What is Normal?

Tonight I was at home watching the olympics with my mom and sister when a television commercial came up. It was a sneak peek at a new show that was coming soon called "The New Normal." I recognized from the picture an actor that I had found to be funny in past films so I watched the trailer. I soon found myself disgusted by the story line of the show.
Two men are in a relationship together and want to have a child, they find this woman who is willing to conceive a child for them and they develop a family of their own.
The title of this show reflects exactly where American society is heading. The New Normal. What does that mean? In our society it is becoming normal and acceptable to have families like this. Two dad's. This is becoming the norm of America. It has become so normal that people are willing to make a show about it and consider it comedy! Is it so normal that we can laugh about it?

Hakka of China

At the end of my trip, we stayed in Texas for a day to debreif. While we were there, we were shown different unreached and least reached people groups. An unreached or least reached people group is a group of people among which there is no indigenous community of believing Christians with adequate numbers and resources to evangelize this people group. We had the opportunity to commit to praying for one of these people groups for the next year. I would like to introduce you to the Hakka people of China. This is a least reached people group where their main religion is considered non-religion. Pray that these people will be reached and that God's word will spread through this nation. There is a complete Bible in this language so praise God for that! If you want more information on the Hakka, there is a link at the bottom of this post.
http://www.joshuaproject.net/people-profile.php?peo3=12054&rog3=CH

                                                         Picture taken by Chelsea Koelzer
This is Holly. During our trip she tore a muscle in her foot, the doctors said she would have to be in a cast for at least 6 months before it would fully heal. Holly had no choice but to sit around the camp sight while the rest of us went out to do our ministry. She sat in constant pain and torture all day every day. One day, we had several sick people and our project director felt that we needed to pray for them. We prayed for about an hour over the sick and by the time we were done, most of them were sitting up feeling much better. After that, our project director told us to pray over Holly. We prayed our hearts out, we prayed as hard as we knew how. Holly had the faith to be healed and we had the faith to heal her. When we eventually finished, she had no pain! She had had constant pain in her ankle before that. The rest of the day she walked without her crutches everywhere she went making coments like "this cast is in my way I want it off." It was either the very next day or the day after and she demanded that the cast be cut off; So we cut it off with a pocket knife. Here she stands in vicotry, fully healed by God's miraculous power.

God broke my heart for the children of Zambia, especially this little girl. Her name is Monde. God showed me through this precious girl how important and powerful His love is. God wants us, as believers, to show His love to everyone. I poured out every bit of love that I could to this girl every time I saw her. And when it was time to say goodbye, my eyes were opened to how important that love was to her. I held Monde as she lay in my lap sobbing, but God had a better plan for both of us. We didn't part ways forever with only that painful memory of goodbye burning in our minds. I was blessed to see her again before I left Zambia, and was blessed to continue to pour out God's love to her.