R a i s i n g C a n e y . c o m

As most of you know, Tasha and I live in Ruston, La. As you also probably know, we are members of Chi Alpha Christian Fellowship. Having said that, we have considered Chi Alpha our “church” for quite some time. The love, fellowship, and community of college-aged believers here is incredible. The campus pastors truly have a heart for reaching the students on this campus. We love it. While we value Chi Alpha and it’s place in our life, we also want to be a part of a traditional church that reaches out to a broader community than our campus. Also, Chi Alpha encourages it’s members to participate in and find a “home” church.

Tasha and I have visited First Baptist – Ruston, South Parkway Church, Crossroads Baptist Church, Warrior School (AoG), and Jonesboro AoG over the past two years. We’ve met terrific people from/at all of the churches, but we never truly found a “fit.”

When my Mom gave her life to Christ several months ago and asked me to help her find a church family, Tasha and I went round and round trying to decide where to take her. She thought I should take her to her old church, Fellowship Baptist. I thought that I should take her to my old church, First Baptist. The night before she was to come to church with us, I stayed up until around 3am…praying that God tell me what to do…where to go…what to do.

Finally, God spoke… He told me “It doesn’t matter where. You bring her to church, I’ll bring her the message.” Wow. That having been said, my decision was made. If God would truly bring her a message regardless of where she went, then I might as well kill 2 birds with 1 stone. I could bring her to Fellowship (making my wife happy), and I would be bringing her to church (making God happy).

After service that Sunday, my Mom asked me “did you tell the pastor I was coming?! It was like he was talking SPECIFICALLY to me!” I laughed, because I knew that while I hadn’t told Brother Don anything, God had (given him that message).

Since then, every time Tasha and I have been in town, we go to Fellowship. If my Mom is off work she usually comes with us. I had never been to Fellowship, so I had never given it a chance! Basically, I’ve fallen in love with this family of believers. They are sponsoring me in my mission trip to South Africa this summer. They are allowing us to host our baby shower in their reception hall. They have a true heart for outreach and service to our community, and they have a strong heart for young believers (as well as reaching young non-believers). The preaching and the teaching is relevant and powerful. We went to Sunday night Bible Study there for the first time this weekend, and it was awesome.

Tasha and I both have a strong desire to invest in this church’s ministry. My biggest fear about this right now is the fact that our future is so uncertain right now! I really hope I get a job in Shreveport-Bossier so that we can continue to grow and invest in this wonderful family of believers after I graduate. It would truly be a blessing to be able to raise our daughter in a church family with the love of this church.

So Monday night, the Chi Alpha girls threw me an amazing baby shower.  I had a lot of fun, we played some games, ate great food (very important to a pregnant woman), and Caney got lots of great presents.  One of the games we played was predicting the measurement of my belly with a piece of yarn.  Most of the girls were way off, but a few came pretty close.  Caney got lots of cool stuff including diapers, wipes, a mirror for the car, a diaper genie, a travel bed, a prayer doll, socks, a baby on board sign, cute little outfits, a picture frame, bottles, an I Love Daddy bib (that her Daddy loves), and a crib dust ruffle.  I really appreciated all the effort the girls put into making my shower wonderful.  It was really touching how many girls were there to show support and love for Caney and me.  Caney is going to love her presents and spending time with all the Chi Alpha girls.

There were regional experiences representing the missionaries all across the world.  Europe and it’s harsh post-Christian culture, Africa and the AIDS epidemic and poverty and education crisis, China and it’s unreached masses.  There were even sessions on reaching Muslims and Hindu people here in the United States.  Every meal we had the opportunity to sit with missionaries from various places around the world.  At these meals, we got to learn about the personal struggles, motives, experiences, and excitements that these people face every day.  I ate with missionaries from China, Algeria, Lithuania.

There were some amazing times of prayer and worship at the summit…

When we found out about the trip to South Africa for this summer with our Chi Alpha group I felt God calling me to go.  The trip is 3 weeks long in late July-early August.  Canaan will be about 3 months old…  So I thought, and everyone I spoke to agreed, that this was a legitimate concern and reason (excuse) for not going on the mission trip.  Also, Tasha and I are on a pretty tight budget as a young married couple going through college, about to have a baby, and taking the world by storm.   People also agreed that this was an acceptable reason to not go on the trip.

This was all wrong though…

God spoke to me at the summit…  If GOD tells me to go somewhere, there is NOT legitimate excuse not to go.  If GOD tells me to go to Africa then God will make a way for me to afford getting there.

So while my selfish desires and conventional wisdom say that I had a pretty sound reasoning for NOT going, God has made it clear that as the Bible says… His foolishness is above man’s wisdom.

So I’m going to South Africa this summer.  So, many of you may be receiving (or have already received) letters requesting financial support/sponsorship to help me pay for this trip.  This will actually be my first mission trip…

I’m scared and sad about leaving my girls, but I’m leaving the camcorder with Tasha so she can record evvvvvery waking moment that I’m gone.

