A Few Weeks Away...

Hello Family and Friends,
A few weeks left till I am off to New York for Africa Inland Mission's Candidate Week. Things are coming together....but the "do get done" list is still long. Your prayers at this time would be a blessing.

This month is a short one for work and we are doing assessments so time is never enough. Also prayers for my sub would be great. She is a sweet and very skilled but with subbing there is always surprises.

Personal my health is not the best. For the last few weeks I have been sick with something that is just not going away. Wednesday I have an appointment to see the doctor.....health before I leave would be a great answer to prayer!

Lastly my spirit is getting nervous! Walking is God's will is always scary and exciting. I am asking God to calm my spirit and help it be open to what He has next for me. Thank you fort all your support and prayers.

-Hugs

Sweet Jerk Chicken Wraps

Hunger and wanting something healthy I tried a new idea I had. The idea included chicken, a yellow pepper, coconut oil, soy-sauce, and spices. The end result is WOW! It was easy, tasty, and thrifty. If you are never needing a fast yummy dish give it a try!

Sweet Jerk Chicken Wraps
1 chicken breast
3 to 4 tlbs of melted coconut oil
1/2 tsp muster powered
1 tlbs brown sugar
2 tlbs soy sauce
1 Yellow Pepper
Lettuce for wraps

-Thaw and cut the chicken into small chunks
-Melt coconut oil and add all other spices
-Marinade chicken in the coconut oil mixture in a bag for a few hours
-Heat frying pan and cook chicken (the oil in the mix is enough no extra for the pan needed)
-While cooking add Jamaican Jerk to chicken (enough to cover a all chicken lightly)
-Cut pepper into strips and add to the chicken

Use whatever lettuce you like best: roman, ice burg, butter

Add chicken and peppers on lettuce and ENJOY!

Christmas Blessings

(one of my biggest blessing, my grandmother)
The Holidays have come and gone....now we are all looking forward to the new year. Truthfully I am thankful the holidays are over. So much running around, parties to attend, and living in a world that has forgotten the real meaning of the season. But I can not start 2011 without looking at the last few weeks of 2010.

For the Luontela family we like spend time at home. Quite and peaceful. We had a great time together for the holidays and it was one that I will hold near and dear with God calling me overseas. I am so blessed to have had two weeks with my family. It was low-key but just what I needed, even if I did not know it. There was time of laughter, deep talks, and learning how to living all together again.


I hope you all were able to enjoy the time and see the blessings God gave us over 2010. As 2011 starts I know the Lord is working in our lives in marvelous ways. Blessings to you and yours for 2011!

Less of Me More of You For 2011

Welcoming 2011 in was very low key at my family's. My Grandmother went to sleep at 8pm followed by my dad around 10pm. I soon toddled off around 11:20pm with eyes that could just not stay open anymore. I believe the only one that made it until 12am was my mom and the surrounding neighbors with their fireworks. It is so clear that we are a party family.

For the first day of the New Year I stayed in my PJs. Not really being lazy but more of starting the New Year off with a relaxed feel. My Grandmother and I had fun watching the Rose Parade. Afterwards I had some time to think about what is unfolding in 2011. There is a lot coming and many changes! Many are exciting and others are nerve racking. But there is a theme I want to thread into the patchwork of the New Year. Something that is unlike anything else on my to do list, something that is so simple, and something that makes you work harder then you ever thought. Waving in and out of 2011 in my heart and mind is crazy, reckless, and unwavering LOVE.

We all know the greatest commandment is to love the Lord with all your heart AND to love your neighbor as yourself. Knowing and doing are two different things! This year I feel God calling me to push myself to really follow in the steps of Christ. My spirit knows there will come some easy days in LOVE and some that are just hard. But without the hard things in life we never know how strong God makes us and without the easy days we would forget how SWEET He is to us. Because, I will push myself to live I will learn a lot about me and my relationship with God but the strong undertow that comes with LOVE it that it is contagious. Deep in my heart I believe that Revolutionary Love can CHANGE this word.

Just think of the possibilities. People loving their neighbor as themselves...heart by heart, city street by city street, hearts and lives could be changed! Just thinking about the possibility I can see what Christ had in mind when He gave the commandment. There is no doubt that it is not easy, we have wavered far off course, and our natural nature does not like it. But I am called to love, we are called to love. So as easy or hard it may be day to day I seek to weave LOVE (not for myself) in and out of every aspect of 2011.

Please Join Me In Prayer...

Hello Friends!
2011 is coming fast. The end of 2010 means about a month and a few weeks left until I head out for AIM training. I am writing to ask for your prayers! I thank you as you have all had a hand in my calling to the mission field; it might have been a word of encouragement, a prayer, or just telling me how excited you are as I am answering His call; it all has been used by the Lord. I could not be anything more than grateful. As my training draws closer I would love to keep partnering with you in prayer.

A lot needs to happen in the short time left before I fly out to New York. The Lord has lead me thus far and I know He has me each and every step of the way....but some prayer would be great! Before I head out I will getting everything ready, from paper work to prepping for a sub while I am gone. The week of training will be busy and fun. I am very excited to meet other AIM candidates, make some new friends, and learn a lot about African Inland Mission. At the end of the week I will know if I have been accepted into AIM and possibly know a definite assignment. This is huge! As each day passes my excitement and nerves grow. This is truly an exciting time as God is calling and I am answering. I know I cannot do it without you and your prayer support. By mid February I hopefully will know where I will be placed, the ministry I will be doing, start raising my support, and have a sending date!

