Curacao: generation-z
living in community, learning a language, and seeing God working. This blog's just a way of showing you glimpses of thoughts and a smattering of photos. cheers!
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158 days
Spent on Curacao. I learned how to understand half of the words, and shake my head for the other half. I am stronger in my arms, in my faith, in my resolves.
It’s November and back in the midwest. Wearing three t-shirts, mittens, and refilling teacups like oxygen. Was it ever this cold here? My friends have been flooding in and out of my kitchen and room since I got home.
Since Curacao, I feel like I live in a castle. My bed is enormous and pillowy. The lights are soft and subtle, it is quiet. I hear the wind, and the trees. There are no dogs, no fans, no late nights out on the fort watching the ships in the harbor.
I still am shocked when anyone answers the telephone and speaks English. Sometimes I want to greet someone “Bon nochi! Kom’bai?” and then I stop and realize, hey. no one understands. It was the longest short four months of my life. Curacao stretched me - and gave me an experience that no one can take from me.
I want to say thank you. Thanks for following me on this journey, praying for me, and encouraging me from afar. The offer still stands for you to e-mail me or contact me at anytime for prayer.
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This photo is of two rescue workers outside of my church here. Inside that ditch is a man who fell in and drowned. The current is too strong to get him out. This all happened last night.
I have never been in a scarier storm in my life. My neighbor down the street’s house got hit by lightening, and he got electrocuted because he was on the computer. He lived, but was badly shocked.
The streets are flooded and cover whole cars in some places. Last night people had to leave their cars in the road and walk through waist-deep water to try and find shelter.
Y’know how people use the phrase, “The windows were rattling” ? Windows do not rattle. They shake and bellow and scream. It is the most terrifying feeling, hearing that sound and knowing that at any moment they can shatter.
Our friends’ houses in the lower ground flooded to their knees. Everything is damaged, everything is broken. This morning at 10:30, the sky was still so dark I didn’t even know day had come.
(Source: springwillcome)
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here is my brother Jonny’s blog
He’s in Spain, doing amazing work for God’s kingdom!
Check it out, throw up some prayer, and enjoy his epic extreme sporting videos.
Warning: just, keep the sound low when watching his films. trust me. (:
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Divinia
She sings on the church worship team. She has the sort of voice that belongs on the radio. It’s sweet, clear, confident. One Sunday she singing a simple song and she started to cry. I watched as tears fell down her face, but her voice stayed the same till the song was through. As the song closed, Caroline leaned over and whispered, “She wrote this song when she found out her husband was struggling with addictions. When he left her because he was too weak to give up his idols for his wife.”
I saw Divinia in a new light. She was broken because of her marriage, but in her voice, she was whole because of Jesus. Her song was about trusting in God even through confusing times. When it doesn’t seem fair, when she wanted to blame God, leave God, scream at God. She resolved to trusting in Him. It just goes back to asking God not to prevent tragedy, but to guard our hearts and keep our minds in the event of conflict.
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bazaar
Emma and Cesar have a home in a very, very poor town. They could easily afford a home in another neighborhood with less crime and friendly faces, but they refused. They moved to Fuik to be missional. They wanted to tell the people of Fuik about Jesus. They do so through the children. My first week on the island I stayed in their house for VBS. , most churches do VBS in their four walls. But the people in this town would never drive that far. Emma and Cesar: they ran the entire operation in their home and yard. over 400 children. I thought they were crazy for doing this. A week of hardly any sleep and all screaming, fighting children. Then I found out they do this every day: all year. Days of ‘open house for homework help’. Kids pour in screeching and clawing and disrespectful from 2 to 6 after school. “They behave like animals” Cesar says, “Because that’s the only way they’ll get food back at home.” But, why? Why give up your home? It’s covered with chidren’s toys, papers, homework assignments, crafts, snacks upon snacks, and playthings. Emma lives in a perpetual daycare: with no pay. It’s crazy and undignified work.
To add the the mess, the street they live on is pure havoc. Across the street the police invaded in the night to discover one of the biggest car thieves on the island. They had been stealing cars for years. Next door is a commune of men who steal anything in order to buy drugs. They sit on their front porch eating trash and staring with dazed expressions. In broad daylight, girls roam the street trying to sell themselves to put food on the table.
