Being Real

What makes someone real?  For most of us, being real is living meaningful lives.

Meaning can seem elusive, because we feel more alive on certain occasions than others, thinking that pleasure in the moment makes us come alive, like falling in love, or surviving extreme danger on an expedition into the Alps. It’s easy to think that feeling totally alive is the same as finding our purpose, living our destiny. I challenge that.

Making prayer blankets may seem boring by comparison to mountain climbing, yet using our talents and skills to comfort those going through tough times, investing in other people’s lives, walking beside them along a harsh path satisfies our need for relevance and purpose. Whether we’re making prayer quilts, or prayer shawls what makes us real is not that we feel like it, but that we consistently use our skills and abilities to bring glory to God. Like Rick Warren says in his book The Purpose Driven Life, “It all starts with God.”

Prayer Blanket Ministry Taught Me How To Pray

The Prayer Blanket Ministry taught me how to pray for others and from that how to abide in His Presence in prayer.

We know God speaks anywhere anytime. It doesn’t matter where we are, we also can pray anytime.

However, habit plays an effective role in prayer, adjusting kinesthetically to the connection with the Almighty Father, as we sense ourselves moving into His presence, inner eyes wide open, exploring, then captivated by His Powerful Presence with a crescendo of unplanned praise playing freely, unstoppable, until a pause between the notes shifts the scene. It takes us by surprise with an orchestra of fresh ideas, somewhere crossing the line between our own thoughts and His, not knowing which is which, not willing to pull back to explore it, not willing to miss a moment of it, held by some mysterious force… when suddenly the phone rings, bringing us back to earthbound lives.

Lego Faith

Prayer blankets remind us that God is bigger than any problem we’re facing…

…problems we thought would never happen to us.

When we feel defeated, weakened, hurting, stripped of health, we soften towards God.

…It seems to be our nature.

Other people’s faith, those who pray and knot, bring their collective experiences of faith together into something touchable, increasing our own faith, …as Legos hooking together to form a myriad of structures, leveraging and bracing, building and expanding.

These fleece blankets with their prayers knotted into the fringe, symbolically reach us, touching our hurt, covering our doubt, rescuing our hope.

And when we lack faith ourselves, we wrap up in other people’s prayers, leaning on their faith, walking with them down the dark road,  their faith lighting our way.

Performing Arts Team on Mission

People gather to watch and hear a message of Christ through performaing arts with music in their language.  They responded....children women and men.

The wind blew and we tethered the staging with cinder blocks

This little boy receives a package of clothes.  Many children recieved clothes for school through their local churches compliments of St Paul's Collegiate Church, Storrs, CT

We're not pointing at the children in the tree, we're teaching them a rap song about the 10 Commands by Alan Root.  We used an interpreter, and later this gathered audience did the hand motions with us.  It was a beautiful thing.

A Trip to San Miguelito, Panama

Our mission in San Miguelito, district of Panama was to clothe poor children so they could go to school.  Our church, St Paul's Collegiate Church of Storrs CT also has a feeding program there. About 78-80 children received four school uniforms each while younger children received everyday outfits.  The pastor of this church, Cielos Abiertos, is handing out one of the packages to a young child.

Through workshops and assisting with a crusade, we were in the midst of where God was at work. Many came to know the Lord and we gave ideas and materials to equip believers to teach children.

So many stories to tell and God was in them all, even the unexpected and funny situations, like my rehearsing ventriloquism, basically pacing while talking to my hand, and not three feet away slept a homeless man...and when he sat up...I nearly wet my pants.