Priesting the Gospel

Well, I promised some insight from Perspectives, but it is hard to distill down such an amazing first 2 weeks to a blog short enough to read!  What strikes me this morning is one short line to "priest the gospel" not just "preach the gospel."
What's the difference?  You've known some great preachers, right? Highly polished sermons, great theatrics and stories, perfect TV face?  Were you impressed? Did you really feel Christ's love from them? 
Now remember a really great priest or pastor.  I really like the term pastor since I understand about sheep and shepherding.  It takes really getting in the muck with your flock to be a good shepherd.  Good pastors are the ones who cry with you when you talk about losses, work shoulder to shoulder with you on things and listen when you need to vent.  Through this building of true relationship, not merely preaching at us does one really understand the difference. 
God calls all of us to "priest" the gospel.  From our abundance of joy in God's glory we should overflow with the desire to share this with others.  This means our sharing or evangelism doesn't come from a sense of duty, but from a love of God.  When we share our faith and joy of salvation with someone, especially if we don't know them well, it springs out of our love for God as much or more than our love of the person.
Whew, much more to come, but there is a lot of reading and writing and thinking in Perspectives, though I highly recommend it!  It has already caused a bit of paradigm shift in our thinking about missions. www.perspectives.org.

Perspective

Wow, nearly a month already!  Where does the time go?  Somehow we have gotten terribly caught up in the busyness of life and haven't communicated in a while.  After 2 Real Life Real Impact student weekends, 10 days in Nicaragua, and a CVM Board meeting in CA I feel like I am on spiritual overload!  God is so good, but it took me a while to recover.
We are now officially in our third month of deputation and I think the Lord is teaching us patience....  It seems like it will take forever to have our monthly budget coming in or pledged. 
God is blessing us through many of you and your gifts though!  We are glad you are enabling us to be the conduits through which your ministry to God's people can be carried out.  Keep praying for the people of Bolivia and us as well as about your role in this ministry.
We are beginning the Perspectives on the World Christian Movement course this week--wow!  This is a bigger undertaking than I realized, but I have been blown away in the first chapter already.  Look for some insights from this course in the upcoming weeks.

Our God is AMAZING!

This morning is our last full day in Nicaragua.  It is a day of rest and regrouping.  I am sitting and watching the Pacific break on the rocks, waiting for the few surfers to paddle out and tackle the waves.  It is a tough life...
We have had a great week of training though.  We, along with 10 other CVM fieldworkers or candidates have been working 8am to often 7 or 8 pm daily on a training called "Training of Trainers."  This is an exciting, practical method of adult education based on Participatory Learning.  The gist of this is involving trainees (on our staff, in communities, or anywhere) to engage in dialogue through skits, picture codes, etc to discover their own needs and have ownership of the material they learn. A simile for this is like how David and I joke that our marriage is happy because we always let the other person think it was their idea!  It isn't so devious as that, though.  It is an amazing method of teaching and learning rather than our traditional school method of banking--dumping knowledge into a brain and expecting regurgitation of answers.
Anyway, it has been an intense week of learning and application, we even had to develop our own training programs to present to our classmates.  The bonding between our coworkers was amazing.  I am constantly reminded of what an excellent example of the family of Christ that we have in Christian Veterinary Mission. 
We have now been at the beach for a day or so with the other fieldworkers from Latin America and have loved picking their brains about crosscultural living and the odd things we should plan to bring with us!  More about that in the future...

Thanks for supporting us with your prayers!  We are flying home on Tuesday and then Caleb is going to Indiana to visit family, David is back to school, and I am headed to California for the CVM board meeting.  Pray for our crazy travel and sanity!

Leaving Saturday

It has been a fun, busy week for us!  Last weekend we spent an awesome time in Athens for the CVM Real Life Real Impact student meeting.  It was great to see our DVM friends and meet new vet students who love the Lord. We shared about RAIN and had a wonderful outpouring of love and prayer from the folks in our session. 
Tonight I get to share with the Bell County 4H about equine parasites, then finish packing for Nicaragua.  We leave at 3:30AM Saturday to head to Nicaragua for a week and a half of training in participatory learning for community development and fellowship with other CVM fieldworkers.  Pray for our travels and our deeper understanding of this form of ministry.

White as snow

As I look at the thin layer of snow this morning, I will continue on the theme of cleansing, of sanctification.  Cue the "Washed in the Blood" chorus (are your garments spotless, are they white as snow), so it can be stuck in your head too!
The sacrifice of Jesus justifies us, that is, makes us accepatble to the Lord (remember your elementary Christian education-"just as if I'd").  Our sanctification however is another matter altogether.  That is our process of working toward holiness.  This is where the snow comes in.  Today we have a very thin layer, but all the grass is poking through, there are windswept patches on the driveway that are bare; all in all it is pretty ugly.  But if it continues to snow it will blanket everything to there are no rough edges, no poky things and it will be beautiful.  In the same manner, as we learn to let go of the things of this world and strive toward God's will, we become clothed in righteousness and just as smooth and pure as the snow-covered landscape looks.  Here is where my analogy may break down (or not).  God changes us and truly makes us holy and righteous, whereas the snow just covers us up, when it melts, the unmown grass and weedy pastures are staring. Maybe it is true of us too though.  Without God, we are still human, so if we drift away our weeds become exposed too.
Enjoy the snow and think of how we are working toward holiness, not covering up our inadequacies ourselves, but allowing God to blanket us in His purity.

