Yesterday, I was in:
-2 homes
-2 cars
-2 cities
-2 states
-2 airports
-2 churches
And I gave 3 hugs.
I also got to spend a few days with my best friend, Laura. We celebrated her birthday on Good Friday with a tornado in St. Louis.
And I also got to see my folks for Easter. Here’s mom making blueberry muffins. (But I didn’t get any pictures of Dad!)
You know how sometimes something just keeps coming up until you can’t not pay attention to it anymore? In some ways, that is where our story begins…
We have been feeling the tug to visit Uganda for awhile now. Since we moved to Tulsa, actually. Remember this?
From our pastor here at Garnett who lived there for 8 years, to the Perspectives course, to other friends that are living in Uganda now. You know how something like this just keeps coming up in conversations & connections all around you? Well, that’s what Uganda has been for us.
We’ll be traveling with a ministry called Kibo. (www.kibogroup.org) We both feel that Kibo has done some amazing work in Uganda, and that they’ve been doing it the “right” way. (Sustainable work that empowers Ugandans to take over roles in the ministry, so that they can bring about change in their own country.) One of the things that most impresses us with Kibo is the way they have been involved in ministry with the intent to really involve Ugandans all along. And now, almost 15 years later, it is working! Almost all of their work is being handled by Ugandans now, with minimal involvement by the Americans. We are excited to be able to go & reconnect with people we’ve met that have visited the states recently, and also meet some new people. To see another way of life-very different than ours here…and to see God’s work in the lives of these beautiful people.
We’d appreciate your prayers as we make plans for this trip… dates, travel arrangements, things to see & experience while we’re there. We will do several posts in the coming days about our plans, how you can support us financially (plain tickets are expensive!), and what we will be doing. Thanks for being part of our lives!
You may have noticed I think that stories are really interesting. I like hearing people talk about their lives, who they are, and where they come from. Sometimes though you are in a place that is heavy with somebodies story, even thought they not there. I have had the honor of visiting a few of them recently.
First was a small cemetery in the Smokey Mountains. It was an old cemetery, from the 1800s. When you walked in you could feel the weight of the people who had lived in those mountains and of the hard life they lived. There were a lot of graves that showed lives of only only a few years or even days. Somebody maintains the cemetery, im not sure who, perhaps it is just the park service for the benefit of tourists like us. In my mind thought this is a family cemetery and the decedents of the buried come back to cut the grass, put flowers on the graves, and set the headstones back up. This is sort of a sad thought to me in some ways, there is nothing alive there, the people have long ago returned to the earth. So, I am not sure I relate to the need and drive to maintain the land they were buried in. But, then the weight of the place comes back to me. Here is a place that stands in memory of normal people who did normal things and lived normal lives. Yet they are still remembered. And I can stand there, in a place where 200 years ago real life was happening, I don’t really know why, but that is important to me.
There is a bit of a problem with all of this though. The story that is told by that cemetery, and the whole of the Smokey Mountain park neglects a really important story of the people who were there first and were forced to leave. The weight of that story is not felt, but it should be….
…which leads to the second place I visited recently. The story of this place actually starts with the Trail of Tears, and the end is not in site. The signpost in this story that I visited is the Reconciliation Park in Tulsa. The park is in memory of the Tulsa Race Riots. I had heard about these riots of course, but never really knew the full story. If you get a chance to visit the park you should.
It seems that Ben has been posting much more than I have lately.
I thought I’d share a few pictures from our life recently.
This shows two things I’m loving right now. (And honestly, I have been for awhile now.) Topeca coffee and Tulsa.
I’ve been spending every spare moment (of which there are not very many) finding new supplies for my cards & increasing my inventory. Leah & I are vendors at the Dogwood Festival this year! Also, a good friend of ours is opening up a retail store in Fayetteville called “The Moustache Goods & Wares“. And he wants to sell my cards there! More details on this fun opportunity soon. For now, a few treasures I recently rescued from the dusty shelves of a thrift store.
Anyone recognize this? It should be familiar to some of you. It’s a carabiner that we gave away as the favors at our wedding…almost 8 years ago! I’ve been using it on my key ring since then, and was really sad when it broke a few weeks ago. Thankfully we still have a few left! (Now I’m sporting a green one.)
I apparently have this thing for old, funky green chairs. You can’t really see the green color of this one by this picture, but you can see the awesome flower pattern. (I rescued this beauty from Wagon Inn before it was torn down!)
And this is one of my “to-do” lists. (I have several.) This one is on one of those really large pieces of memo board paper that you can stick on your wall-like a really HUGE post-it note. I get great satisfaction from taking the thick sharpie & marking things off the list.
So there are a few snapshots for you of life around here lately. Things are ridiculously busy…but really good.
