And I’ve also learned that, like Moses, I have often let my perception of my weaknesses and obstacles determine how I act and think. But for every person, the call is not to be strong, but to trust in God, in spite of your weaknesses. Don’t look at yourself or rely on your strength. I challenge you to read through your Bible, and just take note of how God did things…how He fought Israel’s battles, how He selected the disciples, and who He used. My pastor, Brian, reminded me once that Philippians 4:13 is not a verse about letting God do things for you. It’s about having the faith to let God do things through you. And faith is the opposite of fear. Often, I need to check myself and ask why I’m doing something. Is it out of fear, or out of faith? Is it out of duty, or out of love? These things matter to God. These things show your belief.

Even as a formal leader now, I must remember how I serve. Do I serve with my strength or do I serve through God? We must not be hasty to enter leadership, if we feel God telling us no, but we also must remember not to hesitate, if God tells us go. Results are up to God, and don’t get caught up in the idea that good results mean holiness. Our part is to trust, obey, and have hope, faith and love. I write this, because if we place the burden on ourselves, and do not seek God, and do not ask Him for wisdom and help, then we will burn out, and we won’t grow in God.

I remember this time when I had just finished my freshman year, and was just starting to get to know who God was. I really wanted to lead, and I think I placed too much of identity and hope in becoming a freshman small group leader for TCF. I remember looking through my emails, the summer after freshmen year, and realizing that I had not been asked to be a leader, even though it seemed like everyone else in my class had been asked to lead. When I came back to school after summer, it hurt so much, and I thought that the people in leadership did not trust me for some reason. But later on, one of my really good friends told me that my leadership application had actually been lost over the summer. Looking back now, I think that God was protecting me. I really learned about who God was that sophomore year, and it blew my mind. I still lead that year, without a formal title, because leadership is servanthood, and our King, Jesus, is the greatest servant of them all. I made so many good friends, friends that I have been privileged and amazed to see have grown greater than me. I ate lunch with tons of people, and learned some valuable things, like asking people about their stories. And I know now that even though there seemed to be several times where I was serving, and no one else knew, God knew, and it must have brought a smile to His eyes.

I’ve always trusted God to meet my needs. The problem is I’ve been trusting more in my needs than in God. Today, God was showing me that He doesn’t meet my needs according to what I think should happen, but according to Christ.

For me, it’s easy to trust God by relating to his nature as a loving and caring Father. Jesus himself points us this way when he says the Father will provide for us like He does for the lilies and sparrows. The problem with this is that it’s easy to present our Father with a wish-list and then ask him to provide. We get upset when he doesn’t meet the list and even ask ourselves, “what kind of father would do that?” “He must not love me,” and, for some, project the failings of our own earthly fathers onto our Heavenly one. Instead, we need to trust God to provide for our needs in the way HE will, rather than in the way we want Him to. For example, I’ll say “God I trust you to provide for my apartment” then I’ll go and try to find one based on what I think are my needs rather than seeking God IN the process. I trust Him to work it out, but I’ll go and figure out all the details. What I’m really doing is asking for His blessing on MY plans. What I need to do is seek HIS plans and rest in His blessing there.

So, this Phillipians 4:19 business: God is going to meet my needs according to his glorious riches in Christ. How is that going to meet my needs? BECAUSE WHAT I NEED IS CHRIST. What I have always needed is Christ, and so God [is going to/has already] meets my needs by giving me Christ. A perfect match. God’s greatest treasure (glorious riches) is Christ, and He is sharing that with me. So many Christian songs talk about Christ being “everything” and “ALL I need” and “more than enough” – do we get it yet? Jesus is the complete fulfillment of everything I need. He is not just the fulfillment of my “Jesus-fix” on Sunday mornings (and Thurs night and Wed night and Mon night :P), He is the fulfillment of my BEING (Acts 17:28).

The temptation is to apply this by saying, “okay, let’s see how Jesus fulfills my needs of food, companionship, enjoyment, direction, satisfaction, success, etc.) He may do so indeed, but if you look at it this way then you are still presenting a wish-list based on your own perceptions of what you need and how you want those needs met. We need to get off Santa’s knee and onto our own, admitting our all-encompassing need for Jesus and asking for Him only. Let us lay down our perceived needs (relinquish them fully from our hands) and ask Him to reveal our true neediness.  For example, we may be driven by a worldly need for “success” and many of our “needs” may stem from that. Jesus does not want to grant this request, He wants to free us from it’s clutches. He wants to free us from every desire, need, and motivation that is not in Him and from His own heart. This pretty much constitutes a full-system reboot every time He shows us another area of our operating system that is not founded in Christ alone. If we look to Him, He will show us our needs; if we look to Him, He will meet them.

So I know we’re all wicked smaht (as we say in Maine) and like to put our brains together to solve problems, be it a mathematical proof, social injustices, or how to fit your entire class schedule onto just two days of the week. (the I-can-do-it attitude which is another thing Jesus wants to free us from btw, see John 15:5 and Phil 4:13) Be cautious of bringing this into your relationship with God. He doesnt want us to figure it out for ourselves while He blesses our plans from afar, He wants to bring us into the blessing of self-abandonment and full reliance on Jesus Christ.

