Just a quick update here. Everyone is fine and seems to be doing well. We
spent the day at the same site as yesterday. Most everyone had new
responsibilities for the day. One thing that was different from yesterday
was we were able to put in a concrete floor for a church member. It was
dirt at the beginning of the day. Crazy.

I didn’t have nearly as many pics today because I was busy in the
evangelism area. Over the past couple days, at least 50 people have prayed
to receive Christ. Also crazy.
The one pic I’m including is Bailey bringing the devotional word to the
team at 6 in the morning!!!

Tomorrow we won’t go to a brigade site, but we’ll attend church instead.
Interestingly, the church we attend tomorrow will be the same church that
the clinic will be at on Monday and Tuesday.

By the way, people around here are telling us that tomorrow is The Global
Day of Prayer for the Church and that most churches in Honduras will be
participating in it.

Ok. We’re having a great time. Hope all of you are well.

___________________
Taido Chino

Today was our first day of working the medical brigade and it has been a long one! It started with morning devotions at 6am. Erin McGhee shared great thoughts from Jeremiah and 2 Corinthians. Breakfast was at 6:15 and we were sitting on a school bus by 7:00. The drive to the brigade site was probably 1 ½ hours away and on our way there we would pick up the various other translators and medical staff that would be helping throughout the day. We arrived at the church hosting the clinic and began to set up. The pastor and several of the church members were there to help facilitate the day.

After some introductions and prayer, work began in earnest. Several of our team members were working in the evangelism stations and for some it was their first time to both share and lead people to Christ. Several other team member worked in the children’s ministry area singing, playing, sharing their faith, then washing their hair – which one WGO staff likes to call “upside-down feet washing.” A couple other people stayed busy working the pharmacy which is really just several trunks filled with medications and vitamins. Everything was well labeled and so dispensing the meds was fairly efficient. Mark and Rob assisted with the dental stations today and lots of cavities were filled and teeth pulled. Debbie, Rebekah, and Julie worked the medical station today (and will be every  day).

It is hard really to describe all that went on. The experience is fairly overwhelming. People were waiting in a long line as we arrived and people were sent away without being seen at the end of the day. The accessibility of medical care we have back home is a luxury that these Hondurans simply don’t have.

Well like I said, we’re all pretty worn out, but very grateful to be here. I’m running out of words to describe the day. So maybe a few pictures can fill in the gaps left by my lack of words…
___________________
Taido Chino

Howdy friends,

Just wanted you to know we’ve had a great day. Our day was spent traveling to Rancho Ebenezer and having some time there. Some of the team played soccer with the kids. We heard about the ministry that they carry out there to children. Lunch and then a tour of the facility that was cut short by a rainstorm that sort of forced us off the mountain.
A big “highlight” of the day was our bus (we are being transported in a school bus) breaking down on our way to the Ranch. It wasn’t at all dangerous, just a little inconvenient. They dispatched some vans from the Ranch and they not only brought us there but also had to drive us all the way back to the Mission House (about a 2 hour ride).
When we got home, we loaded up the cargo truck for our first day on brigade tomorrow. We’ll be heading to our first of two days at a church in the area.
Hope you are all well!

___________________
Taido Chino

Around 4:00 am Wednesday morning, this group of adventurers met up at FN and headed to the airport to catch their flight to Honduras. The group is varied: adults and students (many of whom graduated from high school this past week). They are going with World Gospel Outreach to help with medical clinics in and around the city of Tegucigalpa, and will likely see several thousand people at those clinics in the next week. Over the years, quite a few people from FN have traveled to Honduras with WGO, helping out in various ways. It’s been a few years, though, and we are excited to have a group going back now.

Our group will also spend time loving on the children in the community there – something that many of the students have done before, on mission trips to Chicago and Kentucky. We know that they look forward to being the physical presence of Jesus in this way. Finally, they will spend a good deal of their trip sharing their faith with the people that they meet – opening up God’s word to clearly tell the Gospel. They may find this task to be the most challenging part of their trip, but also eagerly anticipate what God will do through them.

We’d love for you to join with us in praying for these people – both the ones that are on the trip, and the ones that will meet them in Honduras. The things that will happen over the next week will have far-reaching effects on the lives of those going to help, and those receiving it. We expect that God will be evident in all of it, and can’t wait to here how He was when they come back!

