This is Kind of a Big Deal

So this is my support letter for my mission trip.  There are some very important changes in here regarding how to support me, so if you received a hard copy of my letter and want to support me please read this instead of your hard copy!

Dear Family and Friends,

The Lord has blessed me with an exciting opportunity to attend Youth With a Mission’s Discipleship Training School (YWAM-DTS) in Kona, Hawaii.

YWAM is an international mission organization whose goal is to train and equip believers so that they may fulfill their part in the Great Commission. There are training schools at various locations all over the world. The goal of the DTS is to train believers both spiritually and culturally; to grow in their relationship with Christ; to learn to hear His voice; and to follow His lead in spreading His love everywhere they minister throughout the world.

YWAM further believes that part of showing Christ’s love is accomplished in a more meaningful way by helping to meet the physical needs of the people encountered. My specific training will be in two different phases:  1. An onsite training at the DTS, and 2. An outreach period in which we will be applying what we have learned. 

I am most excited about the outreach portion because it takes place on a ship that transports medicines and other needed supplies to people living on remote islands or areas of the world that can only be reached by boat.  I am prayerfully considering the location in which I feel the Lord is leading me to serve during this training portion of my ministry.

This three month long ministry adventure is a dream come true for me.  I have three things I’m passionate about: Jesus, people, and the sea. I’m so excited to have the opportunity to combine all three of these passions into one amazing opportunity.  In this season, I feel that the Lord is opening the door and inviting me to take a wild adventure with Him. In order to do this I will need some support.

First, I will need partners who will pray with me. Some of my specific prayer requests include the following:

1. That I would have no fears about traveling,
2. For good health which includes spiritual, emotional, and physical protection,
3. For intense spiritual growth and communication with God,
4. That our team of workers will be focused on Jesus and that His light will shine through us, and
5. That decisions will be made for Christ.

Secondly, I need to raise my own funds for the trip.  So, I humbly ask for your prayerful financial support.  If the Lord leads you to give, no matter what the amount might be, please make checks out to the YWAM Ships OC and send them to my home address: 3164 Willow Bend Dr. Chico, CA 95973.  There are two options for donations.  You can either support the schooling portion of my trip, or the outreach portion.  If you desire to fund the outreach portion, please write Q42013DTS-OR in the left hand corner of the check. Also, only the outreach donations are tax deductable, so if you are giving for the outreach portion, you can include a separte note stating that your donation is for the outreach portion.  You can also pay on line at http://ywamships.net/give/ which is probabaly the easiest way to pay.

Whether you choose to support me spiritually and/or financially, I sincerely thank you. May our Lord richly bless you. 

In Christ,

Christine Goddard

Of Eating Sand

I imagine loving people to be like catching a wave.  I've never caught a wave.  But whenever I imagine catching a wave it is inevitably followed by a disturbing mental image of me eating a face full of sand.

The thing about loving people is that you can't put the cart before the horse.  You can't get so excited about the wave that you leave the surf board.

What, as Christians, are we called to do?  Love God.  Love others.  Lately I've been putting the cart in front of the horse.  I've abandoned my surf board.  I have tasted a glorious mouthful of sand.

Loving people sounds so easy.  It's easy until they are mean to you, take advantage of you, use your kind heart against you for their own gain, step on your rights, and hurt your feelings.

I was walking with my good friend and she said some words to me that rang very true.  You cannot love with an agenda.  You cannot love with an agenda.  You cannot love with an agenda.

Go forth and make disciples.  Here's a news flash.  America has a pretty good idea what Christians believe.  Because we yell it in their faces and tell them they can't be gay.  You can't love with an agenda. 

While lying on the beach, chewing on my mouthful of sand and contemplating my failures, I had a revelation.  It's impossible to love others.  "WTF God?"  (Yes sometimes I cuss around God, He loves me anyway.)  "How am I supposed to love people?  A. They suck. B. I'm terrible at it.  C. I suck!"  And He whispers, "You're getting it backwards, Kid."

You see, I was right.  It is impossible to love others.  Oh sure you can love your friends.  Most of the time.  But not that asshole of an ex-boyfriend, or that child molester or that politician.  You're getting it backwards, Kid.

You see, God is love.  He IS love.  He is the very definition, creator, all encompassing thing that is love.  And you cannot love without Him.  Any love you experience, came from straight from Him.

"Love me."

You see when you seek out God's love, you can truly love unconditionally.  You can look at your Dad who walked out on you and see what God sees.  And when you see what God sees, you love so much your heart breaks.

One more thing.  Perfect love casts out fear.  Fear is the opposite of love.  But where love is, fear cannot exist.

I failed at this.  And so take some advice from a salty, sticky kid with a mouthful of sand.  Love God.  Love God.  Love God.  And He will change hearts.  Especially yours.

That's all.

