Ashleigh Martell
Why Mission Year?
Let’s not start with me.
I’d rather begin with God. He’s a character and a half.
I know a mere blog wouldn’t be able to contain the pages of babble I’d love to give on this subject, but who cares? God’s been moving and breathing in my life more so than ever before. I’m beginning to feel His presence more than my own. Weird? Maybe. Exciting? You bet. He’s alive and pursuing – and that’s why this blog is here in the first place. I certainly never assumed I’d be so excited about living under the poverty line during what would be my sophomore year of college. However, as He does, God intervened like crazy. And I adore it. He’s the first – and really the only – reason I’m doing this.
I heard about Mission Year from a friend about a year ago. Since I’m the reading nerd that I am, I researched the program for a few weeks and tried to figure out why it was so appealing. Maybe it was because I’d been feeling like Christ-followers don’t do enough for each other for years, feeling like those considered ‘poor’, ‘unfortunate’ and ‘oppressed’ shouldn’t be labeled, but shown love and taught how important they are, feeling like I was wasting my time in comfort, ignoring these problems. I used to say I want to do everything. Now, I just want to do enough.
I want to do enough to create a laugh. Enough to start a friendship. Enough to change that look in your eye. Enough to stir hope inside someone who’s given up.
I guess I could touch on who I am real quick, even though lately I’ve been learning just how little I matter as an individual. I’m eighteen and I’m currently studying at Johnson Bible College in Knoxville, Tennessee.
I’ve had a pretty different experience growing up than most. Most of my birth family isn’t here and alive with us. After my Dad passed when I was nine, my Mom’s health starting deteriorating. And so eighth grade marked the beginning of foster care. Five foster home placements and one group home (modern day orphanage) later, I was chosen by my current foster parents. My birth Mom and my foster parents work together in my life as influences, role models and close friends. So much so, that I consider myself to have three parents. Believe me, that’s the ten second version of those years.
Let’s wrap it up: I also have three sisters (2 birth and a foster sister), am a vegetarian, love good books, and live near the beach in Chesapeake, Virginia.
But most importantly, I want to get “out of the pews, and into the world”. I want to spend less, and share more. I want to be an “ordinary radical”. I want to “walk out on the water where I have no control”. I want to “sell my clothes, and keep my thoughts”. And I want “to love others as myself”.
That’s what matters. And that answers, “Why Mission Year?”
About Mission Year
Mission Year is a year long urban ministry program focused on Christian service and discipleship. We take teams of young people, place them in an area of need, and help them to serve people and create community. We are committed to the command of Jesus to “love God and love people,” by placing the needs of our neighbors first and developing committed disciples of Christ with a heart for the poor. Learn more about our first year program…
Ashleigh Martell's Blog
P.s. / Oct 16, 03:13 PM
Oh, by the way, I cut my hair last week.
Extreme Creative Planning / Oct 14, 01:04 PM
Every Monday through Thursday, our camp staff gets together for the hour before the kids arrive to plan, pray and just get ready for that day of camp. This year, staff are expected to turn in their plans two weeks in advance, so we’re using that free hour wisely! A couple of days ago during that hour, I spent a lot of time figuring out how to relate a couple different games to various Bible lessons, since games are much harder to parallel with a moral than crafts. One of the lessons caught my eye in particular…
John (one of Urban Promises interns who plans the Bible lessons that I match activities to) planned a Bible lesson for one Thursday that talked about God’s love and went on to a bunch of different tangents, one of which concerned the different ways God talks to people. Since we were just listening to outlines, matching the activity and moving forward, I didn’t give the lesson too much thought until I got home, but it’s something I think is pretty cool.
