Posted in General Posts
by Brenda Wilchowy
on 11/29/2008
Hello blogging world! I'm baaaaaaccck!! I don't have much time as I'm sitting at a coffee shop in a busy mall in Hong Kong using their free wi-fi to compile my thoughts on China and share them to you through the mind of Brenda....
Let's start with the bad & ugly of China....shall we? At the end of our time in NW China in a city I can't spell the name of (but can tell you where to get the best food), my camera was stolen from me. They left me with the case, however, which I thought was quite thoughtful. But they did get all of my photo's (so don't mind me if I direct you to other people's blogs for photo's or only put up Beijing photo's)....did I also mention that it was stolen the day before my birthday?
So basically that left a bad taste in my mouth. I got on the train to Beijing mad at China and wrote the following in my journal...
"I decided that I hate China. The stealing of the camera mixed with all of the awkward & annoying experiences have just been adding up. Things like the poop filled troughs without doors (aka: squatties) that I stood in to go the bathroom, being stared at, pointed at, being ripped off for food, the driving rules (there are none), the constant honking & blasting karaoke on buses....I've come to the 'I hate China' part of my life. I do know that they need the Lord though. So even as my flesh hates this place right now, the Lord has brought me here to love it anyway. Love the people who he loves...to love those who grow up with no truth. Those who work hard their whole lives to please their parents, their teachers, the government, their ancestors, or their religion. They need truth. They need freedom. I need to forgive the theft of the camera. I need to love where I've been annoyed. I'm here because to LOVE them anyway. China needs to know truth & freedom in Jesus Christ!!!"
My anger turned into prayer and love and hope for a nation I was mad at for a couple of days. Now that I think about it...I think China is amazing and I would love to return.
On the good side (I like to end with a good side)...we met a man named "Mark" on a very random day. A day where a crowd gathered around Dennis, Carly & I and we found Mark to be the only English speaker. He led us to a school where we met teachers & spoke to an English class, ate lunch together and then met up later with the rest of our team where we toured a mosque, a villagers home, and had dinner where Mark shared with us about his life's perspective and the struggles he faced and what he believed. He in return asked us the same (answering our prayer earlier that he would ask us because at this point we weren't sure if he was working for the government or not)...and we shared the gospel with him and he was ready to receive it at our dinner table in some extremely long winded and hard to pronounce town somewhere in China! We took him back to our hostel and taught him to pray, gave him a Bible and to share what he knew. Please pray for Mark and his journey in China.
We also did a lot of prayer walks, praying in temples & mosques to the one true God. We would play with kids and pray over them out loud. We blessed the towns we visited and the people we met. Communication barrier was there, but love is communicated with smiles and without words.
Tomorrow we fly to Kenya. Please pray for us. I have one more blog I hope to post before we go, but free wi-fi means slow wi-fi. Bear with me.
Posted in General Posts
by Brenda Wilchowy
on 11/29/2008
Hello blogging world! I'm baaaaaaccck!! I don't have much time as I'm sitting at a coffee shop in a busy mall in Hong Kong using their free wi-fi to compile my thoughts on China and share them to you through the mind of Brenda....
Let's start with the bad & ugly of China....shall we? At the end of our time in NW China in a city I can't spell the name of (but can tell you where to get the best food), my camera was stolen from me. They left me with the case, however, which I thought was quite thoughtful. But they did get all of my photo's (so don't mind me if I direct you to other people's blogs for photo's or only put up Beijing photo's)....did I also mention that it was stolen the day before my birthday?
So basically that left a bad taste in my mouth. I got on the train to Beijing mad at China and wrote the following in my journal...
"I decided that I hate China. The stealing of the camera mixed with all of the awkward & annoying experiences have just been adding up. Things like the poop filled troughs without doors (aka: squatties) that I stood in to go the bathroom, being stared at, pointed at, being ripped off for food, the driving rules (there are none), the constant honking & blasting karaoke on buses....I've come to the 'I hate China' part of my life. I do know that they need the Lord though. So even as my flesh hates this place right now, the Lord has brought me here to love it anyway. Love the people who he loves...to love those who grow up with no truth. Those who work hard their whole lives to please their parents, their teachers, the government, their ancestors, or their religion. They need truth. They need freedom. I need to forgive the theft of the camera. I need to love where I've been annoyed. I'm here because to LOVE them anyway. China needs to know truth & freedom in Jesus Christ!!!"
My anger turned into prayer and love and hope for a nation I was mad at for a couple of days. Now that I think about it...I think China is amazing and I would love to return.
