Sure of who we are and who Christ is to us

partnership: a contractual relationship between two or more persons carrying on a joint business venture witha view to profit, each incurring liability for losses and the right to share in the profits

I want to write and let you know how much we appreciate you as partners in this ministry. We know that without you, our ministry would have a much more narrow scope. We are happy to know that we all “…share in the profits” (blessings). A recent revelation in God’s Word has left me challenged and hungry. Challenged to see what I am to Christ and where I stand in my relationship to my Father and hungry for more of Him. If you look closely at John 9, the healing of the blind man, you will see what I mean. It states immediately that he was blind so Jesus could show God’s glory but what hit me was the events after the healing.

If you look at the whole chapter, see how you identify with the blind man spiritually. Ask yourself, ‘if I was put in a spot to say who Jesus is to me, how would I answer?’ You can watch this man’s thoughts and perception of Jesus change as his life is turned upside down. Thank goodness that never happens to us. The blind man could now see, a miracle happened and he was challenged to explain it. So I asked myself, ‘…what am I to Jesus and my Father? Do I really know Him enough to call Him, Father? Were my eyes really opened? Can I share the proof? Who is this Jesus that has gifted me sight?’ (To see my commentary on John 9 click here)

“As long as it is day, we must do the works of him who sent me. Night is coming, when no one can work. (v4)” This verse that was mentioned so early in the chapter is truly what I had to ask myself after receiving the revelation of the rest of the chapter. Am I showing God’s glory as long as I have light… as long as I am alive? Am I giving it my all?

I am learning and improving through our work together and I continue to try and be all that God made me to be. My prayer is that we will be able to do the same for you. Thank you for your partnership, for I know we are proceeding in a venture together to see a profit, God’s glory done. “…this happened so that the works of God might be displayed…”(v3). I am well aware if the Corks become a liability and fail to show God’s glory we will incur losses as a partnership but, its my prayer that we see profits thru blessings from obedience to what God has called the Corks and you to. Thanks for your continued partnership in prayers, encouragement, and giving.

vincent

My Mother’s Day gift from Vincent and Wellington

Vincent made me this wonderful video for Mother’s Day. The footage is from when we were in Quito, Ecuador last August waiting for our work visas for Colombia. He was just turning 2. Wow, has he grown since then. I am so blessed to have these two in my life and to have such a talented husband.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JKys1LDyPaM&email=comment_received&lc=yqbbXenfsJGTlkZ4EPrLVuGtmkoPubEc8JglvTr3It8&lch=email&feature=email

Wild Ride

We had been searching for a new location to live for several months as it has been difficult in the past finding housing for our short-term teams.  The original plan was to use the Cali district center but it is still in construction and currently there are no more funds to continue construction.  In the past we rented other apartments near our apartment to house our short-term volunteers. We didn’t have housing confirmed until just a few days prior to the arrival of our teams. If an owner wants to rent their home/apt they are not going to agree to a two-week rental when they could have someone to commit to a year, so our rental agreements were always last minute. Glory to God he always came through with what we needed not a moment too soon or a moment too late. This type of housing was wearing for the fact that we had to carry bunk beds, mattresses, fans, tables and chairs sometimes up to the 3^rd floor of apartments and then remove it all the same day or day after the teams departed. We have found a better solution of renting a home where we would have sufficient space to house our short-termers. The name hotelcork seems to be following us wherever we are. We love sharing our gift of hospitality and now we will have the perfect opportunity to do so. Let me tell you the “wild ride” story of finding the house God had for us.

