The Marvelous Misadventures of Melody

News From Addis!!

2011-02-04T04:05:00.001-08:00

Thanks to a convenient sinus infection and Strict orders from Dr. Ulla to take some rest I have time to write an update! Something I’ve been meaning to do for quite a few weeks now! YAY!

We’ve been pretty busy the last month since I got back from Christmas break, painting, renovating, along with teaching and cooking for the girls everyday, but it’s been a great time! Our house is starting to look more and more like a home every day. So despite some difficulties we are still very encouraged and excited for what God is doing now with the projects and in Ethiopia!

We have been extremely blessed by a team from Herrnhut that came a few weeks ago and helped by doing a ton of practical work for the house, we painted, put in flooring and lamps and they fixed the toilet which was huge help!!! There are also 3 girls that stayed from the team to work with the project and help us with lessons and cooking which is a huge help and we are able to do a lot of things that we have always thought of doing but never had enough people! So they are a big help and encouragement for us! We are so thankful for the donations we received already from different supporters and our base for renovating and buying furniture it’s a huge answer to prayer! The next thing we have to do is to buy beds, mattresses, a couch and hopefully a fridge! It’s so funny to move and buy things for the house here because ever piece of furniture that we buy we have to carry to the house ourselves or some how find someone with a car to help us haha! I think it’s a funny sight for the people here to see two white girls carrying a shelf down the street with paint splattered all over themselves. Most of the foreigners (or ferengi’s as they call us) have nice fancy cars and hire people to do everything for them!

We can tell that this is a really special time for the projects and that God is really doing something here. We have been spending time praying for the projects and feel that things are getting better everyday! Our prayer is that God would really grow these projects into the best that they can be and that his will would be done in all of it! We would really appreciate it if you would pray for us in this time!

This past weekend we attended a conference at the international church that we go to here. It was called Africa Arise and it was so incredible! I was so inspired by the speakers and their perspective on what it will take to change Africa. They preached that Africa needs leaders to rise up that will have integrity and that will keep their distance from corruption and that the people in Ethiopia are called to be the leaders that they wish to have! Not to wait for someone else to change things or for white people to come and give them money but to stand up and change their own lives and their own countries! It was so encouraging to hear this because so often we find in our ministry that we absolutely need local people in order to accomplish anything in this country and even though we try to help people as much as we can, in order for people to get out of poverty the main effort needs to come from their part otherwise we can’t help them! We invited all of the girls that are a part of the project to come with us and the ones that came really enjoyed the conference!

I am so honored to be a part of this project and to be able to invest in these 14 girls! I really believe that they will grow up to become leaders and spokespersons in their communities, schools, cities and then the world! That is really our prayer for them! It’s so exciting to talk to them about the dreams that they have when a year ago they didn’t even dream! They only thought about surviving as best they could! But now they dream of becoming dancers, lawyers, doctors, journalists and artists! Even just seeing one of their lives changed or one of them being able to dream again makes any difficulty we may face here worth enduring!

Ulla and I are still doing research and praying about The Rahab in Jinka and hoping that we can go south soon but I don’t know when that will be and we feel like God wants us to stay in Addis for now and until there are more people for the girls project! Please pray for more people here in Addis that have a long-term vision for the projects here and while your at it ask God if it’s you he wants to send ☺!

Well that’s all I have for now!

Love
-Melody

Newsletter!

2010-10-27T01:37:00.001-07:00

I just sent out a Newsletter so check your inboxes!

If you don't see it, it might be in your spam folder.

or just click here!

a very basic summary for those of you who don't read...

I am getting ready to go to ethiopia in about two weeks! DahhhhH!! Ulla and I are getting so excited to finally just be there!

Please pray that we get all the finances, visas, and everything that we need before we go we don't have our plane tickets yet! But we know God is Going to provide so we're not too worried!

kthxbai!

-Melody

P.S. Check out the new features on the side bar ->>>>
(sign up for my newsletter list, donation button)

Fall is here!

2010-09-19T05:43:00.000-07:00

Another wonderful weekend in Herrnhut! I love weekends...

Last weekend I had a great time with my parents, they came to visit! We had a Birthday party, went to prague, and had awesome vegetarian food! Yea it was a great time, I love them! Getting back to Herrnhut monday morning was not so much fun, my bus was late, the taxi broke down, it was raining, it was pretty miserable, But I made it home and my super sweet flat-mates had left me birthday presents, cookies, and a beautiful little note on the table which made up for it all!! I love my friends!

