It's been a long time...

I have not posted in while because I've been trying to communicate with people through other means these past few months. If you are on my team of supporters then you already know that Cory and I are planning to move to Colorado in just over two weeks. Most people should have received this letter about a month ago, but I wanted to post it here as a means to wrap things up on this blog. I'm so appreciative of your investment and interest in the journey God has taken us on this past year.

Dear friends,

I want to thank you again for your support of my ministry with the CCO.  Because of your investment in the work I’m doing, I’ve served dozens of college students, planning trips, handling logistics, and equipping groups for extended time in the backcountry. This year we sent students to the Everglades, Georgia, Colorado, Wyoming, Canada, Peru, and places in between.

God used this year to teach Cory and me quite a few things about ourselves.  One of those things is that I’m definitely a people person.  My passion is interacting with students, but due to the nature of my position I don’t actually get to spend much time with them. Most of my time is spent fixing gear, researching gear, and preparing gear for trips.  Though I play an important role on our team, I’ve realized that my position is not a good fit for me.

Throughout the year Cory has been taking time to think and pray about what God has planned for his future.  He’s been going back and forth between pursuing full-time ministry work and going back to school to get his master’s degree in architecture. He’s talked to a lot of wise people in his life and has made the decision to pursue going back to school.

Ever since we met each other working at camp in Colorado in 2009, we’ve felt a strong desire to make Colorado our home. Since none of the universities in Pittsburgh offer the program that Cory is interested in, we’ve decided that an architecture program in Denver would be the best option.  We are planning to move to Denver in July to become Colorado residents before Cory would start school in 2013. Working at an outdoor retailer during college brought me a lot of joy, and I hope to go back to that.  Additionally I hope to volunteer with the one of the ministries that I connected with those three summers in Colorado. I still keep in touch with some of the students and I look forward to seeing them again.

As someone who has gotten our updates over the past year I wanted to let you know that my last day with the CCO will be July 13th, and all donations need to be in before then. If you would like to send in a special gift of encouragement before then it would help us finish well.  We’ve appreciated your care and interest, as well as your prayers for us and for this ministry. I think you are probably supporting me because you know and care about me, but if you are interested in continuing your support of the the Experiential Designs Team’s ministry within the CCO I would recommend supporting Jamie Zackavitch. She is XD’s administrator and I can honestly say that our team wouldn’t run without her.  Jamie has spent over 3 months out of this past year in the backcountry leading trips and mentoring students. If you are interested in supporting her, please let me know and I will give her your contact information.

As things come to a close with me at the CCO I welcome any phone calls or emails about our plans.  I am truly grateful for your partnership in ministry with me.  Your prayers and financial support were a blessing to me and Cory, and sustained us during our time in Pittsburgh. I hope that you have a blessed summer and that you get to experience some adventures of your own!

With Gratitude,
Allisa Linfield

Campout in the Living Room

Spring Break 2012

As you all know, spring break is a big deal for most college students. While I was in college at the University of Wisconsin, everyone tried to leave and escape the frigid temps. As a student my first spring break was with Campus Crusade to Florida to minister to the "crazy" college kids on the beach. Honestly, I didn't really enjoy this trip... I didn't see much value in walking up to drunk students and telling them about Jesus. They weren't going to remember it the next day anyways. I felt like Campus Crusade was putting us in a difficult and unsafe situation that we didn't all voluntarily want to experience. The following year I spent spring break going to New Orleans to work on houses. I really enjoyed the city but laying laminate flooring and cutting wood wasn't really my thing either. The next year I worked during Spring Break and took a weekend backpacking trip with my boyfriend (now my husband) and some of his friends. The following year I was in for the eventful spring break I was always hoping for. Cory and I helped lead a trip for University of Pittsburgh students through the CCO, the ministry I now work for.

We were planning to spend 6 days in the Pisgah NF of North Carolina; but that's not what happened. When we hiked out is started to rain. The students didn't mind at first but us seasoned veterans knew that as soon as you get cold and wet in the backcountry, you never get quite dry again.  It continued to rain throughout most of the trip. Tents started to leak, students began to run out of dry clothes, and everyone gradually became more lethargic and whiny. On the third night a co-leader and I sat in our tent listening to her weather radio. The forecast called for snow! Knowing that our students weren't prepared to handle winter weather conditions we evacuated the next morning with 8 miles between us and the trailhead. Knowing this would be a lot to ask of a group that had previously only managed 6 miles we prayed for the best conditions. Cory and I, along with another guy, went ahead of the group to get our van (an additional 2 miles from the trailhead) and bring it to pick up the group.  Soon after we set out we heard the thunderous roar of a river swollen from the heavy rains and snow melt. Unfortunately there was no bridge to cross it and we had to stop to help the group across. This story repeated itself two more times. Eventually we started to run out of daylight.  When our small group of scouts made it to the trailhead, we continued to the van only to find that the road had undergone construction! Since the road was not driveable, Cory and the other guy had to drive 45 minutes through the town and over the other side of the mountain.  I was sent back on foot to stop the group from continuing onward. Finally we loaded up in the dark and drove home through the night.  The students love to retell the story today. They think they are so cool.

