by jimmy | Oct 26, 2013 | buildingaboat, buildingaboat |
John 20:21 – Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, even so I am sending you.” I want to tell you about one of the best Christmas gifts I ever got from my parents. I asked for a remote control car. The one that’s bad to the bone; not like the simple forward and reverse kind. AIR. I want this thing to catch air. Christmas morning comes around and I am so jazzed up and ready. I knew that after presents I was going to be building ramps and jumping stuff by 2 p.m. that afternoon. I got the present I wanted. I knew which one it was. I had scoped them out in Hobby Lobby for months. Even though I knew what was inside, I played it cool anyway. When I unwrapped the box, there it was. Oh, yeah, the Hornet. I double checked the cover. YES. Awesome. I raced to the front room and opened the box. 100 million pieces. The car was not even recognizable. It had no form. There was nothing there, not even a tire to roll around. Everything had to be put together. I burst into tears, devastated. It was not what I wanted. We are pretty good at knowing what we want. For years, we did the Jimmy and Jeannie plan. We worked to get what we wanted. The school we wanted. The house we wanted. The life we believed was for us. But it wasn’t until I got on my knees that I got what I needed. As I sat there crying on...
by jeannie | Jul 20, 2012 | buildingaboat, buildingaboat |
Here’s a few shots of an orphanage in Managua, Nicaragua. I stopped in to see if I could help out, and snapped a few shots while there. The Young Life Expedition team was there, and were doing a great job of loving on the babies and kids that live there. It was beautiful watching babies being held, fed and adored by each of these college...
by jeannie | Jul 14, 2012 | buildingaboat, buildingaboat |
This summer, while in Nicaragua and Costa Rica, we’ve met so many families living poured out lives for the sake of the Gospel. One thing that keeps standing out as we meet each new person is that the one valuable thing they have isn’t within themselves, but rather a complete surrender to Someone they happen to know well. Our Pastor back home wrote yesterday about the great purpose for each ordinary person, and as I read it I remembered how it seems a realization of our own brokenness happens oftentimes just before some of our biggest adventures in faith. He shared how he ran into old friends that are walking away from everything they worked for, everything they thought they ever wanted to make their lives about something more valuable. I feel blessed that God moves in the hearts of all of us. My prayer is that we’ll all learn to listen. Following costs each of us something different b/c our expectations and ideas are different , but we all gain the same thing. Hope in an eternal Truth that brings a freedom you can’t create, buy, or produce on your own. To get it, you search, question, fall, and learn to get back up. Then you learn to trust and to believe. You learn to jump into the unknown, and the adventure builds and builds until you’ve built such a story with the One that guides you that you have to share it. Spending time with the Rodgers family was a high point in our journey while here. Their story was one of longing to go, but...
by Hampton | Jul 14, 2012 | buildingaboat, buildingaboat |
This summer, while in Nicaragua and Costa Rica, we’ve met so many families living poured out lives for the sake of the Gospel. One thing that keeps standing out as we meet each new person is that the one valuable thing they have isn’t within themselves, but rather a complete surrender to Someone they happen to know well. Our Pastor back home wrote yesterday about the great purpose for each ordinary person, and as I read it I remembered how it seems a realization of our own brokenness happens oftentimes just before some of our biggest adventures in faith. He shared how he ran into old friends that are walking away from everything they worked for, everything they thought they ever wanted to make their lives about something more valuable. I feel blessed that God moves in the hearts of all of us. My prayer is that we’ll all learn to listen. Following costs each of us something different b/c our expectations and ideas are different , but we all gain the same thing. Hope in an eternal Truth that brings a freedom you can’t create, buy, or produce on your own. To get it, you search, question, fall, and learn to get back up. Then you learn to trust and to believe. You learn to jump into the unknown, and the adventure builds and builds until you’ve built such a story with the One that guides you that you have to share it. Spending time with the Rodgers family was a high point in our journey while here. Their story was one of longing to go, but...
by jeannie | Jul 5, 2012 | buildingaboat, buildingaboat |
Traveling on the Ticabus from Costa Rica is already slightly daunting, watching closely your bags, your children, your passports, and constantly checking to make sure they are all still with you. As you sit in the buses, you literally put all your bags at your feet, wrapping them around your legs and never in the upper bins at the advice of our Nica friends here. While traveling one day from Costa Rica headed back through a town called, Rivas, we were met by an American that currently lives here in Central America. Initially on the bus he takes the seat across the aisle from our Libby. It didn’t take long before an unsettling feeling was around us. He seemed unsafe although he looked perfectly normal. As we were approaching the border from Costa Rica where we all file out, get our passports stamped, and wait for a long time in the hot sun, I overheard a conversation in Spanish from this man on his phone. I understood enough to know he was speaking of children and money. Children and money. I thought to myself, “Not that, God.” I just kept listening and praying in my seat. I couldn’t be sure, but I felt a sense of danger. I always try to minimize things, and talk myself out of them. This is always my default. Could I have imagined or am I over-reacting? Did I misunderstand what I thought I heard? And all along, my hope is that I am dead wrong about this guy. We cross the border, and as we get back on the bus and...
by Hampton | Jul 5, 2012 | buildingaboat, buildingaboat |
Traveling on the Ticabus from Costa Rica is already slightly daunting, watching closely your bags, your children, your passports, and constantly checking to make sure they are all still with you. As you sit in the buses, you literally put all your bags at your feet, wrapping them around your legs and never in the upper bins at the advice of our Nica friends here. While traveling one day from Costa Rica headed back through a town called, Rivas, we were met by an American that currently lives here in Central America. Initially on the bus he takes the seat across the aisle from our Libby. It didn’t take long before an unsettling feeling was around us. He seemed unsafe although he looked perfectly normal. As we were approaching the border from Costa Rica where we all file out, get our passports stamped, and wait for a long time in the hot sun, I overheard a conversation in Spanish from this man on his phone. I understood enough to know he was speaking of children and money. Children and money. I thought to myself, “Not that, God.” I just kept listening and praying in my seat. I couldn’t be sure, but I felt a sense of danger. I always try to minimize things, and talk myself out of them. This is always my default. Could I have imagined or am I over-reacting? Did I misunderstand what I thought I heard? And all along, my hope is that I am dead wrong about this guy. We cross the border, and as we get back on the bus and...
