New Blog

Well, I think I'm switching to a wordpress blog. I'll continue to post on both for a few posts to see if I like the wordpress one better. The main reason I'm switching is because I can have other pages off of my blog and I'm setting a shop to sell my photos/earrings. And I can't do that on blogger. And I can make it look nicer alot easier. Well, relatively so. So visit www.ajourneytogodsheart.wordpress.com to find my new blog!

Brasil- 2009

“Forgetting what is behind, and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal.” Philippians 3:13/14

If I was planning my life out two years ago, I never would have dreamed of where I was headed. The unexpected twists and turns on this road of life is what makes it interesting. After coming back from Africa to a crashed economy and unemployment rates rising, I prayed diligently as to what I was supposed to do, if I was to find a job or just to escape to another country again. The new reality of America shocked me, but all things work for the good of those who love God, and God brought me a wonderful job in an unexpected place. I have been working with an autistic seven year old boy in the local public school these past few months. I love the kid and working with him is always interesting.

However, another unexpected turn has come in this road-trip of a lifetime to God's heart. I'm going back to Brazil!

I'm going to a completely different place in Brazil, and with different ministries than I have in the past. I will be going there to visit the two bases that Iris Ministries has there, in Rio de Janeiro state and in Sao Paulo city. I will be visiting these bases to find out if I could see myself working there long-term in the future. I will be helping out with the projects that they have, teaching some art classes, helping with a feeding program, and working with kids in large and very poor favelas (slums).

In addition to the two Iris bases, I will also be visiting a church in Rio de Janeiro and helping at some projects they have with women, youth, and children in the favelas.
I will be in Brazil for 2 months, from June 17- August 23.

Please pray for me, the Iris bases, and the children that I will be working with. Pray for:
Good health and safety for me and the Iris base leaders
Discernment to determine where God is leading me to work with Iris
Greater ability to understand and communicate in Portuguese
That the children would know God's love above all else
Open doors and windows where God wants to share His love through me

Your prayers are needed so much!

I will be updating this blog from Brazil. I will post further prayer requests on here as time goes on. I will also be sending email updates to those of you who are on my email list. If you would like to be on this list, please send me your email address.

Thank you so much for your continued and faithful support!

Vai com Deus!
-Emily Bair

For tax-deductible donations to this trip or the projects I'll be working with:

Follow this link to contribute with a credit card: https://protected.hostcentric.com/jbair/order.htm
(The website is for my dad's computer software business, English Plus, its legit.) Use the box for “Donations” and write in the “Special Instructions” box “Brazil”. Don't worry about the computer system information.

Or if you would like to use a check, make it payable to Harvest Christian Center, with Brazil on the memo line. Send all checks to: Harvest Christian Center, 302 Soundview Ave, Shelton CT, 06484.

Red Dirt

red dirt runs thick through my veins
promising me
that if i return, it will expel
and rid myself of this
craze
this red dirt. which
causes my heart to beat
with the rhythm of the drums
pounding out their worship
sunrise
to the star-flung night
we chant and sing
clap our hands, dance
faces, faces
black and white
chants
as the red dust flies
into our mouths.
breathing in africa
breathing out our homes
for now we are home
the dust in our hair, nose, teeth, eyes
proves it.
the red dirt clogs my veins.
enters my heart.
promising me
a swift return.
the dirt must go back
replace replace
to where it came.

TIA, ti amo, te amo.
for what is it to love another?
what is it to love a country?
what is it to love a place?
are not these places
just faces and faces
the faces we love?

the red dirt smeared on his little black feet
the day he runs up to me and we meet
red dust flung into his hair
brush it out, brush it out,
the kids don't care.
their blood must be red from this african dirt.
running and playing, happy, carefree.
what a world we would live in if we all could be.

cover your mouth
don't breathe in.
too late
you did it.
you're infected
with africa.
with africa love.

Someone Else's Blog

Its after midnight. I should be asleep. I have to work tomorrow. But I can't sleep. Not now. Not tonight. African drums pound in my head. I wake to the chant of "Cavonli-ca-na" in my head. I think I actually woke up singing it yesterday.

I was poking around on the Compassion International blog, and I found someone who feels much like I do:

"The running water in my comfy apartment cannot help the hurt in my heart today. The grande nonfat latte I picked up from my favorite coffee shop didn’t help, either.

American luxuries I once looked forward to now feel empty, as nothing fills the void that Africa left.

Someone once said, “Once you get the dust of Africa on your feet, it will never leave you.”

Every day further away from Rwanda, the more I ache to be there. It’s been six weeks since my return from Africa, yet some moments, I feel as if I just stepped off the plane and into this alternate reality called America.

People were intrigued and interested for a short amount of time, but then the interest faded. And I’m left to pick up the pieces of my broken heart.

Leaving the kids I loved in Kigali, Rwanda, was like a death. It happens to most people who spend any amount of time away from home, and then return.

I cannot blame those around me who seemingly lose interest. The truth is, they have their own concerns, challenges, and broken hearts.

Life continued while I was away. It doesn’t mean people don’t care. It just means that new things sweep them up in the ever-flowing, ever-changing current of life."

