You Have All the Weapons You Need...

"

You can deny angels exist, Convince ourselves they can't be real. But they show up anyway, at strange places and at strange times. They can speak through any character we can imagine. They'll shout through demons if they have to. Daring us, challenging us to fight.

"

So tonight I watched Sucker Punch, I saw it once before in theaters and I'm sure I've mentioned it to most of you.
I have to say; I'm not sure if it's my neurosis or the real deal, but, this movie inspires me.
It's not so much the story lines as it is the quotes.
And I like kick ass action flicks.

So tonight I just wanted to share some of my favorite quotes from the film.

For those who fight for it, life has a flavor the sheltered will never know.

If you don’t stand for something, you will fall for anything.

Your mind can set you free. To reach your own paradise just let go

.

For me these quotes are golden. I often find my mind get's in the way of my heart, or my ambition.
Doubt is the weapon and logic, and for people with big dreams 'logic' is often an enemy created in our minds to say that we can't do it.
These quotes remind me that it's me who stands in my own way.
I'm not afraid of the devil, or the boogie man, my arch enemy is often times the same mind that grants me my biggest inspirations.

You are afraid. Don’t be. You have all the weapons you need.

What you are imagining right now. You control this world.

To reach your own paradise. Just let go.

I've been given all the tools I need to reach my dreams. My destiny lies within me, and I've been equipped to accomplish it.

I think most of us expect an angel in white light to appear and give us divine inspiration as to how or what we're supposed to do with our lives.
I think God makes it a lot more simple than that.

In the move Baby Doll is forced to dance, her dance is a fight for her own survival. The first dance starts out with her royally taking a beating, but she realizes something midway through the battle, if she possesses the weapons to fight then she must possess the know how to use them.
That is the biggest turning point in the movie, Baby Doll turns from a victim to a victor in a split second and the best part is it's a natural thing. The audience isn't showered in glitter and spot lights to show how she's transformed they simple see that she starts to fight.

When I saw this it made me realize that I need to stop waiting for that divine moment when I suddenly am blessed with the knowledge I need to complete the task, I just need to take what I know and do it.

"Who honors those we love or the very life we live? Who sends monsters to kill us, and at the same time, sings that will never die? Who teaches us whats real, and how to laugh at lies? Who decides why we live, and what we’ll die to defend? Who trains us, and who holds the key to set us free? It’s you. You have all the weapons you need. Now fight!"

I think that pretty much sums up the point of this blog, and what the movie meant for me.
It means, in less flowery- much abridged- english; Get out of your own way, and do something.

Xena Made it Look So Easy

I guess I'll just start out by saying no one makes sense any more... but maybe it's just me?
Where ever I go I see people living their normal Western lives and I just don't get it any more... but maybe I do?

The best way I can describe these feelings is painting in this light; As a kid I was very imaginative, my sister and I had a made up world of tree sprites, and animal royalty and all around magic and sunshine. It was like living in a secret garden, and that's very much how my relationship with God was for a long time.
But like all heroines from stories that deal with magic and fairies I grew restless and went out into the world.

I became Xena in a lot of ways, I was warrior woman with a spit fire attitude when wound up and an even keel when left to my own devices. I loved the way my life had become, and the way it looked like it was heading.
I left my safe quaint delicate little garden and roamed through fields of glory making big battle plans and working to secure a future as glorious as the grand visions my wanderings gave me.

Let me clarify that I am still that person, a rough and tough warrior woman, sword in hand and and dreams in heart but something has happened as of late.
I've been invited into a lot of people's 'gardens'. Their private lives and worship sessions and here is the part where my childhood obsession with Xena didn't prepare me for.

You see in the television show Xena traveled around kicking butt and taking names, but every once in a while she'd visit some mystic temple or lavish garden and she fit in there just as did on the battlefield.
In the real world- or the semi-parable world- it doesn't work that way.
I end up being a lumbering warrior trampling on flowers and pulling up the shrubs by the roots.
I don't mean to shake values and challenge core beliefs, but you really didn't have to worry about offending people out in the field like you do in the garden.

Home has been very much like a big open plain littered with gardens that I've visited.
Churches I've attended, Ministries I've been apart of even friends that I keep are all these gardens. While I am able to live in them comfortably I just don't fit in with them. There are always those nagging little things that make you bristle under the armor your wearing.
It's like they're from the same culture but a different tribe.

