Trust and Obey

My boss, Rick Scott, the President of Springtime House in Romania, described me well when he noted, "you always seem to expect to hear 'no' when you ask for something don't you?" He's right, especially when it comes to asking for money. So how amazed am I right now, looking at me Excel spreadsheet tracking my known donations from NTG and other friends and family, and I see it there: 100% of my goal is reached. It's not even February. It was 100% even when I take out all the Hanukkah/birthday money I saved up in December that I had set aside in the beginning. I kept that personal money in an envelope in my old hymnal from the church I grew up in under the hymn "Trust and Obey". We had it sung at our wedding, and it continues to ring into my life, reminding me that "our toil He doth richly repay". And from what I hear, there are more donations to come that will make it in the bank this coming month. I'm simply blown away. God is so good, all the stinkin' time! I had to just share this with you all who are following my story in this journey. Of course, any extra donations given to my trip will overflow into the ministry's general fund for the projects we plan to complete in this year's mission. Don't let this stop you from giving towards that goal or to take on sponsoring one of the Springtime House care homes. So much more can be done. To end with that sweet hymn, 

"What He says we will do, 

where He sends we will go --

Never fear, only trust and obey.

Trust and Obey

For there's no other way

To be happy in [Yeshua]

than to Trust and Obey"

It's Not About Me

I have been exceedingly blessed by my new full time job with New Tech Global (NTG) Environmental. Not only am I provided 5 paid work days to volunteer for a non-profit organization that will cover the majority of my time spent for the mission trip, but I was accepted into their donation matching program as well. Any NTG employee who donates to my mission trip this summer will have their donation matched by the company's president. Already I have reached 43% of my trip's expenses, and half of that projection is thanks to NTG's generosity. Yesterday, I was able to give a talk to my work family describing Springtime House in Romania's history, needs, and goals. Luckily, I was able to use left over posters and bio cards of the kids from the past Fall Fundraiser to share. The office has been buzzing about it since, and many have expressed interest in further info and spreading awareness.

I know full well that I am a strange personality. I have a "Type A", self motivated attitude when it comes to completing projects, always desiring to go above and beyond no matter how simple the task is. That's not jut a quote from a line in a typical college entrance exam essay, it is really true. However, I highly dislike the lingering attention. The best way I could describe it is like fantastically putting on a one-act play on stage, and then after the curtain falls, fading into the darkness of the backstage, quickly getting to my car, and driving home to hide away for a few days, hoping to not be confronted on the streets with any public congratulations. I would rather read the reviews the next day in the paper. I love to perform, at anything, but I hate the attention. It's ambivalence at it's best.

I mention this piece of myself because I don't want to seem superficial at all. I never want to be superficial about anything. Reality and truth are characteristics of life that I simply want to emulate, seasoned with my hope and faith in a humble spirit. The truth of the matter is, all my work, with Springtime House, NTGE, or any other projects I take on, I know they are not about me. So many other people and events depend on my part to complete them, but I alone could not make great things happen. In the same vein of this declaration of anti-superficial reality is that with the attention I received after my Springtime House talk at NTGE, I can't just fade away from it, or else people will not be encouraged to spread further awareness about Romanian orphanages and the real struggle of hopelessness and abandonment that they are faced with every day.These same struggles that they will have to battle with even when they are chosen by a family who wishes to care for them. If I open up the issues to my friends and quickly close up in fear of too much attention for it, I am practicing my pride and not my humility, and I deny supporters for these Romanian families I claim to love.

So while I openly admit that I don't enjoy public praise for anything I do, it isn't about what I enjoy anyways. Because like I said, it isn't about me. I don't want anyone thinking I am an incredible person for going on these mission trips or working with Springtime House. I have to actively fight my pride to not deny a well-intentioned co-worker or friend their genuine support or praise for the cause God has placed me into. Because it isn't about me; it's all about Him.

