on the other side

so this is my second attempt at writing a new post on this here blog. i did learn that blog is a mating of two words web log, and someone started calling it blog. that was free info just for you.

it's fall break and most everyone has skipped town, including my roommates, lauren, and most of the students. i'm pretty sure i haven't had this much free time on my hands in a really long time. it feels good, but it also feels lonely. i went to the gym and then to pcj to get an anna bananna and i sat there reading the encore and thinking about how lonely life is without people. and okay, that sounds like a not-so-smart comment. but really, my life is filled with amazing people, and i can't quite imagine what it would be like without them. it makes me think of those students or those young professionals who haven't found community or authenticity or a place to fit. i'm just pretty darn convinced that my life would be 80zillionmillion times harder without people who love me in it.

i'm still reading real sex, but i'm almost done and i'll have to say i'm learning a lot through it. just about real issues and the way we think about sex, and what that looks like inside of a marriage relationship. i think it's a book worth reading, especially to you out there who has a distorted view of sex. which, is probably everyone. the book is designed for those who are waiting for marraige, but i think just about anyone can benefit.

now that i'm on the other side of the busyness of fall, i am thanking God for all that He's done, and the new students that he brought in. It's really amazing. With 19 functioning small groups in every dorm on campus and students who are owning the mission, God is working and changing uncw for Christ. i'm just excited to be a part of it.

i'm just hanging around here this fall break and looking forward to tomorrow, i get to do grow zone for 2 services, how awesome. i love those kids and teaching them that Jesus is their friend forever. :)

kingdom of couches

well so. here it is the day after ashley's wedding. the day before i go back to wilmington, a month after my return to america. 3 days before report date, 5 days before freshmen move in. life seems interesting these days. last night i had this really great time with everyone at the wedding, i had a few moments of thinking about life and how funny it is. how some people get married, some stay married, some stay friends with you, some think they can plan out their lives, or think they should appear as if they have it all together. some haven't quite figured out who they are yet, and are finding their identity in possessions, people, substance, instead of in Christ. so i was thinking about all of this, but i was also thinking about where i am now, and how much i love my life, the challenges before me, the things God has allowed me to walk through, who i am today, who i will be tomorrow, and why God has put me where He has. it's all so very interesting and things that i don't really think about often. one thing i know for sure, is that i am completely willing to go where God sends me and completely unwilling to give in to worldly junk that doesn't satisfy. it's certainly been a process of where i am now, where i will live, trusting God with every detail and more, because certainly i can get lost in the monotony of life. the bigger picture is before us, we've just gotta look up. and so, i was also thinking about community. and what that means, and how a lot of churches long to create it, we as cru strive to build community, yet, we're spread out across america in our one bedroom's wondering at why we fall into isolation, or why we can't make friends, or why it's hard to find fellowship...i think it's still so hard for me to understand, and i want to learn more, i think we're called to way more than comfort. i'm not quite sure what that looks like in the daily life style, but i'm pretty sure it's a lot different than what we're doing. this isn't just about you, this is about me. i want to defintely find out what it is in me that prevents me from living in community, and build up to life unrestrained. kingdom of couches is a name of a book that i will read as soon as i finish changes that heal, which has in fact changed and healed me. it's a book that i recommend to anyone anywhere who mentors, disciples, and is walking with the Lord. it is really life changing.

Slovakia summer project 06 recap slideshow video

Put together by the one and only Justin Gibbons, he wows you with his photography skill, capturing some of the most delightful moments from summer project. Each piece of the project is notated by a title screen.

where God?

i might be going through a mini-depression, not clinically, but i think i am experiencing that let down after you are around some 50 or 60 people you know and love for 7 weeks, then you get back to the daily grind, there is junk all around you. you don't get along with your roommate. conflicts lie unresolved. i think this is when i start to sense that God wants to call me away from this. somewhere else. somewhere that i can focus on Him. the materialism junk is out of the picture. where God? show me so i can go.

i read irresistable revolution this summer. you should read it. now. so go on. buy it. in a lot of ways this book changed my perspective on my life and how i'm living. i am definitely in a process and i can tell i am being refined.

