Jambo! Update from Belwop!

Jambo! Hello, from Belwop!

I'm finally here and it is amazing...really no words can describe what it is like, but amazing will do for now.

When Lauren, David, Sammy, Veronica, and our driver Charles picked me up from the airport I could hardly believe that they were standing in front of me. I hadn't seen Lauren since New Years 2010 and I had never met any of the others, only seen them in pictures.

Almus, Lauren, and Jane.

Lauren, for those of you who don't know is the sort of leader of the pack. I met her on my mission trip to New Orleans in July 2009 and we bonded because we had a mutual friend, Geoff Spencer. From that moment on we have been friends and even as God called me to New Orleans Lauren and I stayed in touch and she continued to talk about Belwop and Veronica. This is Lauren's third trip to Belwop, although much shorter than her last two trips (1 month and 5 months)

David Martinez with Peris

David, has also played a large part in helping Belwop, being sort of the green thumb of the group. Helping with the shamba (farm) so that the kids can feed themselves with food they plant. This is his second trip and he is also the wonderful boyfriend of the wonderful Lauren. Sammy, a friend of Lauren's from La is on his first trip to Belwop, just like me!

Sammy teaching (L to R) Sharon, Irene, Caroline,
Sammy, Michek, Moses, and Zipporah.

Veronica Mumbi (Mum)

Lastly, VERONICA, also known as Mum, is the Mum of all 23 of the kids that live at Belwop as well as 5 of her own kids, and of course she has adopted all of us who come here to visit as our Kenya Mum! Meeting Veronica has been the most surreal, she is in a sense famous, well at least to me, because I had only seen her in videos, pictures, on the webstie and of course on facebook. She is an incredible woman of God, her faith is unfailing and continuous. Her laugh is beautiful and her smile is infectious, and most of all her unconditional love towards everyone she meets is incredible.

The first few days here has been busy. We have visited another farm, planned out what we want to do with our trip, played with all the kids, gave them their gifts, started building a dehydrator (something they can use to dehydrate the food that comes from the shamba (farm)). Sunday was so special, we held church at the orphanage and the kids lead the whole thing. It brought me to tears to see these kids worship God. A lot of them have been through so much...from abuse to neglect to abandonment but through Christ using Belwop and Veronica they have found joy and peace. This is an incredible place. Below is a picture of everyone with all the clothes, toys, and supplies that ya'll have donated!



Originally I thought this trip would involve a lot of moving the kids to the new house, but in Africa you have to pay off the entire cost of the house. So, before we can do that we must raise the remainder of the money. At the beginning of this month we had 30,000 left to raise in order to completely pay it off, as of today, we have only $2,900 left! God is good.

So, perhaps, with your help we will be able to move them after all! You can help us by either buying some belwop kicks here: belwopkicks.blogspot.com or by donating belwopproject.com/give.

Lastly, I want to send my prayers and love to those in New Orleans who are dealing with Hurricane Isaac. All of us over here in Kenya are lifting you up.

Na Upendo (with love),

Heidi sMiles

Leaving on a jet plane....

TODAY IS THE DAY!!!

It's finally here! Thank you so much to the Teitelbaum's, the Baldwin's, Jack and his parents from church at Vintage, to Liz, Meredith, Grace, Anna, Phoenix, Grandma/Grandpa Miles, Lauren and Robert Hance, Beth and Joby Lucca, Dianne Weber, and Kirt for helping me by either donating their time, money, or clothes/toys for me to bring over to Africa! Below are pictures of all that I will be bringing over because you gave!!

After putting this all in suitcases I had two large suitcases full of stuff for the kids!

Close ups on the suitcase and other items! We were able to get everything from shirts to pants, sweatshirts, to batteries and glow sticks to jewelry!

And now here are the details of my trip! I am leaving on a 7pm flight to Atlanta and then from there heading to Amsterdam where I will have a nice 8 hr layover then fly to Nairobi, Kenya arriving this Friday, August 24th at 6:25am where I will be greeted by Lauren and David in the van. We will then drive a little over 2 hours to the BELWOP orphanage where I will get to meet Veronica and all the kids!! And of course please be praying for safe travels!

THANK YOU so much to those of you that gave financially online on indiegogo.com! There will be pictures to come of where your dollars are going! I will be trying to blog about 3-4 times while I am away so be sure to check for updates.

