The Ukraine Mission Team 

Off again

Just a quick update here to say "bye" and ask for your prayers as, tomorrow morning, myself and 12 LCC students head to Zytomir, Ukraine for the next 10 days. The students will be working as camp counselors for young teens attending the camp - many of who come from orphanages in the area, while some are members of the local Baptist church. It should be an interesting mix!

Please pray that the LCC students will be stretched in their reliance upon God, that they will begin to learn what it means to rely on Jesus, that they each will experience what it means to have a personal faith with Him, and that they will be able to share their faith with the students they minister to. Pray that I will be attentive to the Holy Spirit as I try to encourage these students and pray for them. Thank you in advance for your prayers for our travel safety and health as well!

I'm looking forward to sharing lots of stories of what God does in the next couple weeks, so stay tuned!

Prophetesses on a Plane

I should know by now to expect these things. Really. Somehow all my journeys of the past year have included encounters and moments that tell me God is really and truly with me. This trip was no exception.

Things began on the trip to DIA on Sunday night, when I was nervous about having enough time at the airport to make it through customs and get dinner, buy a magazine, etc. I was whining to my brother-in-law as we moved slowly through the 1-25 traffic when I looked out the window and saw a sign tacked to a light pole that said, “Trust Jesus.” We got there in plenty of time!

Standing in line to check-in, I noticed a huge pile of boxes with pink stickers piled up near the group check-desk. Similarly pink-tagged backpacks hung from the shoulders of a group of about 15 people standing there too. I took a look at the mailing address affixed to the boxes and saw they were labeled, “Poprest, Romania, Arms of Love Ministry.” I assumed it was a church group, so I leaned over the rope and asked one of the women if they were going to Romania. “Yes,” she said, “we’re doing a Christian camp for orphans in this small village.” “I’m on my way to Christian camp in Ukraine!” I said, and then we chatted about the location of the village and I mentioned that I’d been in Romania 12 years ago. It was a short but encouraging conversation, and I wondered if I might get to sit by some of the group once on the plane.

After I got my boarding pass, I was disappointed to find I had middle seat since I was fully geared up to sleep as much as possible (this is my technique when going TO Europe, while I stay up coming back). Boarding the plane, I found my seat just a little before two girls slid in next to me and one of them said, “we’re friends and would like to sit together, do you want the window seat?” “Thank you so much!” I exclaimed, “what a blessing – I’m planning to sleep the whole trip!” Then I noticed the girl’s T-shirt, which said “Jesus Loves You,” in Romanian. “Are you guys with the Arms of Love group?” I asked unnecessarily. Of course, they were, and we introduced ourselves and launched into an eager conversation about what they’d be doing in Romania and what I do at LCC and will be doing in Ukraine.

The women, Kelda, 26, and Tika, 29, are both from different churches in Denver, but these churches have been sending teams for several years. Kelda is looking in to spending a longer term serving there, though she doesn’t have specific plans yet. As we talked and then cozied under our blankets to sleep, I knew I’d want to pray with them before we parted ways. At one point in half-sleep during the night, I heard them praying together for their ministry and the people they’d encounter.

It was easy, then, as we began our descent into London to turn to each other and pray over each other’s ministries. To say it was a divine encounter doesn’t do it justice. They both recognized the fact that God did not seat us together by accident, and when we got done praying over each other, they asked how they could specifically pray for my trip to Ukraine. I shared some of my concerns about not knowing my exact role on the team, how I don’t feel quite spiritually prepared, and how I don’t want to feel isolated (or isolate myself) as the only non-Russian speaker on the team.

At that point, Kelda spoke up and said, “I don’t know if this means anything to you, but as we were praying I felt I needed to say to you that you have a weary heart, and God can give you a new heart.”

I sort of stared at her.

Tika, who is a powerful pray-er, piped in, “let go of the past and look toward the future.”

“Does that mean anything to you?” asked Kelda.

“So much,” I said, “this past week I have really felt God leading me toward verses about His faithfulness, about His desire to do a new thing in my life.” I shared with them my desire to go into a new year at LCC with a truly renewed spirit, and how it has been hard for me at times to envision what this new year will look like.

“I get the feeling that you feel really alone,” said Tika, “why would that be?”

At this point I had tears in my eyes and began to share some of my struggles of the past year. I believe with all my heart that these women were given some words from the Holy Spirit to speak into my heart at that moment, as I was leaving family and friends and trying to muster the spiritual stamina to face another year away. God is always faithful to me. He is always faithful to me. He is always faithful.