The past two weeks have been pretty crazy! but really cool with all the new Marriage of the Arts students! God is doing and is going to do even more awesome things in this school! 100+ Crazy talented Artists working together, making art that is going to change lives! yea it's awesome to be here right now!

Ulla is also back this week and we've been talking and praying a lot about ethiopia, and when we are going to go! We are talking about going in the end of october, and planning to stay until around may! Which is a little scary, since that's only a month away and there is still so much to prepare! But I am really excited, and I know that God is going to provide, and lead us in this! Next week we will probably figure out a budget for the trip, to see how much we will need to fund raise. We are both really looking forward to the time and anxious to get there already and get started. I especially can't wait to see the Garbage City Girls again, and to go to the south and see all of our friends there, that I haven't seen in over a year! The south feels like my third home. :-)

I am really inspired for this time and I plan on continuing to work on my art while I'm there!! I have recently been getting into more painting and mixed media stuff! This is something I really want to practice and get better at! I want to be re-inspired by Ethiopia and the people there and see what kind of art will come out of that inspiration!

Yea we have a lot of ideas for this time and I think Ulla, Corey, Anna, and I, will make a great team! Plus whoever else decides to join us!! (that could be you!*hint*). Ulla and I really desire to focus on empowering local Ethiopians to get more involved in helping their own people. Not having this role of the 'Westerners coming in to save the day' But rather partnering with, and encouraging Ethiopians to save Ethiopia! Because, I believe that is when real change will begin to take place in this country! There are tons of awesome NGO's and organizations out there but I think there is so much more that can be done! They are really a unique and beautiful people.

We also want to learn Amharic so that we can better communicate with them, especially in the south as less people can speak English there! So we'll see how that goes!

Stephanie just left two days ago for ethiopia So keep her in your prays as well! She will be there for 40 days working with the different projects! Check out her blog for more info! Liz, David and Angie are also hoping to go down next week as well!

Yea that's pretty much all I've got for now!
I'm planning to send out a newsletter soon!
And in case you haven't seen it yet, you can sign up to get my newsletters right over there in the side column -->

Thanks for reading!!

<3 sMelody

So Yesterday I edited some photos from cornerstone and hamburg! for your viewing pleasure! (see more on my flickr!)

bustling breezes and bumblebees.

2010-08-29T11:10:00.000-07:00

So We had a wonderful retreat in hamburg two weeks ago and I officially love Hamburg! It was so crazy to have all 35 of us in the same room! Yes I said 35. It's so crazy how much we've grown and looking back to see all the things that have happened in the past year. It's so cool to see what god has done! It's even crazier to think of all the things that are to come this year!

Liz said something very true towards the end of the 4 day retreat "Enjoy this moment, all of us in the same room, it's probably not going to happen again until our next retreat!" Lots of new and exciting things sprung up during the time. For example we will be working on publishing a Pick A Pocket magazine soon, of course the Not for Sale conference in November, we will Continue to work on the existing projects in India and Ethiopia, and most immediately the Marriage Of The Arts School! There are now 125 students who will be arriving within the next two weeks!!

During the retreat we spent a lot of time in prayer asking God where he wants to lead us for this next year as a team, we also spent time with each other, going to coffee shops, Exploring the city, and just talking and coming up with new ideas. It was so good just to start dreaming again, to look back and see all the dreams that we had last year that were fulfilled this year and now being able to dream again and keep looking forward! We were also able to welcome in 9 awesome new members who came with new ideas and inspiration for the team!

I am especially excited about more people committing to working with the projects in Ethiopia, like the boys and girls of garbage city, and the Rahab Cafe! It is a team of 4 people(so far), Myself, Ulla, Corey, and Anna (who isn't technically a part of Pick a Pocket, but has the biggest heart for the girls and guys of garbage city and has been fighting for them since the beginning! She is amazing!)

I am planning to go to ethiopia in November and live there for 6 months and I am so looking forward to this time! The last time I was in ethiopia I was really challenged to do something more long term in the projects and I really have the desire invest so much more into the relationships that I have there! I don't know yet exactly what this time will look like but I hope to spend some time in Addis, working with the Garbage City girls and guys, Solomon, and also some in the south to work on restarting the Rahab Cafe because at the moment there are no girls to work at the cafe as they have all four moved on to other things! So I know that it will be an awesome time!

