- Joyce Meyer
from the article, Love: Join the Revolution
read the rest of this article here.... :)
5.24.2010
quote for today 1:36 PM
"Being part of The Love Revolution is going to cost us something, but it doesn’t always mean our money…we have to be willing to give ourselves as a sacrifice. And that means loving people on the job, in the neighborhood, in your home and loving the poor, lost, and needy enough to put your time and effort into it. We’re going to have to stop complaining because of all the petty inconveniences that come our way and start really loving people."
i love free wifi 12:34 AM
I know I sound like a broken record, but the last couple days have been crazy. We are living so moment-by-moment that I often forget what day it is! I feel like I began this trip without being fully prepared, honestly though I’m not sure one could ever fully prepare themselves for an adventure such as this. We set out with the heart of our mission being to love on individuals, to show that our world is not made up of a sea of faces, that each morning as we’re driving to school or to work or daycare or whatever the people all around us are living their own stories and experiencing feelings of excitement, joy, fear, hurt, and every other emotions that we ourselves feel on a daily basis. I myself am not the center of the universe… I’m not the leading role. Everyone is special. Everyone has their story to share. Its beautiful and difficult and exciting and surprising to be sharing in other peoples stories.
As we listen to people’s opinions on what love is the most frequent underlying answer, no matter the presentation, has been self-sacrifice. I feel like that’s what I’ve been learning as we travel. There are 4 of us and we are almost always together, we spend hours in the car together, we volunteer together, we eat together – and this is a beautiful thing – but none of us is perfect, I am very quick to admit there are things about me that are not lovely :) we see every side of one another. I’m learning to show love the most to Emily, Stan, and Jason. Because if I can’t be love to them there’s no way I can be love to strangers. Its hard, but I will be successful! Everywhere we go though people talk to us about being love to one another and encouraging one another and pointing out good things about one another. Being peaceful, patient, kind, gentle, and graceful. It’s been so helpful to have it pounded into our heads and hearts from every direction.
I guess to give a bit of a trip/travel update from my viewpoint…. Lets go back a little bit…Its Sunday in Knoxville and we’re leaving tomorrow. We’ve been planning on heading over to New Orleans but last minute find out that our housing plans aren’t going to work out. During the drive up to Knoxville on friday we had been listening to my dad on the radio and heard him mention that some of the Joy fm guys were planning on driving up to Nashville to deliver a bunch of tens that were donated by radio listeners for the homeless people that used to live in tent city. Savetentcity.com . but I didn’t really think much of it at the time. Fast forward back to Sunday in Knox, we’re having a group meeting and talking about New Orleans and somehow the information we had heard on the radio comes up and we decide to call my dad up and ask him about what they were doing in Nashville. We all felt like it could be a really awesome opportunity to help people out because of the flood and all the damage it caused so we changed our plans and found friends in Nashville to crash with.
We arrived in the Nash on Monday afternoon and hooked up with Otter Creek Church, who the Joy fm was working with, and agreed to help out the next day (Tuesday) and sort tent sizes and pass out tents and sleeping bags to homeless people. We spent the rest of the afternoon/evening getting to know the guys that we’re staying with (they have an awesome house! I love that it had so many musical instruments… it inspired me to start practicing guitar again when I go home… but that’s a whole story in itself… anyways), having dinner at SATCO, and meting new friends and asking them their thoughts on love :)
Tuesday morning we got up and helped out with the tents… it was a pretty crazy day for the church staff/members and we ended up sot of being put in charge of the whole process, which we weren’t expecting but it was totally cool, and we got to meet a number of awesome people; Bill and Kris from the Joy fm (Jason has a major friend crush on Kris :P ), Brian the creator of savetentcity.com and his crazy cool 10 year old son Anthony, Otter Creek Church members, and a missionary named Joseph who works with Youth With a Mission teaching classes about discovering your calling and purpose at different Universities of the Nations around the world. I believe Emily wrote a lot about our visit with him in her most recent post.
