Last pre-China update!!!!

Hello all!!! I'm officially about to begin my trek to China tomorrow (friday) at about 11:30 in the morning. I am so excited to finally be going!!! We have been busy here in MN getting everything moved into the new house, but we are so excited to be finally on our way in the mornings!! I know that there are exciting things for me on this trip! The family and I have meshed together SO well! We are all having fun and I love being with them. They are like my second family and having time to draw even closer with them this summer is such a wonderful opportunity. Thanks to all you who kept me in your prayers during my flights! I had an unHEARD of easy time. No delays, no plane issues, no baggage problems, it was completely flawless and not stressful at all. Thank you thank you thank you for being behind me 100%!!!! :) We will fly straight from MN to Tokyo, then catching a late flight to Beijing, spending the night, and arriving to Yunnan on the fourth of July! What an awesome way to spend independence day! This excites me! I love being the intern this summer! Haha. Well, more updates are to come soon! The next one will be from China!!!

Love and blessings to all,
Hannah

Second pre trip update

Hello dear friends and family!

I am rejoicing today as I get to the final 12 days before travel! I know that God has amazing plans to change my life by allowing me to be a part of changing others' lives. I want to thank you for the love and support you have shown me, even though this may seem a bit of a crazy adventure for someone my age to be taking on. My 30 day visa came in the mail yesterday, so I am all good for the first thirty days in country (trusting HIM to help us get the visas renewed while in country!!) Here are some prayer points:

• Finances are still much needed to make this trip possible without large amounts of debt. (about $2500) Right now the majority of money I had to spend on flights was charged to a credit card and the balance is now sitting on the account. Please pray that God will provide me with everything I need financially.
  
• I have less than two weeks and I still haven't gotten started on packing yet! Pray I don't forget anything I really need!!!!
  
• Again I ask that everyone continues to pray and lift up my family (especially my sisters) in prayer while I am gone. The girls are very much saddened by the fact that I am leaving and don't want me to go. The fact that they don't have any concept of time only makes it harder on them. They don't understand why I have to leave them behind, and it is hurting their hearts.
  
• PLEASE pray for me to have peace and joy as I leave. I am just a bit nervous about being away from my family for this long as well, but this opportunity was clearly a God thing, and I want to be able to feel the amazing joy God always brings to me when I am caring for "the least of these"

I cannot tell you how much I appreciate every prayer said for me and everything concerning my trip. It is the thing that lifts me up daily when I get discouraged.

I love you all!
Hannah

Offensive warriors

Okay so I'm not an expert at putting the things on my heart into words, but I'll continue to try (and hopefully improve!) anyways.

Over the past few weeks, I've taken a good long look at Christians in the American church. I've taken the time to really review every strength and weakness I see in the church as a whole, and while I have seen GOOD THINGS, I also see very frustrating things that are hard for me to look past. What I say may seem strange, (or actually, uncomfortably normal) but I believe God is calling me to share what He has placed on my heart for the church as a whole.

We have learned since we were little that we should always "stand up for what we believe in," even when the consequences are great. While it MIGHT have been easy enough to apply that to situations like saying no to drugs and drinking, or not cheating on a test, when it comes to the real world and the reality that we might offend someone, it suddenly gets a lot harder.

It seems that of the great mix of people I see all around the world today, Christians are the ones who are under the most discrimination. OUR National day of prayer was the one threatened. "One nation under God," in the Pledge of Allegiance is at stake. The public opposite of us defends themselves saying that they fight against what this nation was built on, because of what Christianity represents as a whole, because what we are is "offensive" to people who don't share the same beliefs, but that's not the truth. The truth is that we as Christians were not and are not offensive enough.

That's right. Not offensive enough. Jesus has standards that He holds us to, and yet as humans we are scared of other people. Scared they won't like us, or scared they will be angry and offended by what we have to say even when it is the truth.

I think that the reason that our nation is where it is today, is because when sin and degrading morals started creeping into our laws and our land, the church winked at it. The Church was afraid that if they said things that wouldn't be popular, that they would be "behind the times." I'm sure that NO ONE 100 years ago ever dreamed of making same sex marriage, assisted suicide, or partial-birth abortion legal, and yet now these are some of the greatest controversial topics of our time. Had the church been on the offense from the beginning, and not been afraid TO OFFEND, I sincerely do not believe our nation would be in as dark of a place as it is now.