Medicines Needed

• Children’s Chewable Vitamins – 25,000 Tablets
• Adult Multi-Vitamins – 15,000 each week
• Tylenol Extra Strength 500 mg — 10,000 each week
• Ibuprofen (Advil, Motrin) 200 mg — 7,500 each week
• Loratadine 10 mg (Claritin) — 6,000 each week
• Antacid Tablets (Tums, Maalox) — 4,500 each week
• Zantac or Pepcid — 3,000 each week
• Naproxen (Aleve) — 1,000 each week
• Shampoo, Family Size Bottles — 8 each week
• Conditioner, Family Size Bottles — 4 each week
• Lice Killing Shampoo 8 oz Bottles – 24 each week

Other Supplies

• Latex Gloves – Powder Free, All sizes (Extremely Critical Need)
• White Out or Corrector Tape (Critical Need)
• Avery Printer Labels #8160 (Critical Need)
• Antifungal Cream (Lotrimin, Clotrimazole) (Critical Need)
• Printer Cartridge for HP F340 & HP OfficeJet 4355 — #21 Black & #22 Color (Extremely Critical Need)
• Eye Drops – Natural Tears (Extremely Critical Need)
• Zip top Plastic Bags – Sizes – Snack, Sandwich, Quart, 2″ x 2″, 2″ x 3″, 3″ x 3″ (Extremely Critical Need)
• Twin Sheet Sets — Fitted, Flat & Pillow Case (Critical Need)
• Antibiotic Creams (Neosporin, Polysporin) (Extremely Critical Need)
• Latex Gloves (Non-sterile) – All Sizes (Extremely Critical Need)
• Extension Cords (Heavy Duty) (Critical Need)
• Decongestant and Saline Nasal Sprays (Extremely Critical Need)
• Printer Cartridge for LexMark Printer — LexMark 44XL Black (Critical Need)
• Anti-itch/Hydrocortisone Cream (Critical Need)
• Baby Wipes (Extremely Critical Need) Qty. = 10 pkgs/month
• 2″ x 2″ Gauze Pads Non-sterile (comes in long packages) & Sterile 10 ‘ x 10′ Flat Tarps (Critical Need)
• Iron (ferrous sulfate) tablets (Critical Need)
• Scissors, Full-size (Extremely Critical Need)
• Printer Cartridge – Canon #40 and #41
• Heavy Duty Pad Locks (Critical Need)
• Printer Cartridge – for LexMark Printer–LexMark 44XL Black (Critical Need)
• AAA Batteries (Critical Need)
• Vaginal Yeast Infection Treatments (Extremely Critical Need)
• Cough/Cold Tablets – Adult (Extremely Critical Need)
• Allergy Meds (Claritin, Zyrtec, Loratadine, Benadryl Capsules) (Critical Need)
• Small bottles for lotion or travel size bottles of lotion (Extremely Critical Need)
• Diaper Rash Cream (Extremely Critical Need)
• Stool Softeners (Docosate 100 mg) (Extremely Critical Need)

Why are we learning the story?

What happens after we know it?

We get to be a part of it! We have the chance to become part of the big story God is telling, part of the redemptive WORD of God in our community.

Sunday, May 6, we’re becoming the WORD on the street.

Many of you were here a few years ago when we first did a Sunday like this.  Instead of coming to church, we wanted to BE the church.  We closed the doors of the Fellowship North building and went out into our community, serving in multiple ways.

We’re doing that again on May 6.  We can’t think of a better way to celebrate the WORD than to be the WORD on the street.

So what’s happening right now?

We are in the planning stages and need your help.

• We need MANY projects, of all types, shapes, sizes, locations, and skills.

• YOU are our best resource.  You live, work, and play in this community.

• So here’s the question for YOU: Where can a group of people from Fellowship North make a difference in a day?

The best projects are the DIY’s [Design It Yourself] – ones where you have a connection and you know what needs to happen.

It might be a yard cleaning project for a neighbor; it might be an organization you work with that could use some help cleaning; it might be a school project we can lend a hand to. 

We are looking for projects that are large and small.

If you have an idea, please let us know.  You can email Meghan Griffith mgriffith@fellowshipnorth.net  or pick up a project card at the connecting point and return it there.

We are doing our planning in March and then everyone will be signing up for projects in April.  Mark your calendar now for Sunday, May 6: WORD on the street!

________________________________

Need an idea of what it might look like? Here’s a video from a few years ago…

I picked this book up in the Children’s Department at our library a while back.  It is a haunting history of sugar.  I had never understood how much the desire for sugar in England (and around the world) drove the slave trade in the 1700s.

In the bibliography, I found that a book was often sourced called Bury the Chains, which I’ve been reading this month.  It’s a history of the battle against slavery in England.

