Self-Care Plan – by Jenn

This past Thursday, four questions were given to answer in my pallitative care/end-of-life care class,

1. What would be the ideal situation/setting for your own death?
2. What would be the worse situation/setting for your own death?
3. As a caretaker of someone that is dying, what would be your plan of self-care?
4. How would you implement this self-care next week?

Yes, they were very tough questions. It forced me to really look deep within myself and come to know what my true feelings, values, beliefs and biases are. It really is no surprise that every single time I come out of the class, I am deep in thoughts for at least 2 days. This post is not about the first two questions but the last two.

I pondered for a bit about the self-care plan to keep myself emotionally, spiritually and physically sane, as a future caretaker of someone that is dying. The only three things that came to me were:

-Spend time with a group of friends and family that I can freely share my feelings and experiences with
-Set time aside to reflect, to pray, to journal
-Eat, sleep and exercise

I noticed how quickly I came to the conclusion that I need people around me, as it was the first thing that I wrote down. Every student shared their answers and we moved forward to the last question… how am I going to put this self-care plan into action tomorrow? While every fellow nurse practitioner student were busily writing and sharing, I just smiled. I realized that I ALREADY had my plan of self-care in place; it was my small group.

Faces of all the people in my small group crossed my mind and I thought about how much I enjoyed worshipping, praising, praying, sharing and reading the Word with each of them. They are all passionate and genuine in their walk with the Lord. Their mouths are always full of praise for God and their minds are always contemplating how to serve and love God more. Being admist such faith-filled people brings me life. Even during times I dont feel like singing and praying, I still get nurtured spiritually and emotionally through their worship and prayers.

I am filled with thanksgiving to God for the revelation that my small group is not just a social circle, or just something to do on a Friday night, or is just a way to serve the church, but its way more than that. I actually NEED this small group to keep myself healthy in spirit, emotions and mind. Its actual self-care…

As for the physical exercise part… I am going to put that one aside for now. Why ruin such a nice post?

Operation Christmas Child 2009

Thanks Anna for leading this!

God desires to include us in His pursuit of love for those that live in our community… (by Redd and Aya)

My wife and I were so blessed during the treasure hunt hosted by Chris
and Jenn’s small group.  We were reminded that the Holy Spirit desires to
speak to us about reaching those around us.  We were reminded that God
desires to include us in His pursuit of love for those that live in our
community.  God truly gave us a renewed excitement about walking in faith
and in the Spirit when it comes to interacting with the regular people we
meet every day.

On that night, the group prayed, worshiped, listened then went out.  What
a great model for doing life!!  I wonder how much more of the miraculous
we would see if we continued to live that out.

First treasure hunt experience, and what an experience it was! (by Monique)

Recently, my small group utilized one of it’s Friday meetings to go out into the world and conduct a Treasure Hunt.  I had never heard of this form of outreach before, and learned that through prayer, God reveals “clues” to assist with finding a person in the streets that he wants us to share a message of his existence and love with.

This was very intriguing, but a little incredible to me.  I hear from the Lord regularly, but not usually in this manner.  I typically receive spontaneous, in-the-moment communication from the Lord (reactive); but the idea of God telling me in advance (proactive) who He wants me to meet and pray for was a totally new concept, and something that I didn’t know if He’d bless me with.  Nevertheless, I was committed to having an open mind and heart, and met up with the group early to pray.  I asked the Lord to “surprise me” and to do a new thing.

Well, the Lord did not disappoint.  He showed Himself faithful to Scripture that says:  ”We have this confidence that if we ask anything in His name that is in accordance with His will, He will hear us, and we will have what we asked for!!!”  Praise God!