This is more of a get this weird feeling of rogue-ness off of my chest kind of blog, but I think it can be applied to a lot of people who have experienced being apart of a culture that has lived out of the status quo.
I don't just mean people in ministry I mean people have held the dying, loved the unloveable, listened to unspeakable confessions with out batting an eye and extended grace to every one they met with out questioning that persons faith or motives.
I don't meet those people often, and I don't get every one else in the world who can't do those things any more.

The Bible says "The weapons of my warfare are not carnal" and I'm starting to get that. We're not fighting a war in the traditional sense. We're taking ground empathy and grace not excluding our selves and judging others. Each battle is won by becoming part of a culture and enforcing the positive strengths of that culture rather than over taking a culture and punishing all of it's wrong doings.

So I've decided that I hate the metaphorical gardens, where they hear the stories of people doing something out side of their four walls/paradigm/every day norm and associate it with what they can understand rather than seeing it for what it is.
Ministry is about winning the lost, it's about being Christ to a hurting world.

The only time Jesus quoted scripture was to those who used scripture as a weapon, the rest of the time he just quoted his father.
That's what we do out side of gardens, we live our lives by what God says, not by what someone holier-than-thou thinks is right. And out side of gardens we get stuff done.

I'm not bashing traditional church, or any particular group, I'm just calling my self out a little bit. Garden's are great to rest in, but there no place for a warrior to live.
I'll stop tearing up your shrubberies now, I'm picking up my sword and I'm going to push out of these gates.
In the words of Xena...

Nothing too Spiritual Today

Can I just say I love Alexi Wasser. But I don't really love her, she says things that disgust me but at same time she says other things that are so deep in a shallow way that you can't help but find your self drawn in.
Her blog http://imboycrazy.com/ is not a family friendly place, but it does have no-nonsense advice for women living in an urban world.
You just have to pick through it, like these quotes:

6. Sometimes I have a problem; I’m more concerned with casting a spell on a guy and collecting his love before I decide if I even like him.

8. Why is it that the guy you want to text you doesn’t, but the dude you don’t give a shit about won’t stop? BUT, if the guy you actually liked texted you as much as the guy you don’t like, wouldn’t you think he was a pussy and be turned off? Probably, right?

11. What am i looking for? what do i ultimately want? I want my future husband (and by husband, I probably just mean ‘uuber serious relationship or father of my child’) to know BETTER than me! i want him to make me feel safe. i want him to be my best friend. i want him to ‘get’ me. to get ‘it’. i want him to be handsome, tall, sexy, funny, smart, great in bed, a gentleman, loyal, and successful. i want to be fascinated by him. i want to respect him and believe in what he does. and vice versa.

2. what are you doing? you’re wasting your life away! and you’re even more guilty because you know exactly what you want to do and you know exactly what you have to do to achieve your goals, but you’re running in the OPPOSITE direction! Wake up!

Just a few snippet's of what I find interesting about this brazen woman from L.A.
I'd like to have coffee with her one day and pick her brain apart, because for all her funny social commentaries and shallow wisdom she seems like she's hurting, but maybe that's just her big blue eyes.

Integration isn't so great.

This past week I had the unique opportunity to work at a missions training camp for an organization called the World Race.
This group sends missionary teams to 11 countries in 11 months to do extreme missions and humanitarian work.
While I've never been on the World Race and do not intend to go I've known a lot of Racers from my time at G42, and from the fact that my parents were life coaches for many of the racers.
A group of Racers that were helping at as well with this camp have just gotten off the field, and a few have just returned from G42 and I noticed a lot of conversations about re-integration into American culture. This stirred up a lot of old feelings from when i first returned from G42 and some conversations that I had with other racers/G42 alumni about coming back home. It also inspired me to write this blog detailing some of the symptoms of Integration and some antidotes.

