Follow me onward and upward

With my new job at Students For Life of America I'll be posting a blog every week for everyone to see. So since I'll be updating there I'd love for you to come and read what's going on. You can find my new site at sarah.studentsforlife.org

Hope to hear your feedback there!

The Ride for Justice

So as I sit back home in VA I must take time to reflect and let you all know of the important travels I have been up to lately. I will admit that a few days before the Justice Ride with Created Equal I was having my doubts about whether I was up for another week of traveling, I felt so exhausted and ready to just stay in one place. I almost even called up CE and asked them to give my spot to someone else, but of course my better senses got ahold of me and I knew I'd be able to make it through the week with God's strength. Plus this was going to be a big deal because my brother was coming! My brother probably supports me more then anyone I know in my job and what I do, he's always encouraging me and telling me how proud he is, so I knew I had to go.
So I got back to NJ on Friday and we left promptly in the early morning on Sunday to head to Ohio to stay with Preston (a fellow Survivor and volunteer with Created Equal) for the night before we left Columbus on Monday morning. I admit I slept most of the way to Ohio, but my brother and I had some good conversations on the way. He endured my quizzing him a bit on what to say to certain arguments that are brought against pro-lifers. We arrived in Ohio and I was so glad to see Preston, it's a hard thing to be away from someone who you consider to be family.

So we arose on Monday morning, me trying to rush the guys out the door with many threats of "if we're late then they're going to leave without us". So we got to global headquarters for Created Equal (aka Paula's laundry room) and found that we about the second group of people to arrive and waiting on many more. Who knew all my worries would be for nothing, but the important part is we arrived on time ;)

Once we had the team together we got some pictures quick, had our morning devotion and packed up in the vans to head to Cincinatti, Oh. When we got to Cincinatti I had a little nervous feeling in my stomach, it seems like that always happens to me after I take a break with working for the graphics for a few weeks. Plus this Justice Ride would be different as we weren't going to be on college campuses but in main squares and areas in very populated cities. So we unloaded and set up the signs, it was making out to be quite the scorcher of the day, but we were all excited. I got to be paired with a newbie to Justice Ride's, her name is Reagan, and she's just about the sweetest girl ever. I always laugh a little to myself when some of the girls tell the new gals to go with me cause I 'know so much'. I mean I've only been working with graphic images since February but I suppose the years before that doing pro-life work doesn't hurt.

So Reagan and I were standing out on the edge of the square when I saw a young woman who had walked by before walking by again rather slowly. I noticed she just about had tears in her eyes, so I went up slowly to her and asked her what she thought of the pictures. "Oh it's so awful, I can't look at them cause they're making me upset". I told her I did agree with her that they were absolutely awful and that we weren't there to make people upset but rather show them what the term 'pro-choice' really means. So I asked her what she thought of abortion to which she replied that she had had one and just hoped that God could forgive her. I told her that she was forgiven, that we all are forgiven for our sins when we acknowledge that Christ died for us and paid for those sins. I asked her if Reagan and I could pray for her and she said that that would be great. So here we stood not even a half an hour after setting up being able to pray with this young lady for healing from her abortion! What an amazing gift to my heart it was to be able to share the true meaning of the gospel with her and to tell her that there is healing from abortion. Before we parted after praying I gave her some information on some different places she could call in to talk about the abortion and how to heal. The rest of the day went rather quickly and we were able to talk to a lot of people and change hearts and minds.

So we bunked on a church floor that night but not before we got to watch a movie "The Courageous Heart of Irena Sendler". It's a great movie which follows this brave young woman who saw children being led off to the concentration camps to die and decided she had to do something about it. It's estimated that she saved over 2,500 young children from certain death at the hands of the Nazis. We all were pretty exhausted after a full night that day, but I managed to stay awake for the whole movie with tears in my eyes most of the time. I highly recommend it to everyone, especially young activists!

So we all awoke bright and early the next morning to head to Indianapolis, IN. Such a beautiful city and we were able to stand on the circle which in the middle had a monument dedicated to fallen soldiers (I think, I never spend much time looking at the stuff around me unless I need to). I was super excited to be there and get to visit a fellow blogger and friend Stanley, who had been on the previous Justice Ride in March. So we got there, had our morning devotional and pep talk and set up our signs. It wasn't too long before the wind started blowing over some signs however, which can always serve to disappoint and frustrate some of us. I've found the best way to deal with this is to just suck it up, hold the signs against me, and continue the battle. The day was pretty good, though I had a few interesting conversations that changed minds something that I will share with you was not such a good thing. It was towards the end of the day and I saw two mothers walking with what looked to be two of their sons who appeared to be in Junior High. Now by no means do we target children but I still like to reach out to the mothers if I can. So I went to asked the mothers' what they thought of the pictures. I barely got a few words out before the mother took her hands and covered the young boys ears. I silently thought to myself that I'm sure both those boys have played violent video games and watched movies with graphic images with their mother's consent. But so interesting to me that a mother would do that. It's a protective instinct I'm sure, but how scary is it that instead of teaching our children to fight injustice we instead shelter them and teach them to ignore the injustice happening?
The day went on and I was able to briefly talk with a young man who was post-abortive and riding by on a bike but stopped to talk for a bit. He seemed to admit that he regretted the decision but he just didn't think there was any other option at the time. He seemed so geuinely lost, like he knew that his life turned down a path he didn't like at that point. This shows in so many men, I often think that whenever the men come by and are enraged it's partially due to their own participation in a abortion. For some men they may not even be the father's, they might just be trying to help a friend out (or so they think) by driving her to the abortion mill.

Later that day we were so blessed to be hosted by a lovely homeschooling family who took all 25 or so of us in. The most impacting thing of that night had to be when Jim (Created Equal's driver for the Truth Truck) got up and talked. He talked about how his wife asked when he would be home next and how it was hard to be away from her so much. But he told her that just as he fought in the war years ago he was now fighting the     "Baby Wars" and that he would be away and fighting this battle until it ends.

While there's so much more that happened on the trip, I mean after all we did visit three more cities (Chicago, Cleveland, and Pittsburgh) I'm going to skip to Pittsburgh for the sake of getting this posted.

So Pittsburgh was our last city, and I can definitely say that we all were feeling the effects of little sleep for the week. We arrived in the Square at Pittsburgh and it seemed as if most people on the team had a feeling in the pit of their stomach that this was going to be a very rough day. I shrugged it off, thinking that 'hey at least I know we won't be getting arrested' (this was something I had to worry more about on tour with Survivors). So we set up the display and things seemed to be pretty normal, at an even pace. I managed to get some really good conversations in with some people encouraging them to stand up for Life and vote in the upcoming election.
Then as soon as it hit noon it was if a bunch of angry people were released on us. Of course this would be the lunch crowd, the people coming out expecting to go about their lives as usual and not be interrupted. But needless to say you can't do that once you've seen our graphic images. However just because our images are graphic does not mean they shouldn't be shown to the world. We shouldn't ignore the damages of a mass genocide because they make us uncomfortable. We should help people see the light of what's going on so that we can do something to change it! Plus how often to do you see the slaughter in Africa of children who are dying from wars or malnutrition listed as "CHOICE"? I can tell you not very often do you see that. But every day over 3,000 children are murdered in America for the sake of 'CHOICE'.

We need to bring this issue to light! I generally don't try to debate people to death when they tell me after looking at the pictures that they are perfectly fine with that being done and know how it's done. Often times these people will refuse to see reason. But I can't tell you how many people that walk by and see our signs have had no clue that that's what abortion was. It's got to be thousands who have changed their opinion from seeing these pictures. I've talked to many of them myself but it's still shocking every time I hear a young woman say that she was lied to about what her abortion was.

Needless to say that at noon in Pittsburgh we all felt the wrath of the angry passerby's shouting at us that we were ruining their day, and how awful we were for showing these pictures. But they just don't seem to get it at the moment that we don't show them to ruin people's days or because we're awful people. We show them because we have compassion for them and for these young lives being unnecessarily taken every day. We show them in order that people may find another option that brings them to a much happier and less destructive ending. Overall it was a rough day, but I was able to talk to a older lady who seemed really skeptical at us being out there, but after I had lead her around and showed her why we were out there and talked to her about what was occurring in our own country she really seemed to understand. She told me she would be praying for me as I started doing full-time pro-life work and that really meant a lot to me.

I really couldn't have hoped for more on the Justice Ride, it was such a great experience and so great to meet some new Justice Riders as well as spend some time with my friends from the previous one. But overall the greatest part was having the privilege to not only go on it, but to have my brother join me and then voice that he wanted to continue doing more things like it to help end this injustice (my words not his... haha).