So to a university that asks, “are you smart enough?” and to a self-centered predisposition towards self-reliance seeking fulfillment of my needs:

Trust in the LORD with ALL your heart and lean NOT on YOUR OWN understanding; in ALL your ways submit to HIM, and HE WILL make your paths straight. (Prov 3: 5-6)

And I guess as I look forward to Jesus and Java, I can still remember the small things that really made a difference during those first few critical weeks at Tufts. For example, I remember being greeted by a senior named Elton Sykes. When I came back the next week, he still remembered my name. I also remember asking Kat some weird questions about Filipinos, and I still remember how Alex Nesbeda actually drove to Bush Hall to bring me to church the day after Jesus and Java. I write about this, because the reason why I can go up to a person and talk to them at TCF is because I know how it feels to enter into a place, and be awkward, and alone in a room full of people. And it meant a lot to me those days when people actually cared about who I was. Maybe other people don’t feel that way, but I felt like that for the longest time. And even before, I just had this idea in my head that if people got to know me, the real me, then they wouldn’t like me at all (luckily, God likes me). So I guess what I mean to say from all this is that it just comes down to obedience with love.

I think lots of people know who D.L Moody is. But not a lot of people hear about Edward Kimball, the guy who led Moody to Christ. Kimball was freaked out on the day he led Moody to Christ. Moody apparently was not a nice guy, but because Kimball overcame his fears, or rather, because Kimball didn’t let his fears dictate whether or not he obeyed God, God was able to touch the life of D.L Moody, and use him powerfully in the lives of many others. Likewise, everyone knows about the Apostle Paul, but few people remember Ananias, who God assigned to pray for Paul after Paul became blind. In my Bible, you can actually flip to the same passage and read my comment on Acts 9: LOL OH CRAP HE’S BACK. I think it was Tyler who had that insight into the passage. For the longest time, Paul had been terrorizing the Christians, and all of a sudden, God wanted Ananias to pray for this guy’s eyes. I think Ananias must have been freaked out, and maybe even unsure of himself. After all, if God blinded Osama Bin Laden and then told you to go to him and pray for his healing, what would you think? Maybe not a perfect parallel, but eventually, Ananias said yes to God. You know, the world has largely forgotten about these men, but I can tell you that God hasn’t. And one thing I know about God is that if you give him the loaves and the fishes, He multiplies them for you. And you know, because of the love that a few people showed me in the beginning of my freshmen year, my life has not been the same. And I pray that as I enter my senior year at Tufts that I would be able to do the same things for others.

Now I want to continue my post by explaining its purpose. I want to tell you all about my grandmother’s death. I have been wanting to do this for a long time, but hadn’t had the strength yet.

Here we go:  About five weeks ago, I lost one of the people that meant the most to me in life. The funny thing is that I used to say to myself that if God ever took my grandmother before I saw her again, I would stop believing that He exists.

On Friday June 16th, my mother came into my room with tear-stained cheeks and told me that my grandmother Arlete who lived in Brazil had just returned from the hospital and was in critical condition. I did not think much of this, because I had faith that God would never let my grandmother die before I could say a proper goodbye. I had a good night’s sleep that night, and the following night, until around 7am on Sunday when my mom came into my room and sat on the edge of my bed. My alarm had just gone off and I was about to get ready for work, when she said in a meek voice that I had never heard come from my strong mother: Your grandmother died. I cannot begin to explain how I felt upon hearing those words, but my first thought was “There is no God.”

I spent that entire Sunday and many days that would follow coming in and out of bursts of desperation and endless crying and screaming. I was weak and lost. My grandmother, one of my strongest pillars of hope, was dead. But look closely and here is where you see God’s hand. During one of my moments of anger, while screaming bloody murder up to heaven, I said to Him, “All I wanted was for you to take care of her.”  Then very quietly, in a moment that even as I recall it now I am filled with an indescribable sense of peace and tranquility, He whispered, “I did.”

Here is what I have understood of myself and of God through all this pain and agony: our plans are not His plans. We may think we know what is best for us, but only He knows, and if we give ourselves completely to God, He will take care of us. Imagine yourself as a baby that hasn’t conquered full motor coordination yet. You’re crying, kicking and screaming, and just as you think that you have been forgotten, He scoops you up into His arms and nurses you to sleep.

I have never known the pain that I am currently experiencing, but I have never felt God this way either. Everywhere, I see Him.

I cannot say that I no longer have issues with my faith, or that suddenly I am the perfect, devoted Christian. What I am trying to say is that in the midst of drowning, I have constantly found a hand to pull me out of the water in God. No one else has been able to help me or give me the comfort that God has given me.

All that I have left is a question, How do people recover from great tragedies without God? I am thinking that the answer is simple: They don’t.

After paragliding...God helps us FLY AND SOAR!

… “i know not who i am…no, that identity begins to bloom while God sews the strings of my life. He plucks with the needle and pulls, and I hurt, I heal, I grow…I am mysteriously new. I know not who I am, I know not who I will become.”

