Happy Mothers' Day!

To all you moms out there--Happy Mother's Day!!!
We love you and appreciate you, and you know that if it weren't for you...
We wouldn't even be here!

I'm feeling a little empty place inside, since it's been just about a year since my mom went to be with Jesus. Someday I'll be able to tell her "thanks" again for all she did for me!

Here in Liberia, Mothers' Day has a slightly different flavor. At our church, the tradition is that a lady is asked to give the sermon (and today it was a real fiery one, on Ruth chapter 1--the three options a woman faces--be like Orpah (start on the road with God, but turn back after realizing it won't all be so pretty), be like Naomi (blame God, but at least return to him and experience his faithfulness), or be like Ruth (commit to God 100%, better or worse, until death). It was a great message.

Then after the message the Women's Department had a little fundraiser called a "pinning" to show appreciation to the moms in the service. They sell either ribbons (for 10 Liberian Dollars--about 17 cents) or candy (for 5 Liberian Dollars--about 8 cents) and you take the ribbon or candy to a mom (your own or someone else's) and pin the ribbon or the candy on her to tell her you love her and appreciate her. All the moms were asked to wear white today--So Deb got decorated quite nicely!!! Here she is right after the service.
Happy Mom's Day, Debbie!

Mystery Photo #1 Revealed

Here it is .............The mystery photo was a closeup picture of this lobster's egg sac while the creature was under water. We have these Rock Lobsters here, and they are delish and not too expensive (our neighbor bought 10 for $40) but they don't have the great claws that Maine Lobster have - so you just get to eat the tail. We also have blue crab occasionally.
So we had a few ballpark guesses - some figured it was something marine. We heard from about 7 people I think. Guess we need to do some more publicity for this blog! Stay tuned for another mystery photo soon!

Scripts Newsletter

Hi again! We're just doing so many cool things with the internet these days. I've posted the newsletter that we're just putting out at:

http://www.geocities.com/rick_sacra/april2007prayerletter.pdf

So if you just can't wait, you can read it now. Especially if you want to know some more about Rick's medical activities, you'll like page 2.

This is the anniversary of the death of Rick's mom, Shirley Sacra. It's hard to believe a whole year has gone by. Pray along with us for Glenn today.

Have a good week. Still looking for someone to guess right on the mystery photo! We have one close guess. Tune in on Wednesday for the answer!
Debbie

Jared the science guy

Check out our youtube video clip of Jared's new invention...

the zinc/copper/vinegar clock. The tension is building... The excitement is palpable... The victory is indescribable!!! This is Jared's science experiment for school, and Jared and Dad had a nice time putting it together. Check it out!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BnrMACzgcOI

PS... I've now tried to enable comments. So please keep commenting and guessing on the last post. I'll post the "answer" in a couple days. Lotsa love, Rick

Mystery Photo Number 1

I've decided to find out who is really reading this blog...
So I'm going to post some interesting mystery photos on it, and I REALLY want you to participate in letting me know what the subject matter is! Thanks... we look forward to hearing from you !!! --Rick

eScripts - monthly news and prayer update

Here's the latest monthly update we emailed:

The last two weeks of March, we had a great visit from Sean and Cathy Marston from New Zealand. Sean is basically “the” candidate department for SIM NZ, as well as speaking for SIM as the “Champion” for youth and young adult ministries. Cathy works for Pioneers mission, and together they co-lead (with other ministers) a home church in Auckland. They seem very much to have their fingers on the pulse of the twenty-something generation and the phenom of global youth culture.

Cathy and Sean led our “first since 2000 only SIM-Liberia (not combined with our region)” Spiritual Life Conference (a team retreat of sorts). Cathy led the spiritual teaching on the “Bread Covenant” and Sean helped us look a little at ourselves as a field. We actually had 9 SIM missionaries, plus 2 teenagers (Max Sacra and Tim Goodnow) plus 2 guys from Germany who are working with ELWA and ECUL from another mission. One day, our 3 staff joined us and on Saturday, their families. It was really a great time together: getting to know each other better, sharing our ideas, thinking more about how we live out our faith in this setting as well as in our private walk with God. One very special time for us was having the team pray for us.

