 9-14 with activities, singing, talk time, and crafts. She tries to find time to take each girl out for her birthday, and if she knows that a girl has something she would like to talk about, Lori spends one-on-one time with that girl.

During summer camp time, when Beaver Lake hosts four different camps for children and teens, Lori is the one who spends time with a kid that’s causing trouble or needs extra attention and subs for counselors who need some down time. “I get to know more kids that way.” She helps throughout the year at various retreats hosted at Beaver Lake Camp, and in between events she helps with laundry, cooking and cleaning, which she also enjoys. “It’s good to give my heart some space from people and fun to work with my hands.”

The Journey to Beaver Lake

Lori first came to the North when she was eighteen, for a summer program called Personal Workers Training Camp that flew young people into northern reserves beyond the reach of roads. She was flown into a small reserve called Wapekeka, where she built long-lasting relationships; and she ended up returning to that same community for a total of three summers.

When her family was called to Cambodia, Lori felt frustrated. “I felt such a burden for the people of the North, so why Asia?” But neither did she want to leave her family at such a pivotal time. In the end, she committed to one year in Cambodia (her family had committed to three) and also told God that she wouldn’t apply to any other mission field, but wait until she was asked to go somewhere.

During her year, Lori grew to love the people of Cambodia, but she didn’t love her job there: teaching English. Summer was difficult, because she wanted to be with the people of Wapekeka, helping them deal with the bullying and suicides that rocked their small community–and found herself instead on the other side of the world.

When her year was almost over, Lori thought, “Duh, Lori! You told God you wouldn’t pursue another mission unless they asked, but who’s going to ask you to their mission when you’re already on the mission field?”

She prayed about it that night, planning to talk to her dad the next day…but when she looked at her phone the next morning, she had received an email from the director of Beaver Lake Camp, asking her to come as a personal worker.

Friendships that Matter

Lori has many precious friendships among the First Nations people. One young girl, whom I will call Nora, she met when she helped to teach a Guys and Girls of Value class at Nora’s school–classes aimed at teaching young people that they have belonging, worth, and competence.

“Nora was special,” Lori told me. “I noticed her out all by herself. She was talking to someone, but no one was with her, so I went out to talk to her and she told me all about her imaginary friend. I didn’t know how to respond. I knew it was a coping mechanism for her.”

Nora’s family later came to Beaver Lake for counseling, and Lori got to spend a lot of time with Nora and learn more of her story. Because of difficulties in the home, Nora and her siblings had been put into foster care. Nora had been separated from her older brother and didn’t feel safe in the home where she was put with her younger brother.

“It was hard to see them go home,” Lori said, “knowing they didn’t want to go and that they would be separated from their family again.”

But with hard work, Nora’s parents were eventually able to get the whole family back together again, and Nora’s mom sent a note of thanks: “Tell the staff at Beaver Lake that since I was there everything is going well. There’s no more drinking and no more fighting.”

“We hardly ever get notes like that,” Lori said, “so that was really cool. People come here and change inside, but when they go back to their community everyone else expects them to be the same. So it’s hard for them to keep the ground they’ve gained.

“But a lady came here for church recently, and she told us in Sunday school class what an impact Beaver Lake had on her life, and she had been here twenty or thirty years ago.

“So what we do does make a difference. It’s all about those seeds we can plant somewhere.”

In Weakness, Strength

“Just this past week,” Lori said, “I was really, really struggling with the thing of not knowing where my home is. I felt this darkness and distance from God. And here it was coming up to youth retreat, and I wondered, ‘How can I give anything?’ I felt so empty.

“I thought I had to get this belonging thing figured out before youth retreat, and I was gonna talk to someone, but it didn’t work out. I took a few hours of quiet time, and I was praying about this darkness. I was reading in Psalm 18, and found this verse. ‘For thou wilt light my candle: the Lord my God will enlighten my darkness.’

“I was so excited. It was just what I needed. I didn’t have the whole belonging thing figured out, but I felt peace to plug into the weekend.

“Then at cabin time when I went to visit each cabin, I saw one girl sitting outside by herself. I sat down with her and asked if she was okay. She started crying and opened up and shared her story. Such a sad story, of growing up hearing her Dad beat up her mom. She was homesick, yet she had wanted to come to this retreat because it was better away from her family.

“She said, ‘I just don’t feel like I belong anywhere.’

“And I just sat there and cried with her. I understood. My story is not as awful, but I had that point of connection, and I could hear her heart’s cry. My weakness, the thing I thought I needed to figure out before I could help anybody is the thing God used to work through me.

“It was amazing.

“So many times I think I have to have everything together, but often it’s in the times when I am weakest and feel helpless that He comes through and uses silly me in other people’s lives.”

***

This article was written for Daughters of Promise magazine, following the tradition of the Women in the Trenches columns I once wrote for that publication. For more Women in the Trenches articles, visit this page.

The post Though You Are Homeless: Lori Helmuth’s Story appeared first on Lucinda J Kinsinger.

I recently wrote several articles for Daughters of Promise magazine, to add to my earlier Women in the Trenches series. This article features Lisl Lattin, a mother and wife in Chiang Mi, Thailand.

“My journey to Thailand started mostly with Dru,” Lisl Lattin told me when I asked what led her to Thailand. Even when they were dating, she knew that  he was called to be a missionary. Much of their dating was done long distance, while Dru attended the Institute of Global Opportunities, or IGo, an Anabaptist mission and training school in Chiang Mai, Thailand. Five months after their marriage, Dru and Lisl moved to Chiang Mai.

Lisl’s first child was born in Thailand and today, she is a mother of four: Jube, 6; Havilah, 5; Rennie, 3; and a little boy on the way. She home schools Jube, who is just now reading, and Havilah, who is slowly working her way through preschool. “We’re not living terribly primitively,” Lisl said. “I’m raising my children with a lot of the same conveniences I would have in the States, just in a different culture.”

And that culture is very different. “There are parts of this culture we could not in a hundred years understand.”

Thai Culture

So what are the differences?

Feet, for one thing. After eight years in Thailand, Lisl is just a bit shocked when she visits the U.S. and sees her dad relaxing in the living room with his feet propped up. “I think, ‘Get your dirty feet off the coffee table!’ But I don’t say that.

