A Journey Back...Forward - Part 2

Walking to my next gate during a layover at the Tokyo airport, I ran into past participants from programs at MTI. This is the non-profit organization where I work in Colorado. We (Steven and Lauren Sauder & I) were all on the same flight. They are moving to Chiang Mai, Thailand for a 2-3 year initial time of service with Growing Entrepreneurs International. I meet them in Colorado, they are from Illinois, and here we are in Japan randomly on the same flight to Bangkok...What a small world!!

Moments like these, I appreciate community and reflect on how valuable it is in our lives. How sweet to have a chance to visit, swap stories, hear the latest news, be encouraged and hopefully be a bit of a blessing to others on the journey. I'm thankful for all the many friends along the path of life, and for whatever season or seasons we may travel together it is what makes the journey GREAT!

At this point in my trip back to Asia, this clear reminder of God's desire for us to know others and be known by them was rich. I am so thankful in this season of grief and transition for the incredible community of friends (in so many places) that fill my life to overflowing! The friends of seasons' past that remain steady and strong, but also the new relationships that have been an unexpected source of strength, grace and encouragement in these last eight months. Living out faith in community is something I have always valued, but never more than in my transition back to states while walking through grief. Lastly, it was such a sweet and perfect place to have a new, pleasant experience that created the first great memory of this trip.

Thankful for community...thankful for the Sauders...thankful for God's sweet, gentle reminder of His ways...

A Journey Back...Forward - Part 1

Wow! It's been a very long time since I've spent time sharing thoughts, stories, experienc- es, recaps of special events and portions of life here at The Magruder. There is much to share about the last 8 months of life. As I embark on a journey back to mostly familiar places in Asia, along with a new land to be encountered, I hope to recap not only this trip but also give commentary to the last 8 months of life. My last post was Part 1 of a 2 part series. This last entry is poignant for me. It's like a representation of how life, as it was, froze in time. A process of chipping away at the ice (working through grief and towards acceptance of all that has happened) began...and continues. Now, I have this very real and tangible experience of being back where I got a tragic phone call and being present to where life, as I knew it, ended abruptly. Grief has been the journey of the last 8 months, and now more than all five senses as well as heart and mind will be engaged in a journey filled with the hope of reconciliation and greater acceptance of all that was, is and will be.

I do hope by the end of this trip, to finally post Part 2 of "Bus Driver". Hope to share the fun, deep, meaningful, silly, difficult, sad, redemptive, adventurous and...well all the different types of moments these next two weeks hold. Thanks for going on the journey with me!

Bus Driver - Part I

My main mode of transportation is often the city bus. It’s always an adventure and a great way to see different parts of town. Often, I jump on a bus only to find that maybe walking would have been a much safer option! Yesterday, I had one of my more adventurous rides yet. I never ate at McDonalds back in the states, but I’ve found it to be a tasty treat and reminder of home. For some reason, I decided that I would make my monthly pilgrimage prior to jumping on my sweet ride, earlier said city bus. With my Mickey D’s in hand, I sat down only to find that the bus driver was one of the hyper types. These type careen down streets barely putting their foot on the brake even for turns. This particular driver even drove in the on coming lane of traffic for about

half a block until reaching a red light. We proceeded to sit through the entire light while cars heading our direction honked and swerved to miss us. There’s always lots of honking, but this guy seemed to never take his hand off the thing. As I was trying to eat and keep me, my computer bag and my coke from flying all around the bus, I thought about a recent story I had shared with some friends about another adventurous bus ride.

This bus ride story was the total opposite. The above story is quite common of many of my travels to various countries. However, the story I had shared was about a much calmer experience, such calm that it was quite alarming actually! It was as if there was an angelic children’s choir singing a beautiful rendition of “The Wheel’s On The Bus” with an added “birds chirping” sound affects in the background. He was going so slow that I was totally out of sorts. I kept checking the time to see if I was going to make it to my destination on time. Usually I don’t get too hot on the bus because there’s a breeze, but no breeze here because we’re going soooo slow! I never worried about being thrown out of my seat or my Mac being launched into the aisle. This bus driver was calm, cool and collected. It was crazy odd to me, but a nice break from the normal craziness I usually experience on my rides.

The common thread in both stories is the bus driver, but more specifically my questions for him. On both rides I was asking the same questions, “Mr. Bus Driver…What the heck? What is the deal? Why are you driving so _______________?” You can fill in the blank on that last question with a variety of words including the two extremes in my stories – fast or slow. Then I started thinking about my faith, my journey with God and my relationship with Him.

to be continued…

Christ is Risen! Indeed, He is Risen!