So I am super inspired and excited for this year!!

In other news-

Fall is coming! and I'm still missing the sun, heat, and even humidity of summer.
Herrnhut is beautiful right now though despite the rain and I am excited for the leaves to change colors. My birthday is also in two weeks I'm not sure how I feel about turning 20 yet. Ew, even typing it looks so strange. I don't know if I'm ready for that yet! It's something to look forward too though because my parents are coming!! It will be a great birthday!!

The first Marriage of the Arts students have just started arriving and we are still making a lot of preparations. Just a lot of work! But I am so stoked to meet all of the students and for the school to start because I think it will be a time!

Yea! you might have noticed I added a new feature to by blog, over there in the side bar -->
You can now sign up for my newsletter mailing list so if you want to receive my updates and more in your email! Because if you're like me you always forget to check blogs even though you really want to! hah! Problem solved, See? I will probably just be sending out newsletters every few weeks or months. Just news and exciting happenings. yea! that's it!

oh and for a fun picture of us at the retreat and a Tour higlights video! check out
Steph's blog!
She is also going to Ethiopia in a week or so to make a documentary about the Girl's home in ethiopia! I love her!

cool! yea that's all I've got for now! thanks for reading!!

-melody

emerging from the abyss.

2010-08-06T14:45:00.000-07:00

I realize that my communication over the past months has been equivalent to that of a black hole...

For that I would like to apologize, I just get so distracted, traveling and being on tour was pretty busy and somewhat because there are just so many exciting things to do outside in summer that don't involve the computer! But I'm back now. Yay!

So I'll try to give a brief as possible recap on the past two months! I realize that lots of the people who will see this were actually with me this summer! and I'd just like to say I had some great times with the folks in PA and in NC! It was amazing to see everyone and just be back in Bangor again. Especially at the beginning of the tour and the shows we had in PA were some of the best shows of all tour!!

I've found that Bangor is actually a really nice town to visit! and i genuinely enjoyed being home and chillaxin with you guys!

I would have to say the tour went most excellently I think we made some awesome connections and i had so much fun making new friends and encouraging and inspiring people to join the movement to END EXTREME POVERTY!, wooooO! I know we were all super blessed by the hospitality we received and the encouragement and fun times and just being able to encourage people that if God can use us crazy kids to do something to help end extreme poverty he wants to use them too!!

Being in Nashville was so inspiring. I never knew there could be so many insanely talented people in one city. And cornerstone was one of the monumental experiences of my life. I think I wish I could just live at cornerstone always. awesome music. amazing people. great conversations. new favorite bands. yea. I'm stoked for next year!

Personally I know I've learned and grown a lot in these past two months. and I also see that the team has become closer together and even though tour is really hard sometimes God's there and he's working on us and we're becoming better and better.

I'm really looking forward to these next months with a new school starting in September. It is bigger than any discipleship training school(DTS) we've had in Herrnhut, with 130 students so far, or something like that! yea. it's going to be crazy but i think God is moving and is going to do something big with this school! we're calling it the Marriage of The Arts school. We're inviting musicians, Photographers, Writers, Graphic Designers, Fine artists, Dancers and all kinds of artist to come and learn how to collectively use their talents for God and to battle injustice and extreme poverty!
So if you're reading this and are graduated from highschool and want to be a part of a movement this fall you should check out the website because it's not too late!!

In other news. Sometime this winter I am planning to go to ethiopia possibly for up to 6 months. This is something I've been thinking and praying a lot about the past months!
i don't exactly know how it will look but all i know is that God knows, so i just need to figure out what he knows.. and then I'll be good. So I'd appreciate any prays for that that you can spare. just for more direction! cool

Next week Pick a pocket will be going on a "retreat"(or a week long meeting) in Hamburg, Germany to reevaluate, discuss future plans and our vision as a team! I'm really excited for that! Please pray for finances for that as many of us including myself don't have the money for transportation or food and also have to pay of staff fees and rent! That's a big one right now!

