Tuesday Update

If there were a theme to this update, I suppose it would be "wonderful". The team is wonderful. The Tims are wonderful. Brazil, I hear, is wonderful this time of year. (-:

The group loved traveling up river yesterday morning; The trip was slow, peaceful and full of the beauty only found on the Amazon. I must say, I eagerly anticipate seeing the pictures upon their return (I'll be sure to share a few with you!).

They set up base camp yesterday and plunged into the river for their evening shower. Last night, some slept in their hammocks on the land and some of the group slept on the boat, where it was a bit cooler (temperatures are hitting 90-95 degrees during the day and I'm sure the humidity level can't even be imagined).

Today they're building a dock, installing windows and finishing up church buildings that have been started by Brazilian pastors and other mission teams that have gone down. Their hands are definitely needed to continue the construction; the Brazilian pastors struggle because the churches are growing but there's just no money for building construction.

All in all, the group is doing wonderfully well. This brings me great joy and I hope it does you as well.
Photo courtesy of Project Amazon

Monday Morning Update

We heard from the group last night and all is well down in Brazil.

Friday they went to the dump to share Jesus' love practically. The people they brought food to in the dump live there, collecting items to sell so they can have money to live. These people also share their dump-home with vultures who constantly soar around in search of food. Many of the students had not seen such dire poverty before this; it was a moving experience for all.

Sunday, they attended a service with amazing worship, all in Portuguese. Tim said the highlight was watching the women, dressed in long white dresses, dancing in worship- very sweet and totally directed at the Lord.

The students prayed over the American couple who is hoping to keep moving ahead with the orphanage in which the LIFTers have been sleeping. Presently the plans are "hung up in red tape" with the government. As our group prayed over these two, the Lord moved mightily and spoke to them with great words of encouragement. The missionaries were full of positive thanks to our group and to God for how their spirits had been lifted through this sweet time of prayer!

As of this morning, the group left the orphanage and traveled up river about two hours (on a boat!). The plan was for them to leave at 6am, so they should be at their destination as you read this, setting up base came and prepping for work this afternoon. We'll have more information on their new home for the next few days when we hear from them again.

Please continue to pray for the students! We can assume that this time in Brazil will affect them in some manner, but we want them to come home different, not "affected". God-glorifying, Christ-likened change can only come through the power of the Holy Spirit.

Hammocks in an Orphanage

We just heard from the group; they did make it safely to their base camp (just east of Belem, Brazil) and are resting from their long trip south. Apparently their second connecting flight was very similar to the first (a quick turn-around time with hurried legs in the airport). That's the kind of stuff that makes traveling very exciting.

Their home for the next few days is a building that's currently being turned into an orphanage. There are no beds, so each member of the team was given a hammock to sleep in (please take a moment to ponder the awesomeness of this; it makes me want to go buy a hammock).

The organization that LIFT will be working with for the next two weeks is called Project Amazon (PAZ). Their mission is to glorify God, fulfilling the Great Commission by planting nationally led churches, emphasizing:

• The making of disciple-making disciples
• The training, equipping and sending of nationals
• Ministering to the whole person: spirit, soul and body
• Focusing on the Amazon Basin

Tonight, the group will relax and recoup with some orientation meetings.

Tomorrow (April 4), they will be going to the local dump to feed the poor who work there, then they will be leading a service for the youth in the evening.

Sunday (April 5) they will pack for the next leg of the trip (ten days on the river) and go to church.

Please pray:

• That the students will recover quickly from traveling so they are rested enough for their Brazilian adventures.
• That they would become acclimated with the culture sooner than expected.
• For wisdom and discernment for the LIFT directors as well as the PAZ missionaries.
• That in their excitement, they would remember that all good things come from the Lord and they would be finding their stability and identities in Christ alone.
• That as they minister, that the light of Jesus Christ would be allowed to shine brightly.
• For the people that they minister to, that their interactions with the LIFTers would push them toward a deeper relationship with Christ.

I could make a list of prayer requests that is 3 pages long, but I'll refrain for now. I'll also have more specific requests soon.

This is all I know for now. Posting will be light for the weekend, but be sure to dig around the Project Amazon website for more information on the Amazon basin.

Landed

While I haven't heard from them yet, LIFT should have landed safely in Brazil by now.

We did hear from them yesterday during their layover in Miami. Apparently their flight was an hour late getting there and they had to run around the airport to catch their connecting flight. I imagine it looked something like the scene from Home Alone except no one got lost.

I'll post more later, I just wanted to give you all a quick update.

Also, I've been sending out some email updates and some of the emails I was given are getting kicked back to me. If you want to be on the email list or think one of those emails are yours, send me an email so I can put you on the list.

christinaL[at]camp-of-the-woods[dot]org

The Team

Note: Blogger's time stamp is giving me a hard time. This was published Thursday, April 2, 2009.

Tim, at one point in time, talked about introducing the LIFTers here. Being the busy man that he is, he neglected blogging about the LIFTers and opted for interacting with them instead. I'll accept this as a viable excuse.

And I digress. Here are the LIFT 21 students:


First row: Tim, Jeff, Nellie, Becky, Brianna, Kristen and Dale. Second row: Sarah, Chris, Matt, Harim and Peter. Third row: Megan, Sherri, Erin, Emory, Justyna, Katie and Kim. Not pictured: Directors, Tim T. and Tim O.

Today is a day of travel for them; let's hold them up in prayer as they board three airplanes and spend over 15 hours in the air. Here is their route:


They fly from Newark, NJ to Miami, FL and from Miami to Sau Paulo, Brazil (it's in the same vicinity as Rio de Janeiro). Then they fly from Sau Paulo to Belem, Brazil, arriving at their destination tomorrow morning at 9:30 am EST (10:30 am for the group).

