Granola Gospel

 

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We've moved our Blog: The Vine & The Branches to our NEW website to have everything all in one place for good :) You can check out the new website and read a new blog post: S.O.A.P. @ The Superbowl. If you didn't receive another e-mail from us (through WordPress) about the new website, then e-mail us @ woods.granolagospel@gmail.com and we'll add your e-mail to the subscription list!

JUSTICE is what LOVE looks like in PUBLIC

We arrived January 20th into Red Oak, TX and our first night our friends church had a film on human trafficking including the slave labor industry, sex industry, and child soldiers.


Wrecked. Yup, God is continuing to call us down this road.

With the super bowl right around the corner in Dallas, there are numerous young adults/children that are being trafficked into the United States for the big event. Yes, it is still happening in America today.
Since we are starting to walk into serving in Thailand there have been many things that have appeared to us about human trafficking. Just another sign that this is the direction we are supposed to go.
Here are some things I wrote down as I watched the film:

• Obsession to get lower prices, myself included, for a high demand economy leads businesses to do whatever they have to do to get that lower price and get wealthy, without consideration for the oppression and exploitation of people or places that provide that product. 
• There is a problem with greed and desire to be wealthy, not only in America but around the world, and it is destroying lives, mostly children because they are an easy target to manipulate and can't fight for themselves.
• "We don't want to wear someone else's tragedy" : cotton industry
• "We don't want to eat someone else's despair" : sugar and cocoa industry
  
• We don't want to be comfortable in someone else's misery.
• We won't let children be destroyed: sold and silently oppressed. 
• Human Trafficking has got to STOP!

'Justice is what love looks like in public' Dr. Cornel West. NOW is the time to RESPOND. Check out the website www.callandrespond.com & here's the film's trailer:

living FREE

Little Lake Bryant, Ocala National Forest

Home

Anyone who knows us knows we LOVE to camp and so our last week in Florida we were excited to head into the great outdoors. Over many years of camping on a budget we have learned that you can always camp within National Forest's for free and coming off of WR budget, we decided to add a 'challenge' to our journey by finding a place to live for FREE. Some people might say homeless. Though we felt the convertible was still quite a cushy form of being 'homeless', so we preferred to call it living FREE. Without walls or boundaries without financial necessity, away from electricity, technology, comfort. Surrounded by God's beautiful creation. FREE. To call 'home' for the night wherever we placed our tent or parked our car. So we drove north to meet with our fellow racer Sarah who was driving down from South Carolina to meet in the most logical place in Florida to meet of course, the Ocala National Forest.

Grey Egret

We had chosen a primitive camping area at Little Lake Bryant, which was a pristine, motor FREE lake a short walk from our campsite. We quickly discovered that by living FREE we met many others who had also chosen to live FREE within this forest, FREE as a bird :)

Sunday we ventured out of the forest to go to church in Ocala. We went to a fellow racer's church there: Trevor who by the grace and mercy of God is 100% again, after a life threatening experience with malaria and a ruptured spleen back in Ukraine. It was so good to see how God had healed Trevor!

That afternoon we decided to have a picnic in the town square where we discovered was also the place to hang out during the day for FREE by a lot of locals that came there from the Salvation Army nearby. We met Dolly Parton's cousin who was bi-polar. He sang us some beautiful songs unashamed after we vowed not to make fun of him. He had money. He was not a bum. He told us he was the 'black sheep' of his family. Another soul that had been outcast and forgotten. FREEly traveling and searching for LOVE. He had quite the story and we had all the TIME in the world that afternoon to just sit and listen. We met other friends who were all part of a FREE community that seamed to be family to each other after being abandoned by their own.

Spoonbill

I don't believe they were homeless, just lost. Sure by society's standards they didn't have the homes of their own, but they had a community that took them in when it got too cold. They were friendly, happy to to meet new comers, helpful, yet society would cast these folks as homeless bums. Forgotten people with tremendous amounts of pain they were carrying from their burdened pasts.

