In recent conversations, it got me thinking... When is love enough and when is it not?

• To a homeless woman with a young child, is love enough?
• To an orphan that has food and shelter, is love enough?
• To a rebelling teen, is love enough?
• To a broken marriage, is love enough?
• To a grieving child or parent, is love enough?
• To a distraught unemployed person, is love enough?
• To a prisoned changed believer, is love enough?
• To a prisoned unchanged unbeliever, is love enough?
• To a thirsty and hungry world, is love enough?

I have heard many people in my life quote "Witness, and sometimes use words." The point to that is, that our love, our attitude, our character should be a witness enough to people to where our light in us should point them to God. Yet, to some, playing, loving, and being with people doesn't seem like enough to be a "ministry". Should it be considered one? What about an outreach? or a mission? How are these words defined?

There are times where maybe people need love and something else...

• The homeless woman with a young child would dream of shelter, food, and warmth for her and her child, yet, they at least have the love for each other.
• The orphan that has food and shelter may want toys and nice clothes, but love is what they seek and need more, since they feel so abandoned and are constantly processing why.
• The rebelling teen needs love and attention and possibly even discipline and structure, but those things come out of love... to where love is enough.
• To a broken marriage, trying to recreate or rekindle love could just be enough, or maybe it's love from those around and even maybe love from a marriage counselor. Love is enough.
• To a grieving child or parent, love can help one heart's heal, for nothing can replace the one who is gone. In the end, love is enough.
• To a distraught unemployed person, they might not think that love is enough. They may feel like a failure, but love that gives them peace and faith that God will provide, just might be enough.
• To a prisoned changed believer, receiving love from the outside church just may be enough to help them love others on the inside and keep their faith strong.
• To a prisoned unchanged unbeliever, love just may be enough to show them the love of Christ.
• To a thirsty and hungry world, love can point them to God and hopefully give them faith.

God is love. God is the provider of all of our love. The only reason why "our love" can do anything is because it comes from God, which means that when we are loving them, it's not truly us, it's God. We are merely vessels, empty, without His love. His love is enough for us.

Life is our ministry, mission, and outreach. There is no part of it that is more or less of one.

Amadeo is truly my home.

In the past few weeks, I have had a very different feeling going into VCC. I know that feelings aren't anything to go by persay, but I have had them none the less. On the 14th, I taught the 4s and 5s, and it was different. I love all the kids there, but it was the walking to the room that was different. I felt distant and that it was not my home anymore. I almost felt that I didn't belong. Trust me in that it was no one's fault, it's just the honest feeling that I felt. That day, I ended out helping in the 11:00 service after I taught during the 9:00 service, and when I left, it continued. On Wednesdays, there has only been a hint of the feelings. Honestly, I think it's because I'm still supposed to teach the Prims, even if I am not a normal attendee of VCC. It may all have to do with the fact that I haven't attended a service there since November. Yet, I never thought I would feel this way about VCC. It's still weird.

Yesterday, I had a meeting with Keith who now oversees missions. The meeting went well. Overall, the trips to Mexico will no longer be "promoted" by the church due to different legalities. This means that we can only use the church van for specific trips where we have a lot of donations and that it will no longer be in the bulletin or church e-mails. Overall, I have found that most people like for it to be a smaller group, so I think this might actually be a blessing. Also, this will help it be more of an Amadeo minitry for the future.

Yet, after having this conversation with him, I feel like this is even more confirmation that I am supposed to be at Amadeo and a part of Amadeo. Yesterday when I got there, I felt like there were so many new people. It was exciting, but yet I felt like I have already missed so much just from missing 2 Sundays in a row.

I'm excited for this change. There are obviously people that I will forever be in touch with at VCC, but I am so excited to see all that God is going to do in Amadeo.

I felt like I was watching a movie. I hoped that it wasn't real. I heard the voices of many boys that I loved. I couldn't find them when it was time to say goodbye. I looked in each of their rooms. Empty. But their voices were still there. Where could they possibly be? I knew they were in trouble from misbehaving in church. But I thought they were locked in their rooms and that lunch was withheld from them...yet, they're not in their rooms.