When I was 10 years old and crying because I was leaving all my friends behind in Washington, on the first day at our new church, God gave me Kelli, who has now been my closet friend for 18 years.

When I was heading to England term, a nervous sophomore going with a bunch of upper-classmen, scared about who to room with, God gave me Kendra, who has been a close friend and fellow Kingdom worker in China since college.

When I was a junior in college working with A Christian Ministry in the National Parks in Rocky Mountain National Park, with two other girls who didn’t quite share my concerns for some of the, um, lifestyle choices of our co-workers, God gave me Kristen, at the ranch down the road, to pray with and sing Jennifer Knapp songs with at the top of our lungs every Sunday, renewing us both with spiritual strength for the week ahead. I go to visit Kristen, who has been a close friend since, in Spain next month.

When I was scared to death about moving to Hungary after college, unsure I’d find a kindred-spirit deep and passionate enough to confide in during the year of ministry and teaching with ESI, God gave me Annie – a fellow English-major who had lived a nearly identical life (still has!). Together we buoyed one another up through the stresses of that year and continue to write, even though we haven’t physically seen one another in five years! I go to visit her, on her current ministry assignment in France, at the beginning of August.

When I was new to Loveland, Colorado during my graduate school years, coming off the break-up of a long relationship and a tumultuous summer of ministry that left me emotionally wrecked, I walked alone into Faith Church because they had a young adult ministry advertised on a sign outside. There, God gave me Andrea, Marcie and Elyssa, who are beautiful women of prayer and encouragement who I’ll go to Urbana with in December.

When I was preparing to go to Lithuania, once again unsure that I would have a friend, knowing by now that community and encouragement are what sustain me in God’s work, knowing that I needed even just one person to pray with, knowing that Jesus sent the disciples out in twos… God gave me first, Anna, and then Giedre, and Christine, and Feruza, and Thor, and Jon, and Casey, and Jerilyn, and Jared, and Sarah, and Kim, and Janneke, and Sarah, and Nicole, and….

God has never, ever failed me. He knows what we need even before we ask him. He hears us when we pray, and desires to answer. This is truth, friends!

Dispatches of the Jet-lagged

Okay, so buckle your seatbelt and hang on for this special late night edition of “Jet-lagged Jen’s” super-duper travel adventures!

First I should say how weird it is that as I’m typing this at 11 p.m. it is still quite light outside, and my frizzy hair smells like the salty Baltic sea. Even though I’ve been back less than 24 hours, my friend Nicole and I still found time this evening to catch the 8 p.m. ferry to Smiltyne and go for a swim. This was part of my need to refamiliarize myself with the beautiful places of Lithuania so that I don’t pine too badly for my dear Colorado. (Oh, but she is beautiful…)

This hasn’t been too hard since the trees that were barely budding when I left are now deeply green and leafy, and the sky today was clear and sunny. I can only hope this will be a norm. :) Klaipeda feels strangely both like home and like somewhere new to me. I don’t know how to convey this feeling except to say that I am conscious of the fact that I’m noticing differences (e.g. how skinny everyone is, the impracticality of the shoes) that I did when I first arrived last fall, but at the same time I already know where to go, what to buy at the grocery store, etc.

Coming back to Lithuania really did feel like coming home in some ways. Flying over the blue sea late Monday night, peering at the patchwork of green farmland and rivers, and then landing in Vilnius airport, I relished the sense of familiarity. It was a wonderful moment getting on the Air Baltic flight and hearing “Laba Diena” slipping out of my mouth in response to the flight attendant, as if it hadn’t been seven weeks since I’d used any Lithuanian!

Even more familiar was getting to drive from Vilnius to Klaipeda – not that I myself have ever driven that route, but driving is such a familiar sensation to me in the expansive west, where I spend hours in the car, watching the land turn beneath me. Driving the length of Lithuania late Sunday night, I was able to experience the land in one of the ways I do at home, and there was something very wonderful about that. That car-fueled sense of freedom and connection, I guess. Watching the forests and rivers and uzeigas slip by the windows, it dawned on me that this will be the first calendar year during which I will spend more time in other countries than in the States. My other times abroad have been spread across school years, so no full year prior has seen me outside the U.S. more than this one will. One thing I will say about driving though – it is probably better for all parties involved if I don’t drive a stick shift when they’re many other drivers on the road! It’s been awhile!

Thoughts, scattered, about leaving

Somehow it is almost that time again… my fifth trans-Atlantic flight in 11 months looms on Sunday. Another spate of good-byes and the tedious weighing of suitcases packed to gills with books and warm winter clothes.

