Emergency Response Team - I DID IT!!!!

I did it!!! What did I do you ask? I completed the main test to become a member of the South Alabama AmeriCorps Emergency Response Team (ERT). What was the test you ask? Walking 3 miles, carrying a 45lb backpack, within 45 mins time. Oh that's easy you say... ya RIGHT!! That's what I said the first time we all tried it.. HA! As of right now there are 4 official members of the S. AL ERT, myself, Venicia (Nicci), Monika and Ethan, who is the team leader. Well 2 weeks ago we all met at a school track with El Williams (program director) to do this pack test. 3 miles.. 45 mins.. cake!.. Not so much cake... Ethan was the only person of the 4 that made it the first try.. and Monika had just finished backpacking across the US.. superfit.. guess what.. nope.. didn't make the time. So with Ethan as the new team leader we met a few days the next week for training.. to take the test again.. Monika went ahead and took the test the 2nd day we were training and passed... Venicia and I.. well we wanted to build up our strength a bit more.. and our courage! Well we all met at the track again today and Venicia and I, with Ethan and Monika cheering us on.. retook the test.. and PASSED!!!! WOO HOOO YAYYY US.

So what will I be doing on this South Alabama AmeriCorps Emergency Response Team you ask? Well responding to disasters across the 48 states. ANY disaster, ANY time, ANY where.. Those forest fires in Georgia that you just heard about on the news? If the team had been assembled in time.. we'd have been there. That town in Kansas that a tornado just wiped off the map? We'd have been there. Hurricane on the coast? We'll be there. Earthquake in Cali? We'll be there. Serving as a first response team, clearing roads, stablizing citizens and preparing the way for long term recovery groups, troops, volunteers and other emergency personnel.

The next step in our training is called The Quest... they're going to take the team (us) and drop us off in the middle of the wilderness. With only minimal necessities and sleeping bags (no tents) We have 2 days, using only a compass and the sun/moon to find our way out! We'll spend an entire day hiking, then camp out overnight.. (again NO TENT!) in the middle of the woods, then hike the rest of the way out the following day. The purpose of this is not only to test our survival skills, but also to act as a team building activity. PRAY FOR ME! lol... nah.. just kidding I'm not worried.. ok maybe I'm not kidding.. it never hurts to have someone praying for you!!

On another note.. yet still related.. we're still recruiting members!!! There are several who have applied and a few who are in the interview process, but we need 20 members to complete the team. So if serving others in time of need is something you're into, working in sparse and often rugged conditions sounds good to you, earning a $4,725 education award (at the end of the one year term) that can be used to take college classes, technical classes or pay off an existing student loan sounds like a plan.. then hit me up for more information!! It will be an experience you will never forget!!!!

If you want to check out the Volunteer Mobile website, see what the program is about and maybe fill out an application you can go to Volunteer Mobile, ERT

The Team!!

Venicia, Monika, Me, Ethan

Angelina Jolie - Notes From My Travels

Angelina Jolie is the Goodwill Ambassador for the UNHCR (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees). This book is her journal & notes during missions she took to Africa, Cambodia, Pakistan & Ecuador. I started reading this book yesterday & am a little over half way through... I tell you.. my admiration for this woman grows more each day... the things she describes take your breath away. break your heart and fill you with indescribeable anger all at once.

It amazes me how little we know about what goes on in other parts of the world. During the Rwanda Genocide.. the Khmer Rouge & Pot Pol killed & tortured people in ways that you can't even imagine. In the prisons where people were held & tortured there are pictures of the things that happened... Mothers holding their babies in their arms.. dead with drills in their head. They would take drills and drill into people skulls until it killed them. They would take babies & hang them upside down by their feet & smash their heads against trees until they were dead. They forced parents to cut off the limbs of their children or spouse while they were alive, doctors to cut off hands of babies or they and their whole families would be killed. In this book, this journal of her travels.. Angelina Jolie sees first hand the death & destruction so many refugees suffered.


