Continuing on one step at a time..

Do not complain about the lack of community that you may experience after leaving this one that you have been so engrossed in... instead, take what you have learned, become the leader, and start that community somewhere else.  

Pondering..

We just returned from our retreat in the mountains this weekend.  It was definitely a fun time, but also a time of processing.  Looking back on the past 3 months, I have learned so much in such a short amount of time.  I am still trying to process exactly what I have learned and exactly how I have changed.  I think that I will continue to learn in the months to come.

I leave for Africa a week from today.  My travels are coming up soon, and I am definitely getting excited!  I will be gone until June 2nd, and will have no communication (or very very limited) until I return.  No news is good news.  I am excited for the experience to come, as well as the challenges that lie ahead.  

More to come later this week before I leave..

San Diego!

We made it back to San Diego yesterday and have started to reunite with the other teams!  So good to be back!  So good.  The rest of the teams will get in tonight and tomorrow morning.  Only bad thing is.. we all have to leave each other in a week and a half.  Fun times lie ahead of story-telling from tour!  

pure beauty.

The beauty of a sunset...

California here we are!

Wow... three months has passed and tour is now complete.  We have travelled many states and are now back where we started in California.  We finished our last screenings in New Mexico.. then made the journey back through NM, Arizona, and finally reached California last night.  Our first stop in this state was, of course, In-N-Out.  Mmmm!  We stopped in LA to see the SoCal team as well!  So fun getting to reunite with friends after a few months have gone by.  We are not allowed to go back to San Diego until Wed night, so until then, we have the rough life of a vacation in Newport Beach, CA.  Honestly, this has been a blessing of relaxation for us so far.  We met up with some contacts here and are literally staying on a house next to the ocean.  Today we got to enjoy the 90 degree weather outside all day, and then we just got back from a bike ride down the Boardwalk.  We are going to go watch the sunset, eat some dinner, and do a little more relaxing.  Rough life.  

It is crazy that tour is over.. definitely have mixed emotions about it.  I am stoked to see the rest of the roadies when we return later this week!  And not so stoked to be going separate ways 10 days later.  But in that time, we will be having 10 days of debriefing... a pretty packed schedule, but it should be good.  I will continue to keep you updated...

<3

Long drives

Soo... we made the day journey from eastern texas to western texas.  Let me fill you in on this secret incase you have never been to this great state.  Eastern Texas=fun, cities, etc.  Western Texas=open land of nothingness, tumbleweeds, etc.  So I drove the 9 hours across the state and didn't find much along the way.  But we made it to El Paso!  It is a border city with Mexico and you literally drive on the interstate here and Mexico is directly on one side, while America is on the other.  In the US, you see large buildings, nice cars, the university, etc.  On the Mexico side you see small shack houses, dirt roads, etc.  It breaks my heart that this one little border separates two completely different worlds of living.  

Today we are leaving Texas and making the short hour drive to New Mexico where we will be staying the next 3 days.  We have our 2 IC screenings there and will be finished with tour later this week.  It is astonishing that tour is almost over!  I look back and wonder where the last three months have gone.  So fast, but so fun.  At the end of the week we will begin our venture back to California...

<3

Shots... oh the joy.

Jared and I had to make the fun trip to the travel clinic so we could get our vaccinations before we head to Africa.  This was not something we were looking forward to, but it ended up coming just fine.  Except for the hefty bill that is.  But anyway, I thought I'd take a picture of all of our shots before we got them.  Jared had 6, and I had 5.  The lady did them in under a minute and 30 seconds for each of us... I was impressed.  Oh the price we pay to keep ourselves from getting sick.  The countdown is on: 3 weeks and we'll be flying to Africa!

Austin friends

Before we left Austin, some wonderful friends drove a couple of hours to come and visit us for the night.  It was an incredible time hanging out with them before they had to head back north for their classes in the morning.  I miss them again already!  

Uganda!

