Quotes From Virgin Ears...

  
  Bride, 

 

     It is a muggy Saturday evening in the Jolly Avenue Community Garden and 7 Bhutanese refugees have gathered to hear about the prophecy and birth of a man named Jesus. Once again, something has fallen through with our translator and, once again, God has heard my silent picnic table prayers as I watch our low English listener's walk toward me with weathered smiles and eager ears.

 

    After some suggestions from our growers for a fast fill-in, our sweet Hindu gardener Praki answers the phone and agrees to be there with his wife in ten! He arrives, we ask him to translate, and we're on! Relief hangs in the air and faces of our patient, mosquito mashing bunch. The wait is over and we will be fine. It has been mind blowing to watch God fill in the gaps every week that His people would hear these words of freedom. However, that familiar feeling "sobering" is always sliding in second  as I am witness to the relentless warfare against our Hindu family's through physical destruction.

 

     Last week, we had to cancel because two of our main families were tied up in the hospital at the same time that night. When you compromise one family member in these cultures, you lose the whole clan to a hospital visit because they are simply so familial. It is amazing to see the fight we are in just to gather together for this time each week. Please be our intercessors. He has given us all authority to bind and loose, so let's get to it.

 

    I ask the same set of questions nearly every time I lead each week. "What does this show you about God? What does this show you about man? What did you like? What did you not like?" This particular time Gahadair*, a garden leader whom I'd helped at the hospital during the week along with his wife Indu, was suddenly someone else altogether!  Consistently reserved and faithful in attendance, he began to dominate the conversation during questions!

 

    "So, what does this show us about God?" Gahadair responds, "It is like God is a tree and the people are the leaves. God supplies equally to all the people. Like, He is the tree and they are the branches." This was both Gahadair's, and all other 6 gardener's first time to ever hear of Jesus' birth! "Gahadair!! I believe God is speaking this very thing to you! This book right here is God's Holy words to us and it says just what you've said!" All the crowd begins to erupt with laughter and excitement! "OoOoOoOOWWWW!!!! ...Lots of Nepali I don't understand but sounds very happy."  ( :

 

    Gahadair's face is beaming and I notice a shift has just occurred. Our Gahadair, the Bhutanese man I stood next to talking "Raya Saag" spinach in February and feeling a special love for from the start of my position is the most vocal member of the group today, a title his wife, which I didn't realize at the time, held our first week of storying! Yes, Lord, we ask you would have your worship from this family!!
 

     I can't tell you the sensation of chills running over my body as I look into these dark, serious eyes staring back at me with the answer, "Yus, this ees the fhirst time for ahll."
Don't you feel His love for them? Don't you sense the fierce pursuit of His colorful bride? Let us join Him where He is moving.

Come Lord Jesus,
 

            Jenna in Clarkston 

 

Putting Legs to My Feet:

Mail: Reach The Nations
Care of: Stone Mountain Baptist Association
1200 Green Street, SE
P.O. Box 911
Conyers, GA 30021
Please include “RTN-Jenna Givens” in the memo.

Online/ PayPal:
Go to: stonemountainbaptistassociation.org
Click: “Donate” on the sidebar to the right
Enter: desired amount and then click the ”Make a Donation” button
Enter: “RTN-Jenna Givens” in the description box and then just complete the transaction through either logging into your PayPal account as prompted or entering your information.

"We Must Be Here Every Saturday @ 7:00!" -Laxmi

Brothers and Sisters,

 

 

It is late, my skirt emits a certain cloud of bugspray, my ankles are circled with soil, and this warm-cheeked head is tilty with slumber. So, I will shoot for the bullseye... and probably miss.
 

Why did women, on their way back from a Hindu God worship service in a friend's apartment, show up to listen with finger cymbals still in hand? Why did Yamun, forbidden to pray or learn about God for 3 years after her family members death rush in late from the market with her teenage neice? Why did my phone ring with our Hindu garden leader agreeing to be our translator at the very moment our new intern, Emily, was praying for one this morning?
 

Jesus and His welcomed Spirit through prayer. He is the draw and He will have His way as we invite Him to do what he already paid for.

 

Tonight in the Jolly Avenue Community Garden we held our first Bible storytelling program for Nepali speaking Hindus from the closed country of Bhutan. If I could share just one look with you, I would give you the glimpse of brown, taught and weathered faces reacting to the word of God for the first time in the entirety of their lives.

 

I, a woman of 25, had the high honor of watching women double my lifetime, sit around on logs and listen in with virgin ears to the creation of the world and God's plan for friendship with us. I heard their chuckles when they realized He put them in a garden, and their knowing "AHA'S!" when they were told of Eve's childbirth curse. My heart swelled with honor and burned with injustice. Please pray for our little team of storytellers, Emily Smith, Meagan Wright, and myself, and for those who will hear it!

 

During the question segment of the story, I asked how it made them feel. They all triumphantly declared, "Ramro chha! Ramro! Ramro!" meaning, "Good job! It's good! It's good!" I explained that it made me sad because though God loved them, their friendship had to be broken. Then, an elderly lady agreed she was sad too. Next, another gardener stated "I feel good." Not knowing where to really go with that, our translator Lalee clued me in on the stream of Nepali that followed.