On the good side (I like to end with a good side)...we met a man named "Mark" on a very random day. A day where a crowd gathered around Dennis, Carly & I and we found Mark to be the only English speaker. He led us to a school where we met teachers & spoke to an English class, ate lunch together and then met up later with the rest of our team where we toured a mosque, a villagers home, and had dinner where Mark shared with us about his life's perspective and the struggles he faced and what he believed. He in return asked us the same (answering our prayer earlier that he would ask us because at this point we weren't sure if he was working for the government or not)...and we shared the gospel with him and he was ready to receive it at our dinner table in some extremely long winded and hard to pronounce town somewhere in China! We took him back to our hostel and taught him to pray, gave him a Bible and to share what he knew. Please pray for Mark and his journey in China.
We also did a lot of prayer walks, praying in temples & mosques to the one true God. We would play with kids and pray over them out loud. We blessed the towns we visited and the people we met. Communication barrier was there, but love is communicated with smiles and without words.
Tomorrow we fly to Kenya. Please pray for us. I have one more blog I hope to post before we go, but free wi-fi means slow wi-fi. Bear with me.
Posted in General Posts
by Brenda Wilchowy
on 10/29/2008
So I'm no longer in the Philippines. It's hard to believe that a month has already passed by. My time there was great. I feel like I carry a piece of Cuatro in my heart and would love to one day come back and visit the beautiful people that I met. The kids in the nursery were precious. The ladies at the prison were inspirational. The experiences...unforgettable. I wish I had more words to describe it for you. Here are some photo's of the little faces I was privileged to know and love this past month.
Daniel Moses
Me & Angel (she was photographer) CoyCoy (read Carly's blog for his story)
Now we are moving on to our next destination. It should be an amazing time! We will have no internet access for the month, so this will be my last blog until I can get on again. Please be in prayer for our squad and my team as we prepare to leave in a few days. In the meantime, here are some snapshots of our "race day" in HK! Please feel free to keep emailing or commenting!! :0)
Beautiful skyline You'd better believe it's Bruce Lee
Okay, so not race day...but Karaoke fun during debrief
Posted in General Posts
by Brenda Wilchowy
on 10/16/2008
So I'm finally updating my blog. I'm probably the worst blogger on this site. I apologize. I guess I need to look at it as writing an email to an old friend instead of thinking too much about it, which I've been doing and therefore, never finishing.
I'm going to just go ahead and talk about my experiences, thoughts & ministry updates from our first 3 weeks here in the Philippines.
Last week I got to go to a women's prison with 3 other
girls and the women there are incredibly open and loving and it was easy to build a friendship with these woman after only an hour! Every morning they do a
memory verse and praise song. There is a woman, Pearla,
who grew up in a Baptist family and said that she knows it was her
family's prayers that helped her find the Lord in prison 2 years earlier. She asked that I would pray for her and for her 3 children and
1 grandchild...and that when she is released from prison that she will
be strong and teach others what she has learned. The woman sleep on
bunk beds (3 high) that are made of a board. No mattresses and all of
their belongings hang around them or are on the bed. It's funny in what seems like such a depressing place, a lot of the women (not all of them though) find their hope and joy in Jesus Christ. Their joy brings life to the dingy, dirty cell that they live in. We got the opportunity to go into the cell and pray with a woman who was severely sick with asthma. I heard a report that the girls who went back there today said that she is better!! She isn't keeled over on her bed fighting to breathe anymore!! Thank the Lord for his healing!
We so far have built a
sidewalk for the community and are now painting at the Children's Home transforming the old kitchen into a living room for the girls. Also, I have been watching the babies in
the nursery at the orphanage. There are 8 of them (ranging in age from 2 months to 3 years) and they typically
only have 1 staff per shift for all of them. We are trying to help and release the
staff to have a bit of a break as they work a 6 day work week. The babies are so lovable!! It is a great opportunity to pray over these kids...it makes you feel like family to them when you get to be a part of their lives.
Ben & I got the opportunity to go to Baguio (about 5 hours north) to help launch The Jeepney Magazine there along with Jeepney staff, Reah & Edna. The Jeepney Magazine is actually the first street magazine in the Philippines. It's purpose is to create employment opportunities for the homeless, or those who cannot earn enough money to care for their families. The vendors are given 10 magazines as start up capital and they sell them for 100 Pesos. When they need more magazines, they buy them for 50 Pesos from Jeepney. If they can sell 10 magazines a day, they can earn 250 Pesos (which is like $5.50USD) which is twice the amount they would make at a construction job. My job was to help the vendors sell their first magazine and to distribute the magazine to magazine/newspaper stands and also to present advertising packages to businesses who care about improving their communities and the lives of Filipino's. Please pray that this magazine takes off and please visit their website at www.thejeepney.com!!
