TAPP

We are up and running...for the most part.
The TAPP web-site is up and everyone should visit it.

http://tapphope.org/

I have been working with TAPP for the past year and I am so excited that we have gotten this far....Thanks Davo for all of your hard work on building and launching the website!

This is the process of making the beads in Uganda.....

The Beads then look like this and are made into....

These beautiful necklaces...and bracelets...and earings...and purses...etc

Then we they are shipped to the US TAPP Branch here in Anderson....and Christy and I, along with the whole gang take over from there.

This the Door to out TAPP Office....we just opened the office in October....
We have been working really hard and I for one am so excited at what we have accomplished in such a short period of time!

God has been so good to us and He had been doing some amazing thing!

Thanks everyone for your hard work!!

Last Night

Last night was a good nite. I went to this tiny greek resturant in town with two of my very dear friends to celebrate .....well....we didn't have anything to celebrate! We all just needed a pick-me-up and nothing does the trick like Greek food! Christy and I make it to "The Nile" (the name of the Resturant because it is owned by an Egyptian guy, Samir, and his wife) about once a week. Last night we realized that we were becoming regulars....We were pretty convienced that waiter thinks that we are crazy, but he informed us that in fact he didn't and that he could here us in the kitchen....it is a really small resturant!

This is the Egyptian Christmas Cat that was a guest at our table....

This is Marcos Greek Chicken Salad....the chicken is sooooo good...we are trying to figure out how to order it without the lettus!!

This is the Saganaki....Fried Feta Cheese that is lit on fire at your table with Rum...so tastey....when they light it on fire you are supposed to yell "OPA"

which we did....very loudly!!

This is Christy and Sally...These two girls are amazing....as I am sure the picture shows!

And this is Sally finishing off the Baba Ghannouj....it was good!

I love moments of simple joy and the warmth that comes from good company and uplifting relationships!

a note of thanks

I have to admit, during this whole time with Callie being sick and her surgery, I have been pretty dissapointed with the way that my family's home church here has responded.

The church is made up of Drs and Phds and seminary professors, yet not one of these theologically minded men or women called to check on my sister, nor did they call to check on my parents, or myself.

Instead the prayers, the visits, the cards, the hugs, and the kisses all came from the most unlikely sources.

My parents have had possibly the most open home in the community of this sad college town. Every night another kid is at our home for dinner, to watch a rugby match, to check their email, to get a hug, or to have a cup of coffee. Over the past five years our family has grown leaps and bounds with people from all different walks of life.

Two days after Callie got back from the hospital, we had 15 people at our house for thanksgiving. Everyone brought something to the table. The Indians brought Dahl and Rice, the southeners brought peach cobbler, the africans- pilao, etc....it was wonderful. There were dreaded chain-smokers, theology students, german actors....people that have absolutely nothing in common with each other, but one thing.

Love.

It doesn't look the same for all of them, but that day they all loved my family. My broken, burdened, lacking, but loving family.

When someone asked me what my family needed during this rough time- I said jokingly, I know my mom would love some money to pay for the surgery! :) The next week when she had to pay the bill a card was in our mail box.

It wasn't from the senior pastor my folk's church, it was from a group a hippie girls who started a business 3 years ago with my sister selling their hand made journals.

I was humbled and speechless. All I could do was cry. These girls lived in one room apartments with hand-me-down furniture and part time jobs. I didn't know how they could afford to be so generous to us when we needed it.

All is said in the card was this:

This is from us, an un-numbered group of young people who have been loved by your family. You loved us with all of our shape and sizes and colors. You didn't care about our baggage and that we needed to take five minute smokes every hour, you still loved us. You tell us that you doors are open, and even when haven't had enough to take care of yourself you still make dinner for 10 people everyday because you know that we are hungry.

This was how we have learned to recieve again.
So, Thanks....for everything.
Thank you for teaching me that you recieve blessings from them most likely of unlikely place....because that is just how great our God is!

The Vision

I have been reading Red Moon Rising the past few month. It has literally taken me months to get through it. It is taking so long because after I finish reading everyday, I am left to think and pray. It shouldn't be, but it is so radical.