Something I grew to appreciate about the people we met who were living FREE was their ability to be completely RAW from the moment you meet them. 'Take me as I am, this is how you'll find me 24/7' was one of their introductory comments. No skimming past the surface conversation, it was straight to the core. They shared things with us in the first 5 minutes of meeting them that many people may never share in a lifetime. Brutal honesty that was at times uncomfortable and difficult to hear, but all they wanted was for someone to care enough to listen. Not shoo them away. LOVE them just the way they are, right where they are at. It's amazing how just listening can show them that kind of LOVE.

Wood Stork

Back at the 'camp' we met another traveling soul. It blew me away the tears that were flowing from all of our eyes as we sat around a campfire and just listened. Not in a hurry to go anywhere or move along to another agenda. We had time. Something that is very precious in life. At last we had all the time in the world to listen to this precious LIFE tell his story.

We headed South to West Palm Beach to meet up with Ellen & Michael on Martin Luther King Jr. Day and had the opportunity to serve in ministry with them for the afternoon doing food prep with them for a homeless dinner that they do every Monday. It was so much FUN in the kitchen and there were about 60 people that showed up for a very delicious meal! We got to meet Ellen's family and enjoy shelter, dinner and a HOT shower! Thanks for the blessings friends!

We ended our journey through Florida in the Everglades National Park where there were gators galore and amazing birds everywhere! Our last night was spent with Brian's grandparent's in Naples, which was a special treat to see them for the second time after spending Thanksgiving with them in Ohio. They're 'snow birds' that had just arrived to spend the cold winter months there for their 31st year. They'll be 90 on their shared birthday, January 30th!

Gator, Everglades National Park

Simplifying

Contents of Brian's pack for the year

We have been simplifying. We thought we did this before leaving Kauai, just over a year ago! But after traveling for a year living out of our backpack, moving every 3-4 weeks, and seeing what others have to live. You really see how much you NEED and how much you DON'T need.
I (Brian) had a few pairs of shorts, 2 pairs of pants, and a hand full of shirts (you know for all occassions). Once I got back, I naturally went right back to those clothes, even though I have others now. I am not sure what people think who see me regularly? I now have about 3x as many clothes as I had and am wondering do I really need all these clothes. Crazy stuff.
We have simplified enough to get down to 2 hike packs and 1 duffel bag, along with 2 day backs/carry-ons, & Beth's purse.

We have spent time digitizing as much as possible. Old photos, old papers, old journals etc. It is amazing how you can keep all those memories, but on digital files which is weightless and compact. The perfect travel size.
We are ready to pick up our home/life and move at a moments notice.

The Vita-Mix

There is one item that I just can't seem to part with. We use it everyday and it makes a ton of different things. I feel like a travel ad for them, but it really is the best kitchen tool. It comes rather large though, but for now worth the weight and size. It is a vita-mix. I don't think you can even put it in the blender category, but yes, it is like a blender, only way better, like a Jamba Juice blender.

Simplifying the things in life is easy, once you see how much you can live with and once you don't have attachments to things, but for now I am attached to the vita mix.

New Year New Journey

Sunset on the Gulf, Englewood, FL

We are vessels for God. We are working on being obediant to where God wants us, but we are always a work in progress.

Our life is, I guess, anything but ordinary. We have been transformed. We have changed and want to keep changing.

Right now, to be honest, where we are going next is pretty loose. Florida until January 20, then Texas. Adventually Thailand, with a few other stops in between. We have a vision that we feel called to carry out.

There are life's little details to figure out; where to live, where to get a part-time job, how do we get from... to.... Will we have enough people called into this with us to see it come true. It can be discouraging, exhausting, frustrating.

But then, I remember God. It is so easy to loose focus.
If we are following God, the details will be worked out. Doors will open and close. There will always be people who make it more difficult. We had a friend tell us, if you have resistance then you know you are walking in the right direction for God.

We are ordinary people, living as ordinary radicals. Living one day at a time.