How do you find creativity and inspiration every day? How do you get over your own words and try and get inside the head of the subject? I look at my interview notes, I browse through photos of the person I’m trying to write about, I think about that person and try to come up with a way to describe them and their situation accurately. I want people to care, but I don’t know what words and stories will move people’s hearts to action.

Our desire in this project is to help individuals realize their own potential to effect global change. But today, I can’t even convince myself of that.

On days like today, I cling to the truths found in the Bible and pray that, once again, God gives me the strength to continue down a road that is narrow and long and rocky.

Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.  Galatians 6:9

Why are you downcast, O my soul? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise Him, my Saviour and my God. – Psalm 42:5-6a

Please pray for us. We are so far behind where we’d like to be at this point and some days I fear I will be here until Christ returns or our baby comes. We both need to find gainful employment in the very near future, especially me as I need a set  number of hours of paid employment in order to collect maternity benefits. Thank you for your prayers, we covet them.

I lust after the American dream. I want the house. I want the dog and the backyard and the barbecue parties and the hot tub. I want the crafts room and the rec room. I want the kitchen with the double-wide fridge and ice dispenser. I want the toaster on the counter, the nice clothes in the closet and the recreational gear stored neatly in the garage.

We traveled around the world, saw the poverty and the despair, met the people who give up the little they have to serve the Lord. So how is it possible that I come home and I still long for a life the Lord has not blessed me with right now?

I look at house listings online and want to cry. We don’t even know what our future will hold, there is nothing certain about life beyond Pockets of Change. I know this is a period in my life. This is the place, the time, the life God has set before me and most of the time I praise Him for it. But today, I just want to go back to an easy life of earning money and spending as I wish. Today, I feel more human, more fallible, more caught up in the world than in the Spirit.

I guess that’s the reality of being human. Sometimes we soar, sometimes we sink. But through it all, God’s promises are true. God’s love for me is real. And God’s desire for me is to be in relationship with Him, not with the world. So today, I will set aside my own desires and seek His. I will put my requests before Him and leave them there. Because God is God, and I am not. And His will is perfect for me, even on the days I don’t feel it.

I will seek wisdom instead of wealth. I will seek integrity instead of financial interest. I will seek justice instead of jewels.

For the LORD gives wisdom, and from his mouth come knowledge and understanding. He holds victory in store for the upright, He is a shield to those whose walk is blameless, for He guards the course of the just and protects the way of his faithful ones.

- Provers 2:6-8

In a country where nothing could get worse, it just did. Our hearts and prayers are with Haiti today.

We were in Haiti for two weeks. But it had an impact on me that will last a lifetime. The people we spent time with were amazing, compassionate men and women dedicated to pulling Haiti out of the muck and mire one soul at a time.

And now, they face a horrible reality in the wake of destruction left by devastating earthquake. It’s hard to imagine the country ever rising from such rubble. But through God, all things are possible. Pray that the Christians in this country will be a beacon of hope to the communities. For our friends at HaitiARISE, pray they can help in the time of need and that God will provide more than they can hope or imagine as they reach out to the community of Grand Guave. Praise God that HaitiARISE director Marc Honorat is OK as is a team from Nelson, BC (non HFL) that arrived just hours before the quake hit.

Pray for these things, pray for whatever else God sets on your heart as the news rolls in. Just pray.

He lifted me out of the slimy pit, out of the mud and mire; he set my feet on a rock and gave me a firm place to stand. - Psalm 40:2

If you would like to donate, please click here to be re-directed to a secure donation page, and in the “Donation Designation” section, select Projects – Haiti: Earthquake Response from the drop-down menu. As with all Hungry for Life projects, 100% of the funds given to this project will be used for this project.

We are, as our newsletter stated, finished our travel portion of the Pockets of Change project. The Lord was so good to us as we traveled. We didn’t get any serious sicknesses which is a miracle considering the high risk of malaria in many of the places we went, all the food we ate that wasn’t quite up to Canadian food standards, and all the travel we undertook to climates our bodies were not used to.

Not one piece of luggage was ever lost which is astounding considering we went on more than 25 flights over the last nine months. The only items lost during all our travels were one hat in Huanca Huanca, Peru, and one cable lock which we’re pretty sure ended up somewhere in the Ukraine.

One of the big blessings to share is that we have a place to stay for all of January and February! A friend of a friend opened up his apartment for us to house sit. It is fully furnished, centrally located and ideal for allowing us to jump right into putting the project together instead of worrying about moving our furniture, unpacking and setting up house first. This way, we hit the ground running. Praise God!!

We’re both in good spirits and even though the project is huge and I have had some restless nights worrying about it, we know we have a great team at Hungry for Life helping us out and we have confidence that God will see us through this project. We’re trusting that God will equip us to complete the book and that He will continue to pour out His blessing on us to finish what we started.

