Bigger and Better!

There is a game that I used to play when I was in college called Bigger and Better. The idea of the game is to start with something insignificant, like a penny or a paperclip, and trade that for something bigger and better. The game goes on for a certain amount of time and the person (or group) that comes back with the biggest and best item, wins. Well, Kyle McDonald decided that he would try to play bigger and better using the internet. So on July 12 2005, he went on Craigslist, a website that allows you to post things you are selling, trading or giving away, and he posted "one red paperclip," and said he wanted to trade if for something bigger and better.
His adventure began when someone offered to trade his paperclip for a fish pen and it ended one year later on July 12, 2006 when someone traded him a part in a movie for a free house!!

L to R: Clare Diamond, Me, Maria Schwartz, Haley Devine, Sarah Hollister, Beth Jans and Mel Messler.
This was our second Bible Study, we talked about the story of Jesus at the wedding feast. He was invited to the wedding, He came, and He made it Bigger and Better. But don't worry, that's sparkling grape juice!


In the same way, Jesus has come to make our lives bigger and better. In John 10:10, Jesus says: “I have come that you may have life and have it to the full. The word “to the full” in the Greek is translated as “perissos”. This word is an adjective and it means: exceeding, going beyond, abundant. In other words, BIGGER AND BETTER. In this passage, Jesus makes claims that through Him, life is bigger and better. You bring Him what you have and He gives you something Bigger and Better: Himself. So a challenge that we gave the girls was to do just that: Allow Jesus to make their lives Bigger and Better!!

At Radford there is a term that the students use called “pre-gaming.” What it means is that they go and start drinking before they go to a party. Another thing that the students do on a regular basis is they watch the show “Grey’s Anatomy.” So we’ve combined these terms and created “Pre-Greying” as the name of our Bible Study. So every Thursday before Grey’s Anatomy we get together and do some “Pre-Greying” by investigating the claim that Jesus has come that we may have life and have it “Bigger and Better.”

The Great Outdoors!

One of the first things we noticed as a team when we moved from Charlotte, NC to Blacksburg, VA is that the pace of life here is a lot slower. Blacksburg is the largest town in Virginia, but it is not considered a city. In Blacksburg, I don't have to worry about traffic jams before I head out the door, even if it is five o'clock in the afternoon. Granted, the students are not here because it's summer, but as a whole, the town seems to travel in a slower pace than the city of Charlotte, which is what we're used to. This gives us a chance to enjoy what the city has to offer.

Since we've been here (it has been one month and two days!) we have enjoyed going on hikes, riding our bikes, playing tennis, going on walks and running through our neighborhood. That doesn't seem like a lot, but for someone that has always lived in fairly big cities, this has been a great treat! My favorite hike was when we went to the "Cascades." We hiked for two miles and then we reached a beautiful waterfall. We were determined to dive in, even though it wasn't a very hot day and we had been told that the water would be freezing.

This is our (Haley and I's) second time jumping in, because the first time we did it we did not get a good picture, and what's the point of jumping into freezing cold water if you don't have a picture to prove it? You can click on the picture to see more of our trip.

The students are not going to be here till August, so we have a few months to get to know our surroundings, our teammates and ourselves. I told you a little bit about the surroundings, and it has been a joy to look out of our windows and see layers of mountains! But another thing that has been great has been getting to know my teammates. Because we live so close to one another we get to see each other almost on a daily basis. The Schwartz' are not going to be with us until the first week of August, so we are looking forward to have them with us full time. In the picture below you can see our whole team (minus baby Tera and baby Toby) when we crossed the Virginia state line.

Top Row (L to R): Andrew and Maria Schwartz, Me, and JoshLayfield.
Bottom Row (L to R): Doug Rose, Haley Devine, Collin Setterberg, Julia, Isaiah and Matt Bradner.
Click on the picture for our NEW website!

One of the ways in which I have seen our team's unity has been through the eyes of the children. Isaiah, Toby and Tera are getting more comfortable with us and that reveals an intimacy in our team that has increased since we've arrived. I look forward to seeing how the joy of our team overflows into the community around us.

As we continue to learn about our surroundings and to be impacted by what Blacksburg has to offer, we hope that it will be a two way relationship and that as we receive from this community, that they also receive from us.

Celebrate Good Times - Come On!!

