valentine

A dear friend's son went in for heart surgery this week.
He's doing great... holey heart has been all patched up, now he can go back to terrorizing all of us.
(He's honestly one of my favourite teenaged people)

One of the things I get to do at my job is help people get ready for bed, in some cases- it means helping with personal care... and in some cases it means winding down for the day and praying with them before they go to sleep (at their request).

This weekend, we were talking about the things we'd like to pray about, and I mentioned my friend's surgery. I was asked what the surgery was for, and when I replied "to fix a hole in his heart, it doesn't work properly" the individual I was speaking with became very quiet... a serious and worried look crossed her face.

"Does that mean he can't love people all the way?"









**For Matty- insert here a story/poorly timed entrance into a conversation you didn't want to hear**

*** for everyone else- seriously, my friends Kim and Jason have the greatest kids... first post ever on this blog? It was about their daughter**

...

there was some conclusion.. thanks for your prayers, thoughts and positive energy.... I took Saturday off from life - read an entire book, bbq'd my dinner, had a nap, went to the bean... But I should have written an update.

Some things went down on thursday that gave us a glimpse of what our friends at GTI have to live with. The difference is- we can stand up for ourselves, and not live in fear of the repercussions of standing up... One of our team went over on Thursday to get the full story and handled the situation beautifully- so well in fact, that property guy called him that evening to "apologize" and invite us back to put on breakfast and our usual activities.
As one of our team said

Bottom line, everything is back to normal. I used to think I knew what normal was.

continue to pray for the team... things like this can take a lot out of us. Also, please pray for the summer, that we'd be able to find a few people who would be willing to help out for one or two nights so that some of us can take a week off.
Pray for E- that she wouldn't take the brunt of people's frustrations, and for N as he decides what to do next in regards to the tribunal- we heard that he may have been bullied enough that he's decided to drop the case... not cool. And most importantly, pray for our friends at GTI, that there would be some peace- and maybe some things go right for them.

I guess I should add some praise to that end too... praise for the way we are being supported (in prayer and financially... and thru gifts of meals and coffee!) Praise for resolution.. for safety... for friendships, for concerts and stories, and for no dead mice in the milk jug this week.


more at Ruth's blog

uncool

There are a lot of things heavy going on.
for those of you who pray, keep my friends in your prayers, for those of you who don't, keep them in your thoughts.

just to fill you in.

Ok, so I've mentioned GTI in the past... and now that I've talked with my pastor about the whole thing... I can fill you guys in on it too. Since it's a small town I'm going to leave out names/places... and we'll just keep calling GTI... GTI is a group, GTM is a place where GTI does what it does.... confused? Great.

Prayer Ninjas... take this info and start fighting.
For newer readers... my blog first started out because I was too lazy to write a prayer letter when I went overseas....I didn't like the way my email inbox would get cluttered with returned messages. It's going to have a smattering of updates again mixed in with whatever it is that this blog has become....
Here's the letter that went out to my church....


We often are challenged to be involved in outreach… to think of those who aren’t as fortunate, to care for the poor, the widow, the orphan…. I’ve been blessed twice to head overseas and do just that. And I’ve been feeling God’s pull to do something more. Someone posed some questions awhile back that really got me thinking “do you know any poor people? Are you friends with poor people?”

Now, I’m headed out into a modern day Corinth.
It’s in my own home town.

I’ve been a part of a group for the past year helping to put on a potluck supper once a week in an old residential motel. It’s stinky. Raccoons sometimes dine with us. Most agencies in town have turned a blind eye to the poverty that resides there... and the building codes that it violates. But God has been working up something big, and I get to be a part of it. (and so do you with your prayers!!!)

About 110 people are living at GTM right now, and GTI (the group that I am a part of) has been involved for over two years. Mostly we’ve done dinners, slowly building trust with people who have seen their trust broken over and over. We help with advocacy, we encourage, we listen, we learn, we hope, and we pray. “Can you do me a prayer?”.

And now, more recently, we’re doing church.
It’s not something we set out to do… God sort of grew it up in the cracks himself. As John Burke put it, “God is still doing what God has always done in every generation… constructing His church out of the most hopeless situation”. A lot of people who live in GTM feel like they’re in a hopeless situation. There are mental health issues, drug and alcohol abuse, pain, and whole litany of issues that just wear people down. BUT… they want “to do” church with us.

Now, it’s not church like any of us have ever seen before… you don’t often go garage sale hopping with a friend and ask if they think you have enough ashtrays for church… you don’t often find yourself singing Johnny Cash in a church… or stop to talk about how rehab is going in the middle of a service. “Church of the Blue Haze” (as we jokingly started calling it… the name has since stuck) doesn’t have an order of service, but we have the Bible, and we share Christ’s love in the best way we can.

