No need for wings, to take flight

NO NEED FOR WINGS TO TAKE FLIGHT.

Graffiti on a wall in Resistencia, Argentina.

Open Hearts

Sharon Kimball

MACUCC

Feb. 2015

Jeremiah 29:13  You will seek me, and you will find me when you seek me with all your heart.

I believe that God is omnipresent.  He is present in my waking and in my sleeping.  He is at my left hand and my right.  He is my sun by day and my moon by night.  However, I do not take God's presence lightly.  I believe we must invest ourselves in our relationship with God.  We are the ones who must seek God.  We must listen for God's word and look for God´s guidance and be thankful for the gifts God gives us in and through others.

I cannot just assume God will knock on the door and say, "Sharon, I am here!" though I do believe that is exactly what happens sometimes.  As followers of Jesus Christ, as children of God, we must work to seek God every day.  We must open our ears to listen and to truly hear his word.  It may be the word a friend, a pastor, a child, a stranger.  How will we hear if we are not listening?  We may find it in the silence and meditation and I truly believe we hear it in prayer.  We may hear it as we struggle with our labors and personal challenges.  But first we must listen, we must be open to listening.  If we simply set our minds firmly on one path or one idea - we may not hear what God is saying.  This week we have heard God in so many ways.  In what ways have you heard the voice of God this week?

 Jeremiah reminds us to open our eyes to see, and open our hearts.  It has warmed my heart to experience to kinds of open hearts this week.  One heart is open to give love - to share a hug, to share a home, to share a meal, to share a faith, to share a concern, to share a worry, to share a hidden prayer o secret. The other open heart receives this concern, this generosity with love, with care, with an open mind and willingness to share the other's burden and a commitment to pray for the other's need.  These two hearts exist within one body, within our own bodies and within the church body of Christ.  And individual needs as much to love as to receive love.  The Psalmist  writes: ”I lift my eyes to the hells, from where does my help come?  My help comes from the Lord who made heaven and earth.” 

We in the MACUCC delegation are so blessed to have been able to lift our eyes unto the hills this week.  We with your youth were surrounded by the beauty of the Shalom Center of the Pentecostal Church of Chile.  There it may be easier to realize how very close to us God really is.  There, working, singing, sleeping, eating, laughing, praying, paying and worshipping side by side, it is easy to feel the presence of God.  But none of us need leave our homes and travel thousands of miles to know that we may seek God wherever we are.   We must only open our hearts. We must look into the eyes of another and follow the commandments of Jesus:  Love the Lord your God with all of your heart, and all of your mind and all of your soul and love your neighbor as yourself.

How is it that we can come from the North and South and East and West and find community and peace?  We can seek Good with all our hearts.  May God´s blessing be with all of you as you seek God every day with an open heart.

The Shalom Center Staff 2015-2016

Dear Friends and Family:

Greetings from a wintery Chile in the name of our Lord Jesus!  I am writing to you so that you can join me in celebrating a finished project... Chalice Press is publishing my book of testimonies and stories from Chile and Paraguay!  The book will be launched at the Assembly and Synod, so if you are going to be at those church gatherings, you may look for it there.  I assume that they will be selling it at the Global Ministries booth or a the Chalice Press booth.  

If you are not going to these national gatherings, you may order the book either from Chalice Press or Amazon - but I understand it is cheaper on the Chalice Press website.

All proceeds

​ from the sale of the book​

 will go 

​to​

 support of the work of Global Ministries around the world!

​  I hope you enjoy the​ stories and that you will let me know if there is any testimony that particularly blesses your life.

Thank

​s to each of you for your prayers and support of my ministry over the years.

¡Dios les bendiga!

Shalom,

Elena Huegel​

http://www.chalicepress.com/The-Earless-Man-from-Chile-P1553.aspx

The Earless Man from Chile

Mission Stories of Healing and Resilience
Print format

Print ISBN 9780827208476 List Price $14.99 Print Price: $11.99 EPUB Price: $7.50 EPDF Price: $7.50 More about Ebooks

by Elena Huegel

As a third-generation missionary, Elena Huegel is an adult “Third Culture Kid,” someone who spent a significant part of her life outside her parents’ culture. Elena’s experiences as a missionary in Paraguay and Chile provide the stories in The Earless Man from Chile.Testimonies of faith from the Pentecostal Church of Chile and Shalom Center are at turns humorous, tragic, and inspiring, particularly in the aftermath of the 2010 earthquake. Elena’s own spiritual growth challenges us to heal relationships with God, ourselves, each other, and all of creation. These stories are part of an endless thread connecting the teller and the reader to create new possibilities for healing and resilience.

Yellow Kayak

Sept 6 2011

Elena Huegel

Sitting under a tree in a yellow kayak

Stray drops from the steady drizzle

Reach me under the canopy of leaves.

Across the pond, millions of circles flash

Winking green mirrors

Reflections broken of the gathered trees and

Overcast sky.

I wait

For the rain to stop.

As others have waited before me

Others in birch bark canoes

Exploring these whispering shores for food

Detained in their homeward

Trek by the fall showers bringing down

The temperature and the leaves.

And I wait.

For the rain to stop

As others have waited before me.

The birds chirping from their nests

The deer curling snug in a tree nook

The squirrels and chipmunk hiding with stores

But not the beaver in his underworld

Unperturbed by water falling from the sky.

It is a green gray world

Not waiting

Just being this moment

No need for patience, no though of later

Simply living, breathing

As long as the rain lasts.

Vulnerability

"Vulnerability is not weakness, it is courage.  Our most accurate measure of our courage is whether or not we are willing to be vulnerable.

"Vulnerability is the birthplae of innovation, creativity and change."  Brené Brown

A great leader knows when to be vulnerable in order to create the human space where dignity outshines shame allowing others to risk being vulnerable themselves creating a safe space for innovation, creativity and transformation.  - Elena Huegel

The Road Not Taken

Robert Frost (1874–1963).  Mountain Interval.  1920.

1. The Road Not Taken

TWO roads diverged in a yellow wood, And sorry I could not travel both And be one traveler, long I stood And looked down one as far as I could To where it bent in the undergrowth;         5   Then took the other, as just as fair, And having perhaps the better claim, Because it was grassy and wanted wear; Though as for that the passing there Had worn them really about the same,         10   And both that morning equally lay In leaves no step had trodden black. Oh, I kept the first for another day! Yet knowing how way leads on to way, I doubted if I should ever come back.         15   I shall be telling this with a sigh Somewhere ages and ages hence: Two roads diverged in a wood, and I— I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference.         20