The Something Blue Well (Our Long-Overdue Wedding Update)

Hello friends,

All your lovely faces in 2015! 😍

If you remember, in 2015 so many of you made a stunning celebration possible for us. You came to witness, applaud, and encourage the beginning of our marriage, inaugurating it with your presence and a gift so humbling it continues to move us to tears. And now, we have exciting news!

First, can you please forgive us for all the waiting? We are so sorry it's taken quite some time. Thank you for holding on. Thank you for asking and wondering. We promise, this will be good.

Second, do you know the gravity of what you became part of that October day? We hope we can help you understand. We hope we can help it crash over you as it continues to do for us, and as it should for years to come; generosity is not meant to touch us only once.

As we planned for our ‘unique’ wedding, we wondered - sometimes (...ok, maybe a lot of times) freaking out over - whether family and friends would dare to embrace such an unconventional idea: the beginning of a marriage marked by the funding of a clean water well. You blew us away. We gave and hoped you might be moved to give a little, too, or if not to just show up and know you were part of it all. But you GAVE! Did you know that you gave so far over and above - before and beyond the wedding date - that we had to raise the goal itself?! Your generosity brought the total donated to $19,244. The total number was never the point, but this swept us away in an overflow of tears and joy which carried us through our honeymoon and far beyond. God was faithful to give us a dream and to carry it out, using all of you. To this day we are still moved to tears, and why shouldn’t we be?! THANK YOU!!!!!!!!

And so we planned for a well, and the excess helped to repair an entire drilling rig in a moment of unexpected need for this organization we love, Let Them LOL. So your generosity now touches so many more wells than one. But, onto the the feature: the Something Blue Well.

Kiddos using their new Something Blue well! (Also spotted: Star Wars shirt - yea!)

This well we once imagined as a “what if” now exists, because of you, because God is in the business of crazy dreams... and its story is beautiful. Not only does it serve a small community called Mosongo in the village of Njala along a dusty road I (Katie) have ridden many times before (so unknowingly - but God knew) as I waved and smiled at little ones and their mommas, but it primarily functions as the source for an entire elementary school. You can click here to see it on LTLOL’s map of drilled (and future) wells! (Fun fact: We have engraved the name Njala onto the inside of our wedding rings as a constant close reminder of all God can do through the love of our family!)

This particular school has known the longing for clean water in a painful way, for it experienced the unique hurt of broken promises before LTLOL arrived. We found they had a sort of “well” but it was left in such disrepair there is no way it was preventing illness any better than the dirty mud pits we see other villages forced to drink from, due its unfinished state (see images below).

This is the previous, unfinished "well". You can see the pump was never attached and it was improperly completed so bacteria, algae, and decay have taken over, thus this well never provided clean water.

Peering down into the gaping hole left in the top of the previous well

This school in Njala/Mosongo had been promised a well, but those who began construction never finished the job, not only compromising the health of these people but also leaving a gaping, dangerous hole uncovered in a place where small children wander and play. We are grateful for opportunities to step into these situations and set a new standard where communities have been taught to disbelieve hope exists as promises are broken for the most basic needs, like clean water. This is exactly the kind of thing we believe God was waiting to bring through you - our wedding guests, family, and friends - all along: restoration, hope, new beginnings, and new life. How can we explain our gratitude for this gift that will outlive us? We can only say thank you. Thank you!

The brand new Something Blue Well, just "capped," before the pump was attached an concrete poured.
See the school in the background?!

Clean water!!!

Hope!

Peter and I will head to Sierra Leone at the end of September with Let Them LOL (Peter’s first trip!) and we are hopeful for all that is sure to unfold there. Peter will have an opportunity to do some astronomy outreach with the high schoolers and teachers at our LOL school Hope Rising Academy, I will be photographing and taking on some work-related tasks (I was hired part-time by Let Them LOL last August as graphic designer and storyteller!). Plus, we will of course get a chance to see the Something Blue well and document it for all of you! We are excited to be able to bring back some visuals and first-hand reflections of this experience as another way we can hopefully express how grateful we are and what an impact you have made in this community. We will also get to see the opening of LOL’s new Mother/Children’s Clinic and Leadership Cafe. We know this trip will be full, we can’t wait to share about it all here. Check back soon and/or follow Let Them LOL on social media to keep up to date!

We can’t stop saying it - we are so grateful for each of you; we carry you with us as we need our incredible family to help sustain a firm foundation for a deeply rooted marriage. When we return in October we are excited to announce that we’ll be extending our family through the adventure of foster care as God continues to lead us into new things! We’ve been preparing our hearts for this for years, and working through the process since April.

If you have questions, please reach out and let us know! We’d love to hear from you. Let us say it one last time: we love and appreciate you, each of you. Thank you for being part of this story. 

