Dreams

This past year I was a part of a discipleship group called the Remnant. My parents were the leaders and 6 Kenyan youth made of the rest of the group.

Four where my classmates in secondary school in Kenya. Mom and Dad had gotten sponsors for them and paid their way through school. The other two were my Kenyan sister, Mercy, who is a nurse and Judith, a primary school teacher.

We all lived at Scriptural Holiness Mission. We all also had jobs to do to make money to live on. But the most important part of the Remnant - discipleship. We studied alot of things using discipleship courses, books and sometimes just the Bible and our thoughts.

Of Chirstmas last year my dad got a present from my oldest brother. It was the book the Dream Giver. After Dad read it, he decided it would be something good for the Remnant to learn about.


Each night for fourteen nights, the Remnant gathered in Mom and Dad's house after supper. Dad would have The Dream Giver laying on the table or by the chair. After everyone had settled down we would all look at Dad expectantly. Sometimes he would still be eating or maybe instructing Jed about something, but most of the time he had the book already in his hand, just waiting on us. He would open it up and we would all wait to see what would happen to Ordinary. Dad read the story, using just the right voices and tones to make it interesting. Since each chapter in The Dream Giver is short, all too soon he would read Ordinary's journal entry for his most recent experience. Then he would close the book. We would all sit there thinking about what we had just heard and wondering what would happen next. Sometimes you could hear an audible sign of regret for one of the group as Dad closed the book. After the book closed we knew that we were dismissed and all filed to the door. The next night we would be there promtly to hear the next chapter.

I tell you this story because reading The Dream Giver has more of an impact on my life than anything else from the 9 months the Remnant spent together. The Dream Giver has changed the way I see life and the way I live it.

I have always been a dreamer. I have an active imagination and since my brothers were already in high school when I was little, I needed it to keep myself entertained. The problem was that none of my dreams really had any meaning on my life. The dream that I had that I really stuck to and did something with was going on a mission trip with Teen Mission International. I dreamed about that trip for seven years and achieved it in 2001. Other than that I kinda floated between different thoughts and ideas and dreams for my life. For example I have dreamed of going into many different professions including: medicine, nursing, accounting, business management, education, missionary, youth ministry, counseling, education, and medicine. But none of them were a passion for me.

The funny thing is that after reading The Dream Giver I have discovered that the Big Dream that God (the ultimate Dream Giver) has given me is none of the ones listed above. As a profession in the only way I can discribe my Big Dream is by saying that I want to be a journalist. But my Big Dream goes so far and beyond just that. My dream encompasses telling the stories of the worlds hopeless and helpless. And yet it is still so much bigger even than that.

As I travel around America I see so many young people and even old people who are living life without a passion. People who think life is just about what you can get out of it and how much fun you can have. But it is so much more than that. It is about having a Big Dream that fills you with passion. Its about wanting to get up early in the morning and not waste a second of the precious time God has given us during this thing we can out life. Its about going to bed at night and thinking I did something worthwhile today. For me I found that passion in writing. In looking at the world around me and seeing it the way God sees it(actually thats a story for another day). In recognizing that the people around me each have stories that should be told and digging deeper to find those stories. I may not be a good writter and I may not yet see the things I need to in order to find the real story. I may not be well-known but... I have a passion. And I believe that is all that matters.