Well stay tuned as I'm sure I'll be writing more very soon since it's less then a month until I start work with Students For Life of America!

Blessings,
Missionary For Life

Life and Death

So at the beginning of this week I had the awesome pleasure of being able to take a nice long drive up to Ohio so I could visit my old teammate Preston and some other amazing pro-lifers from Created Equal. Survivors had worked with Created Equal for two weeks during our tour in Florida and what a great time it was! Survivors was both refreshed and fed by Mark, Seth, and their crew and that was in fact where we happened to pick Preston up, who came with us after CE’s tour ended back to California. Preston was truly a welcome addition and has very quickly become just like a little brother to me. So how could I pass by the opportunity when a bunch of lovely ladies invited me to their graduation parties and Preston told me I could crash with his family if I came up? So I drove up to Ohio on Sunday and had a blast partying on Monday and remembering the sacrifice made by those who fought for our freedom on Memorial Day. On Tuesday I was super excited to go out with Seth and Preston to Ohio State campus where Cailin joined us and we did some pro-life outreach with the graphic images. I have to admit after having been gone from Survivors for a month I almost felt a little rusty out there talking to students. But in no time it seemed I was as outgoing as ever asking students what their opinions on abortion were. It was a short day as rain had delayed us getting to the campus that day, but overall was very productive.

One of my conversations was with a young man named Tyler who stopped to talk a little hesitantly. He thought that I wouldn’t want to talk to him knowing that he was pro-choice and I informed him that one of the reasons we come to the campuses is to talk to those students who are pro-choice. So we started having a lengthy discussion about being pro-choice. So with every point he made I made a counter point showing him the flaws in his argument. He kept saying “well I guess I never thought of it that way” or “I guess that’s true”.  It was incredible for me to see someone who was getting it; it was like light bulbs popping up all over his head as he understood. After talking for about 15-20 minutes he had to get to class but thanked me for talking and wished me good luck in talking to others about what was going on.  I had a few other good conversations that day, a few rough ones as always, but that’s to be expected when you talk about abortion on a college campus.

I was blessed by an awesome friend and fellow pro-lifer Amanda to be able to take a day and go have some fun at Cedar Point.  It was a true blessing, as well as a true headache after getting banged around on some coasters. But perhaps the biggest blessing was to have Amanda come with me on Thursday to experience working with graphic images for the first time. Being at Liberty we’ve never worked with the images much as many in Administration disapprove of the use of them. While I sometimes understand why, I also think that we need to embrace the fact that so many injustices in the world were never changed until the true picture of what the injustice was was shown.  So it was an honor and a proud moment of mine to see Amanda jump into debate on her own with a young man who said he thought abortion was murder but was justified if the woman had been raped. We get this view a lot, and sadly many of these people fail to realize the trauma that an abortion procedure inflicts upon the rape victim after she has already been traumatized enough.

The same day I also had a young woman come up to me with a friend and so I asked her what she thought about abortion as per usual with anyone who lingers by the pictures. She said she had had one herself but that the people at Planned Parenthood had told her “It’s just tissue”. My mouth dropped a little, it always does when it’s my first time that I hear a young woman bring to life what I’ve heard that other women have said. To hear something with your own ears or see it with your own eyes is far more different then having the story told to you secondhand.  So we talked for a bit, turned out her friend had a little one because she made the decision not to kill her child in the womb. Crazy isn’t it? I talked some more to both young woman about the different aspects of abortion and how it kills not only the child but hurts everyone involved in both mental and physical ways. I’m sad to say that my trip to Ohio had to end after Thursday after I received a call to tell me that my grandfather was on his death bed.

It was very sudden, receiving that call Thursday night, if you knew my grandfather and just how much of a young spirit he was you would be utterly surprised. My grandfather had been having problems with his hip a few weeks previous, but when my dad hadn’t heard from him for two days he asked a church friend to stop by. Then when his friend said he couldn’t get in the house because it was locked so tight we decided to call the cops. They broke into the house on Tuesday to find my grandfather dehydrated and needing a trip to the hospital but even then we had no idea it was as bad as it was. When I started typing all this I was sitting in a Hospice home in Charlottesville holding my grandfather’s hand. It seemed that what had happened was his heart started to give out because he elected not to have a surgery to repair it last year. Again if you knew my grandfather this would not seem strange as he disliked doctors and asking/getting help. So my grandfather was experiencing the shutdown of his liver and kidneys, all while his heart was going into overdrive.

You may have guessed from my tone already that my grandfather has passed on. I know many of you had been praying for him and my family and for that I am so thankful. I’m so happy and blessed that I was able to race back to Virginia from Ohio (blessed that my car made it!) and spend the time with my grandfather before he passed. But it’s made me increasingly aware of death. My brother and I were with him by his side when he passed on Sunday morning a little before 4am. I will forever remember the words I went to say to my brother in the sitting room to tell him “Matt it’s time”. I know this all probably sounds eerie, but does it make sense that I need to put my thoughts to writing to help me heal?
I’ve never seen a loved one die in front of me, and it’s just ever so strange, because my grandfather didn’t show weakness, it just wasn’t his style.  He was so sweet Friday though, I had gotten to the Hospice home just a little after they transferred him there and hugged my relatives quickly, but then rushed right to his side to sit by him. I never can leave anyone alone when they’re going through pain. I sat there holding his hand, and as I talked to him he started to squeeze my hand. That little squeeze of the hand I’m sure will carry me through rough times in the future. He was so sweet Friday, which again is you know my grandfather sweet is not a word you would generally use to describe him. So I stayed with him most of Friday, Matt stayed overnight with him, I stayed Saturday all day with him. I was originally planning on going back to the house on Saturday night at the nurses urging, but when my brother got there that night and looking at my grandfather I knew it wouldn’t be long. So I asked Matt if he would stay with me and we both stayed the night. I played some of my grandfather’s favorite music and around 3:50am in the morning my grandfather took his last breath with Matt and me by his side.

It still feels so unreal, being in my grandparents’ home this week has been nothing shy of hectic as we try to sort through everything all while planning the funeral for this weekend. There are so many memories in this house, my brother and I growing up would come here every summer for two weeks to spend some time with my grandparents. I have no doubt I’ll probably be a train wreck come Friday and Saturday, especially with all the family here. I keep sitting in this bedroom expecting to hear my grandfather walking through the house talking to my grandmother and telling her to get Matt ready because he’s taking him golfing with him. That was our summer’s for so long, my grandfather would take my brother golfing and my grandmother and I would sit at the house sometimes and watch old movies like ‘Pride and Prejudice’ or  ‘Anne of Green Gables’.

Well I imagine those of you brave enough to read this far are already tiring of this all and wondering why you even come here to read in the first place. But again I really do thank all of you who have and continue to keep my family in prayer during this hard time. I’ll be writing soon again I wager about some big changes that will be taking effect in my life soon.

Love to you all,
Missionary for Life

A day to remember.

So many of you are reading my prolife missionary blog for the first time, to those newcomers I say welcome, but I also say I would be pleased if you read even more than just this one time because of my arrest.

First of all if you're not familiar with Chen Guangcheng's story please read the following, it will help: http://www.lifenews.com/2012/05/04/pro-life-advocates-rally-at-white-house-for-chen-guangcheng/

Okay so here's the whole deal with getting arrested, it's never been something I planned on. While there are some pro-lifers who consider every arrest a jewel in their crown that's not so much my opinion of it.  I actually tried to make sure in every way when I was traveling with Survivors (of the Abortion Holocaust) that I was arrested because I was unsure of how it would affect me fostering and adopting in the future. But after talking to some kick-butt pro-lifers who have been arrested for standing up for the unborn and then going on to foster and adopt my fears and apprehensions were put to the side. But I have to say I still wasn't keen on the thought of getting arrested. I just thought if I'm going to do it, it's going to be something that's really worth fighting for (which is usually just about everything in the Pro-Life movement).

I had been reading up on Chen's situation and had seen Rev. Mahoney posting about it a lot on Facebook of course. But one night after I was reading about how his wife had been tied to a chair for two days and beaten and threatened, I just lost it. I mean how could the US Embassy after promising Chen and his family protection not help them? How could they so easily turn Chen out of the Embassy basically leaving his family to be threatened? I was upset and all I could think about was what if their two kids saw the mother being beaten as well as their father. I couldn't take it, it was upsetting, unnerving and I wasn’t going to stand by and do nothing.