God gave me the clues that I should go to a location where there was a (clue #1) “triangle” in the street, and I would meet (clue #2) someone wearing a long black raincoat, who was (clue#3) experiencing feelings of being disconnected, deep loneliness and sadness.  He gave me just those three things — he didn’t say what gender the person was, what the person’s name was, nor any other unique feature.  I realized that the location was two blocks down from the church on Broadway, at the corner of Justice Street — there is a triangle in the middle of a busy intersection.  My team and I went there, and God also amazed me how he used every single one of our team members in the execution of this treasure hunt.  He gave me the vision, but another team mate spotted a young man way across on the other side of the triangle wearing a long black coat (that turned out to be an exact match: trench-coat styled long leather coat!!).  He seemed to be standing there on the corner, just waiting for us to find him.  All of a sudden, the young man began to walk in our direction, and I asked for confirmation (since He hadn’t given me a name or gender) by sending him back towards us after he left the deli that he entered when he passed us by.  Guess what?  THE LORD SENT HIM BACK!! So, I approached him and began to share with him that we believed that the Lord wanted us to talk to him and share His love with him.

It turned out that he was originally from Burma and had lived in Malaysia.  That’s when another team mate came into play who happened to also be from Malaysia, and began talking to him – helping to establish connection and comfortability.  He had only been in the U.S. for 3 years, and struggled with English; but the Holy Spirit was helping us to communicate with him, and he was understanding us.  It turned out that he was a Christian, and this is where the third clue came into place — his prayer needs.  It turns out that he has a job, makes little money and sends money back home to his Mother, three brothers and two sisters, who depend on him.  He desperately wished that he could make more money so that he could do more for them.  Also, he hadn’t been able to travel to see his mother in several years.  So he was indeed feeling disconnected from his family back home and lonely and sad about not being able to see them and provide better for them!!  He lived nearby to the place where we encountered him with his brother who is a Pastor at a nearby church.  His father, whom he said named him Steven, is also a Pastor.  He is prophetically named because we all commented about such gentle face and sweet spirit that emanated from him – just like Steven in the bible was noted to have!

When we told him that the Lord wanted us to pray for him and to tell him that He loved him so much and remembers him, he was so receptive.  He took off his knit hat in humility and held his hands in open acceptance as we laid hands on and prayed for him right on the very corner where the Lord gave us the clue that we’d find Him!  God used the last member of our group by leading him to give him a certain monetary gift to get to his family.  He was so grateful, and I imagine that he had quite a testimony to tell his Pastor brother when he got home!  We left him with an invitation card to New Life Fellowship, told him that we offer ESL classes free of charge, and that we hoped he could visit us one day soon.

My spirits were so lifted by this experience.  I praised God for hearing my prayer, giving me the “surprise” that I asked for, and showing me that it’s true what one of our group leaders, Chris, said:  God is not looking for ability, just availability!!  PRAISE GOD!!  Now my prayer is that I hope that the Lord will enable us to see him again one day….

The goodness of God in the land of the living… (by Chris)

I just wanted to share an experience with you that we had last Friday night (11/20/2009) that absolutely blew us away! Last night was our small group’s first ever “treasure hunt.” What is a treasure hunt? In a nutshell, it’s essentially prophetic evangelism. You spend some time before the Lord and ask the Holy Spirit to give you words of knowledge in each of these five categories:

1. Location
2. Person’s name
3. Person’s appearance (hair color, color of article of clothing, etc)
4. What they need prayer for (knee pain, marriage, tumor, etc)
5. The unusual (ex. Lollipop, dolphin, green door, etc)

After meeting for a little while before our small group began to pray, we launched into worship. We don’t really have any musicians in our group, so we typically do this via what we call “karaoke worship.” This is when we find somewhat singable worship songs, play it from an ipod attached to a speaker, and we all sing along. After spending a brief time in worship, we divided everyone into groups of four. The reason for this is, if you’re praying for someone out on the street or in a store, you can’t have 10 people approaching them or else they’ll run for the hills! After we broke up into groups, we spend a few minutes before the Lord individually, asking Him for words of knowledge in the aforementioned categories. Once this was done, we got together in our small groups and shared what each of us got.

My group consisted of three people… Redd, Aya and I. Redd got some very specific words, such as a name (Rodolfo / Alfonso), a location (a crowded area), person’s appearance (navy trim on jacket, ), what they needed prayer for (financial provision for family), and the unusual (white picket fence). Aya got a name and “pink flowers” which fell into the unusual category. I got a name (Sandra), Target as a location, appearance (blond hair, red sweater, jeans, white chuck taylors, kinda young), prayer need (relationship).