Sometimes, contemplating the year ahead, I am swept up again in that wave of movie-soundtrack expansiveness of soul and heart, and I feel buoyed up on something strong and brave. Mostly these are times I’m driving west in early evening and that peculiar golden color of sunlight stretches across the brown fields, and the irrigation sprinkles cut the sky into geometric tatters.

Other moments I hate that I’m leaving again, knowing that life rumbles on for everyone here – people get engaged, celebrate weddings, have babies, buy houses, paint their family rooms, take vacations… and I return for my 10th high school reunion very much the same person I’ve always been, with not much to show for the changes I’ve buffeted through. I feel outside of the ordinary happenings of life, like someone pressing their nose against a glass window but never invited in for long.

I try to hear beneath all of this coming and going, the sounds of growing up and settling down, something even deeper and more fundamental. I’m trying to hear in this odd-shaped melody a song that makes sense out of my traveling, of my choices. And I do believe there’s a song being sung out of all of this. And not by me. And I try to let it fill my ears with something more beautiful than loneliness or uncertainty.

Sometimes my individuality, my singleness, the lone-cowgirl-silhouetted-against-the-sunset image, presses in on my chest with a tightness that causes me to question everything. Navigating all these conflicting emotions and desires, the God-given ones and the distracting false temptations, is the battle of every single day. It’s a battle between what the heart wants and what the heart wants more. I want a brave heart.

And the grass is always greener… and friends wish they were me, free to travel, doing a job I love, the constantly-changing scenery, countries new to the eyes.

I believe, I have to, that there is a new song ahead, but I don’t know the words yet, or even have a hint of its tune. “Yet this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope: Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed, for His compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is Your faithfulness. I say to myself, ‘The Lord is my portion; therefore I will wait for Him.’ The Lord is good to those whose hope is in Him, to the one who seeks him; it is good to wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord. It is good for a man to bear the yoke while he is young.” (Lam. 3:21-27).

So it’s not up to me to hold onto joy as if it were a fragile vase that will break if I let it slip out of my hands. It’s a river I’m meant to wade in, up to my knees – a river whose streams make glad the City of God.

A friend prayed for me recently, that I would really experience God’s faithfulness this year. And that is my hope, for a new song whose Singer is my Lover and my Father, and I might find my home in its melody. Or a new plot of land, as Caedmon’s Call has expressed it, where redemption can be found:

“Out on these western plains
You can see for a million miles,
There’s a thousand exits
between me and the state line

Next forty acres
redemption to be found
just along down the way
there is a place where
no plow blade has turned the ground
you will turn it over
‘cause out here, hope remains.
Out here hope remains.”

­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­Funny how struggles repeat themselves. This is what I wrote last July, a month before leaving for Lithuania the first time:

“I know I need more of the Lord, and to seek Him more deeply. My daily words and thoughts and actions do not mirror Him – and that is more telling than a life spent on grand Godly schemes. My heart still runs after the fleeting thoughts of guys, and being admired and wanting to be loved, to be beautiful. More deeply, I need the Kingdom, to be a witness of its coming into the world – to bring it about – all other pursuits aside. I’m scattered and malleable.…

I need to feel this goodbye, or I’ll wake up alone some night next month and wonder where I am, how I’ve gotten there. But my love is so deep, I think it’s easier to go numb and hollow than to feel it. Folk songs on my Ipod pump into my ears, into my car as I drive I25 at sunset – the mountains all lit with beams through the clouds, blue light spread out over the sunflower fields and rooftops – and I’m like a drop of rain before it streams down a window, quivering at the moment of fullness. One prick, and it falls, too full to hold itself together any longer.

Love is the curse and the cure. The beauty and the pain all together. All at once.”

By the Numbers

First let me say that, if you are ever kayaking in shorts and your friends suggest that you put some sunscreen on your legs, and you think, "nah, I could use some color anyway," and neglect to apply said sunscreen, remember that lobster red is not necssarily the kind of color you might want to acquire.

Okay, that health department warning out of the way, here's the weekend in numbers: (I wanted to make this into a song a'la "The Twelve Days of Christmas," but I'm too lazy).

12 - number of donuts brought along on trip, in honor of fact that after leaving the States next week, I can't get them.

11 - 000 feet. Elevation of tree line in Colorado, which we hiked above on our Saturday hike to Ruby Jewel lake at the base of Mt. Clark, (elevation 12,951).

10 - tents used to house all of us for the weekend at Ranger Lakes campground.

9 - wire marshmellow squewers utilized for massive S'more and hot dog consumption.