Breaking the Cycle

One of the biggest drives I have for the culture of Springtime House in Romania is their drive to break the cycle of abandonment in Romania. It might seem obvious to you, but let me describe this abandonment cycle to you in a hypothetical story. I found the majority of these common elements in Karleen Dewey’s book, “A Place of the Mourning Doves” as well as some of the biographies of the children in the care homes Springtime House supports.

Let’s start with a young mother who has just given birth to yet another child. As the nurse leaves the room with the little girl to take to the nursery, the woman begins to think to herself the same thoughts that have been cycling through her mind for almost 9 months now. She can’t afford to feed herself and her already existing children living on the streets. She has no support system of family or friends to help feed, clothe, and shelter this newborn in need of so much more than just the bare minimum. She was abandoned herself by so many men claiming to want to give all they could to her, yet taking all that she was in the end. She was empty and couldn't give any more of herself to anyone, not even a tiny child. While no one was looking, she walks out of her room, down the stairs, and out the door, hoping that someone there would be able to give the love and comfort to her child that she lacked.

So then the child is swaddled tightly and taken into the nursery section of the hospital, as the staff keeps a small bit of hope that the mother might return for it. Until then, they are charged by the state to care for the child. While understaffed, overworked, and underpaid workers give watered down formula to the infant, time passes with no sign of the mother’s return for her daughter. She is kept tightly wrapped, unable to move too much, and unstimulated by the few nurses rushing to meet immediate health needs of other infants in the nursery, most abandoned themselves. Time marches on as her daily meal goes from watery milk becomes watery oatmeal and the only stimulus provided continues to be the tired nurses rushing back and forth to the numerous cribs around her.

By her second birth day, the state transfers her into an institutional orphanage. Here her undeveloped mind stretches to comprehend the laws of survival: only the toughest will survive. She is stolen from, beaten, and without a friend among her peers. The orphanage is just as understaffed as the nursery was so that those who are supposed to protect and care for her are again stretched thin to keep the peace among the pack of primitive children struggling for their own stake in their world. The story can go deeper into her abuses and struggles, but in due time, the little girl is an 18-year-old, supposedly ready to become a fully-functional citizen of Romania.  In reality, she has only a change of clothes, about $20, and the basic survival skills she had learned in the orphanage with an already limited brain capacity from her lack of early development. She is unprepared to take on post-education. She has no trade skills to hold a decent job. If she’s lucky, she may be able to find a safe home to stay in while she picks up the pieces of her childhood to prepare for the next step.

Statistically, within 2 weeks, she will be involved in human trafficking. With her wounded heart, it may only take a warm offer of a good job with no experience needed and a place to live to coax her into the system. Hoping to douse her fiery anger and mend her broken heart, she finds that those she trusted have yet again led her down a road of deception. Within a few months, she becomes pregnant under the conditions of the so called job she had acquired. Her masters can coerce her to abort the child or threaten to throw her out on the streets, leaving her abandoned again, if she kept it. Feeling the straining thoughts her mother once had, the cycle is completed and brought into the next generation. She has her baby and abandons it in the hospital in the same manner her own mother did years before. Hopelessness over takes her as she walks back onto the streets, eager to return to her captors in a gross case of Stockholm syndrome. 

Dewey’s book gives a historical account on what happened to encourage this cycle to begin and other details explaining individuals within the orphanage system that are trying to improve the system no matter how small of an impact it will have. Nonetheless, it’s Springtime House’s mission to rescue these orphans from this disabling mindset of hopelessness by taking them out of a world that teaches them selfishness and rather teach them how to love others. They have interaction, encouragement, and a community that edifies their existence, going above and beyond meeting their basic needs. I wanted to share this to make others aware of the dangerous and generation immobilizing pattern, and also as a personal service to remind myself for why I want to go back to Romania this summer. I have spent over a year now reading about these children, hoping and praying that they do not see themselves as a statistic, but as a loved and priceless individual in God’s plan.

First of All, Mongolia...