Substitute Mozambique there instead of Rwanda, and four and half months instead of six weeks. But I like where she goes with this. She doesn't just sit there. I can't just sit here either. I can't sit here and let Africa die.

"

The U.S. is a stark reality when compared with the developing world. But for now, the Lord has me here in America, like most of you who are reading this. A dear friend of mine exhorted me: Don’t live in sadness.

Pray. Engage. Invest.

I need not be in Africa in order to shape Africa, to have a profound impact on a child in poverty. I simply need a heart that prays and longs for healing and blessing upon a continent too often overlooked."

But I can't just sit and pray. I have to DO something. I'm collecting clothes for them. Shoes, 20 pair of crocs so far (haha, my sister flipped out, the NYC fashion queen doesn't like crocs). Money, mets to go back, sending money thru various organizations. And I talk about Africa alot. Alot alot.

It was so nice to be able to talk about Iris with a friend who is thinking of going there. He asked me all these questions and I got to talk all about Africa and Iris. Haha, I'm recruiting people to go there.

But what else can we do? What else can we do here? I can't sleep still, my heart hurts too much...

Saving the animals too

As I was reading the April 13 edition of Time Magazine, I started to cry when I saw a picture of gorillas that had been killed in the Congo. Maybe its because I have a soft spot in my heart for the great apes (relatives of monkeys, I always have had a number of stuffed animals of great apes in addition to my usual monkey collection) or maybe because I have it in my heart to go to the Congo and help the people there. Maybe it was just that I realized that the war there is destroying not only the life of the people there, but also the animals, and it takes much more time to restore a country from ecological devastation than it does to simply repair the bombed out buildings. Or as in the case of Mozambique, to not restore the buildings, and go back to simple village life.

I have read how the war in Moz destroyed the animals-- big game like lions, elephants, black rhinos, leopards, and zebra-- and how they are just starting to be able to bring some of the wildlife back to Moz in some remote regions.

Do we need the same thing to happen in the Congo? The Congo holds such awesome equatorial jungles, they cannot just remain a casualty of war, and we can't just let the people and gorillas and all living things be wiped out.

I know I am trying to find my way to God's heart through this blog, but I am realizing that God made the earth and we need to take such good care of it. Conservation and preserving the environment go right along with what God desires. And it goes hand in hand with sustainable community development.

As a missionary, I can't just go into a country and bring my own seeds from America and tell them how to plant them. I need to find out what grows best there, what the environment is like, and then enable people to grow food that is native to the area.

I believe that missions work, to tell people about God and reach out to help them by clothing them and bringing them clean water, is all related to the environment. How can we bring people clean water when the groundwater itself is polluted? How can we build houses for people if the land is so destroyed that the soil won't produce sufficient crops to live? How can we say to those who work in garbage dumps to leave their livelihood if there is a living to be made by recycling scrap metals there? (I congratulate the organization I worked with in the Quito, Ecuador dump who had made safe conditions for the people to work in the dump recycling things, and to provide an education for their children and to not allow the children to work in the dump anymore)

I think we need to re-think missions a bit for our brave new world. We need to open up our minds that climate change is real, that wildlife is being destroyed at alarming rates, and that saving people includes saving the earth around them so that they can live a healthy life.

If we see that the reef in Pemba is overfished, maybe we should try to teach the fishermen sustainable practices that allow the fish to grow back and replenish the reef. If we see that they are suffering because of overfishing, and now they can't catch enough fish to sell in the market, maybe we need to bring in a few marine biologists and people who know about fish to determine what to do about this problem.

And when the Amazon River floods so high that it destroys all the banana crops, we need to go in and help these people directly by finding other crops to grow or other means to make a living, meanwhile supporting conservation practices that are saving the rainforest. As well as reducing our own carbon loads, since global warming has, presumably, been responsible for these awful droughts and floods in the Amazon.

Which brings me to my next journey, southern Brazil. While there, I hope to visit a rainforest preserve of the Mata Atlantica in Sao Paulo state. This is one of the few places the golden lion tamarin lives, and to see it in the wild would be amazing for me. It also would be just as much of a missions trip for me to visit this conservation project which is run by christians, to learn how to make it possible to have community development and conservation go hand in hand. I believe they do. I just want to see it first hand.

And I also realized in reading the Time Magazine that I saw a really neat starfish called a Red-knobbed Sea Star in Pemba. I hadn't known the name, before. It is not endangered itself, but its habitat is. And I might have taken one of these beauties home. Might have. Which made me feel bad at first, but I think it is important to have animals (or shells, or photos) on display in the US for people to see in order to wake them up to the reality that the world is very big and that there are many other animals out there besides them. Hence why I am not against zoos in general. Although the gorilla house at the national zoo makes me very sad and almost cry.

Suid Afrika

Before I write anything, I will first say, I LOVE South Africa, I think apartheid was awful, and its a shame that there is so much violence there now. I also have gotten to hear alot of points of view on situations in South Africa from being there. Everyone I met, from all the Peace Corps volunteers posted in South Africa, to the white Afrikaaners who ran the hostel, to the taxi drivers, to the various safari guides, and people living in a well-developed village, were ready to let me know what they thought of South Africa and what was going on there as of October 08.