8 - miles we estimate we hiked on Saturday. This is only funny because we set out on what we were told was a 3 mile round trip trek! Remember the hiker's mantra: "you're almost there."

7 - satellites spotted on the clear, starry night Saturday.

6 - fish caught by resident fly-fisherman, Alex.

5 - dogs keeping us company. Jack, the Siberian Husky; Moxie, the Blue Healer; Ella, the labrawiener (lab-daschund mix); Haley, the black lab, and Timber, the jumpy Australian Sheepdog!

4 - mountain bikes shared between us all.

3 - kayaks strapped to the top of Marcie's truck and then paddled around out in North Michigan reservoir Saturday and Sunday.

2 - bottles of wine consumed to make sleep on the ground more, um, comfortable.

1 - moose sighting. One wandered through our campsite Sunday morning!

Happiness is a yellow kayak 

Remind me why I'm leaving this state next week? 

Supposedly this was only a 1.5 mile hike. Hah! 8 miles and 11,500 feet later we made it! 

Looking from Mt. Clark toward Mt. Zirkel wilderness, northern Colorado, at 11,000 ft. 

View out the back window! 

Andrea, Jen, Marcie, Elyssa, Brian... sunburned and happy 

Don't even think about messing with girls who have kayaks 

Trying to put words to this is pointless! 

Hope

I can't decide if I love it or hate it when I run across other writers who've thought or said something similar to what I've been pondering because they usually say it so much better! But Jan Myers in her book "The Allure of Hope" describes her heart growing up in the desert southwest, and it echoed in my own heart as I've spent so much time in my mountains this week. Her words could so easily be mine:

"The threshold between mountain splendour and desert wilderness was a place of refuge for me. It didn't offer relief, but it did offer great comfort, an understanding of the wild places into which my heart was asked to travel, even as a young girl. History and future seemed swallowed up in each moment that I lingered on that cliff; the place seemed to tell me that my history and future were not going to engulf me any more than would the river valley. Rather something of the chiseled beauty around me might actually be built into me, too, if I allowed my heart to respond...

I was at home there like no place else. It was writing hope in me...

In deep nighttime darkness, the landscape provided a young woman a place to weep and wonder as the glittering sky hung low above my hurting and questioning heart...

Along the way this place has had the stregnth to hold the scenes of my life, like liturgy and ritual. Along the way it has nudged me to the conviction that my heart could stay open, my sould alive, even in the face of piercing disappointment, lengthy barren seasons of the soul, an uncertain future. Along the way I'm compelled back to the posture this beauty calls me to, back to the open-hearted stance that such dreaming requires of me.

Hope finds me."

Blessings

Since being home, I've had a lot of confirmation that I am doing the right thing in continuing at LCC next year. Thinking about this, I decided I should share some of the small, but significant, blessings that God has given me in these past weeks:

1. I needed to get a dress for special occasions, but didn't have money lying around. My sister brought me a bag of her old clothes with a dress, in my size, that will be perfect. Additionally, the bag included several pairs of pants that fit me - a big necessity since I've dropped a size in the past year and had no idea how I'd afford to go out shopping!

2. I'd been having some trouble with my I-pod on the trip home from Lithuania, but not enough to merit taking it in to the store. Then, my brother managed to mess it up (long story) on our way to Denver last week. Conveniently, the Apple store was on our route, so we stopped in, told them the problem, and (since I'm still under the one-year warrenty), ta da... I walked out with a brand new I-pod, no questions asked.

3. On our backpacking trip last weekend, we began to lose the trail in the snow, and I, being COLD in my soaked tennis shoes, began to pray and ask God, "Lord, please show us whether we should keep going or stop for the night." About five minutes after that, we passed a clear patch of ground near a stream (the only snow-free spot for what seemed like miles), with a ring of stones in a circle all ready for fire building. We looked a bit up the trail, and then came back to the spot for the night. Hiking further up the trail the next morning, it was clear that we would have been in some trouble with our packs in the snow if we'd kept going.

4. Since last fall I've had some trouble with my right foot giving me weird pains when I walk a lot. I have been hesitant to go to the doctor becuase my insurance doesn't cover check-ups or U.S. clinic visits, so my mom called an orthopedist from our church to see if he'd take a look at me. After a quick visit last Friday, he easily figured out the problem, prescribed me some orthopedic insoles, and wrote "no charge" on the bill for the visit. A MAJOR blessing!