They weren't in their bathroom. I then went to the shower room. There, they were. There's a small room that's behind bars. It's always locked because it has the cleaning supplies in there. It's somewhat of an L shape with maybe 3 feet x 3 feet on the smaller side and 7 feet x 5 feet on the longer side. Yet, there's all sorts of stuff in there. Yet, behind those bars, admist the other things including their underwear that is drying on a line high up, are the boys. About 20 of them.

I saw them, and I don't even want to know what my expression was. Disgust, horror, shock. I know they should be punished, but this?

I did the only thing I could do. Hug and kiss them through the bars. Some would reput their cheek up to the bars so I could kiss them a second or a third time. I wanted to squeeze them so tight, but the bars were in the way. I didn't want to hurt them in the process.

I hear a noise behind us, and it's David, bringing Macario, to throw him in with the rest. When he got thrown in, they all pushed him around. It was just like a movie where the established cell mates had to throw the new blood around.

I felt like a mother, torn apart, having to leave with her sons in jail. There's nothing I could do besides saying and showing I loved them. I can't get that picture out of my head. It's a completely different scene when you know each one, love each one, know they need to be punished, but can't control the way in which they are. Leaving, wondering when they will be released... not knowing, when that hour will come.

Check out this article about a radio station contest in CA Hold you Wee to win a WII. It's pretty sad.

Monday I began, or shall I say, restarted the right way to live. I went to the gym. Stepping onto that scale was a scary thing. I don't remember how low I actually got, but I know I gained a good 10-20 pounds back over the past 5 months. I think Jen would be proud of me. Today I walked for 1 minute and ran for 9. I ran for almost 90% of my time on the treadmill. I am excited that my work hours changed to 8-5 because now I can go back to working out in the mornings. I don't know why it's so much easier for me, but it truly is... It's a lot easier to stay on top of. There are rarely any reasons why I should ever miss completely. Sure, there will be times I need to cut it short, but I can still go. At night... too many random things come up all the time.

Eating healthy... that's a whole other animal. It's hard to eat healthy, but I realize there are some important rules that I need to set for myself.

1. I need to have healthy snacks at my desk for work. People start to get the munchies around 3, so for 2 hours, it gets really hard to ignore the temptations of food in the vending machine. I also need to put them in daily servings so I don't over-indulge just because it's there.
2. I like Kent and Kradan's rule for their kids. In order to get a snack, they need to eat a piece of fruit before hand.
3. Only drink water, and drink enough. However... don't drink too much water to where it will cause your kidneys to shut down.
4. Limit my red meat intake and increase the amount of good vegetables and fruits (not just yummy advocados in guacamole).
5. Decrease the amount of cheese in my diet. Replace cheese on sandwiches with banana peppers for an extra kick.

For now, those are the ones I am going to start with... Wish me luck. I just need to get to the point where I am healthy and where I only like healthy stuff. Afterall, God does tell us to take care of our bodies, so I definitely need to do so too.

There are a lot of changes that have been happening in my life, so it's time for an update.

I will be completely moved into my parents house today. To be honest, I feel sort of ghetto for living with my parents when I am 27 years old, but I need to so I can get out of debt. With this, I should be completely out of debt in 7 months or so. It all depends on my taxes. Wahoo! Hopefully then, I can start saving money so I can have a decent cushion for when I move down to Mexico.

My parents are so much more spiritually healthy than I could have ever dreamed. I went with my mom to their church (Trinity Alive - an AG church in Scottsdale) last night, and I saw my mom volunteer to be an usher... That is not anything that I would ever expect from her. It was hard for her, she said she felt stupid, but yet she did it anyway. She is reading her bible and praying daily now. She used to say she never had time to read. My dad is actually listening to KLove, is wanting to go to Christian concerts, is making sure he can go to church on Sundays, lifting his hands in worship, and is making friendships. Now, this may seem like a normal Christian to people, but this is my dad... Just last year he was a Easter/Christmas Christian that didn't read his bible or listen to Christian music. He would get frustrated and make excuses all the time...

