God's Will

This Sunday morning, our Sunday school class got into a discussion about God's will. It was kind of random, but it was good. On Wednesday, I am actually doing a Bible study on Living God's Will with at least one other guy. When it comes to knowing God's will, our feelings can get complicated. Ideas about knowing how to tell God's will are all over the place. I have always followed Psalm 37:4, Delight yourself also in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart." I think that is saying that if we are walking with God and following what the Bible tells us to do, we will be able to do whatever we want to do! It sounds much simpler than it plays out, but God wants us to work on our relationship with Him and the rest will play out. There are so many verses in the Bible that talk about what God's will in our lives is. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul and mind and love your neighbor as yourself. That is enough to keep you busy for a while.
As we work on our relationship with Christ, God will guide us in those major "will of God" decisions that we must go through (like school, career, marriage and if you should just stop rooting for the Detroit Lions all together). God sends godly counselors our way to help us out with those decisions and He promises us wisdom if we ask for it (James 1:5).
God has called all of us to serve Him. I was going to say some part time and some full time, but really, we are all full time. At work we should be constantly serving Him, no matter if you are a Pastor, secretary, construction worker, painter, plumber or whatever. We are all to be a full time Christian. I count myself extremely blessed to serve Him and get paid for it! So if you are faced with a tough decision, be sure to be seeking God through prayer and Bible reading, seek godly counsel and then trust God to lead you to the right decision.

Missionary Interviews #1- Niles in Togo

I recently emailed several missionaries about sharing some of their experience on the field. I wrote down several questions for them to answer. The first missionaries to respond were Alain and Katherine Niles. We got to know them during Field Prep Seminar last April and they were a big blessing. They have a great heart for the people and here is what they had to say:

1. In a short paragraph, can you sum up what your ministry is all about:
We are living in Mango, Togo. Our ministry is to empower the Tchokossi people to follow God in all aspects of life. One of our main objectives is to see this Hospital project completed here in our town.

2. What inspired you to be involved in missionary work?
We both grew up on the mission field and have a desire to work with Muslims

3. How has your adaptation to the culture gone?
Still adapting I suppose...The most difficult is knowing we will never really fit in because of our skin color. One other difficulty is the heat...it's a killer

4. And the language, how has that been?
Language is tricky, it is a tonal language which means the change of tone in my voice can change the meaning of the word. Since Katherine is pregnant we have learned to tell people she is expecting, in their language they say "she is holding her stomach" or "she tripped on a rock" or "she is carrying luggage" the list just keeps going...

5. Any good stories from you messing up the language?
Katherine was teaching some students and mispronounced the name of one young man which was suppose to be Koku, instead she said Kodu which means banana. It was fun to see his expression as she continued to call him Banana throughout the whole morning. We just hope he wasn't too insulted.

6. What are the main ministry opportunities you have?
we are simply building relationships and living out our walk with God for others to see.

7. Are there any out of the box ideas you are thinking about doing for ministry?
Going back to taking time to invest in the lives of people. Walking through their difficulties and joys with them.

8. Put a plug in here for recruitment: what opportunities are available on your field?
many opportunities for medical staff to get this hospital going. You don't want us to be involved in the medical work...

Let me know if you would like to hear more from Alain and Katherine's work. I love receiving their update emails. I always think of them as real missionaries with the tough language they have to learn, heat to fight and real pioneer work that they are doing.

Successful missionaries

What is a successful missionary? I think that the answer that pops out is one who has a bunch of salvation decisions and baptisms. Could be one who goes to where there is no church and starts one and it eventually results in having all kinds of programs and maybe a Bible institute, orphanage or any number of ministries.
I think that the command to be faithful would probably be the clearest sign of a successful missionary. But I also think that it is more than that, because I think that you can be faithful in that you are on the mission field, but not necessarily faithful in getting work done. A successful missionary will actively be working towards making disciples. But I think that there are also many stages to this including plowing (working on people who have never even heard of Jesus or are totally against Him), sowing the seed of the Word of God through evangelism, reaping by seeing people saved, and growing or discipling them which is a long process of seeing believers mature in the faith, be leaders in churches and even be Pastors or be sending out missionaries. There are so many aspects to the process of making disciples that limiting the definition of a successful missionary to one who sees lots of decisions is hard to do.
What do you think?

Heartbeat

So a couple weeks ago, Sarah had a doctor's appointment and after hearing Evelyn's heart beating really fast, I said that it was beating for her father. Of course, common joke or should I say, dream of each father to be. But thinking about it, I thought that was kind of a selfish and prideful thought. Really, I hope that beautiful little girl's heart is beating for God. I hope that her life exists to bring glory to Him. And I hope that my life does as well. We have a choice in what our heart beats for and that choice has to do with what we love. Do we love that music group or TV show or certain guy or girl? Love is not a bad thing at all, but we need to make sure first of all that we love God the Father and His Son Jesus Christ with all everything that we are.

The Most Common Missions Outreach

I could be wrong on this one, cause there are many other common outreaches like sports, puppets or drama, but probably the easiest outreach to start around the world right now is an English as a Second Language Outreach. It is amazing to see how many opportunities for classes are available in so many places (besides Australia, South Africa and other countries that already speak English).
People here in Porto Alegre value English lessons greatly. When I walk to our church, about a mile away, I pass three English schools. They are all over and it is a great privilege to have an American as a Professor. I have never really wanted to teach English, but I think that I am going to start more classes now because of the great opportunity to make contacts. I currently teach one student, Juarez, because another missionary here is on furlough in the states and asked me to teach him. It started off rough, cause I didn't know too much about what I was doing, but now it is not too bad. It is neat to build the relationship and see progress in his English.
What about where you are at? Be it in the states or abroad. Are there those opportunities? Someone recently told me that they thought that Christians were missing the boat on the opportunity of helping out all the Hispanic immigrants that go to the US. ESL would be a great outreach for them!

