Posted in General Posts by Rachelle Uribe on 5/4/2011
I still need anther $74 in my support account by may 7th to get me to $0 owed, anything after that (up to $1,500) would go to reimbursments for my shots, and insurance and airfare. Please consider donating to my account should you feel led. Thank you and may God bless you.
Its impossible to know for sure what you would have had or if it would have been better than what you do have. When I found out in Africa that team Redemption would be changing I was angry, I felt robbed. Adventures in Missions tells us not to have expectations but I did, I expected to go through Asia with the beautiful people I had so fallen in love with and was learning so much from. I expected to continue to be seen and encouraged and learn from example put into practice.
When I got my new team I expected it to be hard and I expected to overcome that by sheer force of will. I didn't expect it to be as hard as its been, I didn't expect to loose and gain members, I didn't expect to be forced to give up on what I thought I was suppose to fight for. Having been on two teams that ultimately became very very close I see a sharp contrast with my current team. We laugh together and we have fun but I know (only because of where I was blessed enough to be before) that as close as it may seem there is so much more available. It hurts me some, I think part of me feels as though I failed, and part of it is just selfish longing to be understood. I think most of us know that we aren't as close as we could be but it's a sacrifice that had to be made for what we have learned.
It took me two months of frustration and anger to realize the massive communication gap I had with my teammates, a gap that has probably been responsible for a lot of strained or lost relationships in my life but that I couldn't see because I had always just been able to walk away from situations like the ones that made it so glaringly apparent. It took 5 months, a lost teammate, a gained teammate, a squad leader meeting, and emotional exhaustion to get me to the point where I could drop my ego, give up my investment and realize that I don't have to be angry for God. It took me 3 months, constant irritation and frustration, and a few storms to understand why I am meanest to my dearest friends. It took me 4 months, cultural embarrassment, a blow up and two days of silence to realize how I hold loyalty more important than justice and that there are others who feel differently and that God is completely and perfectly both. It took just as long to realize that shielding someone from the truth isn't love or loyalty it is cowardice.
I'm not sure and will never be what the true cost of these lessons were, closer friendships, laughter, and tears come to mind but I can't begin to count the reward either. Oh well, that's the race.
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Posted in General Posts by Rachelle Uribe on 4/19/2011
I was wondering why I haven't written a blog in so long. In Ukraine I wrote them almost daily. I was excited to share everything new and exciting but not so much anymore. I guess I have come to the realization that as much as I may try nobody who hasn't done this or something like it can really understand. Also I think I have just become more solidly planted in the constantly shifting soil of my life, so not too much feels noteworthy anymore. I guess I just got tired.
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Posted in General Posts by Rachelle Uribe on 3/12/2011
Episode 1: look before you slap
*** I have an ant phobia***
A few days ago I sat happily in my bed watching a movie. Out of the corner of my eye I saw one of the giant red ants that takes over the bathroom floor once night falls, crawling on the wall by my face. I panicked and asked Jeremiah to kill it. He slapped it and said it was dead. To my horror I saw that it was very much alive and now on my bed, after several more swats he killed it. I sat back down and tried to be calm, then I felt a tickle on my arm. I jumped up in terror sure an ant was crawling on my arm, I brushed myself only to feel the pinch of a bite on my arm. Someone turned on the light to stop my hysterics, I looked to my arm to search out the offending ant only to find a large spider sitting on my chest looking me in the face. I froze still and Jeremiah hit it off at my pleading.
 
24 hours later I felt like I was constantly receiving a shot in my arm, my lymph glands had become painfully swollen and a trip to the doctor confirmed I had an infection which at this moment has become a very painful but healing abscess under my skin.
Episode 2: Princessa
On the Quinta in the time that we have lived there 2 new puppies have come to live there too., Princessa and Pandi. Puppy Princessa isn't the first princessa on the Quinta however, the woman who runs the quinta has a pet sheep, also named Princessa. The sheep hangs out with Duke and seems to believe she is a dog. When she is scared or angry she chases and stomps people. A few nights ago when the cook Theresa put food out for the puppies, Princessa the sheep came and began to eat it, when Theresa came out to shoo her away Princessa head butted Theresa and gave her a black eye.