My sister's marriage is not so good right now. Her and Chris are currently separated. Please pray for them if you remember to.

God is good.

Oh, and I keep hearing that song "The face of love", and I love it so much. It makes me think about my facial expressions and body language... There are so many times where I see pictures of myself when I'm at CdE and I don't think they seem so loving... (you didn't think I could possibly do a whole post without mentioning them did you.) All in all, it's definitely something that is worth being more conscious of.

Today, I found out that the creator of Scooby Doo died. I feel I owe him a tribute. I loved Scooby Doo, and I still do... I just watched 2 of the movies when I was down at CdE on New Years Eve. If it wasn't for him, then I would not have been able to dress up like the heroic dog for 3 years in a row when I was a kid. That's right, 3 years in a row. Ironically, every year, I wondered why I didn't win any costume contests. I thought it was the best costume ever because of how much love I had toward Scooby Doo. The plastic mask may have been slightly cracked, but it was worth it!

Here's to him. Here's to him. Cheers!

As promised, here are the pics of the new baby at CdE. These were taken when he was 12 days old.


Esveidy (the mom), Nathan Lavid, & Yasmin

Jessica & Nathan

I was reading Keith's latest blog and his struggle as a parent, and it reminded me of what has been going through my head since Monday. There are times where I discipline the kids at CdE, and there are times where I wonder if I did it in the right way. Here are some examples.

Cruz (10) and Arnulfo (6) are brothers. They were fighting and wrestling and both were crying. I was able to calm both of them down, but naturally, it took Arnulfo a little longer to stop crying. Just as I got him to calm down, Cruz came over and put sunglasses on a football and made it seem like it was talking. It totally pissed Arnulfo off and made him angry and scared. This was the 2nd time he made his brother cry since I broke up their fight. I immediately took the football and the glasses away from him and told Jesus Humberto to give them to Cruz in the morning, but that he wasn't allowed to have them that night. Cruz was mad, but he handled it well. The next day, I saw him sitting at a table by himself and looking beyond sad, and I hope that it wasn't because of me. It made me wonder if I should have even interfered or if I should have just let them work it out. ~ Another tidbit about Cruz, he has been at the orphanage a year longer than his brother and sister.

Angel just turned 11 in December. He was fighting (fist fighting) with Perla (a girl). They fought for a good 2-3 hours off and on, and I probably had to break up about 30 fights between them. In the end, I couldn't handle it anymore. I made him stay outside while she was inside. He didn't talk to me for a good 2 hours and he would run away from me anytime I tried to come close to him. Now, I know how a lot of these kids function, but Angel, I know really well. I know that he felt like I was really mad at him and possibly even doubted my love for him. I felt like God was telling me that I need to tell him that I love him. Yet, even after God told me that, it took another hour before he would even let me get close to him. Finally, he did. I snuck up behind him, put my arms around him, and told him, "It's okay. You are a good boy. I love you." He then let me give him a hug and kiss his cheek. He was completely fine after that. Even though our relationship was fully restored, I wonder if I excused his hitting Perla or made him think that it would be okay to do it in the future.

I know that my situations are completely different then those of an actual parent, but these kids are as close to being my kids as I will ever have. I love them more than I can explain ~ even those that I have met their actual mothers, like Angel. These are just a couple of the situations. I can't imagine what it's going to be like when I finally move down there. How will I function and second guess everything I do? How do you parents do it?

Oh, and please pray for me. Please pray that I will learn Spanish easier.

It's the new year, and it's already started off in a great way. I can't even tell you how much I was supposed to make this trip this past weekend. It's absolutely crazy.

I actually already started thinking about what I would blog about on Saturday and I thought... oh, it's just a normal trip, so there's not going to be anything really crazy to talk about when I got back. Yet, I was wrong... I will always have stuff to talk about. Stuff always happens. :)

The second we got there, we went and saw the new baby. Jessica and I were blessed to see Nathan Lavid on his 10th day birthday. He is super cute, I will post pictures of him later. He is less than 6 pounds. The birth went well. Esveidy was nervous and tried to close her legs and keep him in, but once she got into it, everything went great. She is already an awesome mother and she knows all of his little sounds and everything.