“In Thailand, people try to keep their feet under them. You don’t put your feet on the coffee tables in this country.”

In Thailand, where everything has a hierarchy, feet are considered very low. One of the worst insults you could give is to stick your foot out at someone. On the contrary, heads are considered very high, and to touch someone’s head is a sign of disrespect, especially if that person is an elder.

Lisl explained that body language is very important in Thai culture, from keeping your body lower than your elders and authorities to holding your hands in the proper position when greeting someone. During a greeting, your hands should be held together as if you are praying. If you are greeting an older person, your hands should be held up in front of your face; but if the person is an equal, your hands should be at chest level.

“Thai culture is very, very complex,” Lisl said. “It’s no wonder we miss stuff. But they give a lot of grace to foreigners for not knowing.”

There is a huge emphasis in Thailand on respecting elders, so much so, Lisl said, that “it’s to the point of people needing blessing for things we think should be a personal decision.”

For example, when the children’s adopted Thai grandmother, Mae Wan–whom they call Yaa Yai–was baptized, she felt she needed to pass her decision with her  mom and older siblings first. This, in spite of the fact that she was an adult fifty years old.

“The idea of a personal decision is almost foreign,” Lisl said. “For young teenagers who want to follow the Lord, it can be complicated because they do not have their parents’ blessing.”

And that blessing would be difficult to gain. The Thai feel if you are not a Buddhist, you are not a Thai.

While in its purest form, Buddhism is more a philosophy  or way of life than a religion, the Thai have mixed it with the worship of idols and ancestors and with animism, the belief that every part of nature–from the rocks to the trees to the universe itself–contains a spirit.

“There’s a lot of fear of spirits and ghosts,” Lisl said. “There are some that would not want to kill an ant or a spider.” A Thai Buddhist worships his ancestors and the Buddhist gods, and he might even throw in Jesus; but the concept of having no god but One is foreign.

Another difference between Thai and Western cultures is that Thais tend to make their decisions based on feelings rather than logic. A Thai person might say in a discussion, “I see what you’re saying, and that makes sense, but I feel this way, so I’ll do it this way.” While logic and reasoning play a role, other issues – like community, respect, and feelings – are often given more weight.

“We could use more of their ability to feel and their ability to hear from their elders,” Lisl said, “but sometimes it does go too far. All these cultures, ours and theirs, are fallen cultures. As Christians, we find a new, redeemed culture in Jesus Christ.”

The Journey So Far

Dru and Lisl’s journey in Thailand has been full of rerouting and detours. “I feel like we’ve been redirected a lot,” Lisl said. “We think we know where we’re headed, and when that doesn’t work out it can be very disconcerting.”

Initially, they planned to work with a Thai pastor in his church, and were very involved with him for three years. “But that did not work out when we realized we had some serious theological differences.” It grew difficult for Dru, who was serving in a teaching and preaching role, to teach the Word of God unreservedly, knowing that in some areas he disagreed with the pastor. “We didn’t want to start something unhealthy.”

So they made the decision to pull out and began to look at other options. Where did God want them? During their three years in Thailand, Dru had started some highly successful English classes, in which Christian teachers taught English to children and took the opportunity to point them to Christ. “English classes are huge,” Lisl said. “Everyone wants to learn English.” It is a very effective way for Christians to reach out.

But through that experience, Dru realized that being able to obtain a work visa in Thailand was increasingly difficult for someone without college accreditation. The government wanted qualified individuals to teach, and Dru and Lisl decided that for their future in Thailand, Dru needed to earn a degree.

They soon discovered that the only university in the city that met Dru’s needs was right around the corner from their house. When they had moved to their big house several years prior, they had been thinking of its location and dirt-cheap rent, and the university was the last thing on their mind. But now, when they needed it, it was there. “Having that university there was a huge confirmation that we were in the Lord’s will,” Lisl said.

After two and a half years of study, Dru earned his degree, and he and Lisl moved closer to IGo with the desire to disciple young Christians. After a year, when few opportunities for discipling opened up in that location, Dru and Lisl moved to a different part of the city, this time to live near and disciple a new Christian couple and work with them in planting a church.

Dru and Lisl were excited to baptize Bob and Yai last fall and to see them grow in their Christian walk, but have realized that they are not the right team for church planting. “Bob and Yai are still very young in faith,” Lisl said. “He’s trying to overcome smoking and drug addictions from his past, and he battles with not drinking. They’re definitely committed, but not yet mature.” Also, they realized Bob was kept busy just with work and raising his family. For him to find time for church work–“it’s not there.”

Although Dru and Lisl looked for someone else willing to join their church planting effort in Chiang Mi, no doors opened for that to happen. And so, Lisl said,  “The road could turn a corner once again.” They are committed to Thailand for the long term, but believe God may be calling them to a different focus of ministry. They are open to His leading, though they are not sure where it may take them.

What She’s Learned Along the Way

Lisl is thankful the foundation of Bible teaching and godly habits she learned from her parents. “Often I don’t know how to relate to Yai because I haven’t walked through the same things,” she said. “How do I be practical for her?

“For her, every step forward is big; it’s hard. For me, some of those things come naturally, and the idea of doing it some other way is foreign. It was done for me by parents and grandparents who said, ‘We’re going to change this habit for ourselves and for our children.’ Yai fights for every step of the way.”

But Lisl has had to fight battles of a different kind, as she went through the adjustments of childbirth and motherhood in a culture and environment foreign to her. Her body is not used to Thai heat, and during pregnancies, it only gets worse.

“My toughest time was when I was pregnant with Havilah,” Lisl said. “I realized I kinda knew what depression was.” During that time, while Dru and Lisl worked with the Thai pastor, she had little contact with Americans. When she did occasionally get together with some of the ladies from IGo, she felt lost because she had no idea what was happening in their lives. “It was confusing to try to figure out who I was. I felt like, ‘I’m not Thai, and I don’t fit in with the Americans, either.’ ”

The Thai pastor was a very intense man who held services or church events five times a week. Lisl, although worn out from her pregnancy as well as caring for little Jube, found it hard to say that she needed to be a mom and stay home sometimes. Dru also felt the pressure when she wasn’t there and people would ask, “Where’s your wife?”

