Speaking at Church

My gut clenches, sweat beads on my upper lip, my mind races is twelve different directions, my mouth goes dry, and my hands shake—why?  Because I’m speaking at my church this evening.  And it’s not because anybody has twisted my arm—I want to do this.  When I’m in the US, I want to speak as often as possible to anyone who will listen about Europe as a mission field.  But I’ve always had a fear of public speaking, and even though it usually goes really well, and the audience is very sympathetic and supportive, that fear is lurking just out of sight, ready to make my voice crack or make me forget what I was going to say.

Fear of speaking in public is one of the most common fears around.  Most of us would rather face a roaring lion, armed with nothing but a Twinkie than speak in front of an audience.  But like I said, I want to do this.  Facing-down this fear is the measure of how strong my calling is for Europe.  If I didn’t do this, I would feel like I had abandoned my calling.

Europe is the forgotten mission field.  A professor of foreign missions at Abilene Christian University told me that he asks his students at the beginning of the semester what is the mission field with the most need.  They invariably answer Africa.  Then after he has demonstrated to them that Africa is far more Christian than Europe, he will ask them again, and many times the answer is still Africa.  The economic need tugs at their heartstrings, even though Europe is in far worse need spiritually.  Operation World calls Europe by far the “most secular, least Christian” continent on earth (pg. 79).  Europe also has the most un-reached people groups of any region in the whole world—including the Middle East.  Africa is now sending missionaries to Europe.

• Slavery – Human trafficking is epidemic in Europe because the relaxed borders have made it easier to transport people from Eastern Europe (primarily Ukraine, Czech Republic, Moldova, and Romania) to Western Europe (Italy, France, Spain, the Netherlands, and Germany).
• Poverty – People think of Europe as a rich peoples’ playground.  And it’s true that rich people do vacation in Europe, but the average European makes far less money than the average American, and lives a simpler life.  Furthermore, the third world exists throughout Europe at the edge of every city: in gypsy camps of staggering poverty.  The gypsy children live in shockingly unsanitary conditions.  Many gypsy children are denied an education due to their nomadic family life.  Gypsy children are expected to bring money back to the patriarchs, the grandparents.  They beg, steal, or work as prostitutes to bring money back to the family, and if they fail to bring back money or to bring back enough money, they are beaten.  Sometimes their legs are broken and set in crazy ways that will turn your stomach.  Sometimes their legs are cut off—giving them more sympathetic appeal.   Many gypsy children are sold to sex traffickers or organ traffickers.
• Homelessness – Homelessness is a huge problem.  Budapest has an estimated 30,000 homeless people.  I saw lots of homeless people when I was there, and the homeless of Budapest are unlike homeless people I’ve ever seen anywhere else.  There are so many of them that they have simply lost all hope.  They don’t even ask for money, they just curl up in doorways and in the subway entrances.  (This is all recounted in my book, Look, Listen, Love.)
• Suicide – Suicide is rampant throughout Europe, especially in the current economic climate.  Fourteen of the top twenty countries with the highest suicide rates are in Europe.  Switzerland legalized suicide in 1941, and under Swiss law, you do not have to have a lethal diagnosis to ask for physician-assisted suicide; you don’t even have to be Swiss!  That means that if someone is depressed and wants to end their life, they can go to Switzerland, which is conveniently in the middle of the continent, and pay a doctor to help them kill themselves, and they don’t have to get any kind of counseling.  In fact, the doctors would be against counseling because they make money on each suicide.  Now suicide is also legal in the Netherlands. In Milan, where suicide is still illegal, and Switzerland is only an hour away, about once a month or so, somebody jumps in front of a speeding subway train.  In fact, it is such a common occurrence that people have lost all sympathy for the victim and his or her family, instead they just become annoyed at the inconvenience that the suicide has caused them as they rush through their day.
• Drugs – The city of Amsterdam is uniquely problematic because they have de-criminalized both prostitution and marijuana.  Legalizing pot use has been discussed from time to time here in the US.  The arguments for legalization seem very logical and reasonable, particularly when it comes to saving taxpayer money and law enforcement manpower.  But before getting onto the bandwagon, you should take a trip to Amsterdam to see what legalized pot use looks like.  Marijuana is only legal in the marijuana coffeehouses, but it doesn’t stay in the coffeehouses.  And because pot is legal, tourists think that other drugs are also legal—they are not.  No matter how harmless you may think it is, the fact is that marijuana is a gateway drug.  The dealers of illegal drugs situate themselves along the canal in the Red Light district (more about that in a moment) and peddle their drugs to passers-by.  They don’t stand around looking villainous, but instead they are very friendly.  The dealers speak English and often the major European languages.   Amsterdam is the number one partying destination in Europe, possibly in the world.  So lots of young men travel to Amsterdam for legal sex with prostitutes and legal marijuana use.  Many of them are lured into trying the harder drugs as well.  The result is that the streets of Amsterdam are filthy with trash and vomit and people that are either homeless or too high to remember how to get back to where they are staying.  The streets are also very loud all night long, with the sounds of hell-raising.  There are so many people who are addicted to heroin that the city has started giving out free needles to try and keep the risk of HIV transmission low.  So the parks are full of addicts that are shooting-up.  And the free needle program has done nothing to stop the spread of HIV.  Prostitution – Legalized prostitution in Amsterdam was supposed to help prevent the spread of HIV by having the Dutch Minister of Health responsible for making sure that all the window girls stayed healthy and conducted business in ways that reduced the possibility of transmission (i.e. washing the customers and using condoms).  However, that has turned out to be impossible to enforce.  Plus, the presence of legal prostitutes has not stopped or even slowed down illegal prostitution in the Netherlands.  Let’s face it, supply follows demand.
• The idea behind legalizing prostitution seemed like a good idea, but prostitution plays a part in all the above behaviors, like a European version of “what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas,” but worse because of the whole drug issue discussed above.  People believe that the window girls are independent businesswomen—they are not—at least not all of them.  Many of the window girls come from other countries, mostly Eastern Europe and Africa.  Those girls got there because they answered ads for jobs, and some even paid intermediaries who turned out to be traffickers to get them illegally into Europe.  Few, if any, of them set out to work in prostitution.  Like I said, the relaxation of borders within the European Union has actually worked to the traffickers’ advantage.  And even if some of the women are voluntarily working in the windows of the Red Light district, they have invariably been sexually abused as children.  As a woman, I can tell you that no little girl dreams of having dozens of sweaty, smelly men use and use and use her all day and all night long.  Prostitutes use the same survival strategy that victims of physical abuse use: they have learned how to zone-out and not be in their bodies while it is happening.  Despite the lies that the johns tell themselves, that doesn’t sound like it’s something they enjoy, does it?  All of this means that Amsterdam, an otherwise lovely city, has become a haven for potheads, traffickers, drug dealers, and drug addicts.
• Cynicism – The young people of Europe are among the most hopeless and cynical in the world.  They go to university only to find that they are still unemployed and unemployable.  East European youth are leaving their homelands in droves, seeking employment in the west.  The employers take advantage of that desperation and pay them lower wages, and giving them the jobs that West Europeans don’t want.  Most of the janitors in Italy are Romanian, Bulgarian, Ukrainian, or Polish.  Because they feel powerless, the youth are drawn into witchcraft and satanism.  They recognize that there is genuine spiritual power therein, but don’t have the discernment to know the good from the evil.  Turin, Italy is the European capital for satanism.  Every so often, there is a ritually sacrificed body (either human or animal) found in the woods near Turin.  It has become such a common occurrence that the news agencies have stopped reporting these findings.  Many of these young people consider traditional religion a waste of time, and they don’t want to hear about anything of a religious nature.  For this reason, missionaries in Europe have had to be very creative in sharing the Gospel.