This book tells the fascinating individual and collective stories of a handful of men who are responsible for finally bringing an end to slavery. On the cover of the book to the left is Olaudah Equiano, whose autobiography was a key factor in the fight against slavery.  Somehow, because slavery was happening so far away from home for so many people in England, they connected to the brutality of Equiano’s story.  In addition to writing his story down, Equiano told it to crowds of people all over England.  People grabbed hold of his personal testimony and began to stand up against slavery.

One of the ways that English people bonded together and stood up against slavery was to boycott sugar. It continues to surprise me how much sugar shows up in this story.  Both the desire for it and the refusal of it seem to have moved the world in significant ways. There are lots of numbers in both of these books, but this following quote most illustrated for me the need for the sugar boycott in England.

One final set of grim numbers underlines the way slaves on sugar plantations were systematically worked to an early death.  When slavery ended in the United States, some 400,000 slaves imported over the centuries had grown to a population of nearly four million.  When in ended in the British West Indies, total slave imports of two million left a surviving slave population of only about 670,000.  The tiny French island of Martinique took in more slave imports over the years than all thirteen North American colonies, later states, put together.  The Caribbean was a slaughterhouse.

Reading the first book, Sugar Changed the World, was enough to make me want to harvest my own sugar in the backyard instead of buying it off the shelves at the store.  Because even today, sugar and chocolate are among the most inhumanely harvested crops in the world.

The abolitionists succeeded because they mastered one challenge that still faces anyone who cares about social and economic justice: drawing connections between the near and the distant.  We have long lived in a world where everyday objects embody labor in another corner of the earth.

________________________________________

Today’s post is by Alison Chino – she blogs here and twitters here. Married to Taido and mom to Cole, Mary Polly, Ben, and Simon, she loves cooking, reading, yoga, and travelling.

If you’ve ever wondered “Why do we even observe Lent?” – you’re not alone. There’s some great background, explanation, and what-it-means-for-us-today in
this post from Glenn Packiam. He’s the pastor of New Life Church in Colorado Springs, CO.

Or, if you’re looking for a creative way to walk through the season you might try picking one thing from this post by Rachel Held Evans. She’s compiled 40 different things you could try during Lent.

Finally, don’t forget that you can join one of the three Ash Wednesday observances tomorrow, February 22, at FN. Come at 7:00 am, noon, or 6:00 pm for a half-hour time of reflection.

- -

Right now, Taido and I are walking with the middle school students over at elevate through a new series called chazown.  That’s the Hebrew word for “vision”.  And because it’s Hebrew, that “ch” sound has that got-something-stuck-in-your-throat-cough sound you hear sometimes from fancy schmancy pastors in the pulpit.  The kids love it.

Through chazown, we’re asking these 6^th-8^th graders to get in touch with God’s vision for their lives.  But also, to get in touch with the vision of the church they attend.  Fellowship North has it’s own dream.  It’s own chazown.  We’ve read it.  Heard it.  Maybe even seen it.  But have we felt it?  Have we embraced it?  Have we made it our own?

            To mobilize a racially-unified family of God,

            Called out as the presence of Jesus in our world,

            To pursue His mission:  all people reconciled to God.

- -

I believe it starts with our students.  Not because I’m paid to believe that, and not because after school specials told me so growing up – but because the lunch room tells me so.  That place continues to be The Great Indicator.  When Taido and I visit the high schools, we see the world as it currently is.  Not how we want it to be.  Not how others spin it to us.  But how it is: right here, right now, clear as day.

The lunch room is divided; economics, status, and race all creating their own splits all across what could be a unified body.

But what if that division became united?  What if these students caught the vision?  What if they had their own chazown?  What if they lived out Dr. King’s dream?

We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of Now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood. Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God’s children.

Do you feel that urgency?  That push for change to come – today?

As we fight to become a body of believers that is racially unified, a family of God that equally reflects the community that surrounds these walls, may we recognize not only the injustices in the world, even the broken parts of our own community, but may we also grab hold of the need for now.

In his speech, Dr. King repeats over and over, “I have a dream today.”  Injustice to justice.  Unrighteous to righteous.  But Dr. King wasn’t just a dreamer.  Dreamers dream dreams.

He was also a doer.

Do you have a dream today?  A vision?  A chazown?

Write it down.  Share it.  See it, feel it, embrace it.  Make it your own.

See it through.  Now.

________________________________

Bobby Harrison is on staff at FN, where he works with middle and high school students. His precious wife Amy is also part of our staff. Their son Abe and dog Zeke are not yet on staff, although they do visit whenever they can. Bobby blogs here, and sometimes here too.