My Easter Celebration this year has been the most unique I’ve had in many years. I’m not interested in getting into dogma, theology and such (at least not in this post), but to just share my experience. I’ve celebrated the resurrection of Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ in many different church settings. I’ve gone to Catholic Mass, and I’ve participated in a Messianic Passover Seder Dinner. Thus far over my lifetime, I’ve mostly celebrated in a Protestant setting just after eating a hollowed out chocolate bunny for breakfast. ;)

Well, this year I attended my first Greek, and then Russian, Orthodox Church services. I was with friends in Hong Kong for an all day and night affair that started (well for me) about 1 in the afternoon with a late lunch at Outback Steakhouse. This was my first visit to a true chain restaurant overseas. It was a treat that’s for sure! Then we wondered through Hong Kong a bit before heading to the Greek service. After feasting on some absolutely INCREDIBLE food (love the Greeks and their food!), we headed to the Russian Orthodox Paschal service, which started at midnight (traditional time for this celebration). Then, following a 2-hour layover at a 24 hour McDonalds (waiting for the MTR in Hong Kong to open), a 2-ish hour trip back home (including crossing the border back into China)and a two hour nap, I headed to my own church fellowships’ Easter Celebration service here in Shekou. By the time this was all said and done, I had met, visited with and celebrated our resurrected Saviour with fellow believers in Jesus from Greece, Cyprus, India, Romania, Russia, Tajikistan, Hong Kong, Australia, South Africa, Mongolia, Italy, England, Myanmar, Philippians, Jamaica, Mongolia, Canada, Mexico, Brazil and China. What a special way to celebrate such a sacred and holy day. It was truly full of His life!

Christ is Risen! Indeed, He is Risen! I hope you’ll enjoy some of the other beautiful ways to express this life-changing truth.

Afrikaans... Christus het opgestaan ; hy het waarlik opgestaan.
Greek... Christos anesti ; aléthos anesti.
Hebrew... !המשיח קם! באמת קם - Ha-Masiah qom ; be-emet qom.
Hindi... Massih jee uthha- hai ; va-stav me? vo jee uthha- hai.
Italian... Cristo è risuscitato ; in verità è risuscitato.
Japanese... ハリストス復活実に復活 - Harisutosu hukkatsu ; jitsu ni hukkatsu.
Khmer... Preah Christ mean preah choan rous leong vinh ; trung mean preah choan rous leong vinh men.
Malagasy... Kristy dia nitsangana tamin'ny maty ; eny efa nitsangana marina tokoa Izy.
Chinese... ハリストス復活実に復活 - Jidu fuhuo liao ; zhende, ta fuhuo liao.
Nepali... Isu masiah byujhinuvayo ; bastabma sachikai uha byujhinuvayo.
Filipino... Si Kristo ay nabuhay ; totoo ngang nabuhay.
Spanish... Christo ha resucitado ; en verdad ha resucitado.
Swahil...i Kristu amefufuka ; kweli amefufuka.
Thai... Pha Kristo Tiao klap pen kune m lèo ; ting ting phra tong klap pén kune ma.
Tibetan... Yeshu kyarsön chesong ; lakso chesong.
Turkish... Mesih dirildi ; gerçekten dirildi.

Nepal Recap Video

Last July I had the great privilege to travel to Nepal with eight fellow MILLers for a month long mission trip. We had an incredible time connecting with a long time friend of theMILL James Lhomi. What an honor to serve along side him in the Manage region located deep in the Himalayas. He gives his all to serve and pastor the people in this area of Nepal. We were there for a couple of weeks. He kept thanking us for coming, but we were the ones blessed by his faithfulness and servanthood. In addition, we partnered with Bob Clinton of First Love International to serve at four of their children's homes located in Nepal. We spent the majority of our last two weeks at their Chitwan home. The children captured a part of my heart that is difficult to express. They inspired me to love deeper than I had before in my life, and they helped me realize that I can do that in extravagance by being humble and simple. They thanked us for coming, but they were the ones making the impact - not us. It was an unbelievable trip full of God's sweet and unmistakable presence along with adventure, love, laughter, beauty, awe, His still small voice, His almighty power, constant companions, grandiose views and a thousand sweet moments. I hope you'll have the time to check out this little recap. It's actually more of a documentary taking you along for the journey, therefore it's more on the long side. I'm no professional, so please forgive me for issues of quality and a very long buffering/download time. Put it on mute, let it sit for awhile and come back later for the viewing. :) Enjoy!

