s w e e t COMPASSION

i have a SWEET 2-in-1 story

to share with you

sweet as in

chocolate chip cookies sweet

COMPASSION as in

when one has such empathy/deep care or concern for another person/cause that one is compelled to do something to help

...................

a church in missouri
&
a high school english class in hamburg

are the sweet ones
filled with a whole lot of COMPASSION
intrigued? let me explain.

a few months ago i received an email from pastor vic, who is the head pastor of family life fellowship in missouri.  he learned about our ministry from our friend rachel, and he emailed to ask us how his church could support us. he said his church loved helping in tangible ways.

 the only thing i could really think of at the time was how i'd like to bake chocolate chip cookies or brownies for the women in the brothels--but you can't get all of the ingredients you need here to make them. so i gave him a wish list.

weeks later we received this 58 pound box of LOVE on our doorstep. 58 lbs! it was so heavy the delivery guy had to wheel it into our apartment and from there i had to push it across the floor so we could open it.  imagine what the postage co$t on this baby! sooo generous.

they did a collection at church and yes, we received everything we needed to bless our dear women: chocolate chips, baking powder, baking soda, brown sugar, vanilla extract, almond extract (yes, i put a tad bit into my cookies), and then about 20 boxes of brownie mix.  it was pretty incredible.  a group of people we've never met before believe in our ministry and sent us all of these goodies.  amazing. 

that's the 1st part of the story.

around the same time i received the box, i spoke to a group of students (who you see above & below) here in hamburg.  some of you made have read the post i wrote here about anna and how her teacher invited me to come and speak about women in prostitution: a profession? i shared this speech, but i spoke from my heart instead of giving a formal speech.  along with me for the morning was a friend that works with our brothel team, that used to prostitute on the reeperbahn and for the past ten years has had a new life in Christ.  after we both shared, we opened it up to questions, and the class was so interested in the subject matter that the Q&A time spilled into their break time and they didn't even care. suffice it to say, it went really, really well. we were so grateful for the opportunity--especially to be able to do so in a public school!

later that night i received an email from anna, telling me how deeply impacted they all were from our talk; she said the girls couldn't stop talking about it all day. they were so affected by it that they felt compelled to do something for the women--so they decided to cancel a kayaking/canoeing field trip they had planned for their last week of school and instead wanted to stay at school and bake cookies and make cards for the women in the brothels--and asked if i would join them. 

i asked if they had a certain type of cookie in mind that they wanted to bake or if they'd be interested in learning how to make american chocolate chip cookies and they were excited to do that. perfect timing to use all of our ingredients just in from the u.s.!

a few weeks later we all got together. (i still can't get over the fact that they cancelled a school trip to bake for the women!) half of the class baked batches and batches of cookies and they did a great job.

i made sure that they each tasted the dough as that's what a typical amercian would do. right? :)

mmmm! they made enough for each woman to have 2, and they made them pretty well sized.

 

but they didn't stop there.  the other half of the class made cards for the women to attach to the little bags of cookies.

they cut out golden foil hearts

and put them on different colored cards

by the way, this is on the left is the lovely & brave anna

inside each they wrote a simple
you are loved!

with a little happy face :)

how SWEET is that?!

sooo cute! and so happy!

my favorite part of the afternoon was HOW they decided to write what they wrote on each card:

before they started making the cards, they knew what they wanted them to look like but they didn't know what to write on them, so they asked me for some ideas.  and so i said to them,

 "well, WHY are you doing this for them?"

they said things like

we want them to know that we believe in them

we want them to know that it will get better

we want them to know that we think they are precious

we want them to know that they are valuable

and then someone said,

what about writing

you are loved ?

and they all immediately smiled and nodded their heads in unamimous agreement. it was a precious moment of such pure, unadulterated hearts filled with love for the women. i was so proud of them (and still am!)

hearts of compassion in missouri

+

hearts of compassion in hamburg

=

a SWEET, SWEET way
to spread the love of christ
in a very attractive (and tasty!) way

**our brothel team had the fun job of passing the cookies out in the brothels and out on the reeperbahn the following night. the women loved the cookies and were so grateful.  one even asked for the recipe! it's these little homemade acts of kindness that i think especially touch the hearts of the women**

THANK YOU
to the compassionate hearts of
family life fellowship and
 my new friends in 12E
for serving the women
out of such selfless love.
you have made
not just a difference in their lives
but in ours as well
by being living examples of
joyful & generous GIVING

vielen dank!
(many thanks!)