Just Give it Away

As has been previously mentioned, I work for a missions agency.  One of my responsibilities is to help train missionaries in developing a support team (formerly known as support raising) and to help coach/encourage/commiserate with them through that process.  Even though the 5 years I spent living off of support have passed, I still spend a lot of time thinking and learning about this whole phenomenon.

One of the reasons that I help with the support raising training at MTW is because of how much I love this whole crazy, messy process.  Don't get me wrong, I'd be pretty much scared to death if God called me back into that for full-time ministry, but there are so many things I adore about this process.

1. Being surprised and totally humbled - resources come from the least expected places.  Seeing friends and even strangers give so generously and sacrificially brings tears to my eyes and warmth to my heart in a way that few other things have.

2. Relying on God's faithfulness in new ways - one thing you realize about DST (developing a support team) is that you're so not in control.  You can send letters, and write blogs, and post updates, and call folks, and make fancy powerpoints or whatever that crazy stuff you can do on ipads is, and pray, pray, pray (the most important component) until the end of time, but NO MONEY is going to come in if the Lord's hand isn't in it.  I think DST was the best training I could have had for growing the kind of day to day, minute by minute dependance on the Lord that is necessary to survive on the mission field.  

3. Being confronted with my sin - few things reveal my sin like raising support.  How I expect God to respond immediately to my efforts. How my mood is measured by how much money came in that day (and by mood I mean "how I feel about God that day"). How I'm grossly judgmental as in "I know how much you go out to eat, you could totally give more to missions" - blech.  God has continuously used this process to refine the tar out of me.

However, now I'm a full time worker and committed US church attender.  I love, love, love being part of the sending team.  I wish I could do so much more to help support my friends and co-laborers who are obeying the call to expand the Church to the ends of the earth, but I'm thankful for what I can do and for the ways God is refining and blessing me on this side of the equation.

God has given me an amazing crash course in the blessings of being a giver, donor, sender, supporter, team member (whatever you want to call it!) this week.  For months and months I'd been wanting to be able to start giving to some pretty cool folks that God is using in pretty cool ways.  Instead of praying about it faithfully and really seeking the Lord, I'd been looking to my budget and bank accounts and planning that when this happens or such and such lines up, or I finally don't have to pay all this medical crap, I'll be able to start giving to these folks.

However, 8 months later, there's still no change and I want so very, very much to be a part of what God is doing through these folks.  In a moment of frustration last week, I was finally like "Screw this" (sometimes the conversations in my head involve less than polite language... sometimes the ones not in my head, too. :), I'm sick and tired of waiting for things to "line up" before I start giving.  There's no end in sight to these medical expenses, fears about car problems, potentially buying new furniture, etc.  I can't give much but I'm going to go ahead and start giving this piddly little amount and hope that I can increase it at some point in the future.

I was so excited to finally fill out my bank info and begin to regularly support these folks.  I knew that even though my gift is small, it was going to be a blessing and encouragement to my friends and to the people to whom they'll be ministering.  I didn't entirely know where the money was going to come from, but I was just so thankful that I'd finally stepped out and done this.

And, you know what?  God, who is so insanely, sweetly, unfailingly good to me, turned around blessed my socks off.  The very next day I was talking to a pretty awesome person who said that they really wanted to step in and help lift the load of some of my medical expenses for the next few months.  What an amazing blessing!!!  It lifted such a burden to know that there would be help in facing the overwhelming task of meeting my out of network deductible twice in two months.

So this week, I was like - well, that went so very well last week and there are so many I know who need the church to come alongside them and help fulfill God's call.  I thought that maybe I could step out again and give another little baby amount to start supporting another family's ministry.  Once again, it was such sweet fun to fill out that online form and know that this gift was going to bring smiles, hope, and encouragement to more friends, and even more than that, to bring more souls to the kingdom.  And once again, there was trepidation about not knowing exactly where this going to come from.