This is something I wrote as a status one day when I was simply floored by one fantastic realization: God is working in my life. God is working in my life. That means that He wants to work in my life, that He wants me to grow. But to gain something good, there must be pain. The SALVATION of the world was born through the Sacrifice, Blood and the PAIN of the one who chose to die for those who did not deserve it. Just like that, we must start from the bottom to climb a mountain…start from the bottom….

I will now show you some quotes from what I wrote while I was in France, and explain what was going through my mind. I will start with the moment that hurt me but strengthened me the most.

+ “I’ve done something wrong…is ego holding me back from Christ? How can I not know that it was God who did all this in my life? How can I possibly have turned to seriousness and egotistical ways…not very normal for me. So, I must take steps to fix this. These trials I am going through are for God to know if I am truly His warrior and if I will quit right away or battle til the end. Now this test is really, really hard…brace yourselves. Ok step one: talk to God every minute of the day…just chat. …this is hard…to battle myself…I’m in battle…I can’t see anything…”

***This was definitely a dark moment during my trip. It’s not that I didn’t know that God was the one who did all this for me, but that I forgot to say thank you, and the enemy took advantage of that right way. I felt as if I was under attack…the enemy threw dust in my face and I was distracted by the burning in my eyes. But even through the pain, I had to know that God permitted this to test me…He wanted to know if I would be able to have faith in him, to be able to know who is who in this situation and what things are coming from God and what aren’t. You see, ALL OF THE MOMENTS IN YOUR LIFE ARE TRAINING for something bigger…because of what I went through, next time it will be a lot easier for me to know that I am under attack and take the right steps to get myself out. At times, I won’t be able to get myself out…PRAYER will be the only thing to save me. But prayer should be there anyway J

-       Another important note: the “first” step ended up being the only step I needed to take to get out of there. It was hard. It was as if I didn’t even wanna talk to God. But knowing that it was the enemy that gave me the spirit of pride and that pride is just not normal of me as Stephanie, I did all I could do: talk. Just talk…PRAYER ROCKS!

-       The enemy will make us believe many things that are not true about ourselves, but that SEEM PLEASANT AT FIRST….AAAALLLL LIIEESS!!!! They seem comfortable and nice at the beginning, but then they become the cause of 1) the end of our relationship with Christ    2) and therefore the beginning of our emptiness, unhappiness and horrible diseases that only come from the enemy…such a foul and jealous being. Yes, he is jealous of us, so he has to make us suffer…he is weaker than we think. Such a wimp! Don’t let yourself be defeated by a weak little animal like him.  What is the enemy lying to you about today?

+“I used to want this…I used to want France and traveling and singleness and freedom. I gave it up for someone, now I need to go back and find who I was before…that girl with Passion and sass and confidence…the girl that wasn’t afraid to Love herself and Love others. The girl who knew she was destined for something more.”

***yeah, that was me…for three years, I was in a too serious relationship, that of which ended a year and a half ago…I used to want to travel and have fun and live but the seriousness of that relationship took all of that away from me. After the break-up, I felt cheated, barren almost…I felt like so many things had been stolen from me, including my independence. God brought me to France to show me a few things: 1) Nothing’s impossible for Him  2) I was meant to fly…YES…I, Stephanie V with no middle name, was meant to fly…The way God envisions me is hard to believe…He sees me as a WARRIOR. And yes, I repeat this word too much, but that’s exactly what He is making me. A strong, strong warrior.

+”The Love that I’ve longed for, I already have! It’s actually God’s Love that I’ve been wanting, not a man’s Love! So, I now know that I must base my life, my happiness, my Love and my sole being on God’s Love, not a man! I shouldn’t be looking for someone perfect…I should be looking for a fellow human being, like me…a companion.”

***needless to say, break-ups don’t always leave you feeling bubbly and peachy-keen happy…the problem was that I started to depend on the Love of the person I was with, let alone the person himself. He became a part of me and a part of my life. So for every decision I made he would be taken into account. That later left me depending on being with someone in general, which is never good. God showed me the difference between Love from God and Love from a partner: a man’s Love is a human’s Love, but God’s Love saves.  What I’m saying is that, in a partner, I should be looking for a companion, a human being just like me: marked with the imperfect human nature and jaded by mistake after mistake…it’s a big error to look for perfection in a human being, and thank God I know that now. On the other hand, God’s Love is BIG…it heals, it cures, it changes, and it makes you better…so much better. GOD’S LOVE SAVES.  So I don’t need a man…I’ll just be happy if God ever gives me the gift of one J

+ “The Lord is working on all corners of the earth…you are not alone! It’s like we’re a league of soldiers. We should come together and not be separated = forget religion, forget stupid differences = we are the ARMY of God!”

***ok, call me a dreamer, call me an idealist, it’s all good with me! If we would just let go of pride and arrogance for one second, this world might be a better place. I introduce the idea of worshipping God as one body, worshipping the same God together, the way He would have liked it. Yes, it’s pretty impossible today. But I think it’s ok dream…with Faith, all things are possible.

