03/03/08

We are grateful to hear from you, the women in our conference.  It strengthens us when we can share our stories, thoughts, and encouragements.  Perhaps you'd like to leave a prayer request so that we can support each other in our quiet times with our Lord.

2007 - 2008 NPC WM North Park Scholarship Winners Announced!

            Michelle Good-Hanson
            4^th Year Student
            Bellingham, Washington
            Bellingham Covenant Church

            Molly Buchan
            lst Year Student
            Sammamish, Washington
            Pine Lake covenant Church

Our Global Ministry Chair volunteered in China this autumn to rock special needs infant orphans. The women of the North Pacific Conference came alongside her with financial support, encouragement and prayer to extend our love into the world. Here is a little news from Suzann's China adventure.
 

“Cuddlefest 2007”
Suzann McLamb.  China. Rock Babies
What an amazing call!  What a profound adventure!

 I’m in love with a short, bald Chinese guy. Meet my Henry. As a 30-day volunteer with China Care Foundation, I fell in love a lot. It’s a job hazard, but well worth the risk! We had an exorbitant amount of heart babies in the children’s homes while I was there. Henry is one of  them, but that wasn’t why he was in my assigned home at the time. Henry was born with anal atresia. His digestive tract had no exit so some clever surgeons built him an anus and it works too! They don’t always have that ability on the first go if the muscles don’t want to cooperate with the new plumbing. My understanding is it was supposed to take three surgeries to achieve his success. It’s hard to believe how excited I can get over a dirty diaper!!!

Anyway, it was discovered Henry also has a severe heart defect called MD—basically, he has a hole in his heart so his blood circulation pattern is not normal and could cause serious medical complications in the future. The good news is he is doing so well recovering from his last surgery, he can wait while other babies get prioritized for theirs.

Before going overseas many people contributed money for me to designate for a baby’s surgery and I agreed to direct it to Henry. The ayis (nannies) kept handing him to me as my own little charge so it wasn’t a big leap to say yes. That gets him half-way paid for at $2,000 of $4,000. It is impossible to express how deeply this gift impacts him and how grateful lam to those who are radically changing his life. This little guy glows love. He is quite a serious little fellow, but when he smiles the world gets a whole lot brighter.

There is something very different about these babies. The way they look at you is so unique from anything I’ve experienced before, and I’ve rocked a lot of babies. Maybe they know they’re fragile, or realize they’ve been abandoned, but there is unadulterated appreciation of any attention in their eyes and it goes straight to the heart. I am humbled by their love and gratitude. And they are happy. I have to tell you, China Care rocks. Each ayi only has two babies assigned and there are no more than 10 babies per home. Even in the transitory homes I volunteered in with babies constantly coming and going from hospital and cities of origin, they have a homey, cozy scene to live in where they are not only fed and cleaned, but nurtured.  

This volunteer gig was the best job ever! I was the extra lap. I didn’t change one diaper or mix any formula, but I did get to hold bottles and nebulizers for the infants, snuggle, play a hundred games of clap, clap, clap, rock babies to sleep and let them just nestle in my arms. I got to hold the hands of our extra- fragile babies and comfort them in their hurt and distress. They are exceptionally attentive listeners and love a good story. I got to make them smile and giggle and know they were the center of the universe in those oh so special moments.

If I’m going to rave about China Care, you must meet another heartthrob of mine. I had a three-hour adventure one day going on ayi shift change at the hospitals to meet Jack. He was abandoned at two weeks old. He was a mess. One of the directors (and my new personal hero) quite literally saved his life by choosing him from one of the orphanages to enter China Care’s homes. His surgery was for meningocele, a form of spina bifida where his lower spine was open with some kind of fluid sack. He was tiny and emaciated. I did not recognize him in hospital from his picture, and since no one spoke English, I thought he was a different baby because the one I saw was all rounded up! Turns out, he had just been well cared for and has been thriving ever since! We hung out a lot my last week. He is so alert and such a smiley, snuggle-bunny! All of their personalities are very distinct and strong.

This trip was so not about me. These precious orphaned souls are a force to be reckoned with and we’re called to look after them in their distress. (See James 1:27) What I saw was gorgeous lives full of potential and I thank you for coming alongside us.

Want to help more? Go to www.chinacare.org and check out their “ways to help.” I’d go back in a heartbeat. It’s good to be an ambassador of love.

It “Happened” At Family Camp

On 7/7/07, Carmin took a few moments to speak to those attending the evening service at Family Camp in Yelm, Washington - to give witness to what a powerful God we have and to remind those present that “Nothing can separate us from the love of God.”  It was her seven year anniversary of sobriety. What God has done with her in those seven years is nothing short of miraculous. 

Carmin is the daughter of Tom and Donna Moline, Directors of Cascades Camp and Conference Center, a Covenant retreat center in the North Pacific Conference.  When her parents accepted the job and moved to Yelm, Carmin was 15 years old and not the least bit happy about the move.  To her, it was just one more hurt in a life already too full of pain.  When she was eight years old, Carmin was sexually molested by a trusted Covenanter.  At such a young age she was unable to find God in the midst of the tragedy and inwardly felt shame and confusion.  She found comfort in later years hanging with the “wrong” crowd.  She started drinking at age 12.  Her parents had no idea the path Carmin was on.  When they moved to Yelm, Carmin found a whole new level of “wrong” and started running away from home at age 16.  She’d be gone for days, hanging out with friends, doing things that would make any parent’s skin crawl. 

Each time she left, Donna could only release her into God’s hands and pray.  “We didn’t know where she was,” Donna recalled, “and I’d go through this grieving process cuz it was like she’d died.  Then when she came home and things were good, I thought if she left again, I’d get stronger, I’d be good.  But then she’d leave again and I’d go through that whole process again.  .  We were always just hanging on to the hope that God would bring her out of it.”  Carmin’s addictions and disappearances went on for 13 years.   