Lastly, I just want to say thank you to the Vintage and Harbor Church Communities for supporting me in prayer and helping me prepare for this trip!

Love ya'll and see ya when I return!

Heidi Smiles

Hey Friends!

Over the past year or so, I am sure you have heard me mention wanting to go to Africa! Well, this summer God has made this possible! I am finally going! I will be joining a great friend of mine, Lauren Cray, as well as some others on a mission trip to help move orphans into a new home. My adventure, from New Orleans to Africa, actually began before I met Lauren on a mission trip to New Orleans. This journey begins with a woman named Veronica!

The short version of the story
Veronica gave up everything to follow her calling to give hope to the neglected, orphaned and abused children of Africa. And thus, the birth of Belwop Rescue Center, an orphanage in Nyeri, Kenya. For the past 4-5 years, Lauren and a young lady Kate Johnson, have been joining together with other friends here in the US to support the needs of Belwop. Through hosting fundraising events, putting on dinners, camps, video online campaigns, True Religion concerts they were able to provide for most of the needs of Belwop. However, one large need still remained: SPACE. Belwop had grown and no longer had any more room for children who came daily in need of a home!

But, HOPE has a home, and this year Belwop was entered into a contest through Cultivate Wines and in March WON the $50,000 that enabled them to finally purchase a place to call their own! While the Belwop Project and Friends of Belwop, Inc. are still working to raise the final $30k for a matching grant (to fully pay off the home's balance), Lauren Cray, her boyfriend and other friends of Belwop are headed out this summer to help move the babies into the new place! It's in the small town of Nyeri, Kenya, can be easily expanded as Belwop continues to grow and is perfect for what they need right now! Best part is - Belwop OWNS it! No more renting!!! Everything from here is expansion to welcoming more children into a loving home!

Here is how you can help
So, I am sure you are thinking, how can I help be a part of the Belwop Story? Well, what we want to do is figure out a way to help furnish the new house as much as possible! Turn the house into a HOME! I already bought my plane ticket, as did the rest of the team and have saved up enough to sustain ourselves for the 16 days we are out there! So, here is where you come in! We need your help in 3 simple ways:

1. Through PRAYER. Prayer for travel, safety, provision for what Belwop needs, for Veronica, for the team while we are there serving their needs, for the children through the move and for us to be effective in helping fulfill any needs of Belwop that arise while we are there.
2. Through SPREADING THE WORD. Tell your friends and family about what we are trying to accomplish. Share this post, share the video I have linked to below. Show them how they can be a part of someone else's story far away from our world just by giving of their prayers and/or finances.
3. Through GIVING. You can be a part of financially helping Belwop house become a home and here is exactly how! http://www.indiegogo.com/back2belwop

• 15 new bunk beds ($200 each = $3,000)
• Lights = $300
• Wall decor and paint supplies = $200
• A fruit and vegetable stand = $500
• Contribution for the getting the new children in the home/school expenses = $1000
• OR donate shoes, toiletries, pants, shirts, socks, undergarments, sweaters, blankets, pillows, sheets, books, toys to the children who are already in the orphanage, but also to those that will come in the future.

Please drop off or send these items to my address:

2334 Chippewa Street

New Orleans, LA 70130

If you would like to commit to pray for us, please email me at address below with your mailing address and I will send you a reminder card.

heidismiles157@gmail.com

So, please, consider committing to pray for us before, during, and after our trip, giving financially, and/or just plain telling others about what we are trying to accomplish and how they can help! Together, we can make Belwop a home!!

Below are a few links if you would like to learn more about The Belwop Project.

1. http://www.indiegogo.com/back2belwop - Where you can donate financially towards the items above!

2.http://belwopproject.com/story - The documentary some friends of Belwop (Geoff Spencer) made last time they were there. Please watch this! As it is an incredible story and will definitely show you why God has put this project so heavily on my heart

3. http://friendsofbelwop.org/Friends_of_Belwop/About_us.html - Where you can learn more about Belwop and the kids that currently live there

Thanks to all you friends and family who have always supported me in my adventures! Can't wait for this one!

Love,

Heidi Smiles

A much needed update

Hello world,

Considering it has been probably over a year since I have written on here and I have realized that blogs are not really for me...I guess I am going to be a once a year sort of blogger...or maybe a phase blogger. Write three times in a week and then not again for 6 months. But honestly, I just enjoy being in the world and loving people and exploring then writing about it on here.