+ “I feel the NEED to attach myself to the things of the Lord…to surround myself with God. To sing songs to God. To give all of my talents, thoughts, dreams…all of myself – to God. He is the One that made everything in my life happen…there is no other choice but to give all of me…NO OTHER CHOICE”

***A song came out of this reflection! I just felt for a second that any good deed towards God will never be enough to repay what He does for His child. Even if we give God 100%, He gives a billion!!! What more can I ask for?  It’s time to give back J

+ “Bloom where you are planted” – Ms. Gerlach

***Ms. Gerlach was my high school math teacher and later became one of my best friends and a true sister in Christ. She wrote me these words to remind me to not look to the future at the gifts that God has for me, but to make the present day the BEST BEST day that I can make it, listening to God’s direction and just living life!!! CARPE DIEM!

+ “Enjoy your life…enjoy every moment of your life” “you have not because you’ve asked not” “I’m not gonna waste a day” “spend your time doing what you really wanna do” “we’re alive, so let’s celebrate it” – Joyce Meyer (Tayo’s video post)

***shout out to TAYO!  God is using you in great ways, and your post  was one of the things that really helped me while I was learning how to fly again. Thank God!

+ “Now, live your life…LIVE. Seize the moment. Carpe diem. Make your dreams come true. Own the gifts the Lord has for you. Be honestly yourself. Go out. Take Jesus’ hand and don’t look back…look at Him instead.”

***God is good…

So, in France, I learned to live again…I learned to FLY. I became the Stephanie from before, but a so much better Stephanie cause of what I’ve been through…I am strong yet humbled, determined and direct yet joyful and innocent. I am finally (slowly) becoming the woman that God made me to be. Now, I WILL LIVE.

Lastly, none of this…I mean, none of it…would be possible without the One who cares enough to make a plan for our lives. The One who intricately places all the details of our every minute and every day, JUST TO MAKE US BETTER. The only One who has the patience enough to KEEP WAITING while we fail Him, doubt Him and simply place selfishness over loyalty. PRAISE be to God, the only God, and the medicine for all of our scabs, cuts and bruises. He will do with us only MIRACLES.

Preaching on Luke 15 ---Courtesy of Jerry Qiao (who took one million ugly pictures of me. This is the only decent one)

It’s hard writing about my trip to Uganda because my month in Uganda actually felt like a year to me, because God was teaching me so much, and every day I saw something new, and something unexpected. In the end, the biggest change God did in my life through my trip to Uganda was opening my eyes a little more.

When I first arrived in Uganda, we were immediately taken to a retreat center called Girenge. Everyone told me that Girenge was like Toah Nipi, but I think it would be doing a disservice to both retreat centers to compare them to one another. They’re both beautiful. What I do remember was having to adjust to new toilets, using bottled water to brush my teeth, bed bunks that were way too small for me, giant anthills, using cups to shower, and new friends in a new country. It was a big change from the life that I was used to at home, but I loved it, even though, according to my standards, Girenge counted as one of those sacrifices you have to make to be a missionary for the Lord.

God challenged me a lot, though. God brought me to so many schools, some schools to preach in, and some schools to teach in. I began to appreciate the education I had received. In the New York education system, thirty students in a classroom were considered too much for a teacher to handle. And I asked myself, how could these students learn when some of them don’t have pencils, when they all have these tiny desks to sit on, when all the teacher has is a blackboard that’s so old and inerasable, you can still see the lesson from last year still on the board? And in my heart, I felt that a lot of these children were not going to go far.

And then God brought me to a hospital, specifically to a maternity ward, to minister and pray there with my friend and roommate Ibra. Again, it was one of the hardest places I’ve been to. When you see the commercials of these African babies on television, it’s easy to flip the channel, but when that baby is right in front of you, burping all over your hand while you pray for its malaria and cough, you can’t change the channel. When the mother stands there, hugging her baby, who seems to be asleep, but who really has a hole in her lung, a lump forms in your throat as you try to think of something to encourage this woman. I ended crying that day, and the day after that, because I know my God is a God of healing. I know that despite what people say, that God does not heal anymore, that God does still heal. But that day, I did not know why He didn’t heal those babies.

And then I saw hope. I met a man who told us about his past, how he used to sleep with all these women, and how the Lord saved him. He also told us how he now had HIV, a powerful testimony, considering how HIV victims are stigmatized in Uganda. But that shows you how Jesus loves, and gives us a new identity. Another day, a blind and deaf man walked up to me (to me!) and asked me to pray for his healing. That man had so much faith in Jesus, it showed me a little of what it must have looked like for that leper to run to Jesus for healing. In Lukodi, I saw a lot of child mothers who were around my age, playing net-ball, smiling, and singing to Jesus with all of their heart, soul, mind, and strength. These women, despite all they had gone through, knew hope, knew forgiveness, and knew the love of God, even more than I did, despite the fact that I could read the Bible and despite the fact that my mind was full of all these facts and weird stories about Jesus. I listened to so many stories from my Ugandan friends, of the miracles God worked in their lives.