“It’s not easy learning to make boundaries,” Lisl said. “I remember right where I was standing when I thought, ‘I do not have to impress this pastor or anyone else.’ It was hard for me to realize that yes, my husband is a missionary here in Thailand and I want to work beside him, but my reason for living right now is to be a mom and wife. As soon as I start stressing about what I can’t do, I lose my joy and my energy.

“I need to hear my man and walk beside him. Eventually I’ll be able to do what he’s doing more closely, but right now I have to be okay with saying no. My reputation here doesn’t matter. I know what I’m supposed to be doing.”

***

You can read Lisl’s musings and meet the newest member of the Lattin family on her blog, Green Guava’s Wife.  The Green Guava? That’s Dru. You can check out his blog as well.

The post Women in the Trenches: Lisl Lattin, Thailand appeared first on Lucinda J Kinsinger.

“My fiancé and I actually met through kids’ church,” Rachel says. “We plan to continue on and be just as involved after we’re married. It’s exciting for me to think about marrying a guy with the same passions.

“He has a house in town, and at one point I wouldn’t have liked that. I grew up on a farm in Kentucky, and now my family runs two greenhouses. So I’m pretty much a country girl. But after being involved in RISE, I’m excited about the opportunity for ministry right there in town. I’ll be living close to a bunch of kids from kids’ church.

How she got involved: “I started as soon as they opened it up to more staff, about two and a half years ago. I had dreamed of doing something with kids’ ministry for a long time. I started the same time a bunch of other staff started joining, and there was an explosion of kids.”

A special journey: “Besides the kids, we also build relationships with the kids’ parents. We’ve helped them move, helped them pay bills, babysat for them.

“There was one woman I worked with as a certified nurse aide at one time. Her son started coming to kids’ church, and our relationship grew. At one point, she lost the car she’d been making payments on, her mobile home flooded, and her son was in the hospital. Kids’ church got involved–paid some bills and helped her move. I also got to know her mom, who was sick with cancer, and she loved when I would visit and pray with her.

“But I’ve learned through kids’ clubs that stories don’t always have fuzzy, feel-good endings. You can invest and invest and give and give, and you don’t always get anything in return. The times she’s asked me to loan her money, she hasn’t always paid me back. Her son isn’t interested in kids’ church anymore, and I won’t hear from her for weeks, then suddenly she’ll call and want me to take him somewhere. I know she’s doing things in her life that are hurting herself.

“I’m learning we have to do what we can and trust God for results.

“I grew up Amish and wasn’t exposed to a lot of this. After starting with RISE, I saw a whole new level of pain and hurt. People abandoning and taking advantage. Kids’ stories that are so hard to hear because so much of their pain is other people’s choices.

“We do what we can and pray and pray and pray, and God has to do the rest.”

An answer to prayer: “There is one boy who comes to kids’ church who at one point tried to commit suicide. He was talking to one of the staff one day and told her he really wants to hear from God. She told him about some of the ways she’s heard from God and told him, ‘You talk to God, and He’ll talk to you.’

“So he did, and the next week he came back and told her there was nothing.

“And she was thinking, Oh, no, God, why did you have to let him down? Then she asked him, ‘When you were talking to God, did you see any pictures?’

“And he told her he’d seen himself standing with a rope around his neck, ready to commit suicide, and Jesus was standing behind him with His hands on his shoulders.

“‘That was God talking to you,’ she said, ‘telling you He was with you when you tried to commit suicide.’

“He had thought he was hallucinating, and he was so happy to hear it was God talking to him!

“God is definitely working. There are new stories every week. It is a very exciting thing to be involved in. It takes a lot of energy, but it’s very encouraging. Before I started, I wondered, can I actually sacrifice? There were no questions once I started. This is what I was made to do.”

This article was written for Daughters of Promise magazine. To find out more, you can visit the RISE Kid’s Church facebook page. 

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“I am very much a people person,” Janae says. “I love meeting new people and experiencing new cultures. I love to paint and draw, sing, play violin and ukulele, and write. I have a part time job babysitting for an Indian family in Hutchinson. They are Hindu, so it feels like my job is a mission field.”

How she got involved: “I started with RISE two years ago, when I was sixteen. Being the people person I am, I craved the social interaction. And I love kids. Also, people in ministry are intentional people, the kind I want to be influenced by.

“The first time I visited, I didn’t enjoy it, but I knew it was what I wanted to do, so I purposed to put myself into it. I’ve learned when I’m stretched I grow the most, and getting out of my comfort zone makes me depend on God. It’s scary but rewarding. Kids’ church is fun now, one of my highlights.”

A special journey: “I mentor a twelve year old girl through RISE. We spend time together at kids’ church, then two to four times a month, we hang out doing things we both enjoy. She’s adopted my family, and we often have good and meaningful conversations. She’s searching; she’s hungry. It’s nothing I’ve done. It’s God’s work in her life and her wanting to get to know Him better.

“She has a more solid family than some, but she’s had some hurtful experiences when she was pretty young. Going by that, she could be much further behind, but she has risen above what her circumstances call for and wants to do what ‘s right. I’ve seen that beauty in her; I’ve seen her grow; and I am so honored to be a part of her life.”

An answer to prayer: “I sing on one of the worship teams. Recently, our worship leader was gone, and in previous times when that’s happened, we’ve had chaos. Thankfully, another guy was around to fill in the two weeks he was gone, but we were still really praying. Then our guitarist had a bad cold and wasn’t sure if he could do it. We prayed, and he was able to do it. We made it through worship without any glitches, and the following week as well. It was a complete answer to prayer. The evening could have been a disaster.

“I couldn’t even tell all the stories where God has directly answered prayer.  It’s incredible to see. I see God working continually, in us and in the kids to open their hearts. It’s nothing I or any of the other staff do. We’re not more qualified or more talented than anyone else. We were willing, and God did way more exceedingly above all that we asked or thought, and continues to do so.”

***

More coming! This is the second of a 3-part article written for Daughters of Promise. Tomorrow I will post Rachel Miller’s story. If you want to see more pictures of RISE or contact the team, check out the RISE Kid’s Church facebook page. 