This is the long story on how God first sealed my heart for orphans. I was 19 and in my spring semester freshmen year at Texas A&M University. Word was sent to me through my grandmother who met a missionary couple with an orphanage ministry in Khonger and Darkhan, Mongolia. This ministry was working on becoming self-sustaining with its own crops and hoped to keep its own herds of animals. That way they could feed their own children in the orphanage and have enough left over to sell and make a profit for the ministry’s other needs. She said, “It is sustainable agriculture and kids. You love both those things. You should be there.” I smiled and said, “That’s nice Grandma, but I have this thing called college going on right now that I have to pay for somehow, and tramping about around the world to some place I couldn't locate on a map (without some assistance at the time) didn't sound like a wise thing to do.”

I’ve never really had a heart for going on a mission trip anyways. I was always taught to take Acts 1:8 very seriously in my witness: “But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be witnesses to Me in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.” I was to work on my witness in my home, then in my community, and then my county, my state, and then the end of the earth. If I couldn't spread the Gospel in my most intimate circles, how was I going to spread it 5,000 miles away from home? It was a hypocritical notion. So I walked away thinking going to Mongolia was a silly idea. Well, a week passed, and with much twisting of my arm, I ended up going to a Navigators conference the following weekend. I realized how much of a hypocrite I already was, stubbornly living in sins and focusing on a past that immobilized my spiritual walk.

With “a washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Spirit” (Titus 3:5), I walked into my 8:00 AM Monday morning class, Worlds of Rangeland Ecology. It was taught by a pretty erratic professor who sort of just did whatever he wanted and taught whatever he wanted, never using a syllabus, and just enjoyed the power he might have thought came with his newly earned PhD. It made me a frustrated student to say the least, but God can use anyone, and He does. He started by explaining how he wants to finish the last 6 weeks of the semester focusing only on …Mongolian Rangelands. My mouth hung agape. For the next 6 weeks, I took in the most interesting ecological practices and herding patterns that Mongolian pastoralists had been using since before the 1000s. The next weekend I ended up at home for my old high school’s stock show, where my mother informed me that she and dad are planning to go to Mongolia. God had used Grandma to call them into this also. Things were getting crazy by that point.

For the following 3 summers, I spent many weeks in Mongolia working with the staff and orphans in this ministry. It changed my life. It challenged me in ways that I couldn't put fully into words, even in a long version of the story. It brought me and my parents closer together, and gave us stories we will never forget. We even got to bring our relationships with camp into it in the third year. However, after those 3 summers, God did another incredible thing as He always does. He called us out of Mongolia. Reasons and feelings are still mixed in a fog of miscommunication, yet it weighed on us that our plans for Mongolia weren't lining up with God's plans. I can only speak for myself, but I felt so empty for years after that news became clear. 

I prayed and prayed and cried and prayed and cried some more. It’s a dangerous thing to ask God “Why?” but I did. “Why did you send me to Mongolia? Why did you give me so many lessons, memories, friendships, and dreams of how I might help these people more in years to come?” One important thing I've learned in this hard lesson in asking God “Why?” is that God is Good, All the Time. The enemy truly is the father of lies and would rather we believe that God isn’t good and that He’s withholding something we need from us. It took me years to come to this realization, and several people to tell me until I really began to own it. I still feel my heart beat for the orphans and families in Mongolia. Whenever I see a globe, I turn it to that country in the heart of Asia.

Now, after all that prayers, tears, and questions, I think I may have an answer, or maybe just the next part of the answer. First of all, I know this: God is Good, All the Time. Secondly, His timing is truly perfect. 

I had been married nearly 2 years at this point, trying to make ends meet and searching for a part time job to take with my full time job. Through the grapevine, I was put in touch with Rick and Sandy of Springtime House in Romania, a small, non-profit organization which supported orphan care homes within the country of Romania. They worked out their own home office and were in need of an administrative assistant. Between all the options I had weeded through, they were my first choice. God could have only arrange this match up. I slowly became immersed in the children's bios and each home's history. They helped support my husband and I, and I have the opportunity to continue supporting orphan care in a country where international adoption was impossible. 

