LUTHERAN CURSILLO MOVEMENT OF ARIZONA

"Make a friend, Be a friend, Bring that friend to Christ"

Our first night at Black Canyon School was a wonderful kickoff to our Chayah weekend. After everyone else got through security, I got stuck because my name wasn’t on the list. So, there I stood for 15 minutes until Chaplian Rose fought through the red tape to allow me in. Everyone clapped and celebrated, mostly because no one else wanted to sing and play guitar all weekend for the girls!

After we unloaded the Chayah trailer of tables, and supplies in the Chapel, we were able to relax for a few before doing the Eve of Dedication service. It was a wonderful service where we all sang several songs, and were emotionally touched by the spirit in the room during Communion tonight. God is present at this Chayah! I know it. We wrapped things up about 7 and headed out to eat at a nearby restaurant.

Finally, we made it back to Foothills church off of Happy Valley Rd and 39^th ave for our temporary residence for the next few nights. We apparantly were early, because the AA meeting wasn’t done. Undeterred, we piled 16 of us into a small classroom in an adjacent building to review the songs we’ll be singing for tomorrow. Lucky for us, we got to sit in the the itty bitty kids chairs to practice singing. We have a great group of people who love the Lord immensely (They can sing too!!!)!

Most of us are finished setting up our beds. I’ve come prepared with my daughters Ipod and some noise cancelling earphones so that I don’t have to listen to the “symphony” of snoring tonight!

Pass this on to everyone you know in the Cursillo community – and those who hold God close to their hearts!

WOW! Christ is alive in Phoenix, we saw him today!!! We started out today not knowing any of the girls names to whom we’d spend the day with today. By the end of the day, they had nailed their sins on the cross and were weeping. Throughout the day, we had our prayer box located on the altar. Personally, I didn’t see too many girls placing prayer requests in the box, but I was WRONG! There were about 50 prayer requests by the end of today in the box to which we prayed over this evening. As you can imagine, they were very personal requests mostly dealing with prayer requests for their families, fellow girls at the prison, and US! They prayed for US! How does that work? I believe these girls started out today not knowing who Christ was, maybe they recognized his name, but had never met him. They came into the day as expected, pretty hard. By lunch, they had loosened up a bit as they heard talks about Ideals, Faith, God’s Plan and it broke loose after lunch with Pastor Gale’s talk about God’s Love. During his talk, a Q&A session broke out. He handled it like the pro he is. Every fundamental question about the Christian faith were ripped off to him one after the other. He answered everyone of them with grace. After about a ½ hour of this activity, schedules forced us to redirect them back onto the plan. I’ve never personally witnessed this type of event where God directly gave Pastor Gale the words to speak to these girls with examples and scripture to support it. He was incredible!!! Dale A. followed up this talk with some additional explanation and comfort that their questions would be answered. It was awesome!!! This afternoon, a youth and an adult shared their Prodigal son stories. Tonight, after dinner, we sang a few songs, and they requested one that they felt compelled to sing tonight, so we obliged. “I can only imagine”, but Mercy Me, was their request. It wasn’t on my program of songs, but I did have it in my book and obliged. Without the overhead projector and transparencies for this song, we did it from memory. Well, let me clarify – they did it from memory. Imagine this (no pun intended), that 30 girls, many of whom just met Christ for the first time today, singing this song – mostly accapella. After the first few lines, they simply took the song and ran with it and I hung on. I played softly so I could hear them sing to GOD. I’m convinced of this. It brought me to tears. We closed the night with the Stations of the Cross, and nailing their sins to the cross. Finally, we burned those sins outside of the Chapel, standing in a circle, singing “Amazing Grace, My Chains are Gone”. Incredible is the only word to describe this experience.

I came into today with many preconceived notions about what type of attitude I’d find. I was wrong. These are young, teenage girls who are simply looking for love. They found it in Christ today. They are so raw and moldable. Today, Pastor Gale read the story of creation where God took clay from the riverbed, and made man. Then blew the breath of God into this image of himself, thus creating man. Today, God blew his breath into these “clay” girls and they came alive.

Today, Satan tried desperately to keep the Lord out of these girls hearts. The keyword today was – obstacle(s)! For those of you who have been through (or have run) a Cursillo weekend, you know that typically, the leaders have pretty good control over the schedule, facility, etc. Here, at Black Canyon School (Prison), there is NO control over the time and I learned that you must be very quick on your feet (or with your guitar and music) to be able to react to unscheduled activities (more on that later).

