playing tag, too

Liz tagged me on her blog to fill out this ‘8 Things’ survey on my blog. It looked interesting so here it goes.

8 things I am passionate about:

1. Understanding Micah 6:8, discipleship and living it

2. Learning what ‘on earth as it is in heaven’ really means and apply it more.

3. Creating art in some form (photos or fiber)

4. Learning to stop with the control crap (that’s all I’m gonna say about that)

5. Better ways to harness energy than fossil fuel. Come on wind! (or other)

6. Justice issues…they burn in my heart and weigh on my soul, especially Darfur. Can that fight just stop!!!?!

7. Fair Trade chocolate

8. Writing/blogging

8 things I often say: In no particular order:

1. Schweeet

2. Niiiice

3. Trudat

4. Whaaa?

5. Dude

6. Your turn on Facebook Scrabble

7. yt? (in IM)

8. holy cow!

8 things I want to do before I die: Current List

1. Go to Africa and help, preferably building a water pump system or something useful that changes people’s lives.

2. Go back to Hawaii and do the islands and go to all my old haunts.

3. Go back to New Zealand and visit the southern island, stem to stern.

4. Debt-free and working for a non-profit that helps people.

5. Really Learn to love people the drive me freakin’ nuts.

6. Lead an international mission trip somewhere in the world

7. A Christmas where I don’t get one single gift and all the $$ goes to others who need it much more than I.

8. Figure out what I am going to do next in my art career, if anything.

8 things I have learned from my past:

1. I have the same freaking pants to get happy/glad in that I just got mad in.  In other words, I can’t blame my emotional response on others. The credit is mine. (good grief)

2. Never, never, never break or hairline fracture your elbow. Never do it.  Trust me.

3. When you are tired and cutting fabric, STOP. Otherwise you become a poster child for a rotary cutter guard along with an insane number of stitches.

4. Don’t over think it (what ever it is….). Just jump in and fly by the seat of your pants.  Trust God.

5. Remember what it’s like to be made fun of by people…and don’t perpetuate it.

6. Don’t hold your nose when swimming, blow air out of it instead.

7.  People are on a different part of the spiritual journey than I. Patience.  Remember what I was like 10 years ago.

8.  Being an alum of Iowa State builds a LOT of character during football and basketball season.

8 places I would love to visit: Again, in no particular order. . .

1. Galapagos Islands

2. Ireland (Especially places where the Quiet Man was filmed)

3. Scotland

4. Alaska (the only US state I haven’t been to)

5. Australia

6. England and Wales

7. India

8. Jerusalem

8 things I currently need/want: Random order…

1. New carpet.

2. Time to read my backlog of books or at least audios of all of them.  Just to partial catch up on it…crazy!

3. The nerve in my mouth to stop hurting when it pleases.

4. A pair of shoes, black, low heel for winter.

5. All my closets, basement and garage to be cleaned out/organized.

6. My daughter’s hand to heal.

7. Halo to quit dominating Zoe and the cats (that sounds like a group, hmmm)

8. Direction for where I need to go next with my life.

8 people I tag:

1. Ben

2. Tonya

3. Tony

4. Kevin

5. Tara

6. Ken

7. Marie

8. Anne

If I tagged you, copy all of this and fill it out on your blog. If you dare!

drawing conclusions

“No one shall be subjected to torture, or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment”- Universal Declaration of Human Rights

I revisited an old drawing of mine in a family Bible today. It was a story I wrote when I was 9 years old. It was a story about my favorite person and a drawing. The story said:

Language
September 27, 1973

Deana

My favorite person is grandpa arends. He doesn’t have much hair but a little hair in the back and brown eyes and glasses and I liked him taking me to the zoo. He is still alive.

On the back was a simple, quickly drawn picture of my grandpa and I walking. Many of my memories of my grandpa Roger were of walking. Sometimes it was the zoo, other times in the neighborhoods of Grimes, Iowa where we’d occasionally make it to Main Street, talking to friends on porches or in yards as we made our way through town.

Spending summer weeks at my mother’s parents conjures up other fond memories. There was no pool in town, so my grandma got out her old wash tub, filled it with water and I splashed in that. They grew raspberries (my favorite fruit to this day) and we enjoyed them with half and half or in a fresh pie. There were zoo trips and dinners out with other great aunts and uncles. Sometimes cousins visited and fun was had by all. I learned how to fry chicken and crochet. I showed my prowess around scrubbing out sinks after doing dishes. I helped bake bread and count the number of canned vegetables and jams in the basement. I learned how long it takes to polish a rock in a polisher. And yes, I did catch fireflies in on of grandma’s old mason jars for a nightlight, only to release them each morning to start again that night.