Of Cooking My Chicken Called Freud

I was talking on the phone with my Mom the other day. She's always full of super awesome advice like, go vote, or, go to church. This particular conversation had to do with eating organically, something I've been passionate about for ages and she's finally catching onto. We talked about how drinking non-homogenized whole milk is really good for you, and how one of the healthiest things to eat is soup made from chicken bones.

Meat and I are not friends. I've scoured the research available to me, trying to find some evidence that I can still be healthy and avoid eating dead things. But you can't really. You can get close...but you can't be all the way healthy and not eat dead animals. So I took myself down to whole foods, which I hardly ever do on account of it's ridiculously expensive, and I bought milk in bottle that had the cream sitting on top. Cool. And I bought a whole chicken. The fresh kind that they wrap up for you, not the frozen kind.

Here's how it happened. I approached the counter and asked the man for a chicken, and he reached in and grabbed one by the leg. I unfortunately started giggling, because the chicken did this floppy, jiggly thing that I can't really explain, but I thought it was funny. So he wrapped it up in paper and handed it to me. This made me giggle more because my chicken just felt so personable, jiggling there in my hands.

So today, when I came home from church, (be proud, Mother.), I decided to cook my chicken. When I unwrapped him, his personality jumped out at me. And it said, "My name is Freud!" And I agreed. Don't get me wrong, I'm not fond of Freud at all...in fact the sooner Freud is bone soup the better, then I don't have to look at his little jiggly self. I googled baked chicken recipes online, and after discovering it would take an hour and a half to two hours to cook Freud, I realized I did not have that much time.

This put in somewhat of a predicament, as I had already dumped him off his paper and onto his cooking dish. So I fished out the paper, and found myself in another predicament. No way in hell was I about to pick him up of that dish. Gross. So I took the dish and dumped him back onto his paper. And he lay there on his back, his legs stretched out, and jiggled amicably. Rolling back up took some doing, he kept trying to slip away from me. Finally I got him mostly covered and back into the fridge. And we'll try this again later.

Of the Drive-Through and Other Such Things...

Here are some of the things I heard in the drive-through this week:

Me: "How's it goin today?"

Customer (Huffily): "Fine. That's the THIRD time I've been asked that just in this drive-through."

Me: "Oh that's cause Liza talked to you on the headset, not me."

Customer: "NO! You asked me too when I first pulled up."

Me: "Oh, I'm sorry maam I didn't hear your response the first time."

What kind of culture do we live in where a woman is pissed cause she's asked how she is???

Me: "That will be $4.24 and you'll see Liza at the window."

Me: "Oh sorry, I'm not Liza, she got busy, I'm Christine."

Customer: "What's the difference?"

For the love.

Another time, a man tasted his drink, demanded his money back, handed me his cup and drove away.

I also got asked for ketchup. AT STARBUCKS. Go to McDonalds Douche-bag.

Why is our culture so fast paced and fat? So self absorbed, impersonal and lazy that they can't even get out of their car to come buy a cup of coffee? Why do they treat the people serving them as if they are less of a person? I was asked for an essay question to write about what I would change about American society...after trying to write it I decided I should probably move to another country. There are so many things that we could potentially love about America, like freedom, wealth, prosperity, health, and then you experience an American...yes, I'm being racist against my own race right now. Grow up people! Stop caring about your stupid, fat, selves, turn off your tv, get off facebook and go do something for someone who is less fortunate than you are.

One morning I had three different people come through the drive through and pay for the car behind them. All in one day! And it was the greatest day ever. People are powerful, you have the power to hurt and to heal, and if we all just took our eyes off ourselves for a second the world would be a nicer place to live.

Of the Moon...Or Lack Thereof...

Today I woke up at two. In the afternoon. If you know me at all you know that I am a hardcore morning person. Even on my days off. I hate the feeling of my day being wasted by sleeping through it. So you can imagine my horror when I awoke to the realization that I had slept my day away and that I had to be at work in two hours. I had beautiful plans for the day too. I was gonna work out, go to the grocery store, and get ahead on my homework. Instead, I had cold oatmeal and nutella on crackers since that is pretty much the extent of what's left in my kitchen. Healthy.

I don't feel as badly about sleeping in though, because last night was a great night and I wouldn't have missed it for the world. For one thing, after work I had a date with the one and only Jordan Brown, who is one of the coolest girls I've ever met. We went to this coffee shop called Jives that is open until 12ish but that's only if the owner feels like closing. Sometimes he's too busy jamming on his electric to notice the time. His coffee is better than anything I've ever experienced. He has ten kids, most of whom work for him. Dang, if my dad owned a shop like that I'd work there too. He has this really awesome espresso machine that is part manual and part automatic. And it's blue. Which I love. I was ashamed that all I had to do was push a button to pull a shot in my workplace.

It was open mic night, but I didn't quite have the guts to get up and play. Plus I was with Jordan, and I didn't want to put our date on hold while I went and performed.