I could continue, but I think this post is long enough.  So, I take a deep breath, pray for at least an hour, and go pour my heart out for an hour or so about Europe.  Suddenly, I understand exactly what Jeremiah meant when he said that if he tries to keep silent, God’s Word is like a fire shut up in his bones.  God is good, and I want more missionaries to share His goodness with this lost and dying continent.

Great Happiness!

A group of us were talking about the meaning of names, and I said, “My friends are always asking me what my name means, but in English names don’t have meanings.  They’re just names.”  One girl said that she knew of a website where the meaning of names can be researched.  So she looked up my name, Alisa, and said, “Great happiness!  Your name means great happiness in Hebrew!”  All the other girls said, “Yeah that fits you!”

Now, that blows my mind because all my life I’ve had the opposite spoken over me.  I was born on a Wednesday, so I was told “Wednesday’s child is full of woe.”  I believed it!  Depression has been a plague and a curse on my family—one which I recently broke.  I have suffered a couple of bouts of depression so severe that I slept only 1 or 2 hours a night for almost 3 months, and had suicidal thoughts and even suicidal hallucinations.  The longest period of depression lasted about 2 ½ years.

Once during a bout of severe depression I saw a funny clip on America’s Funniest Home Videos.  I laughed so hard that I couldn’t stop.  Then I began crying just as hysterically, thinking that surely this is the last time I will ever laugh.  It really alarmed my family, who had no idea how to help me.

Another time I literally felt something inside of me break at an unkind remark that I would normally have shrugged off.  After that, I passed entire days looking out the window and crying.  The sight of a bird flying by was enough to start me crying.

I don’t like having to depend on medication, but Prozac probably saved my life.  It didn’t make my life less painful, but it cushioned the pain enough to help me keep a grip and not act on those bad thoughts.  To be honest, all that feels like it was another life, a different person.

Nevertheless, despite the depression and the bad stuff in my life, I have always been able to remain mostly upbeat and positive.  Perhaps that is because even without knowing it, whenever anyone said my name, they were proclaiming great happiness to me without even knowing it.  Now that’s a great thought!

And now that I have truly surrendered all to God, I do have great happiness.  I never would have thought it possible—at least not in this life.

And here’s a fun thought, inspired by 6 year old Dave Junior: logic and chocolate do not go together.  Chocolate is not a great anti-depressant (the calories are unfortunate), but it does help some.  God is good!

The Whole Inheritance

Greetings from Rome!

I am here at Transform 2013, an outreach program of OM.  At the airport while waiting for the bus to the conference, I stopped at a coffee shop for an after-lunch espresso, as is my habit.  Next to me at the coffee bar was a friendly woman.  She smiled and spoke to me in English.  It turned out that she was also headed to Transform.  We hit it off in an instant friendship.  But Monica and I had no idea at the time just how compatible we were.