Cesar says there’s more to this place than that. He says these children are going to be the next generation. They are our generation-z. And it’s up to them to change this neighborhood. He works at the Xeorox print shop, and then comes home after a full day of work in a huge hippie van to drive the kids home from ‘homework help’. On their birthday, Emma always bakes them a cake. That’s where I come in. Lately I’ve been going over to Fuik to bake and bake vanilla or chocolate cake. Emma says that if she didn’t make them a cake, they would not get one. “Their familes do not care about them.” she says, and looks terribly sad for a moment. I think that’s the only time Emma is sad. She is always laughing and singing, even through a hard day’s work as a teacher, and then as a mother to these abused children back in Fuik.
They had a bazaar sale where people donated clothing and things. Cesar and Emma sold them all for very cheap. People came with bags and lined up at 6am, because these clothes were not broken, and they were not expensive. After the bazaar, we piled the remaining furniture and clothing into the van. “Where are you going with it?” I asked. “To the immigrants.” replied Cesar. “The ones who don’t have visas, and don’t have beds.”
Cesar says the only way to give everything away like this, his time, energy, money, home, kitchen, even his clothing: is to realize that he is not his own. He told me once, “Emily, I realize that one day I’m going to stand before God and he’s going to say, ‘Cesar. Now how did you use that house I gave you for me? How did you use that van? Those shoes? That food?’. Nothing is my own. All of it is lent to me from Christ, to give away.”
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“earth is like living in a foreign country temporarily”
- Rick Warren: The Purpose Driven Life
I am living in a foreign country temporarily. And a lot of times, I think about going home. The reunion, my friends, the life I have back in the states. The Bible endlessly recounts this analogy of earth being like a temporary visit to a foreign land. If that’s how earth is supposed to be, then why are we not thinking of our reunion with our father at the end of all this? I mean, I’m not encouraging a fixation on death. I think just a realization that life is such a fleeting, transient, shadow of a thing. And once we release our own life, then we are able to look to eternal things. Think about what’s controlling you in your foreign country. Remember you homeland, and think of the people who aren’t going home with you. Don’t you want them to be a part of your reunion?
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same little girl from my first week here. Naomi, still in the town of Fuik. Six years old, and the most rebellious of them all.
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Siloam
(if you read Dutch, here’s their website:http://www.siloamvillage.org/website/)
In the morning we went to Siloam, a home for terminally ill children. There’s a big white building to our left, looks like a cross between a church and Noah’s Ark. It’s going to be a hospice for the kids, and was donated by generous people around the world. To our right is the main house, with an old orange roof sagging under the sun.
Herman, the tallest, jolliest Dutchman I’ve ever met, greeted us with an old workshirt on and a trail of beautiful, dark children. He urged us under the awning. “I only have a few minutes, but I’ll tell you the story in a nutshell,” he begins. “We came here with nothing.God told me that he would provide. I quit my job in Holland, and we moved to this island. It started a few months in when someone asked us to care for a terminally ill child. We had no idea what we were doing! But it grew from there, and we started this place here. We now have eleven in our care 24/7, and Bett, my wife, never leaves their side.” Across the street is a building printed with something saying “kas di Dios” or House of God. Herman tells us it used to be a bar, but he is now renting it and every Sunday over 80 children come in from the town to hear the Good News there. On Saturday’s they feed the children with physical food, on Sunday’s the give them spiritual food.
A young boy scooted up in a diaper and the biggest smile. He grabbed my hand and started speaking in little boy Dutch. He told me he was eating goldfish. But then he got shy and ran off all cute and wobbly. Herman smiled after him. “That boy there is what we call a walking time bomb. any week, any day, any minute could be his last.”
They started this place so they could share the gospel with the children before they die. Herman says that each before each child has taken their last breath, they have all accepted Christ as their Savior. Each and every one. “Save for the babies who just can’t understand, the rest are following Christ into heaven. And that’s why we do this. That’s why we’re here.”
What are you here for? What can we do in our lives that will make the most lasting change?