It is not to say there aren't Christians who are living their lives as God's offensive warriors; people who are fighting for what is right, and aren't afraid of what others may think of them for speaking the truth. There ARE those people! They are my heroes, and yet SO MANY others have accepted the mindset that they can't really do anything to change a small part of the world, or that they would lose everything (their reputation, their place amongst peers, etc.) if in fact they could, and Jesus "would never want them to do that," so they stay in their comfort zone their whole lives without ever making the dent in history that God intended for them to. Jesus wasn't exactly the most popular guy around, in fact, people ended up hating Him so much that they crucified Him. When He spoke the truth, the pharisees didn't like hearing what He had to say. Countless people were offended by the way He lived a life of uncompromising righteousness, but He did it anyways because He knew it was right. He knew His daddy was pleased with Him. Shouldn't it also be enough for us, to know that God is well pleased with the way we live our lives? Don't you think God knows everything? That Jesus died so that his father could carry out His amazing plans in your life and then spend the rest of eternity with you? Don't you know how much HE loves YOU and wants you to have the most exciting life, more exciting and crazy than your wildest dreams? He has such amazing plans for each and every person on this planet, but He asks that you trust Him with your life. If He asked you to get up in front of your church congregation and confront them about something He laid on your heart, would you do it? Would you speak up about your beliefs in the presence of people you deemed more important than yourself? Or would you stay quiet? I know that I have struggled many times with this. I don't have the perfect track record of doing everything that tiny little voice inside me is nudging me to do, but this I know, God has given me a boldness when I have asked for it, and I will not be silent when He is asking me to speak any longer. I may miss it, or mess up sometimes, but I won't say that I didn't try.

I pray that as I learn how to be the offensive warrior God called me to be, my life would affect others around me. I pray that today I have challenged you to be bold in the way you live your life, and that you now have more desire to be who He created you to be; a warrior who will take up their cross and do whatever it takes to follow our Savior, even if it means giving up EVERYTHING you hold close. In the end, HE is all that remains.

May God bless you and make you His own personal offensive warrior.
Love,
Hannah

First pre trip update!!

Hello to all my friends and family! This update is for those of you who received my letter (or those that didn't!!) and are checking for news!

So far, I have booked both my domestic and international flights. Those two tickets combined were quite expensive parts of my trip, but God is faithful to me and I am confident that He will provide for what He has called me to do this summer for Him! I am leaving home on June 29th for Minneapolis and will be there until the 2nd of July when we'll fly to Beijing. 36 more days!! How exciting!!!

There are several big prayer points for right now;

• That the visa process would go smoothly and that I would get my visa on time
• God would constantly be preparing my heart for what I'm going to be a part of while I'm there.
• The hearts of my sisters who suffer emotional scarring from abandonment would fully grasp how much I love them and that I will be coming back even though I'll be away for a long time.
  

• God would prepare my heart and the hearts of my precious friends for coming together to live as one family and that there would be a general peacefulness between the five of us.
  

That's all there is to tell (and ask) for right now, but I will update the blog frequently with any new information. If anyone would like any additional information about the trip, feel free to email me or leave a comment requesting it! Thank you so much for taking the time to read my blog! God bless you! Have a great day!

Hannah

Extraordinary sacrifice

Dictionary definition of extraordinary: Beyond what is usual, ordinary, regular, or established.

Life could be so much more extraordinary if I lived with the mindset that in order to live a life that would count for God, I would have to look for ways and be willing to step outside my comfort zones. I wish I was like that. I wish that I could say that I have been faithful in looking for a way to do something that would make a difference even if it was awkward or uncomfortable or frightening to me every single day, but if I was honest, I would say I definitely haven't. This week I was at a conference and Heidi Baker, founder of Iris ministries in Mozambique, was speaking. She asked the question, "What would YOU do for God if the inheritance He says He promised you was actually real?"

What's the answer to that question? I think for each of us it's different, and yet as Christians we all SHOULD have one thing in common; love. The person who resonates the love of the Father towards His children is attractive! If the name of Jesus never came out of my mouth without someone prompting it, would the world be able to tell that *I* were a child of God? Does MY life mirror the heart of my heavenly Father in a way that would make people want to be around me because I'm different than the others?

I'm stepping into a new season. Since the time that I was 11, my social life has always been number one. Friends, parties, movies, the next social event. Hands down, it was always the most important thing to me. I thrived off of interactions with my friends. Surprisingly, when I moved back to being right down the road from them, THAT'S when I started changing. I can honestly say in a million years I never thought that NOW would be when I'd have my "social crisis," but slowly I find myself coming to all these unexpected conclusions. Slowly, little by little, God has begun to strip away my attachments to my precious social life, and He has begun to impart into me an understanding of how important my time is to Him. He's jealous for MY time. He wants MY time. For HIS purposes. A friend of mine once made a really amazing yet extremely simple point that has stuck with me for months now. She said, "Jesus DIED for YOU. He went through the most excruciating pain, and all He desires, is our time. How dare we have the GUTS to tell him NO?"

Powerful words. Sadly, I forget them all too often. My prayer for my life is that I would start remembering more often that every second of my short time here on this earth counts either for something or nothing. Time is too short to waste.

Dictionary definition of sacrifice: the surrender or destruction of something prized or desirable for the sake of something considered as having a higher or more pressing claim.