However! there is a benefit, I found myself reading what I wrote and laughing because of all the memories it brought back to me. And after all, as you get older, a year seems a lot less like a year and more like no time at all. Hence why out of nowhere I am turning 25 this year. WOW.

Okay, updates. I'm going to stick to a bullet point list....sad...but that's the way it goes.

• Still living in New Orleans, but no longer in the boon docks where the cows hang out and people call where I live: down the road and refer to me as a Violation since I lived in Violet! No, now I live in Uptown, a great combination of living in a community while still being close to the city and awesome things like magazine street which is full of shops and restaurants like Steins, a great breakfast spot that the roomies and I frequent...which Lisa, the most frequent Steins member, has become the best of friends with the owner and gets us things like free shirts and bagels on credit
• Ok, second, I know these bullet points are turning into more like paragraphs...but ya'll know I am a talker...so I just am typing what is spitting out of my brain and into my fingers on the keyboard
• Third, I have a new job! I work, ON STAFF, with a REAL salary for a non profit called phoenix of new orleans (pnola.org) as a Project Manager!! AHHH! I'm growing up! Scary berry.

And that is all for now.

later.

Your love is strong

I am in pure aww of God right now. He is so good.

To further explain... lately I have been feeling homesick for lots of things ranging from my family to my church to the marvelous and amazing in-n-out and thus have not been in the best of moods and have talked about in-n-out way to much and been a little grumpy for the past day or so..BUT God stepped in, as he often does at the moment when you least expect it and changed everything.

Today my friend Jen introduced me to an amazing Church that she herself had just been introduced to last week. The Church is called Vintage and is made up of mostly people 30 and under and honestly is exactly everything that I could possibly want in a church. Friendly people, spectacular worship, and a great message...and most importantly the right attitude and posture towards God and religion itself. What I believe Christianity is about is exactly what this Church thus far (seeing as I have been once) displays. I believe that Christianity is all about love. That is what everything comes down to. Love God, Love others.

1 John 4:19 "We love because Christ first loved us."

Anyways, this whole day has been amazing and Church was amazing and God has affirmed so many things for me today. Especially since last night I was talking to my roomies about what I believe, and how when you break down the Bible, it is about love, and why I don't drink and what I think of those people who yell at people and tell them they are going to hell on Bourbon street and just what I believe in general and and then I go to Vintage Church tonight and that is exactly what the Pastor was talking about.

To quickly recap, the message was all about how in our world we are constantly attacked by others in different ways (hit, sued, forced, demanded) and that our natural reaction is to fight back, to sue back, to force back, to demand back but God wants us to react differently, he wants us to sacrifice our bodies, our possessions, our time/service and our money for everyone, even those who hate us, who are our enemies.

Embrace the love of Christ, not the love of the world.

WOW. I am so happy. God is Good. His Love is Strong.

Goodnight.

P.S.- listen to the lyrics of this song, really listen. "Your Love is Strong" by Jon Foreman

Shell Beach, New Orleans (photo credit Phoenix)

Yet another amazing sunset in New Orleans

the adventure begins!

Hello all, friends, family, and the blogging world!

So begins the adventures of heidi smiles... a documentaion of my life for those of you who have the time to read about it! :)

Before sharing more about what I am up to I must throw out a disclaimer to all of you out there who may be reading this or end up reading this at some point! I have never kept a blog, unless you count a livejournal I had back in like 9th grade that I probably posted something on twice, therefore there this blog may be a bit messy grammatically and may not always be so eloquent, but I shall try my best since I really do want to keep everyone updated on this new adventure in my life!

About 4 weeks ago my family and I embarked on a journey over half way across America to an amazing city called New Orleans. A city filled with spirit, music, life, family, and food. Fast forward to about 5 months ago and had you asked me if I would ever find myself moving to New Orleans I would have answered most definitely not. However, God has a plan and that plan isn't always what we expect it to be and so today I find myself living in the great city of New Orleans.

Maybe some of you are wondering what lead to me moving here and for those of you who are, I shall tell you! This past June I graduated from the University of California, Irvine and realized I had to start figuring out what I was going to do with the rest of my life! So, instead of applying to grad schools right away I decided to do a bunch of things that I had been wanting to do, but never made time to do.

So, after moving back home with my parents to save money, I spent the summer helping out at church at youth group (jr high and high school), being a leader in my churches summer day camp and being a counselor at high school camp for a week. I then flew down to Irvine and from there went on a missions trip to New Orleans with a group of people from my church that I had been attending during college.