The post Women in the Trenches – Janae Miller with RISE appeared first on Lucinda J Kinsinger.

Jewel loves to write, whether through her own journaling, emails to her friends, or the weekly RISE newsletter. This fall she begins a two year writing major. “I wasn’t going to do college for writing,” she says, “but last month I suddenly knew in my bones and from Jesus that I was supposed to. One thing that’s important to me is to be a truth teller, and writing plays into that. There’s not a lot new to write, but truth needs to be spoken into every generation.”

On Sunday mornings, Jewel speaks to kids at the Hutchinson detention center. “There’s something  incredible about dealing with kids who have hit their lowest point and know they need help,” she says. “They look at me in my nice dress and veil and think, Who is she? But then I tell them my story of going through depression and wanting to commit suicide and finding Jesus. I tell them, ‘You guys right now with your experience, because you have been at the bottom, you are the best equipped to help the kids at the bottom. ‘

“That’s the call God put on my life, to offer hope for kids who lost their hope and be a voice for kids who lost their voice. Over the last five years, that call has really grown.”

How she got involved : “I wasn’t here when RISE started. It was started by six teenagers who hung out together and decided they wanted to do something good with their lives. When I came home in the fall of 2013, two years after they started, there were 60 kids coming. Four months later, there were 100. Now we average 110 kids every Tuesday.

“I got involved right after I came home. I had just finished two years of Christian ministries classes. I was very tired of talking about ministry and very ready to start doing it.”

A special journey: “I met Hiromi at a birthday pool party with a lot of little kids running around in bikinis,” Jewel says. “Hiromi heard about kids’ church from her friends and wanted to come. At first, she thought I was just perfect. Then the shoe dropped.

“Hiromi is sorta a princess, if you know what a mean. Her parents indulged her, and she’s spoiled. I set boundaries for her, and she thought I was awful. She can be manipulative, and she did push my buttons.

“I’m not sure at what point that switched. I came to realize that Hiromi has a really caring heart. I tend to have a mercy heart as well, so I could relate to that. She is controlling, but also insecure because she’s been given whatever she wants without boundaries. I continued to hold boundaries, but also love her. We got to be really good friends.

“We had a meaningful conversation recently, and for the first time I could tell she wanted to hear what I had to say. One of her friends at school had died, and it was terribly hard on her. She asked questions about what happens after you die, and I was able to talk to her about the choice that we each have to turn our life over to Jesus.”

How she sees God at work: “Basically all our kids are from south of the tracks,” Jewel says. “They deal with abuse and drugs and alcohol. Our vision is to see them rise out of those circumstances to positively affect their communities.

“Our church has been rural and isolated and protected from a lot of that brokenness. Since RISE began, we have a connection to the community I don’t think we had before. I am convinced if Jesus were alive today, he would be hanging out with a lot of the people we hang out with.

“I have also seen our youth group mature and learn to take leadership. There is a part of spiritual maturity that doesn’t happen until you need to disciple someone else, and we’ve matured because we’ve had to lead others to maturity. ”

More coming! This is one of a 3 part article written for Daughters of Promise magazine. Check back tomorrow to hear Janae Miller’s story. 

To see more pictures of RISE kids or to contact those involved, you can visit their Facebook page.

The post Women in the Trenches – Jewel Yoder with RISE appeared first on Lucinda J Kinsinger.

The Beginnings – Emily Yutzy:

“I really like people,” Emily says. “It’s interesting to me how you can learn something new from everyone you meet.” Emily works as a receptionist at a health and wellness center in Hutchinson, Kansas, where she has many opportunities to meet people. She also enjoys running outdoors, Pinterest, trying new recipes, and sampling new and ethnic foods. “I love my family,” she says. “I have eight nieces and nephews.”

How she got involved: “I guess I was one of the people that helped start RISE. There was a group of us friends, all teenagers, and one of my friends brought up the idea of starting a kids’ church.

“Somehow I used to have this weird idea that the only people who needed Jesus were overseas in poor countries. But through some friends I had made in town, I started to realize there were people right in my very own town who needed to be shown the love of Jesus.”

Emily and her five friends talked and prayed and held meetings, and one Tuesday evening they held their first kids’ church in a rental building in Hutchinson that one of their dads owned.

“We didn’t know how it was gonna go. We had a couple kids that said they wanted to come, and that’s how we started. We were in a super tiny little building, basically two rooms. We had worship in one room, and then we played kickball and had snack in there. It will be four years this fall since we started, and I’m pretty sure none of us imagined it would ever get this big.”

Nowadays, RISE is held Tuesday evenings in the spacious Word of Life church, with 45 staff and an average attendance of 110 kids.

Staff meet at six o’clock for prep time, then begin their planned pick-up routes at six thirty. Worship time starts at seven and is led by two worship teams, one for the teens and one for the other children.  After worship, the children split into age groups, or tracks, for a Bible message and Bible memory, then come together again for games and snack. Teen activities are kept completely separate.

When kids’ church ends, staff drop off children and meet back at headquarters for hash time, where they spend time in prayer and discussing the evening. Hash time ends at ten, the close of an action-packed and energy-expending four hours.

A favorite story: “One of the things I really like about RISE, other than working with the children, is interacting with their parents. I’ve become pretty good friends with some parents on my pick-up route. There was one family where I hardly ever saw the parents. I know they were drinking a lot. The mom might come to the door occasionally, and once I could tell she was crying. It seemed really dark.

“One day the kids came to church all excited saying, ‘Hey, our parents got saved the other day.’

“I have to admit I was skeptical, but I’m like, ‘Oh, that’s cool. I wanna talk to them.’

“So I went in and talked to the parents, and they were different. They had definitely had a conversion experience. I don’t know all the details, but I know the dad had a dream he feels was straight from God.

“There was a huge difference in the home after that. I would pick up the kids, and the parents would be having Bible study. They would ask, ‘How are our kids doing, and what can we do to help?’ They became the friendliest parents on my route.

“That experience was a major faith strengthener. God has to exist because there is no way they could have changed that drastically otherwise.”