These abandoned children could only hope to be adopted within their country, and if they aren't rescued from the crowded, understaffed state institutions, they are sent out into society at the age of 18 with the equivalent of $20, some clothes, self-taught survival skills, and nightmares of their past abuse and neglect. These individuals are prime targets for human trafficking rings, which happen to thrive within Eastern Europe due to facts like these. My heart has broken again for these little ones abandoned in maternity wards and is yet encouraged by the progress that Springtime House has already brought just a few families and multiple children. I see hope spread as I had seen it spread in Mongolia. 

Coming back into my question to God, "Why?", I know I'll never know an exact answer. However, just as I love the details He designed into each living cell and compound on earth, I love feeling and observing the details within my own life story. Maybe God wanted me to have experienced the lives of orphans in Asia and Europe. I'm in love with both countries now. I have made relationships in countries I never would have considered going to until God placed them in front of me. I pray for both countries daily. Yet at this season, God seems to want me working for this ministry. I will never understand why He chose me for this or Mongolia, but then again, I would rather wonder at His glory than understand more than King Solomon. 

Support Letter for Romania Mission Trip 2015

To My Friends and Family:

Since October of 2014, I began working part-time for Springtime House in Romania, a non-profit charity which exists to rescue Romanian orphans and widows from poverty and abandonment to combat human trafficking at its source. Being their first American employee, the ministry is indeed quite small in size yet large in vision. I have been amazingly blessed by Rick and Sandy Scott, the President and Secretary of the ministry respectively, as I have worked through their home office to keep their paper work, spreadsheets, presentations, website, social media, and correspondence in order for them.

In July 2014, they gave me the opportunity to meet the families and care homes that I have been working to benefit throughout the past year. It was an incredible experience talking with these guardians face-to-face after months of emails, and the children’s smiles were priceless when I addressed them by name at first sight, knowing them from their bios and photos that I have read and organized. As we have grown as a ministry, we’ve also grown in need for more mission teams to go into Romania in 2015. Rick has challenged me to be the leader of one of three mission teams to go this summer. This will require me to take charge of 10-12 individuals ready to offer their “hearts” and “hammers” to our Springtime House care homes. It also requires me to raise my own support to travel into the country for the week of July 3 – July 12.

First of all, please pray for these families we will be serving, for my health and effectiveness as a team leader, and for the many details of this trip including safe international travel. Second, please consider supporting me financially for this outreach opportunity. The inclusive cost for the trip is $2500.00.  A donation of any amount would go a long way in helping me pay my expenses.

I believe in working hard for donations to make my community stronger both here in Houston as well as in Romania. With the holidays coming up, you may have a ‘disaster area’ in your home that needs to be organized, errands to run, or any other need you don’t have time to meet. Therefore, I am willing and able to complete any need of chores, cleaning, baby-sitting, pet-sitting, etc. for a donation. Please contact me at caitlinfuess@springtimehouse.com to arrange a time for me to help you out from now until July. You may donate based on what you feel is due for the job completed. All checks will be made out to Springtime House in Romania – USA, Inc. with a note in the memo saying it’s for Caitlin Fuess’ Mission Trip 2015. It can be given to me or mailed directly to P.O. Box 17912 Sugar Land, TX 77496. Any surplus amount I receive beyond my $2500 goal will be donated straight into the Springtime House donations account going straight into the care homes we minister to. These donations will be tax deductible as well as a blessing of relief to you in clearing your holiday to do list and beyond into the summer.

I hope that you would consider being a part of the Springtime House Team in supporting my trip. The MOST you could do for us is pray for every detail to be in God’s will. I am planning to revamp my blog in order to connect with my supporters with stories from this past year's trip as well as the process of preparing for this year's trip. Thank you and Multemesc!

