The wikipedia definition–Chick flick is a slang term for a film mainly dealing with love and romance designed to appeal to a female target audience.  Although many types of films may be directed toward the female gender, “chick flick” is typically used only in reference to films that are heavy with emotion or contain themes that are relationship-based.

Yes, it’s true.  I can almost always go for a good chick flick.  I saw one recently and it got me thinking.  What is it about these movies that draw us to them?  “Us,” being girls, typically, as the definition says.  Love, romance, relationship.  Words that either make you sigh and bat your eyelashes, or sigh and make you crinkle up your nose.

This particular film that I saw stuck with me for a couple of days, so I couldn’t help but ask why.  And I couldn’t help but write about it.

To me, this is one way a good chick flick can go:  Boy likes girl.  But girl initially rejects boy.  Their paths continue to cross and eventually the girl decides to be friends with the boy.  Despite her rejections and hardness of heart, the boy accepts the girl as she is, and he enjoys her company.  He decides she is worth pursuing even if she does put up a fight.  He believes in her, values her, adores her.  All the while she is blind to this, because it is too hard for her to accept him for who he is, and also too hard for her to accept that she is who he sees her to be.  She fights against his love for her.  She fights against the love she feels for him.  But the boy is patient, kind, forgiving.  He is up for the challenge and continues to give her grace that she doesn’t deserve, because he can’t deny his heart.  She is worth fighting for.  But he endures another rejection and has to let her go.  He knows she has to decide on her own that she is who he saw her to be all along.  He knows that she has to believe on her own that he is the one she loves and the one that she is meant to love forever.  When the veil is finally lifted from her heart then she goes to him and makes herself vulnerable like he had been with her all along.  He could say many things in response to her, but he says the truth he can’t deny… “I love you.  I never stopped loving you.”

Roll the credits.  I take a great sigh, bat my eyelashes and imagine how they live happily ever after.

Then it’s back to reality, right?  Well, I woke up the next morning after watching that movie and read my devotional thought for the day.  From Sarah Young’s, Jesus Calling:

Come to Me. Come to Me. Come to Me.  This is My continual invitation to you, proclaimed in holy whispers.  When your heart and mind are quiet, you can hear Me inviting you to draw near.  Coming close to Me requires no great effort on your part; it is more like ceasing to resist the magnetic pull of My Love.  Open yourself to My loving Presence, so that I may fill you with My fullness.  I want you to experience how wide and long and high and deep is My Love for you, so that you can know My Love that surpasses knowledge.  This vast ocean of Love cannot be measured or explained, but it can be experienced.  Rev. 22:17, John 6:37, Eph. 3:16-19.

Wow.  So this is why I love chick-flicks so much!   It’s true!  It is the reality of how God pursues a love relationship with mankind!  Girls, next time your man rolls his eyes at the mention of you wanting to go see another chick-flick, just reassure him that it’s the Godly thing to do!

Just kidding.  Sort of.

No, really, though.  The other reason why this particular chick-flick stuck with me is because it was all too familiar.  You can substitute “boy” in that description above with “Wes,” and “girl” with “Stacy.”

Wes and I are celebrating 9 years of marriage!  On August 24, 2002 I married the most amazing man.  I married my best friend.  I married the one I was waiting for–someone who would love God more than he would ever love me.  I married Wes, took a great sigh, batted my eyelashes, and dreamed of how we would live happily ever after.

The Lord knows the kinds of trials we have been through over these last 9 years.  And the kinds of trials that we went through before we even got married!   Who ever said being in a committed relationship was easy?  If you have been told that, then you have been straight up lied to.  Happily ever after doesn’t mean perfectly easy.  It means that even when times are tough you hold on tight to the promise that God will see you through that fire.  And then you rejoice together, because you endured the flames and came out stronger, together.  Closer, with a greater dependence on your Lord.

It was about 10 years ago when that veil was lifted from my eyes and I could finally see what was before me clearly.  I began to realize that Wes has taught me more about God’s grace and unconditional love than anyone I’ve ever known.  And since that day I am constantly given a picture, in the flesh, of what my relationship with God is like.  What it was like.  What it is supposed to be like.  What it can be like.  What it will be like with time.  Who ever said being in a committed relationship with God was easy?  If you have been told that, then you have been straight up lied to.

But maybe there is something you haven’t been told.  Here it is again.  What God says to you,

Coming close to Me requires no great effort on your part; it is more like ceasing to resist the magnetic pull of My Love.  Open yourself to My loving Presence, so that I may fill you with My fullness.  I want you to experience how wide and long and high and deep is My Love for you, so that you can know My Love that surpasses knowledge.  This vast ocean of Love cannot be measured or explained, but it can be experienced.