More to to come about this, but there is a portion I want to share. When asked about what is vision looked like for this 24-7 prayer movement, the author responded with this:

The Vision?
The vision is JESUS--obsessivley, dangeriously, undeniably Jesus.
The vision is an army of young people. You see bones? I see an army.
And they are FREE from materialism.
They laugh at 9-5 little prisons.
They could eat caviar on Monday and crusts on Tuesday.
They wouldn't even notice.
They know the meaning of the Matrix, they way the West was won.
They are mobile like the wind, they belong to the nations. They need no passport. People write thir addresses in pencil and wonder at their stange existence.
They are free yet they are slaves of the hurting and dirty and dying.

What is the vision?

The vision is holiness that hurts the eyes. it make children laugh and adults angry. It gave up the game of minimum integrity long ago to reach for the stars. It scorns the good and strains for the best. It is dangerously pure.

Light flickers from every secret motive, every private conversation.
It loves people away from their suicide leaps, their Satan games.
This is an army that will lay down its life for the cause.
A million times a day its soldiers
choose to lose
that they might one day win
the great 'Well done' of faithful sons and daughters.
Such heroes are as radical on Monday morning as Sunday night.
They don't need fame from names. Instead they grin quietly upwards and hear the crowd chanting again and again: "COME ON!"
And this is the sound of the underground
The whisper of history in the making
Foundations Shaking
Revolutionaries dreaming once again
Mystery is scheming in whispers
Conspiracy is breathing ...
This is the sound of the underground
And the army is discipl(in)ed.
Young people who beat their bodies into submission.
Every solider would take a bullet for his comrade at arms.
The tattoo on their back boasts "For me to live is Christ and to die is gain."
Sacrifice fuels the fire of victory in their upward eyes.
Winnder.
Martyrs.
Who can stop them?
Can hormones hold them back?
Can failure succeed?
Can fear scare them or death kill them?
And the generation prays
like a dying man
with groans beyond talking,
with warrior cries, sulphuric tears and with great barrow loads of laughter!
Waithing. Watching: 24-7-365.
Whatever it takes they will give:
Breaking the ules.
Shaking mediocrity from its cosy little hide.
Laying down their rights and their precious little wrongs,
laughting at labels, fasting essentials.
The adverisers cannot mold them.
Hollywood cannot hold them.
Peer-pressure is poweless to shake their resolve at late night parties
before the cockerel cries.
They are incredibly cool, dangerously attractive inside.
On the outside? They hardly care.
They wear ckithes like costumes to communicate and celebrate but
never to hide.
Would they surrender their image or their popularity?
They woule lay down their very lives--swao sears with the man on
death row--guilty as hell.
A throne for an electric chair.
With blood and sweat and many tears, with sleepless nights and fruitless days, they pray as if it al depends on God and live as if it all depends on them.
Their DNA chooses JESUS (He breathes out, they breathe in).
Their subconscious sings. They had a blood transfusion with Jesus.
Their words make demons scream in shopping centers.
Don't you hear them coming?
Herald the weirdos@
Summon the losers and the freaks.
Here come the frightened and forgotten with fire in their eyes.
They walk tall and trees applaud, skyscrapers bow, mountains are
dwarfed by these children of another dimention
Their prayers summon the hounds of heaven and invoke the ancient dream of Eden.
And this vision will be. It will come to pass; it will come easily; it will come soon.
How do I know? Because this is the longing of creation itself, the groaning of the Spirit, the very dream of God.
My tomorrow is his today.
My distant hope is his 3-D.
And my feeble, whispered, faithless prayer invokes thunderous,
Resounding, bone-shaking great "Amne" from countless Angles, from
heros of the faith, from Chirst himself. And He is the original dreamers, the ultimate winnder.
Guaranteed.

--peter greig

Movin On

It is a strange feeling when you know that it is time to move on. It never is very clear to me. It is just a feeling.

Then I start asking the questions:
Move on to where?
How will I get there?
Am I actually moving on or moving back?
What does this look like?
Can I do it on my own?
What if people think I'm stupid?
What if things are never the same again?

Then I start to pray.
I know that what I am movin on to isn't anything I would have dreamed for myself, but there is a cloud of peace over my mind and my spirit. I know that I can't do it on my own, and Lord you are really going to have to make a way because I DON'T KNOW HOW to do it on my own.

And then, when I start to doubt....again....when I go to bed at night and convience myself that I don't have move on...that I am fine where I am....that there isn't anyway that it can all come together in time...I should just wait till next time......

Jesus steps in and shows me that I am not in control and that He is.
He is making a way to move on....
He is making a way for my life......