Transform in Rome is to prepare missionaries for short-term missions in the countries around the Mediterranean.  “Where are you going after the conference?” Monica asked me.  This would become one of the 2 most common questions to strike up conversation at the conference.  The other being, “Where did you come from?”  I told her that I’m from Texas, living in Milan, Italy, and going to Malta after the conference.  Her smile widened and she said, “Me too!”  Both our jaws dropped open.  Right on cue, the bus arrived and took us to the conference.  Monica and I rode together, each glad to have found a traveling companion.

When I arrived in Rome, I was already going on 2 nights in a row of only 4 hours sleep.  Monday night (or technically, Tuesday morning) I awoke at 2AM with a migraine attack beginning.  The enemy frequently tries to prevent me from going or from being effective on missions trips by attacking me with migraines.  But the Lord said to get on my feet and fight.  So I stood there in the dark room, rebuking the enemy silently so as not to awake my 3 roommates.  The migraine immediately went away and I was able to get back to sleep, but had a 3^rd night of only about 4 hours sleep.  Something would have to break.  The next night (yesterday morning) I woke up again at 2 and simply couldn’t get back to sleep.  It wasn’t that my mind was busy, I just laid there feeling my breath going in and out, and not sleeping.  About 11 that morning, I was considering going to the room to see if I could sleep through lunch.

But my morning prayer partner suggested that I pray with someone who knows about generational curses.  She suggested this because I had opened up and told her about my concerns for my son, who had written on Facebook that he hadn’t been happy in a year, and had asked the question, “Why should I go on living?”  I noted that it was about a year ago that his grandfather (my former father-in-law) had committed suicide.  The person she led me to was Monica.

I told Monica about my son and father-in-law, and also that 4 months later, I also lost a close family friend to suicide.  She said that there is a spirit of suicide and a spirit of death that are generational spirits.  That means that they tend to cling to a person’s family, encouraging death among family members.  I had already broken other such curses off my family, but not specifically suicide or death.  I told her that in the last year that I lived with my husband, I suffered thoughts of suicide all day long, day-in and day-out.  And that finally, when I left him, I was literally running for my life—not because of physical danger from him, but because of the danger that I might, in a moment of weakness, act upon those thoughts because of how intolerable life had become for me.  One day I did come close, but instead called 911 and was referred to the County Mental Health Clinic, where I was given a prescription for an anti-depressant.

Monica took me to her room, laid hands on me and prayed for me, breaking the spirit of suicide and death.  She prayed for the healing of my memories and other things that I don’t remember.  What I do remember is that her hands smelled very nice and felt soothing on my skin.  When I commented on the fragrance of her hands she showed me a little vial of Frankincense.  It has a lovely smell!  It’s really very soothing.

After Monica’s prayer, I felt my energy return.  I did take a nap, but not until after lunch, and only for about 45 minutes.  Last night I slept very well, getting about 8 hours—6 in a row!—thank You, Lord!

Today almost everyone has gone into the city of Rome on outreach, taking many paperback Gospels of John in Italian, 3000 dvd’s of the Jesus film to give away, and thousands of tracts to hand out.  I decided to stay behind, knowing that without a nap, I could never last a whole day into the evening, walking around Rome.  On Fridays I pray for Italy from 3-4 in the afternoon.  So I went to the prayer room, with their big floor map of the Mediterranean countries.  I knelt down on Italy and prayed and wept over it.  Then I stretched out over Italy, my heart right over Tuscany.  For a long time I had no words to pray, just mute longing for the salvation of the people of Italy, and my heart beating over Tuscany.

Then I lifted up my head and saw the words printed on the corner of the map: “Ask Me, and I will make the nations your inheritance, the ends of the earth your possession,” (Psalm 2:8).  It was 3 years ago, just before I went to Transform 2010, that I received a prophecy, saying (in part): “You will not just receive the blessing, but the whole inheritance.”  So I stood to my feet and began to ask for the nations as my inheritance, and to claim the whole inheritance.  As brokenhearted as I had earlier felt for Italy, I began to feel confident that God will indeed bless and save the people of Italy—no matter what their background.

Then I remembered a prophecy I received a few days ago, but read this morning: “When your faith is in what you want Me to do for you instead just wanting Me, it is misplaced,” (emphasis mine).  Yes, my faith is in God Almighty, and He alone is the hope for Italy.  God, who helped me yesterday when I was in trouble, can help Italy, too!  God is good!

A Planned Meeting and a Surprise Meeting

I returned to Bratislava to meet with a missionary here.  However I had gotten in touch with her late, and her village is 6 hours away by bus, so that meeting didn’t happen.  But I did manage to meet with one of our new Slovak friends, Zuzana (see Kebap Shop Breakfast (part 2 of the double post, titled Sweet Slovakia) and Pray for the Peace of Jerusalem).  Zuzana came with us to Budapest and also to Vienna to pray in those capitals.  When she returned from Budapest, her boss told her that she was fired, no explanation given.  Of course she was very upset at first, but Pastor Ivan’s daughter had already offered her a housecleaning job, so she decided not to let it get her down.  Ministry carries a price tag.  Jesus told us repeatedly that we will have to leave our homes, our families, and that we must count the cost.  For someone so young (20), Zuzana is surprisingly mature.