The prayer needs listed below are for pre-trip, during, and post-trip. Thank you in advance for all your friendship, support, and prayers. If you have any questions or would like more information on any of the prayer needs please contact me. Thank you for the covering of prayer; it is a great blessing. I will keep you posted on what is happening through my blog.

Working for Change in Africa,
Cassandra

Prayer Needs!
-Reserving and sending back all the needed AIM paper work (on time)
-God's provision for Candidate Week (still need to raise $500)
-Prepping my class, lessons, and projects for a sub while I am gone
-Travel mercies (round trip)
-God's leading as the final step of an assignment is completed (I am dying to know where I am going)
-Meeting other missionaries during my training and making new live long friends
-Peace in my heart to listen to God
-All the little things (I know He has them all taken care of)

Time Together...

Happy belated Thanksgiving. The last month has been crazy so there has been little time to write but I wanted to say a few things about giving thanks.

I spent the Thanksgiving holiday with my family. It was needed time and time well spent. My family and I do not have the chance to see each other as often as we would like and this time together was very meaningful. My grandmother is getting older and not in the best of health so the holiday spent at the table together had new meaning. We had a great time watching the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade and a yummy meal. I was also blessed to have a few days with them after Thanksgiving before I had to head back to Cali. It was very hard to spend the time together knowing how it could be my grandmother's last. There was even a few times I had to hold back tears because she even said it might be her last. She is the one person in my family that understands me and we are joined by a special bond.

Because, of this bond it is harder then even to think of life without her. A life that holds a whole new chapter for me soon, one she may never get to see. I am sure I am not alone in this feeling during the Holidays. For many this could be the last holiday together or the hurt of the first holiday without them. All around us there are songs and phrases that tell of the great joy this season brings, but yet for many it is not a season of joy at all. This year the Lord is teaching me the flip side of this season. I still love the sights and sounds but they are bitter sweet undertone this year. All the fun of Christmas shopping, card writing, and decorating is still on my "to do" list. As I am going about my days getting things done and marking them off my list there is a kind of understanding I am learning about....the understanding of joy and pain this season can bring.

It can be very hard at times to feel this mix of joy and pain but I am grateful for the insight God has given me because I am now able to relate more with others. He always has a lesson for us to learn to help in our ministries. Through the pain this season, at time brings, I know He has plans for me and my family to have great joy together. This will be a Holiday season I will not let slip by or say bah-humbug to.

As you go about this season I pray if you feel the overwhelming joy you remember those that feel pain and if you feel the pain this season can bring I pray you know there are others that understand how you feel.

Giving. Has it become a commodity?

So this weekend I along with a friend and her husband I went to The City. We took BART in and walked a few blocks to get to the GREEN Festival. Call me a hippy at heart, but I had a great time. There were a ton of booths about how to green your home, fair trade goods, and renewable living choices; but for me it wasent just about the booths. God had a few people in mind for me to meet.

As I strolled around the main floor of the festival something caught my eye. There was a booth with African baskets for sale. I stopped by and took a look. They were stunning baskets handmade in Rwanda. After chatting with the nice lady running the booth I kept going. Little did I know that just a few booths down God had something for me. There was a both called "African Mamas." It was full of colorful shirts, beads, and more from all over Africa. There was some Kenyan beads that just sent me back to the hot orange sun of Kenya. I smiled and kept looking. The lady running the both came up to me and we started to talk. I asked if the beads were Kenyan and and with a surprised response she said they were. We started talking more about our lives. I told her I have been to Kenya off and on for the last three years and at the end of this up coming summer I would be moving to Africa (Thank God she did not ask what country....because I still don't know). I got a few things (one is a great Christmas gift) and she asked me for my name and email. She said she is always looking for contacts that know Africa. As I was about to leave a young lady stopped me. She said she had over heard my conversation and would love to hear more about the orphanages in Kenya I have worked with. She is starting one in Lago de Atitlan, Guatemala. She is looking to talk to other that have start orphanages to get ideas of what she is getting into. It was a great time talking and exchanging contact info. As I walked away I felt God's hand on me, leading and guiding every step I took at that event. God is so good but that is not what I wanted to write about. He is and we all know that He is but there is something that HIT me.

Tonight I was checking out the website of the young lady I meet starting the orphanage. I loved reading about her, seeing her pictures form the last trip she took, but the thing that got me the most was the video she had listed under inspirations! It is the founder of a micro loan website speaking on how the nonprofit came to be. She talked about how she learned of the poor in her Sunday School class. How she knew she was asked to help. Filled with excitement and passion she started to do so but then learned that Jesus said the poor will always be with us. She started to see the poor as an never ending line of people asking for things. She started to give out of guilt and then the guilt was replaced with a new feeling. Somehow the giving became a commodity. As I heard what she said I was floored! How can giving become a commodity? But then as I listened to how she described it and what it had done to her it was crystal clear. And it made me start to think.

In today's world giving has become a commodity. People do it because it makes them feel good. There are gift giving catalogs that make it simple to give someone in need something as a gift for other. We seen the commercials on TV all the time for organizations asking for money so they can give it to others. The more and more I thought about it the more my heart broke. We have high jacked something that God asked us to do n order to bring glory to ourselves (there is a deep pit in my stomach right now). Where did we make the turn of doing something for someone in the name of US insetd of Jesus?

The video goes on to say that the founder had learned so much when she packed up and moved to East Africa for three months. She learned how the people just wanted a a little help more so then a hand out. The movie does come full circle and gives hope but I am still hung up on the fact that, we as humans have lesson-ed the meaning of giving. Truth be told there are many great givers out there that give with the intend that God has designed. But this thought of how giving has become a commodity just rocked my world. What about you?