 

 She explained, "She is saying that she likes it! We have never heard this before. This is our first time hearing this story. We want to learn anything you can teach us about God and creation." I was floored. My internal jaw lay square between my feet.

 

These women have daughters beyond my years and yet they have travelled through every memory to this point devoid of Truth. Do we take this seriously? Heartwrenching! This is the heart of God, that He would have His worship and freedom would reach the captives. I have enjoyed them for nearly 6 months in my position at the garden. What if it had stopped at that, accepting that they are Hindus and we just can't communicate much, assuming they've probably already decided against Jesus anyway? I would have missed the privilege of marking, for the first time in their lifetime, that moment when light hit the photo paper and a new image was burned into them, drawing apart the light and dark.

 

Doesn't it make you think, as the body of Christ, that we need to stop worrying so much about the end when there are thousands of Nations who have never even heard the beginning?
 

 

"And the Good News about the Kingdom will be preached throughout the whole world, so that all nations will hear it; and then the end will come." Matthew 24:14
 

Sharing Jesus with those who have never heard is not just pulling up the shade; it is acting to usher the return of Jesus back to earth!
 

I dare you to consider the weight of Glory you've been given,

 

 

                                       Jenna in Clarkston
 

*If you would like to partner with my life amongst the unreached, please feel free to use the details below and contact me with any questions!

 

 

Putting Legs to My Feet:

Mail:Reach The Nations
Care of: Stone Mountain Baptist Association
1200 Green Street, SE
P.O. Box 911
Conyers, GA 30021
Please include “RTN-Jenna Givens” in the memo.

Online/ PayPal:
Go to: stonemountainbaptistassociation.org
Click: “Donate” on the sidebar to the right
Enter: desired amount and then click the”make a donation” button
Enter: “RTN-Jenna Givens” in the description box and then just complete the transaction through either logging into your PayPal account as prompted or entering your information.

Mary, Mary How Does Your Garden Grow?

A lot more interconnectedly than I once thought...
 

Today while registering gardeners at the garden, up walked a man I knew from Willow Branch, my old complex. Yup, he has a plot and our faces met with a look of total shock and excitement of who eachother was, he a gardener, and me the new Director! Guess what else? He is also a member at my refugee church, Reach The Nations, a Nepali man with stained teeth from "Pan" ...Nepali tobacco. We couldn't stop smiling at eachother and explaining to every other Nepali who came up why we looked so silly shocked. Do you have any idea how much joy that brought to me? Today I got a bit of my joy back, because I was reconnected to my love, the people, even if only for a couple hours of sign up.

 

 

Let me tell you why else I walked away smiling and full of energy after 9 days of no eating on a cleanse to kill off some parasites and standing in the frozen, yes frozen because it was no longer freezing, it had definitely passed that checkpoint already, wind. I stood with a man named Ghaja* at his plot, a man my heart already feels so deep an affection for, talking about what his "roya saag," which looks like Nepali spinach, and making small talk in broken, broken English.

 

 

Why did this matter so much? Because beloved body, my strong support, at 18 I went away to study Environmental Studies with hopes to be an agricultural missionary in Asia one day. Then I went to Nepal and God gave me a curiosity and hunger to find a way into Bhutan, the smallest Kingdom in the world and almost completely closed to visitors after being told about it by the Argentine missionary housing me. That began a pursuit in researching what would make me a good visa applicant to be one of the few allowed in. I looked into their agriculture, among many other things and contemplated what could be possible.

 

 

My inner hope was to go and work with farmers in agriculture, teaching new methods to yield a greater harvest, and reach the people of Bhutan with the all sufficient news of Jesus.

That hope died, and even my own boss last semester as a teacher at a private school, mocked my desire to go there as I came across an article on Bhutan while helping my students find collage materials in Art class. "Isn't that where people are fleeing from to get here?!" she said. "Yah..." "Then might make you think you shouldn't be going there, huh?!" No Pam*..."Actually those are the places God calls me to go to because it's worth it," I say with a huge lump in my throat and red cheeks as she overpowers me. Then Today, I made the connection. I am standing here with ghaja*, a man who tells me he was a farmer, in Bhutan, and we are having a conversation about his vegetables right here together. It happened.

 

I walked away in awe of a God who places inside of us desires, but asks us to watch Him pull them together in submission, one blind step at a time, and in doing so, our worship and awe of Him is magnified all the more because He never for one moment went away from bringing that God given urge to pass.


I love the webs He weaves, the obedience He blesses, the way He blesses in such a way it is never divorced from our sanctification and His more intensified worship. I love that it leads us back into the well again. I feel a hope in me rising as God privileges me with seeing even for a season, the way He has never walked away from the desires He put in me that, until this point have all seemed separate and confusing, that I somehow misheard. No, no, He was just putting in what the bread needed before the oven. I am starting to see the dough rise and that it somehow all works together and smells really good.

I trust Him with my plans. I trust Him with the side roads, and I trust Him to make happen what He has given natural curiosity for as I choose to enjoy the immediate obedience of what He has spoken for now.
 