Posted in General Posts
by Brenda Wilchowy
on 10/3/2008
So I don't have a million peso's...but if I would like to donate it to this ministry we are staying with here in Manila. KIM (Kids International Ministries -- www.kidsinternationalministries.org). They are an example of what happens when LOVE happens to people. In a place where opportunities to help the poor, feed the hungry, hug the orphan are endless. A place where you could get overwhelmed by it all and quit before you even know where to begin....KIM seems like an amazing place to start. They want to be a difference here in Cuatro. They are full of vision and hope for this community. They see the individual child among the 200,000 street kids here in Manila.
I feel like I'm about to learn a whole lot from the people that I will meet here. I'm on night shift with Carly tomorrow night to feed, hold and pray over the babies in the nursery at the orphanage. I can't wait to start!
The Lord has been doing amazing things among our squad here in the Philippines. We have come together like family. We have our amazing coaches and squad leader & others working with us and for us to see us be all that God wants us to be. To be more and more like Jesus. It's the beginning of an amazing journey.....
Posted in Support Letter
by Brenda Wilchowy
on 8/17/2008
August 2008
To my awesome Family & Friends,
How
great is summer?! I hope you are able to get outside and enjoy the
great outdoors!! I know that I come alive during this season and enjoy
the super long days and the beauty all around! This summer is a little
bit different for me. I'm also using this summer to prepare for
something big in the fall....
I have been out of YWAM
for the past year and a half now and during my time back in Canada I've
basically been working and enjoying spending time with family, which
has been good. I feel though, like there is something missing from my
life or I almost feel unsettled and in the midst of those feelings,
I believe that even though I'm just an ordinary person, the call of God
on my life is for Him to do extraordinary things through me and for me
not to settle for an ordinary lifestyle.
Through much prayer and consideration, I have felt led to an extraordinary organization called Adventures In Missions
which offers numerous different short-term missions trips and
opportunities throughout the globe. I will be venturing on their
11-month missions trip called The World Race. The World Race visits 11
countries on 4 continents during that time. It encourages people to
step into cultures and situations beyond what they have ever dreamed,
bringing the truth and message of Jesus as they go. During this time
I'm expecting my world view to be blown away and expecting my heart to
be broken for the poor, the needy, the unjust...and to be blessed by
the locals' smiles, kindness, and their resilience...and I intend to
walk in faith to see the Lord bring love, hope, healing & peace to
the people that I meet.
This adventure begins at the end of September 2008. The tentative schedule is as follows:
August 2-10 - Training Camp
September 28 - Fly to 1st destination
October - The Philippines
November - China
December - Kenya
January - Uganda
February - Ethiopia/Other
March - India
April - Bosnia/Serbia/Other
May - Romania
June - Mexico
July/August – Guatemala/Nicaragua/Other
Ministries
include working in orphanages, building houses, teaching English,
feeding the hungry, helping local ministries plant churches, serving,
etc. We will be working with pre-existing contacts & relationships
in each country and also allowing the Lord to lead us and guide us to
specific people and places.
This
trip costs $13,800. That is $1,254/month. It isn't too bad when you
break it down and compare it to normal costs for a year (i.e. rent,
food, transportation, etc). It's actually quite reasonable considering
our cost includes the air travel to 4 continents!!
Breaking
things down even more, if 50 people gave $20/month over the 11
months...that amounts to $11,000, which actually looks like an
attainable goal!! I really am not looking to set up a specific system
like that, I would prefer if you would be willing to pray and hear from
the Lord if you are to give towards this mission. Please feel no
awkward pressure!!
You
can click the "Support Me!" link on the left hand side of the screen to
easily donate online and you will become a part of this ministry
through your support. You can also send a cheque if you prefer. Please
make cheques payable to:
Adventures in Missions
PO Box 534470
Atlanta, GA 30353-4470
USA
Adventures In Missions will then send you a receipt.
Adventures
In Missions is registered with the Internal Revenue Service as a 501
(c) (3) non-profit organization. Donors will receive receipts for their
gifts with the understanding that the disbursement of those gifts lies
completely at the discretion of Adventures In Missions and that the
gifts are non-refundable and non-transferable, per IRS regulations.Gifts
may be tax deductible, please consult a tax advisor. (Unfortunately,
for those who are Canadian citizens, please be aware that the receipts
will not be tax deductible for you since this is an American
organization)
I will also have this blog so you can check for updates along the way, for prayer requests, view photo's, get more info, etc.You can find me at http://brendawilchowy.theworldrace.org
Thanks for letting me share this exciting news with you!!
很多愛,
Brenda
1 John 5:13-15 (The Message)
"My
purpose in writing is simply this: that you who believe in God's Son
will know beyond the shadow of a doubt that you have eternal life, the
reality and not the illusion. And how bold and free we then become in
his presence, freely asking according to his will, sure that he's
listening. And if we're confident that he's listening, we know that
what we've asked for is as good as ours."