Another thing you can pray for is that i really need a place to live by the end of this month! Right now i am still living out of a suit case and have moved around a bit since being back in Germany after tour! It's very difficult to find housing in Herrnhut. There's not that much available! yea i appreciate that!

yea cool that's all I've got for now! Thank you all so much for your continued prayers and financial support it means so much to me! and sorry again for the long silence!

Ethiopia!!

2010-04-21T07:14:00.000-07:00

Well I’m back from Ethiopia! It was a great time, of course not without challenges, but over all I can say it was awesome. The majority of the time was spent working with the 13 young girls from Garbage City who are now making t-shirts instead of working in the dump. It was cool to just spend time with people and just live life with them for a while!

Everyday after school the girls come to for two hours to work. They sew t-shirts, we listen to music and just have fun times together, and then sometimes have a short English lesson! On Saturdays they come earlier in the afternoon and take showers wash clothes and we just hang out play games and have lunch together! Then On Sundays we take some of the Girls to church. It was so fun to get to know them all over the time I spent there and they are all amazing! We were extremely limited in our communication with each other because they speak very little English and we speak very little Amharic! But it forced me to learn a lot more Amharic words than I knew before so we were able to communicate on a basic level, which was great! They are just like normal teenage girls so it was really fun to hang out with them. Most of the girls I had met before while they were still working in the dump and so it was amazing to see the transformation from then to now and it was a privilege be a part of that and to see that now they have to opportunities for a better life! They can have hope again and that’s awesome and inspiring! We plenty of brainstorming times and came up with new t-shirt designs and worked on improving the quality of the shirts being made! Yea I really really enjoyed the time there and I was really sad to have to leave! I can’t wait to go back again hopefully for a longer time than 1 ½ months although I’m not sure when exactly that will be!

Traveling back was quite the adventure and I still haven’t quite made it to Germany! With the volcano and everything all the airports in Germany were closed! So I got to Istanbul and then waited for 9 hours to get through the line for people waiting to rebook their flights! Had some Turkish delight samples and ate some left over French Fries in Burger King. Then I finally ended up catching a flight to Vienna, Austria. On the flight I met a couple from Australia who are currently living in Vienna they invited me to stay for a few nights at their place until I can get the train up to Germany on Saturday! So I’m very happy to have a good rest after traveling and thankful that I didn’t have to sleep in the train station! The city is absolutely beautiful so I feel super blessed. But I’m still a little sad and missing the girls and friends back in Ethiopia! And I could really go for some Injera and Shiro Wat (the cultural food that we ate almost everyday!).

I’m very excited an anxious to get back to Germany and see all my lovely friends again! And also to finally see the book printed and finished WOOHOO! Thanks to all the people who supported us! I’m so excited to finally have the book in hand! And also for tour! I’ll be coming to the states around the middle to end of may and then be there until the middle of July for tour and spending time with my family!

I post some more info on tour dates later but we will be coming to PA everyone in the area should come out and see it will be super fun yes! And yes more information will come for that in a few days. When I find out all the details!

Yes so that’s all I have for now I’m going to enjoy Austria!

Love
Melody.

Off to ethiopia! in 1 1/2 weeks!!!

2010-02-24T07:46:00.000-08:00

So as I mentioned in my last post I've been planning on going to ethiopia to work with the projects for a while and now it's finally going to happen!

So far it looks like I'll be leaving march 9th and will stay until middle of April! My friend Kelsey and I are going to go together and then later on some more people from Pick a Pocket will be coming!

We will be working for the majority of the time in Addis Ababa with some of the girls from Garbage City. The last team that was there was actually able to set up a house where some of the girls, who were previously having to dig through the trash everyday Are able come after school. There they can learn how to sew t-shirts so now they are earning a living wage and they don't have to go to the dump anymore! So far we have been selling the t-shirts around our community and we are planning to sell them on tour and eventually open some kind of online shop! So that's really cool and I'm really excited to go and be able to work with the girls and teach them how to sew more things too!

The other thing that I want to do there is to travel south and work with the Rahab Cafe in Jinka. Right now there aren't any girls working there because they've all either gone to school or gotten another job, or made peace with their families and are living at home again. Which is really cool but we want to find more girls to work there and figure out how to keep it running!

I'm really excited for this trip and I know it's going to be a great time where we can really invest into these girls and build stronger relationships with them and at the same time to help sustain the projects!