On my last update I shared that my brother (Claude) was getting married on the 29th to Joy Vance. Well, it happened, they tied the knot at 5pm and it was a beautiful ceremony - click here for some photos. Having our whole family together was a great joy and we really enjoyed each other. I got to spend a good amount of time with my brother and his wife (Vitor & Marina) who came from Brazil. We stayed up late, woke up late and spent a lot of their money on gifts for people back home - it was great!
Another exciting thing that happened is that I turned 24!! YAY! Yesterday was my birthday (the 1st of May) and I got to celebrate it with my family before they left on Sunday (April 30th). We had a brunch, which consisted of fresh fruit, cold cuts, bagels, orange juice, coffee, and lastly ICE CREAM CAKE! It was a great surprise and I really enjoyed it, but it did not end there, on Monday - my actual birthday - my friend Mary Beth came to Raleigh to surprise me, and she did. I have felt very loved from all of my friends and family on my birthday, it will definitely be remembered in the years to come.
Lastly, as of today I have raised 76% of my support and feel like I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. Please join me as I pray that I will be done by the 19th of May so that I can depart with the rest of the team to Blacksburg, VA. I am excited about Virginia and what God has there for us in this next season of our lives. Thank you so much for your love and support!



Joy & Claude Pariz
at Raleigh Moravian Church
on April 29th at 5:00pm.
Marcelo Pariz (Claude's twin) was the
best man, and Catherine Vance, Joy's
sister was the Maid of Honor.

Radford, Here We Come!!

So it has been a while since I have posted my last blog and some great things have happened. One of those things is that the COVE Team spent a week in Virginia. We stayed at a lake house about one hour and a half away from Blacksburg, VA. It was a great time of catching up with each other and building vision for the upcoming year. During this time we found out who our partners will be and what school we will be going to individually. If you click here, you will see some pictures of our weekend, during this weekend we found out our partners and which schools we will be going to. My partner is Collin Setterberg and we will be working at Radford University. Radford is a medium size school, about 10,000 students, but the town is really small - it's definitely a college town! Haley Devine (my future roommate) and Douglas Rose will be working at Virginia Tech, which is a little bigger (about 26,000 students). While we were in Virginia we got to go to RU and walk around for a little while, it's a great campus. The students were very friendly and easy to talk to, we also noticed that a lot of the students smoke, this might seem like a random comment, but considering the fact that we had just been to Virginia Tech and saw ONE, then we went to RU and saw a lot more than that, we took notice.
Besides checking out the campuses, one of the best things about the week was getting to be around the whole team. I loved being around the kids and feeling like we were a family, thinking for each other and watching the interactions. Another thing that was great was getting a theme for this season of our lives, our theme will be "Authentic." We will look at three different angles of this word and what it means for our walk with the Lord. 1 - That God desires to have an authentic relationship with us, 2 - That He desires authentic changes in our lives, and 3 - That He desires for us to have authentic relationships with others. I am really excited to dive into this theme and understand more of God's character. It is VERY refreshing to understand that God has created all of us differently and that He deals with us differently. It makes me feel so special to understand that He doesn't just respond to my needs in the same way He responds to all other believers, but that He listens and responds according to who I am, and how He has design me.
On another note, my brother (Claude) is getting married on the 29th of April, which is right around the corner, and my brother (Vitor), who still lives in Brazil, will come with his wife (Marina) on the 21st and stay until the wedding. This is really exciting because I never get to see him and I miss him a lot, he is very joyful and refreshing to be around. This time can become very hectic for my family and I just ask that you remember us in your prayers and that this will be a time of rest and joy for all of us and not an overwhelming and frustrating time. The opportunity for my immediate family to come together (which makes up eight of us, six kids plus my parents) is very unique and has only happened twice in the last 14 years!! Most people have family reunions with their ENTIRE families, we have family reunions with our immediate families, that's pretty funny! That's all folks, I hope you all enjoyed this brief update!


Left to Right:
Collin Setterberg, Me, Haley Devine
and Douglas Rose in front of a
fountain on the Radford Campus.
Haley will be my roomate in VA and
Collin will be my partner on the
Campus.

Limbo: An intermediate place or state.