How she sees God at work: “One way I see God working in RISE is in the small things you don’t think about. The things you look back on and see, Yeah, this is how God was preparing us, and this is how he provided. He was faithful then, so we know we can trust in the future.

“When we first started, we were so dependent on God. We spent a lot of time crying out to Him, praying for direction. We told Him, ‘If this is gonna work, You’re gonna have to show up.'”

Mentoring to Maturity – Angela Yoder

Angela is a massage therapist and owner of Oasis Massage for Women. “I’ve been doing massage for four years,” she says, “and I recently took on another massage therapist. I honestly feel like I have the world’s best job.”

How she got involved: “I started with RISE in August 2012, and it had been running for probably a year before that. It was started by a core group of teenagers, and God just exploded the growth. They couldn’t do it by themselves.

“I’ve always felt convicted about trying to follow the great commission and go and tell. And kids are more accepting and a lot less scary than a college professor. I was thrilled to be able to come in and join.”

A special journey: The stated vision of RISE is to lead kids to spiritual maturity. “We would love to see our kids turn into spiritual leaders in our community,” Angela says. “We’ve heard from others involved in kids’ ministries that the kids who grow up and actually stick around as Christians are those who have had someone take a personal interest in them. Discipleship happens one on one or in small groups, and that’s hard to accomplish in kids’ church.”

To try to fill that need, RISE has more recently begun a mentoring program. “For a person who is willing to mentor, we pick out a child who has a need for more attention, or a child who shows extra spiritual hunger. Some children just open their hearts up to God, and there is so much potential there. We ask a mentor to commit to meeting with the child twice a month, at least two hours per time.”

“When I first got to know Yazmin, the girl I mentor, she was eight, one of the most challenging kids at kids’ church. Her mom left her dad when she was three. He was an angry person, hot-tempered, and had addiction problems. He was here illegally and was deported back to Mexico, so Yazmin hadn’t seen him since she was four or five. She really hated him. I think she felt significant rejection from him.

“She was a controlling child, and also very articulate. She would monopolize staff’s time talking about her daddy pain, and we would tell her, ‘The answer to this is forgiveness,’ but she resisted. Then I believe a neighbor or cousin had their dad get murdered in prison, and they told her, ‘You know, your dad could die, too, and you’re cheating yourself.’

“It was after that she came to me and said, ‘I decided to forgive my dad.’ After that she was more open to spiritual things. When she got a letter from him, she read it and put his picture up on her wall. It’s been an amazing journey watching her change.

“Looking back, it’s hard to believe an eight year old was that bitter and angry, but she was.

“Another little story with a lot of significance happened this past summer when she found out I had been sponsoring a Compassion child for over a year. She was upset and acted as though it was a big deal that I had not told her, like I had been hiding information from her.

“I kept asking questions to try to understand why this bothered her so much, and finally she said, ‘I’m afraid you’re gonna like her better than you like me.’

“I looked at her and said, ‘Yazmin, do you remember the time you rubbed mud all over my car?’ And I named some other hard stuff we had gone through. ‘What did I do?’

“She said, ‘You waited and were patient and prayed for me.’

“‘I didn’t leave you, did I? I’m committed to you. You’re not gonna do something so bad that I would give up on you.’

“And just thinking about all the hard times we’ve been through helped her to realize that yeah, whatever happens, I’m committed to her. Our relationship went to another level after that.”

An answer to prayer: “I’m on the committee in charge of the 8-12 year olds,” Angela told me, “and with the  12 and under age group we came to have so much chaos, it was difficult for the speakers to be heard. The children just would not be quiet or stay in their chairs.

“One of the committee members suggested we really crack down. He said the staff was not being consistent in handing out strikes–our method of discipline–and that we would need to stand together and get hard on kids, with extra drivers to take the kids with three strikes home early.

“I didn’t feel good about cracking down. I didn’t want the kids to feel like they weren’t good enough for the Christians, and some others felt the same way. We decided to pray and think about it, and after our month-long summer break, we would make a decision.

“I shared that need with my Sunday school class, and they all prayed. One of the ladies, Betty, is a real prayer warrior, and the next time we had kids’ church, Betty was praying. It was the difference of night and day. The kids were quiet and respectful. It was the most peaceful kids’ church we’ve ever had. God clearly showed us what decision to make.

“It really made me realize that this work is God’s, not ours. We thought we needed to crack down with strikes, and what we really needed to do was cry out to the Lord for help.”

This article was written for Daughters of Promise magazine, the March/April issue. This is the first of a two-part series on RISE, to be completed in the next issue. 

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Los Angeles, California. Its sunny streets and sprawling population are a far cry from International Falls, Minnesota, where Carita Witmer grew up. International Falls, nicknamed “Icebox of the Nation” has a population numbering a little over six thousand. Los Angeles? Almost four million.

Carita lives with her family in a quiet neighborhood built on a hillside, about fifteen or twenty miles from Hollywood. She calls her neighborhood “city with a small town feel,” but she doesn’t have to go far to reach the crowded housing and hum of inner city life.

Los Angeles is unique as a city in that its population is widespread, with many people living in single family homes as well as apartment complexes. Carita says that to her the most intriguing aspect of city life are the many different cultures represented. “One grocery store in particular almost feels like you’re in a different country. It’s set up market style, and there’s a lot of hustle and bustle and you hear lots of other languages: Spanish, Armenian, and Chinese. You can buy cheap produce there, and many varieties of rice and meats and spices.”

Carita’s neighbors are American, Asian, Philippine, Indian, Iranian, and English.

Carita and her family moved to Los Angeles in 2008 to work for Choice Books, a Christian book seller whose mission is to make quality Christian books available in the marketplace to people who might not otherwise have opportunity to buy them. Choice Books’ racks can be found in drug stores, grocery stores, and hospital gift shops across the U.S.

While the means of the Witmers’ living in Los Angeles is Choice Books, the heart of their mission is church planting. Under a mission called DestiNations International, three other families have moved to Los Angeles in the years since the Witmers, to assist in the seeding and watering of a church. Today, the church has grown to include eight families and several singles. They meet on the back patio of a local Los Angeles family.