The rest of the first couple of days was normal. I played with and loved on a lot of kids during the day. At night, I become bouncer "Ana" and broke up tons of fights in the boys dorm, comfort those that were crying, and tried to do my best to make them say sorry to each other... and I even punished one boy this time.

Sunday, the boys were supposed to have a baseball tournament, but their coach never showed up, so they didn't play. I told them that I absolutely couldn't miss church this time since I missed it on my last trip.

I went to church and we had worship. Manuel then came over to me and asked me to fill in for a teacher because one didn't show up. He asked me to teach the girls. I asked him what, and he said "whatever you want". As I walked off to do it, he reminded me to teach them in Spanish. You would think that this would be right up my ally and that I would be stoked for this... Yet, I have no curriculum, no idea what to teach, no idea where to take the girls or how they usually run it, and no idea how I am going to find the right Spanish words to teach them... I looked at the girls and not one of them could serve as a translator.

I was praying as we were walking, asking God to tell me what He wanted me to teach them. I got nothing. I had one of them pray to get us started. Still nothing. Heck, when all else fails, teach your favorite section of scripture. Open up your bibles to 2 Samuel 9.... The story of David and Mephisobeth. They read it, I got to talk about it a little more. I then talked about how Jesus gave us so much more and went down that road. I talked about how we could be like David too.... The boys are still in their room... What to teach now... Oh, how about the Proverbs of the day... can't fail with that, right? So, we read Proverbs 31. I talked a little about that... The boys are still in their room.... Prayer. That's a good, healthy filler, right? Does anyone need prayer? We prayed for 2 girls. At this time, I realized I did have a translator that was hiding behind a column. She then started helping me. In the beginning, some of the girls could understand what I was trying to say in my broken Spanish, and then they would reword it for the others. Anywho, back to prayer. We prayed, and then I talked about how we can pray and what we can pray for. It ended out being good. Church lasted for 2 hours again yesterday.

It's weird. We are all supposed to leave our religion at the gate, and there have been times when I have wanted to say... if I could only teach them this.... Yet, here I was given the opportunity and my mind was blank. It ended out being good, but I just know how much more prepared I need to always be. I really need to work on my Spanish more as well.

About an hour and a half later, Adrian came up to me and asked me to go to this other place with him. Giselle and Raul go to this plant nursery every Sunday to do a children's service to the poor people that work in this nursery. Manuel told Adrian to ask me if I would go. He wanted me to help teach... again... I just got over the other teaching.... and they were going to pass out presents to those kids. I got there... and I felt what other people do when they first go to CdE. I felt nervous, awkward, and I didn't know what to do... I was totally out of my element. I ended out not having to teach. I just participated in worship and listened to Raul's message. I played with some of the kids and comforted the little one that was crying. It was good. These people are poor poor. It was eye-opening, and I will probably post more about them later.

On the way back, Giselle asked if I had planned anything for the night. I told her no, but I could tell she wanted me too. They were just going to have them watch some movies. So, at 6:00 p.m., the planning started. We went to the store and bought over 200 fireworks, 3 cakes, 12 popcorn balls, candy, and maybe 12 bags of chips. They watched a movie and ate the popcorn balls, and then we had the cakes. I had all the kids sing happy birthday to Jesus Guadalupe (Keith's boy). We then watched another movie and had the pinata. We then went and lit all of the fireworks. That was an adventure in and of itself! They threw them at each other's feet, but everyone was fine. We then watched 2 more movies and ate all the chips. I was actually outside when it turned 12. I was with the ones that wanted to make things fly in the air with the fireworks. The girl that I have been trying to spend more time with because somehow I never seem to, was actually the first one to come outside and tell me it was 12 and wish me a happy new year. That was the sweetest gift of all. I love Leticia.

So, besides getting pooped on by a puppy, Jessica getting peed on, my camera breaking... again... and all of the other little crazy things that happen all the time, it was a wonderful new year's eve, and a new beginning for 2007.