Unfortunately, I had no idea who Mbeki was, no idea who Zuma was, and Mbeki had just resigned when I got to South Africa. Now I am reading a bit about Zuma in the news and it just struck me as funny today when I read an article in the Wall Street Journal about Zuma's two wives. It was kind of poking fun a bit, saying "Which will be the First first lady".

I also learned that polygamy is legal in South Africa because it is such a part of their tribal culture. Anyhow, I am a bit concerned for the state of the AIDs crisis in South Africa because their president has two (almost 3) wives. And has 19 kids. I hope that the AIDs crisis does not get worse there as a result of his bad example. Well, then again, it already has had other people in the government deny that AIDs is real.

Unfortunately, I still don't see South Africa's future getting much brighter anytime soon with the new president. They need transparency in their government and need to hold the government accountable to their actions.

Disturb me

>I found a video on a pro-life website yesterday that disturbed me for various reasons. It disturbed me because planned parenthood is covering up child rape and not letting the authorities know about different cases of molestation and rape because they get money from it. These women and girls deserve so much better than that. They deserve counseling and hope. They deserve to be loved, not just to be another case in the clinic. Ok, that part disturbed me alot.

The other thing that disturbed me was that these people from SFLA (Students for Life of America, which AU Students for Life is a part of, I believe) had gone in undercover and lied about the circumstances this girl was in. That also seems wrong to me. I understand investigative reporting and doing things like this for journailstic stories, but I still don't think it is right. It kind of makes SFLA out to be some sort of rougue undercover policing body. Which AU SFL was not.

I doubt that AU SFL would have supported such an endeavor . We were pretty progressive in terms of what we did for the pro-life cause. We did not support GAP (Genocide Awareness Project) which shows photos of aborted babies on picket signs. I actually think that GAP is disrespectful to the lives of the babies who were killed as well as the mothers of those babies. The photos are disturbing and may bring out truth, but I don't think they need to be seen. It is bad taste, in the same way that showing murder victims in newspapers is in bad taste (and btw, not usually allowed in newspapers).

We supported Feminists for Life, we actually had one of their speakers come my senior year and talk on campus. Their slogan is “Women Deserve Better”. Which they do. So when we marched in the March for Life, we carried Feminist for Life signs that sais “Women Deserve Better than Abortion”. With the focus on preserving the women's rights and putting their well-being at the forefront of the debate, I think Feminists for Life manages to stay relevant in the world and doesn't alienate people.

As a group we also had someone from the gay pro-life, PLAGAL, group come and talk about how gays and lesbians should be pro-life because in the future, if they start to screeen children for diseases in-utero and abort ones with negative diseases or traits, it could very well mean that children who are said to be gay in the womb would be aborted. However, I wasn't able to attend this speaker, I think I had class.

We also held cordial debates with the AU Democrats group, the largest student group on campus. We debated the pro-life issue and kept it formal and fact-based. We didn't yell, scream, or say outright without information “You're Wrong!” I think I atteneded one of these, and it went very well. People on both sides were open to hear both sides of the debate.

We also helped out at the Capitol Hill Pregnancy Center. Various members volunteeted time there. We held “Diaper Drives” at the grocery store and asked all the rich Washingtonians shopping there on a Sunday afternoon every month to buy some diapers so that these girls who go to the pregnancy center would be able to afford keeping their baby. Diapers are expensive!! We had people who were pro-life come and applaud what we were doing. We had staunch pro-choice people buy diapers because they wanted to help the women who are from low-income neighborhoods in DC. We did have people say we were crazy and that we should do a condom drive with the diaper drive :). So we laughed about it then, and still laugh now. AU SFL stilll does diapers drives and keeps that pregnancy center stocked. That center is in NE DC, not the one nearer to AU because the GW Students for Life group worked with that one before AU SFL even started.
We also had a baby shower for the center and bought baby items that they needed, and some professors donated things to us, as well. We raised money tabling on the quad and in the student life center for this. We were able to get lots of things for the center, but unfortunately because of privacy issues, we couldn't pick a specific girl to have the shower for. Nor were we able to meet the people coming into the center unelss we had been through their counseling Anyhow, I don't think AU SFL would support what Stand True or SFLA did. I am not sure if I do, but it is disturbing. And maybe I need to start doing something to help the girls in my area who find themselves pregnant and scared and without support.

We in the church have been too quick to condemn those who get pregnant out of wedlock, but we need to love them just the same. One sin is a bad as another. I am not perfect, neither are they. Just my mistakes yesterday didn't lead to a child being born. Theirs did. Hah, we can cover up so much sin, we can cover up lots of things, but unfortunately, once a girl gets pregnant, then everyone points the finger and accuses, rather than loving.

So now I am praying, God, what do you want me to do about this, right here and now? Who do I need to be loving more? How should I go about doing that? As the prayer meeting I'm in grows, I think we will see lots of girls come in who have been hurt by men, whether they are pregnant or not, and they will be loved there and prayed for there. It will be a place of deliverance and freedom for them. I guess that's where I am at right now and where I must be working and moving for the time being.