Jubilee Reflections

Just for Janet -- another blog post! On a half-related note, it snowed last night in Pittsburgh -- my favorite kind of snow. The big, fat, fluffy kind that floats gently down out of the sky, piling up and covering everything with a peaceful blanket of white. My roommate described it perfectly when she said "It looks like Narnia outside!" I wanted to take pictures of it, but by the time I got home last night it was late and I just went to bed. Perhaps if the trees outside my apartment are still Narnia-esque when I get home, I'll take some and post them for you.

On Saturday I'll be leaving for another mission trip, this time to Bay St. Louis, MS with 18 college students. I love that students are willing to give up their spring break to go somewhere and do dirty work. Granted, it will be warmer in Mississippi, but I think their main concern is helping people, which is great.

A few weeks ago was the Jubilee Conference, yay! It is an absolutely awesome conference, and I say that not because I am on staff with the CCO, but because it is truly unique in its focus. It's really encouraging to hear other people talk excitedly about what we are doing, too. Not just so that we can toot our own horns, but because we truly believe this is so important.

The main stage speakers included Kelly Monroe Kullberg, Chuck Colson, Donald Miller, and Anthony Bradley. After the conference, Anthony posted the following on his blog about the CCO and the Jubilee Conference:

[Jubilee is] the only conference I know that combines the Biblical narrative of creation-fall- redemption-restoration and living missionally of any college ministry currently embedded on several college campuses. [Students were] meeting together for a weekend to talk about the implications of the the narrative of creation-fall-redemption-restoration for life in this world right now, today. This is unprecedented!!! They get it: creation-fall-redemption-restoration, mission! A passion for piety and the redemption of all of creation. A desire for personal
righteousness AND a desire to fight against evil and social injustice--to be true redeemers of culture.

Anthony also mentions something that is MY favorite part of Jubilee. No matter what your passions or interests are, there is something at Jubilee that addresses it! We, as campus staff people, want our students to understand that their faith should inform EVERY area of their lives. Here's what Anthony had to say:

I especially love that Jubilee demonstrates that the Gospel applies to every area of life in the topics of the seminars, panel discussions, and breakout sessions. Every area--from your identity in Christ to HIV/AIDS and environment. Forgive me for being biased but it seems cultivating a Christian-world-and-life view is the best holistic understanding of what it means to be world Christian.

AND, Jubilee is getting buzz in really cool places! Michael Gerhon was a panelist and breakout session leader this year at Jubilee. He is also a columnist for the Washington Post. He mentions the Jubilee Conference in a recent article in the Post. Read the full article here.

I have seen the future of evangelical Christianity, and it is pierced. And sometimes tattooed. And often has one of those annoying, wispy chin beards.
Those who think of evangelical youths as the training cadre of the religious right would have been shocked at Jubilee 2008, a recent conference of 2,000 college students in Pittsburgh sponsored by the Coalition for Christian Outreach. I was struck by the students' aggressive idealism -- there were booths promoting causes from women's rights to the fight against modern slavery to environmental protection. Judging from the questions I was pounded with, the students are generally pro-life -- but also concerned about poverty and deeply opposed to capital punishment and torture. More than a few came up to me between sessions in anguished uncertainty, unable to consider themselves Republican or Democrat, liberal or conservative --
homeless in the stark partisanship of American politics.

Awesome!!! And, believe it or not, the CCO folks and the speakers and presenters aren't the only ones who really like the Jubilee Conference -- the students love it, too! Carine, a senior nursing student from the Republic of Congo, said this after attending the conference:

I have been struggling with a lot of things going on in my life that even question the Love of God. Being in Jubilee, and listening to different messages, helped me renew my commitment to God, and know that He is and will always be there in my life if I let him take control of everything.

Amy is a junior education major who is also very interested in environmental stewardship. She doesn’t feel much support from the campus regarding the ways that Christ calls us to be faithful in all areas of life, including environmentalism. She said this about the Jubilee Conference:

Seeing so many people working to make a difference is so encouraging. It always moves me to tears. At Jubilee, I feel like that's a time to actually hardcore SEE what is being done. College students just like me are making a difference.

Our students are catching the vision of what it means to have their lives transformed by the power of Christ, not only in how they do their devotions or how they treat others, but also in how they work and play and study and create. The Kingdom of God is coming here, now!

Rebuilding Phoenix 2 - photos!