life in america

well i'm back. here i am. i miss europe, desperately. all i can think about it the people, the place, the culture, the language, the spiritual deadness, the food, the way there is no air conditioning, the public transportation, the prices, the exchange rates, the life there, our apartment in prague, being a local. all of these things and more come back to me as i am sitting in my freezing home in wilmington. it's hard for me to understand completely what God did in my heart while I was in Slovakia - but it was cool. I definite overhaul of my heart and things that I focus on. even as i think back to how i've lived in the past few years without regard to hundreds of other countries out there, in comfort. i know it's time for a change. God is calling me to something different, something not as comfortable, something for the world. i loved getting to know people there, being with the students on campus was difficult and really draining as we labored for two weeks to share our faith with medical and law students. some took the time to listen, mostly we saw girls turn their heads to their books instead of to Christ. it was a hard two weeks, mostly rainy and cold. the hardest part was trusting God with the results. in these two weeks and the weeks that followed i learned a lot about how God's word does not return void. it accomplishes the purpose for which it was sent (isaiah 55:10). overall it was a learning curve to trust God and take steps of faith. i think that might just be the definition of successful witnessing. now that i'm home i'm finding it hard to get back into life in america. people seem back stabbing, non caring, shallow. i guess i can be the one who isn't those things, and that somehow changes other people, i don't know - that's a ghandiism, and we all know that it's God who changes people. not us. if there is one thing i learned in SK, it's that. He opens the eyes of the nonbeliever, my job is to go.
in other news. lindsey comes to visit today, laura and heather will be down tomorrow, i'll be cleaning this house as it's not guest ready. i want to go to the beach - and i'm sure i'll get plenty of beachtime in the next few weeks.
i put 518 of my pictures online, so if you want to see them, you should check them out here.

cau košice

we have reached the end of our time here in slovakia. tomorrow we head to prague on a 10 hour train ride. leaving košice is bitter sweet. i'll update more once we have some time in praha. i know i haven't given you many updates lately. please pray for our time in prague next week it could be very instrumental in the training of slovak nationals. i'm excited to be a part of what God is doing here!

check out what we've been doing on by looking at tons of pictures here.

the heartbeat

things in slovakia are still going great. thank you for your gracious prayers. we are nearing the end of our time here in košice and we are now exactly half way through the project, which is all together hard to believe. ministry has not been what we have expected at times. this week we were supposed to have anywhere from 40 to 100 high school students come to a program that we are hosting about transitioning from high school to college and misconceptions about america. on monday, however, we saw only 8 come out to the program, and we continue to pray for more and hope that they will invite their friends. we are having to think even more outside of the box of ways to reach students here in the city. most college students are in exams, or have gone to their village for the summer to study. exams are quite different here than in america. they may have one one week and then their next exam may be next month. they are a lot more spaced out and not really on any kind of specific schedule.
yesterday we saw the sun for the first time in two weeks. we caught word that it snowed in germany and italy this past weekend - and even in the tatras - which is pretty close to where we are! we have a week and half left here of high school ministry in kosice and then we travel to Prague and then Vienna to end the project. Tomorrow I am heading to Krakow and we are taking the night train which leaves at 11:27 tomorrow night and arrives at 5am. i am excited about going back to krakow and seeing things i've never seen before. last weekend we were in budapest, hungary and that was really fun. we got to explore castles, museums, and the city. i enjoyed the rich history that budapest has and am excited to learn more about the kings and rulers that once hailed in that city. it was a relaxing trip gearing us up for 2 more weeks of full on ministry in kosice.
personally, i can say that things are going really great. we are studying jonah and i have learned a lot about the Lord from this small 4 chapter book. we are studying the book through the inductive method looking closely for key words, common themes, and looking in depth to the 5w's and H. who, what when, where, why and how. i am greatly enjoying my time with the Lord and i'm finding that i am really meeting with Him. i am also really loving my relationships here with the students on project and getting to know the staff. i am definitely learning about dependence on the Lord and not a culture or any one person - but just on Him. it's been an awesome and humbling time to get to know part of His character even more.
i am getting over a cold today and i am thankful for that. please continue to pray for good weather, safe travel, against sickness, and for more ministry opportunities. i've taken almost 800 pictures and i'll try to figure out a good way to get those to you.

