The transition from Malaysia to the Philippines has been one of the hardest for me on the race. It was difficult to leave because of the relationships that our team had built with our contacts and the families we lived with in the jungle.  I left Malaysia pretty certain I will return sometime in the future...at least in some capacity...even if it's just to visit. 

But the race continues to move forward and we now find ourselves in the Philippines working together as an entire squad. This month we are living and working at a children's home in Malaybalay that is run by Kids International Ministries (KIM). This is a relatively new location that KIM has moved into and there are a lot of things that we get to help out with while we're here. One of our major resposiblities is taking care of the babies that they have on site. Currently they are short staffed and the people that normally take care of the kids do not get any days off and have very little time to relax. While we're here we are doing 24/7 care for the babies so that the workers get a chance to breathe again and even take a vacation. There are also toddlers and younger children we help out with and look after during the day. 

 

He came to the children's home a few months ago with his two sisters. Their mother has been diagnosed insane and their father doesn't want them. Before we got here, the workers told us that Andrew was unresponsive and wouldn't interact with anyone. After being here a couple days we started to see some changes in his behavior. He now loves to hang out with us, smile, laugh, and play with the other kids that he lives with. It has been so amazing to see life come back into him. Last Sunday, Andrew and I hung out during the morning church service and became buds. He liked turning the pages in my Bible and "accidently" dropped into the dirt quite a few times. Andrew's life is just one of many that have been profoundly impacted by the ministry that KIM does in the Philippines.

Our other major project is finishing up the construction of the buildings they have started building on the property. We've sifted sand, made concrete, painted, spackled, sanded, built fences, landscaped...just to name a few. Our main push is to get one building completed before another team of volunteers come in and to finish the kids complex before about 500 kids come for a weeklong camp. 

Of course there are other things going on here where we live and also in the surrounding community...hopefully I can share some of those stories later. Till next time....

 

For most of my life I've known a lot about God. I've read all about His character, His life on earth, His death and resurrection. I believe that I'm even about my Father's business...making disciples, serving others, caring for widows and orphans. But even though I understand these things and try to live them out, I can't get over the fact that I know I still have a very limited relationship with my Father...I struggle to know His voice, to spend time at His feet, to truly comprehend His heart. 

Living here in the heart of the jungle and seeing hundreds of people that don't have access to any copy of the Bible makes me think a lot about how God reveals Himself. I think many of us believe the only way to know God is to read about Him in scripture. I believe that the Bible is the primary way He speaks to us and teaches us, but it is not the only way. The Pharisees were people that had the best knowledge of the scriptures and yet they had no idea who God was. They had made it more about religion than a relationship. Sometimes we forget there is a God who is bigger than even the scripture He gave us and that all the words in the universe are not enough to speak of His goodness, His holiness, His love. Some of us have made His word our god. That's a scary place, where the gift becomes more important than the giver. When was the last time we stopped our Christian music, stopped listening to a sermon, put down even our Bible, and just listened to God? Are we able sit in His presence, longing to spend time with our Father and hear directly from Him?

I know there are a lot of Pharisees still in the church today. Some will probably stand before God and have the scenario in Matthew 7 play out. I know I have Pharisaical tendencies that I have to fight all the time. I don't want to deceive myself and think I am doing all these great acts in Jesus' name and miss the person and relationship with the God in scripture. I want the Holy Spirit to truly open my eyes to who God is in scripture and outside of it. I'm trying to seek God with all I am...and I know that He is faithful to reveal more of Himself to those who earnestly seek Him.

In a lot of the countries when we show up people are intrigued about foreigners coming to visit and stay for a month. The more remote the location, the more interest people seem to have probably because they don't have many visitors. They also usually want to hear what you have to say and if they believe in God they want you to run church services. Here it has been a similar experience. We've been able to lead a couple Bible studies and the Sunday church services since we arrived. 

Whenever we get to a new country it always takes time to learn about the culture and find out about the local church though. We've seen a wide range of people's maturity in the faith and it helps to get a feel for where people are at when we try to minister and lead services. Sometimes people barely believe in Jesus at all and sometimes people are crazy about Him and just want to soak up more of Christ in whatever way they can. 

Here in our village, we've been told that people were introduced to Christianity and became Christians twenty years ago. However, as we started to talk with people and explore what it means to be a follower of Christ and who Jesus is, we quickly learned that they are still in an infancy stage in their beliefs. It makes sense because although someone may have came and preached the Gospel twenty years ago, there hasn't been anyone to stay and disciple people. As far as we know, pastor Hem is the only one in the village who has a Bible, and one of the few people who can read. The Asli people have their own language and no Bible has been translated into it and very few people even speak the official language of the country, let alone can read it.

So as we started to probe and ask questions about who Jesus is, what His life was like, why he had to die, we started to see it on people's faces that they didn't know who He was. Many had never heard about Jesus' life on earth and they had no idea why He came and died. I was reminded of The Great Commission and how the last thing that Jesus tells us is to go make disciples of all nations, teaching them to obey everything He had taught. Sure we could show up and be another foreigner to preach the Gospel and have people once again say they wanted to be Christians and pray the sinner's prayer.   But after we left they would be right back at square one, not understanding who God is and the truths that are presented in His word. 

I know God is bigger than even the Bible. I know that He can reveal himself through whatever means He chooses and isn't limited to words on a page. I know He gives us dreams, visions, and speaks to our hearts. I believe He can also use other people in our lives to speak to us. I believe God has brought us here to share what we know about Him. To not boast about convert numbers and actually spend time discipling people who need to know more about Him.