Lastly, here is a photo album from the wedding (you can still view it if you're not on facebook, don't worry), shot by the incredible and talented Laura Wielo: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10155792575091115.1073741828.765361114&type=1&l=7019e5fb81

We hope this post can be an encouragement for you to return to on the difficult days. Hope grows, sometimes in the unlikely and unconventional, sometimes in the hidden things, but always among people who simply choose to put love of other above love of self. This is our favorite story to tell and it is because of you that we have so much hope to keep believing it on the hard days. It is the story of the lowly King we serve. May we tell it with every day of our lives, in all the smallest ways, until it is overflowing.

(Ok, one more time...) Thank you. Truly.

With so much love,
Katie & Peter <3

The Spirit and the bride say, “Come!” And let the one who hears say, “Come!” Let the one who is thirsty come; and let the one who wishes take the free gift of the water of life. Revelation 22:17

He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose. Jim Elliot 

(a more recent picture of us ...because Mom told me to add this, haha - We love you!!!)

Every Dark Place

Four years ago, I could predict the general story of my life. I could probably have listed my dreams on paper for you with pride and comfort. My hands wrapped tightly around a future and an idea of God that seemed safe, and I thought I was happy there.

Until one crucial piece changed, and all of a sudden following my God meant letting go. The scary kind. Letting go of safe dreams and certain timelines, to step into uncertain, painful ones with no guarantees. It was terrifying. In dark places my heart cried out and I began to need – and to know - God differently. Slowly I began to open white knuckled fists just a little bit, and He met me there. He used the pain to create a space and as we waded together through oceans of tears and fear and sin and forgiveness, He began filling the empty in me with new things. 

One day six months later He leaned in and whispered, Come away, I want to show you more of Me.

My feet hit red dirt, and He opened my hands wider to fill them with new gifts I could never have predicted. Here in a war-torn country, here where tears soaked the pages of His words in my lap, I found what I never expected: hope. I found hope everywhere. Creeping in the places darkness said it should not be, bouncing out of smiles whose stories should have eroded it forever. I began to know this God as the One who speaks new life into valleys of dry bones, the King who kneels down in the dirt to be near to the suffering, the God who calls a farmer mighty warrior and makes it true, the Creator who calls forth hope out of darkness.

I began to trust the One who asks for my palms, my heart, my life held wide open. He plans past my limited imagination, my secure hopes. He pulls me into the uncomfortable, the painful, and puts power behind my every weak yes to draw me deeper still.

In March 2014 I found my feet again in this strangely familiar country halfway around the world, where my God so gently sings over red earth about the depths of His kind of hope. Plowing through a list of kids to be added to Let Them LOL’s School Sponsorship Program, surrounded by a crowd of them chanting, "We want to learn!" my heart was emptied and filled all over again. It was easy to hope here, I didn’t want to leave. But surrender means learning to listen. I offered my open palms and began to carry hope with me into darker corners of my city where God is still teaching me how to listen.

Shortly after returning home, one word changed my world all over again: Ebola. For months and months I sat on my bed crying as an otherwise manageable disease ravaged the poorest, most vulnerable communities in the world including that dusty red land that I love. This was too much. How could this impossibly hopeful place be suddenly drowning in so much hurt all over again? How could I know God as good here in this darkness, where my open heart seemed repeatedly met with deeper hurt? Daily He spoke His promises into the depths of me and I prayed them back to Him for my friends. Sometimes hope is something we fight for.

As I prayed for the faces I know, one by one, I learned about the One who responds to our weakness with mercy. I learned the status of our home base village: zero cases through the entire outbreak. Hope flowed salty down my cheeks. I learned our entire chiefdom was spared. I saw the numbers of daily cases drop from hundreds to single-digits. 

Then two weeks ago, tucked away in a grid full of pictures was a face I knew instantly - even after three years - a little girl named Hawa. The same Hawa I met on my first trip in January 2013, who shared with me a piece of her heart and stole some of mine in return. The same Hawa I wrote to when I could not visit with some of our team last year. The same Hawa I cried over on my list of “Abba, please let her be alive.” There she was in a photo posted just hours before – out of 100+ kids they could have pictured, at an orphanage I hardly knew how to track down - safe, smiling, and healthy with the impossible news that her orphanage had avoided the disease. With palms open, I lifted my head and closed my eyes. This was too much! God whispered Call to Me, I will answer you and tell you great and unsearchable things you do not know. Hope. Like a secret meant just for me.

I am no expert at this hope thing, but my dreams look different today than they were four years ago. I haven’t abandoned the longings planted deep in me but I have laid them down because God cannot fill my clenched fists. And I want His kind of fullness. My finite dreams and logical timelines might end with some basic version of fairy-tale happiness – but God is making me hungry for joy and a better story. Joy finds that hope endures because it has learned to walk through dark places, joy trusts that my weakness is strength in the hands of the One I follow. Joy pays no mind to ever-changing circumstances in the face of God's promises.