Still Growing,

Caitlin Fuess

Administrative Assistant

caitlinfuess@springitmehouse.com

It's the Little Things

I have so many experiences and stories to tell about my time spent at T Bar M Sports Camps. This will be but the first of many accounts of this blessed place in my life. The second summer I coached at T Bar M, I was placed in a cabin called “Bug Tussle” with two other lovely ladies. Jokes began to develop about the three shortest girl coaches being put in such a well-named cabin. The jests came more so after the first week’s age groups were assigned. Bug Tussle was to be a temporary home to twelve 6 to 7 year olds, the youngest age group allowed at Sports Camp, commonly nicknamed “The Babies”.

Now all my life, I have known what it felt like to be the shortest girl in the crowd, and for some of these girls, this was their first time to be away from the families over a week’s time and thrown into a crowd of 200 kids up to the ages of 12. From the beginning, they probably felt smaller than they actually were.

There’s no way to quantify this, but by the end of the week, those girls probably taught us more than we taught them. They were all so courageous on the ropes course, helpful during cabin clean-up, and thankful when they were served their meals. Most impacting was their insight during our morning Bible studies. Those times when I felt like what I was saying to them wasn’t sinking into them, they would chime in with faith-filled, God-honoring wisdom and knock me out of my seat.

I found it interesting that at the beginning of the summer, with all the short jokes connected to our cabin name, we established Proverbs 30:24-28 as our cabin verses. Solomon accounted that,

 “There are four things which are little on the earth, But they are exceedingly wise:

       The ants are a people not strong,

      Yet they prepare their food in the summer;

       The rock badgers are a feeble folk,

      Yet they make their homes in the crags;

       The locusts have no king,

      Yet they all advance in ranks;

       The spider skillfully grasps with its hands,

      And it is in kings’ palaces.”                                    ~Proverbs 30:24-28

All species of ants, from the Formicidae family, collect their energy source in various ways, from predatory, scavenging, or herbivores. One of my favorite methods of cultivation happens to be a more specialized practice. A symbiotic relationship exists between ants and aphids where environments permit. Aphids secrete a high-energy food source called honeydew as they feed on plant sap. The ants feed on this secretion while giving protection to the softer-bodied aphids from predators and “herd” them in such a way so that they found quality plants to consume. In the periods of migration, the ant colony would carry the aphids with them to the new location. I admire ants as the tiniest ranchers on the earth, with their aphids as their livestock. They could harvest from plants, other animals, even fungus. Obviously we don’t think of an ant being strong, but they certainly don’t seem to be in need of their nutrition, as they have the wisdom to prepare it on their own.

The rock badger, also known as the rock hyrax, seems to be the odd example out in this list of four creatures. The other three belong in the phylum, Arthropoda, while this creature is in the phylum Chordata. It’s also probably the less known of the four, especially under the label of “hyrax”.  A rock badger resembles a guinea pig which inhabits rock crevices to stay protected from predators. They tend to live in communities, and similar to prairie dogs, have members take turns standing guard and give alert to the others if a predator is sighted. Their wisdom on survival certainly gives them what they need, despite their feeble physical stature.

I imagine that a swarm of locusts would be a terrifying thing to behold. The truest account of the damage these creatures can inflict upon crops and natural vegetation can be observed best in Exodus 10 as God sent His eighth plague upon Egypt to urge the hard-hearted Pharaoh to let the Israelites go from their slavery. Exodus 10:14-15 says, “And the locusts went up over all the land of Egypt and rested on all the territory of Egypt. They were very severe; previously there had been no such locusts as they, nor shall there be such after them. For they covered the face of the whole earth, so that the land was darkened; and they ate every herb of the land and all the fruit of the trees which the hail had left. So there remained nothing green on the trees or on the plants of the field throughout all the land of Egypt.” Generals dream of leading soldiers who fought like locust, wholly and undividedly set on their goal, working as a unit to overcome their enemy. Yet a swarm of migrating locust needs no leader. They have their God-given wisdom to swarm together in ranks, so that each individual may be filled and have the energy to carry on their journey together.

