Camping Trip and Pictures

Ok here are a few pictures from our camping trip this past weekend. Half of our class went last weekend and half went the weekend before. I got to camp with my E-linc group.

Thursday, we had to pack all our stuff out to the campsite (which was in the woods on campus) and set up camp. Each of us had to build our own shelter with tarps, ropes, and sticks. Rachel and I built a shelter together, and apparently it was really good because Clint was impressed by it. :) It was an A-frame tent with just enough room for the two of us. It was quite cozy! That first night, it got down to 28 degrees, and it was COLD! But I actually ended up sleeping really well, which was a blessing!

Friday, we had classes out in the woods most of the day. Saturday, we got to butcher chickens, which was quite fun! I actually got to butcher some last month, so I knew sort of how to do it. It was really fun! We also had to hike through the woods using a compass and GPS (not the car GPS that tells you "Recalculating" all the time) to find coordinates for different things, including our meal for the night (don't worry, it was in a cooler). Then on Saturday night, we had a HUGE bonfire! Lots of fun! Sunday, we packed up and headed home.

So all in all, it was a great time! I learned a lot more about working with a team and just learning to survive out in the woods.  Here are some pics taken by my E-linc leader.

I'm Back (and other thoughts)

From the title, you can see that I'm back from my twelve days of disappearing. They were very fun days, especially because I had no idea that all sorts of things were happening in the world, such as the government shutting down. It's actually really funny how much happens when you can't check the internet. How in the world did people survive before they had the internet???

Ok so really, it wasn't that big of a deal.

It was actually a really sweet and amazing time. I got to spend my evenings around campfires or in my house with candles. It was so peaceful. I did a lot of singing and playing guitar in my house, which was fun and relaxing. And I got extra time to read (or listen to Clint reading).

I was struck by how simple and sweet life can be without things like internet, electricity, and sometimes even water. Yes, it's more difficult at times and can add a bit more stress to life in some ways. But it does something to the human soul. I think it's how we were created to be. We were created for nature, beauty, and a relationship with God. But so often, everything else clouds our view, and we don't see all that. We often can't even look at the stars at night without street lights getting in the way.

I got to see the stars again this weekend without any street lights around. And they were beautiful. So, so beautiful.

Oh, the things we miss when we let life choke out God! I know I've done that recently. I've let myself get so busy that I don't have time to think. Time to just be alone with God. Time to process things I'm dealing with. I miss that time.

To go along with my thoughts, here are a few quotes from the past few days of classes:

"We are bloated when it comes to biblical resources and atrophied when it comes to authenticity."

"I’m convinced that we don’t need to know more. We need to start living what we know."

"If God fits into our worldview, then we are god, not Him." 

I don't ever want to let God fit into my worldview, thinking that I have Him all figured out and I don't need to spend time with Him. I want to be awed by Him every day.

Ok, so I guess I've done a lot of thinking over the past two weeks. It's been good. And I pray that God will continue to teach me through my final two months of training here.


P.S. I'll be putting up some pictures from the past two weeks really soon! We did some really fun stuff!

Disappearing for Twelve Days

As a part of our training, we are required to do a class called Practical Skills, which teaches us things like how to cook from scratch (if we didn't know already), how to live with little or no electricity, how to use all kinds of tools (including chainsaws and stuff like that), and a whole bunch of other stuff. It includes a twelve day section called Simple Living where we are required to have no electric lights from 8pm-7am, no electric appliances, and also no internet or phones (just 1 hour a week for each). It should be a lot of fun!

So why am I telling you this? Well, that section starts this morning in half an hour, and I wanted to post on here so that you know that if you don't hear from me for the next twelve days, it doesn't mean anything bad is happening... it actually means I'm following directions. :)

And, if you try contacting me via email or phone, I may not write or call you back for a while.

I'm really excited about this part of the training, and I think it will be good practice for all of us to be able to do without various things that we normally use every day, like electric lights. And, we have a camping trip next weekend, so that should be quite a fun experience!

