URM Video from Catholic Charties

Hopeful Possibility

My heart has been stirred for the poor and the needy for as long as I can remember. It might have started early when I would visit my mom schools on days off. I can remember sitting with one of her kindergartner boys (don't remember the kid's name) who was sick in the nurse's office and was going to home early. This was all going on right before Christmas. He was not feeling well, obviously, and I was sitting with him trying to comfort him before his mother got there. Trying to make small talk with the kid, I asked the kid what he wanted for Christmas. I can remember him saying all I want is some new socks without holes in them. My heart was crushed. I always believed growing up that I was a "poor" person. I was not afforded luxuries of name brands and the latest and greatest gadgets and"toys" as I felt many of the people around me were, but I never was in need or clothing, food, or most of all love. I have not really known hardships like many in our world have. My job as a teacher in Dallas and now in a more needy part of Lewisville has kept my heart stirring towards kids who need more that I could ever have imagined as a child.

My first year in Lewisville I my first two refugees. One from Burma and one from Nigeria. Now every since I have had a least one refugee from Burma. I do have a great connection with many in the Chin community at Lakeland. ( Chin is the people group from Burma that have settled in Lewisville.)

Last year I got a job offer to tutor some Chin Unaccompanied Refugee Minors (URM). URMs are refugees that have come to the United States with out their parents or other adult to take care of them. They have for whatever reason been separated from their family weather it is from death, or flight. To make a kinda long story short, I applied for the job, got offered the job, and then because of some summer opportunities that I had, I choose to decline the job. I remember thinking how interesting that would be for me to do one day.

Last Sunday when it snowed, I showed up to church early because of the weather and listened to a girl that is single and very close to my each. She had said she just finished her training to be a foster parent and had been given her first off--a 17 with a 2 year old daughter--she declined, not feeling like she was prepared for that her first time (I WOULD HAVE DONE THE SAME THING) But anyways I got home, snow and all not really able to do anything else and my brain started turning reflecting on the earlier conversation. Why couldn't I do that? The childish well is she can than why can't I? I truly believe God had that conversation happen for me to hear, and pulled that memory from last year back to my head. I spent hours looking for information on fostering URMs. I honestly really could find a way to contact some one for it here in the state of Texas. I was really frustrated, and then I thought I should email the lady that I had interviewed with and she could pass the information along to someone. I told people the next day at school my heart was stirring and I needed to find the information and set people out to pray about it. I sent emails to my brother and another friend who is a foster/adopt mom seeing if the have information. They did not, but I heard back from the lady I had emailed and that was not her program with Catholic Charities. Here is one of the funny/coincidences (sure it is) that if I had waited a week to send the email, I could not have started the process yet. But I did email and went to my first class last Saturday and and returning this week..

Pray with me through this please. I am excited and will give more details. This may help me to stay blogging for a bit.

Back in the Game???

Ok so I went the other day to blog on a friends post to post a comment and it took me forever to remember my password for the blog. I had no idea. I tried everything I could think of finally I got it. I know I think it says I have not posted anything since October or 2009 or sometime before or after that. I do think about this blog ofter, but have issues with significance and belief that things going on in my life are important. (I think it is called fear of man, in face I am sure that it is) I have spent some painful time trying to dig through my issues (and boy do I have them) and am relying on the verses

Luke 12:22-29

²²And he said to his disciples, "Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat, nor about your body, what you will put on. ²³For life is more than food, and the body more than clothing. ²⁴Consider the ravens: they neither sow nor reap, they have neither storehouse nor barn, and yet God feeds them. Of how much more value are you than the birds! ²⁵And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life? ²⁶If then you are not able to do as small a thing as that, why are you anxious about the rest?27 Consider the lilies, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. ²⁸But if God so clothes the grass, which is alive in the field today, and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, how much more will he clothe you, O you of little faith! ²⁹And do not seek what you are to eat and what you are to drink, nor be worried.

I am thankful for the process of self reflection/evaluation. I am thankful for the pricking of my heart and pleading the Lord to keep peeling away layers of being anxious/fearfulness/self-righteousness/ect...(what I can ISSUES)

I feel like I may share more about some of my "issues," but then again I may not. I think I will continue to write it this a little more regularly than once a year, but then again I may not.