week dva

we've been here 2 and a half weeks. time is speeding up a bit now. i am learning a lot from the Lord and am thankful that He has brought me here for a second time. tonight i was eating dinner and i saw a woman with a forever 21 bag. i talked to them some, asking first if the spoke english. the bag, however, is from america. it was a little bit of wilmington here in sk. it made me feel more at home. one really cool thing is that i am learning more of the language this time. i think that happens the second time you go somewhere overseas you take more in. i am really loving it this time. the weather is a bit depressing, cold and rainy. thankfully, my mom mailed me a raincoat yesterday. i love receiving mail here - so just know you can send mail whenever you'd like.
for the past week we have been meeting students at medicka - learning about them, what they believe, what they like to do for fun, all kinds of things. most of them are really busy because they are taking exams - these are smart kids. one girl answered the door with a book open saying, "i must learn." they are very studious.
we are studying Jonah - and i am really enjoying it, learning a lot about the soveriegnty of God and what it means to be repentant. we have a lot to learn from Jonah.
this weekend we are going to budapest and then we have a two weeks of high school ministry - then we are going to prague, then vienna - then i'll be back in america! i love it here. keep praying for us as we take steps of faith.

cau

here it is. we have officially been here a week. i have decided to check email and blog only once a week. things here are going great, except for one really rainy and cold day that we had yesterday. we have been on campus for 3 days now at mediska (the medical school) meeting students and asking them questions about spiritual things. most have never heard or thought about what happens after death and therefore have not really considered what life really means. me and the girls in my group; sarah, lindsey, stephanie, ashley, and elizabeth as well as two stinters Stacy and Meg have had the opportunity to meet students and share with them about what we believe and why we traveled over three thousand miles to share that with them. the spiritual climate here is much different than america. most people in america have heard the name of Jesus at one time or another - many are jaded by the church, or have had a bad experience with a Christian and the struggle is getting them to come back - to truth. however, most here have been jaded by communism and there is not a need to get better - because everyone is the same - there is no striving. a better life is almost out of the question - and then we walk into their lives - into their story of what is already going on - and we share with them these things about grace, truth, faith, and Jesus - and it's all very brand new. it takes time. it is definitely a process. we need to pray that long termers will be raised up to live here and walk with these slovaks through life and on the path towards knowing Christ personally. all of which we take so for granted in america.
things here are great, we are living at a hostel pretty close to the main street. we have breakfast and dinner provided at the hotel and then we go to main street to find lunch. i am finding that i really love it here, more and more. i am praying for the Lord to increase my heart for the slovaks so that i will love them out of a genuine heart and have compassion on them to know Christ. this is not of myself, so that i cannot boast. that's the power of grace.
we are studying Jonah and it's really rich. we had our first bible study yesterday and i really learned a lot. last night we went to see the da vinci code and brought slovak students that we have met on campus these first few days with us. we did not have any come from our campus because they are in exams right now - and medical school exams are pretty tough as you might imagine. several other schools had students come and they will be getting into more conversations today about God and what was true in that movie if anything. obviously the movie is fiction and we are not basing anything on it, rather, we are hoping to open up different conversations about truth and things that many people have not even considered.
oh. you'll love this. there is a guy here that is taking massive amounts of pictures. i am pretty sure the total is over 1000 at this point and he has taken the time to put around 300 of those on his website. so enjoy these! :)

what day is it?

We arrived in Slovakia yesterday! It is beautiful! We boarded a plane in Atlanta, GA around 4:30 on Wednesday afternoon and arrived in Sk at 4:30 on Thursday. We flew from Atlanta to Frankfurt to Vienna straight into Kosice. It was a nice trip. We all arrived safe, and only a few bags were spared. All in all there are 46 of us. Our time in Atlanta was good, a brief day and a half of preparing the 36 students for what will come there way. Over and over again I have heard the same thing - what day is it? Changing through time zones can really do harm to your schedule! Mostly for me it has been great to be here so far. We drove in and all I could think about was how beautiful it is. The fountain in downtown Kosice is alive with dancing. Today a bunch of students graduated and there was much public drunkeness on Hlavna (the only time Slovaks are loud in public is when they are drunk). Today we learned about the culture some more and how to be sensitive. We talked a lot about how we are entering their culture and we are not trying to make them conform to ours. One really cool thing that Doug Meyerdirk (the Country director) talked about today is that if something is different from America we should probably think that there is a reason for it instead of criticizing it. I thought that was a really good way to look at it.

