Courageous With Hope

Thailand planning is going as much as before. More details. More emails. More numbers. The excitement to again be in a third world nation daily grows. The thrill comes in thinking through navigating foreign public transportation, the aroma of spices from street food vendors, playing with barefooted Burmese refugee children, and worshiping with believers in a language I cannot understand.

Little things increase the excitement to go. One morning I was in the library with the Swiss girls. There was a Native woman softly reading a children's book out loud to herself. I saw the humble spirit of this woman as she, a grown adult, sat in the children's corner, stumbling through books, teaching herself to read, as her young daughters played, speaking perfect English to each other.

Another morning there was snow flake making. While Andrina was only interested in shredding paper with scissors, a Chinese woman across the table struggled to teach her children how to fold the paper. I showed her how to properly fold and cut the paper to form different shapes. I taught this lady something I learnt in elementary school. In a few short weeks it will be reversed roles, where I will be learning what is basic to others for the first time.

The next closest trip, however, is Wednesday for me. The director and I will be joining a ministry called Carry The Cure and go to Hooper Bay, a Yup'ik village on the west coast of Alaska. Mid October, Hooper Bay experienced four suicides in 2 weeks. Carry The Cure seeks to carry the cure to suicide into Native Alaskan villages. The cure: a message of hope.

Not only is much of Alaska physically dark, but the spiritual darkness subsiding over many villages comes in the form of rape, incest, abuse, and alcoholism. Hooper Bay has a population where 50% of people are under the age of 18. 30% of homes are female ran with no male present. 41% of the population live under the poverty line with a 37% unemployment rate. There are no known residents with a four year college graduate certificate. Physical seclusion of villages secludes victims of such offenses from leaving. They are stuck. And so the cycle perpetuates. Two ways of escaping: suicide or hope. But hope must first be brought.

The attack in Paris. A CNN article entitled 'The World's Most Dangerous Place To Be Pregnant'. Displacement of Syrian men, women and children. Airstrikes over Lybia. They are international news headlines piercing the hearts of people globally. Within each of these are individuals with testimonies.

Then there are testimonies not making news headlines, some stories not even being recognized by those closest to us. Depression. fear of failure, feelings of purposelessness, perfectionists, eating too little, eating too much, anxiety, chronic headaches, bitterness, lack of love. These thoughts, feelings, and emotions are a reality to some, each unique from the next.

We carry with us testimonies of hope. It is through the blood of the Lamb and the word of our testimony we overcome. Our hearts are the tablets on which hope, restoration and reconciliation are written on.

The vision for joining with Carry the Cure is to partake in anti-bullying and suicide prevention activities in Hooper Bay schools. The reality being I can do nothing unless I allow my heart to become a tablet of stone for Abba to write upon, a tablet to be known and read by all. The light we seek to shine in Hooper Bay does not dismiss the darkness. The light is to shine into the darkness, clearly illuminating God's presence the entire time. The light is to shine redemption in each story, illuminating not another haunting statistic, rather a testimony of overcoming by the Lamb.

We are not alone. We are living stories. We are living hope. Let us be courageous with the stories of hope we carry.

"You'll need coffee shops and sunsets and road trips. Airplanes and passports and new songs and old songs. But people more than anything else. You will need other people and you will need to be that other person to someone else. A living, breathing, screaming invitation to believe better things."

-Jamie Tworkowski