The second thing that was great about last night was that the night itself was beautiful. The night sky in CO is kind of a blue green color, and last night was cloudy, so it added this grey tint that made the world look smokey and mysterious. It smelled like wet dirt...which may have actually been my soap mixed with coffee grounds, but for the sake of the mood we'll say it was wet earth.

There is something magical about the middle of the night. A loneliness and stillness that is yours and yours alone. I drove home on the freeway at forty-five miles per hour simply because I could. Mine was the only car on the road. Neko Case was in my CD player and I kept playing song number nine over and over again. There is a line there that says "don't let this fading summer pass you by" and I kept mulling it over. So often I don't care to enjoy things. My friend Chad says that human beings have a hard time just being.

I think Chad is right, just be. Stay up super late sometime just so you can see what the sky looks like. God put Adam and Eve on earth not so they could do great things for society, or have an awesome destiny, He just put them there to be. So they could enjoy what He made. So He could show someone His creation. And so maybe my purpose is to love that blue green of the night sky in CO. Or to sit in a giant field and watch fire flies. Or take a walk through Bidwell Park. To just be.

Of Our Cynics

Here's a thought I'm trying to deal with: How in the world do I deal with this thing called the Bible? In my limited observation of the world around me, I've come to the conclusion that there are three types of Bible readers. There are the types that take the whole thing as if it were written specifically for them, and apply every single book, chapter, and verse to their personal lives. Now listen up cynics who just scoffed at that sentence...tell me honestly you've never done that. Yes, then there are you people who have swung to the opposite side of the spectrum and view the book as a historical document. Cynics, I call them. These people arrogantly scorn anyone who says, "The Lord gave me this verse..." The third group of readers are caught somewhere in the middle of these two, dutifully reading, but muddled as what to glean from it.

I am one caught in the middle. It frustrates me to the point of throwing the thing across the room and not even bothering. When I was a young, innocent child, I read the Bible as one of the people in type 1. I was young and didn't know better. Here's what I'm wondering...when I was struggling, grieving or rejoicing and I flipped open my Bible and it "just happened" to land on a verse I needed to hear...what was that? God? Or coincidence? This sort of thing happened a lot in my Bible reading while I was growing up... so now that I'm older do I go through my journal and throw out all those verses that I probably shouldn't have applied to my life because the Bible is a historical document? Or is the Bible "living and breathing? And what the hell does that even mean?

This whole thing makes me angry. Somewhere along the way, our generation crossed over from "critical thinkers" to cynics. I don't like cynics, but I think I am one.

In my walk with the Lord, there was a time when I was dangerously close to losing my faith. The Lord used two songs in very profound ways in my life. One of them was "My sweet Lord" by George Harrison, and the other was "As Is" by Ani Difranco. The first was relatable to me in that I "really wanted to know him, go with him, but it was taking so long." I couldn't find Him even though I was striving so hard. The second one, even though written about a lesbian lover, dealt with acceptance "as is." The Lord used it to show me he would accept me as I was, regardless of my crap. Without these two songs, I may not be a Christ follower today.

So then, why can I take those two songs, which were written by imperfect people, and say that they had a profound impact on my walk with God, yet I'm hesitant to apply the written word of a Holy God to my personal walk, because OH CRAP I TOOK IT OUT OF CONTEXT!

I swear to you I'm not the only one who's done this. I think if you're honest with yourself, you've done it too. Our cynics, in all their arrogant, educated glory, are nothing but hypocrites.

So where's the line? I know that there has to be a balance somewhere, but I'm baffled by the magnitude and complexity of this book. Whether you are a type 1 or type 2 reader, you have seriously underestimated the Bible. This is the reason I've been avoiding it. The task of trying to grasp it is daunting, and I'm seriously intimidated. It's only the written word of a Holy God. But we brainless little humans have this unquenchable need to understand everything, even if it means we have to diminish the power of God.

Of City of Black and White

I recently acquired Matt Kearney's City of Black and White album. This man is a song writing genius. He can pretty much do no wrong. I discovered that the secret to his genius is that he has an uncanny ability to write bridges. If his verses and choruses are good, his bridges are ten times better. A bridge has the ability to make or break a song, and his usually make them. The other thing I like about this album is the use of interesting orchestration. He uses a hammer dulcimer at one point, which is pretty much incredible. I absolutely love "Here we go again" especially the bridge.

The only thing I find a little irritating are his lyrics. They are very well written lyrics, but they are also sappy love songs. I think Matt Kearney needs counseling. He clearly has problems with relationships. Based on all his songs, his relationships are full of drama and problems. They are very well written sappy love songs and that's all. If he were to take his genius and write songs about things that are important (not that relationships aren't important, but every song? Really?) then his career would explode, and he would go down in history, in my opinion. So, Matt, I know you'll never read this, but really. Write about something other than a girl for once, and you'll be incredible.