It’s true.  It can be experienced.  God desires intimacy with us.  A kind of intimacy that is even greater and stronger than the kind of intimacy between husband and wife.  It can’t be explained.  But it can be experienced.

Thank you, my Lord, and my God for pursing me even when I fight against the magnetic pull of Your love.  Thank you for not giving up on me.  And thank you, sweet Lord, for giving me Wes.  I don’t deserve him, as I don’t deserve You.  But I will praise You and thank You all the more!

Happy Anniversary, Wesley.  I love you more and more each day.  It is such a privilege to live this adventure with you.  Thank you for loving our God even more than you’ll ever love me.

So last Wednesday he went to his first day of Kindergarten at the International Christian School of Lima!  He was very excited and walked right in like he had been there a hundred times already.  His teacher’s name is Mrs. Mysheel Kerekes.  She is very sweet and can relate to the kids in a lot of ways, because she is a “third culture kid” herself.  She was born in Ecuador, but spent at least 18 years in the States going to school and working, she’s also travelled to other countries like, Hungary, where she met her husband.  There are 9 other kids in Jake’s class, and they also come from different parts of the world–Korea, Mexico, USA, Australia, South Africa, and Peru!  How cool is that?!  When we picked him up after his first day he said, “Do we have to leave? Can I stay here?”  I smiled and told him not to worry, he would be coming back the next day (and the next day, and the next day…little does he know he’ll be going back for the next 12 years at least).  :)

On his way to big kid school!

After school: Jake and James, his friend from Australia that we met several months ago.

On furlough we got to visit my good friend, Kimberly, in San Antonio.  She has three little boys and her sister-in-law made her a sign that she hung up in her house, and I absolutely love it!  Because the sign says it all,

“There’s these boys who stole my heart.  They call me Mom.”

There’s no way to describe how proud I am of my boys and how thankful I am to be their Mama!

Well, as the title says, there are whirlwind weeks ahead!  TONIGHT as I type this we have some short-term AFCers who are arriving here to work with our team for about two weeks.  Among other things, they will be doing some service projects and a VBS for all our kids next week when we go to the Peruvian Missions Summit in Arequipa.  Yeah!  We are so excited to have them here!  When we get back from Arequipa our family will have just a couple of days to pack, because visiting Texas is on the horizon!  It is time for our first furlough!  Wow, August 19 will be the 2 year mark of us living here in Lima!  We are looking forward to time spent with our supporting churches, family, and friends.

The next several weeks are going to FLY by.  And on August 3rd Wes and I will enter a new stage in life–kids in SCHOOL.  Like for real big kid school.  Jake starts KINDERGARTEN!  What?!  I know, I can’t believe it, either.

But let’s not focus on that quite yet.  We have a Texan summer to enjoy before that happens, and a little Derek who will be turning THREE on 4th of July weekend!  Fun times in these whirlwind weeks ahead!

One of our interns, Kyle Westbrook, got broken.  Wes and the other Kyle made skimboards.  The first day they went to try them out on the beach Kyle W broke his collarbone.  So a good portion of February Wes was helping Kyle through surgery, recovery, and getting him back to Texas for physical therapy.  Going through something like that can be quite a challenge and leave it’s mark when it happens in another country where you don’t speak the language.  But Kyle is doing great, and he has a great attitude about the whole situation.  We await his return in the coming weeks.  You can read their blog for more details and xray pictures, etc.

Also, in February we were on the hunt for a different car.  We sold the Honda Stream back in November, so when we got back from our holiday vacation we had four interns to drive around, but no car to do it in!  In so many ways God has blessed us with a different 7 passenger car–a 2000 Mitsubishi Montero.  We no longer worry about those pot holes that come out of nowhere or the very tall curbs that we were so familiar with–You know, the ones that, among other things, could tear the bumper right off of that Honda Stream just two weeks after we got it.  And also, we have no worries about all the roads we will take from here on out that are not paved.  Wes (and Jake and Derek) are like kids in a candy store with a truck to roam around in.  We are such Texans.  Here in Peru this car looks like a giant.  But in Texas it’s just your average SUV.

What else?  Oh, the boys started back up at Nido (pre-school) three days a week.  They love it and continue to blow me away with their Spanish skills.  The other day Derek was playing in our backyard by himself and I heard him shouting different words.  Some of them in English and some in Spanish.  He overheard some of our neighbors on the other sides of our walls and was having his own little conversation with them.  And today, when I went to pick them up from school their teacher was telling me about Jake’s dancing skills.  I was like, “What?  Where did that come from?  Surely not from us.”  She asked Jake to show me.  He then proceeded to start break dancing.  Oh! OKAY, that explains it!  That would be Wes’ kid.  Love it.  I’ll have to get some of that on video.  Jake is full of surprises that just crack us up.  Last week he was pretending to play the guitar and REALLY getting into it.  No joke, it was impressive.  We started laughing and Wes said, “Jake, when did you watch Back To The Future?”