And we had so much joy. I remember celebrating with my American teammates each time one of us went out and preached, and celebrating whenever we returned from door-to-door evangelism. I remember singing badly with my friend Odongo, and even dancing with some of the child mothers at ChildVoice International. I remember having to play the part of the robber during a church service in the middle of the bush, and getting dirt all over my clean suit. I remember my second night in Uganda, when Aaron grabbed the guitar and Canace, Charles, Jonathan, Pat and I worshipped together, moving around freely, and lifting our voices to the Lord, knowing that despite all our cultural, racial and other differences, the love of Jesus binded us together as family, as brothers and sisters. I laughed so hard when my friend Pat told this story about he had a nightmare one night, and fell out of his hammock, and Ibra and Jake thought the LRA had invaded their hut. And I also began to ask God, what does the joy of the Lord mean? How can the joy of the Lord be our strength? And what does it mean when we have SO much in America, and yet we are not happy?

God humbled me too. I learned that I was blind. I placed so much emphasis on spiritual gifts, I ignored the other things that God loved and honored. I learned that I needed to learn how to ask good questions because I took things at face value too often, without questioning. I learned from some of my teammates that had such a passion for social justice, and I admire them so much for that and pray God can give me a bit of that passion and love for others. I scorned people who had less faith than I did, until I heard about the fires and trials that God had brought them through, and then I began to feel ashamed of how I judged people, and how I saw people with my eyes, and not the eyes of God. I preached about the heart of God several times, and then had God teach me about his heart personally. I learned that that knowledge puffs up, but love builds up. And who else had more knowledge than I did? I’m not sure, but I was pretty puffed up. All my life I knew I was supposed to walk in love, and yet for some reason, God had to teach me a little bit of what that actually meant. All my life I knew that scripture that says love never fails, and yet I never truly believed it, and so it took me halfway through my time in Lukodi before I realized that even though I didn’t think I was making a big difference, I was actually making a big one, by giving love.

In the end, when I returned to Girenge, I returned as a different Wai. No longer did I view Girenge as a rustic retreat center, a sacrifice I had to make as a Christian soldier under Jesus (for that matter, I had to learn that sacrifice is only good when you sacrifice with love…otherwise, it can lead to pride). Girenge now felt like heaven, and I realized how I took things like running water for granted, even if the water isn’t always clean. And America? I wonder if I realize now what a gift I’ve been given by God, to be part of the select number of people in this world to live in America, where I live like a king. And I wonder if we’ve fallen into a trap as well, to be so dependent on our things, our programs and our knowledge, instead of being dependent on the Holy Spirit. I’m still a different Wai today, and maybe becoming more different every day, as I remember Uganda. It’s the smaller things that seem to remind me of Uganda: taking a shower with hot water, seeing mangoes being sold on the street corner, wanting to make that TAH-NIGHT joke at work while wearing a business-casual suit (or as my Ugandan friends would say, my missions suit), or even seeing that profile picture of how I tried to sneak up on the wild boar sniffing around Shelby’s tent. It all reminds me how blessed I am to have been able to be in Uganda with God, and it also reminds me that this is a trip I want to never forget. And God willing, hopefully one day, I’ll find myself back in Uganda again.

I am prideful at times. The Bible tells us that knowledge puffs up, but loves builds up. After a while, I realized what a problem this was. I can speed-read, and because of this, I’ve grown a lot these past few years. But sometimes this can lead to pride, and once you become prideful, you find that you can fall. You become weak, because you no longer rely on God, but on yourself. I’ve put a lot of my self-worth on things that will never last. I’m so serious about this. One thing I’m going to stand in front of God, and I’m going to realize how stupid I was/am, because God does not see things the way you or I do. God does not look at us the way the world does. The Lord can see our hearts. All we can see are outside appearances.

Right before we left Uganda, we did a Bible study on John 4, but instead of looking at the Samaritan woman, we looked at the disciples. The disciples were blind. Jesus told them, Open your eyes! There is a harvest! Jesus spoke to one Samaritan woman at the well, but the disciples went into the town itself. They had a chance to influence and share the Gospel with many Samaritans, but they were blinded by prejudice. They must have run through the town, bought food, and left quickly. Are we any different? Am I any different? Let me tell you the Samaritans in my life. Muslims. People who are gay. No, I did not hate them, but I never had my eyes opened. Who is the God I serve? Is He not the God who will leave the 99 to search for the 1? Why did I see them as my enemy?

And I’m not going to white-wash everything. Just like there are different types of Christians, there are different types of Muslims as well. But God loves all of them, even the Muslim extremists. And the mistake people have made is that somehow we believe that these Muslims have somehow become our enemy. And it’s not easy to get off this mindset. Whenever anyone attacks the Bible to justify something, or twists the words of the Bible to support something that’s clearly not biblical, my first impulse is to get angry, and get ready to defend the Word of God. But the problem is, God doesn’t really need our help. Jesus Christ died for the Muslim terrorist, as well as the nicest person you know, and even the meanest one you know. And I really struggled with this, because I remember God asking me, How much do you love these Muslims? Will you be willing to die for them? Because it’s love that brought Jesus to the cross, and it’s only love that will overcome the fear that I have towards these Muslims. And somehow I’ve forgotten that laying down your life for others doesn’t mean just thinking about others before yourself, it really means laying down your life for others as well. Don’t make the same mistake that I did. Somehow I believed that Muslims were closed to the Gospel. There’s no way to convert them. Let me tell you something. Jesus said that if He was lifted up, then He would draw all men to Him. If someone rejects Jesus, does that mean that He was inadequate? No. But if we lift up the real Jesus, the one we fell in love with, the one in the Bible, then He will draw people to Him. And it’s the Spirit who will open peoples’ eyes.