So friends, I have received the final word that I will be traveling to Uganda, Africa with Invisible Children in less than a month!  I will be with a group of 12 or so other roadies, and we will leave from San Diego on May 12th.  It is a two week trip where we will get to experience the culture, meet so many of the people who are the reason that we do what we do, see our programs, and serve in any way that we can (through building schools, loving on the kids, helping in the IDP camps, etc).  

I am so thankful to everyone who has been so supportive of all that I am doing.  Thank you to each of you.  If you are one to pray, I ask for your prayers at this time.  I know everything will come together and my eyes are going to be fully opened while I am there.  

As with all travels, there is a price to pay to get over to Africa.  Since I have been volunteering the past few months, I am currently without an income.  I have some of the money needed, but not nearly all of it quite yet.  So, if you feel led to give a financial gift.. know that it is very much a blessing to me.  

Any financial donations can be sent to me at my parent's address (since I am on the road):

Amy Barr

106 Knollwood Drive

Council Bluffs, IA 51503

Thank you so, so much for all you have done.  I will definitely share with you more details as I know them.  Stay tuned.

<3

"We are called to be warriors of light in dark places."

The Barbarian Way

"Barbarians never exist simply to survive.  Barbarians never just get through the day.  Barbarians wake to live and live life fully awake.  To be filled with the Spirit of God is to be filled with dreams and visions that are too compelling to ignore."  

love.

reading and thinking..

"The most civilized churches have really no practical concern for people outside their congregations.  The brokenness of a lost and unbelieving world is not enough to inspire the painful changes necessary to make the church relevant to the world in which we live."

-Erwin McManus (The Barbarian Way)

We are called to be warriors of light in dark places.

New Orleans

We ventured to New Orleans our last few days in Louisiana to do a couple of university screenings.  This was the first time I had been to NO.  I had so many mixed emotions while I was there that I really didn't know how to feel.  It was honestly heartbreaking.  I had seen pictures and knew of the devastation from Hurricane Katrina, however, to see it personally and to know that it has been nearly 3 years and still is still so much to be done was very hard.   This is a city with now 12,000 people who are homeless.  There is only 1 homeless shelter in the city that has 200 beds and they charge $8/night. 

We stayed in the 9th Ward which is the neighborhood which was hurt the most by the hurricane.  We were in the upper 9th, which was not as bad as the lower 9th.  But still, we were surrounded by abandoned houses or people who were living in houses that others would never imagine living in because they were falling apart.  

Aside from all of this, New Orleans has a culture about it!  It was incredible to experience the hospitality and the truly unique setting that it brings.  The people, the music, the food.. its just New Orleans.  We were able to go to a real crawfish boil - in which I tried crawfish for the first time (and enjoyed it!).  If you have never been to one of these - they literally boil hundreds of crawfish and the pour them all out on a picnic table.  You go through a process and finally get to eat them (very little meat for the work it takes to open them).  But so fun!  

I had a lot of good conversations while in Louisiana and was challenged to truly think deeply about why I am doing what I am doing.  About the passions that I have.  And so much more.  As with other cities, the places in Louisiana were just as hard to leave, but now we are back to Texas and making the most of our last two weeks of tour!  

<3

Louisiana

The swamplands of Louisiana!

After being in the state of Texas for over 2 months, we made it to another state yesterday - Louisiana!  It is my first time in LA, and it's fun to be here.  Besides the screenings that we've done, we've also gotten out a bit to go hiking in a state park, see the capital in Baton Rouge, and even eat crawfish!  The weather here is hot and humid, but beautiful.  And the people are so incredibly hospitable!  For instance, we ended up with no place to stay tonight and tomorrow night.. but there was a guy yesterday who opened his home up to us last minute.  Others have shown us a little bit of the LA cooking.  We leave Baton Rouge and head to New Orleans on Sunday.  Another place I am excited to visit!  We are down to about 3 weeks of tour left, and it continues to fly by.  As for now, I am enjoying Louisiana before I head back to Texas next weekend to finish out tour.  More to come soon..