After collaborating for a few minutes, we decided that we would head over to Target since that was also a “crowded area.” Although it wasn’t very far, we drove because Aya was pregnant. We prayed for parking and got some right across the street from Target. After getting out of the car we started looking for clues from our treasure map. We parked the car in front of Hufman Koo’s. We noticed from looking in the window that one of the beds had a “white picket fence” at the end of it. Based on that, we went in and started our search. As is the case for most of the furniture stores on Queens blvd, we were immediately met by a sales agent. Red asked if there was anyone that worked for the store with the name of “Rodolfo” or “Alfonso.” We were told no and then thanked the sales agent for his assistance. We spent another minute or two looking around the store just in case we found anyone that met any of our other clues. Nothing. We moved on.

We crossed the street and were walking towards Target when Redd felt that someone in front of Citibank met the description of one of his clues. We had walked past but Redd felt the Spirit’s prompting to go back and talk to the guy to see if that was his man. After talking to the man on his own for a few minutes, Aya and I also met up with them and joined in. Turned out the man’s name was “Angelo” and he had blue trim on his jacket. In the midst of talking with him, he talked about how he sold perfume on the street. It looked like he had packed up for the day and had all his goods packed into large grey containers and was waiting for someone to pick him up. While we were talking, he began to talk about how times are hard and that he’s out there trying to provide for his family. Financial provision was another one of Redd’s clues! Redd mentioned to Angelo that he had that on his list as well and asked if we could pray for him. Angelo was receptive and we prayed for him, right in front of Citibank! After we prayed for him we exchanged a few more words, shook hands and were on our way to find our next treasure.

Since Aya didn’t have a description, we started looking for someone that met my criteria. We didn’t see anyone outside so we went in to Target. We decided to take a walk around the first floor. We saw one person from afar that could’ve been the person, but as we drew near we found that it wasn’t them. As were walking around we discussed amongst ourselves where we could possibly find “pink flowers” in Target which Aya had on her list. Was there a fake flowers for sale or an arts and crafts section? Pretty much as soon as we started to discuss this, we saw a few large magnetic stencils of pink flowers on the end of one of the isles! We got excited. Right beyond those flowers I saw someone in the isle. Blond hair, check! Red sweater, check (she had a red and blue striped sweater)! Jeans, check! White Chuck Taylors, check! She matched everything on my treasure map. This was our treasure!

I walked up to her and explained that we were on a treasure hunt and we thought that she might be on our map. I asked if her name was Sandra. It was Sarah. Pretty close! We showed her the map and asked if she had a relationship need that she needed prayer for. She couldn’t think of any, but she did ask for prayer for something else. After we prayed for her and talked for a little while, she thought about it and she did need prayer for relationships. Her husband was a pastor and they had just moved from California to plant a church. They just launched their church in LIC two months ago. Her husband had met a number of pastors but she hadn’t been able to really connect with many people yet, including some of the other pastor’s wives. Her husband soon came from the other floor he had been on, accompanied by their two year old son. We spoke with them for awhile and it turns out they knew of our church and had met with Mark and Pam Taft about some marriage ministry stuff! Since we didn’t want to hold them up too long, we blessed them and mentioned that we’d probably drop by their church one of these Sundays just to say hello. We then went back to church to meet up with the other groups and share testimonies.

Now let me ask, HOW AWESOME WAS THIS? We were a little nervous at first but our nervousness soon became excitement as we started to pick up on God’s clues. If you think about it, what’s there to be nervous about if GOD is laying out who you should be speaking to? People were ministered to. People were encouraged. People were prayed for. The name of the Lord was lifted high. I encourage you if you’re bored one night to get a few friends together and go out and share the Good News with someone that the Holy Spirit would highlight for you. The best part of doing something like a treasure hunt is, it makes outreach EXCITING. You have to think, if there’s any prayer that the Lord would ever answer, it’s one where you were seeking to serve Him in some way.