And, you know what?  Once again, the Lord surprised me with such a super sweet blessing.  I had submitted an appeal to my insurance company months ago and it did not look promising that it would go through.  However, the very next day, a refund deposit appeared in my account, which meant that the subsequent appointments would be paid as well.  What an encouragement!!  I immediately set up a bill pay to pay off the ole credit card (cause I'm one of those bad Christians who occasionally uses a credit card for medical expenses and the like).

I share this not to preach any type of health and wealth gospel (especially since that's more of a curse word in Reformed circles than the actual curse words), but to proclaim God's faithfulness to a girl who kept trying to figure it all out on her own, but when she stopped and stepped out in faith to help the Kingdom, was given the two-fold blessing of participating in missions and of being reminded that He cares for me, and He will not leave or forsake me.

So, if you have any tug on your heart to give, I would encourage you to do so.  It has been immeasurably rewarding to me to see God's care for both the missionary and myself in this process.  And, if you need some suggestions on where to give, I could probably connect you with a missionary or two.  ;)

Recipe: Caramel/Toffee Apple Dip

This is another recipe in the "Quick and Easy Crowd Pleasers" series.  Simple, relatively cheap, and usually a big hit!!  I can't take credit for the recipe since I learned it from dear friend and former roommie Melissa D (now Melissa E).  Amazing that the girl who grew up in Africa brought the best dish to the American wedding showers. :)

I made this on Sunday for the Advent Kick-off at church.  I was running kind of late, so didn't take pictures as I was going.  It's so easy you won't need them, though.

Step 1:  Buy 1 bar cream cheese (8 oz), 1 tub caramel dipping sauce (that they sell by the apples in the produce section), 1 bag of Heath toffee pieces, and 5-6 apples.  The Heath pieces can be the trickiest part of this recipe.  They're sold in the baking chips aisle (semi-sweet, milk, butterscotch, etc.).  I've only ever found them at Publix (because it really is where shopping is a pleasure!), but not every Publix has them.  I usually buy them when I see them and have a bag or two around the house.  Or, apparently, Amazon has them.

Step 2:  Get a dinner plate (or a plate with a rim or edge) and take the cream cheese and smear it all along the plate inside the rim.  This goes more smoothly if the cream cheese has been softened.

Step 3:  Dump the caramel sauce on top.  I don't usually need the whole tub.  I also use whatever's on sale - store brand, fat free, whatever.  Spread it around so that it covers all of the cream cheese.

Step 4:  Sprinkle toffee Heath pieces on top of caramel.  I generally only use 1/2 - 2/3 of the bag.

Step 5:  Wash and slice apples.  I usually get a mix of red and green (Granny Smith) apples.  I also slice them really thin.  Instead of getting my usual 8 slices out of an apple, I try to get 12-16.  The main purpose of the apple is a means of conveying the yummy dip to your mouth, so they don't have to be thick, just enough that you can scoop some yummy dip onto it.

Step 6:  Place apple slices around the edge/lip thing of plate.  I have mine stick into the dip a little bit and I might go ahead and start it off by having one or two when I set it up if I'm taking it to a big event so that folks know what to do when they walk up.

Enjoy the yummy dip!!  I do really wish I'd taken pictures now, but oh well.  Also, it does not taste as good when it's leftover in the fridge 2 days and you try to eat it with pretzels because you're out of apples.  In case you were wondering.  

Learn Something New: Glass Fusing

Eventually, I'll get around to blogging about the my official "learn something new" for this year, but in the meantime, I'm going to share about a "mini" one that came along.  One side effect of intentionally trying to learn something new every year has been a great willingness to make a fool of myself put myself out there when other new opportunities come along.  Take a painting class?  Sure.  Try something potentially hazardous sounding like glass fusing?  Why not?  So here's the glass fusing story -

A friend at work (of Bumble Bee cake ball fame) organized a group of us to go glass fusing.  It was at one of those paint some pottery places.  You can make all kinds of really cool things with glass fusing - bowls, plates, jewelry, decorative wall stuff.  As Christmas was coming up, I opted for a Christmas tree ornament. This was a pretty basic way to go as it didn't involve very much measuring or breaking glass ourselves.  They give you a triangle shape and you decorate it.