Next we headed to get dinner. My sister, Grace, attends Belmont University here in Nashville and she highly recommended a café called Silly Goose for some good fresh food (yay!). It was a little bit more expensive than we really wanted but we decided to go ahead and try it out anyways.
[quick side note: a silly goose is carrot apple ginger juice, which basically = me (by which i mean those are some of my favorite things) I thought that was awesome].
So, sitting at a table near us were these super trendy Nashville guys
(honestly I think everyone in nashville is trendy… we felt mildly out of place :P stevie lewis you must visit Nashville! :D )
when their food arrived they stopped to pray for it and we all got really excited! We immediately started trying to figure out a way to go talk to them… we thought about walking by their table and dropping a business card on the floor and then picking it up and being like, “ohh is this yours?!” ooor maybe praying really loudly for our food and looking over to see if they noticed…. In the middle of all of this conversation Jason got up and walked over to their table and said, “Maybe this is awkward but…” blah blah and gave our Love Each One schpeel. AND THEN they invited us to a party. Crazy right? But they did. We later went back to the house and we invited our new friend Jordan, who was sort of living with the guys we were staying with, along too.
The 5 of us headed over around 10 something ish. As we got out of the car and headed towards the door I had butterflies in my stomach… I was always really shy and its only been in the past 2 years that I’ve become more bold and confident. I feel like though if I had been by myself I might have just turned around and run home before I got to the front door, as silly and sad as that is. I’m very thankful that everyone was with me and that we went in because it was wonderful. We made some very good friends and had some good good heart to heart to heart time :) I love Nashville! I’m hoping to drive back up in august with my sister when she goes back to school.
Anyways, Wednesday we drove over to Shreveport, LA to check out Moonbot Studios and continue to show some love. It was really cool touring the studio, I had never done that before… it’s a whole new world to me. We stayed with friend/ringling grad/moonbot-er Adam and that was really fun, it was cool how excited he was to hang out with us and show us around the city. We also got to help set up a gallery show in which all of the work was made using bubble wrap which was cool, its different from any of the other volunteery things we’ve done.
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As I sit here writing we are in Tulsa, Ok at the Coffee House on Cherry Street. I just finished drinking an amazing chai/chocolate/coffee drink that is currently nameless and was created by Nick who is an awesome barista who goes to Rhema. Thank you Nick and Jessica for serving us and hanging out with us tonight!
Last night we went to Stan’s sister Victoria’s graduation and finished the night with a dance party. We decided we should have more dance parties in our future.
as I post this we have just arrived in Wichita, KS where we are staying with our lovely friend Emily B :)
I’m sorry this post has been so very long… we will be updating much more frequently in the future so that we don’t have to throw so much stuff at you all at once!
Good night!
~ginger
ps: Jordan – we’ve got a seat with your name on it in our car if you feel like taking a break from work at any point :D
5.23.2010
Quote of the day 2:08 PM
"I'm only one, but still I am one. I cannot do everything, but I can do something, and because I cannot do everything, I will not refuse to do that something I can do." - Helen Keller
brrlatte and new friends 12:55 AM
It’s hard to believe this trip has only been about a week and a half. I feel like I’ve been through so much mentally, physically and spiritually. One of our biggest challenges has been finding WiFi for us to all get hooked up to for updates, as you may have noticed. It’s okay though, now you just have more to read about :)
As you heard Knoxville was great. The people were awesome, the different things we were able to be apart of were great. It felt weird to move along so suddenly. But we did, we scooted on over to Nashville. Ginger has been telling me how absolutely amazing Nashville is for the past two years. I usually would nod and say, “yesyes Ginger we’ll have to go sometime” without much thought. But now. Now I understand :)
Like Jason’s earlier post said our first day we found a church that was doing flood relief work for Tent City. For those who may not know Nashville went through a serious flood a few weeks ago. A lot of houses and businesses were damaged, valuables ruined, and some lives lost. Tent City was a piece of land filled with tents housing much of the homeless in the city. The flood destroyed it and has left a lot of people misplaced. So this church was passing out tents to anyone that needed them. We worked with some great people and though the day didn’t pan out quite the way we had thought it would we have a lot of fun and were glad to have been there.
