Back in the US!

Good morning! (Iam just saying this to take advantage of the fact that we are now in the exact same time zone - horray!)

I just wanted to give you one last update to let you know that I am back in Pismo Beach, CA for a week of debrief.

My last few weeks in Thailand were amazing - God did so many cool things! We worked a lot with the Karen people, (who are the largest minority group in Myanmar and super oppressed there) doing open airs and working with kids. Despite their crazy hard past (and present) circumstances, they are generally super joyful, gentle, and hospitable. And also, over 50% of them are Christians. I got to speak at a Karen refugee camp one day, and it was such a blessing to me. I feel so honored that I got to be used in this way and serve God in such a crazy setting (It seriously looked like a National Geographic spread)! Here are a few pictures of Thailand for now, and I can`t wait to show you more when I get home in one week!

Thank you so much for supporting me and keeping involved in my life for the past 5 months. See you soon!

Thailand

Well hello there family, friends, etc.!

I just wanted to let you know that I am safe and sound (as safe and sound as you can get) in Thailand :) (just kidding, mostly. i feel really safe. except for the bugs. haha). And I REALLY love it here. The land and the people are BEAUTIFUL. (We are working a lot with the Karen people, who I have found to be incredibly gentle, hospitable, and smiley - my favorite)

I am super busy here, but definately having a good time. We have one more intense week of ministry, then debreif starts. If you could pray for joy, contentment and a strong finish for me and my team, I would appreciate it so much. Also, I will be sharing the gospel tomorrow afternoon at an open-air time (in a village or park or who knows?), so if you read this before then (aka midnight your time) I would love prayer for that too :)

I'm looking forward to seeing you all soon (a little over 3 weeks!) and can't wait to share more stories!

Blessings,
Mary

Calcutta continuted!

Oh boy. I have been doing and learning SO much here, and I don't have time (and you probably don't either :) ) to hear a quarter of it. And that has been keeping me from updating this little baby for a few weeks now (i was hoping to have a good amount of time to sit and update it, but what can you do?) So how about I just tell you what I've been up to this week, and when I get home I can tell you more. Deal? (I'm sorry!)

This week I am spending my days with boys that live in a train station called Howrah. Over 200 orphaned kids live there - mostly all boys, whose parents died (or were abusive/ the kids left for some reason). About 30+ of them ride the train to Life Connection, a really cool ministry that we are working with. In the Life Connection building, any of them can come and have a place to hang out, eat, shower, play, and learn about Jesus for the day. They are surprisingly funny, loving, and love to hold hands, etc. I am SO excited I get to spend this week with them! (I look forwrd to going every morning SO much!)

Of course, with all the good things about these kids, there are hard things too. They are pretty violent with each other and get into fist fights. (It is really interesting to see the contrast of this one moment then the next, when they are sharing their food/ chai tea with each other and laughing). Most all of them do drugs to get rid of hunger pain (glue is cheaper than food) (but they aren't allowed to come if they have been doing drugs). They have been exposed to a lot in their lives, so they are a little rough around the edges. But I love them a LOT. And wish I could spend more time with them. They feel/ treat me like family, and while I was trying to bless them, they blessed me SO much.

OK...I have to go in two seconds, but quicky story. We went to the Howrah train station to hang out with the kids a few times, and talked to this BEAUTIFUL girl. Seriously, she is one of the most beautiful girls I have seen in my life. I cannot forget her face/ eyes. Anyhow, she is about 15-16 years old. She has been married for 5 years. And has had 5 miscarrages. (The last time she was 9 months along). She is into drugs and whatnot, and I can't believe her life. And how much God loves her, and is probably crying for her. Here are a few pictures of her...her name is Najchini...if you could keep her/ these kids/ this ministry in your prayers, I would appreciate it a lot. Other than that, if you could pray that our last week in a half in Kolkata would be super fruitful and whatnot (you would not believe what God has been doing already - can't wait to share with you!) that would be stellar. Thanks so much...love you guys!