The first of these is Exclusivity:
You just got back from the most amazing experience of your life with some of the most amazing people you've ever met, the majority of the American population isn't going to get what you've just experienced, nor are they going to get how you've changed. But don't worry it's not the end of the world. It's also not the first time some one has experienced something like this.
I found when I got home from Spain I found that I had a lot more in common with World Racers coming off the field than either of us realized. We were both used to seeing the miraculous move of God on a daily basis, and we both lived in a close community, and by close I mean close quarters, close friendships and often enough time shared close calls. I also found that we weren't the only two groups to experience this, I met a man in Nashville last year who had returned from military service in the middle east and as we got to talking we both realized we could relate to each other about our home coming experiences.
This can go to show you that your not the only one going through this, you aren't the only one that understands how you feel and there are lots of people who get you. It's okay to talk it out with some one who wasn't apart of your group, you never know who might be able to relate to you.

The next is Business:
Just because you've been gone for six months to a year doesn't mean you have to see every friend and distant relative in the first two weeks you get back. Take that nap you haven't been able to sneak in in your time away. Remember that book you started but weren't able to finish? Now may be a god time to start that.
A lot of times when you get home you feel restless, like you should be doing something all the time, but it's okay to take a deep breath and do something completely unrelated to missions for a while.

Another symptom is Abandonment:
This one comes about in two ways.
The first, the one I experienced is by feeling abandoned.
For me (just because of geographic location) I felt like every one had forgotten about me. I watched for months as every one was posting pictures on facebook where they were seeing one another again and reconnecting and I was stuck in the eastern corner of the states suffering out the summer with out any contact from my G42 classmates. Of course I tried my best to hide it and make my skype calls and claim that everything was fine, but I was suffering from serious abandonment issues.
But here is the good part, this doesn't last forever. Just like the sun doesn't stop shining when you close your eyes for a moment your friends haven't forgotten you just because you're not first person they see every morning. They are probably remembering the great times they had with you, but their busy living life. The best thing to do may be to turn off facebook and spend some time with the one who put you together with these friends in the first place. Jesus is the best comfort for abandonment, he'll bring the right people into your path at the right times and he knows when you need to stand on your own two feet.

The second abandonment symptom, which I know less about, is abandoning others.
Some times when you arrive home you're going to feel disconnected from every one else because your not with every one all the time any more. For this form of abandonment I would suggest just the opposite of the first antidote.
Turn of Facebook and connect, even though it may be as awkward as when you first met your community living partners, but, try to reconnect with them on the home front again. And as always spend time with Jesus, like I said above, he'll let you know who to talk to, and when to pull back.

One that I still have issues with is Over-Relation and Experience Regurgitation:
You have just experienced something incredible and now you want to tell every one about it.
Since I'm still dealing with this one, I'll leave this one short- you don't have to tell everyone about your trip/experience/life story. Just because you can relate doesn't mean you should regurgitate your entire story on them.

I can't think of any more right now, but I hope this kind of helped sort some things out. I know that it helped me to go over what I had experienced and keep in check what I might still be going through.

Protecting Me

Recently my job has been consuming my whole life. I haven't meant for it to, it's just that every one else that worked there has had other things come up, school, other jobs ect. and it's left me taking care of a lot of things on my own.
I've pulled a lot of twelve hour shifts, taken a lot of slack about what the owner had or hadn't brought in, and generally just ran the business the best I could with what was given to me.


Recently thing have come about with my job that caused a lot of drama and ended up causing the owner to sign the business over to the land lords.
And to be honest I was a little bit pissed, but I could live with it, it meant I was going to get the help I needed and I could make some sacrifices.
The land lords asked to meet with me today to discuss the terms of my employment with them rather than my previous boss.

Last night I had been angry because of the way I had been previously treated by the land lords and now they wanted to 'reason with me'. I don't consider my self a difficult person to get on with, but they treated me as if I was unwilling to work with them prior to my previous boss signing the store over to them. Which wasn't true. I was loyal to by previous employer because he was my employer. It never meant that I was fully filled in on any situations between him and the land lords, or that I even sided with him about any arguments between he and the land lords. It meant that I wasn't going to get involved with something that didn't directly concern me.
But this morning when I woke up I prayed about it, I really really sought the Lord about what to say, how to approach it and I gave him these stipulations.
"God I'll stay and work for them, even if they take away my management position, but I can't afford a pay cut, you gave me the car I wanted for a price I could afford with the pay I was receiving and you won't take it away from me now. You gave me a dream for a ministry that would take trips regularly over to japan and I'd be able to pay part of my own way with the money I had previously been making, and you won't take that away from me." "Give me the right words to say to him, the right questions to ask."
And God replied. "Red Hot Heart, Ice Cold Brain."
It was a saying that Andrew Shearman, one of my teachers in Spain (who is mega anointed and wise by the way) said often. It means to go into situations with your heart full of passion but your brain working with complete logic and not running away with all those passionate feelings. It was always great advice but today I was going to put it into practice.
So I told my self, and I told God, I would stay unless they reduced my pay down to Seven dollars, and they refused to move on passed the previous owners short comings.