Today began with the reappearance of some walls within the girls. I’m sure that once they returned to their rooms, they were faced with many questions, ribbing, and conversations that probably replaced their initial doubts about what we were sharing with them. I think, however, like one would break through the thin ice on a puddle on a cold winter morning, the first songs we sang opened a hole in the ice, for the Chayah team to step in and splash around. Through Dales help in leading some songs this morning (You Are Holy, Trading my Sorrows) they began to open up again and let loose. Today’s talks were given by two guest pastors (Pastor Dick, and Pastor Shealds) who both communicated with passion to the girls. They were very engaged before lunch, and began to ask Pr. Shealds many questions, like, “Why would God let someone be molested by her Dad for six years”? We all must admit, we wouldn’t necessarily be able to easily answer that without some meditation. However, Pr. Shealds quickly responded, and explained that God didn’t let this happen and that each of us has the free will given to us by God to choose to do good or evil. God never left the molested girl, and in fact, the girl gained much strength from that traumatic experience to be able to share it with others and communicate her belief that God is what got her through that experience. Wow! Not an easy situation. Kudos to Pr. Shealds for allowing himself to be a vehicle for God today.

After lunch, things got interesting. Jo (female) gave the girls a talk about the Single Life. She shared her story with the girls and it was very emotional. She is a very strong woman and a great example of someone who lives for the Lord and gives, even when she might not have anything of this world to claim as hers. She ended with an open question to the girls that they could ask anything they wanted to her about being single. Oh boy! They took her up on that with open arms and the questions started coming in mass. She fielded a wide range of very personal, pointed and scary questions like a champ! She left the girls with the feeling that it is ok to be single, and that they don’t have to rely on a man to feel complete. Jo touched all of their hearts to Christ through her example. That’s when Satan stepped in.

As usual, on Chayah weekends, the Community helps on Friday night with the Agape feast for the girls. The Community arrives at 3:30 to check in and prepare for receiving the girls. During this time, we were to sing a few songs, then head over to the pavilion to the Agape meal. Unfortunately, the prison had other plans and decided to hold us in the Chapel to distribute medications to the girls. Needless to say, we were ½ hour late to Agape. Now, you must understand, there is NO ROOM in the schedule for being late as the time we are allowed to have the girls is fixed. We ate dinner (beef, potatoes, and green beans) and then desert (cheesecake) and prepared to depart. Now, I must explain one thing, at each meal they/we are given plastic silverware to use during the meal, but the silverware must remain in front of you and near your plate at each meal as it is collected by the guards and counted before anyone is allowed to leave the room. This same rule holds true at the Agape feast. Unfortunately, the count didn’t add up after the meal to what was counted before, and Satan was present to try to destroy all of the good feelings and agape love poured onto these girls over the last two days. So, instead of returning back to the Chapel for a healing service and Candlelight service with the Community, they were lined up and returned to their rooms for a “search”. Now, this was not a normal search, but a pretty humiliating search of the person to ensure none of the girls were stealing silverware. The team and Community were left in the pavilion to contemplate how the rest of the evening were to proceed, and with what success after such a traumatic event.

Nonetheless, we returned to the Chapel about 45 minutes late, and the girls followed about fifteen minutes later. We decided that the healing service would not take place due to time constraints, but that we would continue with the candlelight service. It was announced that none of the girls were caught stealing, and that the guards must have miscounted the silverware. Dale made sure the girls knew this and rose the awareness as to what was really happening with Satan. So, we began to line up to head back over to the pavilion for the Candlelight service, and as soon as we hit the Chapel door, the guards said that we couldn’t go as the girls had to have their meds again. What? These were their nightly meds to be distributed after they had returned to their rooms after we were done at 8pm. It was now 7:45, and we hadn’t had the healing service, and it looked like we weren’t going to have the Candlelight service now too. UUUGGGHHHH! GET AWAY FROM ME SATAN!. Our leader, Dale, looked like Jesus at the temple, but thoughtfully decided not to throw the tables or use the whip on the guards (generally not a good idea if you value your freedom too), but gently (LOL) communicated to the Chaplain that it was not right that these services be cut from our day because the guards wanted to distribute meds early tonight. After a few minutes of thoughtful consideration, Chaplain Rose agreed to a ½ hour extension of time for us (unheard of) to complete the Candlelight service and close the day. We defeated Satan tonight through passion and persistence. The girls were very emotionally moved by the service and the closing remarks given by Dale, along with a wonderful parting song (Halleluiah, He is Risen), then left for their rooms.