Love,
Mary

Calcutta (Kolkata), India

I'm in Calcutta! I only have a little bit of time, so I will just give you a little overview of the city :

- its warm :)
- the people are SO friendly. and sometimes act like they have never seen white people. they treat us like celebrities...i feel bad!
- it is pretty safe here...perhaps safer than a US city? (its a different kind of safe...like no one would try to hurt you)
- at the market, everyone tries to rip you off. its like a game. only sometimes not that fun :) so my friend and i asked tapped on a lady's shoulder and asked her how much earrings usually cost, and she was SOOOO helpful. Her name is Shirin, and she took us to her friend's shop and asked them to give u sthe real prices. :) also, she invited us to go to her church and dinner at her house, which was the best experience ever. :) hopefully i will get to spend more time with her and her family while we are here - i really like them!
- we rode rickshaws home...check out the videos. :)


- traffic is CRAZY! and a part of me really likes it. it is SO chaotic, but i haven't seen one accident. :) (imagine crossing the street. the rule is "no hesitiation"...its kind of like Frogger)
- the food is divine! :)
- I worked with a lot of little boys yesterday...they are super sweet. (and hold your hands/ arms 24/7 and say "auntie, auntie, auntie!" haha). in the picture, one is playing with my water bottle. kind of gross, but what can you do ? :)

Alrighty...there is a little update for now. This next week we are working in the Mother Teresa House with sick people and in the red light district, and I would appreciate your prayer SO much - It is going to be intense!

Blessings,
Mary

My last update from the states!

We are leaving for India in one week from yesterday! In less than 200 hours, I will be in muggy, hot (about 110 degrees and super humid) and hungry (for Jesus, but I have a feeling that "hungry" in the literal sense is highly probable as well) India, and I am SO excited! After 40 hours of traveling we will be in India for 5 weeks, then in Thailand for 4. I'm not sure how often I will have internet access, but if/when I do, I will update this little baby and let you know what's up.

I would appreciate it a ton if you could keep me and my team in your prayers :) Here are my prayer requests:

• that I would be selfless and satisfied. AKA that I would be willing to sacrifice my comfort, security, plans, lists, etc. to serve Jesus and the people there, and that I would be content in the present and not constantly dwelling on the past or future (which is a very natural thing for me to do).
  
• that our team would continue to walk in unity and joy. These are definitely our strengths, and I feel like the challenges we face have the potential to rock them a little. 
• that we would be fruitful in the work we do/ lives we live there.
• that God would protect us.
• Also, 1/3 of my team is going to be in a different country (that I probably shouldn't say online...feel free to ask my mom family if you are curious) that is a bit sketchy while I am in Thailand...if you could pray for their safety too, that would be great!

If you want to learn more about what I'll be doing, feel free to watch these videos (of similar ministries in the area):

http://www.ywamlifeconnection.org/media.php

(India)

http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=141831475723&subj=6301117

(Thailand)

Oh dang - this is getting really long really fast. A quicky update of my life =

• JON AND LAURA CAME FOR THEIR SPRING BREAK! It was SO much fun! We went surfing, swung on swings on the beach, went to ice cream, slept in my backyard in a tent (brr!), went to San Luis Obispo with my photography class (see picture), made banana bread and homemade lemonade from the lemons in my backyard, went to the dunes, had a campfire, slept in that the tent again, but with a lot more blankets :), etc...sheesh! SOOO much fun in 48 hours!
• I decided I am going to go to Whitworth University for school this fall. God is so good and helped guide me x 100000. Thanks you for your prayers!
• We have been doing our art show around the area to raise awareness about child soldiers and sex slavery. Our last show was Sunday and it went really well!
• I have been going surfing just about every weekend and got to surf twice on Saturday. It will probably be my last time surfing until this summer :(, but it was the most beautious day and the best waves I have ever surfed. (And I almost hit a seal in the water...oops!)

Also, my friend just informed me that this is day 86 out of 160 of our DTS. So I will see you in a shorter amount of time than I have been here - AKA 2.5 months! 

Alrighty - thanks so much for reading this update and for your prayers! Its crazy to think that the next time I update this I will be halfway around the world. :)

Blessings,

Mary

A Dream of a Week (Grace/ Sunshine x 1000000!)

The last week was one of the best in my life. (If you guys (my friends/ family) were here, it would have been golden).