At age 19 Carmin became pregnant.  She disappeared when Andrew was a year old. She was fully ensconced into the drug culture and made her living selling drugs.  Carmin remembers someone told her once, “You need to get out of this while you can.”  She had just turned 21 and used a needle for the first time.  “Once you stay in too long it’s hard to get away.  The drug culture is a different world; different people, different rules- it’s just evil,” recalls Carmin. 

Tom and Donna raised their grandson, Andrew, until he was nine years old.  All the while Carmin was coming and going, and when she was gone, her parents had no idea if she was dead or alive.  “We were always relieved to get the call from jail so we knew she was off the streets for awhile,” said Donna.  The heartache Tom and Donna suffered cannot be described in words.  But they were not in this alone, they had the support of many, many friends, and they had God.  They trusted Him fully.  “I always knew that God was going to use this for the good, and I prayed that he would bring her back to us whole.”  But as much as Donna wanted to rest in the peace that passes all understanding, she was still a mother who longed to see her daughter.  When she heard someone had seen Carmin in nearby Tacoma, she’d drop everything and rush to that neighborhood looking everywhere for just a glimpse of her.  “If only I could see her,” she said through her tears, “then I’d know she was okay and maybe I could talk her into coming back home again.” 

At age 24 Carmin had racked up two felony charges relating to drug possession and was tired of the life she was living.  She came home for a year and a half, started going to college and was determined to set her life straight.  But she tried to manage her life herself, and intentionally did not turn things over to God. She ended right back up on the streets, living her old life.  Carmin remembers, “I shook my fist in God’s face and went into it harder and faster than I did before.  I didn’t want to deal with the reality of my life.” 

Finally, at age 27, Carmin was at a place where she says she just couldn’t picture herself in “that world” for the rest of her life.  She had added another felony charge to her record and had just gotten out jail yet again.  “I was sitting in a hotel room on the side of the freeway in Tacoma and I’d been out for three days.  I’d used drugs; violated my probation.  I knew I would go back to jail again. It was just a matter of time.  I felt sick and broken and bankrupt – physically, emotionally, spiritual - sitting in that hotel - drug paraphernalia all over the place.  A friend was with me and I was thinking – I don’t want to be here anymore.  I knew in the depths of my soul I didn’t want to do this life anymore.  I didn’t know the next move.  I couldn’t call my parents and do this to them again. Guilt and shame were working overtime.  I was afraid, couldn’t trust anyone.  People I knew were going to jail right and left.  .  I was afraid to leave the hotel room.  And for some reason I looked down at my pager and my parent’s phone number was there.  My heart leapt.” 

.  The date was July 7, 2000, right in the middle of 4^th of July Family Camp.  Not a convenient time to be dealing with this kind of problem, but it was God’s perfect time to deal with it. 

The Molines called several people together at camp to pray for the situation.  As it “happened”, the main speaker that year was a man named Gwenn Lewis.  He had been redeemed from the drug life and founded a ministry called “Sowers International.”  He offered practical words of encouragement and direction for the Molines.  As it also “happened”, Mark Novak, the superintendent of the North Pacific Conference was at camp.  He had just moved up from California where the church he was involved with (Redeemer Covenant) had a close relationship with a Transitional living called Clean & Sober Transitional Living. Mark got on the phone right away and called the C.S.T.L..  Carmin was on the next plane to California. 

Carmin was at C.S.T.L. for three months and it was there she met Joe.  He was just out of prison for drug related charges and the two of them found comfort in each other’s life stories.  They started attending Redeemer Covenant and as Carmin says, “The people there just loved on us and brought us into the fold.”  It was there they married, but it was at a women’s retreat Carmin attended when she was 30 that really changed things.  It was there she completely surrendered her life; past, present and future, into God’s hands.  Carmin recalls, “I don’t think I understood completely about God’s love.  I felt he was in judgment of me, but it was my own guilt and shame making me feel that way.  I just told God – whatever it is you want me to do – whatever you want me to be – I’ll do it.  From that point on, I started growing spiritually.” 

In June of 2004 Carmin and Joe felt God calling their family to move to Yelm, near her parents.  It was there, with the help of Crossroad Covenant Church in Yelm, that they started up a transitional home for drug addicts.  They used their life experiences and modeled the recovery program after the one they had been through in Sacramento.  “Truly Motivated Transitional Living” added a second home in February of 2006 and has just recently added a third home to this incredible recovery ministry that they are both involved in.  

“The biggest part of our story is God’s faithfulness,” says Carmin, “God’s faithfulness to my parent’s prayers and the church family that supported my family during this time when they felt like giving up. The people who prayed for me didn’t even know who I was – just Donna’s daughter.  The most amazing part to me is that regardless of our past, regardless of what we’ve done, our mistakes, our shortcomings, how far we’ve gone down…God will take all that garbage and turn it into a trophy and a story that glorifies him and will help others.  NOTHING can separate us from the love of God.  People need to know that.” 

Donna remembers all those years with a very emotional heart.  They were seemingly wasted at the time, but now she sees how God has so quickly restored them and shakes her head in amazement at what God has done in her daughter’s life.  “My husband and I both became much stronger believers in what God can do for people.  God grew us in our faith– it changed us totally, which was wonderful.  I wouldn’t chose to go through it again, but I wouldn’t chose to NOT go though it again either because we did need to be changed, too.  Your pride just goes out the window – and you have to stand on God’s promises.  Our verse was All things work together for good.  We held onto the hope and God gave us the strength.”