Nepal 2009 from Maggie Turner on Vimeo.

Simply Thankful

I generally like to talk and share with friends in order to process life. Over the years, journaling has begun to play a larger role in how I like to process. I actually enjoy and relish time by myself these days. The influence of many wonderful introverted friends along with a desire to embrace the discipline of solitude has no doubt helped. Since moving overseas, I've had more alone time than ever before in my life. To be honest, this was something I was a bit apprehensive about before moving. Turns out, I've really loved most of the time alone I've had these past five months. This has been one of the sweet surprises in this season.

I've found that it has brought about a deepening of my faith in ways both describable and indescribable. Solitude is often overlooked as valuable, and it is often over shadowed by a lack of simplicity (another rarely embraced spiritual discipline). These last five months I've lived quite simple. Not just physically with things, stuff, etc., but I've also lived simply due to my "lack" of social life and responsibilities. Now, don't get me wrong here I'm still a fan of a social life and engaging with people! I, also, look forward to a day when I feel challenged again with some good responsibility (I use the word good here because I've had my share of bad responsibility in my day...that's a topic for another blog or two). However, I've seen that there is much that can come from having space and less stress. I'm more available to the people around me. I can be more present to them. I'm not just thinking about the next thing..err I mean person on my schedule.

I, no doubt, will one day have a fuller schedule than what I currently have right now. I do hope to have a family someday and that seems to keep people on their toes! I'm just real thankful to have a season that will prepare me to walk into whatever my next "fuller" season is with a renewed vigor toward keeping Sabbath, living simply and loving fully even if it means not doing everything I'd like to do.

Give Up!

One of the things/ideas/themes I’ve been thinking and processing a lot the past year or so is surrender. Of course, as a believer and follower of Jesus, surrender is (or at least should be) a constant theme in walking out faith. So, I’ve made my first point without even getting to main idea of this post. Said idea is that of my own personal encounter lately with surrender.

I recently moved to China. Here’s my process of surrender put in the form of a list for the sake of time, and in an effort to get back to that original point.

*Saying yes to God to go at all… surrendering my will to His.
*Having said yes, but having no plan or place to go…surrending my way to His.
*Preparing to go….surrendering my will to His again and again and again and…well you get it.
*Leaving…surrendering my will, my way and my life as I knew it to Him.

So here I am living in China, and guess what? Yup! The surrender stuff just keeps coming like a hurricane that passes overhead, but it’s floodwaters continue to rise over the days following. I have to be honest and share this. I must have thought that in leaving for China I had past the “hardest” part of surrender in this whole process. With everything it took to leave (that “big” list above), maybe somewhere in my mind I thought, “Well...that should do it.” This came to my awareness because recently I found myself thinking that all this surrender “stuff” has to end some time soon! “Oh boy!” I thought as I pondered what I just been faced with in my own heart. With the continued surrender of my heart, my ways, my ideas, my dreams, my will, the list could go on, I found more.

I found more of Him, but I also found more that I needed to surrender. Fortunately, but painfully, I found more parts of my heart and life that I needed to lay down. I found pride hidden in a dark corner of my heart. I found a lack of hope and belief in an ignored part of my heart. I found self-reliance in an avoided part of my heart. The list could go on, but the important and great part was finding more of Jesus! I found His grace, mercy, compassion, truth and wisdom in the process of surrendering all of the aforementioned and more. What I found to be of most value was His love. In surrender, I found His love for me was greater, deeper, overwhelming and unchanging, and this has (and continues to) changed me forever.

I gave up! I gave up my pride. I gave up my way. I gave up my will. I still have to give up these things daily. I give up my heart everyday, and I’ve found that surrender is the path to love that changes me forever.

GO LOCAL!

I love local places (restaurants, coffee shops, dry cleaners, etc.) owned by people that are a part of the community it serves. Here are some photos from"my" local coffee shop The Bobo Cafe in Wenzhou, China. It had charm and character. The guys who worked there knew me as a regular. When I came in they greeted me by name! It was my Cheers. I also got to know the owner and her boyfriend. They were members of the community and would often be visiting with friends and family there. They also kept me up-to-date on events around the community like shows at the local grand theatre as well as other cool coffee and restaurant openings. What a great place!