Underground ReLOVEution

After great pain a formal feeling comes--
The nerves sit ceremonious like tombs;
The stiff Heart questions--was it He that bore?
And yesterday--or centuries before?
The feet, mechanical, go round
A wooden way
Of ground, or air, or ought,
Regardless grown,
A quartz contentment, like a stone.

This is the hour of lead
Remembered if outlived,
As freezing persons recollect the snow--
First chill, then stupor, then the letting go.

-Emily

We need to get this started up again...seriously.

SUMMER CAMP IS COMING! Maybe yall should post a favorite camp memory. ONE OF MINE IS....

Sitting under the trees and having quiet time and feeling the warm wind. Yeah. Sorry, I guess that was a little anticlimactic, wasn't it? But the sun has baked my brain to a toasty 100 degrees, and the bubbling swirling melting pot that is my cranium can't support much more than that. Maybe you can do better!

Abuse of child 'witches' on rise, aid group says

By Faith Karimi
CNN

(CNN) -- Christian Eshiett was a rambunctious pre-teen who spent a lot of time cavorting with his friends in southern Nigeria. He would skip school and run away from home for days, frustrating his grandfather, who oversaw the boy's care.


Children branded as witches protest on February 26, 2009, in the southern Nigerian city of Eket.

"I beat him severely with canes until they broke, yet he never shed a tear," said Eshiett Nelson Eshiett, 76. "One day, I took a broom to hit him and he started crying. Then I knew he was possessed by demons. ... Nigerian witches are terrified of brooms."

From that day two years ago, Christian, now 14, was branded a witch. The abuse intensified.

"They would take my clothes off, tie me up and beat me," he told CNN in a telephone interview.

The teen is one of the so-called witch children in Eket, a city in oil-rich Akwa Ibom state of Nigeria.

They are blamed for causing illness, death and destruction, prompting some communities to put them through harrowing punishments to "cleanse" them of their supposed magical powers.

"Children accused of witchcraft are often incarcerated in churches for weeks on end and beaten, starved and tortured in order to extract a confession," said Gary Foxcroft, program director of Stepping Stones Nigeria, a nonprofit that helps alleged witch children in the region.

Many of those targeted have traits that make them stand out, including learning disabilities, stubbornness and ailments such as epilepsy, he added.

The issue of "child witches" is soaring in Nigeria and other parts of the world, Foxcroft said.

The states of Akwa Ibom and Cross River have about 15,000 children branded as witches, and most of them end up abandoned and abused on the streets, he said.

Christian ran away from home and wandered around for two years with other children similarly accused. He said they stole, begged for food and performed menial jobs to survive.

The plight of "child witches" is raising concern among aid organizations, including the United Nations.

"It is a growing issue worldwide, among not just African communities, but in countries such as Nepal as well," said Jeff Crisp, head of policy development and evaluation for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees. "We are trying to see whether it is a neglected protected issue."

Belief in witchcraft thrives worldwide. About 1,000 people accused of being witches in Gambia were locked in detention centers in March and forced to drink a dangerous hallucinogenic potion, human rights organization Amnesty International said.

In 2005, relatives of an 8-year-old Angolan girl living in England were convicted of torturing her for being a "witch," according to the Times Online.

Pastors have been accused of worsening the problem by claiming to have powers to recognize and exorcise "child witches," sometimes for a fee, aid workers said.

But some are true believers, such as one minister in Lagos, Nigeria. He pinpoints children affected by witchcraft for free, he said.

"Sometimes, we get a dream that shows us a certain person is suffering from witchcraft," said the Rev. Albert Aina, a senior pastor at Four Square Gospel Church. "Sometimes, you have a child who has inexplicable body marks because of struggling in the night. They are easy to identify, but why charge when you have been given a gift by God?" Aina said.

Once a child is branded a witch, the stigma can last forever.

Christian was reunited with his grandfather, a former theater instructor at a university in Nigeria. Eshiett said he let his son's child return home because he loves him and he advocates for youth education.

But, he added, he does not think Christian has been or can be freed from witchcraft.

"When you are possessed, you are possessed; no one can deliver you from Satan," Eshiett said, adding that his grandson is a witch because he still exhibits unruly behavior and does not take education seriously.