So this next week and a half is going to be pretty crazy! Since I wasn't expecting to go this soon, I have a lot of preparations to make. Plus I don't have any money for the plane ticket yet, I also have to pay my rent before I leave! Yea so if you think of me this week please pray that I get the finances to go in time! If you're interested in helping me out with prayer, encouragement, Or finances please e-mail me @ Melodyj90@gmail.com

thanks for reading!!
-Melody <3<3

(P.S. If you have not heard about any of the projects mentioned here and would like to find out more feel free to ask me or scroll down and check out my previous newsletters! thanks!)

This is Sfleg from Ethiopia. One of the girls who is making t-shirts now instead of digging through the trash!!

2010 woot!

2010-01-23T15:40:00.000-08:00

One of my new year resolutions was to blog more... So far I've failed at that, but now I've finally mustered up the motivation to just go for it! So here we go!

Wow… it's crazy. Looking back over the past year so much has changed in my life it's pretty neat. I can't believe all the things I've experienced or the places that I've been and all the crazy rad things God is doing!

I had an awesome time at home for Christmas, visiting my friends and family. I was able to relax a bit too, which was really nice! Yea! But now it's back to work and there's SO much to get done before the tour. It's exciting but pretty stressful and I don't have nearly as much to do as some of my friends but I have enough!

I've been cooking three times a week and then sewing up in the cold art room whenever I'm not in the kitchen or in a meeting! Which is fun but sometimes I just want to throw the sewing machine out the window!

Really exciting news though this week my friend David finished the writing for the book and he is going to submit it for editing soon! My friend Stephanie, who is an AMAZING graphic designer, is designing the book and so that's almost done too! Now it's time to start fund raising to print it. We are going to start fundraising on Monday the 25th! Get excited!!! We're going to be using a website called kickstarter.com that will make it easy and fun to fund raise! So as soon as we set the website up (Monday) I will post the link and you can check out the video, read more about what the book is and even get awesome prizes if you donate! w00t!

Also Check out Stephanie's website and blog to see some spreads from the book and other art that she has done at http://www.whereisstephnow.com/.

Yea! So on another note within the next few weeks I'm hoping to go back to Ethiopia for 2-3 weeks. My friend Ulla and I hope to go down south to work with the Rahab Cafe, Right now there are no girls working at the cafe because Elli is going to college in another town now, Which is so cool! Then the other girl that was working there got married so she doesn't have to work anymore. The problem is that we still have the license for the cafe and it's only valid if it's actually running! So hopefully we can find more girls to work there or prepare the way for a team to go down in the future! I also want to spend some time in Addis(the capital) working with the garbage city. The last team was down there were able to make awesome progress! They were able to teach some of the girls that were working there how to make t-shirts and so they don't have to work in the trash any more! So I plan on bringing some new designs and more products for them to make and just helping out however I can! So that's really exciting I'm just praying now that it will work out and that I can get the money for the flight soon!

-random alert- So the other day my flat mate Tiana and I decided it would be fun to have a nice dinner together and then we decided to make a video of it for our friends and family back home! Hope you enjoy it!

Mumbai.

2009-11-04T08:40:00.000-08:00

We came back from India yesterday and I miss it already, The busy streets, the people staring at us always, the chaotic but beautiful city! I loved it! I would go back tomorrow if i could. And it's really really cold in Germany compared to the 90 degree, very humid weather we had the past two weeks! But I'm happy to be back with the rest of my team again at least!

We went to India with a goal of finishing the book that we've been working on since earlier this year. This book is going to tell the stories of the people we have met on the outreaches to Ethiopia and India that took place at the beginning of the year, and the ways that we were able to help them through the projects that were started particularly in Ethiopia with Drawn from Water, The Rahab Project, and Garbage City. When it came to the India section of the book we realized that the material wasn't as strong as the Ethiopia section, But we were sure that God had more for the India section. It was decided that we should make another trip to India to get more pictures and stories and to find a Project that we could support through the book.