John 16:8 tells us it’s the Spirit who convicts people. And trust me, I really had to hold onto John 16:8 a lot, because I preached a lot in Uganda, and I always struggled with thoughts and feelings of inadequacy and failure (especially after I gave an altar call, and no one responded). But let me tell you, if you preach the best sermon in the world without the Spirit of God, nothing is going to happen. I had the honor of preaching to the girls at ChildVoice International. I preached on the story of the prodigal son, and I did a good job, but I can tell you that God’s Word means so much more to these girls. They know what it means to kill the fatted calf and how luxurious that is. They know what it means when the father splits up his inheritance in two because land is so precious to them…it’s their very life! They know how crazy it was for the father in that story to love his younger son the way he loved him. Twice in Uganda, I preached in the morning, and that very afternoon, God would help me understand what the heck I was actually preaching.

We need to get off this mindset that the results determine how God sees something. Sometimes they do. Sometimes they’re a sign that you’re missing something, that you’re not following the will of God. But sometimes they’re not. Remember that God is the God who will leave the 99 to search for that 1. I think the key is to always pray, and to keep in the heart of God. For example, I went to an organization called the New Start organization, an organization that took in 12 street kids, and is feeding them, schooling them, and giving them a life that they would otherwise never had. And my first impulse was to think, wow this isn’t much, because I’ve walked through the slums of Kampala, and poverty is everywhere there (not that there aren’t really rich areas in Kampala). But, you know what? To God, that means a lot. For these 12 boys to have a better life, a Ugandan man gave up some of his own dreams, for the sake of love. And to the world, they might think, wow this man is so nice, and so self-sacrificing. But again, this is how the world sees it. I can tell you, though, that even though he is not rich in the eyes of the world, he is rich in the eyes of God (Rev 2:9). For that man, he gave up treasure that would rust, to gain treasure that would never fade.

In Uganda, it’s a lot easier to remember that the spiritual world exists (Ephesians 6:12). Things tend to manifest themselves differently (although if you really look around the States, you can find the same things here that you would find in Uganda). But in the United States, we’re blinded to the fact that there is an enemy, that he really is working against us. It’s imperative we remember this so that we can 1) stop attacking people and 2) start praying, put on the armor of God and take up the word of God.

I think the last thing I want to write about is the fact that God has placed people in your life for a reason. Sometimes it can get frustrating to love them, and there were points on this trip where I wanted to give up on people. God reminded me that it was a mistake to do that. If God has brought someone into your life so that you can bless them, why would you turn away? I don’t want to stand before God in heaven, and then have to explain I was too tired, too annoyed, too angry, too anything. You never know what one person or action can do. That’s the whole point of the fishes and the bread. That’s why one seed can bring in a harvest of 30, 60 or 100 times. Keep your eyes open. So many times we allow our comfort level to determine what we do. Let’s stop worrying about comfort and start following God. We wouldn’t need a Comforter if we weren’t constantly getting into uncomfortable situations.

Anyway, I’m still trying to figure out Uganda. I’m desperately trying not to assimilate too quickly, because I think it can be very easy for me to just jump back into my regular routine. Please pray for me to have opportunities to share about Uganda, and for God to help me during this transition period back to the States.

Just a little update from my side of the world. I’ve just arrived in Kathmandu, Nepal from Delhi. After a slightly creepy Nepalese seating partner and a bit of waiting at the chaotic Tribhuvan International Airport, I’m glad to be sitting in a familiar house in Nepal, on a comfortable, clean bed. And not to forget, wireless internet.

The last 5 weeks have been nothing short of an adventure. Multiple adventures, really. India is an amazing country. It seems more like a continent, with its multitude of cultures and languages and lifestyles.

Leaving Thottiapatti (the village BUILD partners with) was pretty hard, for starters. I was almost used to being woken up daily by a variety of animals, including roosters, pheasants, dogs, cows and monkeys. I was also used to being dirty and grubby (when I really scrubbed I actually became a shade lighter…), using squat toilets and bucket baths, stepping on goat poop, trying my best to avoid cow poop, and being greeted daily by a horde of lovely, excited children. They are the real deal. On the last day I tried my best, in my broken Tamil, to tell them that they are special and loved, and to stay in school. I’m not sure how much they got, so whenever I hugged one goodbye I said a quick prayer for them.

Up next was the 13 hour bus ride to Dharamsala. Which went pretty smoothly, apart from the dripping air-conditioning, the lady in front of me who insisted on lowering her seat uncomfortably close to my chest and the fact that we were hanging off a mountain edge most of the time.

