Broken Hearts

Hearts get broken all of the time.  My dad's broke this weekend on a float trip in the middle of Nowheresville Missouri when he started feeling chest pain.  Doctors told us later that this was the beginning of a severe heart attack that nearly killed him.  Mine broke today when I saw my strong, reflective, and unbreakable daddy sitting in his hospital bed fearing for his life as he anticipated open heart surgery.  Tomorrow he goes under the knife to fix what has been broken.  

Unfortunately, there is no simple surgery that heals the kind of breaks in the hearts of my family members as they have watched the recent events unfold...it is not as simple.  It's not just a clean cut, and stitches, and 6-8 weeks of recovery.  Healing these breaks requires something much more complicated.  These kinds of breaks require a vast network of community that makes meals and takes your dog out when you can't.  These kinds of breaks require text messages from dear friends from all over the country.  These kinds of breaks require prayers...and in this case, prayers not just from all over the US, but all over the world.  All up and down the country of Mozambique people are praying for my dad's surgery, and for my family, and for a peace that passes all understanding.  In languages I cannot even understand, I have received prayers.  It's not as simple as surgery, it's much more complicated and much more beautiful.

I ask for your prayers, near and far, for tomorrow.  

Prayers know no distance, and they heal a multitude of things that are broken.

June - Whewwww

June was insane. Crazy.  Like, I-can-just-barely-keep-my nose-above-water NUTS.
The long and short of it goes like this:

June 1 was the official start date of "Sarah as full-time Mozambique Initiative Coordinator".  AWESOME...aaaannndd just the slightest bit overwhelming.  Carol (my predecessor) and I had our last week of overlap before the Missouri Methodists' Mayhem Meeting (otherwise known as Annual Conference), where Carol was honored for her 13 years of service and I was introduced to the conference at large as the new Coordinator.  There was pomp, there was circumstance, there was a huge Mozambican hut set up as a display...every time I turned around I was meeting a new person, and shaking hands with another church leader.

                                                                

In addition to this introduction to the Conference, my band was asked to lead the music at the Sunday morning worship service. This was no ordinary worship service - this was the largest group I had ever played for in my entire life. From the piano, I looked out onto a crowd of 2,000ish people who were all very excited to see what the music is like at The Gathering UMC, and who were on the edge of their seats waiting to hear how rock-n-roll and Jesus make a pretty darn good mix.  I must say, it was a delightfully amazing event in every way.

I took a couple of days to rest after this whirlwind of adrenaline, and woke up bright and early that following work day.  I walked into the World Head Quarters of the Mozambique Initiative (read: my home office), and felt a sudden twinge of panic... along the lines of....OMG, what did I just do?? ...similar to that feeling I had after I got that first tattoo when I was 18... you know the one....

But then I skyped with our representative in Mozambique, got to work drilling a safe water well at the Carolyn Belshe Orphanage, and a wave of relief hit me because I knew that I was exactly where I belonged doing exactly what I love.