Everything that I did this last summer has helped me grow so much in who I am and has challenged me to become a better christian and have a closer relationship with Christ. I feel more confident in my beliefs and more comfortable to express those beliefs to others. I would love to share more, but I don't want this post to go on forever, so feel free to ask me about it and I can expand more!

Anyways, back to why I am where I am. My first day in New Orleans volunteering with St Bernard Project I was talking with my Site Supervisor, Daniel, who was in charge at the house I was working on. We talked about how he had ended up in New Orleans and what SBP was all about, how americorps worked, etc. And that very first day he told me I should apply to work with SBP...This sort of shocked me and my first reaction was...hmm..sounds cool, but probably not right now...I need to go to grad school first...but as I began to talk with my team mate Lauren more about this and whether or not it would be a good idea...it occured to me...WHY NOT? and so I began to pray about it and asked my team to pray about it.

Later in the week I had a conversation with my team leader about why I had not gone on more mission trips and how a lot of times I let what people think of me hinder my actions. Coincidentally that same night my other team mate Dominic gave a devotional all about trusting in God and said the same thing I had been talking about only 4 hours earlier about letting what others may think of you hinder you from doing God's will. And then went on to say that God just wants you to Go. This hit me hard...and I knew that God was specifically speaking to me through what dominic was saying! God wanted me to just Go...where to, I wasn't sure, but I knew Grad school was going to have to wait and that I was going to have to Go, no matter how terrifying that seemed.

After that amazing experience in New Orleans I came back to Brentwood determined to figure out what was next and then things began to distract me and I kept putting off everything and then decided to just go ahead and take my exams for grad school just so I had options. However, soon God began to send small signs to me reminding me about New Orleans. First, while working at my Dad's store a man came in and began to talk to me and soon enough I find out he is from the exact neighborhood that I had been volunteering in New Orleans....THEN and I think this was one of the most significant signs for me! I was with my friend Rianna visiting her school that she was attending in the fall for college and we walked into the library and there on the wall was a giant painting with a cross on it and small letters that said "help me" and then in the corner it said "New Orleans, LA"!! I knew that again this was God reminding me that I needed to go back there and I decided right then and there that I was not going to be a Jonah, I was going to go back to New Orleans no matter what it took.

Next began a long process of applying and interviewing and waiting and waiting to find out if I had gotten the job with Americorp at St Bernard Project! And considering I am here in New Orleans you can only guess that I did get the job!

Now!! It has been about three weeks since I started working here and it has been amazing! This city needs so so much help and I can not image myself anywhere but here. There is something so comforting about being exactly where you know God wants you to be. Sometimes, as a human, I doubt that, but then something will happen and I will be reminded, "yes, Heidi, you are meant to be here".

So far I have had two weeks of training and started my actual job for just one week doing site supervising, which is basically where you have volunteers come to the house you are supervising the building process of and you teach them what they need to know to get whatever done that needs to be done! This last week I worked on lots of finishing work on a home that is almost done! Being a site supervisor is a lot of work with my hours being from 8am-5pm 5 to 6 days a week, but it is so much fun and so worth it when you see a family move into their home that they have been out of for 4.5 years! :)

New Orleans is an amazing city filled with amazing people, however a lot of those amazing people have not been able to move home after four years of living in trailers or in a friend or families home. There is so much work that needs to be done and it shocks me how little the rest of the country is aware of the situation here. I mean, even I was shocked, I had no idea that New Orleans even needed any more assistance! I thought that it must have been done, it was four and a half years ago!! how could it not be rebuilt. But I can honestly tell you, it is not!

Now, I hope that you are wondering how you can help!! And there are lots of ways! One super easy way to help that doesn't involve any money or really any of your time minus about 90 seconds is to go on facebook in January, I will remind you all, and vote for SBP on the Chase Community Giving Page! We just recently won round one and received 25,o00 dollars and now if we can win round two we will receive 1 million dollars which will bring 66 families home!! :) Another awesome way would be if you came and volunteered!! I would love to have you and you can even have me as your site supervisor!! :) If you want to do this, ask me for more information and we can make it happen!

Well, this first post has been very long so I shall wrap it up now and promise you that they will not be this long in the future! Thanks for reading! And Merry Christmas!

Love,

Heidi Smiles