Slovakian Presidential Palace

So I met with Zuzana, and she took me for a walk in the park behind the Presidential Palace.  It is a lovely park with flowers and wide paths.  She said that Pastor Ivan’s daughter is from his first marriage, and she is not saved.  She said that Pastor Ivan wants her to share her faith with his daughter.  She admitted that she feels some pressure about this.  I told her about my 3-point method of sharing my faith:

1. I was . . .
   1. Everybody has their own unique story of their life B.C. (before Christ)
2. Then Jesus changed my life
   1. Usually the smile on your face is enough to convince people of the change inside
3. Would you like to know Jesus?

Simple and easy, you don’t have to be an expert in theology or to know the Bible inside and out.  People don’t care about those things.  All they want to know is that Jesus is real.  They want to know what Jesus can do for them.  And nobody can argue with you about your experience because it happened to you.  They might not respond the way you hope, but sometimes the seed planted today will begin to grow next year.

Then I told her about my conversion and re-conversion (see Gotcha! and Gotcha! Part 2), and the suicidal depression I had endured.  Zuzana then told me her story.  She had also been suicidally depressed, with demonic apparitions.  To look at the 2 of us, you would never imagine that either of us were so down.  So I said, just tell her what Jesus has done for you.  God will give you the right time to talk with her about it.

Uniformed Guards at the Presidential Palace

Then we walked back to town, to her favorite coffee shop.  Zuzana told me about one time when she had been reading her Bible there and God showed her that the woman next to her was crying. The Holy Spirit told Zuzana: “Tell her that I love her, and that she is precious to Me.”  So she did.  The woman was startled and resistant at first, but then listened as Zuzana told her about the wonderful love of Jesus.  As we found our seats in the coffee shop, she said, “And she was sitting right there.”  I turned and looked where she pointed, and said, “Right there?  Where Anushka is sitting?”  And we began laughing like maniacs because we had not expected to meet her there in the coffee shop.  Anushka (see double post Sweet Slovakia and Kebap Shop Breakfast) was sitting there writing on her laptop.  She looked up when she heard the laughter, so we told her about Zuzana’s story and how she had pointed right there without realizing that Anushka was there.

So I got another chance to say goodbye to Anushka, and I had a lovely visit with Zuzana, and was able to encourage her.  Zuzana will probably be joining us on our next trip, to Ukraine and Belarus.  She will be useful in both of those places as a translator.  God is good!

Gotcha!

Part 1

As promised, here is the story of how I came back to God after 8 years of sincere atheism:

After having had a genuine experience of God (that is, born again, baptized in water, baptized in the Holy Spirit), I suffered a series of setbacks.  I was devastated the day my husband announced, “I don’t believe in God any more, and I don’t love you.”  This was only 3 years into our marriage, and we were already parents of a little boy.  He didn’t move out, but things between us had definitely changed.  He was a workaholic, so we settled into a pattern that kept the marriage together for another 30 years: He would usually say something hurtful to me on his way out the door, and I would cry and despair for an hour or so, and by the time he returned home about 12 hours later, I would be over the hurt, and things would be fairly pleasant until the next morning when it usually happened again.

Thus began a slow decline in my Christian walk.  We had recently moved to a suburb of Dallas and every church that I had tried seemed empty and dead.  One preached about money, money, money, and even posted on a bulletin board in the foyer how much money each person had given the previous month.  Outrageous!  It seemed like we had not only left our hometown, but also the Lord.  Finally, I just stopped going to church.

Not coincidentally, I also began to drink—a lot.  Before long, my drinking was really out of control.  So I was already far from God when both my sisters-in-law lost their babies within 6 months of each other.  Then I read in the newspaper about 3 women in New York City who had thrown their babies out the window.  I decided that either God didn’t exist or He was lazy.  I became agnostic because I wasn’t ready to let go of the idea of God, but essentially, I had.

The final blow came when Phillip, my childhood sweetheart, was killed in a highway accident too horrific to describe.  Phillip had been the only person in my life to show me unconditional love.  With Phillip’s death I became a radical militant atheist.  If somebody tried to give me a religious tract, I would respond, “I don’t want that sh**!”

Looking back, I can see God’s hand on my life because just 3 weeks before Phillip died I had quit drinking.  This was God’s timing because when Phillip died I was so depressed that I wanted to crawl inside a bottle and never come out again.  I would have welcomed death except for the feeling of responsibility to my son, who was 7 at the time.  I had quit drinking because of having blacked-out at yet another party, waking the next morning to find my husband so angry with me that he refused to speak.  I knew that I must have embarrassed him, so I told him that I would quit drinking.  He (having grown up with an alcoholic step-father) said, “I’ve heard that before.”  And I’m sure he had, but not from me.  That statement made me so mad that I decided I would make him eat those words.  I didn’t have another drink for 20 years.

So although I was a radical militant angry atheist, I was no longer an alcoholic when Phillip died.  God allowed me to have my stew in my anger for almost 8 years.  It’s hard to sustain anger for that long, so little-by-little I became less angry at God.

Shortly after we moved to Durham, North Carolina, we visited my childhood home in California for the first time since moving away 19 years before.  I had such good memories of that place and my childhood there that returning to real life in an abusive marriage sent me into the worst depression of my life to that point.  For the next several months I avoided the few friends I had made, and cried through my days.