When I got to the store and had my meeting my stipulations were met with flying colors. No matter how many times I told the land lord I wasn't informed of decisions made between he and the previous owner he kept trying to tell me about how he had 'pulled the wool over our eyes' and how 'he wasn't the man we thought he was'. I stuck to my guns, I refused to let him talk about this man with out him being there to defend himself, and that it was not relevant to our agreement about my employment. I was willing to forget my previous boss ever owned that store and work solely for him (at least for a little while any way) but he refused to let me work for him unless I let him talk about the previous owner.

The land lord I should point out is a Christian, he is a minister and he is very dogmatic, king james only and the like. I think he's experiencing GOd in his own way and I expected him to respect the fact that I was trying to honor him, honor my previous boss and honor my self by moving passed that and starting fresh. But he didn't, infact he pulled out his big guns "Your Boss told lies about you."
I froze here, because honestly I didn't know if my previous boss would have or not, I would have hoped he hadn't but I wasn't sure. My first instinct was to hear what he had to say, ask what my previous boss had said. But God spoke to me then.
"Is defending your self worth loosing your honor?" And again I heard something Andrew said to us in Class.
"One day your going to have a choice on whether you're going to be morally bankrupt and financially sound or stand firm and let God take care of you. "
And my choice was made clear then. I cut off his story there.
I told him as long as he knew they were lies, I didn't need to know what was said, and that we could move passed them and forgive and forget. Then I told him that what I wanted to know that would decide my staying on with them or not was "Will I still be the manager, and will I still receive the same pay?"
And I can quote exactly what he said to me.
"I would love to have given you that pay, but honestly I can't give you $9 an hour if you we can't talk about the past, and I would have loved to have started you at $7 an hour and given you raises, but obviously we can't communicate."
I knew then I had to go. I couldn't afford to stay there much less could I morally afford to stay there.
I refused to stay under some one who felt that moving forward meant dwelling on the past.
So I thanked him for his time and told him that I appreciated him taking time out to talk to me and that he considered me for staying on.
I told him that I was sorry he felt we couldn't see eye to eye but I felt like God was calling me to a place of honor and that I didn't feel right in my spirit about talking about my previous boss with out him being there to defend himself or to agree with the land lord.
Before I could leave the land lord said something to me that made it hurt personally.
He said to me;
"I've been a Christian longer than you, and I've had many more years walking close with the Lord than you have, what you think is honoring him isn't, and I'm sorry you couldn't see that."
It took everything in me not to shout at him. But I had to turn on that ice cold brain.
"I have been a Christian since I was 5 years old, I've graduated from a Christian Leadership Academy, I'm starting a ministry and I've been part of ministry since before I could walk. God speaks to me as a prophet and as a friend and I'm sorry that where he's calling me isn't where you are comfortable with." then I shook his hand and thanked him again for his time, I told him that this conversation didn't effect my view of the coffee shop, his personal business and that I was glad that my sister was still employed with him and that this didn't effect her job. After i let go of his hand I turned around and left.

I sat in my car broken, sobbing and crying out to God. Why did doing what he told me hurt so bad!? Why did it have to be so hard!?
But it was a lesson I had to learn, one I'm still sorting through and sifting through and working on.
"Be devoted to one another and out do one another in showing honor"
-Romans 12:10
My Honor is worth more than my reputation. God is looking out for me, and a job where I would have to lower the standard of honor God has set for me isn't going to fulfill me.
I'm sorry I had to quit my job, that I had to leave the coffee shop, I enjoyed my work and my customers, and I still harbor no ill will or hard feelings against the book store and it's owners the land lord, but I refuse to work where my walk with God and my ability to hear his call is questioned because of who my previous employer was.

