Next Stop: Vladimir, Russia

Well, I told you that this blog would be reserved for future missions opportunities and the next one has presented itself!

Since finishing my stint with Word Made Flesh in Sierra Leone, I have joined a Masters program back at Taylor University where I am studying Higher Education and Student Development.  In this role, I work as faculty with the Campus Pastor and have a chance to take advantage of other faculty opportunities, including leading a short term missions trip with students!  Taylor has a philanthropic arm known as Taylor World Outreach (TWO) that provides opportunities for students to engage in service and ministry in the community and around the world.  One of the major ways they do this is providing Spring Break missions trips to various locations throughout the US and the world.  In 2007, I participated in one of these to the Dominican Republic and one of my college roommates was once a student leader for it, so I know it's a great way to be involved in missions.

This year, I applied to co-lead a trip because of my passion for missions and my knowledge of the work TWO does in inspiring students to missions and ministry.  I found out months later that I had been selected to lead the trip to Vladimir, Russia.  This is a trip that TWO has sponsored for years (I remember it happening in 2006, but I'm sure it goes back further) so I appreciate that while the trip is short-term, the relationship between the school, our host organization, and the locals is long-term.  We work in tandem with the Boaz Project which has close connections through Taylor alumni and has worked with this trip before.  My co-leaders are Jim and April Jurgenson, Directors of Operations and Programs for the Boaz Project and also TU alumni.  With their organization, we will be conducting vacation bible school and building relationships with orphans through music, games, and stories.  The trip is over Taylor's Spring Break which is March 19-27, 2011.

That's most of what I know for now.  We're still picking our student team and the process is still confidential.  I wanted to let you, my supporters, know that this was coming up and give you an opportunity to get involved again.  I know you'll be interested to hear about my team and what we'll be planning, and I will be very appreciative of your prayers once again.

A Post Worth 94,000 Words

...And some because of this short paragraph explaining. These are not all of my pictures- just the ones that comply with Word Made Flesh's photo policy of not publishing photos of our kids. I can show those in person and many of you may already have. If you haven't, perhaps we can get together, but here's 94 pictures worth 1000 words each. Enjoy!

Final Support Letter

My time in Sierra Leone may be over, but I am sure that the work God has set before me is just beginning. I want to express how grateful I am and was for your support and prayers while I was living in Freetown this fall. Not only did your dollars provide rent for my room, buy every meal I ate for four months, and pay every vital taxi fare, but your prayers made even more difference in my life. It was a physically and emotionally taxing time and without the knowledge that God was there to help (and that you were there bringing me before Him in prayer) I would not have been able to learn and do all that I did.

I went there expecting to learn more about the plight of the poor and to have my perspective changed on how God blesses each person and I certainly did experience a great deal that has changed my outlook on those issues, but there was more. I learned a lot about myself and how I struggle with the tension between learning and doing and I opened my mind to the idea that as a well educated Christian I may not understand all that is true as well as I thought I did.

I originally wrote to you with the idea that I would be "helping spread God's Kingdom by serving the poor" and while that certainly remained true, I slowly began to realize that I was there more for my own education that to do anything monumental in the lives of my new friends. A stanza from a poem I wrote while there encapsulates this idea well:

I am here now to join their shift

Yet can I lift some from their plight?

It's not my part to do this deed

But plant a seed; to sow God's Light

Realizing that I came to Sierra Leone to have my own assumptions challenged and not to bear the burden of some great social change was hard for me to understand until I remembered that St. Paul saw himself only as someone who simply sowed a seed, let others water and care for it, while God made it grow (I Cor 3:6).

As I continued to grow in this realization, I found myself challenged by more. Like most Christians, I am convinced that what I believe is right and nothing in this world can challenge those truths. This belief still stands for what I consider to be true theologically, but I realized that I had made the common mistake of transferring this infallibility to my cultural beliefs as well. In Sierra Leone I found my Western worldview challenged by things that still fit into my Christian worldview. When a local pastor friend of mine was telling my team about witchcraft in Freetown and how some witches have spiritual vision, I was skeptical. He told us that witches see Christians as having a flaming sword around them and the sword terrifies all evil things. As I considered what this well-educated Christian was telling me, I remembered that I live in the same world in which Satan physically attacked Job, Jesus cast out demons, and Balaam's donkey spoke. This caused me to put some serious thought to what might be true that I had not given a chance and I thought about the flaws in my own worldview. I wondered what it might be like to understand the cosmos like Moses did, or King David, or even the One who's got it all figured out- Jesus! When I read in I Cor 2:16 that we have the mind of Christ, I wondered what was getting in my way of comprehending what I should understand. It is a process, but I am attempting to widen my worldview and stretch my perception how much of the truth I am able to see.

Of course, not everything can be told in one letter, so if you want to hear more, read my blog or email me and I will answer questions about my time there as best I can. But I really do want to thank you for holding me up in the hard times- I really depended on your support more than you know and I am very very thankful for it. Let us keep praying for one another because we don't stop learning and growing in our everyday lives