Could your teen become a Human Trafficking statistic?

As I’ve become a human trafficking abolitionist, I’ve come face to face with more memories of God’s grace in my life.

And since these memories are not horror stories with bad endings, most of them are secrets. Secrets I have kept silent to protect the heart of my most amazing mommy.

But I think part of abolition is EDUCATION. Education about risks.

So here’s a memory…

Today is Fat Tuesday, the end of Mardi Gras. As a lifelong Protestant, I barely know what it stands for.

But as a teenager, I knew it stood for one thing.
PARTYING!
In Galveston, only 45 mins from where I grew up, Mardi Gras festivities imitated the New Orleans activities. Parades by day, street parties by night.

As a deceptive teenager, I planned a “night at the movies” with my friends, and jumped in the car with another 16-17 yr old. We headed across the big bridge to the party. We parked on a secluded street and headed into the darkness.

My mom liked to keep track of me, so she paged me at one point, and I hiked to find a pay phone to report that I had gone to a later movie… Oh and could I spend the night with my friend?

She made the same plan. To spend the night at my house, that is.

And we wandered into the night.

No where near where we said we were.
Completely vulnerable.

Graciously, God brought me home from this particular night & many others when I did not take my safety into account, going to parties in cheap hotels or houses rented by adults who threw parties for teens.

Honestly, I wasn’t trying to get hurt.
I was just trying to have fun.
I thought my mom was just afraid my car would break down.
I DID NOT KNOW THE RISKS.

I did not know that the world was full of perpetrators.
The people in my life, my family, my community, had always cared for me.
This may sound dumb, but my world was so good I didn’t know about rape or sexual abuse.
My safe life BLINDED me to the real world.

Like I said, this story doesn’t have a bad ending. That night, I came home unharmed. Truly, I believe I was wrapped in the prayers of my mother as a shield around me. She did not know the details of each lie, but she knew I was running from her & from God.

The moral of this story:
1. Pray for your kids.
2. Don’t assume they understand what it means that 12-18 year olds are prime victims for trafficking.
3. Pray for your kids.

Salt-toasted Tofu

Back in the old days, we used to keep a little Vietnamese mom’n'pop restaurant called Pho Huy Tan in business.
Well, really Mike & Tammi Rice did, cuz they picked up the whole bill at least 80% of the time (which was a huge blessing, since we were living on $1000/month).

Anyway, my favorite food became Salt-toasted Tofu.
It’s got an awesome breaded-exterior like a popular non-veg comfort food.

Since Pho Huy Tan, then Mai’s, burned down, I’ve ordered Salt-toasted Tofu off-menu at every Vietnamese restaurant I’ve tried. And they always know how to make it.

So I started thinking it must be super easy & a Vietnamese basic known by all.

Now that we are Vegetarians again, I decide it’s time to learn to cook it at home.

I found this simple recipe and tried it last night.

Drain water from tofu. Wrap with paper towels and a kitchen towel, then place a pan on top. Let sit for 20 minutes.

In a large bowl, add corn starch, 2 tsp garlic granules, 1 tsp ground ginger, and 1/2 tsp salt. Toss in cubed tofu. If needed, add more corn starch so the tofu is completely covered.

Heat pan at medium high with canola oil. Cook tofu in batches, not too crowded. Some recipes call for cooking on each side for a few minutes. I cooked one side for 4 minutes, then continually stirred until all sides were golden. Place in separate bowl.

Heat pan at medium high with olive oil. Cook onions and garlic until soft, then add tofu. Toss in scallions until soft. Season if desired.

Here’s our tofu-toss. I wish I know the proportions for the dry ingredients… Taste-wise, I should have done 2-2.5 times all the seasonings for 2lbs of tofu.

It browned really great in 1/2″ of oil.

Of course, we needed white rice to eat the tofu over.


I was pretty impress with Arabella’s technique for carrying the cutting board.
She’s a huge help in the kitchen!

Final product!
It was pretty good. I need alot more green onions next time, as well as the increase in spices… I only did 1.5x for 2lbs & it was a tiny bit less flavorful than I wanted.

Basilica nostalgia

The last 48 hours have converged into the perfect storm of friendship & memories.

Friday, during my sick timewasting, Joel told me about Facebook timeline. It’s kinda addictive. It combines photos & chronology which I love.

As I sorted through pictures on Facebook, correcting the dates on each album (so it appears in the right spot on my life’s Timeline!), I tagged this picture I uploaded 2 years ago:

This is the group that helped us get the BSM building ready for Basilica’s public launch in September 2006.