So, just in case you feel like I'm disappearing from the internet for twelve days, it's true. I am. :)

Not satisfied

Was really impacted by this quote this morning:

"Never be satisfied with what you knew about God yesterday."

So often I can just gloss over my time with God. You know, read a little from the Bible, pray, and get on with the day. Yeah, life is busy.

But I think when I do that, I'm missing the whole point of all those things. Am I just reading the Bible to say I read it? Or am I reading it to know more about God today?

I've been reading through John recently, and I read through Judas' betrayal and crucifixion today. Just a disclaimer in case you didn't realize this already, I can get excited about the craziest things sometimes. And as I was reading today, I saw something I'd never seen when reading the Gospels before (at least, I think I'd never seen it. With my memory, you never can tell). You remember the servant guy whose ear Peter chopped off with a sword in the Garden of Gethsemane? Well, I noticed today that he has a name!!!

Um yeah.... what's so special about that?

This guy was an accomplice to Jesus' death. Yeah, maybe he didn't quite know what was going on (John didn't include that particular detail), but he was still there, at least somewhat in the picture (otherwise, why would Peter have cut off his ear?).

And yet Jesus has compassion on this guy. He heals his ear. That in and of itself would have made me think twice about arresting Jesus. But not only does Jesus heal him, He makes sure that we have this guy's name written down. And now, when we read this passage, we can see that God cares about each and every one of us. He knows our names. He knows when we're hurting. He knows our life stories. He's not up there condemning us. He didn't do that with Malchus (that's the guy's name, by the way). We deserve death, but He chose instead to die in our place and to even go beyond that by healing us. He doesn't just heal physically, but also mentally, emotionally, and (most importantly) spiritually.

Those truths blow my mind. And I never want to get satisfied with that knowledge. I want to know more.

Suffering

I know it might be strange to write on this topic just after posting about how much fun I'm having with friends. But I think the two go hand-in-hand. Relationships are an incredible part of God's plan for our lives, but suffering is too.

I know I've written tidbits on this before, but I thought I'd post about it again. I've heard and read so much about suffering in the past few days. It's kind of crazy, but I think God is trying to teach me something.

I've kind of gone through life with the perspective that suffering is bad. Pain isn't good, right? Or is it?

I guess I'm just seeing more and more how small of an understanding I have of God. I see suffering all around me. On Sunday night, we were at the boys' home for ministry. Clint was teaching about the Fall of man in Genesis 3, and the guys were furious.

"How can God be so good when my life has been the crap hole it's been?"

Yeah, they didn't use the best language, but honestly, I think that is because of how deeply they've been wounded in their short lives. Many of these guys are fatherless. They've been told their whole lives that they are failures. That they are worthless. And so they act on it. And they wind up in juvenile detention centers and places like this boys' home. Some of these guys have told me that they have terrible nightmares at night because of the things they've experienced. They hate sleeping because it's such a terrifying experience.

I felt like weeping.

And then one of Clint's friends who are missionaries overseas in Africa just lost their baby girl this past week. It was so sudden. So abrupt. They didn't really even know she was sick until a few weeks ago. I know the pain must be so intense for them right now.

Again, I felt like weeping.

Why does God allow so much suffering? Why do teenage boys fear sleeping at night? Why do babies die before they've really even had a chance to live? Why? Why, why why????

And then I'm reminded of the truth of God's Word. He sees the bigger picture. We don't. He is working all things for good. We can't see that. He does ALL things well. He is breaking us to heal us.

If I as a finite human being want to weep over suffering in the world, including my own, how much more does God? He sees it all. It must break His heart so, so deeply.

I heard this amazing song as I was writing this, and I wanted to post the lyrics, because I feel like it portrays so well the emotions we often feel in regards to suffering.