THE definition of extraordinary sacrifice? The cross. The reason for it? The holiest purest love anyone could ask for.

So what does extraordinary sacrifice look like for me? Living outside my comfort zone. Simple as that. God didn't ask me to die on a cross. He did that for me. His one greatest desire is for me to understand how much He loves me, and then for me to be able to take the joy and beauty that comes out of that knowledge and spread it to the people around me and around the world. That's what my extraordinary sacrifice looks like. If every Christian would strive to love the way Jesus loved, even in our humanistic imperfections, how much better would that make the world? Perhaps 32% of teens wouldn't attempt suicide, maybe kids in Africa wouldn't be mercilessly made into murderers, and just possibly, it would be easier for broken hearts to heal. There will always be pharisees, there will always be Sunday school Christians, and there will always be people hurting people, but MY goal for MY life, is to do my best to mirror God's love to others. I'll never be a perfect person, but God sees me as beautiful. He is pleased when His children desire to walk out a life of love.

The smallest and unworthy sacrifice I could ever give in exchange for the greatest most extraordinary sacrifice of all, is my life for His purposes. I know I'm not super woman. I know I can't save the world, but God can change it, and He can use me to help accomplish that. In the words of Helen Keller:

"I am only one, yet still I am one,
I cannot do everything, but still I can do something,
and because I cannot do everything,
I will not refuse to do,
the something that I CAN do"

Be looking for more blog updates soon as I am preparing to head to China for two months this summer. Today was just my two cent's worth. :)

With Love,
Hannah

Monday- The universal languages of Love, Laughter, and Tears

So I JUST realized that I never published this post!!! Goodness!! Well here it is! This was one of my favorite days so enjoy!

Monday. Monday was incredible. The Lord did so much in my heart and in the hearts of the children the Lord allowed us to love on. We woke up very early excited about our first day of ministry. We got to spend the whole day at CIPI, the orphanage for babies, toddlers, special needs children, older girls, and pregnant teenage moms. For the first part of the morning, we just got to love on these kids. I spent most of the morning playing with the toddlers out on the playground and then feeding lunch to the special needs children. It was so amazing to see how much they lit up when you would just simply call their name to ask them to come and join in a game. There were two kids from that morning that I just fell in love with. One was a little four year old girl named Ete' and the other was a special needs boy named Antonio who was eight. Ete' was shy but extremely sweet and just dying for attention. She came up to me and just wanted me to touch her. At first she was too shy to even tell me her name. She wouldn't let me take any pictures of her and when I would snap one anyways, she wouldn't smile. When the kids wanted to go out to the play ground, she grabbed my hand and led me to her favorite swing. She stayed on that swing for nearly the entire time that the kids were allowed to be out on the playground. She kept asking me to take pictures of the other kids and then show her and then she would laugh as I tickled her. I FINALLY got one good picture of her showing me this little half smile and it is so precious.
She showed me how much just a little love can transform someone if we would just take the time to give it.

Antonio, now that little boy, he melted me from the inside out. He was just so cute!! I got to take a ball and toss it back and forth with him and see him light up when he got to play the guitar we brought with us. Even though he didn't talk much, his smile told me how much he loved what he experienced that day.

I thought that I had experienced all the universal languages before lunch time!! What an incredible beginning to an awesome day!! but there were a few more things I had to learn about. After lunch we had the privilege of spending time with the older girls who ranged in age from about 11-17. We first did some crafts together and taught them a few songs, but then our translator got the greatest opportunity we had had yet! She got to share the gospel with them!! She spoke about how many of their families had left them, abused them, and done things to hurt them; especially their fathers. At this point many of the girls were already crying at the painful memories of what had brought them to live at CIPI in the first place. As our translator continued to speak she told them about a Father who could give them hope, and peace when they were going through the many hard things they all had to go through. She told them of how much He loved them and wished that they would let Him be their Father so that He could hold their broken heart in His hands and begin to put it back together piece by piece. Monday, six girls accepted Jesus, and a seed was planted in the hearts of many more!!! As they cried, I cried with them. I cried for all the hurt they had experienced in their lives. Most of the girls were younger than me, and yet they had known more horrible things than I could imagine. At no point in that day could I see more clearly how much God loves each of His children and desires to heal them through love than I did in that moment. I didn't have to speak Spanish to communicate or understand the tears that were shed there that day.

After such an amazing and yet very intense few minutes of crying and praying together with the girls, we got to play a game with them. The language barrier was once again broken by the laughter that we shared as we tried to untwist our huge human knot. We spent 25 minutes attempting to not fall on each other as we stepped through arms, over heads, and under everybody laughing the whole time. The memories of my first Monday in El Salvador will never leave me. At the end of the day as I reflected on all the awesome things God had done in my heart and in the hearts of the kids we got to spend time with, I realized that He had shown me one of the most important things I would need to know in future ministry times; I didn't need a translator to communicate the most important things in life. Love, laughter, and tears, are a language that can be understood by all, and God's love transcends every barrier we could ever come across.