So after seeing the invitation from Students for Life of America and Rev Mahoney to go to DC to stand up for Chen and his family I decided to head up there on Friday morning. So I started my journey at 6am that morning and met up with Tina Whittington from SFLA at 1030 am to drive into DC.  As we drove I found out that Tina herself had never been arrested before either, but this was something that was heavily on her heart and also she wanted to make sure I wasn’t alone if anything happened which was rather sweet of her. I was a bit nervous as we drove, but we talked about many things including how wonderful it would be to see Chen and his family comes to the United States.

We arrived to DC just a little before noon and walked to the White House. We joined Rev Mahoney (Pat) and talked to the media about why we were there and calling for them to get involved and get Chen out of China, since they not only had promised to do so but had the power to do so. Pat then announced that we would be going on the sidewalk in front of the White House to kneel and pray for a bit less than an hour (until 1pm) for Chen’s safety and that Hilary would open her heart to let them come back to the US with her. We went onto the sidewalk and knelt down to pray together, yes we can do that many places, but doing it in front of the White House symbolizes in the media that there are still Christians willing to stand here in the US with Chen. As we were there for about 15 minutes with what seemed to be no problems we thought that perhaps the cops would not be arresting us. But just as Pat said that perhaps we’d be that lucky the cops pulled up in quite a few cars and started barricading off the area we were in including part of the street. The lieutenants came up and told us we weren’t allowed to remain stationary on the sidewalk on which we were kneeling praying on.

So they gave us two warnings saying that we needed to vacate the public sidewalk, and we kneeled firmly keeping in prayer. On the third time they talked over the PA system in the cop car they told us we were then not allowed to leave and were being put under arrest. They came up and determined they would take the ladies first; first they arrested Tina, then me, and then Gwyn. They had us frisked and went through our belongings quickly before they put us handcuffed into the back of eh paddy wagon (as I like to call it). I can’t even begin to describe the horrible feeling of having a cop tell me to stand up and then turning me around and grabbing my wrists to put them in handcuffs. It’s this slow-motion thing in your head of ‘are they actually arresting me, when I’ve done nothing wrong?’

I mean laws are made for a reason right? They’re made to protect people right? What part of this was protecting someone, we told them we were just there to pray until 1pm. We said we just wanted America to know the injustice that was going on with Chen’s situation. We were just there kneeling in prayer and were told we weren’t allowed to remain stationary there… and why is that? Is it because we disagree with what the Obama administration and the US embassy is doing to Chen. Because it that’s the reason then that’s obviously and blatantly disregarding our First Amendment rights as Americans. So we were put in the police wagon, the women on one side and then Wylie and Pat (Rev. Mahoney) on the other side. They locked us in then and drove us to the police station which seemed to be quite a bit of a drive away, at least it felt that way while we were moving around the whole time in handcuffs. We were not buckled into the row in the back we were sitting on so you can imagine how great our nerves were when we saw the police man who was driving the vehicle was texting and driving! But we tried to keep things light and got to know each other and sang a little on the ride.

When we arrived to that station we were taken out of the paddy wagon and lined up to walk through a couple doors into the room that they would process us in. The men (Pat and Wylie) were patted down and had their things confiscated and then were put in a cell together. I’m not quite sure why, but they told the women we could have a seat by the desks where they would fill our paperwork out, they had us patted down again and then let us sit there while we waited for them to come fill out our paperwork. So we waited and they filled out our paperwork and we waited a little more. They then came to us and told us we could either pay the fine or we could stand trial. We all elected to pay the fine and were released within about 3 hours of being arrested I believe.

We thankfully were picked up outside the station somewhat because otherwise we would have been wandering for a bit is my guess with the horrible directions the cops gave us on how to get to the metro. So we all made our way back and Tina and I headed back to Fredericksburg. It was quite the day and I can tell you by the time I got back to Lynchburg and my apartment that night I was just about as exhausted as one could be. To only get up the next morning at 645am to go pray outside Planned Parenthood, what can I say, the pro-life work never ends. But I can honestly say I feel so blessed that working in this movement and defending the unborn is where God would have me be doing His work right now. I feel truly blessed, especially with people like Tina, Gwyn, and Pat by my side as well as countless others in the movement.

One of my friends had posted about what happened and had remarked about how she doubted that this would slow me down in fighting for Life. She is quite right, this if anything shows me how much more time I need to put into it all and how tirelessly we have to work until abortion is ended, not just in the US but in the World! 

New Beginnings

I can say it's definitely different being home so far. It feels like a whole different lifestyle then one of traveling non-stop. Not that I'll be in one place for long, right now what I'm trying to decide is what I want to do tomorrow pro-life work wise. My time with Survivors was great and I've grown so much in learning how to handle different situations and how to become more active defending the unborn. So I'm going to continue this blog with updates of different things I'm doing, though it may not be quite as active as it was on tour. 

So today I made a call to the local abortion mill, relieved to find out they got rid of one of their locations at least when I asked when I could come in for an appointment. But I honestly feel ill to my stomach about the call just made. I called as a scared young girl just trying to find out some information about options. I was asked about when I had my last period, so they could figure out about how far along I was. Then she asked me if I'd like to talk about options over the phone instead of coming in to talk about them. So I asked her what my options might be, and she launched into different types of abortions. Mind you I did not ask or tell her I wanted to have an abortion, just what my options would be. So I stopped her after she explained the first abortion procedure (my stomach couldn't take hearing anymore) and I told her I was unsure of whether I wanted that and might want to consider adoption. I asked her about some options with that, to which she replied "I don't have any information on that, but the office might if I can schedule you for an appointment". She also did say that she could tell me the rest of the procedures over the phone though, and that way she could just schedule me for one for tomorrow. Something is just not right with that.

Have you ever wondered why the "Pro-Choice" movement is called just that? I wonder it all the time, because it seems to me as if they are always trying to push abortion as if that is the only choice! or a choice that should be okay.....?
I don't have a camera I can get info on yet, so I think that I'll be waiting until I get back to VA to do undercover work. But tomorrow Matt and I will be planning on going out to pray and sidewalk counsel in front of the abortion mill. So if you're in NJ and would like to come along, please let me know. I just want these women to see their options... why is that so much to ask?

What do we actually accomplish?

So here we are almost at the end of my trip with Survivors and I find myself looking back as I’ve been on this journey into pro-life missions work wondering what impact we’ve made throughout the country.  Well I’m sure the biggest reward we’ve felt throughout the trip was when we received the “Good news” on Good Friday this past week.
You may remember that I wrote about 4 or so weeks back about standing outside of an absolutely awful abortion mill. At this abortion mill we had the sprinklers turned on us in hope that if they soaked us and the signs that we would leave. We stood as ever steadfastly as we were able to in hopes of talking to someone. We were very impressed with local pro-lifers such as Sarah H. and Father Terry who steadfastly were outside that clinic many days a week despite not only the sprinklers but almost constant harassment from the abortion mill workers.  I can’t lie that the harassment I received from two men who came to fix the sprinkler had been bothering me a bit on the trip. The things they said in effort to bother me quite the wide variety of disgusting things that any father would beat up a man for saying to his daughter. But I prayed for the one man nonetheless cause as I was standing there I could feel as if he was hurting in his life, like he knew what he was doing was wrong, like something in his life he knew was wrong. I very much wonder if that was the ache of needing a Savior in his life.

Okay I’ll get to the good news now… so as some of us were in Mexico on Friday we were told to call Kristina immediately cause she had some news for us, I figured it was about the Jackson arrest. But we called and were told that the Alabama abortion mill was ordered to close by May 18^th! Diane D. the clinic owner had been ordered to surrender her license by or on that date ( you can read more about the story here)! A lot of this is happening due to all the injunctions against them, including I’m sure stuff about the two botched abortions that happened earlier this year. There’s been so much that the pro-life movement and many have done to bring about the closing of this abortion mill. It’s really a blessing to see that all the work we do is not in vain and that we do accomplish great things. I can honestly say that this work is mentally (and sometimes physically) exhausting day in and day out. You wonder if you’re making differences, but we also had some good news while we were in Tennessee. We visited a local pregnancy center and were told that a woman had walked in and after seeing our signs had decided against getting an abortion. What a victory! We know that our signs change hearts and minds all the time, and every day it seems we get those who tell us that our signs will never change anything and we get to tell them differently.

So this week we’ve had a couple office days and today we traveled to Moorpark College in California to do activism on their campus for two days. The first day was a bit rough today, we discovered once we arrived on campus that it was “Multicultural day” which normally sounds like a great time to do what we do. We quickly found out however that there were several grade school classes on field trips at the college, we knew the second we saw them that as soon as we set up that we’d be dealing with angry teachers and parents. That can always almost put a sour mood on the day, but I started praying that no matter what we faced we’d be able to handle things peacefully.