The boys are both very into super heroes right now.  Derek especially likes Superman.  And Buzz Light Year.  Jake likes Spiderman, Batman, and also Star Wars.  Jake is about to turn 5.  FIVE.  Wow.  He loves to make things (with the trash, I mean treasure, that we collect in his “making box”), build with Legos, play outside, swim, and go to the beach to play in the sand.  Derek also loves to play with Legos, and is getting better at making his own airplanes out of them.  Jake will spend more than an hour following the directions to make an airplane, a helicopter, or a boat out of his Legos.  It’s seriously amazing.  I help him find the pieces and he puts the whole thing together by himself.  Derek loves to swing in the back yard on the swings his daddy made, he wants to go the beach every day, and he loves to play outside, too.  Since it is summer, often I hear him say, “It’s a sunny day, Mama, can we go to the beach?  Pleeease?”

We looked over at Jake one day and this is what we saw.  It was awesome.

Here’s a pic of Derek as batman.  But this picture is oh, so much more.  Did you notice the q-tip in his ear?  He came up to me with that in his ear, tilted his over to one side, looked at me grinning and said, “Can you hear me, Mama?  Can you hear me?”  I died laughing.  Cutest thing ever.

We had a great beach day last week.  We tried a different beach and it was really cool.  The waves were HUGE.  And scarey.  But we survived them and came out with sand in every nook and cranny of our bodies.  We also got to swim just about 15 yards away from dolphins!  It was a much needed day off and day of fun.  The Thompsons got some great pics.

The very same day we arrived back from our vacation, we also welcomed our very first interns who are here from the Aggies For Christ!  We (and them) hit the ground RUNNING and it has been an amazing two weeks already.  We love having them here!  Here is their blog about their adventures here, thelima4.blogspot.com.

Kyle G., Jenny, Taylor, and Kyle W.

And last but not least…

The Thompsons will be back in Lima next week!  Thank you, thank you, for all your prayers and support!  Here is the link to their blog post about them coming back–  Let the Games Begin.

Our teammates, The Thompsons, abruptly lost their financial support just over two months ago. They left their home here in Lima with the hopes of returning to it as soon as possible.  They flew back to Texas and started blazing down that fundraising trail once again.  We, as a team, have no doubt that Lima is where the Lord wants this family to be and we know He is providing a way back for them.  We have missed them terribly and it has been a rough journey for them.  As always, times like these are opportunities to build our trust in our God and strengthen our faith.  Will you consider joining us in prayer and think about helping the Thompsons get back to Lima?

a stick

plastic bowling pin

dust pan

rubber door stop

tennis raquet

toy saw

plastic bottle

a small toy giraffe

cheese grater

my cell phone

And here are three recent pictures of PURE CUTENESS.  I love this kid.  He’s so much fun!

]]> http://theyoakums.net/blog/you-think-derek-likes-baseball/feed/ 3 http://theyoakums.net/blog/our-august-celebration/ http://theyoakums.net/blog/our-august-celebration/#comments Mon, 30 Aug 2010 03:09:58 +0000 Wes http://theyoakums.net/blog/?p=767 Today is the last Sunday in August. So what? Well, right now we’ve got a number of small groups that meet regularly for Bible study and worship times on Sundays. We have several different groups that get together in people’s homes in different parts of the city. These small groups, house churches of sorts have been really great for a lot of reasons. But, in addition to getting together in these smaller groups, we have been combining these three groups and inviting our friends that aren’t in a group yet to come and get together for what we call our Celebration Sundays. And, today was one of those Sundays.

We had a really great turn out this time around… which was encouraging. I don’t know how many people came but the room we rented out for the occasion was pretty packed and we completely ran out of the snacks that we brought. During these times of “celebration” we generally have some times of prayer, worship in song, read scripture and maybe have someone share a short thought… the idea is to have a time in which we celebrate our shared faith in Jesus and enjoy the chance to realize that we are in fact a part of something that is bigger than us and to enjoy the community of worshipping together as a group.

