summer sun

 i love the smell of chlorine and sunscreen on your skin. i love the feeling of cold air conditioning after a long day in the sun. i love the sleepyness that sun+ water creates especially when mixed with a generous helping of iron and wine.

Update

Hi all. I wanted to take a moment and touch base with you. As you know in March I chose to stay on another year with YWAM Denver. This was a stretch for me as the past year I have not had the support I have needed to  take care of my basic bills. (Right now I am receiving 246$ a month. My monthly expsenses are about 400-450$ a month) I sent out a newsletter  asking people to pray about financially supporting me in 2010. I got some response and raised almost an extra 100 dollars a month. This was not quite where I needed to be, but definitely a great help. This weekend I came to find out that about 90$ of that support had fallen through.  With that said I wanted to send a special request out to friends and family. I am looking for fifteen people to give 10$ a month for the next year. You can give in a few different ways. If you are looking to receive a tax credit for your charitable donation please make the checks out to YWAM Denver and attach a note with my name on it. You can mail it to 12750 W. 63rd Ave. Arvada, CO 80004. If you are not interested in the tax deduction you can mail checks directly to me at the above address or give via PayPal...

if you choose to give via paypal you can return to this site monthly and give, or give in one lump sum. The button will be located at the very bottom of this page for ongoing use. Thank you all so much for partnering with me. There will be more info on here in the next days and weeks about this quarter, our outreaches, and life at YWAM Denver. Please keep me in your thoughts and prayers.
Love,
Laurie

a helping hand

I hate asking for help. this may be a product of my independence or my stubbornness or just my personality, but i hate asking for help. I have  been living on support for the past 17 months. People donate money to me because they believe in and want to partner with me in what I am doing. That alone is a humbling experience. There are a lot of lessons I have learned taking this life path. One that is becoming more and more apparent to me is the lesson of interdependence. Wikipedia defines interdependence as the following...


Interdependence is a dynamic of being mutually and physically responsible to, and sharing a common set of principles with, others. This concept differs distinctly from "dependence" in that an interdependent relationship implies that all participants are emotionally, economically, ecologically and or morally "interdependent." Some people advocate freedom orindependence as a sort of ultimate good; others do the same with devotion to one's family, community, or society. Interdependence recognizes the truth in each position and weaves them together. Two states that cooperate with each other are said to be interdependent. It can also be defined as the interconnectedness and the reliance on one another socially, economically, environmentally and politically.

Interdependence is the crux of community. Recently I have seen this in small, but powerful ways. 
This week a friend I work with at YWAM and I were having a conversation in passing. At the end we were joking about our financial states. He was heading home to meet someone about his water heater and said in a joking tone "pray i get 1500$ real soon or ill be taking a cold shower." Earlier that afternoon I was balancing my own budget to realize I was 20$ shy of paying my cell phone bill. I, in an equally sarcastic tone responded to him, "pray i get 20$ real soon or ill be phoneless." Later that afternoon I was in the kitchen making dinner, filling in for this friend while he was home, and I get a text from him saying he wanted to give me 20$ to pay my cell bill. I was taken back. The comment was not said in any way to suggest he would give me the money, but he did none the less. He had in fact found out that his water heater was "done for" and he still needed the 1500$, but wanted to help me out. I was touched. Later that night Him and his wife went to dinner with a friend and her boyfriend. They were talking about the whole situation with the water heater, and the boyfriend offered to buy them the new water heater. 
    Interdependence only works when people are generous with each other. Generosity inspires generosity. I have learned to do without quite a bit. I have learned the value of simplicity (of which i could write a whole other blog of insights on this topic). But, I have learned to be generous with what I have. Sometimes it looks like running errands for a friend in nursing school with no time, other times it is sharing food and opening my house for friends to hang out, sometimes it is the gift of a warm shower  for friends who are awaiting that new water heater.


Asking for help makes you dependent. Offering help makes you interdependent.