So as you can imagine several parents (and students) came up complaining about the fact that we were there and how awful that we would subject young children to such images. But may I just give my opinion for a second…. I honestly think that what sets the tone for kids being upset or being interested in what’s going on has largely to do with how the adults act. I’ve seen many young children who have been told and shown what abortion is. These children funny enough seem to most times grasp more so than adults that abortion is wrong and is the taking of a life. No, we’re not trying to brainwash the kids, we’re trying to explain to them the truths of what’s going on. So the parents and teachers at the school did manage to reroute the children so they didn’t walk right in front of where we were set up.

It so scary to think though that in a few years when those kids reach middle school and high school that they’ll start to be marketed by people like Planned Parenthood. They’ll be taught that so many things that are wrong and should be called murder are not. Do I want these children to have to see these images, the answer is of course no. But sometimes I wonder if it’s necessary as kids are being hit with sexual images, pornography, and other things having to do with the “sexual nature” and how they can’t control their desires. I simply want people to see both sides of the equation, you want to teach them sex education and all that, well if you insist on doing that then tell them about the consequences of those actions that you say are uncontrollable.

Sometimes we have students come up to us and talk about humans can’t control having sex with people, that it’s simply in our nature to always do it, all the time. I often feel like then asking them whether the fact that I control that nature in myself as do my friends makes us some sort of super humans…. But I usually keep my mouth shut when it comes to sarcastic comments; I find they don’t help in debating so much.

So today at Moorpark went well, we had really a lot of students who wanted to talk and handful that wanted to sign up to get more involved with pro-life activities at their campus. I know these pictures change minds; yes not every mind is changed. Though I guarantee that those images are something that are not so easily shaken from people’s minds.  So I’m preparing for my last day with Survivors tomorrow, it’s sad to see the time go by in what now seems like such a fast time. But I know I am so better prepared to be able to engage in conversations with activism and that this time with Survivors has lit even more of a passion for pro-life work in me. A passion that will not be quickly extinguished, in fact I plan on doing some pro-life work this Saturday in New Jersey with my brother and continuing even back in Virginia. Remember do not let your fires be put out, do not let the outrage at the fact that over 3,000 unborn children are killed every day fall away cause you are simply too busy to do something about it. Get out of your apathy and do something about what’s going on! Scream about it, tell everyone you know, and be active about it! For if we don’t cry out for their murders then who will?

Easter and In memory of those who went before us.

The last week has been such a crazy one, getting back in California and getting showered and rested for just a little before three of us took off for a missions trip to Mexico. So we arrived back in California on Tuesday night and Preston, Jayne, and I took off with a youth group team to Mexico on Wednesday morning. Talk about running all over the place, it feels as if I never stop moving sometimes. 

I was so blessed to be able to go to Mexico to get to play with the orphans and bless the orphanages with food and clothes for the kids. What a difference from going to talking to mostly angry college students all day to playing with orphans who hug you the second you get out of the car. I felt so taken aback when we got out of the car at the first orphanage in Mexico, cause no more than a couple minutes pass and here come a flood of little Mexican children coming up to me and hugging me saying "hola" as they pass by. Oh it was awesome! Exactly what my heart needed after being at the University of New Mexico (I ran into two rather hostile and angry students there).

But back to the Mexico trip, it was absolutely great to meet more of the White family and to get to know all their friends from the youth group that came down on the trip and do ministry with them. I was also blessed in getting to see some absolutely beautiful sights while we were down there because the missionary house is right on the beach. The sights there were absolutely breath-taking (see picture below)

These are the moments in which you take it all in and thank God for blessing you as you do the work He has called you to do. It was amazing each morning to be able to wake up and go sit outside and take in the view as I did my morning devotions. Truly I have been so blessed by God in so many ways along the trip. We were in Mexico until Saturday night when we got back. During the trip we visited orphanages and were able to play with the kids, dye some eggs with them and then do an Easter egg hunt. It was so great to see their faces light up and even more humbling to see kids who had so little wanting to share the candy they found with us. I definitely know that all these years I've wanted to go visit and work with orphanages have now not been for nothing, because it truly is a great experience! It was also humbling as we went and delivered food to families in different locations that were living on so little. One place we went was nicknamed the "chicken coops" by the team and I can see why. Each family there lived in what was the size of a chicken coop with very little, the faces of the little kids and some mothers as we pulled up and loaded out bags of food to give them was enough thanks. The little ones are always so cute because it's as enough they know that when Americans come that we will have candy for them. I can really say that I felt much more blessed by being able to serve then what little we have blessed them with food. I don't think it will ever cross my mind to be a regret of not taking the time off and staying back in CA during those days to rest. Because while we were down there serving God granted me the rest needed. It was truly such a blessing for Preston and I to be able to go on the trip, one I know that we both will not soon forget.


But today celebrating Christ's resurrection from the grave was quite powerful; I also was struck so much on Good Friday on the greatness of Christ laying down His life for sinners such as us. I have so many areas of fault, far too numerous to even list. But He still loved me enough to endure all that suffering, such a moving thought. It was great to be invited to the White family's celebration today with all the kiddies and family members running around. They accepted Preston and I in as if we were their own which was quite moving for us being so far from our own family on the holiday. 

I was especially moved today as we paused before prayer to remember a certain amazing young woman named Kortney. I know I haven't written about her on here before so much, but I'd like to think Kortney is partially responsible for this awesome mission’s work I've been doing for the past 7 weeks. Kortney was such an inspiration and great friend, and I guess you could say mentor of mine when she was working with Students for Life. She was always keeping tabs on how things were going with the pro-life group at Liberty and how I was doing with some struggles there. She was talking to me a lot about going into the pro-life movement full-time after graduating. Well after her, Jon, and her unborn daughter Sophy passed away in October I almost felt a bit lost without them. Jon had been very much responsible for helping me put together Liberty's first pro-life senior project. I remember sitting down one day in January and thinking "okay, I'm done with college what now", then I thought to myself "What would Kortney suggest that I do next, now that I'm done with college pro-life work?" So I remembered that she had worked for a group called "Survivors of the Abortion Holocaust". I had also remembered seeing them at the SFLA conference a week earlier but dismissing going to work for them since it wasn't a paying job. But then I felt something tugging at me to submit an application to become a missionary with them. So I did, and the rest is history!
So today we took a moment to pray for her family and to remember her, I feel like throughout this entire trip I've been seeing little marks of how she went before me in working with Survivors and accomplishing so much!

I've met so many people on the trip who've been touched by her life and the work she's done. I've also met quite a few who knew Jon and were very inspired by his passion for the unborn. So today we remember not only their memories, but most importantly the memory of Christ. The memory of a carpenter's son who was sent to earth to walk the road before us, and die for our sins on the cross. Today I remember the sacrifice made on that cross for all my sins. So today and everyday let's keep on our mind the sacrifices others have made so that we can be where we are today. Let us remember to live life to the fullest fighting for what we believe in (as Jon and Kortney did)!

Thoughts from the road

So as we travel our way out of Oklahoma after a most relaxing day yesterday at a small ranch/farm/whatever you call it I find myself full of thoughts. I couldn't be more thankful for Mrs. Keller and her generousness to take us all in, we arrived around  5pm after about 11 or so hours of driving yesterday and were relieved to get out of the car. We found ourselves on a farm of sorts with cows, horses, and lots of land, and within minutes were riding on the mule (a traveling cart of sorts, but not an ATV as the boys seemed to drive it as). It was awesome to go gallivanting about and yipping as we went over bumps in the cart and such. It was awesome to feel the breeze and see all the land, and no college or high school in sight. I can easily say I've had my fill of schools, but nonetheless will continue the work that's been started.

So we had some awesome time of talking with our host last night and relaxing and we all had a bed of sorts to sleep in last night which I'm sure the whole team can tell you was a little slice of heaven to us. I have a little less then two weeks left of touring with Survivors and am starting to prepare for what's next in my journey. I have an interview this week for a position in Minnesota in which I'd be doing sidewalk counseling training full-time. If you know me, you know that's something I'm definitely passionate about and love to do. But I also have had two other job offers which require fundraising my entire salary, so I'm not quite sure yet where God might be calling me. I'm hesitant to take the ones where I have to fund raise my whole salary for obvious reasons, but I know if I decide to take either of those that God will provide as He always does.

It's scary to think I'll most likely be out of the Lynchburg area come August, quite scary, that's been my home now for the past three years and I'll miss it, but I also know God is calling me not to be comfortable but to serve Him. As I sit in the Sprinter as we drive I find myself drawn to looking at the quote on my window (courtesy of Alexis) which is:
"Courage is not the absence of fear,
but rather the judgement that
something else is more
important than fear"
-Ambrose Redmoon

So I shall go wherever the Lord calls me knowing that the importance of the work I'm going to do overrides the fear of going somewhere new on my own.