Ok, so I can't figure out how to rotate this picture, but we started with a base, a green (sparkle!) triangle, and then I added fettucini glass to make my strings of lights.  And I added a special piece of fancy glass to the top for a sparkly star.  Initially, you just work on placing everything where you want it to go and then later on your glue it down before it goes in the kiln.

There were lots of pieces of glass that were already broken that I looked through initially for my lights and decorations. And then, if I didn't find what I was looking for, I could break the noodles or rods of colored glass to the shapes that I wanted.

Next, I used tweezers to place the little ornaments where I wanted them to go on the tree.

Here's my tree!!  The colors here are very distinctly yellow for the lights (I straightened up that bottom one) and orange, but after being fired they kind of ended up the same color.  That was a little disappointing.

But all in all, I'm quite pleased with how it turned out.  You can see where I added a little trunk at the bottom. And the star at the top actually has a little gap in it so that you can put a wire hook through it.

I took a quick picture of it on the tree, although I haven't left it up there permanently yet.  The cats still haven't been convinced that the tree and ornaments aren't a giant play toy for them.  I think my $22 hand-made ornament will be safer on an ornament stand for the time being.  It is a bit of a pricey activity, but I opted for the larger tree, sparkle glass, and a fancy piece of glass for my star (that's a $2 star!), so my choices led to several up-charges.  You can make smaller ones for $8-12 or so.

Here's most of our group at our Creative Clayhouse.  You can see Kris (in orange) has a square piece, that will end up being "draped" over a mold and as it's fired it will melt into the shape of a plate with slightly raised edges.  Pretty cool!!

And Cheryl made an awesome snow flake where she did a lot of the glass cutting/breaking herself.  It turned out great!!!

Christmas Tradition: Ornaments

My family doesn't have a ton of traditions and most of the ones we do have involve cooking/eating food of some sort - Daddy's special, chocolate covered cherry cookies (to die for), chocolate lady finger pudding (look for these recipes later in the month).  One of the traditions that we do have that I love, love, love is collecting ornaments.  Ok, collecting ornaments at Christmas time is probably not so unique, but I love the tradition my mom started when we were kids.  This tradition started during the post-divorce phase that I fondly refer to as "Vacation Wars." Seriously, 2 kids who'd never been anywhere more exotic than Tennessee are, within an 18 month time span, taken to NYC (mom), on a cruise (dad), to London (mom - and that's a really cool story about how my mom saved all of her change in one of those big 5 gallon water jugs and after we rolled coins for months - this is pre-Coinstar- we had $1500 which was enough for tickets  to London for 3), and finally to Vail (dad - but also we had a free place to stay).

My mom had us start collecting ornaments from the different places that we'd been.  We didn't start this until the London trip, so we missed a few trips early on, but we have 3 little beefeater guys to represent England.  And every year, when we hang the ornaments, we tell our favorite stories from those different travels.  For instance, with the beefeaters, we talk about how Michelle and I hated British food (duh!) and really only wanted to eat at Burger King, and how at the tourist attractions we really just wanted to rush through to the gift shops, and how Michelle got car sick on the bus to Windsor Castle and we had to get off before even leaving London and I missed my chance to see a castle (umm...until I studied in London in college and then traveled Europe and saw about a million castles).  

Here's a glimpse at some of the ornaments that I've collected on my travels in recent years and what they remind me of.  

This little birdie is from Bangladesh.  I went there with work in the Spring of 2010 to visit our workers.  Fun story, my boss took me on a "short, little hike" to a remote little village where I almost died from dehydration.  That might be a slight exaggeration.  Slight.  Fun times.  Really, it was great to meet the amazing people who are ministering there, though. 

This one might be kind of hard to see, but it's a little filigree heart with a cross inside from Nepal.  Fun Nepal memories - 16 hours on the night bus (ha, ha, ha that was so horrible, so very, very horrible).  The first time I got altitude sickness.  The first time I rode on top of a bus.  Seeing Mt Everest.  A-mazing.

