Who wants to go to Cancun and Playa Del Carmen with me in February or March???

Here's a video from our friend Pastor Doug in Playa del Carmen who is building an incredible ministry in the Mayan village of Chan Chen.

I'm in the beginning stages of forming a team to go in February or March to work with Back 2 Back Ministries with orphans in Cancun, do some work with Pastor Doug in the Mayan village of Chan Chen AND also experience some awesome beach time and personal growth time. WHO WANTS TO GO???

What is a Butterfly?

“Tell me Sir, what is a butterfly?” asked Yellow the caterpillar.

'It’s what you are meant to become.

It flies with beautiful wings and joins the earth to heaven.

It drinks only nectar from the flowers and carries the seeds of love from one flower to another.”

“Without butterflies the world would soon have few flowers.”

“It can’t be true!” gasped Yellow.
“How can I believe there’s a butterfly inside you or me when all I see is a fuzzy worm?”

“How does one become a butterfly?” Yellow asked pensively.

“You must want to fly so much that you are willing to give up being a caterpillar.”

“You mean die?” asked Yellow.
“Yes and no…What looks like YOU will die, but what’s really you will still live.”
“Life is changed, not taken away. Isn’t that different from those who die without ever becoming butterflies?”

(From the book "Hope for the Flowers" by Trina Paulus)

God, I don't want to live falsely, in self-imposed prisons and fixed,
comfortable patterns that confine my soul and diminish the truth in me.
So much of me has gone underground.
I want to let my soul out.
I want to be free to risk what's true, to be myself.

Set free the daring in me…
the willingness to go within, to see the self-lies.
I'll try to run away, but don't let me.
Set me on a journey toward wholeness.

I'm scared, God. Make me brave.
Lead me into the enormous spaces of becoming.
Help me see your face shining in the night of my own soul.
Help me to break free and risk becoming the person you created me to be.

Tomorrow I may regret these words, but tonight I speak them,
for I know that you're somewhere inside them…
I know you love me and won't leave me alone in their echo.

(Adapted from a prayer by Sue Monk Kidd)

I Wanna Set The World on Fire

A couple of years ago I made this video as a way to express a prayer to God that I couldn't seem to put in words...so I used pictures. Most of the pictures are mine and are from mission trips to Mexico and India. I meant this prayer from the bottom of my heart and I kind of forgot about it until today.

I'm amazed at how 3 years later all of the things I was asking God for were set in motion that day and are starting to come to happen! Pay attention to your dreams. God has put them there for a very special reason!

Make photo slide shows at www.OneTrueMedia.com

Mexico Update

Hello Friends!

As you know, Trent and I are hoping to do missions work in Mexico (specifically the Riviera Maya) some day soon. We went in February to start the process of figuring out what we are supposed to do and are planning on continuing to go back until something develops. We were thinking we were going to have to start our own missions agency, which we have no idea how to do, but are trusting that God will make a way.

Well, God has made an amazing thing happen! My good friends Matt and Julie Cooper are opening a second site of Back2Back ministries in Cancun to serve the orphans and the children who are left to raise themselves while their parents work 12 - 16 hours a day in the hotels. These kids are being preyed on and used in human trafficking and Matt and Julie are going to move to Cancun to help fight against human rights violations. Now Trent and I don't have to figure out what we're supposed to do in Mexico, we have an awesome organization that will be in place that we can bring teams to without having to start our own!

B2B is the mission organization I worked with in Monterrey, Mexico when I took teams of high school students on mission trips. We are very excited to be able to partner with friends and a mission agency we love and trust! My favorite part of taking those teams to Mexico was watching the transformation that happened in just one week when kids were removed from their comfort zone, removed from video games and cell phones and were able to focus on and serve others...to see that it's not just about us in here in America...there's a whole world out there that needs us to get out of our bubble and help! Amazing, amazing things happened in people and changed them forever! That's what I hope to have a part in someday soon!

Family Christian Book Stores has offered to match any donations they receive up to $15,000. Could you find it in your heart to help Matt and Julie with their move so they can get started right away in this global fight against human rights violations? $5 turns into $10....$25 turns into $50....you get the idea. Any amount will help them and it will also help us (The Rajski's) in our mission.

You can read more about Back2Back or make a donation at www.back2backministries.org . Trust me, there isn't a better mission organization out there...I'm so excited to get the opportunity to partner with them and hope that you will help!

Love and Peace, Lanette

P.S. I'm hoping to form a team and be one of the first to go to Cancun to help Matt and Julie get started. Let me know if you're interested. We'll do some mission work and we'll do some vacationing and sightseeing too!

New Back2Back Ministries site in Cancun!

Blog post by Julie Cooper, Back2Back Ministries
(See the original article HERE)

This fall, Back2Back will be expanding, by opening a second site in Mexico, specifically in Cancun. Staff will help in the fight against human rights violations against children and provide “care for today, hope for tomorrow” to orphans in need. Below, Julie Cooper, who will be heading up this site with her husband, Matt, explains how the idea began:

My husband, Matt, with two siblings from San Jose Children's Home in Cancun, during a visit to the area in March. I want to share with you a little bit of the story behind us going to Cancun. This won’t cover every angle but mostly that which involves us personally. In the fall of 2008 one of our SMCA (the school on campus) teachers held a fund raiser to help an organization that works in areas where human rights are being violated. I was interested to learn more about this organization so I visited their web site to see what kind of work they were involved in. I was struck by an article about the great need in Cancun and how poor and street children are at incredible risk there. It just kind of became a burden to me. I thought a lot about the kids and their needs and began to wonder if Back2Back could maybe someday be “back to back” with the work that was going on in this city.

Later in the fall of 2009, Back2Back decided that it was time to branch out and begin work in another Mexican city. By this time, I had shared with pretty much everyone what I had read about Cancun. However, back in the US office while researching options, our team was unable to find even a word about Cancun on this organization’s web site. Apparently, they don’t even work there! Whatever it was that I read over a year ago, was clearly God’s way of bringing this area of Mexico to our attention. Many associate Cancun with beaches and hotels – not with the thousands of children in need. Some are living in children’s home but many, many more are at home unsupervised while mom is gone twelve hours a day trying to earn a living working in one of the hotels. Older kids often turn to the streets. Below is first-hand insight into the situation in Cancun, as reported by Chris Hawley, of Republic Mexico City Bureau:

Cancun is a place of brilliant turquoise waters and cool white sand, tropical breezes and icy margaritas, glittering hotels and immaculate streets. That’s the Cancun seen by some 4.6 million visitors a year, making this tiny island one of the world’s biggest tourist destinations, a major source of cash for Mexico and the model for new resorts from Tunisia to Thailand.

But there’s another Cancun just beyond Kilometer Zero, the place on Kukulcan Avenue where the vaunted Hotel Zone ends. And things are not so idyllic there. It’s a city of 500,000 struggling with the social ills of a frontier boomtown: crime and poverty, drugs and gangs, political unrest . . . It’s a place of gritty “superblocks” where hotel workers live in cinder-block houses, and of even poorer areas where squatters build shanties out of scrap wood and old advertising banners.

“If the tourists knew where we live, they’d understand what Cancun is really like,” said María Eternidad Jiménez Orinano, standing in the door of her scrap-metal home in the Tekach neighborhood.

Back2Back will work to meet the needs of the children in the area and offer opportunities for short-term mission teams to partner with us as we serve.

God has worked in His own time and I am encouraged by that as I think about the obstacles that still stand in our way. I’m going to write about it in my journal right now, so that next year I can look back again at our Faithful God who supplies all of our needs according to his glorious riches in Christ Jesus and see how He was again faithful!