In between all the tent shenanigans we met this really cool missionary Joseph. He’s traveled all around the world and taught classes for YWAM ( Youth With A Mission - http://www.ywam.org/ ). He said two sentences that are awesome! But grrrr Ginger and Jason don’t remember them but Stan wrote them down. So he’ll post them later. But our conversation with him was just really encouraging. He talked about stirring each other up. How people are like a pot of soup. You stir a pot of soup because all the good stuff is at the bottom. It’s important to encourage people because you want to stir up all the good things in them. Let them know what they’re good at. Tell them what they do well so they can keep on keeping on. ‘Let us think of ways to motivate one another to acts of love and good works. And let us not neglect our meeting together, as some people do, but encourage one another, especially now that the day of his return is drawing near’ from Hebrews ten was what Joseph referenced. I want to be better at stirring people up.
That Tuesday is Nashville was a very encouraging day. While trying to figure out dinner plans Ginger pointed out a restaurant her sister recommended called Silly Goose. Though the not super cheap menu was a bit intimidating and we didn’t look quite as trendy as the other guests we decided to go in. In the end I think it was the perfect leading :) We ended up meeting some of the trendy guests and were invited to meet up with them later. I never would have guessed you could make good friends in half a day… but I know now it’s possible :) All the guys we met were super welcoming. They let us into their home and fed us and shared stories with us. It was a really great night that concluded beautifully with some heart to heart to heart and prayer. I look forward to my next trip to Nashville.
The whole trip has made me realize how much fun it is talking to the people around you. And how awkward it can be :P But a lot of great things have come from just talking to someone random. Though Love Each One does make it a little easier to talk to people. The business card makes us look official and our cause gives us something to talk about. I think we’re all considering carrying around the business cards for the rest of our lives just to make it easier to talk to random people. But I’d like to be able to just break past that weird awkward wall that seems to be the social norm. To just be able to talk someone because I want to talk with them.
Currently we're in Tulsa, Oklahoma, enjoying good food and a few new friends. I love meeting people and making friends :) It seems like at every stop we end up saying aww lets stay here so we can hang out with our new friends. But it's okay, having friends all over the country is cool. I hope to be able to travel around the country at a later date and be able to call up these new friends and get to know them better.
The trip has been great. It’s been a challenge. Overall it’s been a lot of learning and thinking. I’ve enjoyed ever minute of it and look forward to everything that’s in store for us.
I thank the Lord that we are always in the right place at the right time and talk to the right people.
Hooray for adventures :)
and a shout out to Jordan! we miss ya! just keep on loving where you are anddd maybe we'll see you in a few weeks :D ... ?
5.21.2010
Days...5-8? I think? Lol 12:56 AM
Hello everyone!
Fear not, we are still alive! Lol between busy days and sparse Internet availability, our posting hasn't been as frequent as hoped. But here's a quick update of our ventures from my phone! :)
After leaving Knoxville, we drove over to Nashville to help with flood relief. We ended up hooking up with a local church and made plans to help sort sleeping bags and tents for the homeless who lost all they had in the flood. We hooked up with Kris and Bill from the joy fm in Sarasota who drove a bunch of tents and sleeping bag donations up from Florida.
Afterwards we hung out with a missionary we met for a couple hours, which was really cool.
At dinner we met these trendy Nashville guys, who invited us to a party later that night. We went, and had a lot of fun hanging out with the local crowd. We made some great friends, and it was sad to leave Nashville.
We then moved on to Shreveport yesterday. Today we went and checked out moonbot (awesome!) and then helped them put together an art exhibit on the 50th year anniversary of bubble wrap. It was a lot of fun hanging out with everyone here. After dinner, we went to William Joyces house and got to hang out with him and a few of the other moonbots.
Tomorrow morning we have to get up and leave by 7 to head off to Tulsa, Oklahoma for stans sister's graduation
So these are the highlights of what we've been up to. I obviously left a lot of details out, but we just wanted to give you guys a quick recap of the past few days.
