Danielle in Baton Rouge

What causes a place not to feel like home anymore? Sometimes, the place changes in ways that means it alienates instead of embraces you. Other times, you change and the place that once was a safe and inviting space, a shelter, does not seem able to offer the same level of security it once did. Wounds can also break heart and soul ties between you and what was once home. Open wounds can foster a sense of bitterness and harden your heart toward the place you used to call home. Healing, forgiveness, even reconciliation can restore broken hearts and strained relationships but a “new’ condition is not the same as the “original” condition, which may mean wounds are healed but home is still lost.  Homelessness is an experience of suffering, but it is not fruitless. Suffering, framed Biblically, bears fruit in our lives. It refines us and pulls us closer to the heart of the Father. Jesus suffered homelessness. He tells an overeager potential follower, “Foxes have holes, and birds ...

I am supposed to keep my newsletters kind of short, but I am a kind of longwinded person. No one reading this who has ever read other blog posts is surprised. So...here's some added details I left out of my newsletter! Week 1: We traveled to Belgium overnight, arriving on July 10. Between the 10-14th, we had training camp for 30 athletes who were mostly Belgian and American high school and college students. As a SQ staff member, I helped lead the training, including workshops on the project guidelines, discipleship and evangelism, and sports ministry strategies. We also spent time doing team building activities and worshiping together in preparation for the weeks of ministry ahead. Leading a workshop during Training Camp Week 2: On Saturday the 14th, we split off into smaller sports-based teams and took trains to the cities where we would be serving for the upcoming week. My teammates were Daniel (co-leader, from Germany), Marnus (Belgian), Darcy (Belgian), Adri (Belgi...