I may not know as much about vegetables as I had expected by now, but I know a whole lot more about yielding a greater harvest, and that is a track He knew all along He was placing my caboose on.

 

 

Blessings my incredible family, goodness how I cherish you.
 

To get more up-to-date on why I was registering gardeners and what this refugee church is all about, see a recent bio explaining my current work at http://rtnatlanta.com/2013/02/09/ciao-chinee-jaimesi-jenna/

~Jenna in Clarkston

This is a photo taken at Urbana, a missions conference where God confirmed my call to missions undeniably in 2006 as a Freshman in college. It was taken because God had just spoken India into my heart in a prayer room as the place He would one day send me. It was on the wall of the booth I visited just afterward. I cannot wait to tell you more about this confirmation and the wonderful web he has woven on this one currently.

To Give by Mail or PayPal:
Mail:
Reach The Nations
Care of: Stone Mountain Baptist Association
1200 Green Street, SE
P.O. Box 911
Conyers, GA 30021
Please include “RTN-Jenna Givens” in the memo.
Online/ PayPal:
Go to: stonemountainbaptistassociation.org
Click: “Donate” on the sidebar to the right
Enter: desired amount and then click the”make a donation” button
Enter: “RTN-Jenna Givens” in the description box and then just complete the transaction through either logging into your PayPal account as prompted or entering your information.

Meet, Eat, and Repeat!

Here's a little sneak peek into the mysteries of Clarkston...

Sitting in my closet at 5:30 this morning...

God woke me up to pray specifically and I am so thankful I finally had the awareness to stumble up and listen!

 

 

Two-way journaling back and forth in conversation with Jesus...this has been blowing my mind. Check out the "4 Keys To Hearing God's Voice" by Mark Virkler if you want to know more!

 

 

Let the apartment visits begin! Yes!!!!
 

Met with my pastor and a friend to visit different believers and nonbelievers in my complex in their homes.

 

Ready, set, go!

 

1. A Congolese believer who attends Reach The Nations, my refugee church, and is awaiting her long lost husbands arrival in hopefully a couple of weeks. It has been almost 5 years since she and her six kids have last seen him! Lunch #1 consisted of goat livers and rice and creamy coffee bubbling over on the stove. I was not too disappointed I was fasting today and graciously explained this to my dear sister in Christ eating a heap of white rice instead. My comrads took one brave bite after another doing everything to keep them from reappearing on the plate. Some were more successful than others. ( :

 

The best surprise of the day came when I realized that the wonderful and interesting smells greeting me everyday in my bathroom are actually coming from my Congolese friend's kitchen on the other side of my wall! She didn't even know we were neighbors! Love that! Funny... I know when she burns things too....

 

2. A visit with an Ethiopian Orthodox family who sees Christianity as something separate altogether... and lunch #2 which consisted of enjeera (a spongy brown bread the size of a pizza crust) smothered with a chickpea and spices saucy mash and eaten with your hands. Her son was named Daniel which was an incredible connection because this is the book I am travelling through in the word right now! He had never read the story of Daniel and the Lion's Den, nor did he know much of Daniel or the Bible in general. I grabbed my easier translation from my bag and showed him how to find his way around the Bible and he started reading the story. My pastor and I invited him to come to our church and I really hope to see that little guy soon! The mother invited me back anytime. It filled me right up inside to meet some of my new neighbors!!

 

3. A high Hindu priest Nepali family was last but not least having suffered a tragedy of great proportions...losing their 22 year old son only weeks ago to colon cancer. Through the conversation I began to realize that the Nepali family I have poured into the past 2 years, and used to visit in the same complex I am now living, are actually the relatives of this family! We had a great conversation connecting dots and opening doors of relationship as my pastor offered encouragement. I especially connected with their 19 year old daughter who already knew of me through our mutual Nepali friend and will be praying through whether this is an area of good soil or not to spend my time investing in.

 

 

I am off to an English house church meeting which was attended by Ethiopians, Americans, and Afghanis last week at our first gathering! It was beautiful to study the word with the Nations altogether in one living room declaring Holy the same Father.

 

 

My pastor has asked if I would be open to beginning a similar Nepali speaking Bible study group alongside of some Nepali believers from our church within my own complex. I would be leading it off with the Nepali couple, modeling how to facilitate it, and discipling other Nepali/ English speaking individuals within it. This is a point of prayer and I ask that you would pray for my wisdom and also for my financial support to be able to continue taking on more ministry responsibilities and expanding the Kingdom.

 

 

I love you all and have to run!!!

Thank you for your prayers!!!
 

                Jenna in Clarkston...

 

How to give:

Mail:

Reach The Nations
Care of: Stone Mountain Baptist Association
1200 Green Street, SE
P.O. Box 911
Conyers, GA 30021

*Please make the check out to "Reach The Nations" and include "RTN-Jenna Givens" in the memo.

Online/ PayPal:

Go to: stonemountainbaptistassociation.org

Click: "Donate" on the sidebar to the right

Enter: desired amount and then click the"make a donation" button

Enter: "RTN-Jenna Givens" in the description box and then just complete the transaction through either logging into your PayPal account as prompted or entering your information.