I'm writing this blog from a far off time and place since my last post. So much has happened and I haven't been able to keep anyone posted so I want to fill you in on where I'm at. We finished up our time in Malawi by rejoining with the entire squad in the capital and sharing what God had done during the month in the different teams. It was a great chance to reflect on our time there and hear about other people's ministries. The month after Malawi was scheduled to be a month where we decided what ministry we wanted to do and where we felt God was leading us to go. We felt God calling us to Mozambique, to a place called Mama Rita's. We also decided to switch up teams each week while we were there and have a new team leader each day. The night before we left for Mozambique we found out that two people had malaria and would have to stay back until they got better. The rest of the squad proceeded to Mama Rita's in hopes that the others would rejoin us quickly.

 

 

 

 

From Moz we headed back to South Africa for a debrief period. We ended up meeting the people that had malaria in Malawi at debrief because there was no way they were going to get rest at Mama Rita's so they headed to South Africa early to finish recovering.  So many times debrief is anything but restful, but our squad ended up arriving a couple days early and we were able to take it easy and not have to rush into all our meetings immediately. The short story of debrief is that through a lot of prayer and discussion, we decided that things really needed to change. So many people had gone home, some teams were thriving, some teams were stagnant, and the lines between leadership and others still seemed to be a problem. So what happened was everyone was put in one room and we sought God as to who he wanted to place on new teams. Everyone was on an equal playing field and we all had a voice in what was decided. It could have been one messy process, but it went extremely well and everyone showed how mature we could be in making decisions of this caliber.  After the teams were finalized, each team decided their leader, finance person and how their team would function.

Now that we've completed a decent chunk of our race, I've got a few countries under my belt and quite a few experiences to draw from. We get to visit a lot of churches during our travels and they're all so different and unique. They have different cultural norms, traditions and ways of worshiping God. Growing up in the American church I've gotten used to a specific structure for church, how it runs, what not to say, when to stand, when to zone out, and when to head for the door. But for a lot of the church outside America, the structure looks different. They do things in a different order, leave things completely out, or have very little structure. But I think the biggest contrast I've noticed between churches in America and churches we encounter on the race are the physical ones. The building (if you can call it that), the mud mounds for benches, the lack of electricity, and the missing instruments. 

 

 

My question is this...how many people would leave your church if you stripped away all the glitz and glamour? Would you still be attending? Do we experience more of God when we are fully engaged in media and have things fed to us? Or do we lose God amongst all the noise and commotion that is going on? 

See, I feel like I've felt God's presence more strongly than ever before in some of the churches here in Malawi. I'm not saying God is absent from the American church...no not at all. What I don't want this blog to be is a bash on America and the culture. It's easy for me to get judgmental when I'm overseas and looking back at a land of excess. What I'm wrestling with is the thought that many attendees of American churches are coming with the intentions to be entertained....really?? Yes. Entertained! Do we come to the cross of Christ in hopes that he'll entertain us for a couple hours? That's a scary thought.

I'm speaking from experience here, so don't think I'm trying to exempt myself from anything...We raise our hands during worship and get emotional and feel like God is so close...We hear a message and it pulls at our hearts and we know that our lives need to change...We see our brothers and sisters hurting and realize we need to have compassion and do something for them...but then nothing happens...no action takes place.

If we were encountering God I think there would be more people on their faces before God, more people changing how they live their lives, more people loving their neighbor as themselves. But instead nothing happens and we go back to our busy godless lives. 

So why the disconnect? Maybe it's because we never came to church to be changed, we never came to experience the creator of the universe, we never wanted to have someone tell us that we are wretched and in need of a savior. We came to be entertained and get on with our lives. Next time you're in church look past all the things being presented to you and see where God is truly at work. When you seek Him out you will find Him. And then be ready to go for a ride...a ride that will change your life...that will call you into things that are bigger and better than yourself. I love adventure! And that's exactly what following Jesus is...the greatest adventure I've ever been a part of.

 

 

Not the most comfortable situation, but the memories are priceless. At the border we loaded all our packs and every person on two taxi vans took a few hours to get to our lodging where we found out they didn't have our reservations so we just pitched tents and made things work. Waking up the next morning the squad split up with one team going to the northern part of Malawi, two teams staying at the campsite in the central region, and my team heading on a 5 hour minibus ride to the southern part. Long story short...we made it and have plenty of stories to reminisce about together.

This month all our teams are working with the same organization even though we are spread out across Malawi. We are partnering with Harvester International Ministries (HIM). HIM does a lot of church planting and disciplining of leaders in many different denominations. Most of our time here looks like it will be spent traveling around and encouraging churches, pastors, and anyone we come in contact with. We'll be doing a ton of preaching, teaching, and sharing testimonies. Our contact here is Medson, the director of the southern region for HIM, and we are living with him and his family. 

 

The youth choir.

This is going to be a great month...more stories to come...!

 

 

 I've become used to flat tires, but losing an axle doesn't happen every day. Instead of going to the base, we hitched a ride into town and got a few groceries before heading back home.

 

 

The day after showing the film we headed back out into the same region and passed out vouchers that people could redeem bug nets for. In this area there are a lot of people who contract malaria. Typically the malaria carrying mosquitoes come out at dusk and by sleeping with a mosquito net you can drastically reduce the risk getting bit. So, we walked around the area and talked with people, sprayed their existing nets if they had them, and gave people who needed nets the vouchers. The vouchers allow us not to have to carry large amounts of nets with us, but they also give us a way to invite them to church the next day so they can redeem their ticket after the service. It went well...we handed out about 70 tickets and had over 50 tickets redeemed after people heard the gospel message.

I have one more thing here that I love to do, but I'll save it till my next post since this one is getting lengthy and I was always told to keep my blogs short....whoops.