I tried to figure out how long it would take to drive from Speculator, New York, United States to Belem, Para, Brazil but Google had some issues with me wanting to drive that far. If someone wants to figure it out, drop a comment here.

Cheers!

Meu Nome è Christina: A Brazilian Introduction

Hello all,
As most of you know, LIFT 21 will be departing tomorrow for a two-week mission trip to Brazil. I will be taking over this little slice of the interweb while they are gone, updating you on their adventure. Some of you may know who I am and can assume my excitement in this new project of mine, but I suspect more of you have no idea who I am and how I'm connected to the LIFT program.

First, I am a graphic designer and photographer at CAMP-of-the-WOODS, the resort and conference center that the LIFT Discipleship Program is tied to under their parent organization, Gospel Volunteers, Inc. This is my eighth LIFT class I've been given the privilege to observe and interact with.

Second, last semester, LIFT 20 went to Nigeria. In a story that's entirely too long and only minutely relevant to this blog, I had the opportunity to go with them last November and act as their photographer. Since we've started a two-semester opportunity, we have 8 students from last semester doing LIFT again and subsequently traveling to Brazil.

Third, I love to blog.

In short, I am professionally and emotionally tied to this group. I love the students and my experience in Nigeria will give me an opportunity to understand their Brazilian experience better. Which means I can effectively communicate it with you.

This is a picture of LIFT 20 in Nigeria. Some of the students are missing, but it's the only group photo I ended up in.


So that is who I am. Now on to the more important stuff.

The plan: My goal is to update here more often than I hear from the group. In between actual updates, I'll be throwing in some random Brazil facts and maybe a Portuguese lesson or two. We'll have fun together, I promise.

The group leaves tomorrow morning; please pray:

• For sharpness of mind and the ability to place all their anxieties on the Lord as they pack.
• For their emotional preparation; that they would rest wholly on the truths of Scripture.
• For their spiritual preparation; that they would be walking by the Spirit and leaning on the Lord for wisdom and understanding.
• Pray Philippians 4:6-7 for them, "Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus."

Worship Beyond Words

First of all, sorry it's taken me so long to get another post up here. No excuses, I'll do better.

and now higher up and further in....

"I can't even put into words the experience of standing on top of a mountain, completely buffeted by the wind and snow, staring out as far as I can see into God's creation."

"God just keeps moving the boundaries of what I think I am able to do!"

"I hiked into our site a couple of days ago with a heavy heart, and have really spent our time up here wrestling, doing a lot of thinking. It was cool to discover as I hiked out that I still had a song in my heart."

These are some of my favorite quotes from our experience two weeks ago in our camping trip in the High Peaks. Here's a brief summary: We loaded all our gear on our backs and hiked in about 3 hours to our base camp, which was actually a really nice, warm cabin. Girls stayed in the cabin (apparently so warm that they didn't even use their brand new North Face sleeping bags). Guys stayed in the lean-tos (a little colder, especially with 10-year old bags). The cabin was great, we had breakfast and lunch in there, as well as a couple of meetings, worship times, that sort of thing. Great place for building community. We spent three nights out there, and the third night we all slept outside. Some slept in the lean-tos, while the rest of us built and slept in Quincy's. To build a quincy: back a bunch of snow down, then begin shovelling snow onto that spot, building a mount, packing it down as you go. Build it up about head high, then shovel out the insides, making a make-shift igloo. The girls' was big enough for about 5, and we fit 10 in the guys. I'm not kidding--it had two rooms, a door in between, two entrances, and even two windows of ice some guys dragged up from the river. Style. Quite the experience!

But this week was about far more than experiences, hills, or snow. It was about worship, about developing the bonds of our community, of struggling through cold and exhaustion, of supporting each other, and realizing our failures. And more than that. I can't blog it all, but I will say this: it was a good week. I'll share a couple stories in particular that highlight our time of worship in "the wild".

We hiked a couple of mountains, the most significant of which was Mt Marcy. Marcy is the tallest mt in NY, and really was an adventure at the summit. The wind really picked up above the treeline, and the final 1/2 mile or so of the hike was a fight against the elements, carefully picking your way along the treacherously icy, barren hillside, leaning into the wind, trying to ignore the pelting snow that was pummelling your face. There is just something about being stretched to the limit of our physical capabilities that makes us feel that we are human, that we are alive...hard to put into words, actually. :) There is a unique awe of God you feel as you lean into a freezing wind that is almost strong enough to actually hold you up, and so loud that you have to shout to be heard...and to look out, and see for miles, and know that the same God who made all that can hear the prayers you utter silently in your own mind.

I'll round out the story of the tempestuous storm at the top of Marcy with another one from a different perspective. For some reason at some point I was out walking alone, and happened to cross over a frozen river near our cabin. A soft snow was falling, it was one those times where the white blanket just muted everything. I paused in the middle of the river, taking in the stark beauty of the WHITE. Standing on a frozen river, covered in snow, surrounded on every side by towering trees weighed down with their burdens of snow, and giant, silent flakes falling all around me. We had just witnessed the glory of God's power on the peak of Marcy, and now I was hearing the still, small voice of God.

And, as I drank of God's beauty, i noticed, down a ways from me, perched on a rock, all by herself, one of our LIFTers. I just stood there for awhile, unbeknownst to her, watching her as she worshipped. I can describe to you the things that I saw, but I can't put the experience into words. There is just a beauty to God's creation, and a futher beauty to silently witnessing one of God's daughters drink in that beauty in worship... I can only thank God for the moment.

It was a good week....one that i still don't quite have all the words for. But I have a song...