Prayers for Haiti

I just had my first meeting (over the phone) with the high school missions team I have the blessing to co-lead on their trip to Haiti this summer, and I am so encouraged. Our team of 13 will be partnering with a family of missionaries, the Wrays, for an unusual project: conducting weddings! Many couples in rural Haiti are confronted with the cost of having a public wedding and are simply unable to pay it, so although they have committed to be husband and wife and are living faithfully, their marriage is not recognized by the community or by the church. Thus they live as second class citizens who are condemned as sexually immoral. By performing weddings for them, we have the chance to restore to them the dignity and celebrate the value of their marriage in a way that few have recognized it before.

Please pray for us in the coming two months before we leave. Here is a list of some the prayer requests we generated together during out meeting, but please also pray as you are led:

*safety
*effectiveness
*clarity of purpose and ability to accomplish that purpose
*gratitude for the opportunity to serve in this way
*the individuals who are enabling us to go to Haiti by their financial support
*the people who will be left behind in the US (parents, siblings, friends, our church)
*people in Haiti who we have yet to meet
*our anxieties, impatience, weakness, etc.
*hearts that align with God's, that love as He loves and break as His breaks

Please also pray for each member of our team: Soren, Evan, Fred, Richard, Chet, Hudson, Kendall, Annie, Clair, Rachel, and Ethan, as well as my dad and me, who are co-leading the trip.

One of my favorite Biblical prayers come from Nehemiah, and I often have to humble myself and remember that God is awesome, able to help in trying times. As Nehemiah was rebuilding the wall around Jerusalem he confronted immense opposition, and this was his simple prayer, one that I want to pray in its wise simplicity and totally trusting dependence for myself and for my team:

'They were all trying to frighten us, thinking, "Their hands will get too weak for the work, and it will not be completed." But I prayed, "Now strengthen my hands."'

Revitalizing the Blog for Summer 2011

Hi friends,

It's been a long time! I'm in the process of updating this for my summer 2011 adventures: Haiti in June and Uganda in August, so things will be changing around in the next few months.

Also, I have two requests for you:
(1) First and foremost, please pray! I would love your prayers as I prepare to serve and while I am abroad--not only for me, but for the teams I will be traveling and working with, and for the people I will meet in Haiti and Uganda.
(2) If you would like to contribute financially to my Uganda trip (I have to raise several thousand dollars, and I know God will provide), please visit www.Christian-Union.org/Uganda2011 (select "J Haley" from the list of student designees) to donate and get in touch if you have any questions.

Something I'm learning about God's faithfulness and provision, which comes from Deuteronomy 8:3-4, is that even in the smallest of things God is sovereign. "He humbled you, causing you to hunger and then feeding you with manna, which neither you nor your fathers had known, to teach you that man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord. Your clothes did not wear out and your feet did not swell during these forty years." Wow: what provision, and what faithfulness! I trust Him for all things.

Love,
Jessica