Join A New Story

On May 9th SafeWorldNexus is having a benefit in Nashville and I'm going!  So are the other interns!  It will be the first time I meet everyone in person.  I'm so excited!  If you are in Nashville or can get there you need to go.  Go to http://joinanewstory.org/ (I just now learned how to make links to other sites.  This internship is already paying off!) to buy your $25 ticket.  I've known for awhile now that we had a major benefit coming up, and that it was for Haiti, but I naturally assumed the benefit was all to help fund SafeWorld so WE could serve in Haiti. 

No.

SafeWorldNexus is doing a ton of work to host a benefit for a totally separate organization.  These are the crazy awesome people I will be working with!  What I love about SafeWorld is they don't think of it as a "separate organization".  We're the same because they are our brothers and sisters in Christ.  They need help, so we're helping.  The organization is Heartline Ministries.  They're loving expectant mothers and newborn babies in Port Au Prince, Haiti.  They do a lot of different things.  (Watch this video.)  Our goal with the benefit is to raise enough money to build Heartline a 7,000 square foot maternity center to ease some of their difficulties.  

   If you can imagine for a moment, there are a lot of difficulties in running a maternity center in Port Au Prince.  For the last couple weeks I've been reading about it on the blog of an American family working for Heartline.  I have totally fallen in love with the Livesay family.  I want to relay their story to you, or at least say something that will make you go read their story, but I really don't know what to say other than our God is great!  Here's a post where they mention SafeWorld's visit back in January.  I WILL share with you these beautiful quotes on their blog:

   I know I pitied and judged the teen moms when I read about them, but Tara Livesay quoted a musician named Jason Gray and it definitely is opening my eyes.  It says, "Both pity and judgment are too easy and are therefore the enemies of genuine understanding, which to some degree, requires that we enter into at least a portion of the struggle of those we would genuinely understand.  But because that might be painful, and because we are allergic to pain, we flee to the less costly emotions of pity and judgment."  I've been using Paul's prayer in Colossians 1 a lot lately.  I was jumbling wisdom and understanding together like they were the same thing.  This quote really opened up my eyes to what understanding is- something you have to work for.

Another quote on the Livesays' blog is a Franciscan Benediction.  "May God bless us with discomfort at easy answers, half-truths, and superficial relationships- so that we may live deep within our hearts.  May God bless us with anger at injustice, oppression, and exploitation of people- so that we may work for justice, freedom, and peace.  May God bless us with tears to shed for those who suffer pain, rejection, hunger, and war- so that we may reach out our hand to comfort them and to turn their pain into joy.  And may God bless us with enough foolishness to believe that we can make a difference in the world- so that we can do what others claim cannot be done, to bring justice and kindness to all our children and the poor. Amen."  Churches don't pray enough for discomfort, anger, tears, and foolishness.  I know I had never even heard a prayer like this until at USC.  At Campus Crusade for Christ we often asked God to break our hearts for what broke His.  I remember it really jumping out at me the first time I heard someone pray their heart be broken, but that's what God calls us to do.  Remember (especially this week (I could so write tomorrow's sermon.) ) Jesus did not want to die on the cross.  He was man.  He knew that wasn't a good time.  But because he loved the Father and loved YOU he prayed for the Father's will and not his own.  The Livesays get that.  They know that God calls them to do stuff they don't want to do, but they're obedient, because they love Him, love people, and know He knows way more than they do.

They quote E. Lutzer saying, "Better to love God and die unknown than to love the world and be a hero; better to be content with poverty than to die a slave to wealth; better to have taken some risks and lost than to have done nothing and succeeded at it."  So together SafeWorldNexus, along with The Dave Ramsey Show, will be hosting a benefit, taking some risks, to try and raise $850,000 for a highly functional maternity center in Port Au Prince, Haiti.  Join a new story.