Just when you think you can't carry on anymore...

 It’s been a crazy week, so there has been little writing. Somehow everyday I’ve gotten up this week without fail has felt like a Friday. I’ve been exhausted beyond belief and felt like I’ve been dragging my body every day.  But nonetheless I carry on to save the little ones and to grow in this journey that God has me on. I read a really great devotional today that talked about how we need to “walk with God” instead of asking Him to “walk with us”. How true that is in this fight! 

So this past week we’ve been in Georgia, as Georgia State University, which was a really interesting crowd. We had quite a few pro-aborts who came up to us arguing and ripping literature. We even had one that went through our Literature and made what they called “improvements” one of which included citing the ever credible site stfupro-life.tumblr, I know what you’re thinking… they sound legitimate right? So after that crazy filled day we drove off to Clarksville, TN.

We were greeted by a group of local elders and faithful attenders of the catholic church nearby to APSU (Austin Peay State University). They talked about how needed our visit was to inspire them, I truly wish they knew how inspiring they were to us and what a blessing they were. So we rushed from that meeting to another at APSU with the Newman Group. We had a rather warm welcome from the students and were given some much appreciate pizza and drinks as we all talked about where we were from joking and such. We then transitioned however into a time for them to ask us some questions about how they could become more active in their pro-life views.

The Newman group stepped right up to the plate when we found out there had been some miscommunication of how many of us there were and we needed some extra places to stay. So I was very thankful to Mary and Alexis (and Caroline) who so graciously took in Jayne, Sarah, and I into their dorm room for three nights to stay. We had such a good time talking with them and being able to get to know them. APSU’s campus was a challenge, almost as always we were met by security on the campus telling us we had to move our signs or that we couldn’t pass out literature because it was against school policy, which evidently takes precedence over one’s Constitutional Rights. But we worked it out and found ways around what they asked so our voice would not be silenced. It was a very hot day in the sun, but it’s amazing how God carries you through it all.

So we had a rather interesting night, we went and had lunch and did some media work before deciding to chalk on the campus that night. So we got ready chalk in hands and walked to where the play “Vagina Monologues” was taking place on campus. We handed out “180 movie” cards as well as some “Unplanned Pregnancy” cards to the audience as they walked in. Once they were inside we went to work chalking on the ground things like “Real Feminists don’t kill their children”, “Crisis Pregnancy call 1-800-395-HELP” or one of my favorites to combat their chalking “Vagina’s are for Mothers”. But as we were chalking up walked the ultra-feminist old ladies who started yelling at us asking whether we were from the Crisis Pregnancy Center (There’s a background story somewhere). We told them that they weren’t and then they proceeded to tell us how inappropriate out messages were since the play was about Reproductive Rights. We just replied that our messages were actually quite appropriate. So one lady came out with a camera and the proceeded to try and bully some members of the Newman group telling them she would get them in trouble for this. It’s amazing how some people will bully away when they are confronted with the truth of what goes on every day. So we finished up the night with reading a Psalm and we all went to bed for the next day and the work we had left to do on APSU’s campus.

We awoke the next morning bright and early to get set up on campus again, this time I was out at the front entrance of the college which faced a main public road, but also had good access to the students coming in from the parking lot. We had plenty of angry people that day coming up to us telling us it was inappropriate to show these pictures, but still saying that abortion was anybody’s rights. But even as the sun was absolutely glaring we still carried on and I remarked to Vince just how great a having a lemonade sounded right about then. So low and behold one of the members of the Newman group, Kate comes up and asks us what we would like to drink. So she went and got us some water and lemonade, this was truly such a blessing from God that I could not believe. Yes it seems small, but it’s amazing the things you take for granted when you work long hours and are always going on your feet.
We were also very blessed that two different men (one who was a pastor of a local church) specifically stopped their cars that day to come and walk over to us to encourage us that we were doing a great work for God by being there and speaking for the unborn.  That was such a blessings especially considering it came before my last conversation of the day with a particularly hateful young man who kept berating me telling Vince and I that we were breaking the law, even though we informed him we were not.

So that night we had a spectacular time being hosted by the Newman group for a social-cookout-night and ate wonderful food and played Disney trivia games complete with teams and craziness. It was such a great time, we really couldn’t have asked for a better group host experience at the college. I hope that in the future I’ll be running into some of those great people from the Newman group and can bless them as they have so richly blessed us this past week.  It’s been a rough week so far, and we’ll be traveling almost non-stop the next few days, but as we have much time in the car I love to look on this journey and think about all the wonderful people I’ve met. Fighting for the Unborn’s rights is something I hope to not have to do someday, but I can say, that I’m honored that I’ve been given the chance to do so while I can.

Graphics and Saying Goodbye

So sad to see the last week with Created Equal come to an end, I’ve had a blast getting to hang out with some really awesome teenagers and of course the Created Equal staff people.  The last few days I broke off from Survivors to go with Created Equal as we tried to reach as many colleges as possible in the last few days and so I could visit a friend I hadn’t seen in about 4 or 5 years.  I really do honestly believe we changed so many hearts and minds this past week, I’ve had so many people tell me that graphic pictures don’t have a place. But when you see college students as their faces turn to horror because they had no idea that this was what abortion looks like you know that we should be exactly where we are with these signs.

One particular student’s face will remain with me for perhaps the entire trip; I only wish I could know her and her little ones fate. Her name is Savannah, she came up to our display as there was quite the intense debate going on with both Seth , Mark, and students who stood both on the pro-choice side and the pro-life side. Let me just jump on a side note and say I was totally blessed to be able to watch these two men debate and have conversations for the past two weeks! But anyway Savannah is about 9-10 weeks pregnant and the Planned Parenthood worker had already been up to her to offer her services and such. It was scary to see because you almost instinctively know that PP just sees her and her unborn child as a dollar sign.

So Savannah started getting into a debate exclaiming that it was her choice, that she would decide what was best for her and how dare we be out there with the graphics we had. Now let me just say this (you can label me as insensitive if you’d like) there’s no medium ground, either the photos are offensive or they aren’t. You can’t have it both ways! You can’t tell me the photos are offensive and then go on to say there is nothing wrong with what the photos show. This young woman however found the photos extremely offensive but still thought there was nothing wrong with choosing to kill her unborn child. I didn’t get to speak to her much, but tried to stand back and watch as Abigail defended the unborn. I couldn’t be more proud watching some of the girls trying to talk to Savannah; it was always with love, but with an urgency of wanting to help save her little one.  Savannah must have been there for about 2 hours or more talking to many of us, Seth offered to adopt her little one; I followed and offered just as the conversation was ending. You almost have to know that if she thought abortion was completely okay that she wouldn’t have stood there for 2 hours talking to us all. My heart broke for Jessie as my guess was this was her first time seeing a young mother pregnant and treating the life as if it was okay to throw away. I told Jessie as Savannah walked away that while we had no idea the ultimate decision that would be made for her child that I knew those photos would stick with Savannah as would the conversations she had with us.

It’s hard to get used to the fact that in this work as a missionary you’re around life and death on a regular basis whether you realize it or not. Each glance at a picture could change a mind and save a life, as well as the conversations we have. I’d like to think that when I ask students whether they’re registered to vote and then inform them on our current president’s pro-abortion stance that they will be inspired to go out and vote in the upcoming elections for a president who will stop funding the elimination of a third of our generation.

It was really hard to say good bye to the Created Equal team at the end of the week, I felt like I was able to bond so much with the gals on the trip this second week. What a blessing, I am and always will be a die-hard youth leader, so being around youth naturally makes me happy. Especially when it’s so hard being away from my girls back home in Lynchburg.  It’s always sad to say goodbye, but I’m hoping I’ll be making a trip to Ohio within the next few months and get to visit with them all. It’s especially amazing the impact they all can have in my life in a short period of time. I was talking with Rebekah and Emily in the van and hearing them express interest in possibly going into full-time pro-life work, and they’re not even out of high school yet! What an encouragement to see the passion of Cassie, Amelia, Emily, Kailin, Jennifer, Abigail, Jessie, Maggie, Rebekah out in the mission field! I look forward to seeing how they impact their towns, friends, and families as they go home. 

Gaining Sassy Pants and Patience

So this week has definitely been a week of learning patience so far, with team members getting towards the end of their rope after long days and little things we forget to do until its late and we have no patience or energy it’s been a rough one.