The comments from the “tagged” people warmed my heart, the 1st being my favorite:

It was nice to share these feelings as we prepared to see a large group of our former Basilica members today, as Joel preached at Covenant Community Church.
——

So I guess this was filling my mind as I slept, because I dreamt about today last night. Of course, the church location in my dream was different, and, as with all dreams, out of context people were there.

But the close of the dream was AWESOME.

I was introduced as being Joel’s wife, and the closing of our church was alluded to.
Then I witnessed my own internal dialogue in response:
“80% of churches fail within the first 2 years. Basilica made it 3 years, but we did not have a healthy, sustainable body.
So we closed. And were able to be Organ Donors, sending strong members, into other churches, like Covenant.”

The wonderful, mature families that came out of Basilica are a huge source of motherly pride for me! I am so proud of them. But I had never thought of it like organ donation before this dream.
Now I’m even more proud, that Basilica was, and that we were able to fail TO THE GLORY OF GOD.
—–

I was still contemplating my dream as we headed to Covenant Community Church Pearland this morning.

It was a surreal-ly peaceful worship service for me.
1. I got to see some of my favorite families:

• The Cowarts
• The Fosters
• The Fisks
• The LaCazes
• The Morkins
• The Parks
• The Von Kanels
• The Willis
• Marissa Stephens

2. I got to meet baby Matthew Foster & hold him during the sermon.

3. My husband preached an awesome sermon, pulling together several areas of the Bible in a glorious way.

It’s nice to get some clear hindsight.

The Glorious Beards of Basilica

A sweet surprise

Going through Holden’s papers from school tonight, I spotted the word “Mom”…
I found 2 treasures:
1. This feather for the Thanksgiving turkey with what he was thankful for.

2. This paragraph.

My mom Heather
Heather, my mom, is my best friend and is a great person.
My mom plays with me. She feeds me and she has blue eyes. She loves popcorn and most important she loves God and is a Christian.

The one that got away

You may be wondering, as I do several posts in a row about other people’s adoptions, how this all relates to me:

1. The obvious: Darin, my precious present, God brought us by adoption.

2. The memory: Jean-Roni, the one that got away.
Last summer in Haiti, Karen, Amanda, & I took care of Jean-Roni. He was a tiny, malnourished baby boy who came into the Real Hope for Haiti clinic while we were visiting.
We cared for him day & night for the majority of our trip.
We were told that he would not live at the size, age, and progression of his malnourishment.
And so don’t get attached.

That didn’t work.

So we dreamed & calculated how to bring him home with us.

But when we left, he stayed.
And 35 days later, while my arms still ached for him, Jean-Roni died.

We must fight everyday to save AS MANY CHILDREN AS WE CAN.
Our humanity requires this.

Cazale, Haiti: Photo album

Click to see full album

Cazale, Haiti: Day 1

The airport in Port-au-Prince was so simple.
We took a bus from the terminal where we landed to a warehouse-type building with the immigration, baggage claim & customs. Everything was basic, but clean and orderly. We rented 2 carts, and the guy standing with them wanted my claim tickets for the bags. I wasn’t sure I should give them to him since Lori had warned me not to, but he was really persisting. Then, as we are walking toward the baggage, we saw the guy with papers with our names on the back (and our pictures on the front) – he said to let the guy find our baggage and he gave me the phone to talk to Mr. Zachary. We found all our bags, and walked right out of Customs without answering any questions – or opening any bags. There were lots of people in plaid shirts, looking kind of official, who tried to help with our carts, but we just walked on past them to the parking lot.
Then Mr Zachary (Zach) had a Haitian man that was with him load all our bags in the back of his truck (which has a tall fence around it) and we climbed in back there, too.

We drove through Port-au-Prince for about 30 mins. It looks kind of poor, but better than I expected. People dress okay, not too much begging when we would be at a stop light, and not much attention paid to us.

Eventually, we got out of the city, and started seeing what looked like mountain-side used for grazing animals – but covered with shelter/tent-things. We were between the coast and mountains, and it was very beautiful. If I looked ahead, past the luggage and thru the windshield, I would be VERY scared because we were going fast and toward other cars… so I just looked out at the scenery and was fine. I really felt peaceful. I think we did this for like 30 mins too.