"An intermediate place or state," that is the definition I found for "limbo," which best describes the way I feel right now as I raise support to go to Virginia. There is a sense of tension in my heart, a feeling of not wanting to wholly give myself to the things in Raleigh because I know I will not be here long, but at the same time not wanting to have my mind be in Virginia because I'm not there yet - I'm here, in Raleigh, but not really. I've gotten accustomed to my lifestyle of raising support, a lifestyle that is unique to any other season I've ever gone through in my life. Sometimes that lifestyle gets interrupted by reminders of the past or anticipation of what the Lord will have in the future. Those reminders are usually very sweet, but also very brief, leaving me longing for more of it. I'm hoping that as you read this you can relate to that feeling of wanting to be "back there" where things were easy (or the things you remember as easy overwhelm all other things in your memory), or as you look forward to a place you are going you think that you will reach utopia and that FINALLY you will be where you have been longing to be for a very long time. What I am realizing during this season is that the hardest place to be is here, today. It is becoming more and more clear that it is more likely for me to be in "limbo," as defined above, than in any other place. So what does that tell me about the God that I serve?
This past weekend I went to Charleston with the rest of the Virginia team and Matt Bradner (the director of our team) was the speaker for a retreat that Campus Outreach Greenville was having. One of the things Matt said is that we get so caught up with wanting to get to our destination that we miss the reality that our God is about our relationship with Him, not about getting results or getting us to where we think we need to be. So this season of my life is not about raising all of the money I need in order to get to Virginia, it is about meeting with the Lord and being transformed by Him. Here is a verse that summarizes what Matt talked about this past weekend: "Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you" Matthew 6:33.
Tomorrow we leave for Virginia, and we will stay there till Monday (27th of March). Our purpose for going to Virginia is to look for places to live as well as visit Churches that we might connect with when we move there. By the end of our trip I will know which school I will be going to and who my partner will be. This coming trip will stir up a lot of things in my heart about what God has in store for the next couple of years. On Monday I will head back to Raleigh and get back to my normal routine of raising support and learning that the God I serve is a God whose delight is found in the growth of my intimacy with Him and my satisfaction in Him, not about my percentage in support raising.

Silence and Longing

So as I told you all, I went on a Silent Retreat this past weekend. Here are some pictures if you want to check out the place where we stayed. It's called the Avila Retreat Center and its in Durham, NC. As you will notice in my pictures, I have a picture of a clown playing the guitar. I have to admit, I love this picture! Most people are scared of clowns, I guess because of all the make up - you never really know what they look like and they're always smiling - that's a little freaky! The thing I've been learning lately is that I'm very much like a clown and only a few people really know what I look like without any "make-up" on. So, like a clown, I get up and put on my "costume," then I go and entertain people. Only those who stick around long enough will know the real me.
The reason I'm writing all this is because I really want to be known completely. I want to be loved without the make-up and costume, I want the freedom to walk around in my "normal" clothes, with my "normal" face. That retreat really opened my eyes to realize that my Creator loves me for who I am, without the dressing up. I've also been noticing that men that are married are so confident, they don't really try to impress you, they just are who they are. I don't know if any of you have ever noticed that, but they have such freedom and, on my end, I feel free around them because I know that they're married, so I don't have to impress them either! I want to experince that, I want that freedom - that confidence - to be who I have been called to be and be free - because I'm taken, and I don't have to impress anyone, I've already been wooed and won!
"For your Maker is your Husband,the Lord of hosts is His name; and the Holy One of Israel is your Redeemer, the God of the whole earth he is called." Isaiah 54:5

It's been too long!

I has been WAY too long since my first blog. I want to apologize for the delay, and I also want to give you a quick update from the last few months.

November: Nothing too exciting. I was still living with Matt and Layna and working at Gray's College Bookstore, as I raised support. One thing that happened during the month of November was that the Lord began to make clear His desire for me to move to Raleigh, which He confirmed over Thanksgiving break. Family Pictures.

December: I began to pack up my things to move, which didn't take long since I had just moved in October. The reason I moved was to be able to really concentrate on raising support for Virginia. I moved to Raleigh on the 18th and left again on the 27th. I spent Christmas with my parents and three of my brothers. Over the New Year I went to Atlanta for the 2005 Atlanta New Year's Conference. It was a great time to be around a lot of great people, great speakers and great worship. I was reminded of the Lord's compassion for us, and was challenged to be more like Him in that area. It was an incredible time of renewal and joy for me. Christmas and Atlanta

January: As soon as I got back to Charlotte, the Campus Outreach Virginia Expansion team had a retreat. We did a lot of logistical things, but it was a great time of perspective building. We also found out that we will be going to Virginia Tech and Radford University and that we will live as a community. I have to admit, one of the most exciting news for me was hearing that we would all live as a community, I love the idea of having such intimacy with my team-mates! As we transition to a new city, new state and new jobs, we are going to desperately need the body of Christ! After the retreat I return to Raleigh and kicked it up a notch. I began going to Bible Studies and different Churches trying to meet as many people as possible. I also had friends come to visit me - Friends and Fondue Lastly, I traveled to Charlotte last weekend (the weekend of the 27th) to see the new member of our team - Tobias Robert Bradner. Tobias was born to Matt and Julia Bradner on the 26th of January at 10:33pm. He weighed 8lbs. 11oz. and was so cute. They are all doing well and I had a great time visiting them. Tobias Robert Bradner

February: This coming weekend I am going on a "Silent Retreat" along with all the other Campus Outreach Women. We are going to a retreat center in Durham, NC called the "Avila Retreat Center." I will let you know how it goes! Besides that, I am 32% done with Raising Support and 68% still trusting God. I have enjoyed this time of support raising a lot and look forward to the ways in which He will continue to make me more like Him!