Episode 3: Shake your clothes
Given the wide variety of insects and arachnids that live on our walls, in our walls, under our beds, in our packs, in the sink, in the toilet..... Us girls have taken to shaking out our clothes prior to putting them on. After some clothes shaking and tooth brushing Carin and I went out to collect Jeremiah from his new little house in the medical clinic, for our morning walk.
He walked out looking groggy. Carin took one look at him and jumped in the air mumbling gibberish. Carin is fearless and for her to react that way I was sure something was very wrong. I looked to see a huge spider resting on his pant leg. What looked to be a hostess ding dong size tarantula was just resting nicely on his jeans. He looked an froze. I took off my sandal to smack it off. He looked at me pleadingly and said don't smash it, which would have no doubt caused it to bite him. I swatted it with my shoe. It landed on the ground by Princessa the evil sheep and unrolled itself. It wasn't a tarantula it was a large scorpion that had been resting in a ball.
We took pictures and let it go in peace.
Episode 4: Polly want your finger
I don't like birds on a good day but the parrot at Casa Mateo tries to break out of his cage and will snap and nip anyone who gets too close to his cage. Some of the parrokeets have chomped Lili with their crazy red eyes.
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Posted in General Posts by Rachelle Uribe on 3/7/2011
As the clock winds down on my great adventure I am faced with the seemingly grim reality that I have to go back to the world. Even as I write this I recognize the irony of what I am saying. I have spent the last 10 months circumnavigating the globe, trotting from country to country, continent to continent, and partaking in the various cultures I have found there but that's not the world to me that's the kingdom. I have spent almost every waking moment with men and women (its weird for me to talk about us like grown ups) who are sold out (or trying to be) to whatever this is we are doing. Its easy when you aren't alone, its easy when you have a cheer section and companions to go after what sounds to any normal person to be impossible.
It hit me hard the other day as I was mulling over what exactly I should do after the race. I imagined that I would like to work in a little bakery or something early and unrelational and then it hit me like a ton of bricks to the chest, I won't have community. I WON"T HAVE COMMUNITY! When I go home I won't be constantly surrounded by my cheering companions, I won't even have anyone around who vaguely understands what I have been living for the last year. Even when I saw my family on the layover we had through LAX on the way to Central America from Asia, I was never without my community, Lil and Jer were with me. I have spent a year learning to and then trying to live in transparency, accountability and a constant search for God, these are not the things I will go home to.
I doubt there is one person among us who is leaving the race unchanged. We all left lives behind that probably haven't changed too much in our absence, but we have. Don't get me wrong, I am looking forward to seeing my family and friends and knowing the local language. I worry though that the race will be something I lament as I navigate the unquestionably harder paths of the "real world", that I will long for its comparative richness and simplicity as I trudge through the clutter that awaits me.
Wow, this got real depressing real fast. I know that regardless of how easy or difficult homecoming will be I am glad that I did the race and that with God's continued grace I will finish it. It has been nothing that I ever could have comprehended without doing it. I have made friends I want to keep for at least the rest of my life. I have learned a lot about who I am and who the Lord has called me to be. I have learned that the dreams we are given can be lived out if we are willing to walk by faith and not by sight. I have learned that what God wants for me is infinitely better than what I could ever even imagine wanting for myself. Best of all though I have learned that I am not alone in this, in wanting more than the world says I should have, in wanting Kingdom and restoration and God's love poured out on His people, we might not live anywhere near each other but we are out there and now we know it.
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Posted in General Posts by Rachelle Uribe on 2/28/2011
It was the 3rd or 4th day in Nicaragua when the visions started. Each morning Jeremiah and I would go for a walk down the entrenched roads that surround La Quinta Esparanza where we live. Our paths took us through neighbors fields and down seldom used pathways, over grown and reeking of childhood adventure. Going over these roads there was a thickness that I couldn't quite understand but kept me extra vigilant. One day as Pastor Glen spoke to us about two of the children who live on the Quinta a flood of images came to my mind. The brother and sister he spoke of had come from homes where they were abused and frequently had to fight. Both were born of incestual rape, one by the great grandfather another by the great great grandfather. As he spoke this suddenly I could see different places on the roads we had walked with multiple scenes super imposed on each other, the same actions with different people at different times. I saw mothers beating their daughters and calling them names. People being assaulted, robed , raped. In the deluge of images I knew without understanding why what I was seeing. The spirits of the past invade the present here, the people are like actors living out the same horrible play again and again. They are a conquered people constantly reconquering themselves. This country and these people need prayer and they need people willing to fight the bondage they live in with the Love and Mercy of Jesus.