Dharamsala itself, though, was amazing. It’s the home of the exiled Tibetan government, so there are many Tibetan refugees around. It’s also a popular town for grungy, soul-searching hippies. Many things happened in that one week, including hearing the Dalai Lama speak, making friends with fun solo travellers, getting a nose piercing, meeting Tibetan refugees, sitting with party-crazy, hookah-loving Punjabs at a beautiful waterfall, and meeting fellow Christians. This last one warrants a story.

As you guys know, I’ve been praying a lot for encouragement. A month with no community of fellow believers is hard. But He is good; there have been many times when my friends have asked me about my faith, and He has given me wisdom in my answers. I’m glad that despite my choices and my different perspective, they have always treated me with respect and care.

On one of the mornings in Dharamsala, I was sitting on my bed at the Ladies’ Venture Hotel (we were staying at a RS100 a night hostel though… it was basically a damp room with tons of beds. RS100 = approx. USD2. Yeah!!!) when I suddenly felt the urge to pray hard. I prayed hard for Him to move.

Later that morning, after getting tickets to the Dalai Lama’s talk, we headed to Dharamkhot, which was apparently full of Israelis who were travelling before/after serving in the army. A guy on the street had invited us for a jam sesh two days before, and since many of the people in our group were Jewish, we thought it’d be fun to go. We went to the cafe, and I stepped in only to find everyone sitting around singing in a strangely familiar fashion. It seemed a lot like church to me, or one of TCF’s worship nights. Immediately I felt His spirit, but I didn’t want to assume anything since it was supposed to be a Jewish community. And we were in a Buddhist town, after all. So I asked Him to show me the truth… and then they played How He Loves. I started crying at that moment, because I couldn’t believe how faithful He was. Here I was, in a mountain town in India, worshipping Him with others who knew Him. What was even better was that my friends got exposed to worship for the first time. After the ‘jam sesh’ of sorts we ate lunch and sat around and talked about Jesus, who is the coolest person you could talk about, fyi. The people there were incredible travellers and individuals. Even if my friends didn’t agree with the belief, they all concluded that the camaraderie between them was something new. I felt like I had known them for years. I love how He unites us.

At night, I even went with one of them to a Bible meditation, where I met a Tibetan former monk who became a Christian. His story was so inspiring. Despite being excommunicated from his family and monastery, he says it is all worth it. He is living the gospel.

In the days that followed, my friends kept bringing up that afternoon at the cafe. Sometimes they made fun of it, and other times they’d just ask questions about faith. Whatever it is, I’m glad it’s on their minds. It’s totally understandable why they were offended by some of the beliefs. Jesus offended people too. What He has to say isn’t easy to hear. And that makes sense to me, because He is God. I wouldn’t want a God who could fit neatly into my perception of Him. I want a God who acts like He is God and better than I could ever be. I’m not there to convert them… but I was on the trip for a purpose. Wherever I go, I am to be like a city on a hill, or a light that uncovered by the bowl. I can only trust that through my testimonies, stories, words and actions, some of them came closer to knowing Him, the fullness of life itself.

I just finished the book What I Know Now: Letters to My Younger Self, edited by Ellyn Spragins. For those ladies (or gentlemen) out there, I HIGHLY recommend it.

I decided to write my own letter, and anyone interested can read it below. It is written to the Barbara that was going through a difficult time last summer.

Dear Rising Junior Babs,

This summer is perfect for you. You have three months of nothing going on. Relish every moment of it and make it worthwhile to look back on.

Yes, you failed to get an internship. Your parents are not letting you come back to China because of that. You will helplessly crawl to someone to beg for a plane ticket to China, and he will give it to you, but you will not be truly passionate about the research that you will end up doing for him.

Babs, don’t accept the research money.I know you want to have something to put on your resume. I know you don’t want to come back to Tufts and report to everyone that you spent your summer doing nothing.  But it is not worth sacrificing your happiness for a paper you don’t even want to write. An impressive credential does not lead to greater human worth.

You will arrive in Beijing only to find out that everyone you were supposed to work with had finished their research and were gone or unavailable. You will be lost and without guidance. You will not tell your research granter this, because you are scared he will want the money back. But Babs, you need to tell him. You need to be more transparent with the people around you, especially those that trusted you with a task.

Stop having panic attacks about your future. Stay in Boston and learn how to drive. Explore the city and surrounding area more. Volunteer somewhere. Connect with the people that became founts of wisdom for you later on at Tufts: the hobos on the streets. You have friends who will be willing to let you stay for free at their place. It is not the money that is the issue, and money should never be the issue that you must focus on in life.

I know you want to be a leader in society one day. Your dreams are big and bold. But slow down for now. I know you well enough to tell you that your restless spirit and rare love for people will drag you to places you’ve always wanted to go and to do things you’ve always wanted to do. You will not let life get you down. No, I will not let you. So right now, Babs, “keep calm and carry on.”

Cherish your friends and relationships. Your high school friend John will die that summer, and a few days later your grandmother will die. The summer will end with your regretting everything. You will come back to Tufts without a smile on your face. It will make you lose all faith in yourself. You will not do well academically and be put on academic probation. You will be left lost and directionless again, feeling like your dreams of greatness are completely over.