How about I tell you a few things I learned about grace, and a few highlights of my week so that this thing doesn't trail on forever like last time :)

GRACE:

-The best thing ever. I was so thirsty to hear this truth, and I finally got a glimpse of what God's grace is. I accidently took 17 pages of front and back notes, so this little recap isn`t doing the topic justice. Anyhow, some of my favorite things =

-(I just skimmed through my notes and can`t narrow it down. It is a tiny overwhelming. Shoot. Well, I am just going to write some of my favorite quotes from the week, and maybe that will help you understand a little bit. If not, I would LOVE to talk to you about this topic when I am home if you want)

- "Grace is amazing - the most amazing, perplexing, powerful force in the universe, and, I believe, the only hope for our twisted, violent planet. If you catch a mere whiff of its scent, it could change your life forever." (Phillip Yancey)

- "Religion is man's persuit of God. Christianity is God's persuit of man." (Author unknown)

- "Sin is the faithless rebellion of the creature against the just authority of the creator" (Max Lucado)

- "Oh the foolishness of trying to enter a room you are already in." (Watchmean Nee)

- "Faith alone saves, but faith that saves is never alone" (John Calvin)

- "Mercy (or Grace) understood is holiness desired" (Max Lucado)

- "God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God." (2 Cor 5:21...just thought I would toss a verse in here so you know this isn`t made up :))

- Also, we talked about Legalism, disputable matters (aka things that aren't in the Bible but are cultural taboos in the church. IE smoking, tatoos, etc.), the purpose of sacrifices in the Old Testament, and that the Old Testament people were saved by grace through faith too. God is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow, so this concept definitely makes sense.

Ok...sorry if that was super scattered and didn't make too much sense! Moving right along, here are the highlights of my week:

- learning about grace and watching its amazing impact on my relationship with God - I feel so free and a lot more motivated to serve God out of love instead of my own expectations to perform a certain way/ reach a certain standard.

- wearing everybody else's clothes :) (see the P.S. on my last post if this doesn't make sense) I wore some crazy things, but because people don't know my style super well yet, they didn't know it was weird for me to wear these things. AKA they didn't say "Funky clothes, Mary" even when I was wore border-line hideous things. (On one particular day, I wore an especially odd outfit and convinced a few other girls to do the same. cheers!)

-getting mail - i LOVE mail! horray!

- Friday night - after family dinner, some of us dressed up and went to a Blues show that we got free tickets to. We had so much fun dancing (at one point, we started the electric slide in the middle of the floor...haha) and afterwards we walked to the end of the pier and told stories and such.

- Saturday - definitely in the Top 10 Best Days of My Life so far category!

1. family breakfast outside in the sunshine...I made peanut butter pancakes with chocolate chips.

2. surfing with friends in the SUNSHINE!

3. hanging out on the beach playing Beach Volleyball

4. Then I went to Old West Cinnamin rolls with two friends and split a cinnamin roll in the sunshine and shared random fun facts about our life.

5. I went with those same two girls to a fancy bistro to get coffee and started talking to the owner about going overseas (he lived in crazy places for 20 years). While we were talking, he messed up a crepe he was making (that costs $8) and gave it to us for free! horray!

6. Went hot tubbing.

7. And last, but not least, we went to Yogurt Creations, aka the best ice cream place ever because there are SO many toppings!

- Also, yesterday we went to a BEAUTIFUL beach and had Silence and Solitude (aka quiet time alone) with God for 6 hours. It was 75 degrees (I was wearing shorts and a tank top) and I actually got a tiny burnt. It feels so good to get vitamin D in the winter time here in California (esp when I heard it snowed at home this week.) I put a few pictures in an online album because it is way faster to upload pictures that way, so if you want to check them out, here is the link:

http://picasaweb.google.com/MaryViducich/SilenceAndSolitude31109?feat=directlink

(I was on a mountain top overlooking the huge ocean. It looked like I was in another country or something. Also, I saw dolphins playing!) Anyhow, besides seeing the beauty of God's creation and taking pictures of it, I had a really good, long talk with God. I hope I can continue to devote time like this to Him every month and then when I am home...it changes my perspective/ heart/ attitude SO much!

What a great week, huh? I left out a lot of little day-to-day things, but I was smiling more this week than I ever remember smiling. God is SO good. Also, I am leaving in less than a month for India then to Thailand. If you could pray that God would start to prepare me/ my heart/ my team for outreach, I would really appreciate it!

Blessings,

Mary

Trick Candle

(NOTE: This accidently turned into a LONG blog. So maybe don't read it until you have a bit of time. And a bowl of popcorn and M&Ms in your hands is probably not a bad idea either.)