Through another act of Christ, Chaplain Rose brought the Community over to the Chapel to pray over us for continued strength to conquer Satan’s influence in this place. What an awesome group of volunteers we had tonight and even better prayer warriors to have our backs during this time of trial.

We just finished praying the girls’ prayer requests (another 30) and are winding down for the evening, before we come out swinging for the bleachers tomorrow.

God is present here today, but Satan was too. We need your continued prayers for the girls that their hearts open up to Christ, and for Satan to be overcome with God’s love here tomorrow.

What an awesome day! As you all may know, the third day goes very, very rapidly. There were 6 of the 15 talks to be given today, which is a lot of ground to cover. Since I’m exhausted, let me sum today up as succinctly as possible. All of the talks were fantastic. Bob and Deb’s talk about Marriage was a huge hit. What a powerful story about her life of drugs, sex, and complete disregard, to their meeting and ultimate beautiful marriage with Christ as it’s center. They were gracious enough to do a Q&A for ½ hour following their talk. The girls hit them with many, many questions about marriage as if they had never witnessed such a bond like theirs – ever. It seemed very foreign to most, if not all of them. Their ministry to these girls, along with their commitment to Black Canyon School (Prison) is to be commended. Their agape love towards these girls is phenomenal.

Pastor Rosemary’s talk about a Call to Holiness was condensed. After about 2 minutes into her talk, she simply stepped away from the podium, and said, “This is how it is”, and proceeded to speak directly from the heart about how they should choose to live their lives. It captured their complete attention and grabbed their minds.

Singing today, was scant. We sang a few songs upon arrival this morning, then played some instrumental music during a brief healing service, and a few songs this afternoon. The girls really enjoyed the pizza party, and a few of the girls asked if they could sing “I Could Only Imagine” again. I then worked this into the Closura in a key that was more fitting to their voices. They sang it loud and sounded like angels. We also sang “Amazing Grace, My Chains are Gone” as our second song to the Community. They did great. If you’ve never heard 40 girls, plus 10 women team singing in a small 20 x 30 room before, it is certainly unforgettable.

Closura revealed the full impact of the three day event called Chayah (New Life in Hebrew). Each girl got up front and spoke to the heart about what this weekend meant to them. What power resides in someone speaking directly from their young heart! I don’t think I’ve ever, and I mean ever, been so emotionally moved by someone else’s story before in my life. These girls only want LOVE. It’s that simple. When you introduce Christ to these girls, they get it. They understand the Love thing and get it. They poured out their feelings and appreciation for the Community, Volunteers and for Chaplain Rose in a way that I’ve never witnessed before. God was not only present in that room tonight, he LIVED there. It was his home base for tonight.

I hope everyone reading this email is drawn to serve on a Chayah team. I don’t say this for any reason other than for each of you to experience what Christ really meant by Make a Friend, Be a Friend and Bring a Friend to Christ. Chayah is the REAL DEAL, people. I’ve now been through Cursillo as a participant, and again as a rookie cook, and I wouldn’t trade those experiences for a moment, but this is truly different. While the structure and message of the weekend is the same, the level is completely different. You are not working with committed Christians who volunteer to come and spend a weekend at a church retreat, but instead, you are working with girls of all different races, religions, classes and sexual orientations who have made mistakes in life and are now committed (incarcerated) in a different form. I can’t tell you how many of them had said how mad they were at God for something that God put them through in their life. From a grandparent or parent dying, to a lost dog, they all had a reason NOT to want to come to this event. However, God had different plans for them. Basically, in sum, I felt like I was truly on the “front lines” of this war and came away victorious. I know of at least one girl who said she had given her life to Christ this weekend. I know that many, many more did it without saying it publicly yet. I know that every girl was touched by Christ through us this weekend AND FELT IT!

If you really want to live your faith, I mean really want to live like Paul lived for Christ, simply commit yourself to a Chayah weekend. I’ll personally guarantee you that you’ll NEVER, EVER regret it.

To the team of Chayah #47, thank you for letting Christ work through you to reach these Christ starved girls. They need you!