The US State Department estimates that there are STILL 60 to 70 MILLION landmines in the ground worldwide. In Cambodia.. children play in yards that have not yet been demined... amputees, victims of landmines often work together to try and farm land to provide for their familes. She writes of a man who has no arms below the elbow and is blind, from stepping on a mine. His 5 year old son is his eyes & has to help in the field... the field that hasn't been demined.


I encourage EVERYONE to read this book, research, read, study, do what you can to learn about the horrific conditions your fellow human beings are living in daily... All because Organizations like the UNHCR don't receive enough funding to help these people build new lives. Their homes are mud huts, or boards leaned against each other, they sleep on the dirt ground, they consider themselves blessed to have a few ounces of food a day... The courage, strength and pure heart of these people come through in Angie's notes and though I may never have the opportunity to let her know, I thank her for sharing her travels with us & inspiring me to even further see what I can do to make a difference.


For more info on Angelina Jolie and her work with the UNHCR visit UNHCR.org

Life, Love and God's Plan

As 2006 comes to an end and the New Year begins, I find myself looking forward with uncertainty, apprehension and a seemingly insurmountable number of questions. At the same time I find myself feeling excitement, anticipation and confidence about what the future holds, although I have absolutely no idea what that may be. Seems I'm kind of at odds with myself huh.

In one moment I've never been more sure of what I want in life, what my dreams are, what my passion is, and in the next I am floundering, clueless about where to go and how to get there. I had dinner with a good friend tonight and we chatted about life, about dreams, goals, and the people who have them and what it takes to accomplish them. We also talked about people who are perfectly content to live life day to day, never thinking beyond that very moment or dreaming of anything bigger. People who are fine just working a job, living their lives day by day, and we both came to the conclusion that neither of us are the latter type of person. Here is where the conundrum lies.

I once believed God had a specific plan for my life that included a specific person. A person I loved more than I thought humanly possible. I had no idea what that plan was, or what I needed to do to accomplish it, just that he was a part of it. Maybe I should reword that belief. I believed that He had a plan for his life and I was a part of it. "His", being the (prophesied) love of my life, God's chosen one for me. I never really believed in prophecy before, didn't even know it existed other than in stories in the Old Testament. But a new adventure into a new way of believing seemed to make things so much clearer. Or did it?

Let me expound a little. I met this guy.. online of all places. Not my type at all, I didn't think he was even a little bit cute. Here's where the "it really only matters what is on the inside" saying comes in. Love is blind? Absolutely. Positively. Unequivocally. So anyway, I fell for him. Never did think he was cute by the way. Again I say. Love is blind. So a very short courtship and 3 ½ years later the fairy tale ended. But during the story some very profound things happened. I learned that I could lose all respect for myself in the name of "love".

I learned that people have the ability to "read" other people and abuse them for their own benefit, and I learned I think most importantly that when someone is so terrified of failure they refuse to try, then they are doomed to fail. And most sadly that in the midst of their failure they will pull those most dear to them down with them. That became the point where I had to separate myself. As deep and true as my love was, it would never be enough to overcome his fear. He had to learn to love himself first, before he could every truly learn to love anyone else. I hope one day he succeeds.

Anyway, back to God and His plan for my life. God, being God and unable to lie, can only speak what is and will be. Right? Before I go any further let me clarify that I have a deep unshakeable belief and faith in the Lord and my Savior, Jesus Christ. However there are still so many things that I still and may never understand about how and why He does some of the things He does. So if God speaks a Word into your life, then it's Word. True, solid and unshakeable. After all He said, "Let there be light", and there was. So if He says it then it is that it is that it is. Right?

Now say the Word God speaks concerns someone else, and that someone else decides that it's too hard to live the life he was called to live and takes an alternate path. One that has less risk of failure, or so he thinks, after all the failure to try something is failure in itself. So, the other half of your Word is out of the Word. Where does that leave you? Or should I say me? We are talking about me after all. (Stories just sound so much better about someone else) Does that mean God's word fell void? According to the Bible that's not possible. So, again, where does that leave me? Does God have an alternate Word for me?