As I stated, we had been searching for a home near the church for the last few months. We looked through about 15 houses. We scanned the area of 10 blocks long and 8 blocks wide, zig-zagging through all the streets looking for rental signs and asking workers if the houses they were working on were for rent. Sometimes the workers would let us look through the house. Our wonderful co-worker, Sandra, would make the calls and appointments for us to see each of the homes for rent. Some were pristine and remodeled, others had been vacant for what seemed to be years and had freeloading cockroaches. We were so close to renting one of the homes. As foreigners the security companies had stricter rules for us. We would need someone to back us on the contract. With the church backing us, the Pastor backing the church- the security company still wanted one other signer to be behind the Pastor… someone not associated with the church. We were unable to find someone to do this. We praised God as we thought we had found the way around this by paying a deposit of 6 months. By the time everything was said and done, the security company wanted 10 months worth of rent for the deposit on a one-year contract. It wasn’t the answer. We found two other great homes but they were with the same security company, same problem; so we continued the search. The owner of the apartment we were in agreed to let us stay for another month past the end of our contract while we searched. Low and behold, we walked up to another great option for a house. In the process of having our paperwork reviewed for this house we learned that the apartment where we had been living had been sold and the owner wanted the house on the 27^th of March. We were given one-week notice of this. We waited and waited for the approval on the house rental and finally it came but they requested one more document. Pastor needed to sign the document but he was starting some intense travel. Sandra patiently waited for him to arrive home from a scheduled flight at 5pm but due to delays arrived after 8pm… only to turn around and leave the next morning before 5am for Venezuela. We got the required doc signed but they still needed to draw up the official contract. He would be gone for one week and we needed to be out of the house in 2 days. We packed over the weekend ready to move our stuff out to who knows where, maybe a room in the church. We had asked for an extension of one week to get all the paperwork in order but the woman managing the apartment denied us. The day we were to move out, Sandra and Vincent stumbled upon a good friend of the new owner of the apartment. She put us in contact with the owner and we explained our situation. She was more than kind to let us stay through the week if we needed. Praise the Lord we had two more nights in our apartment with the living room and dining room stacked high with boxes with only our mattresses on the floor. Sandra received approval from the rental company to allow us to move in before the official contract was signed, but repairs had to be done in the house as well as a deep clean. This was all done by Wednesday afternoon (minus the deep clean). We finally moved all of our belongings and all the short term volunteer supplies including 4 bunk beds and 16 mattresses and 8 fans not to mention all the additional bowls, plates, cups, coffee makers/servers, coolers, linens, etc. I am amazed how much stuff we had stored in our little apartment. In putting this in God’s hands, He moved us into our new home 24 hours before my family arrived to visit us. He is so good.

So many of the things that happened during this transitional period were all been at the very last minute but God is always coming through for us. Thankfully we have learned to hand these things to Him so He can deal with them. I have been reflecting on the time when we had just arrived in Cali and we were searching for an apartment to rent, needed cell phones, and wanted a map to get our bearings. I was so impatient with God wanting everything to be done upon our arrival, but apparently He had some lessons for me to learn. Due to my lack of faith and misunderstanding of what it meant to “trust in the Lord with all you heart and lean not on your own understanding,” I made it a stressful time for me, full of pain and frustration and occasional tears. We spent a lot of the time waiting on other people for things we would be able to do for ourselves in the US. This time around, during our housing transition I had so much peace it was unbelievable. And this time I think the situations were much worse in the eyes of the world. I am being reminded of how I was and how much I have changed by the grace of God, having complete faith in Him.

We had a young woman living with us who was studying Spanish. She had been with us for a month when we were in this moving process and she is much the immediacy kind of person that I must have looked like when I first arrived to Cali. I did the best I could to help her through all the transitions, the unknown answers to pertinent questions we all had, and the last minute changes that are inevitable living in South America. Watching her made me remember the pain and frustration I went through during our first months in Cali. I am so thankful I serve a God who is so loving and caring to help us through life transitions, the big thing is we have to hand it over to Him with complete trust and faith and not take it back to do it ourselves.

Vincent shared this verse during on of our small group meetings here in Cali and it has really stuck with me.

John 14:27 Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.

• Prayer Requests:
• Upcoming team of 11 we are preparing for in June mostly from WV, one from MI and another from KS.
• Finalization for a team in Aug.
• Our schedule for our travels home in Aug/Sept 2012 for all speaking engagements to be confirmed by the end of this month.
• Creativity in disciplining our almost 3 year old. It is hard to stay ahead of him.
• Continued provisions for our financial needs. Praise His name for a the blessings from our partners we have already received.

Here are some pictures of our new home we are renting and of the wonderful time I had with my family visiting.

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Weekend trip to the library

We have met some wonderful neighbors who have two children. Melian is 3 months younger than Wellington and Augostine is 7 months. We went to the library with them over the weekend. We met them at their house and Gustavo shared a delicacy with us – GIANT ANTS!! Here is a picture and a video of me tasting this delicacy. We are blessed to be making such great friends.

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We were woken in the middle of the night…

Holiday Happenings and Prayer Requests

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I have not been writing letters or updating posts much in the last month as it has been busy here with the holidays and with Wellington out of school for almost a month. He returned the middle of Jan and it felt so good to have some uninterrupted time to work in quietness. Several times during his vacation when we were at the park he would ask/motion to go by his school, always being disapointed when no one was there. The first few days back to school he shed a few tears, but they were quickly gone as other kids arrived. He is going through a stage of being timid and a bit clingy. He still loves to hand out high 5′s, hugs and kisses but he is a bit more choosey as to whom they go to. It doesn’t take long to get into his good graces. This last weekend came number 3 of his 4 molars. All weekend long he had fevers and didn’t want to each much except yogurt. He was really snuggley which I thoroughly enjoyed. He is waking during his naps in soft cries and falling back to sleep. The fevers come and go, I have been using oral gel and he understands that relieves the pain so he can go back to sleep or playing but that still doesn’t make it easy to put on his molar that is coming in.