Lets join her.

On this tour, we are focusing on political advocacy.  We are asking everyone to take the time to write one letter to one of their Senator's on behalf of the thousands of people dying in northern Uganda and asking our government to continue to support the peace talks.  This is a letter that was written by one girl who completely gets it.  Her letter was four pages long, and these pictures are just a small part of it, but I encourage you to read it.  She understands.  The fact that we are all human beings and something needs to be done.  That something starts with each one of us.  

Fun times!

Willie Nelson's western town

Britta, Elizabeth, and I in jail on the western property

I forgot to mention one more fun event.  I stayed with Willie Nelson's great niece, so on Easter, we went with her family out to Willie's western ranch.  On his ranch property, he has built up an old western town, so I took a lot of pictures.  Here are a couple of them..

Houston

We have been in the Houston area throughout this past few days and will be here until Tuesday.  Houston is one Texas city that I am not quite sure if I'm too fond of yet.  It is so incredibly large.. it takes a couple of hours from one end to the other, the traffic is always bad here, etc.  But I have met some fun people, which makes it great!  I do have one very fun and exciting story to share, but it is too long to write out.  Sooo, make sure to ask me about it!  

Today is our day off and we are running some errands that need to be run.  Tonight we are going with a friend to his church in Houston.  It is a church with over 45,000 people... mega-church to the max.  It will be interesting to attend the evening service just to hear the pastor speak and see the church.  

I had a conversation with a friend earlier this week that was one of the hardest conversations i've ever had.  It is our fourth teammate who is still very very sick.  He is struggling and is currently in one of the hardest places he has ever been in his life.  I wish I could be closer to be there for him, but I know I can't right now.  If you are one to pray, please pray for Will.  I do not want to put too many details up here about it, but know that it is a very serious situation.  

I am also continually thinking about my future and what is to come after tour.  Which direction do I head in?  Where should I go?  What should I do?  So many opportunities, it is exciting, but I also sort of feel like I have a blank slate ahead of me.  

Houston.. oh Houston.. I will be moving on to Louisiana very shortly!  We head out of the great state of Texas on Tuesday for a week and a half to do some screenings in Baton Rouge and New Orleans.  I have never been to Louisiana, so it will be fun to see!  

<3

the church

Who is the church?  The church is  made up of the everyday people who are out loving and helping the poor, the orphans, the widows.  How can we think that any of us think that we are better than that man on the street corner?  How is it that the church is not reaching out its arms wide open to others (both near and far) in need?  Why are we stuck in our self-centered worlds?

I am in a state that has a massive amounts of mega-churches and churches here spend a ridiculous amount of money on their buildings and everything inside.  I have seen flat screens, skate parks, and starbucks inside of churches.  I am struggling with the idea that our money is not going to use in a way that it should.  It should be the church that is reaching out in a hurting world on a level that is far more extreme than is currently happening.  God is all around us.  People are hurting.  Where are we?  

Austin

Since San Antonio, we have ventured onto many new places in different cities.  Last week was our craziest week of tour.  It was literally exhausting.  However, looking back on it, everything went well.  We were in Houston, then Belton, and now Austin.  This past week was South by Southwest (a huge music/movie festival in Austin), which IC had a couple showcases at it.  We were with thousands of people in a crazy musical city where people come from all around the world.  I was able to see some great bands who support IC, meet a lot of different people, and catch up with some friends.  

I will be in Austin all this week until Easter, in which we will head on to the next city.  Until then, we have events at coffee shops, houses, high schools, and a benefit concert.  I can't believe that tour is halfway over.  It is flying by!  I still do not know what will be next after tour... only time will tell.

I would love to tell more, but I am out of words and time for now!  More to come soon, I hope.

Guadalupe River in San Antonio

Enjoying a day with a picnic by the river

Britta, Amy, Kristen