This year, I'm not leading a trip. Instead I am taking care of all of the logistical and equipment needs.  On Friday we sent three groups out to Everglades to paddle for the week. Two groups are kayaking and one group is canoeing. Getting these groups ready to leave reminded me of why I'm a land lover.  It's so much easier to just pack up your belongings inside your backpack and head out on the trail. Maybe though, it's really that I love being able to do things by myself.  As I went out to the Equipment Room to get things ready for the trips, I was frustrated by the fact that I needed help. I couldn't lift boats and load them onto the trailer by myself.  Sometimes I didn't have the knowledge I needed to make necessary repairs to kayaks. Gathering dozens of PFDs, paddles, bilge pumps, spray skirts, hatch covers, and other accessories was cumbersome and these things aren't needed when backpacking.  I think that one of my greatest weaknesses is asking for help and I try to avoid situations were I need help from others. Now that the trips are out, I'm glad that almost all of our trips this spring break are paddling trips. God has used the experience to cause me to become more comfortable with asking for help.

Sometimes I think I subconsciously desire my life to be like a solo traverse of the AT. My few belongings able to fit on my back, no constraints on my time except the setting of the sun, companions coming and going along the way. Cory and I discuss how when I get somewhere I'm always thinking about the next place. He's the one that drives us to build and maintain community ties. Through our marriage God is using Cory to show me more about what it means to be part of a team.

More Jubilee 2012

Mid-february every year, the CCO puts on a conference in Pittsburgh for college students to attend.  This year about 3,000 students attended with their campus ministers. Students arrived on Friday at the convention center and left on Sunday.  During their time at the conference they got to hear from renowned Christian speakers including James K.A. Smith, Robin Capcara, David Kinnamin, Eric Mason, Saleem Ghubril, Richard Mouw, and Bob Goff. Between the main sessions, students can attend breakout sessions tailored to certain areas of interest. All sessions are designed to help students recognize God's calling in their vocation and so breakout sessions are led by architects, musicians, educators, authors, researchers, pastors, and a host of other people who are dedicated to serving Christ no matter what they are called to. I've included some pictures to give you a feel for what the weekend was like.


Main session

Steve Taylor, director of the new movie Blue Like Jazz, talking about the hardships his team went through to get the movie to the big screen. Wish my brother could have seen this.

David Greusel, a local architect, leading a breakout session. Cory got a chance to talk to him afterwards.

The band

Shaun Groves sings a song and tells us about Compassion International.

Eric Mason tells us about redemption. Cory and I felt bad for the next speaker... Eric was a tough act to follow.

Jubilee 2012 was a succcess!

Jubilee Conference!

The winter of warm weather

I'm sure you all have noticed that we've had an unseasonably warm winter. I was looking at a weather map today that showed that the only places in the country that have experienced cooler than average temperatures are the southern tip of Florida and the Northwest corner of Washington. I can't complain, though. Cory and I have both been training for a marathon in April and so we've enjoyed occasionally running in shorts and t-shirts this winter. Unfortunately for XD (the team that I work for), the lack of snow accumulation has forced winter trips to be cancelled. There was supposed to be a ski trip this coming week that was called off.

This has been a very busy month. My sister-in-law, Kristen, and my dear friend, Sara, came to visit the first week of January. We now have fine-tuned our Tour de Pittsburgh for any future visitors... and Kristen and Sara can probably attest to getting a good earful about architecture from Cory.  As soon as they left I launched into an intensive Wilderness First Responder Course. This 80-hour course on backcountry medical rescue skills is required for all XD staff guides. I now know how to reduce a dislocated joint, apply traction to and splint a compound fracture, recognize a host of ailments, and how to properly document it all for the hospital and authorities. Though some of my classmates buckled under pressure and refused to play a helpful role in group scenarios, I realized that I actually am good at getting things done and directing people in a stressful situation. Hopefully I'll never be in a situation where I need to use these new-found skills...

After getting my WFR certification, I returned home to find that a few staff had quit at the bakery Cory works for. Needing a little extra income, Cory got me an interview and I now have a second job. Training has been enjoyable and the perks are great. Every time you have a shift you get a free loaf of bread. So between Cory and me, we get 7 loaves of bread a week!  We've started giving it away to friends because we aren't able to finish it. Another reason to come and visit us!