I mean just in case the other party involved decided not to play along. If so that would mean the original Word wasn't going to work. Again, mistakes not possible from God. Right? So what do you do… look for a new dream, a new path, a new… what? I wish I knew. That's one part of my confusion. Probably a main part, but there are so many other levels and layers to it.

My dream, my ambition, my goal in life is to work with an organization like the UNHCR. Working in Africa, Asia or Southern America helping people and children. Educating people on basic healthcare, sanitation, farming, sharing God's love with people who have no hope beyond the next minute. I see myself in a small village, playing with the native children, helping a family build a safe home, building a school or medical center for a village.

I'd love to teach people how to use what they have available to live healthy, happy, successful lives; their way. Not ours. Seems like a pretty big dream. It seems like such a small thing to me, to use the gifts, skills and education God has blessed me with to help others. I don't have the right not to. My life has been so incredibly blessed. How could I not share that with people who have so little? Yet it seems an insurmountable goal.

What do I do to get where I want to be? How do I make the right connections to end up doing what I dream of doing? What if I get there and just can't handle it? What if I never get there at all? What if I spend the rest of my life alone, wondering how on earth to accomplish my dreams instead of getting out there and doing something, anything to bring me closer to them?

In addition to those dreams are the dreams of having a family. Being married to the man of my dreams, the man God chose for me, and having a beautiful child who holds my heart and soul in his or her tiny hand. Or maybe one day adopting a foreign child who would otherwise never have the kind of life available here, a child whom without me would end up dying as an infant from disease or starvation. With adoption, what if I never find that one perfect soul mate, could I do it on my own?

Do I sacrifice my dream of a probable low income but richly fulfilling life as a servant to others and work a day to day job that affords the income necessary to adopt or even support a natural born child of my own? Or do I forfeit my dreams of finding love and being a parent to devote myself to a life of service? Can I have both? Can I have either?

What if I'm too scared to try, what if I try and I fail? What if I try and succeed? What if? There's a song by DC Talk called "What if I Stumble" ..

The greatest single cause of atheism in the world today
Is Christians who acknowledge Jesus with their lips
Then walk out the door and deny him by their lifestyle.
That is what an unbelieving world simply finds unbelievable."

Is this one for the people? Is this one for the Lord?
Or do I simply serenade for things I must afford?
You can jumble them together, my conflict still remains
Holiness is calling, in the midst of courting fame
Cause I see the trust in their eyes
Though the sky is falling
They need Your love in their lives
Compromise is calling

What if I stumble, what if I fall?
What if I lose my step and I make fools of us all?
Will the love continue when my walk becomes a crawl?
What if I stumble, and what if I fall?

What if I stumble, what if I fall?
You never turn in the heat of it all
What if I stumble, what if I fall?

Father please forgive me for I can not compose
The fear that lives within me
Or the rate at which it grows
If struggle has a purpose on the narrow road you've carved
Why do I dread my trespasses will leave a deadly scar
Do they see the fear in my eyes? Are they so revealing?
This time I cannot disguise all the doubt I'm feeling


What if I stumble, what if I fall?
What if I lose my step and I make fools of us all?
Will the love continue when my walk becomes a crawl?
What if I stumble, and what if I fall?

What if I stumble?
Everyone's got to crawl when you know that
You're up against a wall, it's about to fall
Everyone's got to crawl when you know that

I hear You whispering my name [You say]
"My love for You will never change" [never change]

What if I stumble, what if I fall?
What if I lose my step and I make fools of us all?
Will the love continue when my walk becomes a crawl?
What if I stumble, and what if I fall?

What if I stumble, what if I fall?
You never turn in the heat of it all
What if I stumble, what if I fall?
You are my comfort, and my God

Is this one for the people, is this one for the Lord?

Are my dreams mine?……… or His?