Over the next few days Internet should be more readily available, which means more posts! Woot woot!
Thanks for all the prayers and support as we've travelled along. We've been very blessed so far by all the friends we've made and experiences we've encountered. I'm heading to bed now, but look forward to further posts over the next few days!
Cheers! :) Jason
5.17.2010
Sunday Morning Love Addiction 11:50 PM
Sunday morning we went to church at the True Purpose Thrift Store. They added a bunch of folding chairs to the furniture section, and turned it into a makeshift church where we all sat in a big circle. The service was one of the coolest ones I've ever been to. Pastor Jeremy led for the most part, but was constantly opening up the floor to anyone who had something on their heart, something they needed prayer for, etc. Lot's of people were prayed for, lots of things were shared, and God's presence was strongly there through the whole thing.
You could tell that the guys in the program used to be living in a very different kind of lifestyle. There was a "rough around the edges" feel to them. But you could also tell that that wasn't who they were anymore. They were cleaned up, and had a gentleness and peacefulness that you could clearly see. That is why Tommy, the older man who was sitting behind us when we came in, stood out. He had all of the former, without the latter. Facial hair scruff, bloodshot eyes. He looked like he had just walked in off the street.
At the end of the service, Pastor Jeremy was asking if anyone had anything else they need prayers for, or if there was anyone present who had not ever asked Jesus into their hearts as their personal Lord and Savior. That's when Tommy spoke up.
Tommy had been addicted to drugs and alcohol since he was 13. A period of almost 30 years. He'd been in and out of jail, living on the streets, all alone. He had no family, both his parents were dead. He told us how he woke up in the middle of the night the night before, face wet from apparently crying in his sleep. He lied there in bed, sobbing, realizing that something in his life needed to change.
When he got out of bed in the morning (this same Sunday morning), he couldn't get a friend of his (who runs a local homeless shelter) out of his head. Everything he did, everywhere he went...there was his friends face. So he finally went to see his friend. Tommy told him that he was seeing him everywhere, that he couldn't get him out of his head, and that he wanted to change. He wanted to break this three decade addiction that had been running his life. His friend pointed him to True Purpose, and told him he should come to the church service.
And so Tommy spoke up, and told us all of this. He then went on to say that he was ready to ask Jesus into his heart. He knew he couldn't do it on his own any longer, but was ready to change with the help of God. He went up front, and Pastor Jeremy walked him through the steps. Everyone clapped and applauded, and many tears were shed by all.
It takes $200 to enter the program at True Purpose. This gets them into the program, and then they work at the thrift store, cut lawns, etc to help pay through the rest of it. We had decided yesterday as a group that we wanted to donate $200 to True Purpose for the next person who wanted to enter the program, but didn't have the money to afford it. After Tommy got up and shared his story, and accepted Jesus into his heart, we all knew immediately what we needed to do with the money.
After the service, we went up to Tommy to congratulate him, hug him, and encourage him. And then we told him that we just gave Pastor Jeremy a check for $200 for him to enter into the program. If we thought he was crying before, that was nothing.
He collapsed into his chair and just started weeping into his hands, overcome with joy and disbelief. Emotions overwhelmed all of us, and we just all stood there together crying and smiling. He was so grateful, both to us and to God. He told us that he had told God that he was ready to turn over a new leaf, if God would only provide the means.
I can very honestly say, that that was the coolest, most important thing I feel that I have ever done in my entire life. For just $200, we completely changed this man's life. That night Tommy ate a warm meal, and slept in a bed. He is on a path of new beginnings in his life, for the first time in 30 years, all because of an act of love.
The crazy thing is, we weren't even supposed to go to Tennessee. It was a last minute change. But I know now that we were and are exactly where we're supposed to be doing exactly what we we're supposed to be doing. I'm so thankful that we were able to be used in such an amazing way, touching a life that I know will go on to touch many others. That is an experience that will be with me for the rest of my life.
:) Jason