Let's Play Pretend

Recently a guy I know has been pursuing me... blatantly.
He's a smart, funny, and has a great sense of style. We have the same humor, we're into the same things and I can see my self becoming very good friends with him. He's like the male me.
But, because he's the first guy I've ever really connected with that is pursuing me he puts these thoughts in to my head.
"What if he's it"
"What if he's not?"
"He's not this, or that"
"But he is that and this"

The truth is as far as I know he's not a man of God. He's a leader, he's a articulate out going fire starter, but he lacks the flint that is the groundedness of Christ.

I saw this tonight video tonight, and it made me re-realize something. I'm not looking for almost, I'm looking all together of Christ.


I don't know if he's it, or not, and I'm going to continue our friendship, but I'm not worried about it any more. God is the author of time, so waiting isn't really a big deal. Because no mater how long or short I have to wait, it's going to be right on time.

Fantasy Fest? LAME!

As some of you may know the reason I haven't been active lately is because we were having a big event at work called Fantasy Fest.
Fantasy Fest was a two day Sci Fi and Fantasy Festival in which we were hosting a charity raffle and fun raiser for a non profit organization called Project Ignite, the fund raiser was to help them send a group to Ukraine to work with Orphanages in that country.
We were going to have the 501st out to help us promote, some artist there and a costume contest.
It wasn't going to be a big event, but it was going to be fun!
Also the book store connected to the coffee shop I manage was having one of their biggest sales of the year the same day. Sounds like a no loose situation right?
WRONG.

To start off this tale we must start at the beginning. Back the second weekend in January we had a small comic signing event with a local comic book author, we got to tossing around ideas with him about fantasy and scifi things that would go over well for our venue and the idea for a Fantasy Fest came up.
At first I was a bit wary, us a small coffee shop, put on an event that some might confuse with a minor con? No gracias, I thought. But the owner of my store talked me into it.
He didn't know I was a huge nerd, so he thought it would have been a stretch for me to get some nerdy people to the store- I wish I'd let him think that.
Instead I rose to the challenge.

I hooked up with a friend of mine who is part of the 501st to see how I could get them out there to promote the event, and what charities would be good to work with.
I should have known this thing was doomed to fail when I tried hooking up with the battered women's shelter. The place is a great non profit, which great people and a great cause- their interns just don't know how to return phone calls.
After three weeks of phone tag I was approached by Project Ignite with their non profit, and I jumped on the task because they had all their info ready.
It was all set, I was ready to go to the 501st. By this time it was mid February.
Now any one in the nerd community that has an eye for costuming will tell you the 501st is where it's at. Not only are they a set ready costume guild their sponsored by Lucas Film it self!
And lucky me, I had an in. My friend in the 501st was on the ball ready to be the rock star of the whole show.
He was working to get the event on the forums, and I was submitting by the 'request and event' form and then it was time to sit back wait for the members to roll on in and come by.

Now I could finally commit to working on that charity raffle, getting prizes and working on promoting that portion of the event.
Now I won't pretend I was every day at every store and on the phone all the time, I am currently working on getting my GED (I'm not a drop out, it's a long story, yes I already complete highschool I just don't have a diploma) which is taking longer than I wanted, I'm also the manager of the store, and in charge of not only hiring new staff, but I am the sole person training them. Then to top it all off I'm working on starting my own humanitarian project, (causeandeffectjapan.org) so needless to say I'm very busy and I haven't had a single days rest in over a month.
And a week before I had to hand that over to the founders of Project Ignite.

Now here comes the fun part of the story, the super duper fun bit.
A week before the event my friend in the 501st calls me- and tells me he's moved to Texas. It was a quick move and he was very good to still be working on the event while being a dive instructor teaching 4 classes a week and doing 30 hours of office work, but he wanted to know how many people had signed on for Fantasy Fest out of the 501st.
And then I panicked.
You mean all this time people hadn't been talking with him about Fantasy Fest!? It wasn't generating any attention at all!?
The gnawing feeling that this event wasn't going to work out began to sink in.

All last week I've been making calls, emailing people and texting my little heart out to get any one from the 501st to help us promote this event. Mean while the owners of the book store we are connected to begin to raise HELL, mother loving HELL with us about everything in our store, the way we're set up, our paint, our selection- the fact that we're not buying pastries from the SAME SUPPLIER AS THE BAKERY IN THE SAME STRIP WE ARE IN!
And who get's to hear this ear full on nonsense? Me, if not from them then a retelling of it from the owner.