While we were searching for a contacts and where we should go we were told about a woman who works in Mumbai with women and children from the red light area! Vera was raised in Mumbai and grew up just one street over from the red light district. Her family left Mumbai when she was about 22. They came to America where Vera receive her college degree in Micro Biology. Soon after that she turned to the mission field and got involved with Ywam. She became good friends with our base leader here in Germany, Jan, who is also a photographer and has a huge passion for work in the red light. Through him she found out about the area, she was in disbelief because she hadn't even known about it before. After visiting it herself, she decided that something had to change. She is now running a children's home for 9 girls from the red light area. They are all daughters or orphans of mothers in prostitution. And they are super cool! She is also partnering with a few other ministries working in the red light area, Helping not only the children get out of the area but working with their mothers as well.

Early on in the trip even in the preparation time we had discussed possibly starting another RAHAB cafe in India. Through a conversation with Vera we found out that at the moment Vera doesn't have a way to get the mothers out of prostitution but she has been thinking for a while about how they could do that. So we presented to her the vision of the RAHAB project and told her about the cafe in Ethiopia, and that we would love to partner with her and provide the finances to start a business for the women that she works with! and she was really excited and had the idea of having a second-hand shop that the ladies could work at and also to combine that with Jewelry making! so now we are working on a business plan for that and are going to hopefully be able to get things started in December or January!!

We were able to meet two of the ladies that she works with who's daughters and granddaughter are living with vera in the children home. We had the opportunity to talk to them about their lives and got there stories which was really cool. (I won't share to much about their stories because they will be featured in the book so it has to be a surprise :-P) We hoped to get their pictures then but at the time they were both pretty tired and so we decided to just do it another day. Later we realized that getting good photographs of these ladies is not as easy as we anticipated.

Going into the red light area is one thing and taking pictures there is even more difficult. At first you can't really tell the difference between the red light area and a regular side street there are men and children walking around people with carts and different cafes and shops just as normal. But then we notice that there are women aged anywhere from teenagers to older women standing in front of almost every "house", Leaning against taxi's, standing in front of shops, or sitting on cots on the side of the road. All of them brightly dressed in colorful saris. No matter what time of the day you go there the women are working. Because we're white we just get a lot of attention and there aren't many opportunities that we had to just take out our cameras and start shooting. Also because we are actually publishing the photo's we take that takes a lot of discernment of when it's appropriate to take a picture and when it could be exploitative or rude. So that was very frustrating at times. Stephanie and I ended up spending a lot of time in the hotel room just waiting for the opportunity to take photos and spend more time with the women only to have them not work out. We kept having to delay the photo taking till it was finally delayed till the last day of the trip!

One day we had a really cool opportunity to visit some of the ladies that vera works with in their home. We sat for a while and talked to some of the ladies that were there and were even able to hear their stories a little. All the women have different stories of how they got into sex work, but they are almost always associated with poverty and abuse. We were sitting about five of us in a small room at the front of the house, The doorway to the rest of the house (where the women receive customers) was covered by a curtain and every once in a while some women would walk in and out, Our translator asked us if we wanted to see the rest of the house, So we walked through the curtain into a small hallway wide enough of one person and in in the hallway on either side were rooms just big enough for one bed and a pile of condoms on the bed and just a curtain covering the door. After that we went with one of the ladies, Anusaya, to walk around at a bunch of different touristy spots, It was a pretty great time even though we didn't speak Hindi and she didn't speak English.

While we were there we met with another guy that Vera knows called Karan he took some of the team on a walk through the red light area which was only about a 15 minute walk from where we were staying, and then we learned more about what he does, Which is also really cool. He works with a ministry for street kids and every friday plays cricket with them and does bibles studies with them, and generally just tries to help them and get them off drugs in school and off the street. He also helps the practically and every wednesday takes them all to a river to get clean wash their clothes, get their haircut etc. and some of the team got to go with them to do that as well. we decided that he will be another project featured in the book!

On the last day that we were there Stephanie and I finally got to meet with the two women that we had talked with earlier in the trip and were able to take their photos! After that we were even able to go and visit Anusaya at her house! We climbed up three flights of stairs and then were able to actually sit on her bed with her and talk to her while she was getting ready for the day. We had a translator this time and she asked if we had enjoyed the time, and had really great conversation with her. We even were able to take pictures of her inside her home and it was an awesome time. definitely my favorite day. So we were able to leave with assurance that our goal was finally accomplished!

YAY! we were so excited.

So a huge thank you to everyone who was praying for our team! I think it was a great sucess!