Face to face, prophets, the Bible and other writings, preachers, coming to earth and living an example, prayer, small “coincidences”, internal nudges that we call our “gut” – God uses all of these to teach us new things, remind us of old things, beat us over the heads with things we can’t seem to understand. From this, I got to thinking: why does God use so many distinctive ways to communicate with us? I mean, He created us (Genesis 1:27, John 1:3), He knows more about us than we ourselves ever will (Matthew 10:30,31), and He’s the One who’s planned out our lives and knows our every thought, action, impulse from our past and future. (Ezekiel 11:5). He could’ve simply created us to talk with Him through one mode… and wouldn’t that be simpler? Imagine if God simply communicated with us through sermons. We’d have a heck of a lot of good speakers! And we’d know exactly where to go to learn about our Creator. So, was God just being difficult? Is He indecisive?
Nah. I think it’s pretty clever. I know this a bit of a tangent, but I started thinking about how unique each one of us was made. We all think differently, look differently, react differently and essentially live differently than everyone else. And there are an insane amount of us living on this globe! That’s some creativity. So if there’s this much diversity in our world, it makes sense that God would give us a diverse group of ways to hear from Him, right? I think so too…. And as out-there as this is, once I came to the above conclusion, I was reminded of learning styles.
We hear all throughout school how “everyone learns differently”. We’re forbidden from making fun of someone if they draw things out to understand them and we get reprimanded for saying someone is weird if they use a hundred flash cards for memorizing. As we progress through school, we’re forced to try out every single type of learning habit possible – from memorization, to acronyms, to drawing, to singing, to writing, to reading and reading and rereading to acting out what we’re studying. By college, we’re expected to know which study habit works for us and how we best learn new concepts. I don’t think learning from God is any different. In fact, I think learning styles relate to the ways he speak to us as well –
(Ways God speaks to us)———> (Ways we learn):
Face to face —————>bold, one on one attention
Prophets———————->through other, more educated people
Bible——————————>by reading
Sending son——————>acting out, seeing an example first
Coincidence——————->applying what we’re learning to everyday life
Prayer——————————>consistently thinking/reminding ourselves
Preachers————————->hearing what we’re studying spoken out loud
So I know it’s kind of iffy and a bit of a stretch, and I probably left out a few, but it was neat to see this. And it’s something to think about… I mean, if this were true, even in a small, barely there way, how would it affect the way we looked at these ways of communication with God? How would it affect our time with Him? How would we focus our time differently? Would we develop more intentional habits? Would we be able to let go of some frustration in an area that we didn’t feel like we were receiving answers?
Instant Ashleigh - just add internet. / Oct 7, 03:29 PM
Hey y’all! I realized that I hadn’t yet written a quick little “this-is-what’s-going-on” blog.. so, Merry Christmas:
Wilmington is fantastic! I love living in a smaller city. There’s definitely a great deal of southern hospitality in the people here so I never pass by someone without a “Hello”, “Good morning”, “What’s good” or “URBAN PROMISE!!!” – that last one is from the guys on the corner by our house, who are normally scream that every time one of us passes by. :] I’m not sure if they remember all of our names, but they def. know where we work!
Speaking of Urban Promise, I am so happy there! I love working with my kids every day and seeing them learn and change and fight and play football. I work with 1st through 5th graders Monday through Thursday from 2pm- 6pm. The daily routine pretty much consists of the following: since our program was moved up five blocks from the neighborhoods are kids are from, we walk down to the old church it was held in to pick the kids up. They walk down to the nearest corner store and buy candy most days, which I’m starting to love because now I’m the recipient of some awesome sour straws that cost 2 for a quarter. :] (And once the kids found out I liked them, they ALL give me about one a day). We then walk the kids up to the church we hold camp in and let them free play for about an hour to relax from school. Next comes snack (or pretty much a meal provided by the government) and homework help. Then it’s a specific scheduled activity for Monday/Wednesday or a Bible lesson from John and game/craft/activity planned by me on Tuesday/Thursdays. All of that takes up most of our time and we then walk the kids back and say goodbye. These kids are phenomenal! I feel like I may end up writing a single blog for each of them – which’ll be fine because I only have about 15-16 of them. :]
As far as the house goes, Mission Year knows what they’re doing when they make placements! Community living obviously has its challenges, and we’re really starting to discover and work through some, but our team simply lives together well. I get to cook a lot, which I adore! We had some awesome lasagna last night, no lie. :] Actually, pretty much everyone cooks but Jason…who makes a mean pancake.