Now we come to the never quite-so-loved spider. I’ve met only a few people in my life who wouldn’t mind the chance to observing a spider on any given day. Most civilized people feel the need to dispose of its presence immediately. That’s what I love so much about this verse. Something so lowly and despised is even in the king’s palaces. He wasn’t invited by the king himself. I’m sure most royalty would react harshly toward a spider if it came too close to him. Yet, God gave spiders protection with their unique ability and wisdom to weave delicate, and still, strong webs that they can grasp with their hands. They can go undetected in the corners of their throne rooms building their own living that God provided for them. The God-given wisdom in a spider gives it the opportunity to be given a place in the king’s palaces despite its lowly position. It reminds me of when Jesus said,

“For whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.”

~Luke 8:11

That was another lesson my Session 1 Bug Tussle campers taught me, humility. In their thrilling new experience of being away from their families, they were honestly humble. We were not the most athletic cabin, we didn’t win any of the cabin competitions, but our girls were having the time of their life, experiencing things they’ve never done before, like jumping off the Leap of Faith on the ropes course. I pray for them still, that God would continually build on their wisdom, faith, and humility.

King Solomon

I remember the first few rangeland plant identification practices I had. I hardly knew the coach, Dr. Knight, since he sponsored me for a scholarship in the field a few months before college started. I had only spoken to him through email and phone calls. I finally met him at the beginning of my freshman year. When we shook hands, and he asked, “So you’re joining Plant Team right?” I didn’t quite understand at first, but his description sounded familiar to my experiences on FFA teams. They studied, memorized, and matched the names of plant species to their features. Each team member had 60 seconds to identify each one to their family, genus, and species, spelled correctly, along with their origin and longevity. It could be one of 200 species, and we had to memorize every species on the list. I had been a part of a landscape judging team through FFA where we allowed a name bank of the 50 common names we studied. This team is what shocked me into the difference between college and high school, not the classes.

My memorization was truly tested for four years while on the Texas A&M Plant ID Team. I started absorbing bits and pieces of what made each species different from the others.  My friends became accustomed to hearing the excuse “I can’t. I have plant practice,” often from me. Even when I tried to explain to my professors outside of my major that I would be taking a week off from school to travel to Billings, Montana for a national Society of Range Management meeting to compete in a Plant ID contest, I was met with skeptical questions.  It was like I was a part of a strange club.

I’m encouraged by King Solomon’s interest in living creatures. 1 Kings 4:32 states, “He spoke three thousand proverbs, and his songs were one thousand and five.” The proofs of his wisdom and song writing are found in the Scriptures within the book of Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Songs of Solomon. The Scriptures also speaks of how Solomon asked God for wisdom when he could have asked for anything. After emphasizing his wisdom, the author of 1 Kings accounts that, “Also he spoke of trees, from the cedar tree of Lebanon even to the hyssop that springs out of the wall; he spoke also of animals, of birds, of creeping things, and of fish.” A man with God’s gift of wisdom spoke of the flora and fauna around him.

I believe in God’s gifts, that He gives us a heart for cultures, ministries, and even fields of study.  When friends asked me what a grass is called in the lawn of A&M’s Research Park, and I respond with Cynodon dactylon, they laugh and tell me not to mix up dinosaur names with grass names. Despite the unusual interest, I have grown a heart for identifying plants, even some insects as well. To identify individual organisms, we can begin to understand and classify plant communities, the animals that live within them, and then classify those areas into ecosystems. The individual builds the ecosystem. Perhaps Solomon understood that also. Either way, it comforts me to know I’m not the only one a step-short of being obsessed with plants, or one of 6 or so students who were also on the Plant Team.

I also find it interesting that within verse 33, he describes the cedar tree and hyssop with more detail than any other type of organism. I love also that “the hyssop…springs out of the wall”. I can imagine Solomon sitting near a brick-laid wall observing hyssop breaking through it. Life had burst forth from concrete. Something so frail could force itself through something we assume to be stronger. Whatever he pondered or spoke further about God’s creation, I’m glad He did.