We passed the holidays with friends and even though it wasn’t the same without our families, it was still a special time celebrating the birth of our Savior. We got to experience many cultural things over the holidays. We attended a horse parade and an antique car parade with Wellington. We also spent Jan 1 at the Pance River which is a custom for many Colombians. We had the incredible opportunity to go to a finca (farm, rather it was an urban community) with Pastor and almost his whole family. It was really nice to connect with them and their family on a deeper level and just pass some time together. There schedules are incredibly busy so we feel fortunate we were able to spend this special time with them. We were blessed to attend an overnight trip to another finca (farm) which was a youth camp with a local church we have become very close to. Vincent and I shared a message with the youth around a bonfire, it was the exercise we learned with LWM (Lay Witness Mission) of a quiet time with the Lord where you write a letter to yourself from Jesus. Our dear friend Myra helped us through a few tricky times with the language but we were able to share everything in Spanish. Praise the Lord, your prayers are being answered. For us to be at this point in our Spanish communication is a miracle in our eyes and we cannot thank you enough for all your prayers as far as learning the language but there is much more to learn so please keep praying. Here are some other prayer requests we currently have:

1. New projects and website design for Extreme Colombia at www.extremenazarene.org/colombia. This is a project we have been working on for the last month and a half and it is almost complete. Pray for this to be a tool that will draw people to Colombia to fill the vision of 300. We are praying for a total of 300 people to register for projects this year. Movement is starting to happen with a few teams deciding on dates to come and registering. We also have a Jesus Film group coming. God is so good and faithful to our prayers. Pray with us to hit the vision of 300!

2. Praise the Lord that my family is coming to visit us at the end of March (my sister and her daughter, my mom and my aunt). Pray for God to prepare them for mighty things while they are here and for safe traveling mercies. They will be staying with us through Easter.

3. Wisdom for Vincent and I as we discipline Wellington. We pray for creativity in parenting. Wellington is an incredible and intelligent kiddo and we are working to keep up with his level- working to raise him to be a Godly young man.

4. Praise the Lord! As of Feb 1 we will have renters for our home in Missoula, MT. It has been vacant since the beginning of Dec. We trusted in God that he had very specific people to rent our home. We are grateful for our dear friends who are managing this for us. We had to drop our rental price below our monthly expenses but know that God will provide as he has called us to do what we are doing.

5. We have our flights purchased for our trip back to the States for 2012: Aug 23 – Sept 18. Please pray for God to work the details of our travels and speaking engagements. We will be working to make contacts for these during the months of Jan and Feb hoping to have our schedule in place by mid March.

Cork Christmas Letter 2011

As Christmas is quickly approaching and I have on my “to do” list to get our Christmas letter done I am thinking of what we can share about our lives this past year that is new and interesting for those of you who follow our blog and get our supporter updates. I feel like a majority of our life is captured in this blog. Let me tell you about some of the little things that maybe don’t make it into the blog.

The previous 18 months we have moved 6 times (1.our house in Florence to our new house in Missoula, 2.our host family in Arequipa during Spanish School, 3. an apartment of our own but shared with a fellow Extreme missionary for a month in Arequipa while our plans to move to Colombia were delayed , 4. to the apartment of a member of the Cali House of Prayer church for a month during the transition of finding an apartment in Cali and 5. finally into our own place, which we have remained for almost 8 months.) Needless to say we have been in a bit of a transitioning phase since becoming missionaries. Through this time we have learned a lot about flexibility and going with the flow. There were days when things we take for granted in the States for the most part like electricity, natural gas and water were gone sometimes for a few hours, other times a day and few times for several days. Sometimes I had a hard time finding the joys in the some of the trials we have been through (the biggest one being our visa process). Some of my tears were not of joy but of frustration. I have learned so much more in the last year on how much we need to trust in our Lord with absolutely everything, down to the most miniscule things in our lives. Also to trust in Him completely even when He asks you to do something that looks absolutely crazy in the eyes of the world… to be honest, in our own eyes at the first mention as well, but being faithful and obedient brings unsurmountable joy to our lives.

I absolutely love pictures so I have put together a little album of the best of the best for 2011. For me pictures speak volumes. I hope you enjoy the slide show.

We were originally contracted to remain here in Colombia through March of 2013 but God has changed those plans. We now know that we will be here until 300 people come by the avenue of the Extreme Colombia project. We don’t know if God will do this in one year or five. Its not our place to question, but only be obedient and diligent in doing what He called us to. We are looking forward to the future of our work here in Colombia for more opportunities to boast about God’s greatness, faithfulness and love.

Below is a excerpt from an article I read this Christmas season that really captures our Christmas this year. It is difficult for us to send gifts to all our loved ones in the States from Colombia but we can “give” some of the things described below.