Then I started having suicide hallucinations.  There were 2 of them.  It was always either taking the big kitchen knife and cutting my throat from ear-to-ear or plunging the knife into my heart.  Both were so frighteningly real that I didn’t know that they were not really happening.  In the middle of doing the most ordinary kind of household tasks (putting wet sheets into the dryer, setting the dinner table, bathing the baby) I suddenly had the knife in my hand and I turned it on myself.  I felt the sharpness of the knife, but no pain, and I felt the hot, sticky blood on my skin and smelled the copper-salty smell of it.  Then I would find myself back where I had been, with the wet sheets in my hands or the baby in the bath tub.  I would immediately run and hide in my closet, terrified.

One day in the closet I suddenly realized 2 things: 1. I didn’t want to kill myself (I would never do that to my children) and; 2. If I ever did want to kill myself, I would never do it with a knife.  And those 2 things led me to a 3^rd realization: these hallucinations were coming from someone, and it was not me.  Given that I sincerely did not believe in God, therefore I also didn’t believe in the devil.  But I was very aware that there was some kind of a presence, and it was not a good one.

I went for counseling, and I worked at counseling with all my might.  I wanted to get over this thing.  Every appointment I talked non-stop about everything that had gone wrong for me in my life.  If it hurt, I talked about it—every angle and every nuance.  It was like emotionally disemboweling myself week after week.  And my counselor offered no help, no insight, nothing.  She might have been a bobble-head doll, just nodding and taking notes as I vomited all the pain of my soul.  I told the counselor that I wanted 2 sessions a week because I shook, unable to sleep for 2 days before each session because they were so unpleasant.  So we went to 2 sessions a week, and that was actually better.  After a couple of months of that, I somehow came out of the depression and the hallucinations stopped.  At that time I quit going to counseling and instead started taking a creative writing class.

One day in the car I heard a Bob Dylan song that I had never heard before.  I only just today learned the name of the song: Positively 4^th Street, and it starts out, “You’ve got a lot of nerve to say that you’re my friend . . .”  As I listened to the song, it seemed that Jesus was singing to me, saying things like, “You say you’ve lost your faith, but that’s not where it’s at.  You have no faith to lose, and you know it.”  It was just like receiving a rhema word, only through a song.  And for a few months I started getting rhema words on billboards and in overheard conversation.  I knew that it was supernatural contact, and I knew that it was God, although I still sincerely didn’t believe in Him.  Now I know that He was wooing me, pursuing me, getting me ready to come back to Him.

To be continued, but until then, here are the lyrics to Positively 4^th Street:

You’ve got a lot of nerve
To say you are my friend.
When I was down you just stood there grinning.

You’ve got a lot of nerve
To say you’ve got a helping hand to lend.
You just want to be on the side that’s winning.

You say I let you down,
You know it’s not like that.
If you’re so hurt, why then don’t you show it?

You say you’ve lost your faith,
But that’s not where it’s at.
You have no faith to lose, and you know it.

I know the reason that
You talk behind my back.
I used to be among the crowd you’re in with.

Do you take me for such a fool
To think I’d make contact
With the one who tries to hide what he don’t know to begin with?

You see me on the street.
You always act surprised.
You say, how are you, good luck, but you don’t mean it.
When you know as well as me,
You’d rather see me paralyzed
Why don’t you just come out once and scream it!

Now don’t I feel that good
When I see the heartaches you embrace
If I were a master thief perhaps I’d rob them.

And though I know you’re dissatisfied
With your position and your place,
Don’t you understand, it’s not my problem.

I wish that for just one time,
You could stand inside my shoes,
And just for that one moment I could be you.
Yes, I wish that for just one time
You could stand inside my shoes,
You’d know what a drag it is to see you.

God’s Favorite Kid

I have a friend that I often joke with, saying, “I’m God’s favorite kid.”  And the banter goes like this:

I’m God’s favorite kid because I’m the most blessed!

Oh, no you’re not!  I’m His favorite because I’m more blessed!

To which I reply: “No, I’m more blessed because He gave me you for a friend!”

And she replies: “You’re right, you are more blessed than me!”

Today was one of those days when I truly feel like I’m God’s favorite.  Of course, He doesn’t have favorites, but today it just felt that way.

After breakfast we met at the church and took a bus up the mountain to pray for Sofia from up there.  About 70 people from the local church joined us.  The participation of local people in these prayers for the capital cities is significant.

The mountain was covered with snow and there were people skiing and sledding all over the mountain top.  Nevertheless, it was sunny and much warmer on the mountain than back in Sofia.  So from our perch overlooking the city we prayed, proclaimed, and worshiped Jesus, the Lord of Sofia.  And we sealed the prayers with Holy Communion.

When we returned to Sofia we went to the Parliament building to pray for the new government, whoever they turn out to be (as you may recall, the government all resigned three days ago when our team arrived in town).  A policeman came to see what we were doing, and when we explained that we were praying for the government, he shrugged and walked off.  Several minutes later another policeman approached.  Two of our group walked over to meet him so that prayers could continue uninterrupted.  One of them, a pastor, explained what we were doing and asked the policeman if he could pray for him.  The policeman shrugged, but didn’t say no, so my pastor friend and the other man prayed for him.  The policeman remained skeptical.  He probably thought that we were crazy, but harmless, so he walked off.

Next to Parliament is the university, so we went to pray there.  Our host, Bill, had given some of us Bulgarian New Testaments, so one girl decided to do an important prophetic act and bury the Word of God right there on campus.  The only problem is that we didn’t have a shovel or any other kind of digging implements.  So we had to find ground soft enough to dig up with a stick.  The rest of us laughed about how silly this looked, and cracked jokes about how the Christian bookstores should sell shovels, too.  But once it was buried, we got back to the work of praying, and one topic for prayer at the university was abortion.  Bulgaria has 3 abortions for every live birth—imagine that!  Together with the 3^rd highest suicide rate in the world, no wonder the population is shrinking.