Thank you for your continued support. We feel so blessed by all God has provided, and that includes the readers of this blog who have been with us every step of the way.

Hello friends and family,

Praise the Lord, our travel portion of the Pockets of Change project is now done. It has been quite the ride and it’s hard to believe our travels are over. After some personal travel time we’re on right now, we will be starting the really hard part of our project: assembling all we’ve gathered into the book.

We started this project not really sure what we would find. We prayed that God would open our eyes to see what He wanted us to see. Working with Hungry for Life communications staff members Ryan and Corrina, we crafted a mission statement to keep our focus. None of us knew if the vision would match the outcome, that was in God’s hands. We prayerfully considered the mission statement and felt that it stated what God was calling us to do.

Reflecting on our travels, I know half the mission statement has been completed. We have found ’specific stories of spiritual and physical transformation of people and communities’.

Now we must work to fulfill the second half of the mission statement, ‘we desire to motivate individuals to be a part of a global movement of compassion and justice, realizing their potential to effect global change’.

All this travel means nothing unless people are called to action through the stories gathered, through the photos captured. Staring this January we will be immersing ourselves in this work, to create a book that will inspire, that will motivate, that will call people to action.

We’ll be working at the Hungry for Life office in Chilliwack. If you’re curious about what we’re up to or how the work is going, feel free to email or call. We’d love to share what we’re learning and how the work is progressing.

Prayer Requests:

Please pray that we’re able to work through all that we have experienced. It is overwhelming just thinking about the amount of places we’ve been, people we’ve interviewed and things we’ve seen. I don’t know how we’re going to assemble it into some sort of cohesive work so your prayers are very much appreciated and needed.

Also please pray that we’re able to find an affordable place to live as we work on the book. Our fundraising efforts only covered our travel portion. While we have some funds left over it’s not enough to cover rent, food, gas and the like while we work on the book for the next three to five months. Given we have no income coming in at this point, we are relying solely on God that He will provide for our ‘daily bread’.

Finally, we just want to praise God for all of you, our faithful prayer and financial partners in this project. We literally could not have done this project without you. While our Pockets of Change project is only halfway done now, I know it won’t seem as interesting when we’re sitting in an office pounding the keys eight hours a day. So while we’re still away, it seems the right time to thank you from the bottom of our hearts for your support. Because of you, we were able to gather what we needed to make this project come together.

Thank you.

In Christ,
Lorene and Justin

p.s. While we are taking some time to travel on our own, we are continuing to update the blog as we find internet and inspiration. Please continue to check out www.pocketsofchange.org for more stories and photos from the road.

Here is a newsletter we sent out to supporters. If you did not receive this and would like to be on our mailing list, please contact us through the contact form on the website or email Justin@pocketsofchange.org

Time sure is flying here in the Ukraine. We’ve been here a week already in Nikopol and it’s hard to believe how quickly the time has gone. Justin and I have heard many stories, so many it gets overwhelming. I have filled an entire notebook already in just one week, and we still have another full week here before we leave for Uganda.

We have seen great need here. We have also seen the power of Christ at work in people’s lives. Those that have nothing praise God for giving them breath and life even though they have very little else. Most have had a lifetime of hardship yet their faith is so much stronger than mine.

One thing that has really stood out to me is the ravaging effects of alcohol here; it is rampant. It’s clear Satan has a hold on many Ukrainians through this destructive substance and their families are hurt because of it. We met a woman yesterday who exemplifies this problem. Her name is Luba. Her husband drinks. And she hates it. The sadness in her eyes when she told us that said more than her words. A pool of tears welled up in her eyes as she shared about her husband. Then she told us her son went off to war, and when he came home he had mental problems and started to drink too.

“I can’t express what a suffering it is,” she voiced about her pain.
Yet Luba gets up every day determined to live as Christ would have her live. God reached out to her and saved her and she lives each day with a joy that can only come from Christ, not from her life circumstances.

For Justin, what has stood out has been how similar the Ukraine at first glance looks to Canada. When you’re driving through the streets of Nikopol and out into the countryside, it looks so similar to back home. Visible evidence like signs in another language and alphabet never allow us to pretend for too long, but the trees, the landscape and comforts of the guest home sure make it feel like home.

But, what Justin has observed, is that the more we talk to people and get to know their stories, the more foreign this country has become. What he read in history books in school is now more real than ever. These people we are meeting have lived through communism, they lived through Stalin’s regime and the concentration camps and the starvation and the corruption. It’s no longer just words in a text book; it’s real people with real experiences.

We would like to encourage those that would like to, to drop us a note once in awhile. Justin and I both are feeling out of the loop from life in Canada and sometimes feel like we’re floating in the ocean without a tether to home.

We eagerly await a chance each day to see if the internet is working and check our mail only to find out there are no messages for us. Certainly we don’t need to hear from everyone all the time, but if you are praying for us, or if you have a cool verse to share or something, we would love to get an email.