The dictionary defines a gift as simply, “a thing given.” It says nothing about cost, appropriateness or presentation – only the condition of the heart. One person giving to another. That’s all. So maybe we ought to stop talking about “getting the Christmas spirit,” and concentrate on merely giving it.

How? By pausing to ponder the real needs of people around us. Now it may be that the best gift you could give someone is, in fact, an object. Perhaps a winter coat, box of food or help paying the rent. But be open to seeing non-material needs as well. Needs for friendship, forgiveness, and appreciation, to name but a few. How sad that we so seldom think to give these things away as gifts. Instead, we hold them tightly, letting a sense of justice and fairness dictate who is worthy to receive. But how different the world would be if we simply gave – not sparingly, but lavishly: not reluctantly, but eagerly.

We give when we release a grudge, are patient with a fool or speak kindly to a stranger. We give when we make time to keep a promise, seek out a forgotten friend or enter into another’s sorrow. We give by baking cookies for a neighbor, offering to babysit for weary parents or spending time with a lonely person. We give when we look out for others, not ourselves.

I’ve often wished I had the guts to do this – to forget what anyone might say and just give people what they really need. That I could somehow overcome my desire to exchange wrapped presents instead bring true gifts. Joy. Peace. Laughter. Happiness.

I know. I know. You’re wondering how these things would look under the tree. To be honest, I’m not sure I have the answer.

All I can say is that Christmas joy isn’t found in a shopping bag and the yuletide spirit isn’t limited by the calendar. So give yourself away and see what happens. You may just get what you really want for Christmas.

taken from  A Christmas Digest, © 1998.

We love and miss you all. We are with you in spirit, thoughts and prayers during this Christmas season.

Blessings – THE CORK FAMILY in Colombia

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Wellington’s Christmas program and more…

I wanted to share Wellington’s big debut at the Christmas program but his dancing partner didn’t come to the performance. We still have a great time celebrating with all his classmates and teachers. Below are some picture and video of his part in the program. Wellington was fascinated with a light machine spreading green and red dots all over the stage. We enjoyed watching and listening to the Christmas story from the perspective of Colombia, incorporating their culture into the story. The children also released ballons into the sky with a note attached with all their requests for Papa Dios (God). Last weekend we had the opportunity to go downtown with our great friend Sandra and her mom to enjoy walking through miles of lights along the Cali river. We had a wonderful time taking pictures with all the lighted sculptures and enjoying some of the local cuisine. We are blessed to be able to experience this wonderful city and country and Colombian people during the Christmas season.

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Nov. Rain in Cali

Well, we thought we were just finishing with the second rainy season of the year with the month of Oct. Once Nov rolled around it got hot and we saw a lot more sun until one night it started to rain and it didn’t stop. We made a quick video to show you what happened. This same thing happened right before we moved into our apartment in April, the other rainy season of the year.

POR FIN – We officially have our visa cards

When I posted the fact we had our Colombian Visas in hand, that was not the end to the process. We still had to visit the D.A.S. (Dept of Admin Security) office in Cali within 15 days of reentering the country in which we drove 45 min to this office only to make an appointment for the next day (they only make appointments in person, you cannot call to make an appointment). We received another list of letters and items we needed to present. We obtained the last of these requirements at 10pm that night and returned the next day to sit for over an hour. After the fingerprinting and more photos we were told to return in a month and a half for our visa cards. PRAISE THE LORD, this week officially marks the end of our visa process. After 6 long months, serveral trips out of the country, oddles of paperwork signed, stamped and certified by this office and that, fingerprints of every combination (both ink and electronic), we finally picked up our C.E (Cedula Extranjero). This card allows us to function like a resident in Colombia. We are now starting the process of being less dependent on the locals (to an extent). We are working to convert some bills for things like internet and cell phones that are in friends names into our own. They were gracious to help us when we arrived to secure those things which are essential to the operation of the Extreme Colombia project. It was an impossibility as foreigners without a visa to get any of this accomplished when we arrived. We are so thankful for God providing the support we have here in Cali.

We are gearing up for our next team arriving in 1 week. This is a very special team for us as Vincent’s dad is coming and we have our 3 attending from our home church in Missoula, MT and 2 from Victor, MT. We are excited at what God is orchestrating as far as events for this team. Some of them seem specially catered to the skills and abilities of this group. Why does this surprise me that God would organize such individualized events? I shouldn’t be surprised, this is what we have been praying for and the prayers are being answered. Praise His name. Please continue to pray for this team as many have been under some intense warefare. This only confirms that these are the ones He has chosen to come. We are anticipating marvelous things to happen while they are here.

Psalms 126:3 The Lord has done great things for us and we are filled with joy.