Today we were at Miami Dade College, a smaller college then most we go to, but we managed to get our literature out to almost all of the students.  The craziest conversation I had was definitely with one girl who saw the abortion pictures and said that “it’s so wrong and shouldn’t happen”. Then I asked her whether she was registered to vote, she said yes, I then asked if she knew where Obama stood on the matter of abortion. She said that she didn’t know so I told her that he was for abortion up to the 9^th month and beyond and how he tried to overturn the partial birth abortion ban. So when I asked her what she thought about that her response was “I still like Obama though”. I asked her why, she said “Because he’s black”. She was walking away at this point and I tried to call after her telling her about the innocent lives being taken every day because of the help Obama gives to the abortion industry. But I’m afraid that all fell on deaf ears.

It’s so hard sometimes, we have all these African American students who have the capability to change the world with their voting power, the power to vote which so many great men and women fought to get. Yes these students remain uneducated and vote based on color, how is this right? Just having been to the civil rights museum and seeing all the ways that people fought for freedoms I hate to see them going backwards. I hate to see the African American community being tricked into thinking people like Obama have their best interests at heart, because that’s absolutely not the case. Please don’t consider me a racist; I was totally hoping Herman Cain would be our next president before he dropped out of the race.

But today got even crazier as we went to the high school today, we were at Miami Central High School and ran into a frustrating situation there. The team always jokes about our team members having what are called ‘sassy pants’. ‘Sassy Pants’ are when you basically get fed up with people trying to silence your right to free speech so you fight as hard to keep your voice heard as they are trying to silence your voice.  I can I believe rightfully say I gained my sassy pants today.

We arrived to the school and split up into teams of two, I had signs and Preston came with me with some literature. So here we are standing on the sidewalk outside the high school (all on public property) and giving the students the information. The students are taking it and talking to us and all of a sudden a police officer comes walking up. He tells me that Preston and I have to move across the sidewalk and we’re not allowed to be there (this is nothing new to be told something like this). So I asked him whether or not I was standing on public property, to which he gave no answer except that I needed to move. Yet again I asked him whether I was breaking a law to which he didn’t answer but said we needed to move. He then asked if I had I.D. on me calling me Daisy (I was wearing a name tag still from the college we were at earlier), I told him “I don’t have I.D. but why do I need it, was I breaking the law?” So he took out his notebook asking Preston if he had his I.D. on him and Preston said no, again I asked him whether we were breaking a law and he refused to answer. So I saw him very agitated and he looked like he could be reaching back for what looked like a hand cuff pouch so at that point I told Preston we would move across just until we could get in touch with Kristina.

At that point I was absolutely furious (I think my eye may have been twitching) and picked up my signs and went across the street. So I definitely had my sassy pants on and started projecting my voice to the students across the streets telling them exactly what their administration didn’t want them to know. Telling them that by the time they graduate one out of every four girls in their high school will have had an abortion. So yeah I’ve learned when my rights have been suffocated and I’m told I can’t be by students and talk to them about what is greatly affecting them that I will get on my sassy pants and then yell at the top of my lungs if that’s what it takes to save lives and help students.

I won’t be silent, I won’t lead a normal life, and I won’t pretend everything is okay until abortion is outlawed in the United States! Yes I know some people will still break the law and have abortions, but just because people commit murder of born humans and rape others doesn’t mean we should make it legal to make it easier for them. Much less give our tax payer dollars to help fund them, so think on that as you finish reading about the life I’m leading. What life will you lead until abortion is ended?

God's beauty to those who serve Him

So we are at the end of week one touring with Created Equal and there team. May I just say what a joy it was getting to know everyone this week (Sheila, Dale, Bubba, Mark, Jan, Seth, Aubrey, Adia, Summer, Ian, Stanley, Colin, Brandon, Preston, and anyone else I could be missing though not intentionally). Created Equal’s team was just what the Survivors needed to be refreshed after a crazy week of dealing with police and the abortion mill in Birmingham.

So over this week we’ve visited 4 colleges… I believe. We spent one day at Florida State University, and then traveled to go to University of Florida, and then we have been at University of Central Florida these past two days, but took some time out the first day there to stop at Valencia College for an hour of free speech (apparently they only allow one hour of free speech two days a week?)

But I have felt so blessed because while we’ve been in Orlando we’ve been taken in by a lovely family for dinner times (they’re also housing some of us) and they have a lovely house on the lake in Orlando. I can’t tell you how much some days it’s needed to come back to somewhere beautiful to just rest and admire the world God created. To be able to sit on a rocking chair on the porch and feel the breeze, ahh what a blessing!

So aside from the blessing of beautiful scenery we’ve been blessed with great host homes. When we were in Tallahassee three of us girls got to stay with the lovely Sinclair family. They were great, they had four kids, one of which was the most adorable 3 year old girl who loved to be read books to and played with. It’s always a joy to be around children after working to protect their rights in the womb all day.

Seeing the whole team that joined us was a blessing and refreshing to see their patience with students as they defended life. Sometimes being on this trip after a few weeks you start to jump to the end of every talk, because you think you know where it will eventually lead. But the key is to realize that it’s a separate talk with everyone, everyone is coming from a different life then the other. So seeing Created Equal and their patience was amazing, I really can’t put into words how impressed I was with each of the team members. It was great to see their growth throughout the week as well, for some it was their first time ever getting up and defending their pro-life views.

So I’ve found myself getting increasingly homesick some nights, but at the same time finding more independence every day. This trip is definitely expanding my willingness to go wherever God calls me, no matter how far that might be. I’ve been reluctant for a bit to go anywhere that’s more than 9 hours from home (which is NJ), but now I feel as if I could conquer the world!... or at least the United States.

I think so many people underestimate the mission field that is the pro-life movement. These are lives we’re talking about, approx. over 3,000 little ones being killed every day because people are unaware the humanity of them and because so few people are willing to stand up for them. So please think about it, what are you doing in your daily life to live out your pro-life beliefs? Are you getting involved? Sidewalk Counseling? Pro-Life Activism?

Maybe you say, well I’m too busy, my life is just hectic right now... okay so why not spend some time praying for those who are getting involved, and set a goal to get involved once a month. Take an hour slot in a 40 Days for Life campaign near you and go pray! Pray for the end of abortion, because if Christians continue to not take a firm, active stand on this issue then we may never see this battle won. So take a stand, and invite your church to take a stand with you!

Tonight we are situated in a lovely cabin in the middle of nowhere in Florida, with an ever gracious host who has taken us in (God bless him for taking us hooligans in!) Tomorrow we will be at Florida Atlantic University, so please pray for safety as we are there and visiting other colleges this week! Remember to text me too if you have my number, cause I love hearing from you all and so appreciate all your support as I’ve been on this trip!

Week6/7- A time to reflect and pray with all one's heart

This past week has seemed to almost drag on forever, not because it was boring by any means, I think it was more along the lines of because it was so emotionally draining. I already wrote the post on being in Jackson and what happened there. But after Jackson we headed to Birmingham, AL to do some activism at a local abortion mill, whose owner just happens to have certain unpleasant affections for our group. I heard many stories on the way from California all the way to Alabama of Diane and her love for hurting pro-lifers who dared to stand and sidewalk counsel or pray in front of the abortion mill.  But I’m not really sure I could’ve been prepared for what was awaiting us there, there’s always a difference between stories and experiencing something in real life.

So we arrived in Birmingham, Alabama on Wednesday night and went straight to bed after the past 38 hours or so of insaneness. We awoke early the next morning to go to the abortion mill and received quite the surprise on getting there. Jeff, Cheryl, Father Terry, and Sarah H. were the first ones out of their car and onto the sidewalk. Just a few seconds after stepping onto the sidewalk it seemed the sprinklers went on. Now let me just clarify these aren’t some wimpy or run of the mill sprinklers, these are high powered sprinklers that can easily give you bruises the water shoots out so hard. So only a few seconds after turning on poor Jeff had the sprinkler shoot at his eye, causing quite the injury, I know this because he took several pictures of it.
Things only got crazy from there but I won’t go into the details just now, just know that Diane graciously greeted all of us that morning with tons of foul language.

That day I had the chance to sidewalk counsel and talk to a young man waiting in his car as his wife (or girlfriend) went into the mill in order to get a medication abortion being 3 weeks pregnant then. I was talking to him as he was staying out in the car with their cute little boy Tyler. The father told me the reason his wife said she was having the abortion was because her doctor told her she wouldn’t live if she continued with the pregnancy. He said they had fought the whole way to the clinic; he wanted her to keep the baby and get another opinion from a doctor. She trusted her doctor whole heartedly and didn’t want to take the chance. It broke my heart cause that young man sat in that car with his son, and proceeded to tell me that although he wanted her out of there that there was nothing he could do aside from calling or texting her to come out. He said it was her body and ultimately he couldn’t make the choice for her. It’s so sad to see a father of the baby not think that he has any say in what happens to his own child.