After all this, some of us were very hungry, having not had any lunch—me included.  There was a lot of discussion about where to eat, when to eat, and whether to eat together.  In the end, some went back to the hostel, while others went to eat.  Bill offered to take me to a big toy store.  I had told him that I always get my grandson a bear from every new country I visit, but I hadn’t had any luck finding a suitable bear in Bulgaria yet.  All the bears I had seen so far had scary eyes.  I can’t give my grandson a bear with scary eyes!  So we went to the toy store, and I found a great bear right away.

Then Bill asked me what I wanted to do next.  I told him that I hadn’t had lunch, so I wanted some dinner.  He was very pleased when I said that I wanted to have some typical Bulgarian food.  So he called Vasha, his wife, and they discussed where to take me.  She was just getting off work, so she would be joining us.  They took me to a place that was typically Bulgarian in décor, in food, and in music—wonderful!

They asked me a few times what I was hungry for, but I just insisted on typical foods.  Bill was so happy for the opportunity to share some of his favorite dishes from childhood.  He insisted on getting a few dishes to share, knowing that it would be far more food than we could possibly eat.  Vasha told me that later I would probably see people dancing the Horo.  Which I did!  There was a birthday party across the room, and when the band played the Horo music, the women all got up, laced arms, and danced in a circle.

Bill kept asking me what I was smiling about.  I just said, “I’m so happy!”  Today, I’m convinced: I’m God’s favorite!  God is good!

I Will Make You Know

One of my favorite phrases in Italian is ti faccio verdere—literally “I will make you see,” or as we say in English, “I will show you.”  The first time I heard this phrase I didn’t like the implication of the literal translation as forcing someone to see something.  I could almost imagine keeping my eyes squeezed shut so that nobody could make me see something I don’t want to see.  But hearing the kind way this was said to me, I came to love this phrase and its fraternal twin: ti faccio sapere—“I will make you know,” or as we say in English, I will explain to you.

Last night I had the opportunity to reconnect with a friend and have dinner at his house.  Samuele is a well-traveled and sophisticated person who speaks English, but we always communicate in Italian.  As he shares more and more of his interesting life, I understand that some things really are more beautifully communicated in Italian.  It seems that the Italians can make language as delicious as they make food.

After a pleasant evening, Samuele walked me to the subway.  We found that the subway was closed and I had to take a substitute bus to a subway station three stops away.  As the bus passed the first subway station from Samuele’s house, I saw a fire truck.  I knew then that it was a suicide, which was later confirmed by the news.  That station where the man threw himself under a train is called De Angeli—“from the angels.”  But I don’t think he was hoping for angels to take him up to Heaven.  These subway suicides happen every so often in Milan—and more frequently since the financial crisis hit Italy.  And this is the fourth suicide in six months that has been done either by someone I know or by someone physically near me.

The increasing frequency of suicides is evidence of things that are happening in the spiritual realm.  The devil is working overtime to discourage people to the point of suicide.  And that’s easy enough for him to do with people whose faith is in their finances.

But I recently heard a sermon by Joseph Prince.  He said that we are wrong when we think (as we often do) that the devil starts messing up your health or your finances, and then we must pray and ask God to come in and make these things right again.  What he said was, “God is not running behind the devil, but it’s the devil that is running behind God.”  He said that the devil sees God pouring out blessings on your health or finances or work, and steps in to try and stop the blessings.  And what do we do?  We start worrying: Could these headaches be brain tumors? Am I about to lose my job?  And we toss and turn at night, trying to figure out how to go about controlling the damage—even when no real damage has been done.  Then he quoted:

Even if I should choose to boast, I would not be a fool, because I would be speaking the truth. But I refrain, so no one will think more of me than is warranted by what I do or say, or because of these surpassingly great revelations. Therefore, in order to keep me from becoming conceited, I was given a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me.  Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me.  But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.”  Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me.  That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.

2 Corinthians 12:6-10

He said that many people think that the “thorn in his flesh” is some kind of illness, but Joseph Prince said that other places in the Bible where that term is used, it is always a person—and it appears to be here, too.  But literally it’s a “messenger of Satan,” a fallen angel (angels are mostly messengers).

Here’s the part that blew my mind: he said that just like Paul, our response to these irritations, this petty meddling of the devil should be to thank God for the blessings He is pouring out on us.  Stop whining and start worshiping, praising, thanking God for the blessings.  It’s counter-intuitive (and I love that!), but nothing will make the devil flee faster than praise, worship, and thanksgiving to God.  And then those blessings can really start to flow as God intended.

Joseph Prince explained the flow of blessings from God like a hose from God in Heaven to us here on earth.  The blessings are always flowing, flowing, flowing, but when we worry, for example, about our finances, then we are tying a knot in the hose and the blessings can’t flow.  That’s exactly what the devil wants!