Dr.Crawford Lorritts spoke with us at briefing about how going to the world is important work, but there is nothing magical about getting on a plane and going somewhere. He made it very clear that Jesus did not die for Slovakia, or for any country, he died for people. We just have to go to them. I loved that.

There is a fountain that dances in the middle of Hlavna (main street) it is a fountain that people are drawn to, they will go out there and sit for hours, watching it dance to the music in the background. I too, go out there, I take pictures of it, and I try to take it all in, to behold it. Last night as I was praying and journaling, I believe that God gave me this picture - that my prayer for Slovakia is that people would be drawn to Christ just as they are to the fountain. Pray that with me.

Well I only have 4 more minutes left here at the internet cafe, but I wanted to let you know that I am safe and loving it! Pray for us - our days of ministry begin tomorrow, we will begin going to the universities and meeting students in hopes of sharing the most important thing in our lives with them; Christ.

cau.

katrina aftermath

I just walked in the door from a long 14 hour drive home from New Orleans. I can't sleep, and it's not because I'm not tired. I can't believe the past 5 days. Walking through ghost town streets piled high with debris. The city that was once so alive with activity boasting a huge mardi gras celebration every year, is now in ruin. My staff team, and about 44 students from UNCW headed to New Orleans to spend a week doing whatever we could to help rebuild the city of nawlins. During our stay we gutted homes, taking out personal belongings ranging from stuffed animals to couches to weight lifting equipment. The residents have been completely displaced and are now residing in other parts of the city or in other states. Newsweek has a good article on it that breaks it down to where people are now living. Among the 2.5 million people who were moved out of their homes due to Katrina and Rita, 150,000 of them are now in Houston and they are having a huge set of problems stemming from that. More on that if you read the article. So, the deal is, now that I'm back in my cozy Wilmington home, all I can do is think about what my drywall would look like if it were molded, where the water line is on the homes, and why people are still living in their houses. I am thinking about God and His glory and His power. I am humbled. Was that real? Most certainly it was. The first night we arrived in NO we stayed in a hotel -The Grand Palace. It wasn't very grand, the hotel itself had been through a lot even before the hurricane. I checked the reviews. Our bath tub overflowed, which left 3 inches of standing water on the floor of our bathroom. But don't worry, I turned into lady Macgyver and immediately requested a plunger, draino, a coffee maker, and a trash can. Yes. we survived. We switched camps, so we didn't have to stay another night at that hotel. We went off to a FEMA camp located in Algiers, south and west of the city. We stayed in a tent with about 700 others. We had hot showers and luxurious portajohns. We ate hot meals, twice a day and we were provided with a lunch to take with us on the job site. They took good care of us.

The homes we worked in were molded and we wore N95 work masks and goggles. I became accustomed to the wonder bar tool. I even brought one home with me for around the house things. They really are a wonder.


Anyway, the hard part about describing the experience of this spring break trip is that I know before I went I had no idea what it was like down there. For the past 6 months I have been going about my life, it's been quite peachy. More than anything, this trip taught me a lot about what I believe about God. Do I believe in Him because life is good? Do I trust Him because of what He does for me? Do I praise Him for who He is? Will I love Him the same if a hurricane takes away everything I own? Will I praise Him? Where are you in your spiritual journey? Cause you're on one right now, whether you know it or not. If you get a chance, check out everystudent.com. Some of these big questions find themselves on the pages of this site. It's worth exploring.

I've posted my pictures on shutterfly for now. Check them out here.

here is an article:

E&P in New Orleans: 'The Press Has Moved on Too Fast'

By Mark Fitzgerald

Published: December 19, 2005 12:15 PM ET
CHICAGO New Orleans is a devastated city. I know,that's not exactly breaking news. But I just got back from there, and all I can say to everyone I've talked to since is: New Orleans is a devastated city, almost beyond belief.

You've got to see it, I told people again and again this weekend, back home in Chicago. Everyone in America should see it.

Because you're not seeing it in your newspaper. Not really.