I’ll try to keep everyone up to date as best I can with events from GTI, so we can have more people helping- people to keep accountable to. We appreciate and NEED your prayers more than anything else. This is a very emotionally draining venture, and a very lonely one too… please pray for strength and God’s guidance in all that we do as we try to serve at GTM.

I don’t consider myself “leaving” KCC, I’ll be back from time to time (gonna need to recharge with you guys!) consider me (once again) someone you’re sending out into the mission field (the plane ticket is just much cheaper this time!). KCC will always be my home church.
Thanks everyone!
Bess

new things

if you're the praying type, send out a prayer for Trisha who's in getting her new lungs RIGHT NOW!!!!

oh.. the wonders of the blog community!

compile and file. then burn the file.

I'm hoping that as of tonight, I'll be able to say "remember that time we had the landlord from hell?". As opposed to "Guess what our psycho landlord did this time".

Pray that the pieces would fall together.
I'm sick of the heart burn and high blood pressure.

Doctor come QUICK!!!!

Disclaimer:: the following story may be too much information... unless you like poop stories.

I can only write this because Matty wrote THE EXACT same thing this week..... and so I don't feel so stupid now.

So Monday, my day off, I spent the day watching movies and being lazy in preparation for my two week stretch at work... For dinner I made a nice mess of grilled root veggies in olive oil and rosemary and garlic...mmmmm, Dalton made chicken, it was a masterpiece really.
Tuesday at around noon I went for the "long call" (say it with a Ugandan child's accent please, it makes it less poop sounding.. almost like a pleasant conversation instead of the void that it was) (yes that's right... I mean a crap) To my horror the results were SO full of blood that it started to tint the water red...
I started to sweat... I was near tears... I was DIEING!!!! and so young!!!
I pulled myself together and went back to work... in the back of my mind writing my will, trying to figure out how I'd break the news to my family and friends... gathering the courage to call my family doctor to begin the series of tests that would point to my end.
I was terrified.
Work ended a few hours later...and as I pulled my belongings out of the car I thought about the nice time I'd had the day before, and how there were to be so few more like it, I thought about the yummy meal I'd had..... and how there would be few like it too...
yummy meal? what made it so yummy? spices and roots...
oh yes, those tasty red beets had added so much flavour too ...
red beets....
OOooooOOOOOooooh
right...
I'm not dieing.

Better late than never

I've been having some technical difficulties, sorry, this might show up twice.

ALSO: could someone tell my dad that I can't get any email to him??????? PLEASE! Ask him to email me.


From: Lady Lesley Marie Boileau To: Subject: Jet lagging! Sent: September 23, 2004 9:32:17 PM

Hey Ninjas, ok, so some of you have been left out of the info loop for awhile as to where God has been leading me, so you'll all just have to go to the website to get a little caught up! www.parsleyseasonings.blogspot.com
So, praise God, I'm currently in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Waiting for my connecting flight to Lome, Togo. Honestly, this trip has been such a blessing already. So I was leaving toronto and thinking to myself "who in their right mind flies to Togo Via:Frankfurt, AND Addis? I'm not going to recognise anyone, I won't have a travel buddy... not even one that I just follow and never actually talk to (you know the type? the lady with the BIG hair that you know must be reliable enough that if you follow at a distance you'll end up in the right place) SO, I get to Frankfurt and i'm TRYING DESPERERATLY to find my flight listed... and it's not. and I hear this voice beside me pipe up "you can't find Ethiopia either?" I turn and there's this girl close to my age, big M.E.C. bag on her back. she continues and says "I read the tag on your luggage when I was in line in Toronto and I've kinda been following you, I'm going to Lome too!" So, not only do I have a nice travel buddy, BUT (and this is so God's work!) She's a Christian, working in Benin for 3 months, and her original flight was last week but it was cancelled and she ended up on my flight! and we had seats together to Addis!!!!!! And we've got some pretty crazy background similarities.... so cool. I left T.O. Wednesday at 10:45 pm, I think it's thursday 5:30pm in Canada now, but we've had a 9 hour flight and a 7 hour flight and 4 hours layover AND it's Friday morning (early, but friday) I think we've got another 6 hours flight left. ok, gotta stop typing now, this will probably be the ONLY BIG email I send, I'll send out little notices when I've updated the website instead to avoid overloading my account with returned emails. If you reply, don't include the orginal message to save some space in my inbox ok? thanks!!!! PLEASE email, I miss you all already, and I love to hear from you.... keeps away the lonlieness. Peace prayers and crunchy granola, Lesley if you get this twice, let me know and i'll try to fix it



