That's Life Kid!

Forget feeling good about yourself, it's becoming increasingly difficult to feel even ok about yourself. Social media is in front of our faces constantly. You might get on FB to check on your distant family, but get hit by pictures of the latest fabulous party. The party that looks 100% prettier than the one you last threw. The party that many of your friends were invited to, but somehow you didn't make the cut.  Then you click over to Pinterest to browse. And there, you can see the wedding pictures that were more beautifully & creatively posed than yours, the perfectly staged house that looks nothing like the crumb covered mess you are living in, and the children's crafts that make your child's last craft session look like someone from The Croods family made it.  We have to fight against comparison stronger than ever before. We have to have God's anchor deep down in our hearts. So that when the strong blast of the waves hit us, we stay pointed up.  D...

What would your perfect day look like? This question has been popping up over and over in my reading this week. I think I gave up on perfect days a loooong time ago. So when I first saw that question this week, I quickly dismissed it as a silly, unattainable quest. Life knocks us around quite a bit, hopes are dashed and we sort of give up. Eventually, we end up going with the flow, letting life push us downstream. We focus on the rough current. When we finally look up, years are gone.  How ironic is it that I can, with conviction, tell a person living in trash that they should grab ahold of the hope that God has for them to get out of that place, but I am too scared to dream bigger for myself? That is weak. We are only as strong, successful, and fulfilled to the degree with which we allow God to operate in our lives. If we don't open those places in our hearts and begin to dream with God, those dreams will never happen. It doesn't matter how farfetched and silly those ...

This is the community built around the dump. They have plenty of opportunities to live in fear. Fear of going hungry, fear of abandonment, fear of dying. There is so much panic and fear being spewed out of the media machine right now. If we aren't worried about an ISIS attack, we are worried about the person next to us coughing. They might have enterovirus or, even worse, ebola. We attended a big football game in Dallas last weekend. It never crossed our minds to avoid that area. We also flew our family to Guatemala three weeks ago. Several people wondered if we had been scared to fly overseas. But focusing on fear was never a part of our trip planning. Is that because we are special or superhuman? Not at all. If we had the time, I could tell you all about my past full of anxiety and worry. I could go on and on about how it has tried to consume me in different seasons of my life. But, God has taught me to reject fear. Fear doesn't change my circumstances. It doesn't he...

Poor Jason. This picture was from his Guatemala trip last week with our friend and board member, Scott. To get to our schools in the mountains, they had to climb aboard a small airplane, which had to land on a tiny strip of gravel covered runway. The police had to be called to move the drunks off the runway so they could land. After a big bounce and sliding sideways, they finally came to a stop. Needless to say, it was pretty stressful! The people in this mountain area have been labeled: Rejects. A people taken from their home years ago and dropped off in the middle of a mountainous no-where, left to survive on their own. No wonder they have the highest suicide rate in the entire nation of Guatemala! So their government has done a pretty good job of selling them their label as rejects. How have people tried to define you? Circumstances and life experiences work to make us feel less than what God intended. But the truth is, each of us is uniquely made by God. How do we keep our...

Would you want this mural painted on the walls of your child's school? Take a good look at what is happening in the picture. This mural was painted on the entire width of one of the schools we will be in next January. We can't fix the situations these kids are facing, but we can help them find the life-giving power and hope of Jesus.  Dirty, broken pavement and barbed wire fences might be what the school kids see every day in the 6 schools we have been gifted for our pilot program. But, once a week, they will be taught to look beyond their circumstances.  According to the Inter-American Development Bank, barely 40 percent of Hispanic children graduate from secondary schools. International comparisons show Latin America at the bottom of the education barrel scoring on par with Sub-Sahara Africa. Here is the hope we bring: In Bolivia, our curriculum has Increased graduation rates by 45% Reduced dropout rates by 37% High school graduates advancing to any other typ...