November 29, 2010

I am writing this from 33,000 feet at 5am Lesotho time and 9:00pmOKCtime. The 10 of us are all settled in for the duration of our 14 hr and 45 minute flight. Our journey thus far has been uneventful, rather boring. What a wonderful luxury—to be bored!

We are loaded down with luggage as each person has not only a personal bag, but also an entire suitcase full of tools and supplies including paint sprayers, Bosch drills and Bosch hammers and all kinds of saws and things to build a bathroom.

We have done boring things like enter the entire budget spreadsheet into an iPhone budget app and make lists of supplies to be purchased and mastermind the order of things to be purchased.

We have 7 days to spend $40,000—harder than it seems when only Teresa and I have credit cards, using a currency we’re unfamiliar with. We don’t know our way around, having to find supplies at places we’ve never been while driving on the wrong side of the car and road. We have to sign the lease and work out the legal details of that before starting work on the house. Make sure we can get the supplies needed before starting the demolition of the areas. Order carpet to be installed at just the right time. Order internet and utilities in the house so we can function. Buy beds, mattresses and linens on the first day so the guys can have somewhere to sleep.

Buy groceries so we can have meals at the house, but we also need a refrigerator in which to put the cold stuff and a table to eat on. Let’s not forget pots and pans to cook the food and dishes to eat with.

Basically, we need miracles every hour for 7 days straight!

But God who called us has equipped us and is able to complete what He started in us. I continue to remind myself throughout each step of the process that God is the one who gave me this dream out of the blue. If He can spell out the name of a country to me and give me a clue of what He wanted me to do by putting Chris Caine who runs a human trafficking shelter in my dream with me, then God can do miracles every hour for the next 7 days.

Actually, He specializes in miracles. It is a miracle that 9 people are paying their own way to go with me to a place they’ve never been to help people they’ve never seen who they may never meet.

It is a miracle that Sonya, Charles, Maya, Christen, Abby and Richard are moving to a country they’ve never seen (except for Sonya who’s been there once) to work for free for an organization that was just formed this year to help people they’ve never met.

All of these crazy things are a tribute to the power of a dream and mostly to the power of a relationship with the creator of Heaven and Earth who calls and anoints people to do his will to help show love to others in His name.

All of this ‘boring stuff’ that we are doing now is absolutely essential to the work that the team will do with the girls. These precious children and women who will be helped by Beautiful Dream may never fully realize the love and work that went into the house that they find and the people that love them. They may never fully appreciate all the Oklahoma and Texas people that had to get out of their comfort zone to do some seemingly radical things by Oklahoma and Texas standards, but that’s OK. We are not doing it to get their approval, praise, or appreciation.

We do it for one reason and one reason alone: we want to please our Father and to hear Him say, “Good job, Jennifer! Good job, Teresa! Good job, Sonya! (Etc, etc!) Good job, Beautiful Dream and Victory Church! I am so proud of you. For every time you helped one of these girls who was suffering, hurting, and dying, you helped me.”

Now that is motivation I can live with for the rest of my life.