It’s important that we keep our family, friends, and neighbors in our prayers.  But the devil’s interference in this world is not a reason to despair.  In fact, these are times when people need Jesus more than ever.  You might be the only Jesus that some of your co-workers and casual acquaintances may ever know.  Many Christians these days are shy about sharing their faith, afraid of being laughed at, called “politically incorrect” or “intolerant,” or of losing their job.  But what if you had the chance to tell someone about Jesus and give them the hope that can change their whole outlook from suicidal to joyful?  And what if you are the only person that God has given this chance to?  I will “make” you see Jesus!  I will make you know Jesus!

Hanukkah Heaven or Hell

Baruch atah Adonai, Eloheinu Melech Ha-Olam, asher kiddeshanu b’mitzvotav, vitzivanu, lehadlik ner shel Hanukkah.

Baruch atah Adonai, Eloheinu Melech Ha-Olam, she-asah nissim la-avotaynu bayamim ha-hem bazman hazeh.

Blessed are You, Lord our God, Ruler of the universe, who has sanctified us with Your commandments, and has commanded us to kindle the lights of Hanukkah.

Blessed are you, Lord our God, Ruler of the universe, who wrought miracles for our fathers in days of old, at this season.

On Wednesday, right in the middle of the eight days of Hanukkah, the retirement home (where I live with Mom) had a traditional Hanukkah feast and celebration during the supper hour.  The two blessings above were recited (in both Hebrew and English) as the candles were lit.  It was beautiful, and I was grateful to have been part of the celebration.  The Jewish people here have been very kind about all the Christmas decorations and music—much of which is of a religious nature.  Nan told me: “I’m surprised that you would want to be here for this,” because she knows I’m a Christian missionary, and she also knows that I usually skip the evening meal.  “Well,” I replied, “Hanukkah is the celebration of a miracle.  I believe that we should always celebrate miracles!”  She smiled her agreement.  Nan and some of the other Jewish ladies had shared their recipes with the chef.  The resulting meal was delicious, though he’d had to prepare kugel instead of latkes because he doesn’t have a frying pan.

However this happy day didn’t have a happy start.  Mom and I returned from shopping to find a fire truck, an ambulance, two police cars, and a police department truck marked “Forensic Investigation” in the driveway.  Ambulances are not an uncommon sight here, nor are fire trucks, but the police vehicles are.  When we asked what the police vehicles were about, Jan, a kitchen worker told us: “One of the residents, a young woman wheelchair-bound by MS, had died in the night of an overdose.  They suspect suicide.”  We hadn’t known her, but we were saddened all the same.  She was young (only 42) and she had a fourteen year old daughter.

MS is a terrible, cruel disease that robs the body of strength and paralyzes, leaving the mind intact, eventually killing the person.  One person here actually applauded her for taking her life, and said that when her end is near, she intends to do the same.

I wrestled with the question: if it is kind to put a suffering animal down, why not a suffering human?  When I took this question to God, however, I felt a holy anger rising up within my spirit.  And with it the thought: God is the Author of Life, so killing (even yourself) puts you in league with the author of death—the devil, himself.  And on further thought, I realized that suicide is the ultimate expression of faithlessness, cowardice, and unbelief.

This was a hard realization for me, having lost two people I love to suicide this year: my ex-father-in-law and a dear lifelong family friend.

The last two years of my marriage I suffered severe depression.  The worst symptom—far worse than only sleeping one hour a night—was constant thoughts of suicide.  From the moment I woke until I finally fell asleep, I was bombarded with suicidal thoughts.  I would be in the bathroom and wonder how much of various medications it would take to overdose.  Or I would be in the kitchen and linger over the choice of knives for chopping onions, thinking about which would be the best for cutting my throat.  Or I would look out the window at the barn and wonder if there was a rope I could hang myself with—or a hose I could duct-tape to the muffler and gas myself with.

On and on and on, all day these thoughts tormented me.  I started reading books about positive thinking, but they didn’t help.  My prayers were stillborn, having died before they even started the long journey from my brain to my mouth.  So I mutely searched for God, finding only more misery.  The most innocent and normal things would start the flow of tears: a bird flying by the window or a pretty sunset.  I read and wrote obsessively just to keep the bad thoughts at bay, but they came anyway.  Our landlady’s dog became my dearest companion.  He would sit with me for hours.  I think he sensed the trouble in my spirit.

Our apartment was over the garage, and one day I went down to the garage and put my key in the ignition of our car.  I was going to kill myself and my husband, too (he was busy working on the computer in the room above me).  But instead of turning the key, I pulled the phone out of my pocket and dialed 911.  I told the operator what I was about to do.  He said to go to the County Mental Health Office immediately, and said that they would be waiting for me.  I did, and the doctor there gave me a prescription for Prozac.

When the Prozac finally kicked in, it helped a lot.  I was still in a lot of pain, but instead of raw pain, it was manageable.  The Prozac gave me back a degree of perspective, which helped me to find the strength to leave my abusive marriage.

These memories are so painful that it has taken me nearly a week to write about all this.  In the meantime there was the shooting of twenty school children in Connecticut.  The rampage ended as many of these do, with the suicide of the shooter—proving the diabolical link with suicide.  This was difficult to write, but now that I’ve done it I feel better.  Although suicide would have instantly ended my misery, it would have just started the misery for all the people who love me.  In the midst of depression it’s difficult to see that people actually love you.

To anyone feeling depressed and/or suicidal I say: be strong and courageous.  Get help.  And no matter how bad today is, tomorrow will be better.  Hang on!  God is good!

Bad News Comes, but Jesus is Still Good News!