He has all ready made away!

Snow and Dentists

Well, it snowed here yesterday night. We got four inches. The first snow of the season. I personally wouldn't have ever minded if it never snowed, but i am here...in Indiana, and it always snows in Indiana.

Everyone keeps talking about how much more it feels like Christmas because there is snow on the ground. I have never quite acclimated to a white Christmas...give me 100 degree days and 90 degree nights...that feels like Christmas.

I also had to go to the Dentist this morning. Apperently the only time that I have had any cavities filled in the United States, they did a horrible job! I have to have all four of them replaced! We finished working on the first one today. Did I mention that I live right next door to the Dentist? Today he said "who knew there was a house full of Tanzanians next door!"

I was somehow flattered!

Eunoto

Today I was reading the news as usual on the BBC website and I came accross the following photo story.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/shared/spl/hi/picture_gallery/07/africa_maasai_ceremony/html/1.stm

It made me particularly sad today. I guess I am just sad to have missed out on an era of change. I remember when all of the Korianka age-set began their rights of passage into warriorhood over seven years ago. I never thought that I wouldn't be around to see the next transition happen. Kind of disappointing....rather very disappointing.

Today I am sad.
And to make matter worse...its snowing today...four inches!!
For some they call this Christmas season....not I!

Supernatural Solutions

I had an interesting conversation with a former professor yesterday over lunch. I had heard that she did some sabatical work on female circumcision in Kenya and was presenting her work during a chapel. I wasn't able to go and hear her presentation, (obviously intreged from growing up in Tanzania) I emailed her and asked if we could meet and talk.

Her work had mostly been with Kikuyu, as one of the professors from the Sociology/Social Work Department is a Kikuyu and was hosting her trip. (don't even get me started on my tribal tendency of Maasai and Kikuyu rivalries! :0) But needless to say it was an interesting coversation and I enjoyed hearing what she learned and being heard myself.

She said "Life is so much more raw in Africa. You have to have unconditional and complete faith for provision and sustainance. I would have never given God credit for the things He did for me there if I had been back here in the States."

She told me a story of a trip they were taking from Nairobi to Kisumu. They were on the road, packed with loris, and had been at a stand-still for more than four hours. Her Kikuyu colleage called one of his pastor friends in the area and told him to start praying for a supernatural solution. Not five minutes after the coversation, the traffic was moving again.

They were all praising God and she said "That is so amazing, I would have never thought that my prayers moved traffic in the States" and the Kikuyu said "Lisa, God is working on our prayers weeks before we ever pray them."

So simple, so African.
Praise God!

Yuckie!

Today I don't feel good. I am sitting at my desk at work and all that I want to do is curl up in bed and go to sleep while my mom makes me cups of green tea and I listen to Gustavo Santaolalla.

A Little Better

Well, Callie is home again and she is doing much better. She seems to finally be able to get the rest that she needs. She made us promise in the Hospital not to have some much company come over as we had over Thanksgiving. I understand, I mean there was 15 people around the dinner table and you can imagine the amount of noise that followed! But I am so thankful that she is now doing better and I am so thankful for the way that God always seems to make away!

Well, that is all for now.

Life is Kind a Crazy

Well, Good News. Callie made it through her surgery with flying colors! She is doing very well, and aside from trying to manage her pain, she seems to be doing just fine. The surgeon said that the tumor he removed was 30cm long and weighed 13lbs! Bigger then a full term baby! It does seem crazy that something that big can be inside of you and you don't even know it. I imagine that she is going to start feeling a lot better. Better than she has probably in years!

But now that the surgery is over, I find myself at home alone trying to get things ready for her return and I feel like an emotional wreck for some reason. It doesn't make sense to me, but something doesn't feel right. I feel really lonely and as though there is never going to be enough time in the day to get what I need done. I feel like life is like an empty shell right now and I am not sure what I could do to make things different.

I like my new job, but something doesn't feel right. I am trying to be patient and wait and see how things go, but somehow I feel like a stranger in a place where I used to feel so at home. I am hoping that soon I will feel and see improvment. I am so tired of working at Starbucks right now, but I know that I need to hold fast and make it through.

I just need for a wave of energy to push through the next two weeks. I feel like everything that I was holding back, trying to be strong, has pushed its way to the forefront of my defense system and I am no longer to restrain myself. I am tired. I need to be held. I don't know if I can be the holder right now.