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Posted in General Posts by Rachelle Uribe on 2/24/2011
"No human being can tame the tongue. It is a restless evil, full of deadly poison" James 3:8
The words that are written on the page, edited and punctuated, respaced and shifted to perfection. This is not so for the words that issue from our mouths, ripe with tone and inflection, uncorrectable, indelible and wholly uncontrollable once said. We often don't know the lives our words take on after they are issued from our lips, they flow invisibly through the air, though sometimes like the wind we recognize them by their influence.
This last week has set me to wondering about the lives of my words. I wonder at assumptions and fears that other may hold about me, I wonder if like so many of the fears and assumptions I hold about others they are based on words carelessly spoken in a moment of irrational passion, anger or frustration. Whole lives can be changed by a word. Our lives are changed daily by words written thousands of years before. Wars are waged over words, countries conquered and hearts broken. Given time and care I would like to think I would be able to correct false characterizations based on carelessly spoken words but how often are we given that opportunity in this life?
A friend I have on the squad is wise in a way that I cannot fully grasp. She is a wealth of wisdom, knowledge and grace, and my most frequent complaint to her is that she does not talk enough, does not share enough and is too deliberate in her censorship of what she says. In the last few days I have seen the way that words can transform the ignorance and curiosity of one heart into the hatred of another. I have seen how words spoken in jest can marry themselves to past insults and become current heartache. I see the prudence of her silence and careful deliberation in unleashing an untamable tongue.
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Posted in General Posts by Rachelle Uribe on 2/21/2011
Excerpt from a letter:
From where I stand I can see two worlds to live in, from the other each looks completely insane and a trap to the people inside.
There is a world where you make your own fortune. You work for success and seek your own happiness. Love is a wonderful, exciting and sometimes scary feeling and life is the most precious thing you possess. Some people believe in a higher power, this presence controls for them the very few things they can't, this cosmic Santa clause listens to their prayers and judges them naughty or nice before gifting them accordingly. Most people, however, ultimately believe in themselves, they believe that with some luck they can shape their own destiny into whatever they want it to be. That they can conquer the obstacles in their life with perseverance and smarts.
There is another side
There is a world in which to live you must reckon yourself dead. Everyday you endeavor to choose not what you want but what the Lord wants, no matter how illogical, or uncomfortable it may seem to you at the time. Love is a choice of action and lifestyle we are called to live out regardless of how we feel about who or what we are loving. Your life is a tool of the Lord God and you give it to Him new each day as a living sacrifice. Some people work regular jobs and go to regular movies and enjoy regular music they live in the world but remember they don't belong to it, they belong to God. Most people, however, ultimately abandon more and more of the "ordinary world" as the realize how unsatisfying it has become to them. They have been given the opportunity to be a part of something bigger, something eternal. They realize that no amount of their own strength, smarts or perseverance is going to win their life or salvation for them, but that both were given as a gift by God and that the most satisfying use of both is to use them for Him.
Neither seems attractive to someone living in the other. The other way of living is incomprehensible to someone coming from the other side, it just doesn't make sense as something anyone would want to do. I use to live on the other side and for me it was a lot of work, it was a lot of trying for no reason, it left me tired, wrecked and unhappy, I couldn't believe that was all there was to life. I didn't get where I am overnight, I took a leap of faith and was caught and carried to the other side (not unruffled) by the God I hoped would catch me.