It really broke my heart, because you could tell from the way the father was playing with his son that he was a loving father. Tyler was constantly trying to climb out of the window of the car, I was convinced that he was trying to urge his dad to go into that building and get his mother and little brother or sister out of there. I gave the young man a lot of information and he texted his wife and said that she said she was going to come out soon, but she never did while we were there. So while I don’t know what happened he said she texted that she couldn’t go through with it because her Iron was too low. We don’t know ultimately what happened, but I’d like to think that maybe she came out and he took her to the local pregnancy center where she could get a second opinion.

That next day on Friday we yet again went to the clinic, I grabbed some signs that day to hold and walked toward the mill. Yet again there went the sprinklers, we got wet for a while before moving out of the way, so that the cops could see when they were called that those sprinklers were affecting our right to free speech outside the clinic. That morning was absolutely freezing, yes it was probably only in the 40’s but when you’ve been soaked by sprinklers and the wind is blowing all these factors make for one very cold activist.

We were there for two hours, and in that time there were two plumbers who came to fix the broken sprinkler (because they really need two high powered sprinklers to scare us off). Now these must have been two of some of the vilest men I have ever seen. Kristina tried to engage them in conversation and they started back attacking us. Father Terry even tried talking to them, but then they started saying some of the vilest things I’ve heard in a very long time. Vince, Kristina, and I stood close to the fence because while the sprinklers were off we could do so without getting soaked. I still don’t even want to think of some of the things they were saying, one of them who was older was the one who was saying the more vile things while the other tried to work and would only respond with an attack if he was especially upset. I told the one working down on the ground that I just wanted him to know that I was praying for him and praying that he was able to find a better job so he didn’t have to do what he was doing then.

They weren’t there for long before Diane came out and started calling us names and spewing her hate towards us. I put up my hands and started praying, anything, I couldn’t understand why this women seemed to be covered in this evil feeling. I had actually heard stories of how Diane had hired a hit man a few years back to take out a pro-lifer who faithfully stood in front of the abortion mill praying and sidewalk counseling. I wish so much that this woman would turn her back on the abortion industry forever, but  it’s not going to happen without prayer, so let’s pray for her please!

I was greatly relieved that after we had made a quick stop at a local Planned Parenthood to pray for the 40 days for life vigil that we went back to the house for some much needed free time and rest. Being a missionary traveling is perhaps more tiring then I thought it would be, but then again I was off of school for 2 or so months just sitting at home doing research, so not like I was running marathons. Overall it was a great experience in Birmingham, Alabama. We were able to go to the Civil Rights museum with Created Equal the day we left for Florida.

Just to give you a little background, the next two weeks Survivors is pairing up with an organization called Created Equal, they’re based out of Ohio. They also like us go to college campuses and set up a huge display of signs. They are doing two weeks of touring in which high school and college aged students can use their spring break to defend the unborn and travel all over with them and get some practice in debating. It’s really great to have them with us, and I know our one and only guy Vince is happy to finally have some guys around. So currently we are in Tallahassee but will yet again be traveling tonight. We were just at Florida State University; it was an interesting school, definitely one of the more apathetic ones we’ve visited so far.

I felt so blessed however to talk to this young woman today, she came up to me as I asked her what she thought about the signs and held up her hand. She said “I’ll talk to you, but a few quick rules”, I said “ok”. She said she wanted to keep things polite and that I couldn’t get all uppity on her, which I completely respect and hope that I never do that! So we had a great talk for probably about 45 minutes or more in total that day. She was really great, she talked, then I talked, then she talked, then I talked. It was all done in complete respect. Yes, I always have a point to make when I talk to people, but my thought is that I’m not always trying to hammer them over the head and make them admit their view point is wrong, even if I do strongly believe that. This young woman was pro-choice and had gone through an abortion herself, but she said at that time it was what was right for her. She considered it her one and only “get out of jail free card”. Now while I don’t know if she ever regrets it or not, the great part was she was so open to listening, she agreed that abortion should not be a means to birth control. She also made the great point that while the pro-life message is a great one, there is also such a great need for educating our young people before they even get to the point of needing an abortion. We talked about both our pasts and how we have both fallen victim to men in the past and them telling us how much they loved us, only to treat us like trash.

We talked about a lot, how we’re both super passionate about helping the youth who are uneducated and stuck in the foster system. She wants to be a judge who helps with Children Services and such, which is great! Yes, I know you’re thinking I’m agreeing an awful lot with someone who is pro-abortion, but we had points to agree on. I was happy to hear that she at least thinks abortion was not an option past the 6 month mark. That always seems to be where people on the fence stand on abortion. It’s often because most people know that babies have a much greater chance of living outside of the womb when they’re born then. To me, yes I will occasionally debate someone who is staunchly pro-abortion til I’m blue in the face, but there are points where I know that will do nothing but turn them off from the pro-life side even more. That’s not what I’m seeking to do, I seek for equal rights for all, for all to be respected and have freedom. I just absolutely don’t believe in Murder and how over 3,000 children are being murdered in the womb every day!

So it’s been great on the road, every day I grow more, I try to be more selfless, though I admit I’m definitely not the one on the team to say that I’ll sleep on the floor, but I can if need be. God has been ever so great in providing just awesome host homes and families to take us in and feed us. I often wonder if this is what it was like for the Disciples sometimes, though I imagine they were much less welcomed then we were. But there’s always that great moment when someone is willing to engage in a conversation with you and you see the light bulb in their head light up because they realize just why we’re fighting so hard for an end to abortion.

Thank you for all who have continued to pray and support the Campus Life Team, we can use all the prayer and support we can get!

Jail Time

So the past 28hours or so has seemed like a whirlwind to me, witnessing my first up close arrest for participating in the pro-life movement was a pretty intense experience. I wasn’t a fan of watching my team members be taken away in handcuffs, it was absolutely frightening. Frightening that we could be arrested when we hadn’t even broken the law and frightening that we’re not guaranteed our freedom of speech rights. 

This all started with us going to Murrah High School on Monday, just as we always do when we’re in a town we go to a high school to hand out literature and makes students aware of the horrors of abortion. So we split into two teams of two and one team of three. I went with Vince to the south parking lot of the school where students drive their cars out after they’re dismissed.  I took some literature to give to the students and Vince took some signs. So it was a normal day like most high schools, I was actually a bit surprised we seemed to have a good amount of students taking the literature compared to normal. But we found overall that in Jackson, MS that people were more open to taking it and reading it because they hadn’t been shown the truth of what abortion was and were curious as to what our message was.

So Vince and I finished up after most of the students had driven out and walked back to the van, Mary Rose had come running up to us to get the video camera but I didn’t think too much of it until the entire team got back to the car. The got in and Sarah had had some school cops in her face who took her signs out of her hands trying to get her to leave. One of them even grabbed her camera by the lens and was telling her it was illegal to film him, she asked by what law was that and got the answer “My law” from the cop. So we got most of that on video and then were told by the cops that we were not welcome there again. But honestly, I mean what is that? You’re telling us that we’re not welcome on a public sidewalk to demonstrate our rights of free speech?

This was not acceptable, the cops had already done damage by not letting us get to talk to as many kids as we could, but now they were telling us that our rights we being taken away. This was not something acceptable to us. So we talked about whether we were going to go back the next day and thought about what the implications could be if we did. But we realized that we should have no reason not to go back, and we needed to get the message out to the students. I mean when these students are being targeted by Planned Parenthood to make money off of who’s going to tell them the truth if not us or people like us. Abortion mills aren’t interested in helping them; they’re interested in making money off of them.

Just the other day when we were at the clinic we saw a mother take in her 11 year old daughter claiming she was ‘raped’ (I say claimed because the mother didn’t seem nearly outraged enough as some women who’ve dealt with that ordeal) and that she needed to have the abortion. I tried to talk to the mother and tell her daughter needed her to love her and take care of her right then, but to no avail she walked back into the clinic. So if we have to risk what we did in order to stand up for the unborn then we’re going to. We’re not going to stop doing something that is perfectly legal within our rights because people think the message is offensive. You know what is offensive? That over 3,000 children are being slaughtered every day in the United States and that most people don’t even give a though about what they can do to stop that.

So we decided to go back to the school the next day, one of my good friends had brought up a good point about a week earlier to me in the matter of arrest situations. She knows I want to both foster and adopt and she asked me whether I knew if getting arrested would prevent me from doing either. So while I don’t know the details I knew that I would need to be careful with the whole matter and if I could avoid being in the arrest situation that I should.