Today i'm going to develop my films and see how they worked out!
Please pray that I don't mess it up! :-)

India! Woohoo

2009-10-15T03:53:00.000-07:00

Next Tuesday my team and I leave for Mumbai, india! We all got the money we needed for our flights although we still don't have all the money for expenses while we're in India but god has provided in awesome ways for our team and we know that this is going to be an awesome trip. I have a feeling that it is definitely going to be very challenging. We plan to hopefully work with women and children in the red light district and hopefully visit some slums to meet people and hear their stories and we will see what else god has for us there! We are all super excited to go and to see what is going to come out of this trip!

Pleas pray for us while we are there!
-For protection,especially that we wouldn't get sick or robbed.
-For finances so we don't have to sleep on the street
-thar God would use our team to make a difference in India!
-And that it would be a life impacting experience for all of us and the people we meet!

2009-09-28T01:08:00.001-07:00

Here is the Link to my September/October newsletter!

Sep/Oct newsletter

thanks for reading!

30 days

2009-09-01T11:53:00.000-07:00

So Today is my 9th day on 30 days challenge.

If you know a little about the organization I'm a part of - Pick a Pocket - then maybe you've heard of it. 30 days one of the main tools that we want to use to raise up our generation to fight for the millions of people living in extreme poverty.

The challenge is to go for 30 days without buying food for yourself and rely on other people to feed you. The point of this is to get a small taste of what it's like to be in extreme poverty and to be hungry and not knowing where your next meal will come from. At the sane time - the money that you would have spent on food goes into the individual pockets of people in extreme poverty. You get to pick which specific ministry or person your money goes to!

While doing 30 days we wear our pockets out as a sign of poverty and have the text 30 days written on them, to advertise for 30 days by talking to people about who pick a pocket is and hopefully inspire them to rise up to the challenge and join us in the fight to end extreme poverty!

So far this week i haven't really missed but one meal.. Honestly it's been pretty easy but there have been a few times where i've been like
'wow. i am really hungry right now. and i have no food. nothing. unless someone is going to give me something I'm not going eat today'. But it's really exciting because it's helping me to understand how hard it is for people in extreme poverty. Because what i am experiencing right now is not even close to what they experience every day.

One of the hardest things is not being able to eat what i want to eat. when i want to eat it. I want a carrot but instead I get a sandwich. So it's challenging me to be grateful For what I get. and not to be so picky! which is pretty cool

I'm excited for the next 21 days!

if you have questions about 30 days or want more information about any of this please feel free to email me!

Pick a Pocket's new website (still being tweaked)

One.

2009-08-04T03:42:00.000-07:00

So this is my first blog. I think the last time I wrote a blog was like 4 years ago. when I had a xanga. I think/hope the content will be very different. I definitely won't talk as much about peanut butter and jelly sandwiches or Pokemon (only a little bit about pokemon)...

Anyways so It was a pretty chill week in Herrnhut. I've been attempting to settle in to my new home. Although i have to admit my room is still a little messy. And i'm not exactly sure where i will live on the long term side of things but for now. Me and my friend Jardena are sharing a 4 bedroom flat. Yea it's pretty huge for just the two of us and there are like 7 beds in my room we also don't have internet there.. I'm hoping to move into a smaller flat but i don't know when or where. But last week was great because i've had time to develop my pictures from ethiopia the second time. YES! and now This week is the beginning of staff intake which is basically an introdution to YWAM , the base in herrnhut and the practical jobs we can be involved in. It's also just gives us a chance to get to know eachother and the staff more. so that's pretty spiffy.

The best thing is being back in community and talking to all my friends again I had a lot of hugs the first two days and a few "OHMYGOSHYOURBACK YAAAAAAAAAY" dramatic running hugs. We're already working on ideas of going to thailand and sudan. And planning a tour for pick a pocket in april and august next year which is super exciting and i hope to be involved in that. A group of people is working merchandise ideas to fundraise for the ethiopia projects and also the book is still in progress we are working on getting more photos and finanaces but it looks awesome so far :-). so yea A lot of exciting things are in store and I'm pretty stoked for this next year!

That's all for now! Hopefully my next blog will be more exciting!
Check out flickr for some new pictures <3
And Here's my Newsletter if you didn't get it! It explains EVERYTHING!
Melody's Newsletter

http://www.flickr.com/photos/smelody