These memories are in stark contrast to the collection of drawings I looked at this week from children in IDP (Internally Displaced People) camps of refugees from the Darfur area of Sudan. Instead of pictures of family life and events of joy, children in these camps, witnesses to the ongoing genocide in that country, drew frightening and consistent pictures of homes being burned and people being attacked. For them, there is no peace. The drawings can be viewed in full here. Here is one of them.

The five hundred drawings collected by Waging Peace amount to a form of criminal evidence from silent witnesses. The killings, bombing and looting shown in the drawings directly contradict the Government of Sudan’s version of events over the last four years of bloodshed. The pattern that emerges from these drawings corroborates what we know has been taking place in Darfur and shows a worryingly similar pattern of attacks developing in Eastern Chad.

There have been 5 years of conflict in this region. Now there are school age children who are living in camps that no nothing of peace. Over 1 million of Darfuri children know only a life of destruction, not of home.

This young boy was 8 when his village in Darfur was attacked in 2003 by Janjaweed and Sudanese armed forces. He is now 12 and living in a refugee camp in Eastern Chad.

In this drawing the attackers, on camel and hose backs and in armed vehicles, are setting the houses on fire and shooting at civilians from all corners (note how the bullets are crossing each others paths). The villagers are also fighting back with spears and arrows, while the Janjaweed and Sudanese forces are attacking them with machine guns.

The skin colour of the attackers is lighter than that of the victims, clearly denoting the ethnic character of the attacks.

The tribes of the Darfur region in Sudan are African, not Arab. As the Janjaweed rebels (backed by the Sudanese government) put it as they slaughter villages, “They are too black.” At the crux of this conflict we find race, not religion. More than 400,000 Black African people have been killed, and more than 2 million Black African people have been forced to leave their homes.

Do not deprive the alien or the fatherless of justice, or take the cloak of the widow as a pledge. Deuteronomy 24:17

“Never again” was the rally cry after the Holocaust. “Never again” was shouted after the Rwandan genocide in the early 1990’s. Yet, it is happening again. A child is a child of God, no matter where they live, how they worship, or what color their skin happens to be. It’s time to LEARN about this conflict and genocide. DO something to help. TELL others.

Start here.

a letter from Africa

“We try and make the world safe, knowing that the world will never be safe as long as millions live in poverty so a few can live as they wish.” Shane Claiborne

At the end of last year, I sent my sponsored children family gifts. These are monetary gifts of between $25 to $300 dollars per year used to help the sponsored child, in this case, Stela, and her family. Often these gifts are used to buy items such as new beds, livestock and food supplies. When the money is received, social workers at the center help them purchase items locally, also helping the economy.I received a letter and drawing this week written after Stela received this gift and shared it with her brother, mother and father. This letter is over a month ago when Stela received the family gift. Time is different when communicating with Stela. I can instantly email her, I also hand write letters and send pictures and stickers or other flat gifts such as coloring pages to her. Letters from Stela are between 6 and 8 months apart due to customs, translations and basic letter travel. I’ve come to cherish these small glimpse into Stela’s world. A world with no internet café’s, cement sidewalks or box stores.This letter was translated by one of the social workers at the KMT Kigurunyembe Student Center in Tanzania.

Dear Deana Hartman,

Receive much greetings from Stela. She says she hopes that you are fine. She is also fine. She says, she thanks you so much for the nice family gift which you sent her.

She says, she was able to buy a mattress, mosquito net, a pillow, rice, sugar, soap for washing and for bathing, a dress, blouse soda and water.

She says, she thanks you so much because she will now sleep in a good place and she will not get troubles with mosquitoes. She also thanks you for the nice letter and many stickers which you sent to her. She says, may God bless you for everything and may He give you good health always together with your family. She says, she wishes you a wonderful journey to visit your parents. She bids you goodbye for today and she hopes that one day you will see each other.

She asks you to receive her drawing she drew for you.

Your beloved,
Stela

For a couple less movies and dinners out, Stela was provided with much needed mosquito protection, a bed to sleep on, food stuffs, washing soap and clothes. Basics for a child seems a very good trade for entertainment spending money. And in the end, both Stela and I we were blessed

You will be made rich in every way so that you can be generous on every occasion, and through us your generosity will result in thanksgiving to God. This service that you perform is not only supplying the needs of the Lord’s people but is also overflowing in many expressions of thanks to God. 2 Corinthians 9 11-12

Thankful for letters from Africa, wondering if I will really meet Stela one day.