Two years ago, in November 2012, Carita’s family gathered in Colorado for her brother’s wedding. Carita was teaching school in Pennsylvania at that time, but flew in to Colorado the week before the wedding to be with her family. Four days before the wedding, Carita’s mom and two of her siblings were driving on the highway when their car was broadsided by a large pick-up. Carita’s mom was killed.

When she heard the news, Carita knew she couldn’t go back to Pennsylvania. She had had a difficult couple of months adjusting to life apart from her close-knit family, and now she felt as though God had been using her rocky start at school teaching to prepare her for this life-changing event.

The school found a replacement, and Carita went with her family back to Los Angeles. She was there to watch her youngest brother finish his last year and a half of high school and to see her younger sister start college a year after her mom’s death.

“It really changed our lives,” Carita says. “Mom was definitely my best friend, the one I talked to. I really miss her–her mothering, her mentoring, just her presence. Mothers have a way of pulling a family together and making a place a home. She was a good mom–not only to her children, but even to her children’s friends and other people around her.”

Carita’s current household includes her father and youngest brother and sister and three Choice Books VS workers. Carita does the laundry, housecleaning, and organizing; keeps track of everyone’s schedules; and helps her younger sister with the cooking. “Sometimes I feel like a Choice Books domestics worker,” she says. She is glad for that role, as it gives her a feeling of definition and purpose.

Besides the work at home, she has done some tutoring and nanny work and would like to do more tutoring. This past year she took the final week of training to make her involvement with the DestiNations International mission official.

“Among other reasons, since this is where God has me at this point in time, I thought I might as well plug in,” she says. Joining the mission is more a formality than anything else, since Carita has been helping with the Los Angeles work ever since her family moved there. “But now that I made it official, I feel more of a big picture purpose. I enjoy the inner city aspect. There’s lots of opportunities, and it’s easy to really dream.”

Carita’s dreams? “When I really start to dream, I dream of a Christian school or maybe a tutoring center or a youth center. A place where you could help kids with their homework, where they would have a Christian influence and a good safe place to hang out. ”

Kids are a big part of the mission in Los Angeles. The church hosts a Summer Bible Camp, Girls’ Club, and Kids’ Club. Girls’ Club takes place once a month and includes girls ages 11-15. Kids’ Club, held once a week in a local park, is probably their biggest ministry.

“We get kids from the neighborhood,” Carita says, “and kids that come to the park to play. We range from seven to twenty kids a week. This year, for the first time, we have a consistent core group of un-churched kids, and they love coming to Kids’ Club so much that we are carrying it on through the school year, rather than just during the summer. It’s very exciting. It’s fun to watch how God worked that one out.

“We’re very flexible with what we do. We have game time and song time and snack time, and often we’ll have a Bible story between the games and the songs. While we feel it’s very important to give kids spiritual input, we think it’s also important, and we’re not wasting our time if all we do is hang out with them.

“I enjoy interacting with the kids, and I also enjoy just watching,” she says. “We have a lot of boys at Kids’ Club right now, and it’s great to watch the guys relate to them and hear how they speak into their lives. Some of the kids have been coming to church, and the discussion this week was how to sit still and not be a distraction to other children. Very simple truths but important in their lives.

“One thing we’re praying about now is that if it would be God’s will, he would provide a building for us.”

The core group of un-churched kids at Kids’ Club come from an apartment building where Carita’s brother and sister-in-law lived for a year and a half. The couple are now living in Thailand, but while in Los Angeles, they made friends with quite a few kids from their apartment building, particularly one boy who was twelve or thirteen years old at the time.

“Several weeks ago, that boy prayed to receive Jesus into his heart,” Carita says. “It’s fun to hear my brother Christopher tell stories of conversations he’s had with him. He’s a young man, but growing. He’s only fourteen years old, but he has the respect and admiration of all the little kids and has a lot of potential to point kids to God.

“I feel like we are reaping the benefits of when my brother and sister-in-law lived in that apartment building. It just goes to show that even a quiet presence and little prayers for a community can go a long way.”

What has God been doing in her own life? “I feel like the past several months, God has been talking to me about not striving,” she says. “It’s easy for me to turn things over in my mind, to focus on what I should be fixing.

“In the middle of June my brother referred to a verse in his sermon that really stood out to me. ‘Be still and know that I am God.’ In the New American Standard version it says, ‘Cease striving.’ It was what I needed to hear from God at that point in time.

“I felt like God told me several times in the past months, ‘Cease striving.’

“Another thing that God has been showing me is sinful agreements that I have made with the enemy that cause me to need to control my environment. God is calling me to renounce those and choose to trust Him with situations where I can’t see the outcome.

“My mom’s death certainly impacted this whole journey. Her death revealed some of the struggles in my heart that were there before, but that I hadn’t put a name to. Her death was a huge loss that brought those things to the forefront.

“It’s been a complicated journey that’s hard to talk about, but I guess what it comes down to is this: Can I trust God in a situation even if it looks out of control? If I can’t trust God, I have to try to control things. I am learning what it means to let go of that control.”

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This article was written for Daughters of Promise magazine, the January/February issue.

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It is 7:25 a.m. Marlea Kauffman steps onto the porch of the brick row house where she lives, ready to head across the street to Tidings of Peace Christian School. This time of day, the streets are emptier than usual–fewer smells, fewer sounds. A white lady in tight snakeskin leggings and hoop earrings passes her on the sidewalk, while across the street a young black man walks with the wide stride necessary to keep his baggy pants from sliding down, one hand holding an edge of them, ear buds dangling from his ears. Today is trash pick-up day, and an old man with a scraggly ponytail rides up on a bicycle with a kid cart pulled behind, heaped with old bits of metal and wire. He stops in front of the recycle bin, props up his bike, and stoops over the bin, looking.

Marlea crosses the street and walks up the two cement steps and through the blue door of the long, low brick building that is the school. A square white sign above the door reads “TOP Christian School.” Staff prayer starts at 7:30.

At 8:00, the doors officially open, and with them the noise of children arriving, the thud of a basketball, the squeak of tennis shoes on gym floor, laughter, good mornings.
Marlea is in her kindergarten classroom, making last minute preparations before the bell rings at 8:15, when round-faced Valerie arrives and stands just inside the door, waiting for a hug. Jeremy bounds in after her, full of excitement and chatter. Valerie and Jeremy are her only kindergartners this year, making this third year of teaching at TOP the easiest she’s had.