Life can't be lived at the edge of the great abyss, it's a jumping off place. We could stand at the edges trying to build a bridge, calling the others over to our side in growing frustration, and while that MAY be enough it would never be all that could have been. I have become better than I was, stronger, braver, happier, more real, more loving, more free. I have seen miracles and felt moments of sheer awe and ecstasy that I couldn't explain if I had a million words to do it with. I'm in an undiscovered country and I want to explore and live in it whatever that means. We cannot ask others to cross over because it is a choice we each have to make on our own. I understand why most won't take this on, I don't hold it against them, they're right, this is not their lifestyle this is not who they are and not what they bargained for, but it is who I am.
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Posted in General Posts by Rachelle Uribe on 2/18/2011
High up in a cave, the part we shouldn't have been in, we looked into the deep vast blackness of the caverns that opened before us. It looked like an easy climb, Jer and I agreed that it wouldn't take long to scale the remaining rock face to the mouth of the dark chamber above. I placed my hand on the rock beside me and was struck with the sudden and scary realization, that we were not at Disneyland and that this cave was a real cave, with real dangers and real animals. I shared this revelation with Jer who said "of course" and laughed, undaunted by this truth and then we heard it, the sickening and unmistakable sound of rushing water approaching in the dark. I froze in terror and all I could think of was how Jer and I were about to get washed down into the base of the cave by the approaching torrent. Would it be a quick death or catastrophic injury? Would we plow into Carin and Sarah before our drowned and lifeless bodies came to rest somewhere in the vast network of caverns and idols? I took a step back, held my breath.
The day had started with excitement and anticipation. Carol told us girls to go to the caves and prayer walk. Jeremiah and Dan had gone a few days before and had amazing pictures to show us, so we were excited to have a look for ourselves. Dan, having gone before decided to take the opportunity to do some street evangelism but Jeremiah chose to accompany us for the day. We walked to the old ground train station (as opposed to the elevated train station) and purchased our tickets for the Batu caves which are at the end of the line. After our 3rd wrong train we watched out the windows as the vast city gave way to jungle and a mountain crept up the skyline, growing until it was all there was to see
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We siphoned out of the train with a variety of pilgrims and tourist into the station. We followed the crowed past increasingly ornate structures. Past platforms and temples and swarms of monkeys, As we approached the main cavern we saw a smaller darker cave off to the left. Jer said it was closed when he and Dan had come before, but we decided to check it out anyway. There was a man with a small boy in a makeshift ticket booth who charged us a ringet a piece to enter. The darkness of the chamber gave way to a spectacle of rainbow colored lights and idols in a variety of scenes and poses. We worked our way to the back of the cave where construction was underway on a precarious staircase into one of the high upper chambers. I asked one of the workers if I could climb the stairs, he said no. I asked if I could climb to the top of the completed first landing if I avoided the narrow second and incomplete third landings, he said no. So I asked again, he said no. I asked a forth time and he laughed at my persistence and waived me on. I scurried up the stairs and over the metal bar that blocked the way, to the top of the first landing and the entrance of dark cave, and then we heard the water. We looked at each other, eyes wide and then in the distant cave below I saw a trickle of water turn into a stream and exhaled, only to see water begin to pour down the rock face in front of me and down a space between the stairs and the rock face I hadn't even noticed. Disaster averted I hurried Jer down the stairs that were becoming wet and slippery. Having escaped with our lives we went out to visit the main cave.
 
Climbing up the several hundred stairs would have already been unpleasant without the monkeys who live at the temple jumping from rail to rail, stealing drinks and threatening to bite. Here is rare picture documentation of our adventures.
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Posted in General Posts by Rachelle Uribe on 2/10/2011
I'm still $907 short of my full support goal. I have had committed sponsors and my teammates promise the remaining amount but it looks like one of my monthly sponsors may have to drop out. If you have pledged support that you have not sent yet please send it in as soon as you can, and if you have not pledged support but feel led to please do, anything over my goal amount will go toward funding future AIM missions I have a feeling I will be involved in. Thank you and God bless you, here's the blog...
There are things that make me ridiculously and deliriously happy in life and this is a blog about one of them.