Here are a few photos of my mission trip to Louisiana. Enjoy!



The front door of the home we worked on.





















My assignment for the week: laying tile! Before...
















Our finished task!!! Isn't it a lovely room?















Our group, with the contractor we worked with and the woman's house we worked on (Noella is in the middle of the group).















And finally... the infamous RAT DOG!!! Isn't it just the ugliest little thing you've ever seen?

Rebuilding Phoenix

Last week I had the opportunity to travel to Phoenix, Louisiana for a mission trip with my church. The church I work for is an Evangelical Covenant Church -- a small Swedish denomination with Lutheran similarities. (I don't know much about the church background, actually. For more information, you can check out the Wikipedia article or the Covenant Church website.) Anyway, we went with the Covenant mission organization called Covenant World Relief, and yes, you read right, we were in Phoenix, Louisiana.

Phoenix is a TINY town located 25 miles south of New Orleans, right next to the Mississippi River. As you can see from the map (the pink arrow), it's not located in a very 'safe' spot, particularly when hurricanes are near. CWR, along with a few other mission organizations, has committed to rebuilding this tiny town, which two and a half years later still carries evidence of the destruction Hurricane Katrina caused. Because of its location in between the Mississippi and the gulf/marsh, Phoenix is bordered with two 17 foot levys about 500 yards apart, and so when the wind/rain/floodwaters came, the levys essentially created a giant bowl filled with 17-20 feet of water. And because the water had nowhere else to go, it just sat there until they finally broke one of the levys to drain the water. In a community of only 300 people and 160 homes, only 25 houses were able to be salvaged after the hurricane. Slowly, houses are being rebuilt and the community is being restored.

My team of seven was working on a woman named Noella's home, putting in trim boards, laying tile, painting, and wiring light fixtures. (For your information, I am now an expert tile layer -- available for hire!) The community of Phoenix that existed before the hurricane is still very much alive, even though physically it is still very broken. While we were working, there was a continuous stream of family, friends, and neighbors poking their heads in to see how the house was progressing, asking questions, and taking notes on the building details. One of our favorites was a couple named Donald and Annabelle. Their home was one of the few that was able to be salvaged, and they are slowly rebuilding it themselves, while working and still living in a FEMA trailer on the other side of the Mississippi. But they come back to Phoenix as often as they can, to work on their house and catch up on the community. Though they have no connections to Noella, they expressed so much gratitude for us being down there and helping to rebuild Phoenix. They opened their home to us, fed us dinner (mmm, gumbo!), and insisted that from now on we were to consider them friends. Let me tell you, that is the body of Christ in action!

I have so many more stories I could tell you, and even more pictures I could show you. It's amazing to me the amount of destruction and devastation we saw in our travels -- it's been two and a half years since the hurricane! But thankfully, people are still volunteering to come down and work, and little by little, the area is coming back together.

The first week of March, I have another opportunity to do hurricane relief work. I will be traveling to Bay St. Louis, Mississippi (the red arrow) with a La Roche College spring break team. I'm sure I'll have more stories and pictures to share with you then, as well. Please pray for our team, as we finalize preparations.

Blessings to you all!
PS. If you want to check out the project we were working with, visit www.rebuildingphoenix.com

Tell me what you know...

My newest favorite musician is a woman named Sara Groves, who has actually been putting out CDs for many years. I discovered her, thanks to the Relevant Podcast, and have fallen in love with the way she interprets the world.

If you think about it, we are all doing this, every single day - in every action we do, we are interpreting the world around us. Some are able to do it through music, some through art, some with words... It is an absolutely essential part of our human nature. Every day we are figuring out how and why we exist in the world, and what our relationship is to the world. How do you interpret it?

With her music, Sara Groves makes beautiful connections to our humanity and God's nature. She tells stories and celebrates people. Music moves me, and some days I wish I had the gift of songwriting. But for now, I will have to simply enjoy the work of others. This is the chorus from my current favorite Sara Groves song, off the CD of the same name (Tell Me What You Know).


Tell me what you know
About God and the world and the human soul
How so much can go wrong
And still there are songs...


I thank the Lord in Heaven that I will always have a song to sing. I praise Him because we will always have songs to sing, despite the presence of so much pain and evil in the world. Through the darkness and desperation, there is hope. People are good. God is just. The world is beautiful. And I will keep on singing.

Tell me what you know...

New Photos, Finally!