From: Lady Lesley Marie Boileau To: parsleyseasonings.norton@blogspot.com Subject: letter 2 Sent: September 25, 2004 3:29:30 PM
Hey Ninjas So Thursday I wrote to you, but the message got messed up so only a few received it. It MIGHT have gone to the website www.parsleyseasonings.blogspot.com I’m not sure, at my last test it hadn’t worked yet…. If you’re a Prayer ninja and you’ve been left out of the loop as to what’s happening, you’d better go check the site to find out… OR if you’re new to the prayer ninja scene . Anyway! I’m in Togo and I’m alive!! Praise God!! So at the last update I was in Ethiopia, my flight path was a little on the long side but it saved me a ton… and, it also provided me with countless stories for future postings… Ok, so we were sitting in the plane on the tarmac and we’d been there for about 30 mins, so people were starting to grumble; those who were awake started to grumble, it was 3am local time. Then an aplogetic voice stumbles through 4 languages explaining our situation, eventually he gets to English, and I hear “we have sent someone to the store to buy a part for our plane, he will return in twenty mins. Until that time we wait. Thank you for flying with us, we are sorry” ok… so what PLANE PARTS store is open at 3am, what part, and how do I get off the plane?
We arrived in Lagos and hour late, then arrived in Lome only 45mins late… pretty good. I was met by one of the SIL staff (Wycliffe Togo) Jim Green and he helped me thru all the ins and outs of visas, he had a special pass to meet me right off the plane and to come thru customs… now I’m at the Lome guest house, and the whole Friesen family is here! Marv met me at the airport, And the rest of the family (Edith and the kids Lisa, Beth, Tyler, Simon and Michael) came in the evening to the guest house. I guess we’ll be staying here until Wednesday as Marv has to return to Canada, his mom is very sick with cancer so he was called home… We’ll head up to Kara (my home for the next three months) then. If your getting this message twice, let me know Ok, I should get off the computer, I’ve got lots to tell you and show you (via pictures) but that will wait. Love you all Peace prayers and crunchy granola Lesley Guess what!?!? You can write to me c/o
Lesley Boileau
SIL
BP 57
Kara
Togo West Africa

A settled heart

something I'm finding I have a little more of now, a settled heart. I know that God has all the plans worked out, even though I do not.

For example; I have been overly stressed for the passed few months on how the heck all my support was going to come in, and how was I suppost to do that and where do I start and whom do I approach and who would ever want to help and how does one go about writing letters of support and who's got money to give and..... *whew!* I got so overwhelmed with the process that I just ended up doing nothing to be organized. And God stepped in. Only because I'd finally stepped out of the way. Why did I even waste time worrying? "Who among you by worrying can add a single hour to his life?" Matt 6:27... dude, what a waste of hours!
God is good, support is in... amen?


so, either there will be a picture posted above this writing or a bunch of gobble-de-gook typing. If there is a picture: this was sent to me by one of the kids I have the priveledge of working with in Togo. It's taken on their way to one of the churches.... very cool.
if there's no picture, apologies all around, I'll get this figured out sometime. Sometime soon I hope. ok, there's no picture... close your eyes and imagine this , a grey land rover type thing criving through quite the puddle... spray everywhere... oh, just come to Bagot St. I've got it set as our wallpaper on the computer.

Does anyone know of an inexpensive (but fully functioning) secondhand digital camera which I could buy?

ready.... break!

Yo team!

ok, ninjas, time is marching marching marching, and things are getting into gear. Praise God! I've gathered all my support, so now it's just a matter of (cleaning my room) packing!
but first a huge prayer request, that we (we being Wycliffe Canada, Togo-Benin, Togo-Kara and myself) would be able to figure out how to work the money thing. I guess most of the time people have paid out of their own pockets and then been reimbursed when they returned to Canada(those who have gone short term like myself) However, that's not really an option for me as I don't have my own money, I've got the money that God's given for my use (through you guys) sitting in my account at Wycliffe Canada. So anyway, pray that we figure out some sort of billing option so that I can access the money in the account... ok, did any of that make sense?
Also pray for a meeting that I've got tonight.
ummmm
ok, so much has happened since I last posted. Finished the week at Joy, so good! Went camping with friends, also so good, painted the kitchen at work... pretty good, rabbit's toe got broken NOT so good. ok, had a conversation at the Sheffield's the other night about people's reactions to pain, and how most adults, even most teens don't cry for pain.. they may swear and carry on, but if you broke your toe, you weren't likely to cry. I cried over a broken toe... it wasn't my own though it was norton's. no fear, the vet said as long as it heals straight it won't need to be amputated.
I have some pictures that were sent to me from togo... but I can't figure out how to post them right now...
gotta run
:)