We walked quickly through the busy streets of Kuala Lumpur past buildings I knew and then past buildings I didn't. The man who looks like my grandfather from Canteen room walked at a brisk pace that left us in a single file scurry through the crowds and traffic. He took us down a sketchy looking alley littered with garbage, the alley narrowed and ended in a tented area. Walking in we were surrounded by the rainbow of humanity, various browns, tans and beiges, everyone seated on stools chatting except for the lone guitarist on the small stage. We were met by a volunteer who welcomed us and explained the program. They set up, mingled, had a short worship service, served food, mingled and provided medical care.
I tried to mingle but the language barrier was too much barrier for me, Mary and Dan were more successful. Feeling useless I went to the food prep area to see if I could help there. I poured drinks and then was told to get in line. The volunteers formed a line down the length of the tent and delicious plates of chicken curry were passed down our human conveyor belt. Our guest were served in their seats and then it happened... As the last of the plates went down the line there was a moment of silence, when everyone who had been chatting and waiting was quieted by the food in their mouths.
I guess its kinda strange but that makes me happy, the humanness of it. Eating is something we all do, something most people enjoy, it's a universal, an imparitive. That moment of silence ties people together into something so much bigger than they can understand. The line broke as a few plates were returned because we'd made more than enough. I walked through the tent handing out drinks and then a few more passes through collecting cups and plates and I loved it. Some of our guest laughed at me thanking them for their used cups and plates, I can only imagine why but I would like to think its because they are so unused to being served that having an obviously well fed and spoiled girl serving them was funny. I like to think they laughed at my expense because I want them to have that too.
As the crowds died down I got the opportunity to speak to some people. I got asked if I was Tahitian and got to answer some questions about America. The doctor saw 27 patients in the 15 minutes immediately following lunch, maybe 28 with Jeremiah. I made him get in line so the doctor could tell us what medicine he needed to buy for his nails from the pharmacy, the doctor said he was fine. It was a good day!
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Posted in General Posts by Rachelle Uribe on 1/14/2011
The last bump had us airborne but we nonchalantly continued our conversation. As I sat with Jeremiah in our off-roading moto-taxi after an exotically decadent $5 (a whole days allowance) American breakfast of bacon, eggs, toast and coffee, it occurred to me... This should be weird! Getting jostled and tossed in an open air Cambodian taxi as it drives against traffic and on sidewalks should be crazy or at least scary but it isn't.
In the last few days I've found myself in what seems to me to be a perfectly ordinary and rational moment only to realize that to most people I know (and even former me) it isn't.
- Watching glee in my dark tent, because the electricity is off in the house in which I've pitched it, in a Cambodian village of endless rice patties and crowing lizards.
- Debating as to which prostitute to buy for the evening because they are all our friends and its hard to choose.
- Allowing the local kids to rise my freshly washed hair with slightly green pond water, complete with lily pads, worms and fish.
- Walking around carrying half naked babies that aren't mine.
- Using a headlamp to find the bathroom on moonless nights
- Eating meat, eggs, or chapati purchased from the African man screaming outside the bus window.
- Walking down dirt roads with endless rice patties on either side listening to "All Along the Watchtower"
- Wearing a medical mask as a part of every outfit
- Buying rubber band sealed sandwich bags of food from the local outdoor bazaar.
- Passing the neighborhood elephants on the way home from the bar.
It took me awhile to even think of those because they are so not strange anymore. Catching air on a bus or car ride is so ordinary we sleep through it. Eating things you can't identify isn't exotic or even exciting, its just dinner. We get excited over the things that others take for granted: seeing white people (yes me too, black people in Asia and Asians in Africa are also exciting), McDonald's, toilets, showers, hot water, ice, dairy products (especially cheese), carpet, non-instant coffee, free drinking water, Pepperige Farm cookies, Candy and chip that aren't prawn or seaweed flavored, pizza...
As I sat on the roof admiring the night time view of Phnam Pehn with Marcelle (Andrea). We talked about what it meant to have lost our old conception of "normal". We decided we didn't want it back and hope that its gone to stay (though we worry as the race approaches its end that that will not be the case). I think of all the hang ups I don't have here, all the opportunities I don't miss here, all the fun, and love, and joy and blessing I experience here and its an easy choice and not so crazy as you'd think.
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