Sean is SIM’s “Champion for Youth and Young Adults” which means he is meant to be a resource person and a hub for interaction about youth ministry and also recruiting young adult missionaries. During the week before our SLC, he met with us and our partners to talk about youth culture and encourage new approaches to youth ministry. It seems like he stirred up some energy in that area. We also talked about being a good field for young adult missionaries, as Liberia has always been popular for short term missions because of all the different ministry possibilities and because English (at least a form of it!) is spoken here. The themes of mentoring and community seemed to keep coming out as what young adults are looking for in a ministry situation.

In the aftermath of Sean and Cathy’s visit (after we picked ourselves up off the floor where we fell in complete exhaustion), we’re trying to move forward in a few key areas. Having so many new missionaries here has mandated that we finally have a cultural orientation program. We know that some information and discussion will help them understand the culture more and deal with their adjustment. I’ve had materials gathered and ideas simmering in my head for awhile, and I just had to get them together and make a plan, so we’re launching that next week. Also, we are looking at our list of “personnel needs” – our ideas about what we’d like missionaries to do – so we can make them more accessible from the SIM website. I want people to be able to “see themselves” as they look at the ways we need people to serve here.

Pray for our new people as they get involved in ministry and make the adjustment to living and working in a cross-cultural situation – some (Tom and Melanie Goodnow, Chris and Andrea Lambert) will only be here a few more months and we know they will feel like they are just becoming effective when it is time to leave. They are having an impact even now: pray that they will be able to see that and be encouraged. Gary and Tammy Dunseath, our new long term missionaries, have finally arrived. Pray especially for Gary as he develops relationships with ECUL leaders and figures out how he can be involved with their ministry.

Thanks for reading, and for praying. I guess you can see our role here continues to change. Never a dull moment when God is leading the way!

Happy Birthday Jared

Jared celebrated his 13th birthday yesterday! That means we have two teens now. Rick was im-ing with Max and said TEEN stands for "tempermental emotional eccentric noodlehead". Jared liked that.
So here are some well-known and maybe little known facts about Jared:
1) He was born the day after Debbie's mom's birthday. I tried very hard to get him to be born on mom's birthday -- I moved furniture and vacuumed all morning. And I did have a false start early in the day, but it cooled down until late in the evening. Guess I should have started trying the day before.
2) Jared had red hair when he was born. And it stuck straight up. His cousin Hannah was born 3 weeks later and she has wild curly hair. They are so alike it's scary, and they get along great when they get to be together.
3) When Jared was 3, he cut his head and his dad had to stitch it. We had to lay on him to hold him down. When he was 4 he stuck a lego in his nose and we had to go to dad in the ER to get it out- in the car, he cried (maybe wailed is a better word) he didn't want to go to ELWA ONE (the hospital's radio call name that he heard on dad's handheld radio), but it was no big deal once we got there. When he was 10, he got a cut under his eye when he was swimming. We went to the ER and Dr. Brown sewed it up. Jared didn't flinch.
4) Jared loves to sing (or hum, or whistle). I like to say he has a song in his heart. He especially likes show music, but also SKA and classical. He prefers music with real instruments (unlike his bro Max who likes electronic music).
5) Jared plays the trumpet. He's actually sounding very nice on it these days.
6) For several years, we called him Jared Bear. He probably won't like that I told you that.
7) Jared has lived 10 out of his 13 years in Africa.

8) Jared wants to be an architect or a structures engineer. He finds many interesting ways to prepare for this career (this structure is made of dixie cups and playing cards -who needs toys?). Really, sometimes he amazes us with what he tries to conceptualize.
9) Jared must be about to grow, because his appetite lately has about doubled. He's going to be bigger than his mom very soon!
10) Jared never runs out of questions. Sometimes I tell him that I am very flattered that he thinks I might know the answer to his question, but I am actually not that smart. And I tell him to ask his dad, cuz he's that smart.
11) I was going to stop at 10 but I thought of one more. Jared is really great with younger kids, between the ages of 2 and 5, and they somehow seem to gravitate to him as well. He's got quite a collection of little buddies: Felix, 5 and Isaac Kauffeldt, 4 who they ride to school with in the morning; Daniel, 2 and Nathan Goodnow, 4 our new neighbors; and Hadassah, almost 3 and Jedidiah Dunseath, 5. Even Sis Bindu's grandson T-boy, 5, is always talking about coming to visit Jared.
So that's our Jared at age 13. He's a great kid and we enjoy him very much! I hope you feel like you know him a little better yourself now.