[[I’m trying to think of the things I need to update everybody on without simply repeating the letter I sent our last week!]]
Okay, I’ll cover some challenges and then I think I’ll be done. Food has been one. Vegetarian options are almost impossible to come by in my neighborhood. The local grocery, Save-A-Lot, carries soy milk about every couple of weeks in one flavor… which I’ve come to love. The fruits and veggies are normally home to a number of little gnats flying around and the meats are… under par. Some of the Urban Promise staff has been so nice in taking us with them when they go grocery shopping on Saturdays in Chester, Pa. We go to one place for meats, one for fruits and veggies and hit a larger Save-A-Lot on the way back. It’s so great! We’ve had delicious fruits and veggies the past two weeks so we are going to keep up that weekly tradition if possible! I’ve come to eat A LOT of fish as well, since soy products aren’t anywhere. But it’s teaching me to realize that vegetarianism is really part of a privileged lifestyle.
Oh, and I want to talk about my church real fast! The Evangelistic Temple of Truth has about forty members that are all so insanely welcoming. Every Sunday I feel like they’re all so happy to see me…which is a feeling I’m coming to treasure. We went to the Wednesday night Bible Study last week for the first time and as soon as we walked in Pastor Ellis announced how he’d been praying that we’d be able to make it. They’re all so sincere and… just LOVING. This past Sunday was Communion Sunday, which we stayed for and I though it was so awesome how they have a feet washing service following communion. There are areas where our views clash and an obvious break in age but I know that I’m going to learn so much from these people. I adore the importance they place on salvation and serving each other. It’s so obvious in their lives that they try to live out the truth of Scripture. Next weekend, about half of our group is going with them in a trip to Lancaster, Penn. I’m not so sure what the trip is for, but it’s time to connect with more people!! :]
Alright, this is getting loooong. There are still so many things I want to update everyone on, but I thought I needed to do a quick overview at least. Sorry it took me a month! I’ll try to stay more on top of things. :)
Keep praying for us, please! For new relationships and deeper connections, for awkward and hard moments, for God sightings throughout our days. Love you guys.
Ash
Big Money for Lyin' / Oct 1, 02:30 PM
Since I’ve been here, I feel like there is an impossible amount that I want to get out of my head and down onto paper (or screen). Whether it be a new idea learned, an old perspective broadened or a current belief better articulated, I seriously feel as if my brain is simply going to drop everything out the back if I don’t make sense of some of it soon. I don’t know where to start, but more so, I don’t like being indecisive. So, here we go.
There’s a quote that I can’t stop thinking about from this week:
“Location, perhaps more than other any decision, disturbs the delicate balance we have tried to achieve between mammon and spirit. In this issue, the American Dream collides with the vision of God’s kingdom here on earth, exposing them to be as different from each other as darkness and light.”
-Bob Lupton (If I could bold the first sentence, I would, but I haven’t figured out how to do that just yet. That’s gonna be my focus.).
Burn.
I don’t know a single soul who can argue that they’ve never struggled trying to figure out how to balance those two. We live in a money obsessed nation. We’ve adopted mammon as our primary god. Materialism and consumerism define our lifestyles. Reaching the America Dream symbolizes a blessing – ‘God wants the best for us’, right? I feel like we use that last statement as a cop out to letting ourselves fall prey to the trendy “prosperity gospel”. Yes, God want the best for us, Jeremiah 29:11 seems to explain that pretty well, but who are we to assign standards to His definition of “best”? I mean, get real. Let’s look at Job. Or Abraham…
And we’ve done this for centuries. This isn’t a new fad, as much as we like to paint it that way, since we’ve now got advanced, new fangled everythings. 1st Timothy 6 seems to talk about this topic endlessly, and it was written somewhere between AD 62-64.[[vs. 5 ‘and constant friction between men of corrupt mind, who have been robbed of the truth and who think that godliness is a means to financial gain.’; vs. 6-10, But godliness with contentment is great gain. For we brought nothing into the world, and we can take nothing out of it. But if we have food and clothing, we will be content with that. People who want to get rich fall into temptation and a trap and into many foolish and harmful desires that plunge men into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs’]].We’ve come to believe we can live comfortably serving God and mammon, despite Matthew’s reminder. (Ch. 6:19, 21, 24)
Then there’s the issue of the actual subject in this quote: location. Before now, I’d never considered location as such a key player in this fragile and elusive tango we share with the God of Israel and the god of the personification of money. But since I’ve been in Wilmington, or with MissionYear more precisely, I’ve read or heard the word “relocation” more than I can keep track. I think I’ve neglected this issue ad I’m beginning to realize why it’s such a controversial matter.