I finally uploaded the pictures on my camera to my computer. For you today: a visual tour of the past couple weeks in the life of Wendy.

For Christmas, my parents surprised me with a new digital camera! Okay, well they didn't exactly "surprise" me with it, since I had asked for it. But it was still a surprise! My mom did a wonderful job of researching and picking a really good one. My first real chance to play with it was on the way up to Chicago for a friend's wedding.


This camera is amazing! It does things that I did not know cameras could do! My favorite features are the macro mode (so you can take really close-up pictures of things) and the color filter mode, pictured left.

Once I got back to Pittsburgh, I spent New Year's Eve downtown, enjoying the First Night festivities. Among other things, we got to see a performance of the Balmore Highlanders (I think?) Scottish bagpipers, drummers, and dancers. It was really cool!!!
Also unique to Pittsburgh is the fact that at midnight, our New Year's ball goes up, not down. I wanted to get a video of it, but my camera was out of memory. Maybe next year!


I've had a lot of fun posting and arranging pictures on my new Flickr account. Initially, I got an account because I really like searching other people's pictures and saving them as "favorites" so that I have someplace to look for inspiration when I'm crafting or painting or writing. After a while, though, I decided that it's only fair for me to post pictures of my own, too! I am by no means a professional photographer, or even a talented amateur. But it makes me happy, and I suppose that's all that really matters! :)

After-Christmas Update

Well, much to my surprise, my parents got me the first pieces of the Willow Tree Nativity set! I had told my mom about it, but I didn't know that she was actually going to get it for me! I now have the basics of the nativity - the most important parts, really. Joseph and Mary holding baby Jesus, a shepherd, two sheep, and a donkey. I've taken most of my Christmas decorations down already, but I think I'll leave that one up a little while longer...

Speaking of Christmas decorations, the one thing that is STILL up in my apartment is... the Christmas tree! We got a live one, which brought me great joy. The only problem is that no one was home the week before Christmas, and now that it's more than a week after Christmas, the poor thing is extremely dry and brittle. Yesterday I took off the ornaments and garland, but had to stop before I removed the lights because it hurt my hands so much! The floor is getting covered with a good carpet of dried needles. We have been warned, in a missive from the apartment complex, to thoroughly wrap our tree up before transporting it so that we don't get pine needles all over the building. But my mom's solution to the problem is much more fun: our tree is next to the sliding glass door, which leads out to our third-floor balcony. She thinks we should just drop the tree over the balcony, thus removing the need to wrap the tree up at all! I think my mother is a genius.

In related news, the other significant present I got for Christmas was a digital camera!!! My mom makes us give her lists every year at Christmas, and I put a camera down (along with a MacBook) as a joke, not actually expecting to get one. But I did -- and it is amazing!!! That camera does things that I didn't know cameras could do! The day after I got the camera in our belated Christmas celebration I had to drive to Chicago with some friends, and I spent pretty much the whole four hour ride taking pictures of things and fiddling with my new toy. I'd love to show you the pictures, but I'm currently in Panera without my camera and cord, so the next time I'm around I'll definitely let you all in on the new-camera goodness.

Nativity

In decorating my apartment for Christmas this year, I realized that I have a very small supply of Christmas decorations. This is okay, because I have a small apartment, and so what decorations I do have can adequately fill up the space. Plus we got a sweet live tree, and even though it is sparsely decorated, it is lovely. :)
However, there is one Christmas decoration that I greatly desire to have: a Nativity set. And not just any nativity set, but this one:

The Willow Tree Nativity set, designed by Susan Lordi. I have given other Willow Tree figurines to my mom for various holidays, and I really really like them. This Nativity is just BEAUTIFUL, and I love it. The only problem is that the combined price for the entire set is about $290.00!!!!! Honestly.... That's ridiculous, I know. But I love it. Fortunately, you can buy it in pieces. The plan is to buy one section at a time and eventually get the whole set. (Even better would be to get other people to buy it for me!) I'm anticipating that it will take me 5 or 6 years.

Until then, though, I still really feel like I need a Nativity set for my home (wherever that may be in the next 5 or 6 years). So as an alternative to the complete Willow Tree set, last night I purchased this Nativity Set, much more affordable at $19.99:














Isn't it cute??? AND, if you push the star, Junior the Asparagus sings "O Little Town of Bethlehem." SO CUTE!!!

Well... That's all really. I just wanted to share my excitement with you all. Merry Christmas!