Then we turned up a road into the mountains. It was a gravel road about 3 lanes wide, and was surprisingly safe and not scary. We wound up for awhile over the first 2 foothills, then wound down toward Cazale.
A riverbed of rocks ran along the road, and the water looks very inviting. The trees are thick around the river and up the hills, mainly with banana-type trees. They even cooled the air down. We passed a cemetary where a tombstone stood right out front with Gretchen Zachary’s grave (Zach’s wife) and then arrived at the Clinic.

The clinic is right across from the river. On the other side of the road, between the river and the clinic, are little forts (roofs on sticks) that people sit under selling stuff – probably like our corner store.

The clinic compound is 2 houses with a courtyard that is fenced with gates.

• The house on the left has storage downstairs, and we sleep upstairs – it has a bunkroom for boys, a bunkroom for girls, and a bedroom for longterm volunteers, as well as a kitchen, living room, and dining area. It is very nice – it has electricity, a computer, a freezer with ice we can use, a regular stove with oven. Almost too nice to be on a mission trip to Haiti. The downstairs was the Rescue Center prior to the earthquake. After the earthquake, the “nannies” that watch the kids were too scared to be in there, even thought the house as been inspected, so they moved it.
• The house on the right is the clinic.
  • By the gate, there is a Water Mission purification system with huge tanks that pull water from the river and purify it once. Then there is a UV filter that a guy runs all the drinking water through and puts in in ozark-style jugs (the filter almost looks just like the one we had). There is a window in the gate, and a guy will take villagers’ containers, and fill them with the cleaned river water – and if there bucket is dirty, exchange that, too. There is also a box with about 20 plugs, and people can just hand their phone & charger through the window, and leave it to charge too.
  • Between the water & the building is a sitting area with benches & a tin roof where about 40 people can wait for the clinic.
  • The clinic is just the bottom floor of a house.
    
    • The front porch is the final waiting area, with a scale to weigh people on. People check in at the window to the front room of the house – where they have file cabinets with all 100,000+ files. They pay about $1 for their visit, then get assigned to a nurse who will do their visit – 2 general nurses, a nurse for wound care, and a nurse for women’s health/prenatal.
    • Each of these nurses has a small room in the house.
    • The file system is really smart. Each person gets a note card with a # the first time they come to the clinic (equivalent to their insurance card) so this number keeps track of how many people have come since 1998. The people keep this card when they leave. In the morning on Tues, Wed, Thurs, people line up outside the gate super early in the morning (there were people there when we arrived on Monday evening). At 6am, Placeholder #‘s are passed out, and File #’s are picked up – so 1st person in line is given “1” and hands over their notecard so their medical record can be pulled (if they have been there before). This way, they know how many people from around Cazale have been treated at the clinic total (104,000+), and how many they see each day (today: 375).
    • The back room of the house is the medication room, where common medicines are put in little baggies with the prescribed amount of pills, and dots to communicate to the mostly non-literate people how many times to take it (3 dots = 3x/day). SO SMART!
  • The top floor of that house (clinic) is Licia, Enoch & their 3 boys 2-bedroom apartment.

• The Rescue Center is another building 2 buildings away.
  It is a building with:

  a small courtyard/porch for feeding kids,

  a long-skinny room for the babies, and

  a large, open room for the non-babies. In this room, there are 2 bunkbeds, that a few kids were resting on, but most of the kids hang out on 3 areas that have inter-locking squishy squares covered by a sheet probably 10′×12′. It is very basic.

  The routine over there is to feed all 60 kids in the morning, give them a bath, then hang out til lunch, feed them all again, bath them all again with diaper changes, hang out til dinner, feed them all again, and sleep.

  We are totally free to play with the kids, take them back to the clinic/house compound, let them eat with us, help feed them there, or whatever.
  When we got there today, within 30 secs, Karen was carrying a kid.
  Then I sat down with one, and was immediately covered with 6 kids. They don’t talk or cry, just reach up, or just climb on your lap.
  Amanda found a little guy pretty quickly who has some sort of tremor on his left side and is pretty sick, and she hasn’t put him down yet. His name is Ojean.
  When we left after this first visit, she took him with her, and Karen and I brought along a 3-year old, Rose Marie.

Dreams

I just woke up from a dream… a really vivid, makes-my-heart-hurt dream.
About Jodhpur, India.

If you know me in real life, you probably know, living in Jodhpur is my “other life” – the one I would pursue if I didn’t have this super-awesome one with 3 kids and a husband who thinks India is really hot.
I can usually repress thinking about how much I miss it.