But goods things will also happen. You will gain back the religion that you lost before coming to Tufts. You will rejoin Anchord and find that you actually cannot live without it in college. You will come back to your family during the summer with an internship in China. You will deepen your friendships at Tufts. And you will reconnect with your high school friends and find that you love them with your life.

So Babs, don’t worry. Your life can only get better. Just don’t forget to hold your head up high and smile when inevitable mistakes and failures come your way. They are your speed bumps that will keep you from driving too fast in life for no good reason. Go through them calmly, reflect on them, and learn how to avoid repeating the same ones in the future. Also, strive to be a good communicator. You will hurt less people, and you will bring more clarity to confusing situations.

And lastly, remember: idle time is never worthless or dead, but they are opportunities for an unexpected adventure. So live out your hyperactive brain full of ideas. From the moment you could think, you started to transform the kitchen floor into an ice skating rink using flour. Or you melted alphabet magnets in the oven to make pizza. You still have these crazy ideas, I know. Haven’t you always wanted to stay in Tisch after closing or post bright sticky notes all over the freedom trail in Boston?

Again, do not let life get you down.

Always confident in what you can do,

Rising Senior Babs

At first I chalked it up to spiritual warfare. So I prayed more, in fact I prayed all the time. I was doing a Daniel Fast at the time, and I also stayed away from any kind of secular entertainment. I made sure that God was the last being I spoke to before going to bed, I listened to preachings throughout the night on my laptop even as I slept, and I woke up in the morning to pray to Him more. But something was still wrong. I could not hear Him, and I had lost my joy. I searched the scriptures for answers. I was reading Mark and came across the story of Jesus walking on water to His disciples just to be with them because He saw that they were troubled. This comforted me–I knew that no matter how small my worries seemed to others, God was taking me seriously and He had crossed the waters to surround me.

I wondered if I should just wait it out, but this thought filled me with dread. The last time I tried to ‘wait it out’ I almost lost everything. Passivity is not of God. Waiting on the Lord does not equal ‘waiting UNTIL the Lord’. Waiting must be active. So I continued to pray, and I shared my feelings with my best friend, who also prayed for me. Sitting on a bus coming home from work, a scripture began to resound in my head: ‘Remember the height from which you have fallen. Repent and turn back to me’. I was like, Lord, what height? When have I prayed to You more? Have I not removed all things that were not of You from my life? What have I fallen from?

Memories of my first two months as a born-again, Spirit-filled Christian began to fly through my head. I remembered the joy of FREEDOM and being led by the Spirit. Over a few days, I meditated on what had changed since then, and one thing I noted was the lack of hope. I had drifted into a pattern of thinking that was hopeless, and I had lost my trust in God. I didn’t actually know this, but what proved it more than the fact that I was so scared of losing Him that I was becoming obsessed with routines? What attitude could be farther from hope?

But I didn’t know how to regain my hope, how to get back to the height from which I had fallen. And somehow, between yesterday and today, it came. The reason I was born again was because I had found something NEW in the Lord, something that would never grow old. The Holy Spirit! The Holy Spirit LEADS us into obedience. We are not supposed to wake up in the morning to a set of rules that we are supposed to follow, we are not supposed to try to manage our sin till we are “delivered”. We have been delivered already, into the freedom of Christ! I had, through the leading of the Holy Spirit, begun to avoid certain types of entertainment, and to embrace more and more prayer and Bible study, but that was not ME! Over time, I had forgotten this. I had tried to merely do what the Spirit made me do yesterday, making it a religion and not a relationship. I wasn’t letting Him do something new in my life EVERY morning.

Trying to do right things does not bring us closer to God. Our righteousness, as His Word says, is like a filthy rag before Him. Loving Him, that is what He wants. Trust. Faith. Without faith, as He says, it is impossible to please Him. And faith means letting go of ‘religion’, one of the deadliest weapons of the enemy, and embracing a life that only the Spirit can give. Only He makes us righteous, and we need to step aside and let Him live through us. One might ask, then, do you go to church? Answer: let Him lead. When I was letting Him lead, after just having been born again, He would wake me up and send me to church. It was never in the plan. It just kept happening.

Yesterday, I decided not to do my evening prayer, just to see what would happen. And as I was falling asleep, I began to chat with God and did so till I fell asleep. This morning, I didn’t rush to do my Bible study first. And I had a lovely phone call with my best friend as I cleaned. I’ve never cleaned so fast or enjoyed it so much before. Whatever the Spirit leads us to do is anointed, and it aligns with the Word. As I talked to my best friend, I was getting annoyed because she wasn’t really talking. The Holy Spirit just began to fill my head–’love is patient, love is kind’. How many times had I memorised those scriptures in a desperate attempt to teach MYSELF how to love? I had not allowed the Holy Spirit to do His own work. Divinely, He worked on my heart this morning and I was filled with love and peace. He totally saved the call :)

Praise this amazing God of ours, who does not want us to live in bondage but in perfect freedom :) And I think He’s leading me to do Bible study now, so l8ers ! Also, please comment so we can dialogue about this and have some communion while we are physically apart.

Tayo