With this topic, there are questions that I need to consider: how effective can not only my ministry but the witness of my lifestyle be if I live in the suburbs? Can I effectively foster meaningful relationships with “the least of these” in our society if I commute in? How much needs truly be invested into relocating – can I live in the community and commute out for work, school, leisure? How literal do I take the word ‘neighbor’ – do I continue to blanketly apply it to all God’s creation, faceless unending quantities, or do I define it to those on my block and to my sides? Can I exist as a committed Christ follower AND a lame neighbor? Is “blanketly” a word?
I see the positive effects of living alongside the poor: when we do so, help is not charity, it’s sharing. We acknowledge that they too have something to offer back to us and in doing so, affirm their dignity as a human, a friend (which mission trips and random acts of kindness, as good intentioned as they are, often steal from the recipients receiving the kindness). In relocating, we bring our resource to the community and most importantly, we keep them there. We invest in community businesses and developments and so our dollar is recycled through the town’s economy. We not only act intentional with the way we invest our resources, but we encourage our neighbors to do the same. We help to empower indigenous leadership, bringing hope to those once in despair over the exodus of the inner city (where too often those who “make it” abandon those who don’t). And if we’re moving in as a minority, we seek reconciliation between races, religions, social statuses.
Christ lived beneath His means, didn’t He?
And further, WHY is location the ‘disturber’? Do we truly seek so much of our identity through where we’re planted? I believe so. The American Dream includes it – and I think it’s safe to say that many of us have at some point adopted this dream as the “guiding standard” for God’s will for us, as mentioned earlier. Kind of.
I’m not saying at all that relocation is the mark of a true Christ follower. I haven’t eve worked out my own beliefs on this. But it is something to mull over, don’t you think? I think I’ve begun to ramble…
And oh yeah, the title of this is just a quote from our pastor this week.
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Details, details. / Aug 8, 01:02 PM
Helllllo everyone!
Since my first “intro” post a good number of months ago -and I mean a GOOD couple of months, I’m not even 18 anymore, haha – I haven’t kept up with this because, honestly, I didn’t have much to post! Now, I finally know my city AND my team! I’ve known that I’ll be in Wilmington since April but just a few hours ago I learned who I’ll be there with. :] Those lucky people (kidddding) are Jason Price, Linda True, Paula Apone, Chris Tolle and Richard Burchfield (Hey guys. :]) Now you all have specifics to pray for!
I’m getting really stoked about this year, especially now that everything is starting to unfold and feel a bit more real now that I know names and such. This summer has passed so quickly! Living by myself was fun (except for the creepy basement!) and I love Lynchburg but I’m glad I came home to visit my family a few weeks earlier than expected. So for these last couple week I get to hang out with everyone, enjoy the family Y membership (yes! couldn’t afford this on my own!), play with my baby sister, raise lots and lost of support and lounge on the beach until September…when the real work (and fun!) begins. :]
I’ve heard news from a bunch of people that they’ve recently sent in donations to my account, which is EXTREMELY encouraging! (Thanks again!) Once all those go through, I’ll try and figure out the little meter I can post on here so y’all can watch my progress!
Well, that’s all for the new stuff. I’ll be updating much more from now on since it’s so close to when I move in…so keep checking so you know what I’m up to! :]
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