God is not afraid of the pain it will take to prove the depths of Him. He knows the greater value of what His invitation holds. He is bold enough to allow our fear to face His perfect love and shrink away. He continues to teach me, “every dark place has its redemption in Him. Every single one.” There is always more of Him to be found. When we stop, let our eyes adjust and open our hands we find it to be true: He has hidden hope every dark place.

God plants in me the kind of love that slowly pulls, finger-by-finger, leaving me with palms open but not empty, wounds exposed but accessible for healing, hope eternal and vast but intimate and mine, and expectations deeper than the ones I held to so tightly.

In April I will travel back to red dirt roads for the third time and I am ready to open my hands, ready to see hope in dark places revealed by the One who cares for the orphan and the widow. If you’d like to give toward my trip, it would be a blessing to the nonprofit empowering hope in a dark corner of the world, and to me. https://my.letthemlol.com/Katie2015Trip

“I remain confident of this: I will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.” Psalm 27:13

(L) Hawa in the orange bandana Jan 2013, (R) Hawa earlier this month!

This Conversation Is Missing Your Voice

Today, my friends are dying.

It hurts. Every day for months now, I wake up to this thought. It rolls hot down my cheeks when I'm alone for too long. It haunts silent prayers as I drift to sleep. And it is still the reality. Ebola is devastating Sierra Leone, Guinea, and Liberia - it is not getting better. These are my friends; they are mommys and daddys, baby brothers, and big sisters, grandpas, grandmas, and teenagers. Real live living, breathing, joking, dreaming, loving, hoping, incredible people.

You've probably already heard a million hard things today just turning on the news and it's exhausting. We change the subject, the channel, the conversation, to suppress the growing feeling of helplessness, because it's uncomfortable and we are busy and ...what good can one person actually do, anyway? I hear you, I get it... and here's what I've learned: 

You cannot change the world and you were never meant to. Me neither.

But being a bystander to suffering is not an option. What you can do is change the story for one person. You can pick a cause, a problem, a need, a friend, a story, and dive in. Starting right now, you can begin to do for one what you wish you could do for everyone.

The process isn't glamorous or romantic or simple. It isn't quick, it will not come easy. It won't fill your bank account, it will cost you more than money. It doesn't make you warm and fuzzy. It doesn't guarantee your happiness; you may find quite the opposite as you begin to share a burden too heavy for one set of shoulders. It will continue to look and feel increasingly crazy, you will not feel prepared. It's everything our culture will try to warn you against, but right there in the midst of chaos, what you find is beautiful and valuable and lasting: what you find is hope. The kind worth spending your life on.

If you know anything about my life in the past few years, you may have seen things shift inside me. You may have noticed the pieces of my heart being achingly, awkwardly, and unexpectedly rearranged. There is a story that is changing my story. I'm not the only one. Since this journey began I have come to know some of the most incredible people whose stories continue to shape mine as they have decided to help one like they wished to help everyone; together they are changing the world.

And I have an idea. Soon, I will be launching an online art shop (you guessed it, titled: Do For One). I want you to be part of it: if you have been impacted by Let Them LOL and/or a person in Sierra Leone, West Africa, I want to hear from you!

***

Here's what I'll need:

1) Your voice: Share a moment where the mission of Let Them LOL became personal for you and why. Explain (350-500 words emailed or facebook messaged to me) how you do for one what you wish you could do for everyone. This doesn't need to be profound/dramatic/religious, just honest and providing dignity to the people of Sierra Leone. If you're insecure with words, we can chat over coffee ;)

2) Your heart: Provide a quote (ideally a short one, 3-8 words) or an idea that resonates with you and might be visually transformed into an art piece/print item for the shop

3) Your hope: Spread the word so more people can enter into the awesomeness of Let Them LOL and the people of sweet SaLone (and hopefully collect some cool artwork, in the process)

4) Your help: Donate art (or send suggestions/requests)! I will reserve the final say on what goes up, but if you'd like to contribute to the shop do not hesitate to reach out!!!

Each month, I will feature a post called The Story That's Changing Mine. This will highlight your story as well as a corresponding item in the 'Do For One' online shop, named after & inspired by you! Any and all profit generated by your item will be donated to the Let Them LOL DiggingDeeper Ebola campaign.

***

Um, honest moment: Guys, this feels scary, uncomfortable, vulnerable. This may totally flop. I'm trying to mentally prepare for that. Maybe you won't want to share your story, maybe no one will want to listen, maybe the artwork will turn out crappy and people will avoid the shop like the plague... it's all possible. But I don't care. I believe without wavering that we can be part of something bigger and this is one small way I can try to encourage that.

My friends matter enough to try.

So I'm hitting publish and hoping for some emails, here goes nothing...!