a continuing story of trust, grace and community

Tag: healing

Healing Through Service

IMG_0524I recently had the honor to take a team from my church to serve at Door of Faith Orphanage (dofo.org) in the town of La Mision, B.C. Mexico.  It is located between Rosarito and Ensenada.  It is a most surprisingly charming place.  If a child has to be in an orphanage, this is the place to be!  As the Director, DJ, gave us his welcome and shared the values of the orphanage that he has led for over 20 years, one of the three values were Healing through Service.  He began to share that the children and staff of DOFO are encouraged to serve, and not just chores.  But real ministry outreach service.  The kids raise funds, go on trips and make real differences in the places they go.  This leads to a healing in their own lives as most are social orphans, having been removed from broken or abusive homes.  Teaching them to serve others brings a lasting and deep healing in their lives.

Javier is a man we met when we went to make and serve breakfast with the Baja Family Outreach located the Tijuana dump area.  A church has been built in the heart of the community of thousands who live on reclaimed dump land.  Most are uneducated and find their income by recycling garbage.  Their homes are built with items found in the dump.  We saw more than one roof made from the vinyl banners of highway billboards.  As we made the breakfast a family of 8 came in, Javier being the dad.  His children and wife sat down to eat the food we had prepared, but Javier stood at the entrance to greet people and watch over his family.  I asked him why he wasn’t eating and he shared he normally volunteers.  By our team being there, we had taken his job.  Of course he was blessed by our presence and asked we pray for his family and to please return.  But I saw something powerful in him.  He had no money to care for his family as I am sure he would like, but by volunteering he felt he was part of providing.  Serving was healing for him.  Serving was empowerment for him.  Serving made him feel like he was being a provider for his family.

IMG_0543No better example of healing through service came in the story of Martita, a lady we met serving at another organization, Life in the Canyon (lifeinthecanyon.vpweb.com).  This group is led by Dave Hessler and he found basically the poorest community of Tijuana and began serving a number of years back and was an outgrowth of his time with the Baja Family Outreach.  He landed in the former TJ dump that has created massive hills of garbage covered in soil and is now being reclaimed by squatters and the poor who have built pallet shacks and small homes.  A little over two years ago Dave came across Martita as he walked through a cemetery.  She was high on crystal meth and was digging through burn piles for scraps of metal to sell to support her habit.  He offered, through his ministry to serve the community, some help.  At first, if I understood her story, she didn’t accept, but time after time he continued to reach out to her and eventually she came to the community center.  There she saw loving people serving their community and something drew her.

She asked if she could serve and they found a place for her.  The desire to quit drugs grew and at a point she quietly decided to stop.  After a week went by being clean, she came to Dave and shared her good news.  He told her to go one day at a time and every day to come and give him a number; the number ‘1’ for one more day of sober.  He wrote that number on a white board and eventually it grew from 7, to 25, to 50.  As of our meeting her it has been over 2 years!  Her love for God, her purpose found in serving her community, and the love shown her by Dave and others gave her hope and strength to go on.  Today she is trusted with keys to everything, is one of Dave’s trusted assistants, and has a restored relationship with her daughter and grandchildren.  She is no longer homeless but has a tiny micro-home built with money from a 16 year old boy who did a fund raiser in his church!  She can’t read or write but has learned to post on Facebook in order to be connected.  She gave us a tour of her community, the dump, and you could see the love she had for it’s residents.  She found healing through serving!

One of the things that I found most exciting with DOFO is that they don’t have teams come just to stay focused on them as an orphanage.  DJ said many times to me, almost to the point of sounding a humorously insulting, “We don’t want you to stay here.  Our kids have seen every drama and are pretty saturated with Americans!”  But as he clarified you knew exactly what he was saying.  Come and use DOFO as a hub to serve the broader area of Baja.  Go to the dumps, build a house for a resident, serve at the rehab homes, do an outreach to drunk Americans at the beaches and bars, give out groceries and pray with residents of the dump.  I believe DOFO is as blessed and beautiful as it is because it too has become whole by serving others and not manipulating donors and guests to selfishly stay committed to them.  They have a mature faith, a generous faith.

Thanks Runner’s World

Welcome to all of you who found your way here from the motivational bio profile that Runner’s World posted of me on their site at RunnersWorld.com

I HATE having to talk about actual scale numbers so having this posted was really difficult.  But it’s not like I was ever fooling anyone that I was significantly overweight, right?  So here we are.  I hope my story will inspire and help people, not just to lose weight or to find fitness, but to find that trusting God’s plan over your own is the best.  That really is the whole point of my story these past few years.

Weight loss and fitness are wonderful byproducts of the bigger journey I have been on.  I still struggle each and everyday to not get in my own way and gut it out with will power and obsession.  It never has worked and never will.  Yielding to God’s plan does.  Now, that’s not some cop out and letting go of responsibility.  I have worked hard, I have changed my eating and exercise habits.  I am running or going to the gym or getting on my bike nearly everyday!  But I had to find internal peace and healing first.  All previous attempts failed because I short-circuited that step.

Do I have everything figured out – NO!  That’s what we in the church call sanctification.  I am in process.  Participating with God each day to grow more like Him and let go of self-direction.

I hope you are inspired to join me on such a life!

RetroFit Ministries Shares My Story

A college buddy of mine and more recently a participant on NBC’s Biggest Loser, Ken Andrews, has posted an interview of me and my weight-loss journey.

Ken and I traveled together in a music group for our college back in the day.  He played trumpet and I sang.  We would sit on the bus together and play Rook.  I later to came to realize (through his blog and post-Biggest Loser conversations) that he was struggling with so many issues of pain that were leading to his weight gain.  Many of which I identified and was struggling with at the time as well.  It’s so sad how we mask our fears and pain and find ways to manage it that fall desperately short of God’s best plan for us.  If we had both just opened up to each other and others and experienced the grace we needed then, imagine how different things could have been.

But life is a journey, sanctification is a process, and better to find healing later in life than not at all.  Ken and I have both been doing that!  He now is an advocate for healthy living and faith and has started RetroFit Ministries with his son and fellow teammate on Biggest Loser, Austin. Check out their blog and ministry!

UPDATE:  I continue to lose weight and have now lost even more than the interview states.  I hate giving out actual numbers as it is really is embarrassing, but I felt it necessary to do so for his interview.

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