But I just woke up from a commonly-recurring dream about a homecoming trip to Jodhpur. They used to be less emotional, just me wandering around India, trying to find places I remember but don’t know the route to.
But this one just tore out my heart.
It was a reunion with my most love India families – Anindita, Man Singh & Anita, Honey & Rajeshwari.

The hard part of the dream focused on Anindita:
She’s like my Indian sister. When I lived in Jodhpur in 1999, she was in college – and I was just out of college.
I spent the night at her house, talked about future hope & dreams in our different family-cultural systems of expectation.

In the dream, I see Anindita, start crying and hug her. I ask her about children and she says she has a 9 year-old. I realize this means she was pregnant last time I was there, before either of us were married. I feel hurt and confused, because neither of our family-cultural systems support this, but we could have shared this.

Then I woke up. And I feel sadder with reality, due to the dream.
Because reality is the reverse of this:

My last visit to Jodhpur was in January of 2001, one month before Joel and I got married.
About 1 day into the 17-day trip, I could barely muster the energy to walk down a street. By the 3rd day, when we actually arrived in Jodhpur, I was pretty certain that I must be pregnant… and in a foreign country with only 1 other person… and with my whole identity around being a Christian missionary, in a identity-crisis.
It was the hardest time of my life.
And I spent most of this time faking I was okay with Anindita.
I had a reason not to tell:
I really wanted her to know about my God, and I didn’t want to make Him look bad by being another fake-Christian American like most Indians have seen on movies.
Cause He really is EVERYTHING, even if I get pregnant before I’m married.
I didn’t want to cancel it all out.
I didn’t know if I could explain grace in a culture where shame is so powerful, dictating your every move.

I’ve never had a chance to tell her.
After that trip, I came home to my wedding only 2 weeks away, my first scary ultrasound 6 weeks away, and then had Arabella 7 months later…
Every year, as time passes, I want to write a letter, catch up, show her my babies.
But I never had.

I look for her ANYWHERE on the internet all the time. Haven’t found her yet.

I miss Anindita. I wish I had just told her the truth at the time.

Ode to Joel

Today is a day to celebrate many things:
Love
Perseverance
Obsession
But mainly Joel

When we married in Feb 2001, he had known the grace of our Savior 7 months. Yet he was already reflecting Him beautifully.

In the 9 yrs of our marriage, he has been the steady to my extreme swaying.

He has been the slow and hopeful to my erratic, driving goals.

Joel came into the body of Christ with a clear longing to be mentored and shaped. When he found this difficult to locate, he fought for it, then turned around and became what he had needed for others.

I admire that so much.

I will follow Him wherever God leads him.

As my wedding band states, “Wherever you go, I will go. Your people will be my people. Your God [is] my God.”

Here are vows Joel wrote for our wedding. If you have heard him preach, it should be no surprise they are saturated by scripture:

Following in the example of Christ
I come into this union to serve, not to be served. (Matt 20-28)
And wherever you go, I will go
Where you stay, I will stay
Your people will be my people
And your God will be my Gos
Where you die, I will die,
And may the Lord deal with me be it ever so severly if anything but death separates us. (Ruth 1:16-17)

You have stolen my heart, my bride
With one glance of your eyes,
You have stolen my heart. (Song of Solomon 4:9)

I do.

Nostalgia

In high school, I had 3 friend’s families I spent a lot of time with:
Amy Lina
Amy Williams
Karen Wood & Katrinia Emerick

In some ways, I might have allowed myself to be closer to their moms than my own… because I was less worried about disappointing them. They only know the current version of me, unlike my mom who knew the much better version of me that existed before I turned 14.

I think I was the friend that my other “moms” worried about. I was loud, rowdy and outspoken. I liked boys who looked like they might spend some time in jail someday.

I remember the one time I decided to run away from home – I went the mile to Amy Williams’ house… my dad followed me in his car, saw where I stopped, then called and let her mom know I was grounded. She let me know I was welcome to stay… but I would be grounded there, too.

Today, I ran into Amy Lina’s mom in Walmart.
I realized that I missed her, and my other borrowed moms.
I realized that I probably loved their daughters because they had great moms, and I am old enough (and wise enough to appreciate the neat ladies they are now.
It made me want to have a little reunion.

Fortunately for me, I got to have one with Karen’s family about 2 months ago. It just felt like home.
Hopefully, I will be able to schedule one with the Lina’s and the William’s soon!

By the way, thanks for keeping an eye on me for my mom! I hope I find some moms like you to do the same for my kidse