York, Pennsylvania, population 400,000 and growing, is a far cry from the quiet farm country where Marlea grew up. She grew up throwing bales and milking cows, a self-sufficient-and-proud-of-it country girl who never envisioned herself living in the city.

That changed in July of 2012 when Clayton Shenk, principal and administrator at TOP, called and asked if she would consent to teach.

“Of all the places I’ve gone, this is the place I most felt God’s leading,” Marlea says. “I was working at home, knowing I needed to go do something, knowing just having a day job wasn’t what I would do the rest of my life. Then I got the call to come here, and I fought it. I didn’t like the city, but I remember finally just knowing I had to leave my job back home and knowing I had to come to the city.

“Everything was so new, and getting used to the different culture really stressed me out. I was paranoid of street life, and I walked everywhere I went because I was scared to drive in traffic. I was petrified to walk my kids down the back alley and across the street to the playground. I would make them all hold onto a rope, which was a big joke. They felt like they were tied to it. They were born and raised in the street, playing football, riding bikes. They’re used to playing away until somebody yells, “Car!” and then they all run to the side and wait.

“It’s such a different culture. I grew up on a farm and was raised to work and live off the land. You walk down the street here and nobody’s working; they’re all sitting out on their porches. We took the kids to a farm on a field trip; a lot of them didn’t know where milk came from.

“Another thing I had to overcome was the issue of cleanliness. You kind of have to overlook the stinky child–although we’re allowed to send a note home if it’s a regular thing. I had to realize you have to love these children. They can’t help if they don’t have their laundry done at home, or no one to help them brush their teeth. We’ve often had lice and bed bugs carried to school, and do lice checks regularly–but God is in control of that, too, and I haven’t gotten lice yet, even when my student had them.

“Teaching here, I’ve learned a whole new dimension of the word love–loving the unlovable and realizing the deeper need of their soul. Even if they don’t learn how to work, don’t learn their math, what are they?”

This is the purpose of Tidings of Peace Christian School, to reach into homes and lives with the love of Jesus. The school was started in 1994 by Clayton Shenk and the Tidings of Peace Mennonite Church which he pastors. Inspired by an inner-city Christian school in Reading, Pennsylvania, the congregation told the Lord that if they had one committed teacher, three students, and $5000 in the bank by July 1st, they would start a school. When July 1st came and they had none of those things, they decided “not this year.”

But on July 3rd, the owner of a building right down the street from the church called Brother Clayton and offered to let him have the building for the price of the closing costs, since he wanted to get it off his hands before winter. And so Tidings of Peace Christian School began.

That first year there were five students. Today, twenty years later, there are forty-two students in grades kindergarten through twelfth. Maxed to capacity, with the seventh and eighth graders doing their classes in the nearby church building, they are in need of a larger building so they can expand.

At TOP, parents have the option of paying full tuition, paying partial tuition with a sponsorship, or giving $30 and ten hours of community service a month. The school is able to operate because of volunteer teachers, with donations, sponsorships, and fundraisers covering expenses.

Parents say they choose TOP because they want their children in a Christian school learning about God, or because their children were being bullied and pushed around in another school. At TOP, the children are treated with love and respect. TOP’s motto is, “Respect God, respect others, respect yourself.”

Respect doesn’t always come easily. The first year Marlea taught, she spent hours with one troubled little boy. Because of his home situation, he came to school with his homework undone, refused to obey his teacher, broke pencils, and fell on the floor in defiance. That situation, along with adjusting to the new culture, made her first year difficult. The little boy eventually improved his behavior, but sadly, his family moved away after he’d attended only half a year.

Marlea continues to grow in understanding her students. “I remember I was frustrated with a girl who would never pay attention,” she told me, “and Brother Clayton made the comment, ‘What’s most important, for you to teach her the schoolwork or for you to show her love?’

“He said there could be other things in her life making it hard for her to concentrate, and the longer I’m here, the more I realize he was right. You see evilness here that you don’t see in the country. You walk out on the street and see the moms and dads yelling at their kids, and worse.

“Just down the street from us there’s a lesbian couple who always have a lot of kids around their house, and they’re always noisy with yelling and drunkenness. The cops were out there just the other night to settle an argument between the two ladies. And down the street is a gay couple who adopted children–so sad. Where I grew up, the neighbors were married, one man, one woman, and this gay/lez talk was just what you hear about.

“At school, the whole thing of ‘What would Jesus do?’ comes up a lot. They don’t understand why they need to do right, and we are trying to help them understand and live a more peaceable life. It’s so fun to teach them the Bible stories. Things that seem basic to us, that we’ve heard all our lives, they just soak up. To them it’s all new.
“With discipline, I learned you have to focus on the positive. They might get verbal abuse at home, and scolding them doesn’t have much effect. But words of affirmation really make them beam. I’ve learned you should look for the good in what they do and give twice as many positives as you do negatives.”

School ends at 3:00 p.m. Since her class this year is smaller and easier to handle than those of the other teachers’, Marlea helps with a multitude of after-school jobs: grading students’ work, mopping the gym floor, cleaning bathrooms and drinking fountains, fumigating for bugs, cooking, babysitting.

After-school streets are crowded and noisy. If she walks down the street a ways, Marlea might see kids walking home from school or kids riding bikes, scooters, and ripsticks. There will be pedestrians of all shapes and skin colors. Neighbors lounging on their porches, playing with i-phones or some other electronic gadget. She might smell cigarette smoke. Body odor. Beer on someone’s breath. On hot days, the smell of garbage from the bins. She might hear a siren passing in the distance, or the ding-ding of the snowcone truck. Rap music blaring from a passing car. A horn honking.
This is the city.

“Now when I’m out playing with the kids,” Marlea says, “I don’t let every person on the street bother me. Most of them know us and are friendly when they see the whole line of kids go walking by. I get worried sometimes, and we’re supposed to have phones on us all the time, but I’m not petrified anymore.

“I became a real Yorker when I started collecting pennies from the sidewalk. I found a dime one day. That was a really good day, the best day ever.”

