Getting used to Pemba...

Hello,

It's been a couple of weeks now since coming back to Mozambique and I'm happy to say that things are definitely picking up since my last email. Some of you have been so kind to email or even call me to encourage me through my rough re-entry back to the mission field. Thank you!!!! It was such a pick me up.

I have some praise reports.

1) To my surprise, I've become more acclamated to the life here and amazingly, after not speaking a word of Portuguese in a year and a half, my Portuguese just picked up where I left!

2) I'm very happy that one of Yilo's very good friend, whom since his death has also become a good friend of mine, is here with me in Pemba. She's so awesome. We are having a blast and God is really growing us both and stretching us in areas of missions, love, and the prophetic. She's such a blessing to share life here in Africa. She's an awesome cook and has been and awesome blessing to the bland diet that we have here. She's packed lots of Chinese ingredients for us to cook while we're here. She's become a part of my family both in the US and now in Mozambique.

The old medical clinic and it's responsibilities have been handed over to a team of medical doctors, nurse, and Mozambican medical staff. Within the last year, the clinic, to my amazement, acquired official status as a medical clinic which now allows us to care for the many thousands of villagers around us. Getting official status is a total answered prayer!!!!!! This has been my hope since I first started the clinic from scratch 3 years ago. The medical team has been so strong thanks to some great missionaries. They have a vision to expand what we already have to make it bigger. With the new facility, they're praying for a minor surgical room, 2 dental chairs for visiting dentists, and more consultation rooms.

Because of the many medical perssonel that have volunteered to help out at the clinic, I was able to step out of my physician assistant hat and step into a different hat that allows me to explore the more creative side of me. I've been building relationships with the older girls and boys at the children's and encouraging them to write their own songs and help them record their worship songs on my computer. We're hoping to make a CD one day that Iris can sell where the children could benefit from their own profits. I'll be helping in putting together a picture autobiography of the Baker's life journey of their many years on the mission field. This book will tell their life story in pictures. I've been helping out as staff with the 3 month Iris Harvest Mission School of 120 mission students. Also, I'm organizing groups of students, visitors, and Mozambican students in helping to rebuild a house for one of our provincial pastors.

It sounds like a lot, but it's not....my heart is at perfect peace and I'm really enjoying my work here. I'm trying not to take missions and work too seriously but I'm very serious about the love that I put behind everything that I do. I believe in God's eyes, He weighs the love behind our works and no the works itself. It's very easy to loose focus of this here since we're daily met with so much need and work.

Thanks for reading my blogs. I pray that you're doing well. Drop me an email sometimes.

Prayer Request:
Please pray for one of my good friends.....his mother needs your prayers.
He wrote to me:

"I need some prayer support. word came through this afternoon that my mom has an invasive form of breast cancer and that she will need to get a mascectomy within a week. At that time they will find out if the cancer has spread to other areas (a possibility at this time). My parents are quite upset, understandably so. I would greatly appreciate your prayers for peace and of course for healing."

Much love in Him,
Yonnie

I've arrived to Mozambique safely.

After more than 24 hours of continuous flight, I finally arrived here in Pemba, Mozambique. The weather is beautiful around 70's. We are currently having our winter season. There are a lot of changes....different missionaries that I've never met, kids even. Things here seems to be a lot more organized than before that I've left more than a year ago. So far, I'm getting my living situation settled and I'll be venturing out more the 411 on the base. The crazy thing is that the children have grown so much since I've been gone! I guess that's what it feels like to see your children grow up....kinda scarey...

Haven't gone to the children center for a proper visit yet, but from what I've heard, the clinic has 3-4 nurses already and 2 doctors. They do weekly medical outreaches to the villages.

It was good meeting Teisa , my old roommate. She's now living next door to me with her new husband.

Things here have changed...I have changed. It's tricky balancing the memories of this place, the current Pemba and my new self. My hardest struggle now is keeping myself from reverting back to my old self, the work-aholic missionary....and jumping into work right away.

I pray that as I start my work here in Pemba, that I work always in the state of rest and being filled.....I'm trying.....

Jesus did it....I believe it's possible.

Pro-Kingdom, Not Pro-Israel or Pro-Palestine

I just had the privilege of visiting the Holy city, Jerusalem for the CALL Jerusalem and Bethlehem in the West Bank where I visited some friends who are loving on the displaced Palestinians in the refugee camps.

As I stayed behind both sides of the Wall that separates the state of Israel and Palestine...I realized how blind that I've been.  I'm ashamed of how ignorant that I've been, how I let my American and even the views of the evangelical church shape my view of the Israeli and Palistinian confict.  

I'll explain.

In Jerusalem...I kept having this feeling that as a Christian, I had to choose sides, to stand on the side of the state of Israel as a country.  I felt that I "should" side with Israel because God is has always been pro-Israel in the Bible and heck they are the chosen people of God right?....so of course I "should" be pro-Israel.