Aid organizations acknowledge that the belief is acceptable and popular in some communities.

"It is not the belief in witchcraft that we are concerned about," Foxcroft said. "We acknowledge people's right to hold this belief on the condition that this does not lead to child abuse."

Foxcroft, whose documentary, "Saving Africa's Witch Children," was broadcast last year, spoke to a U.N. panel on the issue in April.

The aid worker said he is planning a global conference in 2010 and public awareness campaigns, including addressing the issue in Nigerian movies. The nation's film industry, dubbed Nollywood, is a popular form of entertainment in African countries.

Government officials also have joined the fight.

Akwa Ibom recently added a clause into the Child Rights Act, saying that anyone found guilty of branding a child a witch would get up to 12 years in prison.

"This is groundbreaking, and Stepping Stones Nigeria applauds the Akwa Ibom state government for this," Foxcroft said.

But, he added, there is more work to be done, and other groups, especially churches, have to team up to resolve the problem.

"The role of the international Christian community in this cannot be underestimated," Foxcroft said. "Unfortunately, the fact remains that this belief system is being spread by so-called Christians."

CNN's attempts to reach Akwa Ibom state officials through phone calls and e-mails were unsuccessful. A Nigerian federal communications official declined to comment.

Videos on Youtube. For some reason I can't embed these videos, but I would encourage you to take the time out of your day to watch them.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EUJSME0TORw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u7C8Znyf510
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wE8epBkSPfo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NYG-h1avVrc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0nH8ZJbJ9lY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BXUKF8dHf4A
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-9wKZMuRG0

Children of the Nations - Feeding Children of the Nations


Holly Sturm is our outreach team leader that planned for a group of us to help out at this event.
We poured rice, lentils, chicken powder and seasoning through a funnel and into these bags.

Some people played....
Some people pretended to have a bad attitude....
Some people were happy....
And some people had fun....
But we filled a lot of these...
That filled a lot of those boxes...
And stacked them...
To fill this cargo container....


We helped them package 285,000 meals that are going to be shipped to Sierra Leone. That is a LOT of meals. If you think about it....that's a lot of lives saved. For those of you that gave up part of your Saturday afternoon, I am proud of you. We can make a difference, and we are changing the world by how we live.

For those of you that did not make it, I hope you can next year... OR.... We do have the opportunity to host our own, like a 2K, or however big you can come up with. If you guys are interested... It was a lot of fun.

There were infants...
Even tiny kids helped...
Groups of friends had fun...

Grandma's were proud of their families that helped...

Father's were proud...
Families helped together...
And some volunteers stayed all day long.

These guys are friends with my older sibings

My clock is broken. I don't even know when the hands stopped moving. I didn't look at it often because I was too lazy to take it off the wall and adjust to daylight savings time. I did not notice my clock was not working because it continued to tick. The ticking that can be heard when the house is silent was all I noticed from the clock. It took several glances in a week to recognize my clock was not keeping time. It filled the void of silence and even decor theme on my wall, but did not serve the purpose it was designed for.

I can go to church, serve as a leader and try my best to follow rules, or even attend a Bible study [all that ticking], but if I am not connected to God and loving others, the purpose is missed entirely [telling time]. Last week Steve talked about the simple answer Jesus gave us: Love God and love people. If you are just following rules, you've missed the point entirely. Love is not a set of rules.

I could let that clock tick until the battery dies, but the fact is something is internally broken, keeping the clock from serving its purpose. Now it's just taking wasting space on my floor.
Is something broken inside your clock and you're just hoping no one will look close enough long enough to realize the hands aren't moving at all?

Sometimes I feel empty inside. My hands aren't moving. I'm going no where. My clock is not working. I serve no purpose. Then I remember, Jesus is my battery. Jesus is my clockwork. Jesus is my reason to keep time and if I am the clock, I won't be reading my own time. If I am the clock, God is the one looking. ...that could go into a whole other idea of how we don't see or need to know what positive affects we have in serving God, and we just need to do it no matter what, but I'll save it for another time...

If you're just ticking without working, we are here for you. Consider your leaders assistants to the clock master [God].