Sep. 1, 2007

Enlarging my tent

Dear friends and family,

After a whirlwind, multi-state summer, we have come back home. Our times with friends and family in the states were wonderful, but there is a comfort that comes only from sleeping in your own bed. Thank you all for the many wonderful chats, dinners, sleep-overs and phone calls we shared with many of you.

On our return trip to Romania, we learned an important travel tip we would like to share. Always check your ticket as every ticket agent along the way rips off the little slips to make sure he or she doesn't get a little overzealous and accidentally remove your child's ticket. This may result in what happened to us, a 4.5 hour wait at the Northwest counter in Lexington as the agent there tried to put together the pieces and get us to Romania. We ended up having to stay in Lexington another 2 days until there was finally room on a flight.

This put us back in Galati just a few days before camp. This year camp was in Lepsa, Romania, at a great facility that included soccer field, basketball and volleyball court, and the favorite of all- a trampoline. Unfortunately, it rained a good chunk of the week, though the cabin fever was helped by ping pong and pool tables. On our last full day at camp the sun came out and we went down to the waterfall. Joel and Simeon were real troopers, walking (Joel with Abram on his back) for a total of 6 miles. All in all, camp was fabulous. We see so many changes in the kids from even just a few years ago. A brother and sister that have in the past shown their emotional wounds through anger and rage were among some of the best behaved. It is encouraging to see how God is healing children's hearts through consistent love and discipline.

So now we are unpacked from our summer and ready to jump into the year. We are still planning on teaching art (Joel) and Bible (Monica) at the drop in center, but, as always, we want consider our schedule with much prayer and invest our time where it is most needed and helpful. Please pray for us as we plan that we would have wisdom.

It was really a delight to see so many of you in the states. In the next few months, we will be updating our address list. If your address has changed please let us know by contacting me at monica.klepac@wordmadeflesh.com.

Thank you again for your love and support as we journey together in Christ.

Blessings,

Monica

Enlarging my tent

"Enlarge the place of your tent;
Stretch out the curtains of your dwellings, spare not;
Lengthen your cords
And strengthen your pegs.

Isaiah 54:2

"The soul of a woman must therefore be expansive and open to all human beings; it must be quiet so that no small weak flame will be extinguished by stormy winds; warm so as not to benumb fragile buds; clear so that no vermin will settle in dark corners and recesses; self contained, so that no invasions from without can impede the inner life; empty of itself, in order that extraneous life may have room in it; finally, mistress of itself and also of its body, so that the entire person is readily at the disposal of every call." Edith Stein

The verse above has usually (and unfortunately) been quoted at building campaigns for outrageously huge churches. But the context is the promise of God to a barren woman to give her multitudes of offspring. It isn't about expanding a building, but opening up a family.

For this phase in my life, I feel that the second quote completes the meaning of enlarging my tent. I was recently at the Word Made Flesh retreat with a large group of incredible people. Of all the people gathered there, I naturally spent a lot of my free time with the other mothers of WMF. It was there that I began to meditate on this verse and to see how God has brought many of us women on a journey of finding out what makes a tent strong and stable enough to be expanded.

If you could zoom in really really close with Google earth, this is what you might see the mothers of Word Made Flesh doing, hanging out in the subway in Buenos Aires with some children of the streets, eating lunch in freezing cold El Alto with women who prostitute, helping Nepali girls with their homework, singing songs with children on the street in Rio, sipping hot chocolate on the sidewalk in Lima, or singing "Rise and shine and give God the glory " for the one BILLIONTH time with a bunch of jumping, screaming, smiling children in Romania.

But being mothers in ministry has not come easy for many of us. We question our schedules, our priorities, our commitments. We worry about our children, our husbands, the communities we are in. The past few years for me have been a searching time for a harmonious relationship between motherhood and working with the poor.

I haven't found all the answers, but as in many things of life, sometimes the simplest things are the hardest. As I love, I grow in my capacity to love. As I learn to nurture my children, I am able to nurture other children. As I give myself to being a fully committed, purposeful mother, my commitment to the children on the streets and the center grows in purpose. Once I really become a mother to my own children, I suddenly feel motherly to everyone's children. As my pegs are strengthened and go deeper into the soil of my calling, my vocation as a mother, my cords can lengthen and my tent "expansive and open to all ".