I bet you can guess where this one is from!! :)  Although I don't know why the kangaroo is making the Home Alone face.  My favorite thing about Australia?  New Zealand.  I know that doesn't quite make sense, but New Zealand is so amazing and everyone is sooooo nice there.  Australia is amazing, though. A wonderful, wonderful friend parted with some frequent flier miles so I could come visit for 3 weeks and we took a little holiday in New Zealand.  Christchurch, because it was the cheapest place to fly to.  We spent one day on an island filled with vineyards going on a wine tasting tour.  And another day was spent on an active volcano island.  Something cool actually from Australia?  The zoo is amazing!  Platypuses are pretty much the coolest animals ever.  And the kangaroo enclosure?  Oh yeah, you walk right in and just hang with the kangaroos.  

It's William Shakespeare!!! Direct from Stratford-Upon-Avon.  I studied/worked abroad in London in college.  I took two classes:  The British Novel...on Film (read a book, watch a movie - awesomeness!) and, um, Survey of British Theater (where you go see a play each week and write a little paper on it).  I did also have an internship where I worked for RNLI - the Lifeboats.  It's ROYAL charity.  Kate & Wills' first event as an engaged couple was launching one of the lifeboats.  British people get really excited when they hear I worked for RNLI since Americans typically know nothing about it.  

So this little heart is totally from IKEA, but it's from IKEA in Chengdu.  My first IKEA adventures were all in China.  And I brought this one little guy back with me.  Ah, those sweet, sweet trips to Chengdu - with IKEA, and Pete's Tex-Mex, and Papa Johns. 

Yay!!  This is my Mele Kalikimaka hula girl from Maui.  I've been a lot of places, like 24 countries or something, but Hawaii just might be my favorite place.  Love it.  Love it so much. Love the 5 pools interconnected with slides (slides!!!), love the ladies who bring those yummy drinks around in the afternoon, love the breakfast buffet.  And love the sweet, sweet friend who redeemed frequent flier miles to fly me out there, pay for our hotel, and get the rental car.  

So those are the recent ones.  Some of the particularly awesome ornaments are still at my mom's and go on the family tree there.  And by awesome, I mean things like the Chicago Bulls Christmas bulb I picked out Christmas of "92 because I was obsessed with Scottie Pippen and the Bulls for like 5 months following the Barcelona Dream Team Olympics.  Those pictures/stories will have to wait until I'm home for the holidays.  :)  

Friday Night at Home

1. Get off work early (score!!) and head to park for a walk in gorgeous 65 degree weather while the SUN is still out.

2. Trim cats' nails.  Be ignored by cats for rest of evening.

3.  Debut this hairdo.

4. Make 3 separate Christmas lists - Mom, Dad, and extended family gift exchange.  This is harder than it may sound. It involves dividing items based on price and extent of desire to receive them so that shoppers have a variety of items to choose from and also that I still get the items I would most like/need (new ironing board cover - that's a need not a want, folks).

5. Write 2 VERY overdue thank you notes.

6. Fold laundry.

7.  Gaze at this tree a bit.  Ok, the bottom 1/3 is actually lit, but it just doesn't look like it in this picture.

8. Decide whether or not to do something about piles of books on bedside table - ALL of which I have started, only one of which I have finished.  Sigh.

9.  Make pizza for dinner instead of healthy thing with cabbage from my garden.

10.  Make list of folks to send Christmas cards to.

11. Write another blog post.  And a second scheduled to be posted later.  And maybe start another.

12. Work on this knitting project while watching guilty pleasure Revenge (which is maybe getting too soapy/stressful even for me).

13. Decide what recipes to bring to December events where a dish is required:
         - ranch bacon dip with garlic rounds for SEC championship
         - caramel/toffee apple dip for Advent kick-off at church
         - Pioneer Woman french pastry/donut things for neighborhood brunch
         - Aunt Dorothy's rice casserole for community group dinner???  (still debating this one)

14.  Search itunes for Christmas albums to add to Spotify Christmas playlist.

15.  Drink hot cocoa with marshmallows while sitting next to fire in fireplace!