Justin and I know that we could not do this project without the support from back home. And we know that there are people praying for us as we have been protected, healthy and gathering the stories of life change we came to gather. Thank you for your prayers, for your concern, and for your friendship. We value each one of you and appreciate your support.

There’s an old familiar hymn I used to sing growing up: ‘Count your many blessings every doubt will fly,’ and the familiar chorus rings out, ‘Count your blessings, count them one by one / And it will surprise you what the Lord has done’.

I have felt spiritually discouraged lately. Feeling like what I’m doing has no Kingdom value, like I’m just taking up space and writing words and none of it is going to make a difference. I know these thoughts come from the evil one who wants to take us down, defeat us and claim victory in this battle. But knowing in my head these thoughts are not from my King and keeping it from affecting my heart are two different things.

So I spent some time this morning just reflecting on the blessings in the Pockets of Change project these last few months. It is not by our strength or smarts this project will be accomplished or be of Kingdom value. It is through Christ alone. When people ask how we’re doing this, I want to always point them to my King. Because He blesses His people and enables them to do His calling. We’re just thankful He chose us to be a part of it.

We’ve been on the road three of the last six months, between our Canada and abroad travels. We’ve enjoyed the travels and have enjoyed the time in Chilliwack as well. It’s been a good experience thus far and we’re now looking to prepare for our final leg of travel.

Going way back to June, we arrived back from our South America travels at the beginning of the month. After in-depth debriefing and catching up on sleep, we spent a couple weeks sorting through interviews and photos and preparing ourselves for the Mexico trip in July. We also spent a fun-filled week in Cranbrook to attend my 10 year grad reunion and catch up with old friends.

The first two weeks of July were spent in Mexico with a team from Coquitlam Alliance Church. That was an extraordinary trip; we saw great need and great compassion. I sometimes still fall asleep at night thinking about the Tarahamarans and what the missionaries there are doing to help, and feel blessed we got to see and be a part of that ministry if only for a few short days.

Friends of a friend of ours heard we were looking for a place to stay for the two months we were back in Chilliwack between Mexico and our Fall travels. The couple offered to let us stay in their rental apartment for almost no cost at all to us for the time we were back in Canada. This has been a huge answer to prayer for us! From March to mid-July we had been living with other people and we found that four and a half months was a long stretch to not just be together in our own home.

When we arrived back from Mexico, this generous Christian couple had the keys waiting for us. And when we got to the apartment, Corrina (our close working partner at HFL for Pockets of Change) had given us everything needed to settle in: pots and pans, towels and a mattress, dish soap and even some KD – our favourite meal! It was an amazing blessing for us and we have been grateful to stay in this wonderful apartment for the last month and a half.

We also had another Godsend in the form of a brand new storage facility to put all our worldly belongings. We had originally stored them in an old dairy barn. We were grateful for the space and prayed over protection for our stuff as we couldn’t get storage insurance. But the family that opened their storage space to us built a brand new barn complete with locking bay doors and an alarm system and invited us to move everything over. Wow, what a blessing that was!

After settling into our apartment, we spent a week on the island with my family and came back to Chilliwack refreshed and ready to jump in. For the last month and a half I have been sorting through interviews and writing recaps as well as getting into story writing for the actual book.  It’s been a good exercise in discipline for me as I work through the more than 100 interviews conducted so far in this project.

Meanwhile, Justin has jumped off the deep end of the publishing pool, trying to assess what the best route will be for getting the book printed. We have again been blessed in this area. The HFL office is located in the same office building as the Blessings Christian Marketplace head office. One of their employees took a publishing program and has helped us greatly in getting started down this route. She has provided invaluable tips and pointed us in the possible directions we can go.

Outside of the Pockets of Change project, we have been able to do some hiking, spend time with our near and dear friends and were very blessed to be in the country for the birth of our friend’s second child – a moment we would not have wanted to miss!

And now, unbelievably, we need to start preparing for the next leg of our journey. The time has gone by in a blink of an eye and I have to look at my computer clock about two times a day to remind myself it is indeed the end of August. We leave for the Ukraine the third week of September and from there head to Uganda, Kenya and lastly Sri Lanka.

I felt remiss in not sharing all that God has done for us as we do this Pockets of Change project. We have trusted Him to provide for us as we live on no steady income and yet I guess I never pictured what that would look like. To have every need met above and beyond has been faith building for us. And to count our blessings truly does encourage me spiritually. I am struggling still and ask for prayer as we spiritually prepare for our next travel leg. But at the same time as we struggle, we praise God for all He has done to take care of us through this phase of our lives. As another old familiar hymn puts it so aptly: ‘Praise God, from whom ALL blessings flow’!