Blogging about mission work

So I have been thinking about things to do for this blog that would make it more interesting. This week my friend Joe from college has been visiting and we got to talking about writing on our way back from Gramado, which is a couple hours away. He mentioned blogging more on missions and the changing face of it and what people are doing different in missions today. So I am thinking about putting a survey together and asking missionaries from different parts of the world to give some input on it. And I may be focusing more on missions from now on. Would anyone hate me for doing that? I will still add some personal stuff here and there of course.

Pursuit of Happiness

So I was thinking about this movie the other day. I thought about showing it if we did a movie night at the church. Of course, as Christians we would say that stability and wealth do not bring happiness, but I am sure that most of us still seek it. I think that the important part is our motive behind seeking wealth and stability. Do we need it for happiness or are we satisfied in Christ? Also, what do we want to do with wealth? The Christians in Acts shared everything one with another. Was that just the popular thing at the time or was it recorded in the Bible as an example for us to follow after?
I know that personally, I have dreams of getting rich. I have my plans to make money in the long run. Of course, being a missionary is probably not the best means, but there are still ways of earning more money over time. I have always been cheap and so even with our missionary salary, we have been able to save and we also have kept our condominium in the states, renting it out, which will help out financially in the future. But even if I did eventually make a lot of money, what are my reasons for it? Would I use it for those dreams of solving some missionary support raising problems, or would I buy a nice new car? To be honest, I am not sure what I would do. I have had a dream of supporting missionaries through real estate, but would I be willing to contribute my condo to see it happen? I am not sure about that because it would be a big sacrifice (it's Evelyn's college fund).
What about you? Are you striving for happiness through riches? Or do you have any plans to "change the world" with what you will make?

Book ideas

I always have ideas for another book. Some of them are as follows (now don't be stealing these all you authors out there):

Missions: Changing the way the church does Mission work

Christian=Disciples: If you are saved, does that make you a disciple or is it separate? If only disciples were believers, how would that revolutionize the Christian world?

A fiction book on the steps a missionary takes in arriving on the field.

Balance in the Christian life: There are so many books out there on secrets to the best prayer life, devotional life, going radical for Christ, but what about learning to just maintain a balance rather than getting burnt out.

Another Crazy Idea

So I get all kinds of crazy ideas in my head and this idea keeps coming back to me often. It has to do with supporting missionaries. So many missionaries are under-supported (not us, Praise the Lord). The average for a missionary to raise support is around 4 years. That is a lot of time. So what is a way that we could raise more money for missionaries; or use the money we have wisely?
What if we supported missionaries the way some of us plan to support ourselves, or our kids going to college, or retirement? With real estate. I have written out a big dream plan using millions of dollars, but let's say that we start out small. One church or a couple churches could buy a foreclosed house or condominium. For a mission trip, church members could go to this house (that is actually in their area) and fix it up. The electricians, plumbers, real estate agents, painters, landlords etc... could all use their gifts and talents to fix up a house and to manage it while renting it out. The money received from renting could go towards supporting missions. So here is what the financial investment looks like: 50-60,000 to buy the home; 5-10,000 for materials to fix it up; free manual labor from church members; the return would be around 700 dollars a month (depending on the real estate prices in the area), so $8400 a year. Well before 10 years, the church would already have reached their initial investment, plus have that real estate value still. The church could have the option to sell the real estate at any time and possibly buy two pieces of property with what they make and do it again.
Churches could also go in on it together. For example, I have several supporting churches in certain towns that could get together and do mission trips together fixing up these houses.
So, I have told this idea to a few people and most of them think it too risky. What are some of you all's initial thoughts?

Crossing Cultures

Since day one here I have known that there would be some interesting situations in ministering cross culturally. I with that it just touched my culture to Brazilian culture, but it even goes further than that. I have seen also that it is difficult to reach different cultures of Brazil at the same time. Right now, the missionary house that we live in is in a condominium development where the upper class lives. We have an electric fence around us for safety and a guard at the only entrance and exit. We are very safe inside from the crime ridden neighborhood all too close by outside. There is a vila (or favela, which is a poor neighborhood) that is close by. Vilas are dangerous places to be.
I play soccer with kids from the vila every Sunday. I look forward to it and really enjoy it. I am also friends with a lot of them. If I see them on the street, they say, "eh Americano" and we give each other the thumbs up. Then I have fun with them on the soccer field.
I am also friends with a bunch of our neighbors. I talk to them every once in a while, have eaten with them, played soccer with them at their club, and even visited with them at their relative's house. It has been neat getting to know them and even try to reach them.
But where the culture difference lies is between the both. Those in my neighborhood don't want me to let my friends from the vila inside the gates. They don't trust them at all. So how do you minister to them in a way that is humble, even though they are basically prohibited from coming in your house? (A couple of them came in once, but I heard that was a bad idea from my neighbors). It is an interesting situation because I want to minister to both of them, but if I do too much, one will not allow me to minister to the other. I know Jesus ministered to both and that is what is right, but must I first revise the entire Brazilian culture of social levels?