So Tuesday came and we headed back to the school at 3pm, shortly after we arrived we noticed that a film crew from a local station (Channel 3) was there, so Kristina got out and gave a short interview with them. At approximately 3:25 we went to the back of the van and Sarah, Vince, Kristina, and Brianna got out their signs and literature. Mary Rose, Jayne, Nina (local pro-life youngin) and I got the cameras and car keys and headed opposite the sidewalk so we could try to capture everything that was going on tape. So they team on the sidewalk set up their signs and waited for the students to come out. So as the students start rushing out of the school the police are already walking up to Kristina and the others telling them they need to get off the sidewalk. Some of the administrators and police were telling the students not to come near us or take our literature, some even yelled at them to get back inside. I really don’t always understand why they think we are so violent, then again they though the people who were on the frontlines in the Civil Rights movement were violent as well.

So as those of us videoing were trying to get good shots some buses pulled up in front of the school they hindered us from getting any shots of Kristina and Brianna. So I was focusing on Sarah and Vince and then look up to see Brianna in handcuffs being led across the street to a school cop car that is parked on the side of the hill closer to us. I started snapping as many shots as I could get with the camera (I’m afraid there were some very blurry photos to sift through). I managed to get a few okay ones as Brianna was being put into the cop car. I tried not to let my mind go to thoughts of panic. So I then look around back to the school and see Kristina in handcuffs also being led to the car… so I was able to snap a few pictures before she was put in the car. But again I didn’t stay on her with the camera cause my attention then went to Vince and Sarah.

Vince and Sarah were being escorted to the other side by us, so we took a few steps back so that if they were arrested the cops wouldn’t come after us… I mean someone had to be there to make the phone calls and get them out right? So we continued to film and I continued to worry that they’d take them all in. Even though Survivors have been arrested in the past for standing up for their freedom of speech rights and won most (if not all) cases it’s still scary because when you think about the way our country could be going downhill you worry about our rights being taken away. I mean just the other month Jayne, her father, her sister, and a few others were arrested for praying in front of the White House?!?!?!?!! Since when has that been illegal?!

But anyway, I digress… a lot. So as it happened Sarah and Vince were not arrested and we were able to get our signs into our van. As we were walking to load everything up news station pulled up and Mary Rose (our 2^nd in command) took up the torch and gave the channel a pretty good interview. So we packed up everything and our lovely hosts (Harriet and Judy) took us downtown to try to find Kristina and Brianna and where they took them so we could just go pay a small fine and get them out and fight the charges in court later. At least that was the plan we were expecting.

So we made it downtown and went to the city court… we were then told to go to the county court next door and that that is where they would be. So we went next door and then were told they would be in the city court. We told them we were just there, that they weren’t there; mind you at this point I’m starting to get pretty concerned. So they kept trying to give us the run around, but then this stranger who was super nice and commented on one of our pro-life shirts that he liked it was nice enough to tell us exactly where to go to get some information. So we went to the correct location which was behind both of the court buildings and after much pestering of the man behind the desk found out that the girls had been there, but that they had then been transferred to another place with holding cells where they would wait to be booked. So we asked how long that would be, they said they didn’t know the time, it would depend on that amount of prisoners waiting to be booked there.

So we mulled around outside the courts in our van, and then our two host home ladies said they knew a lady (Tanya) who lived downtown who had just called them and said we could come wait things out at her house. So we headed to Tanya’s house and went in and introduced ourselves. This woman also a sidewalk counselor had been arrested herself outside the abortion mill and charged with prostitution… now you tell me how they made up that charge against her?!!!

So we waited and waited… and waited some more. We ran back to the high school to try to do an interview with a news station that was filming live at the school, but just happened to miss their broadcast by the time we got there. But we did get some valuable information from the newscaster. We hadn’t been told when we were at the station what charges were being put against the girls… just that they were being held. So the newscaster was able to read us a quote from the arresting officer who said that they were being arrested for 1. Disorderly Conduct 2.Trespassing and 3. Interfering with a bus driver.

So we found this out and then rushed back to Tanya’s house to see if they heard anything yet, Tanya finally got fed up with waiting and started making phone calls. She managed to get ahold of the man who was booking over at the jail and he gave her a sob story about how he was the only one there working on booking. He told her that he wasn’t even sure they would be booked by midnight. So we packed up everyone in the van since it was about 10pm or so at night and decided to go back to our welcoming host homes and try to get some rest and make some phone calls since we didn’t think there was any way they’d be let go that night.

As we went back to our homes... I just kept trying to pray on the way, praying that they’d be safe, that they’d be warm. I think it’s hard for me to be on the side and out of control because of being in charge of the pro-life group back at home for quite a bit. It’s humbling, to not know exactly what’s going on in an on-the-fly situation. I’m used to being able to call the shots and make the phone calls, so it was scary and humbling. I was hearing lots of people in the group and via phone conversations say that this was very unusual for an arrest like this. So even more so I went into a hyper prayer mode and started texting friends to keep praying.

We were so blessed in the fact that our host homes welcomed us back with open arms and told us they would help us in whatever way we needed even if that meant raising the bail money. Once we were back at our host homes Sarah, Mary Rose and I were able to sit down and watch the 10 o’clock news and saw that our group and the arrest had made it on the news, not only at 10pm, but also at 5pm and 6pm. So there on the TV we saw both Brianna and Kristina being arrested, and saw them very rightfully asking what they were being arrested for and the police not answering. We also were able to notice later on that they were not even read their rights as they were being arrested.

So we watched that and went to bed, or at least tried to, some received phone calls during the night. Kristina and Brianna were able to get a local call out to a host home around 4am saying that they would be in court at 9am the next morning. So we got up early that morning packed everything up and hoped that we would get them out and on their way early so that we could get them bailed out and be on our way in time to make it to Birmingham and get some stuff done.

So we went the next morning to the court house trying to find information and the docket to tell us when the girls would be appearing before the judge. Again we got the run around from place to place, not getting any straight information, but we were glad when Tanya arrived to help us find some news. Well we found out that both the girls were going to be held for $2000 dollars apiece and not be given a trial. So we ran around trying to find some connections Tanya had to get the girls a trial. In the end a cop came out to us sitting outside the court building and told us the girls were in a court room. So we all rushed up there, some of us had to stand outside while some other cases were taking place because it was crowded. But we all eventually got in there to watch the case. I had been texting people like crazy that day for prayer and kept going back in forth between the girls having a court case and not having one. So Kristina was called up before the judge, and waived her right to attorney since we didn’t have one present. She pleaded not-guilty to all three charges and the judge looked over the case. He told her she’d be released on her own recogniscence (ROR); we all breathed a huge sigh of release. Kristina went back to sit down and next Brianna came up; again she waved her right to an attorney also and pleaded not-guilty. She was also released on her own recogniscence. What a relief and praise to hear we wouldn’t have to bail them out. The judge however did set their court date for about a month from now, but we assume that by then the school will drop any and all charges since they are all false arrests.

Sadly we had to wait another 3 to 4 hours before the girls were actually released, they claimed the paperwork did not arrive, but we’re not sure if it was just the Jackson PD trying to give us more difficulty. So around 4pm both girls were released back to our team, there was much hugging and crying and plenty of camera crews to catch everything. The funny thing was, three of those camera crews were just there because of a drug bust, while one channel was really interested and was able to go get an interview with a Survivor (Jayne) before the girls were released. So we all loaded into the van glad to have them back and be reunited. We let them head back to a host home to get cleaned up first and then we started to make our way to Birmingham. Before the girls had been released we were happy to be joined by Jeff and Cheryl who are the founders and directors of Survivors (of the abortion holocaust) and also Father Terry and Sarah H.

So this whole ordeal was insane and crazy and wore all of us out, I don’t think one of us did not sleep well last night. We overall are so thankful for so many things. We are thankful for all the prayers given during the whole ordeal, so thank you all for that. We are thankful that the girls didn’t have to be bailed out and that we had a merciful and understanding judge. We are so thankful for all of our host homes (Judy, Harriet and Bill, Roy and Beverly, and all of the Mississippi Pro-lifers who helped and of course Tanya). We really wouldn’t have made it out of that situation without God blessing us all along the way. So thank you to everyone who called, everyone who prayed, and all of you who kept us in our thought, I really couldn’t be more thankful!

So what will happen from here, well I can tell you that we will be going after the city of Jackson for all the damage they did, to the girls and to our time that was taken away from ministry. So keep us and the lawyers in prayer as we pray for wisdom in how to pursue this all.

Blessings,
Sarah
Missionary for Life and Survivor