It’s school as usual in York, Pennsylvania. If you would like to learn more about TOP, visit their website at www.tidingsofpeace.org.

This article was written for the Daughters of Promise magazine, the November/December issue. To view the full issue of DOP, go to http://daughters-of-promise.org/home.htm.

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The new issue of Daughters of Promise is coming soon! Here is a sneak peek of the newest “Women in the Trenches” article, featuring Kathy Zimmerman and her new little one, Jaxson. You can go to the Daughters of Promise home page to view the entire magazine. The September/October issue in which Kathy is featured is not viewable yet, but will be published online within the next several days.

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For as long as she can remember, Kathy Zimmerman has loved babies. She remembers buying a doll at twelve or thirteen, but, embarrassed because she considered herself too old for such things, she got a sister to go through the check-out lane and pay for it. Even before she was married, Kathy prayed that she would someday have a baby, and today she is the proud mother of Jaxson Daniel Zimmerman.

There was a time when she worried that she would never even get married. “Before I ever met Kirby,” she says, “I remember Mom and I were talking while picking raspberries. Maybe I was kinda worried about the future at that time. I was worried that if you wanna get married and there’s no one around, you have to go out looking. Not that I had to get married or anything, but I guess I always wanted to. But that day we were picking raspberries, it was so beautiful outside, with big huge clouds in the sky. Looking at all that beauty, I just knew if God was such a great God, if He could control all that, He could take care of my future.

“I told Mom, ‘If I’m supposed to get married, God will bring someone to me. A person doesn’t have to go looking for someone in order to get married.’

“A while after that, Kirby just appeared and started going to our church. I didn’t notice anything about it at the time, never thought we’d get together. But I kept seeing more of him.”

In the summer of 2012, Kirby took a week off work to teach vacation Bible school–partly because he was interested in the children, but also because he knew Kathy would be teaching. He asked her if they could start dating, and six months later, he asked her to marry him.

“Marriage is something that’s natural in a lot of ways,” Kathy says. “You marry your best friend. But in other ways, it takes getting used to. Some things I was scared about. You really don’t know what to expect until you’re married. As far as household duties, cooking was what I worried most about, but marriage is harder than just learning how to do everything. Back more at the beginning, I would sometimes get really mad and start crying. There were a lot of adjustments for me.

“Seeing how Kirby is–he’s a good example. Seeing the way he takes things makes me want to be a better person. He’s probably had his frustrating times, but I think he has more patience than I do.”

Kathy’s pregnancy with Jaxson came as a surprise–albeit a welcome surprise–to the couple. He was born a couple of days before their first anniversary. “I’m just glad I got through it,” Kathy says. “I was always worried about childbirth pain. I’ve never gone through something so intense. We had a rough third night after he was born. Jaxson kept us awake all night. The next morning, I called Mom and started crying. I told her, ‘I just wish I knew what he wanted.’ That day was our anniversary, and I was so tired, and I didn’t get to spend time just with Kirby.

“Before we had Jaxson, I didn’t fully realize the realness of the responsibility. Your child’s always there, and you’re gonna have to teach him. Having Jaxson is gonna teach me patience, because I never had a lot of that. And it will teach me to let things go the way they go and to be okay with some things not getting done. I’ve learned lately that some days it might be enough just to get dressed and get the dishes done.”

Kathy has come through many learning processes so far in her life. One of the biggest was learning to overcome her deep shyness. “People always teased me to no end about being shy,” she says. “They would ask questions like, ‘The cat got your tongue?’ and that made it worse. When my friends got to know me better, they accepted me for who I am, and that helped.

“I got more confident when I worked as a CNA in the nursing home. I got to meet all kinds of new people. You know, talking with the old people, it felt like I was doing something worthwhile. They get lonely. I guess when you reach out to other people, it helps you. Like the old saying goes, ‘You forget about yourself when you help somebody else.’

“I never want my children to go through what I had to go through when I was a child. But my shyness made me depend more on God. When people made comments about it, I would always feel bad, and I would have to pray and do a lot of crying and stuff. If I would have been just right, had a really nice outgoing personality that other people flocked to, I would probably have gotten kinda proud. Maybe God gave the shyness to me for a reason.”

When she was younger, Kathy prayed that God would bring at least one person into her life whom she could really help. Now that she’s married and occupied with the business of caring for her family, she’s almost forgotten those early prayers. “To tell you the truth, some days it seems hard to even see God working. I guess there was a day when I felt really discouraged, and I texted my sister to tell her to pray for me. She was so comforting and nice and acted like she knew just how it was. She said, ‘God cares and loves you, even if it doesn’t always feel like it.’

“Sometimes it doesn’t feel like I see God, but when I think about it, there are lots of little ways that I can. I see Him in answered prayers, and I see Him in my little baby when he looks up at me with his bright little eyes. I see Him all over, through having the baby and just in the way He helps me from day to day with the things I need to do and in learning how to be a mom.

“I guess what I try to do for Him now are little things like deciding to be thankful–and you know, all the little things that come from day to day, even if they don’t seem big or significant.”

Kathy may not always feel that her work as a mother to Jaxson is significant, but history proves otherwise. There may be no greater missionary work in the world than the work of parents who bring up their children for God. Not only do they touch their children’s lives, they touch the lives of children for generations to come, and indirectly, the lives of everyone who comes into contact with those children. Kathy’s earliest known ancestor, Andrew Martin, born in 1669, was imprisoned eighteen years in a Palatinate jail for his faith, a faith which he passed on to his children. There is also a possibility that two Martins mentioned in the Martyr’s Mirror, a Martin the Painter and a Martin of Vilgraten, were earlier ancestors of Andrew. These two men were martyred for their faith in the 1530’s. Theirs is a witness that spans five hundred years and many generations of children.

“My prayer now,” Kathy says, “is that I could be a good mom and that I could take care of Jaxson. Even if I’m not a very good vessel, everything he learns about God and about life has to come through his parents and through God helping. Even if we’re not perfect, I guess somehow we still have to try our best.”

The post Women in the Trenches: Kathy Zimmerman appeared first on Lucinda J Kinsinger.