Today we did all of that… but it was also a special day because two of our Peruvian friends decided that they wanted to be baptized. Do you remember Edgar? I wrote about Edgar a long time ago… a story about how I was just trying to go play soccer and he completely got in my way by asking me about my faith. Well, Edgar has just kept “getting in my way” in a good way, dropping by and wanting to study the Bible or just talk about life and faith whenever he gets the chance. We’ve become good friends over the last few months and even though I didn’t know Edgar before, I’ve seen that God has made big changes in his life. He works in a small bus, called a combi, as a “cobrador”, the guy who collects the fare from the passengers. While riding all across town he is constantly telling people about his newfound faith and what God has been doing in his life… a natural evangelist. Along with Edgar, his wife Graciela and her mom, Victoria have been learning about God’s love and we are excited to see how God is working in them as well. Anyways, today we got to celebrate with Edgar as he clothed himself with Christ through baptism, as the scripture says in Galations 3.

Of course, Edgar is one of many of our new friends here. Also, we have a friend, Luis, who has been studying mostly with Justin, who was baptized tonight. Luis is a young single man who works as a guard on the Thompsons street and has become a good friend to us all.

Ok, well, I just wanted to share a little bit about our Celebration Sunday today and some of the stuff that God is doing in the lives of our new friends. Please keep us in your prayers, and especially Edgar and Luis as they continue along the path that God has for them.

We focused our efforts in a community in a part of Lima called Villa Maria del Triunfo and more specifically in an area known as “Paraiso” or “Paradise.”  In this, our first medical campaign, we were really just shooting in the dark on a lot of things.  Sometimes inexperience can be a blessing as well as a curse.  We decided that we wanted to have a traditional medical campaign like most people imagine when they think about such a thing.  We talked with a local government run preschool and were able to use their facilities, which turned out to be ideal.  We had several rooms with doctors, dentists and nurses seeing patients.  Plus another room for vision checks and passing out eyeglasses.  All of this enclosed in a fence with a playground for the kids and space for the adults.  It was perfect and we invited the community to come receive free exams and, if we had what they needed, free medicine.  We saw hundreds of people over the three days we were there.

Also, though, we wanted to do something a little different.  Our ministry here has been one that is not a massive, shotgun approach.  We haven’t plastered signs on billboards and played ads on the tv or radio.  While those certainly have their place, our ministry has all along been intentionally very relational.  We have gotten to know our neighbors and the people that work in our communities.  We talk on the street corners and in our kids schools and play soccer on the local “canchas.”  We do a lot of talking over lunch and generally sharing life with our new friends in a one to one kind of way.  So, we decided we would try something similar with our medical campaign as well.

We formed two small teams with a medical doctor and a few helpers that traveled on foot through the surrounding neighborhoods.  We primarily worked by word of mouth and through many of our relationships in the community, going to visit people in their homes that we knew to be sick and need help.   One of the great things about this approach is that we were able to visit many that were unable to get out of their house and come to the clinic we had set up.  Equally as great though, was that we simply had the opportunity to sit down in these peoples very humble homes and talk with about their troubles, pray with them about their concerns and their health, sometimes drink some tea… we were able to go to them and meet them where they were.

I just put up a post on our team ministry website as well… www.twentyeight19.org.  Go check it out.

Also, John Mark made a fantastic video of our weekend.  Take a few minutes and get some better insight into the kind of neighborhood I’ve been talking about and see some of the faces… of our Peruvian neighbors and our American volunteers.

Medical Campaign 2010 – Paraiso from Twentyeight19 Ministries on Vimeo.

Maybe the most noteworthy news item of late is that we had our first of hopefully many medical campaigns this July.

This deserves and will get it’s own post in the next day or two. But the short version of the story is that we had a group of thirty some odd visitors from all over Texas and Tennessee… Among them we had five doctors and five nurses. Those health care professionals plus all the other amazing visitors we had really made our first stab at a medical campaign go about as smoothly as it could have possibly gone… way smoother than I ever expected.

The other big news of late is that we’ve had family visit! First, Stacy’s brother, aka Uncle Ben, is a doctor and came as part of the aforementioned medical campaign.

And then, this week we’ve had Stacy’s parents visiting. The boys have just been beside themselves with Gran and Grandad here in the flesh and not just a picture on the computer via Skype. Unfortunately, grandad had to leave already, but we’ve still got gran here until Wednesday night. Our days have been full of going to the parks around town, visiting the zoo, etc., etc.

Of course our car broke down the day before they got here. So, we rented a car for a couple of days while it was in the shop… we got the tiniest little Fiat you’ll ever see. It didn’t even have power steering; but it was the cheapest thing they had and it got the job done. I also promise more details from the Gran and Granddad visit coming soon.

Oh yeah, one more thing… We’re moving… Again. Of course. If you know us well enough to be reading this, then you probably didn’t just fall out of your chair in shock. But, this isn’t what we expected to be doing when we moved in to our current house almost a year ago. Anyways, this certainly deserves its own post too. So, more to come later in the week.

Yeah, yeah, I know you don’t believe me about all the updates I’ve been promising… But really it’s going to happen. Really.