From my experience, there are two categories of runs: sprints and marathons. OK, technically a marathon is a set race of 42 km. But in my mind, there are the short races and the long hauls. And you run the races very differently depending on the length.

Sprints are all-out, pump the legs and arms as fast as you can, pound the feet against the track, end goal in sight type of deals. You basically go like stink until you reach the finish.

Marathon length races are run much differently. They require persistence and an ability to push through a more aching pain as you consistently pound the pavement. Mentally your focus needs to be on the end goal though you cannot see it for miles in between you and the finish line. Pacing is important, and having a strong support team providing water, food, encouragement and arms to fall into at the end of the race are crucial.

Our entire Mexico trip we were with a team from Coquitlam Alliance Church (CAC) and as we worked with them, I really saw the difference between a sprint and a marathon when it comes to a short term trip. The people on this trip worked like stink, hiking and digging and dry-walling and pipe laying and concrete making and running VBS and encouraging and praying and driving – lots of driving – for two weeks straight.

And we pretty much followed along the team schedule set up for the CAC group. For 14 of the 15 days we ran the rapid pace that is a short term missions sprint: limited time, much to do, many places to get to in such a short time that every hour counts.

And what a team CAC was to race with, sprint style. They were probably all tired of work projects by the time we had hiked out of the Copper Canyon and got to the base camp in Rio Chico. Yet everyone was out there, smiles on, shovels in hand, ready to get brand new scratches, blisters, aching muscles and then to look back at the end of the day and know they did a job well done. It’s amazing to watch and it was great to be a part of that experience.

But now that sprint is over. The CAC team members are back home, blisters healed, burnt skin pealed off, photos downloaded and travel items put back in closets and drawers. It makes it all the more obvious to me now in comparison that Justin and I are running a marathon, not a sprint as we see others finish the race they set out to do and we are not even halfway done ours.

I remember that when I ran, there was almost always a point where I had to mentally remind myself of why I was in the race. I would glance around me to see other racers plugging along. I would take in the scenery, feel the ground and my shoes connect with each step, listen to my breath and just take the time to realize that my body could, after all, complete the remainder of the race.

We just spent a week away from all things Pockets of Change related. It felt good to take that moment in time to look at the scenery, feel the grass under my feet, listen to my heart and realize that I could, after all, complete the remainder of this race, this project, set out before us.

Am I tired? Yes. Do I long for the finish line? Yes. But I am enjoying the course immensely. There have been many interesting people along the route, many God-breathed moments like a cool breeze out on hot pavement, and many assurances that the race is nothing to hard in light of God’s glory and grace.

Pray that we can run this race with strength and endurance, and finish strong whenever that finish line may be.

Tomorrow, I go into the canyon.

And I’m very, very scared.

We are hiking into the Copper Canyon to go to a village called Guacaivo. This is where the Coquitlam Alliance team is partnered and we’ll be going in to interview people about how they’ve been impacted by the work of these short term missions groups and the long term partnership with Pastor Tomas.

It is an estimated six hour hike all the way down the canyon, across a river and halfway up the other side. We have to pack in enough for four nights and five days, so our bags are H-E-A-V-Y.

Please pray for us, specifically on Wednesday and on Sunday as we travel in and out of the canyon. Pray for safety in walking and the energy needed to hike for such a long time.

Hopefully, you’ll hear from me again. Otherwise, look for me somewhere on the canyon walk, praying for the Lord to just take me home.

While we were only gone for five weeks, in some ways it feels like much longer. There was so much we saw, so many incredible stories we heard, that it’s hard to know where to begin to sort through it all.

I feel a deep sense of responsibility over these stories now. I received a gift each time someone opened up their heart to me in an interview, and I don’t take that lightly. I feel at a loss for words to describe what we’ve experienced. It’s a funny spot to be in as a writer, having no words to write.

But we have many stories we want to share with you. We’re back in Chilliwack and have had some time of total rest and relaxation away from the computer, the stories and the project. The focus now is to sort through what we’ve seen, and we would ask for your prayers as we do that .

I want to mention how very much we appreciated those of you that commented or sent us emails along the way. I cannot tell you what a world of good they did for us while we were in unfamiliar places with new faces all the time. While we didn’t have a lot of time to touch base with people back home, hearing your thoughts on what we were hearing and photographing was encouraging.
Our actual travels went well, and we want to thank you all for your prayers as we went from Canada to Haiti to Peru to Ecuador to Mississippi then back home last week. There were lots of opportunities for mishaps and while we did have some travel delays, we always had a place to sleep in safety. We never had one bag go missing and the only thing we lost was my hat. Not bad considering the amount of planes we flew in, vehicles we rode in, beds we slept in and stops we made along the way.

While we are back in Canada for the month of June, I will be posting more stories from the first leg of our journey. Thanks for reading, for praying, and for supporting us as we work on the Pockets of Change project.