I know and understand that not all of you that I’ve contacted for support will be able to support me financially.  Where this is the case, I ask that you support our family and the mission team in prayer.  We believe that God will be faithful to provide, and we believe that your prayers help.

-Cy

So, as most of you know, Tasha and I are members of Chi Alpha. Chi Alpha is one of the campus ministries here at Louisiana Tech. The body of believers in Chi Alpha varies greatly as far as the background denominations of its members. The organization itself though, is sponsored by the Assembly of God (AG) church. AG hosts the World Missions Summit (WMS) every 3 years.  At WMS, Missionaries from all over the world come together to recruit, train, educate, inspire, and minister to (primarily) college students interested in being missionaries (long term, short term, etc.).

Over New Years holiday I had the opportunity to go to Cincinnati, Ohio  for WMS with a group of people who are in Chi Alpha with us.  Unfortunately, Tasha could not come, as her doctors advised her not to do any extended traveling as long rides and such can cause blood clots in her legs (and would be uncomfortable in general).  Soooo, Tasha and I spent our first married New Years apart …  The bus ride was about 13-14 hours I think, and I slept probably 12 of those hours.

There were big praise/worship and informational services and skits throughout the WMS.  In between these services we had breakout sessions and meals.  The breakout sessions were AMAZING.  The most popular one was probably the Eurasia Experience.

The Eurasia Experience is a tour of a fake “country” called Eurasia (referencing the geographic region, of course). Each visitor is issued a fake “passport.”  As we waited in line, customs workers came and separated us having men stand on one side and “women and the unclean” on the other.  Also, we were required to remove our shoes.  We were warned not to have any religious materials for distribution and that in Eurasia cameras and videos were not allowed.  As we waited to enter, the customs agents came through interrogating people about their religious materials and “arresting” people who had materials for distribution.  You enter the room, and men are issued a traditional ethnic hat from various Eurasian cultures.  The women are given scarf head-coverings.  You begin by walking through a “bazaar” where vendors are shoving “fresh meat” in your face.  The skinned goat’s head reeked, but it looked…plastic.  I touched it thinking it was fake.  It was real…and gross.  There were people “pickpocketing,” and there were so many people that you couldn’t tell who was doing it.  There were people selling women into prostitution/etc.  Then you get to a big room where we all sit on the floors.

People who are arrested are placed in a guarded mock jail-cell to the edge, but when everyone is seated the show begins.  There’s a man dressed in religious Hindu attire who dances through the crowd placing a red dot on the forehead of the women.  There’s a Buddhist who goes through the crowd performing a religious ceremony.  There’s an Orthodox Jew who goes through doing a ceremony. There’re Muslims on the center stage praying toward Mecca on mats.  Then, person after person comes through describing the violence, aggression, persecution (reasons NOT to go into missions) and finally, the breakthroughs (the reasons WHY to go into missions) that they experienced in different cultures or parts of the world.  These people are making a huge difference in the Kingdom of God, reaching people who would never have heard the Gospel of Jesus Christ, were it not for their selfless sacrifice.  It was…amazing.  The reason why cameras weren’t allowed was really “for security purposes.”  Some of the missionaries are in closed countries, places where they would be kicked out if discovered to be missionaries.  Even more unsettling, in some of these nations, missionaries can be arrested and ultimately executed.

It was…an amazing experience.  Also, we got to keep the hats!

This is only the beginning of the amazing things God did during this trip, but I’ll save that for the next post.

-Cy

So, Tasha and I watched Juno last year (the title of the post is a line from one of the soundtrack songs).  We both loved the movie, and we tried to get my Dad to watch it.  He lost interest almost immediately, but Tasha and I…still love it.  Many people don’t like it or haven’t seen it, and to that I say “GO WATCH IT!”  That having been said, here’s the poster for the film:

The Juno Poster

Now, here are the costumes Tasha and I wore to the Chi Alpha ROCKtober party:

Our Juno MacGuff and Paulie Bleeker Costumes

Now, again, not everyone had seen the movie, but everyone who recognized our costumes LOVED them.  We had tons of pictures taken of us.  It was a blast.

We definitely wanted to incorporate Tasha’s baby bump into our costume, so we originally considered going as an oven with a bun in it and a chef.  There’s a costume set you can buy for it, but we could only find the chef (aka Bun Maker) half.  We could have made the oven out of a box, but we didn’t want to spend that effort.  Then we remembered the movie, Juno, and our minds were made.

Completely unrelated to our costumes, we went to Heather Castille’s surprise 22nd b-day party a few days before the ROCKtober party.  Heather is a friend from Chi Alpha, and we bought her the Apples to Apples for her birthday.

Apples to Apples Card Game

Here are a couple of pics of us at the party:

Tasha, Cyrus, and Caney at Heather Castille's surprise birthday party

Tasha and Caney at Heather's party

There you have it ladies and gentlemen.  I am still trying to track down the poem about Caney mooning us in her ultrasound, but I can’t find it at the moment.  We have an appointment with Dr. Flores tomorrow just for a check up.  I’ll be sure to report back to you all soon.  Take care, and God bless you all.

-Cy