I got an e-mail the other day saying that my lifelong friend had committed suicide.  He was a believer, but clearly must have been in a terrible personal crisis.  Nobody had any idea, but now that I think of it, he probably never got over his big brother’s death 30 years ago.  Not that any of us have gotten over that, either, but I think it affected Jim more profoundly than any of us had realized.  Looking back, I realize that’s probably why he drank.  I don’t remember him drinking to excess before Nick died.  And I think he just always felt inferior to Nick because Nick was loved by everyone.

I loved Jim, and even if I had never thought this through before, I know that I did show him lots of love.  My whole family did.  He often called my parents just to talk.  But I think that some wounds are just too deep for ordinary human love to heal.  But he had turned to drink instead of to God for comfort.

One thing I was led to do was to forgive him this last sin—after all, suicide is the sin you can’t repent from.  So I forgave him because Jesus said that the sins we forgive will be forgiven (John 20:22-23).  I think that it doesn’t occur to most people to forgive suicides.  After all, it’s such a selfish act that leaves everyone you love feeling beaten and broken and confused.

I am reading “Pursuing Holiness” by Jerry Bridges © 2006, Navpress.  Jim’s suicide proves to me that we can’t afford to simply rest in the holiness Jesus gave us when we called to Him.  We’ve got to work on ourselves.  And it occurred to me today that even though Jesus did the work of salvation long ago, our personal salvation required our cooperation (i.e., confession, repentance, and baptism).  So it makes sense that our spiritual walk requires us to continue to surrender, cooperate, and yield to God as He molds us into the kind of vessels that He can use.   As with anything worthwhile in this life, you get out of it whatever you put into it.  Jesus said that troubles come to us all, but if we’re close to Him, He shields us from things that could potentially destroy us.

Thanks for letting me ramble.  This is just so hard!  But God is still good!  Please pray for Jim’s wife, children, mother, and sisters.

A Heartbreakingly Beautiful Girl

When Clara (the pastor’s wife and my hostess) tells me the ugly truths about life in Romania her voice and face are drained of all emotion, while mine are breaking up from emotions that can’t be contained.  That is how she told me about Sandy.  Clara and Leo have four children, and care for two other girls.  I had met one of them, Ruth, last year.  Ruth’s parents left her with her grandmother while they were divorcing.  When each parent re-married, neither wanted Ruth, so she stayed with her grandmother until the grandmother’s death.  At the time of the grandmother’s death, Ruth was six years old, and both parents had children with their new spouses.  Clara and Leo took her in.  The parents visit Ruth periodically, but Clara and Leo have legal guardianship of her.

When I heard Ruth’s story last year, I wondered how heartless people could be toward their own child—until this morning when I heard Sandy’s story.  Clara and Leo took Sandy into their home on weekends two years ago after her mother died and her father left her with her grandmother.  Clara asked about the mother’s death and learned that she had been forced into prostitution by her husband, and had died after a few years.  She didn’t say what she had died of, but considering all the risks of prostitution it could be anything:  AIDS or another STD, a drug overdose, murder, or suicide.  Clara didn’t say, but it really doesn’t matter, it was a result of prostitution.

When she saw the look on my face, Clara said, “I don’t know if he tried to get work or just wanted the easy way.”  I marveled at her refusal to judge a man who had prostituted the mother of his children.  She went on to tell me that the grandmother is in poor health, and that Sandy has a handicapped brother, so she helps them after school, but stays with Clara and Leo on the weekends so that she can go to church and have a chance to be a kid.  Knowing Clara the way I do, she probably also gives the grandmother money to help buy groceries and pay the bills.

But I wasn’t prepared for what came next.  Clara told me that she worries about Sandy’s dad returning to take her and sell her into prostitution because she’s tall and pretty like her mother was.  Sandy is twelve years old.

Again my face betrayed me.  Clara shrugged and said, “This is a common story in Romania.”  She said that some of the older girls from church send her notes, asking her and Leo to pray for them.  They respond to advertisements for well-paying summer jobs in Budapest, and go with their parents’ blessing.  Then when they arrive they learn that the work is prostitution.  Too ashamed to tell their parents, they work as prostitutes for the summer, then come back home with much-needed money for the family, and resume normal life as a student.  The notes always end the same way: begging Clara and Leo not to tell their parents.

Last year I had asked Clara about the issue of human trafficking.  I had heard that Romania is one of the places where the women enslaved into prostitution come from.  She told me about a little girl from their little city, Biberon: Christina was a pretty little blonde with blue eyes who her daughter, Elizabeth, knew from school.  One day Christina was walking home from school with a friend.  Just two blocks from home a man in a car pulled up to the curb and with urgency in his voice said to Christina, “Hurry! Get in the car!  Your mother sent me to get you!”  She got into the car and has never been seen or heard from again.  Christina’s friend hadn’t thought to notice anything about the man or his car because she had also believed his story.  This happened two years ago, when Christina was only ten years old.  Most likely Christina has been raped, beaten, and trafficked to a country in Western Europe because she doesn’t need a passport to move about within the European Union.

Human trafficking is a multi-billion dollar a year industry, and slavery is illegal in virtually every country in the world.  There are estimated to be more slaves today than in all the years of human history added together.  And if you think it’s not happening where you live, think again.  Check out your hometown on the slavery map:  http://www.notforsalecampaign.org/.  To read more about human trafficking, see: http://humantrafficking.org/.

“All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.”  Edmund Burke