The press, of course, is famous for rushing to disasters, and then moving on. But it's moved on too fast in New Orleans, with the result that Americans either figure the city has descended into anarchy, or is doing just fine.

Instead, block after block, mile after mile, New Orleans is a landscape of houses bumped off their foundations, spray-painted by National Guardsmen with big X's, inscrutable markings except for the bottom number that signifies whether a body, or two or three were found inside.

New Orleans is a pile of TVs on every other street. It is a highway underpass converted into a graveyard of flooded cars. It's a New Yorker magazine poking up from the silt a few hundred yards from the breach in the London Avenue levee, the really bad breach that nobody outside of New Orleans has heard about. It's a city of refrigerators duct-taped and dumped on the sidewalk, some of them converted into advertisements for itinerant demolition crews: "Gutting," the spray paint legend will say, followed by a phone number.

True enough, New Orleans can still make the front pages in America, more than 100 days since Hurricane Katrina stormed ashore.

Everyone headlined President Bush's commitment to rebuild the city's levees with $3.1 billion, and The New York Times reported over the weekend that just about every person who stayed in New Orleans during Katrina did so by choice--news, perhaps, to the rest of America, but a fact long-ago documented by The Times-Picayune.

A few out-of-town papers have made a commitment to ongoing coverage of the struggle to clean up and rebuild New Orleans. But making my first visit since Katrina to New Orleans--a city I've visited nearly a dozen times for the past two decades, thanks mostly to newspaper industry conventions--I was struck at how little prepared I was for what I saw.

The same national media that riveted us by showing the horror of the conditions endured by hurricane survivors at the Superdome and the Convention Center now tells the New Orleans story without much passion. It's all about numbers, like the levee appropriation, or bloodless debates about how--or even whether--to rebuild that great city.

Even when newspapers go down there to write about, say, the struggle to reopen such storied restaurants as Galatoire's or Commander's Palace, the context of daily New Orleans living gets lost.

For instance, until I went to New Orleans myself, I had no idea that virtually no McDonald's fast-food sites have reopened inside New Orleans. I had no idea that traffic lights are non-existent outside of downtown.

I glimpsed one reason for this lack of context just as I was leaving Friday. New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin was holding one of his frequent town meetings at the downtown Sheraton hotel, and I figured I had just enough time to catch it before getting the last flight back to Chicago.

Before the meeting, he held a press conference, with the ground rules being that every reporter could ask two questions. As Nagin's harried press spokeswoman went down the line, it became apparent that the reporters were either New Orleans locals, or foreigners. There were two crews from Japanese television, and at least three correspondents from Europe. So far as I could see there were no newspaper or broadcast reporters from outside Louisiana.

So there are few from outside the city to tell the hard story of how New Orleans is an odd mix of civilization carrying on under almost survivalist conditions.

At night, the French Quarter can seem almost normal, its bars packed and the music spilling onto the streets as in days of old. But then you can hear two words I never expected to hear in New Orleans: "Last call." There's a 2 a.m. curfew, and long before that you notice that the streets are filled almost entirely by males, demolition and construction workers who have replaced tourists.

Friday, empty streetcars adorned with swags of Christmas green rode the tracks downtown in dry runs for the scheduled resumption of service this past Sunday.

Outside of downtown, the devastation is numbing and redefines normal. The tenth, or hundredth, time you see "2 cats found" or "house off foundation" spray-painted in orange on the wall of what used to be someone's family home, the fact is remarkable only in its familiarity.

During the day, whole neighborhoods of New Orleans are utterly deserted, and at night they are dark and silent. It would be a cruel fate indeed if this great American city were to similarly fade into darkness while the press remains silent.

Driving in the Lower 9th Ward early Friday afternoon, I saw orange graffiti on a wrecked home that thankfully wasn't an "X" with a body count. "Psalm 55:18" was all it said.

The King James version renders the verse this way:
"He hath delivered my soul in peace
from the battle that was against me:
for there were many with me."

Restless and unpeacable though we often are, we in the press must stay among the many who abide with that anonymous and hopeful soul in New Orleans.

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Mark Fitzgerald (mfitzgerald@editorandpublisher.com) is E&P's editor-at-large