Then, having the privilege at the other side of the wall...after waiting in line for the border check, showing my passport to the Israeli soldiers,  I entered the sleepy Palestinian town of Bethlehem, the town where Jesus was born...

My friends who lives there, have been working with the Palestinian refugee camps for a while now and I had the privilege of going with them into the camps for house visits.  Hanging out with the refugees and listening to their stories had really stirred and challenged my stance in this matter.  Their pain runs deep in their hearts.  If you asked them how many people they knew personally that have died innocently by this conflict...they'll start telling you about the many young boys that have died in their arms when shot by Israeli settlers.  These 14-15 years old boys were only throwing stones and they were shot.  I've visited families where they have posters of these young boys that died from just throwing stones in protest.

The lives in these refugee camps are truly glim....they're constantly tormented with injustice ....no hope for anything better while their Israeli brothers on the other side of the wall "party and have loud music and live the good life".

I spoke with a young man...entering into adulthood with nothing promising getting intosmoking, doing drugs, and womanizing...

I tried to encourage him....he replied..." yeah, my dream is to study and become a lawyer so that I can bring justice against "those not nice people !@#$%"

I've observed that if you have a person in distress, under pressure,  living poor conditions, stripped from any kind of a choice or power over their lives, they will blow up one day...and indeed the radical muslims have been doing that.  For some reason, I'm actually understanding a little of their world view.  Though I believe that horrible media and propaganda have been a huge contributed to this violence... and I believe that if I had children and if anyone of my children had been shot ruthlessly, the pain would be so incredible that I would consider doing anything to avenge their death, even unto death.  Now, I'm not condoning terrorism, but I'm understanding the root of why things are the way they are.

If someone asks me again about my stance of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict...

I would say that I'm Pro-Kingdom.  I don't think that God is pro-Israel as a state....I don't think that God is even pro-Palestine.  I don't believe that God is political in an earthly sense.  He's pro-Kingdom "on earth as it's in heaven"  He's pro-Bride of Christ making herself ready for His return.  He loves the Palestinians, the Arabs just as much as the Jews and the Christians. 

I don't care about what anyone says, but if you're not loving your neighbor, there is some serious problems there.  I think that taking sides is a trap.  In conflicts like these, I believe my roll as a fellow human being is to be  peacemaker.  To bring Love to them...what does love look like to the Jews?  What does love look like to the Palestinians?

Waiting at the airport in Amsterdam

hey there...this is my first post.

i'm hanging out overnight at the airport in Amsterdam...  trying to stay up playing by with my computer and drinking plenty of coffee.  It's never smart to doze off while traveling alone, especially being a female...

In Israel, I'll be joining the Iris Team, Heidi, Shara, and Sue with our Iris base there.

Will be ministering at a conference where Heidi will be speaking and also the Call Jerusalem.

I'm excited to hear Misty Edwards live at the Call Jerusalem.  

here are some thoughts from the other day.

I realized today that I'm more than just a missionary.  In life, we're all missionaries.  

We are to love the world around us.  My number one job is to love the Lord my God with all my heart, mind, and strength...then love my neighbors as myself.  In order to love my neighbor, I have to love myself.  For all my life, I thought that I was selfish...and had loved myself way too much.  But in reality, it was really the opposite.  I never really loved myself in the way that God wanted me to love myself.  I had always thought that I was not good enough, and therefoe gave way to a negative cycle of self-criticism and self- hatred.  How could I love myself if I never felt loved before?  How can I love myself, when my parents never gave me the love and affection that I needed?  This is especially the case in Asian families....we were never taught an emotional language, how to express ourselves, to give and receive love.  I have to say that many of us are emotionally stunted because of this.  My parents never received love from their parents and love in the Asian culture is providing shelter, the necessities in life, money, education...

Anyways, the key to life is in the scripture in the Bible...we love because He loved us first!

We need to have Him love s.  We need to have God love us so completely and thoroughly so that we can then love ourselves...then in turn, we can overflow and have more love poured out unto our neighbors.

With my missions in the past, I've been trying to love others not knowing that I don't have enough love to give away.  When tired...and overwhelmed, I found myself not giving love away, but criticism, apathym, hate, synicism.  I hated myself because i saw the monster that I became....a miserable missionary that no one enjoys being around and only stuck to her own self... always just trying to fill in the void of her heart by escaping into her own vices of coping with Mozambican life.

I realized that loving myself means letting God love me....Letting God show how much he loves me.  That my quiet times are not just studying the Bible with the mind and intellect...but to ask Daddy, "Show me how much you love me..."  I believe that God our Father, Jesus our Lover, and Holy Spirit our comforter is wooing us into deeper intimacy with Him.

I think that we don't love ourselves enough...if we did, the world would be a better place. 

My priority in being a missionary, a carrier of good news is not to "save lives" anymore, but to be and live as a lover of God.  In this communal love relationshipm, having Him love us, then for us to react out of the incredible felt love being poured over us, we can REALLY and effectively love our neighbors.  If we try to love others any other way, we'll fail miserably.