Sunday- first time meeting Ana Julia

We woke up at 3 am on Sunday to head to the airport. The whole team was more than ready to be in El Salvador already. This time everything went as planned. The flights went out at their scheduled times and after an uneventful day of traveling, we finally got to El Salvador!! We all got through customs without any problems (thank the Lord!) and everyone's luggage was where it was supposed to be. My luggage made it to ES the day before I did and it was a huge relief to find that it hadn't been lost. (thanks to everyone who prayed for my safety and for the luggage!!) It was so good to see our missionary friends again and I was more than happy that we were getting to stay at their house. We had a short orientation with our hosts and then another with the directors of La Casa De Mi Padre (the orphanage where my sister lives) before breaking for dinner. We had pizza hut and I think that was about the best pizza I've ever tasted! Then came my favorite part of the day; I got to meet my little sister for the first time. She's too cute, but she's a little stinker. We got to watch hotel for dogs in Spanish with English subtitles with all the kids at La Casa, and my good friend translated for me. Here are some pictures from our first meeting.
The matching flip flops I bought for the two of us before the trip. Isn't that just adorable?


Meant to be sisters. Forever!!!!!

Hope you are enjoying the updates so far!!!

Saturday Didn't go as Planned

On Saturday I was up at 4:45 am and completely ecstatic. Today was finally going to be the day I would meet my little sister and I couldn't wait. I got to the airport, checked my bags, and right as I was saying goodbye to my family, I got a call from my leader who was in Nashville with the rest of the team waiting to board their plane which was delayed. I flew out to Miami anyways but when I got there I had a message on my phone from a team member telling me that their flight to Miami had been canceled and now I needed to get a ticket and fly to Nashville to stay the night with them so we could catch the first flight out in the morning to San Salvador. I was so sad. I got everything straightened out and then watched the plane to ES, the one I should have been on, board all its passengers and take off before I headed downstairs and flew to TN. A girl from my team met me at the airport and we drove back to the hotel. In a way, it was a blessing to have some time to get to know the team before we started ministry together, I got to hang out with the other teens on the trip and we had a great time. We really looked forward to getting to El Salvador the next day.

I am back!!!!!

I'm extremely sorry that I didn't get to update on my trip so I'm going to create posts for each day with pictures and snapshots of everything that we did. In a general synopsis of the trip; it was incredible. The Lord did so much in each and everyone of us and it was such a blessing to work with these kids. May I just say, I love El Salvador! It is a beautiful country with such warm welcoming people and breath taking views. Here are a few pictures of the city. Hope you enjoy the updates from each day!!!!!

My first glimpse of El Salvador from the plane window.

The street our hosts lived on.

The volcano. We visited it yesterday before we headed out for the aeropuerto. :)

God bless and hope you enjoy the new updates from the trip!!!!
<3's,
Hannah

Less than 24 hours to countdown!

I can scarcely believe how fast time has flown by over the past few weeks and yet how slow it has seemed to go!! It is now less than 24 hours until I take off and I am beyond excited. The Lord has made way through brimstone and fire for this trip to happen in the past few weeks. For those of you who don't know, my trip has changed leaders and locations of the place we are staying all in about the past week so there have been many new challenges in packing, plans and preparation for the group as a whole. My team is leaving Kentucky this afternoon at five to drive to Nashville where they are spending the night to catch the first flight to Miami in the morning. I leave my house at 5:30 a.m. tomorrow for my flight which leaves at 8 and arrives in Miami at 10:25. My team leader is supposed to be at my gate to pick me up as soon as I step off the plane then we will travel on to El Salvador together. I cannot believe it is finally so close!! I know the Lord has amazing plans for everyone on this trip this year. A few prayer points that I would like to put out there are:

• No flight delays!! that all the flights would be on time due to short connections in Miami which is a very stressful airport to navigate with a team of 18.
• Luggage- the team is carrying two suitcases a piece full of supplies for ministry time and personal belongings pray that ALL of the luggage would get to ES safely at the same time as us so that no one is without the stuff we need for ministering and taking care of ourselves.
• Health- Pray for the Lord's covering over the whole team as we minister in the rural areas and orphanages
  

• Safety- The new government took over less than a week ago so pray that the Lord would guide us around any sticky situations that we aren't supposed to be in.

I want to thank all of you for your prayers over this next week. I can't tell you how much it means to me and my team!! I will update as much as possible with pictures and stories of all the awesome stuff that the Lord does through us on our trip. God bless you all!!
Much Love,
Hannah

p.s. The next time I update I'll be in El Salvador!!!!!! It's so exciting!!!!!!!!!