5. My Russian class. I don't know if I've mentioned it here, but I've been taking Russian class for three hours every Tuesday & Thursday night since late May. At first it didn't look like it was going to happen, and then I got worried about how to pay the audit fees for only 5 weeks of a 16 week course. Then I talked to the instructor and was invited to be a "guest" student - which means I go and learn, make photocopies of the workbook (shhh...), and get a chance to interact with other people in Greeley who're at least a little bit interested in the world beyond the States.

6. In the process of support raising, I have met with a lot of encouragement and eagerness to contribute. In fact, I have more people signed on as monthly supporters than as one-time givers. That is really unusual - I almost always get a bunch upfront and then a few people who'll support year-round. All of this tell me, again and again, that God's hands are on this thing I'm doing, that He's orchestrating events and gifts for His glory and His kingdom.

Thanks for letting me share...

Rocky Mountain High

So I have spent a good portion of the past two weeks staring wistfully out of car windows, letting the spring green of aspen and the shape of familiar mountains fill up my eyes and nostrils. And staring off into skies more blue than can still be called blue. And contemplating the way the leaves of box elders move in mountain breezes, and how sun feels through a tent in the morning before you’ve opened your eyes, and how coffee made from filtered stream-water tastes even more like the earth you’ve just slept on. And watching shadows creep up the slopes of red hills until there is no thought in my head but some undefined sensation of lightness, weightlessness and well-being. And how great the highways and mountain passes of Colorado sound under my tires against a soundtrack of Rufus Wainwright, Bob Dylan, Paul Simon, and John Denver.

In short, I’m sunburned and my legs hurt from hiking and there’s a crick in my back from sleeping on the ground and my hair hasn’t been combed in the three days since I got it wet at the hot springs in Steamboat. Too much time in the sun out here starts to turn me into Neruda or Whitman or Dillard and I can’t stop breathing in this perfect dry cool bug-less air, and all the crisp stars. And everything I try to write becomes a rambling list of names and nouns and sensations.

Monday night at Reudi Reservoir, one of my favorite places in Colorado because it is just a palate of elemental primary colors – red rock, green pines, white clouds and sails on the boats on the lake, and a blue sky that can only be described as quivering or sonic or electric – I said to my sister that, I have a lot of travel ahead of me this summer, to some very beautiful places. But, looking out over the lake and the sun casting shafts of light across the open space of the canyon, I honestly do not think I will be anywhere as beautiful as that spot.

I hate comparing places to each other. It isn’t necessary. But these parts of earth, this northern Colorado country, I know so well, and the word love barely begins to express it. It is belonging. And peace. And a sense that even if everything else in my life and heart is in turmoil or confusion, a few days of just looking at this landscape can make me whole again. God is everywhere, and I have no option but to cup my hands to my chest and lift them up in a motion of prayer and release and praise and a hope of being filled.

Another weekend out in the Colorado sun with friends (Kristi, Dave, Micah). What did I do to deserve being from this state?!

A poem from a stone in Orvydas Garden, Lithuania

I found the following poem as I was reading through my journals from the past year. The translation is pretty rough, and I'm sure I've misspelled TONS of the Lithuanian words (I'm going off of a friend's hasty handwriting), but I still like the poem a lot. It was chiseled on a stone in a strange sculpture garden called Orvydas garden which I visited with friends last October.

Tu esi visur – aš tik čia
You are everywhere - I'm only here

Tu esi Dievas – aš tavo (creature)
You are God - I am Your creation

Tu Ganytojas – aš tavo avėlė
You are the Shepherd - I your little lamb

Tu esi visata – aš žvaigždotė
You are Everything - I'm but one little spark

Tu esi saule – aš spinduolėlė
You are the Sun - I am one ray

Tu esi oceanas – aš jo lasinukas
You are the Ocean - I am a tiny drop

Tu esi tėvas – aš tavo vaikas
You are Father - I your child

Tu gyvenimas – aš mirštingumas
You are life itself - I am mortal

Tu be manes viskas – aš be tave meukas
You, without me, are complete - I, without you, am nothing

Tu esi tiesa – aš vlaidu leksmu
You are Truth - but I am error

Tu esi meilesvoms – aš esu (coal)
You are the Fire - I am only an ember

Tas ka darai visa gera – aš dažnaidarau piuta
All that You make is good - I can only do evil

...Tačiau aš esu laimingas
Because of all this, I am full of joy.

In backpacking, as in life, it doesn't matter what gear you have or don't have, or what destination you think you have to achieve, but who you go with that counts. (I'm just full of cliched spiritual metaphors, watch out!)

Nothing beats camp coffee on a cold mountain morning! Yes, that is snow behind us. For more pix of our trek, check out Flckr.