So now I have:
no prizes for the raffle,
no one showing up to promote the event,
and 2 angry land lords who want to shut us down
Sounds like a recipe for a great event right? =_=

Well Friday night rolls around. The day before the event and only one 501st guy is coming and he's not even wearing his own armor. He's having to borrow my friends. After staying up until 2am trying to convince people to come I gave up, I had to get up at 8 the next morning any way to start getting ready for the event.
Also did I mention this was supposed to be an outdoor event? I woke up saturday to a horrible rain storm- like you wouldn't believe.

Saturday morning the guy borrowing my armor is the only guy from the 501st there. He was a nice guy but you could tell he didn't want to be there. I had to pin him into the armor because it was made for some one 8inches shorter than he was.
He left about 3 hours later, not that I blame him but before we even announced the raffle.
I could see it on every ones faces then, but I had to force my self to remain optimistic- This day was a bust.
Not only was the book store making my artist move their work 'out of view' but they set up a food stand with hot dogs right out side of our door! Because of the rain people kept bringing their outside food and drink into our store and not buying anything and taking up tables making our customers stand.
It was like every one was wanting us to fail!

Sunday was our close out day, and my some miracle my friend calls me and tells me to text another guy from the 501st. This kept me up until 2:30 am me trying to get him there and he (a married man by the way) flirting his way around the subject.
Sunday morning I wasn't even sure if he was coming. I told him the night before that we would be slow until about 3 or 4 and he showed up any way at noon.
You could tell all morning he was pissed, he was stiff he wasn't talkative and he was short with everything I said or did.
He left at 2 on the dot.
And even though we had mildly pleasant good byes and 'keep me updated of future events' he proceeds my friend to send my friend a text about how unhappy he was with my event. How it was a 'non event' and that 'I was a nice girl, but had no idea what I was doing' and not to bother calling him with favors like that again, he was only going to show up for 'board posted events'.
I was humiliated.

Like I said around 3 we packed the place out, and the event did it's job.
It told people about our store, it got the information about project ignite into the right hands.
But still with all the obstacles I faced I can't help but feel I failed.
I'm not looking for a "Oh Hannah, your doing your best" kind of patronizing comment.
I'm to exhausted to care, I know I did my best, but I can't help but feel like it wasn't good enough.
It pisses me off and it makes me hate to even think of dealing with this kind of event again.
We're supposed to have another fantasy fest in fall, but I'm not even sure I want to try after today.

Now Presenting...

Dear Friends, Family, Supporters and every one in between,
Most of you know that for a long time I’ve had a heart for Japan, and most of you have encouraged me to follow my heart to where ever God lead me and to do what ever God has lead me to do.
Many of you were shocked when I said I wanted to help Suicide victims and all of you prayed for me to follow God’s heart.

In January of last year many of you helped support me in making the first step to following the path God has lead for me. I set out for G42 Leadership Academy with a place in mind and a challenge for both my self and a self-issued one for God.
“You’ve told me where, you’ve told me why, but I’m ready for the HOW”
Like always God rose to that challenge in my time in Mijas Spain I began to dream big dreams about how I could help.
My ultimate goal became about opening a discipleship house under the guise of a rehabilitation home.
I want to take in suicide victims (People who may be considering or have attempted suicide) in Japan and teach them their self worth and empower them to operate as the mighty men and women they were born to be!
But to do this one needs funds and a platform and some sort of credibility.
While I have a long term goal of becoming a Cultural Anthropologist and going in through the government to help in Japan that still leaves at least four or five years while I’m in school that I’m not proactively doing something for my cause.
Thus I created Cause and Effect.

Cause and Effect is a grass roots humanitarian project that will lead teams to Japan to teach the practice of hope to the suicidal Japanese.
Through trust building, empowerment and community out reach Cause and Effect hopes to establish it’s self as a beacon of proactive change, deterring suicide and spreading hope.

