the Tassy Cinco...

Some of you know that last summer while we were in the States, Micah felt a nudge from the Lord to collect Spanish Bibles and give them out here in Quito.  The very first day of school, he wrote a letter to his teacher explaining his vision and his desire to include his classmates in this adventure.  After planning with our wonderful Elementary chaplain, his amazing fourth grade teacher, and our tremendous organizer of CSOs (Christian Service Outreach), the Lord developed the plan.

Micah and his elementary friends collected around 200 Bibles and decided to share them with the various CSOs sponsored by Alliance Academy.  CSOs are what happen every Wednesday afternoon, with high school students reaching out to people in need all over Quito.  Some of the Bibles went to hospitalized children, some to street children, and some to kids whose parents work at the local dump.

Micah was invited to go to the dumpsite yesterday and give out the Bibles for that site.  He was so excited to see this vision come to fruition!  The night before we went, I was touched to hear him say, “Mom, I hope some of these kids come to know Christ.”

I do not share this story to point to Micah and what a great kid he is (although we personally think he is a great kid!).  In fact, I hesitated to share what might seem like “bragging on” him.  I tell this story because, as a mom and just as a person, I so often miss the nudges that God puts on my heart.  I’m too busy or I get distracted with my own agenda.  And yet I was challenged by our 10-year-old to ACT when God puts someone or something on my heart.

Will you pray for these precious kids and families who received Bibles, that the Word of God would penetrate their hearts and allow them to know Him personally?

Allow me to post a few pictures!

Micah, waiting for the weekly kids’ club to start.  I personally love the fact that he is wearing his “Just Do It” shirt!

Playing with the kids on the playground.  

Handing out the Bibles!

With 1.5 months to go, I had this realization. Finishing well can be fun. Yep, the Tassy cinco will be returning stateside June 23rd. God’s got us where He wants us. There is a ton of “what ifs” yet to navigate. One of the things with Change is that Transition always follows. They are different. And how you handle them both makes finishing well a joy or a pain. I’ve also found that people really struggle with both or one of the other. There is grief… there are headaches… there is that “I miss the _______ we used to do” syndrome… there are funny moments… there are a bunch of details only Jesus knows how to organize and prompt…

“So then men ought to regard us as servants of Christ…” A good friend preached on the first 5 verses of 1 Corinthians 4 and pointed to the word “servant”. He couldn’t get past that first phrase and gave us a picture… The word servant can be equated with “under rowers”. Picture if you will a boat out from ancient times where is a bunch of oars stick out of the belly on each side. Can you picture it? The Boat is God’s Kingdom movement and we do have a part.

Recent developments for me on this theme: Helped a student process living for Jesus and he made the commitment, constantly spot garbage around our school campus and just pick it up, joined in on a Kindergarten lunch time cuz they won a fundraising contest, help move chairs occasionally with the School operations team, just listen to student and staff on what’s going on in their hearts, run a school wide ping pong tourney just for those kids who need something different, and our car “Azul” has been a consistent “Tassy” cab up our hill.

DO THE LITTLE THINGS WELL. 

Send any mail to the Youth World office address:

the Tassys

Mision Mundo Juvenil Internacional 

Av. Brasil N39-68 y Av. America

Quito, Ecuador

South America

I can’t say I really was looking for this revelation; it just kind of came to me.  That’s usually the type of revelation that I need to pay the most attention to, because Someone other than me is giving me a nudge in a certain direction.

I believe that God has been showing me that I have often approached parenting the same way I approach a vending machine.  I have expected to input certain things, and then I should definitely get what I want in return.  Now, I have lived overseas for a bit, so I may be dating myself, but I can remember the vending machines where you put in your money, you punched E5, and then you got your chips or Nutrigrain bar or whatever.  Sometimes the product got stuck so you had to smack the machine or shake it or (so I’ve heard from reliable sources) even kick the thing to get your snack.  But what a simple process—-input money, push buttons, receive product.

Maybe it’s because my personality can swing to the uber-pragmatic side, or maybe it’s because I grew up in a culture where we should be able to get what we want when we want it without ridiculous amounts of effort, but God has been showing me that my approach to parenting has been similar.  I want to be able to make my investment (time, teaching, discipline, etc.), push the right buttons in my kids’ lives, and Voila!  Out comes a pre-packaged, obedient, loving, others-centered kid.

Not only does this not work, but I am realizing it takes the joy out of parenting.  Don’t get me wrong, I fully believe we are responsible for the training of our children.  God instructs us over and over in His Word to be good stewards of the children He has put in our homes and to teach them diligently.

But the other day God gave me a new perspective (it has to be from Him; I am not this creative).  What if I looked at each of my kids as a treasure map, and we are on this journey together to dig up the hidden treasures of the way God has made them?  How differently I would view parenting!

As I started to reflect on this, I could see it all coming together.  When I view the map, some of the paths are meandering and seem out-of-the-way to this ever-practical mom.  But how sweet the lessons have been along those curvy, “wayward” paths!  Sometimes we have walked through forests which seemed scary and unfamiliar.  I have wanted to fast-forward and quickly leave that dark place. But I can look back and see the treasures of dependence, hope, and trust that we carried with us as we finally left the forest.  Sometimes the path seems to lead us through a marshy place, where we tramp and trudge and seem to be getting nowhere.  We didn’t know it then, but we brought out with us some sparkling perseverance and fortitude.  

Some of the treasures take longer to unearth than others.  Some are so visible in our children, we could see them at the moment they came into our lives.  Other things in their lives (and ours) don’t look like treasures at the time, and only by offering them in surrender to their Creator can I begin to see the jewel emerge.

As I look back, I’m embarrassed and disgusted by the moments when I tried to just push buttons and get a pre-packaged, normal product.  Our kids are so much more beautiful and unique than that!  I’m asking God to give me the patience and the grace to join them on this treasure hunt, discovering the beauty of their individual lives as we go.

Okay so tonight one of my boys got stuck in the bathroom. Yep, stuck literally a no budging door latch. It took me & him a half an hour to help him get out. The door wouldn’t open… we used all kinds of techniques to work on the door knob, but then thirty minutes in, I made a suggestion to pop off the pins on the three hinges on the opposite side of the door. He worked them out and we pushed the other side of the door. Are we willing to take risks to try something different? I really thought he could take my suggestions to focus on the door knob, but the answer was somewhere else. My other son got an idea this summer that he final passed on to our elementary chaplain. It was about collecting Bibles and/or money to purchase Bibles for families that didn’t have one. It’s taken off and all of Kindergarten through 6th grade this week is collecting Bibles (or money for them). It’s taken off all because of an obedient 10 year old thinking of other options to open a door. Ha. Love my boys and the lessons they teach me. Open some doors.