My cup overflows Psalm 23:5 (or runneth over, if you like KJV)
This is what I shrieked this morning as I tried to do laundry in the dark.  Pouring clear laundry detergent is not that successful in a predawn haze.  Why didn't I turn on the light?  Well, honestly I got lazy--I had flipped the breaker to rewire the ceiling fan and never gotten around to it and didn't want to run down to the basement to turn the breaker back on.
Why am I bothering to tell you this?  I was struck by the symbolism of this tiny accident.  The Lord's cup overflows with salvation, with cleansing, with goodness. My clothes may be extra sudsy today and maybe cleaner, but the Lord's cup of blessing through the blood of Jesus makes us pure and spotless, able to enter into the Lord's presence.  It is an amazing thing to be clean enough for God!  Read some Levitical laws about cleanliness (Chapter 13 is a good one).  Wow!  Maybe my grandma was right that "cleanliness is next to Godliness," but praise God for Jesus! If we had to present ourselves to the priest for every scab we had, or every spot of mold on a piece of leather to determine if we were able to worship. 
So, wash your clothes and wear them to worship our great God.  Take refuge in His glorious sanctification and freedom.

The Contagion of Christ

One of our friends shared with me an incredible Christmas gift!  Since then I have passed it along to my sister in law, David, and who knows how many others! What was this great gift? A cold, of course.
As I see people infected, I wonder how infective is our Christianity? Is our joy as profuse as our germs?
Is hand sanitizer the equivalent of indifference or the devil stopping our enthusiastic spread?

During this time of cold and flu season we are acutely aware of our actions.  We wash our hands until they are chapped, use gallons of hand sanitizer and cover our coughs.  Are we this conscientious about our faith? I challenge you (and me) to spread the joy of the Lord with abandon. We should be like the leper in Mark 1:45 who "went out and began to talk freely about it, and to spread the news"!  Let our joy and peace be as evident as our red, runny noses and our proclamations of His sovereignty as fervent as our coughing!

Oh, and if you find yourself with physical sickness, remember that Jesus gave his disciples "authority over unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to heal every disease and every sickness" Matthew 10:1 You will get better eventually, in the meantime let your sickness remind you of how to spread the gospel!

Advent!

'Tis the season of Advent!  For you Latin nerds: ad=to; vent=come.  So, the season "to come."  A season of preparation.  You all think I am talking about Christmas?  Well, yes, that and our preparations for all our future amazement.  You may hear this again soon, but it is such a perfect analogy.
How are you preparing to celebrate the Lord's great gift to us?  I'd love to hear some of your traditions of advent.  Caleb and I are working on some Latin prayers and reading different prophesies and accounts of Jesus' birth in school.  We've not had the myth of the bearded guy in many years since Caleb's Papa Carney is a ringer, so it is easy for us to focus on the deeper meaning of Christmas.

Caleb and Papa Carney 3 years ago!

Our Bible study tonight focused on Joy.  We shared storied of all the stereotypical events that bring us joy, but realized how we overlook the joy in everyday life.  Remembering that joy is not always the same as happiness, I challenge you to seek to remember joy can be found in every circumstance.

How is our advent? We just submitted our first prayer letter to be sent out the first week or two of January.  We've been gathering and validating addresses and other contact info so someone actually gets these letters!
David is nearly finished with this semester, so that is quite a relief.  Hopefully he will be finished this Spring--pray with us that some of his life experience credits will be applied ASAP so he can drop some of his classes for the spring!
Our house is getting a bit empty as we sell and pack away our things, but no-one has looked at it lately.  We listed 2 weeks ago with Heartland Realty, so hopefully we'll have some interest soon. 

I hope you all have a joyous celebration of the birth of Christ, our Immanuel!

Photo Card

Checkers Sky Basic Borders

Cheerful Christmas invitations for your friends and family.

View the entire collection of cards.

Thanksgiving!

It is so easy to get bogged down in all the little details of life and lose the big picture.  We are having a big picture day I think, I hope, I pray...
Today we are sitting in our snug, cozy house while it drizzles rain.  David's parents are here for the weekend and we are thankful to have them here.  David is packing up some of our sentimental trinkets from travels past to send home with them for storage.  Actually, it gets a little sad seeing our precious things go away--selling a lot and deciding what we think we can't part with.  Rifles going into storage signal the postponement of dreamed-for hunts, books being sold by the trunkload end the ideas of a future house-build, and putting away our centuries old piece of torah scroll lends certainty to our plans.
We are remembering friends and trips past and being so thankful for the blessings we have had.
We have been exceedingly blessed by relationships such as yours!  Spending a quiet weekend with family is a capstone on this busy week.
We are looking forward to spending next week with my family in Indiana.  For us to do this I must remember to thank Dr. Erica Oller and my staff for covering for me while I am gone.  I can't think of when my whole family has been together in years!!
Deo gratias!!  yes, my household is remembering our Latin nerdiness (ok, maybe just me and I am indoctrinating Caleb).  Thanks be to God!  What are you thankful for this season?
I am thankful that
             We are a redeemed people with a loving God of grace!
             The Lord has commissioned us all to share this grace and love to the ends of the world
             We are all family--sons and daughters of the living God
So, Happy Thanksgiving to our family! 
Are you up for a challenge?   Our pastor challenged us to a fast today until the end of the year (yes, while we were smelling the feast of a covered-dish we had planned).  Thankfully, it wasn't a food fast!  The challenge was to fast from complaining.  Wow!  Wonder how many of us made it home with the challenge intact?
Continue to pray for the sale of our house and progress of our plans.  If anyone wants more information about anything we are doing, contact me--how to give, how to pray specifically, how we can pray for you.
Deo gratias!  (maybe we can have Spanish for you soon...)