Do you know how much of a bummer it is when people get to the end of the B-day song and your candle already went out? And when you thought and thought and finally settled on a good wish and can't make it? I'm going to be honest. That's how I felt this past week+. Burnt out. And a bit disappointed at random things I had been wishing for. 

Luckily, in the past 24 hours, God has completely re-lit, refreshed, and restored me. Its like I was a trick candle the whole time, and the flame just popped back up. All the joy and excitement is back - horray!

Anyways, that's not to say the whole week was lame. Here are a few fun things I have been up to:

- Family Breakfast - A few of us decided to make tons of breakfast foods on a Saturday morning. It was DELICIOUS. (I made peanut butter pancakes with M&Ms :) )

- Small group - This is my small group! We meet every week and this week we ate at a funky 50s diner that is in a train car right down the street. Classy... :)

- Evangelism - this week for evangelism we had a BBQ at the duck pond down the street and invited a bunch of homeless people and such. It was a really good opportunity and atmosphere, and who doesn't like BBQs in the sun?

- FUN DAY FRIDAY! In the morning we worshiped God by painting (who knew?), then a girl came who just spent the last 8 weeks in Calcutta, India and told us a lot about the city. (Calcutta is where I am going on outreach for the first 5 weeks. Oh yes...FYI some of my team (including me) is going to go to Thailand for the last 3 weeks of outreach now, staying near the Thailand-Burma border and working with Burmese refugees. The government is a lot more open to Christianity in Thailand, so we will actually be able to preach and pray and such there. We may go to Myanmar/ Burma for a day or two and visit the rest of my team...we will see) Her talk got my heart so excited to go - only 5 more weeks!

For the next part of the "Fun Day," we went to San Luis Obispo and played at a park for a few hours and had a BBQ. It was super relaxing and an amazing way to spend the afternoon. (It was 75 degrees out, there were lawn mowers in the distance, the smell of BBQ was in the air, I was in shorts and a tank top...you get the idea :) )

Then, at night we got all dressed up and had a "Love Feast." AKA the leaders made us dinner to show us how much they love us!

(See? My week wasn't so bad at all :) I was just pooped.)

This week we are learning about God's grace, and I am stoked. The teacher is good friends with the guy who was my favorite speaker thus far, and I already see so many similarities. I feel like God has been working in me and revealing things to me in these past few days to prepare me for this. Some thoughts that have been hitting me hard are:

-God won't act out of his anger towards Christians. In fact, he isn't angry with us. Seriously.

 

-I think that a lot of the time that people face pain, (i.e. disease, relationship problems, etc) the reason is because the pain is a consequence of the sin that God warns us about. The reason he tells us to do certain things is because he loves us. He doesn't just make rules to be able to mess with us, but to warn and protect us from the consequences. (For example, God tells us to be good stewards of the earth/ take care of it because when we pollute it, there are consequences (such as sickness/ cancer/ etc). This is a generality, but it gave me a very new perspective of the reason for "rules" and a refreshing motivation to follow them.

-Along these same lines, God's "rules" aren't standards. He has hopes for me, but not disappointment/ anger/ rejection when I don't meet his "expectations." And because he doesn't have expectations for me, my love for Him should produce the fruit, not the other way around (me doing works so that I love Him and he loves me.)

I feel like God wanted to establish these things as a foundation for this week, and I know that he is going to use this week to impact me hardcore (and I am so excited and ready for that)!

P.S. (Note: if you are a boy (or maybe even girls), this probably isn't going to be that exciting, so feel free to stop reading :) ) I started getting REALLY bored of my clothes (imagine having a weeks' worth of clothes and wearing them for 9 weeks...boo), and it turns out that all of my housemates are very open to sharing clothes. So this week I am determined to not touch the clothes in my closet at all. It is great!!! And oddly enough, my friend Zahra has pants that fit me like a DREAM (and she is a foot shorter that me, but I guess she always rolls them way up - yes!) I feel like I am playing dress up everyday, because these girls have sweet European and/or artsy/ hippie clothes. Horray for the best housemates around town! (There still hasn't been one bit of drama. Between 9 girls. You go, God!)

Thanks for reading! I'll try to make it shorter next time around!