Mid-January, I attended a quarterly conference that the CCO holds for staff called Staff Seminar. Every time there is a different topic and speaker. Last time David Kinnaman, president of the Barna Group, spoke to us about the statistics regarding beliefs held by this generation of college students (which is funny to hear about because I very much feel a part of the current generation of college students). The topic of this most recent staff seminar was sexuality, and Tim Geiger from Harvest USA, a group that works with people struggling with sexual sin, was our speaker.  Because the topic was so complex a lot of us staff left the seminar unsatisfied with the depth to which the topic was addressed. To be fair, there is only so much a speaker can cover over the two days we were at the seminar. It is easy to get bogged down addressing the "sin" surrounding sexual expression and I was hoping for a little more talk addressing the practical issues of talking to students about sexuality.

And finally, I had this last week to catch up on work and spend time with my husband, who, I'm convinced, is the best husband in the world.

Did you know that Romans is a support-raising letter?

Back in October, Cory and I attended a seminar about support-raising. One of the support-raising coaches mentioned that Paul's intent for his letter to the Romans was to raise funds for his trip to Spain (verse 15:24). I decided that after returning home from the seminar I would re-read Romans and view it through the lens of fund-raising in order to uncover Paul's method for supporting his ministry work. God did, after all, sustain him through an entire life of ministry.

After finishing Romans, I didn't feel like I had necessarily gained any sort of concrete direction in my support raising. God didn't show me a 3-tiered system to fully fund a ministry - not that i expected him to. I did notice that Paul spent most of his letter sharing truths with his readers that applied the gospel to where they were at personally in their spiritual journey. He praised the Roman Christians for what they were doing well and cautioned them about things that could become a struggle for them. The actual part where he makes a request for assistance is very short and easy to miss.

I surmise that the Romans had a more difficult time giving funds than other Christian communities. Though Paul talks about money very little in an explicit way, he seems to talk about it through addressing heart issues that affect generosity and feelings of entitlement. Common themes of the "Roman Road" seem to take on a new meaning when thinking about money. The often-quoted Romans 3 refers to our inability to be righteous of our own accord and the foolishness of boasting about what we have. This is followed up by a passage about wages in Romans 4:4-5 "Now when a man works, his wages are not credited to him as a gift but as an obligation. However to the man who does not work but trusts God who justifies the wicked, his faith is credited as righteousness."

Trying to unpack this scripture feels like a brain teaser because Paul is taking something common in our daily lives (working to receive a wage) and using it as a metaphor to teach the Romans something about spiritual "works." Obviously God doesn't want to us to be bums and not work. This verse isn't meant to spur us towards a vow of poverty. The first part refers to a paradigm that the Romans had: You work to earn money and when you receive that money you are entitled to it because you worked hard for it. Perhaps the Romans where applying this principle to the "righteous" things they did for God, treating the title of "righteous" as something they had earned. The "man who does not work" is simply a man who does not seek to build up a credit of righteousness through his own doing.

The way I see it, this would have a great impact on the way the Romans actually view money. You work hard to earn money and perhaps you start to feel that your money is just a way to store your time in measurable increments. The difficult thing about this view is that is makes it extremely difficult to have a generous attitude when giving your money away. You start finding yourself thinking, 'Don't they know that asking for $250 is equivalent to a week of my life spent working. They are asking for a week of my life!" And when you do give it's hard to resist some feeling of self-credited righteousness. As if we are entitled to even one more breath on this earth. I say all of this because this is how I think about money.

Because I view money this way, it makes it extremely difficult for me to ask people for financial assistance in my ministry work. Going back to Paul's actual request for money in Chapter 15, he unashamedly uses the logic of, 'I've ministered to you, my dear friends, now help me minister to others.' If the Romans choose to financially assist Paul, that money will not benefit the Roman community, it will not be used to feed the hungry or help the homeless. It will be used to procure food and transportation for Paul's journey and to sustain him while he's away.

These are things that hinder my ability to ask for assistance - the CCO support-raising community calls it "mind trash." When I ask I'm afraid I'll get answers like, "You've moved away to another community and you're not using the money to benefit our people," or, "You should be working with another more needy population group like those urban youth you used to work for, " and even, "I thought you always wanted to be in Colorado, why aren't you there?" But I'm encouraged by Paul's ability to ask. He spent an amount of time in a community and then moved on. He wrote to these communities but sometimes did not see them again. He also spent time in wealthy communities and cities because he knew that privileged people with wealth could be very poor in spirit. And finally, I'm sure he had a favorite place to be (perhaps it was his homeland) yet he would not deny God's call to other places.

And actually, I have had some people tell me these things. I'm glad they've been honest. I hope that through this support-raising process I will get the opportunity to talk to the people I love about their beliefs about money. I've noticed many different ways of thinking and I hope that God gives me the opportunity to discuss this most-difficult-topic with people who are willing to share their thoughts. I also have begun to recognize that even if this job I have is short-lived and even if I come up short of my fund-raising goal, God is transforming the way I think about money and reshaping the way my heart feels about wealth. I'm very thankful for the experience. For the first time in my life I don't feel that my wages are given to me "out of obligation" from a higher impersonal entity. I feel that my wages are a gift. And subsequently, my time is a gift.