While I was in Spain I dreamed and planned and prepared and when I got home I continued to dream and plan and prepare and for a while nothing seemed to happen.
Feeling at my wits end and desperate I began ask God again. “WHEN?”
And for a while I heard nothing.
I decided to just rest, letting God deal with this in his timing.
That’s when something amazing happened.
God brought my launch pad to me.
Some of you may know that while I fight crime and spread hope by night in the day I have a secret identity as a manager of a coffee shop. It’s not a glamorous job but it’s fun and it gives me a chance to meet and converse with lots of interesting people. Among those interesting people are two God sends, Josh and Elizabeth.
Josh and Elizabeth are the senior ministers of a group called Project Ignite.
Project Ignite started out a pro-life ministry and evolved into just what its name implies a fire-starting ignition, breathing life into all the ministries it comes in contact with. These guys are the real deal, between pro-life education, orphan ministry and campus crusades these guys are dynamic go getters and true Godly leaders, which is quite a feat since these ‘senior ministers’ are only nineteen year old college students.
One night when the shop was having a slow evening I got the chance to share my heart with Josh and Elizabeth about Cause and Effect, about how I felt this was a big part of my calling and I was able to share my disappointment that things were going so slow.
It was good that God had brought me some peers to vent to but the real miracle didn’t start until I got home that night.
I logged onto FaceBook to find Josh had sent me a message telling me that Project Ignite wanted to help me get the Cause and Effect website up so that I could focus more on getting to Japan than the menial things like paying for a website to get the word out.
Shocked as I was I accepted their offer and began to go through the process with them of building this website and in turn building my excitement back up for Cause and Effect and getting on with what God has been calling me to do.

So I unveil to you the Cause and Effect website.
http://causeandeffectjapan.org
Getting this website up is just the beginning the launch so to speak of big things for Cause and Effect.
I’m planning to go to Japan in November to meet with contacts and will be raising funds for that starting this month.
The total price for one person to go to Japan will be $2200, this includes airfare and hotel.
In the 9 days I plan on being in Japan I plan on meeting with local Churches and outreach programs as a good will mission. I want to extend Cause and Effect to them to help with what they need be it painting a kid’s church or actually helping out suicidal youth. I want to work in community and lead teams to be part of the community to develop trust and dependability so that when Cause and Effect begins our own work we won’t just be the outsiders who want to change the culture and community but we will be part of the community helping the community.

In closing I suppose I should mention that Cause and Effect will be accepting donations through Family Ministries for now and all donations are tax deductible.
I will also thank you all for praying for me, supporting and lifting me up in my journey thus far but hold on tight, because I’m just getting started.
Much Love,
Hannah Day

If I Keep Banging My Head Against It...

Recently I've been having this feeling, that I'm a burden on the people around me, that I'm not going any where and every one is looking at me and wondering what all that big talk I said was about, and where it's going.
For awhile all I could do was hold it in, and I kept feeling like every one was giving me the same speech, why aren't you in school, why don't you have a second job, what are you doing with your life, are you still going to Japan, when are you going, why don't you have the money,and the list goes on and on.
I started to take the speeches and put them on my self.
Why wasn't I in school? Why Couldn't I find a second job? Where was my life going? Was I even going to be able to get to Japan? When? In another year? In another 3 years!? How was I going to get the money?
The more I took those burdens on me the more I strove to prove them wrong, I worked harder at my current job, I looked at tickets to Japan, I downloaded the application to Harvard.
But it felt like I was pushing against a stone wall and nothing I could do would move it, and the speeches, and the burdens and the stress just closed in around me and I couldn't get past this wall.

I'll stop here to say that all the speeches were made in love, and that the people who talked to me about school didn't also talk to me about Japan or a job but all of these things happened at once.

Now onto the good part. I've been trying to challenge my self, not to focus on the speeches and only focus on the wall, let down my stress and baggage and go on with my moving this wall.
But it wasn't moving, and I was desperate, clawing at the damnable thing like a frantic person trying to escape from a fire.
And then something amazing happened.
Tonight at work I got held over for an hour and a half, I was tired and I was ready to go and I was irritated because people wouldn't leave.
There were two of our regular customers that were also in the store getting ready to go and we just struck up a conversation about his business folder, then all of a sudden Cause and Effect came up.
Ideas starting coming to both of the customers and they suddenly knew people who would be interested in my cause and people who could help me mobilize it.
Then when I got home I saw on one of their face book statuses they posted the link to the Cause and Effect Face Book page endorsing it and telling people about my vision. And sudden I felt it shift, my wall moved.

I'm not saying everything was magically cleared and I'm not feeling like my chipper normal motivated self again, not just yet.
But that shift gave me hope that there is another side to this wall, and I'm going to break that freakin' thing down!!