My Support Letter

Dear Family and Friends,
   July 1st I will start a year-long internship working for my dream organization, SafeWorldNexus, in Bristol, Tennessee.  I don't think God could have placed me with a better organization!  SafeWorldNexus' mission is to establish community health/hygiene, provide clean water, and take care of vulnerable children.  "Nexus" means "link" or "a means of connection".  SafeWorldNexus links people who NEED help to people who CAN help.  Currently SafeWorldNexus is working in Bulyaake Parish in central Uganda.  The parish is composed of 8 villages of about 10,000 people.  Before SafeWorldNexus got there, children would walk MILES with GALLONS of water on their heads, to take back to their families.  This water would easily be contaminated with disease.  Now there are 4 clean water wells in the community.  (With more on the way!)  The impact of this is huge!  So much more is going on though!  SafeWorldNexus has started a church and plans on an orphanage next.  What I love about SafeWorldNexus is they are committed to these specific people and return multiple times a year, bringing medical teams and delivering THOUSANDS of mosquito nets to help fight malaria.  They're just living out what Jesus said was the second greatest commandment, to love your neighbor as yourself. 
   The other thing I love about SafeWorldNexus is there are no rules, no bureaucratic hoops to jump through.  When the earthquake hit Haiti, they were there six days later.  Now SafeWorldNexus is loving these neighbors in the Caribbean.  A plan is underway to develop a home for children with disabilities that provides medical care, advocacy, education and life skills.  With a disabled brother I'm well familiar with the difficulties disabled children/adults have in the U.S.- the richest country in the world.  I can not imagine the condition these Haitian children are in...

   But I'm going to try.  I'm NOT going to try to think about something else.  I'm NOT going to pretend they're not there.  Because they are.  All these people are God's children as much as we are and they need our help.  

   At SafeWorldNexus I will be using my major in Media Arts (Yay! Bonus points for using my major!) to produce videos, photos, etc. to help bring attention to our neighbors in need.  In September I will take a trip with SafeWorldNexus to Uganda to distribute mosquito nets and get footage.  I know it will be a life changing experience and I can not wait to share it with you.  It is such a blessing to be given this opportunity to work with people who put no limits on what God can do.  SafeWorldNexus will be providing housing and any work-related transportation, but this is an UNPAID internship.  With my free-time in Bristol I will be working part-time, but this will not cover all my bills.  I am asking you to help me in raising about $15,000 to live off in the next year, and get me to Uganda.  Will you please help?

   To Donate Electronically:
-Go to www.safeworldnexus.com/give
-At the beginning of the first paragraph click the red words that say "This link".
-At the very bottom of the drop down menu select "2011 Internship".
-A second drop down menu will then appear.  Select "Katherine Hodges".
-Then you can fill in your amount and billing information.

   To Donate by Mail, send a check to:
SafeWorldNexus
516 Holston Ave Ste 204
Bristol, TN 37620
-Make check payable to SafeWorldNexus and write "Katherine Hodges" on the "Memo" line.

I can not thank you enough.  I know God will use your gift, and my time to do AMAZING things.  Our Heavenly Father says in Isaiah 55:9-11:

As the heavens are higher than the earth, 

so are my ways higher than your ways

and my thoughts than your thoughts.

As the rain and the snow

come down from heaven, 

and do not return to it

without watering the earth

and making it bud and flourish,

so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater,

so is my word that goes out from my mouth:

It will not return to me empty,

but will accomplish what I desire

and achieve the purpose for which I sent it.     

God is BIG.  Pray for BIG things! 

God's So Cool

Yesterday I painted a small mural at my church.  I wasn't totally sure what I was going to do until I got there.  Kim, the head of our beautification committee said she thought it would be cool to turn the crawl space door I'd be painting into a window.  So I painted some clouds with a window pane in front.  When I finished I still wasn't sure what verse to put on, but I finally narrowed it down to a couple then went with Matthew 6:26- "Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them.  Are you not much more valuable than they?"  I wrote that in one pane and added some birds in another.  I prayed to God that He would really use it to speak to someone.  Not just make someone say, "oh I've always liked that verse; cute," but have God literally use it to speak directly to someone He was trying to convey the message of "don't worry" to.  I knew today it could have the most impact because no one knew I was painting it.  I said, "God what if you even make the sermon on that verse tomorrow or something like that?"

THE SERMON TODAY WAS ON THAT VERSE.

GOD IS SO STINKIN' COOL!  Back in September Kim asked me to paint a large mural on a wall in one of the children Sunday school rooms.  She didn't know why but she wanted to do the verse in John 21:17 where Jesus tells Peter, "feed my sheep."  So I painted a shepherd looking over a flock of sheep and wrote the verse large in the sky.  Elsie has been the Sunday school teacher of that room for years.  When she heard what verse we were using, she started crying.  I guess it was sort of a "life verse".  She saw all the children she's taught over the years as God's sheep, and He had called her to feed them.  I love it!  

May your deeds be shown to your servants, 

your splendor to their children.  

May the favor of the Lord our God rest upon us; 

establish the work of our hands for us- 

yes, establish the work of our hands.

-Psalm 90:16-17

James 1

Listen to the sermon by Francis Chan on the sidebar.  It has me so pumped! To look at James, Chapter 1, copy and paste the following link into a new tab.  (It will direct you from this page if you just click on it.)

http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=James%201&version=NIV