You Do All Things Well
Tenth Avenue North

Father in Heaven, hear this simple prayer
Get us through the night and fill up our despair
Pain has come and taught us to fear
We’re gonna need some grace now to fill the air
‘Cause in the twilight, we need eyes to see
How You’re working beauty even out of ugly things

You do all things
You do all things
You do all things well
You do all things
You do all things
You do all things well

Father, among us, keep us in Your arms
There’s evil all around us and we’re trying to hold on
Just to know that You’re still good
And that Your love is alive
Oh, let us cling to Jesus and sing tonight

You do all things
You do all things
You do all things well
You do all things
You do all things
You do all things well

You break me to bind me
You hurt me, Lord, to heal me
You cut me to touch me
You died to revive me
You break me to bind me
You hurt me, Lord, to heal me
You cut me to touch me
You died to revive me

You do all things
You do all things
You do all things well
You do all things
You do all things
You do all things well

So glad for friends!

It's been really good getting back with my friends here at MTC. We have a lot of fun together hanging out and doing stuff. It's so good to have a break from homework, class stress, and everything else and just have fun. So, so glad for friends! :)

Enjoying the beautiful weather at a local state park

And it's so good to be able to challenge and encourage each other, especially as we're going through our practicum class. We're almost done with that, but all the final papers have been a lot of work. We've had 4 papers due (one of them being 8-12 pages) during the last week. While that's nothing for college, these are the first papers we've written in several months (yeah, I know, it's shocking that we didn't write any over the summer). 

Having fun at a birthday party for Rachel

So yup, it's been fun and encouraging!

Vote for NTM

New Tribes is attempting to get win a $10,000 aviation grant to help buy a new Kodiak plane. The Kodiak is an incredible aircraft. It's built for missions. It can hold a lot of cargo for a small plane, but it's able to still land on some of the most difficult airstrips in the world. NTM has been able to get one of these planes already, but the need for more is so huge! 

The winner for the grant is determined by votes, so the more votes, the better chance New Tribes has of winning. From what I've heard, they are in 2nd place right now, so I thought you guys might like the chance to help out. I think the current 1st place candidate is a company that is trying to get money to fly dogs around. Um, what?????? Anyways, I definitely think people are more important than dogs, so I'm voting for NTM! :)

Here's the link:
http://www.lightspeedaviationfoundation.org/content.cfm/Voting/Get-to-know-the-2013-finalists/New-Tribes-Mission

You just type in your name and email address, and it counts your vote. I used both of my two email addresses to vote. 

This is a really easy thing to do, and it will make a world of difference for NTM missionaries! Would you take 5 minutes to help vote? Thanks guys!

Learning through Ministry

I haven't written about my ministry at the Boy's Home for a while. It's a really exciting time right now! The group of guys that we have currently seem to be hungry for truth. We started out at the beginning of the semester by giving them the Gospel... Jesus' death, burial, and resurrection. Now, we're going back to the beginning of the Bible and teaching about Creation and who God is. This next Sunday, we are teaching about the creation of man and how much God values us because we are created in His image. The guys are actually interested in hearing God's Word. All of them, except a few, have been attending. We read some from Psalm 139, just pointing out how God knows all our thoughts, and one of the guys said, "I find it comforting that God knows my thoughts. He understands!" 

Wow. Sometimes I find it terrifying that God knows my thoughts. This guy's comment reminded me again that this fact should actually comfort me, because it shows how much He loves me, even when my thoughts are not in line with the truth of His Word. 

Josiah teaching at the Boy's Home

Please be praying for the guys at our ministry. We have about 7-8 guys at the home right now, and most of them will be there for a while still. But our time is so short, and we want to impact them with the truth as much as possible. We know it's only God who can change their thinking. Pray that they would be responsive to Him!

What a Simulation Can Teach You

I never realized how incredibly challenging, encouraging, stressful, and amazing a simulation could be.

That's what we're doing right now... a simulation. It's a 6 week-long class here at MTC where we get to practice things that we've learned over the past year. Actually, not just "things". We're practicing pretty much EVERYTHING we've learned.

Anyone who's ever done a simulation before knows that it helps solidify material that you've learned, but it also brings up aspects of the situation that you've never thought of before. This simulation is no different.

I've discovered so much more about myself and the way I process. But I've also seen how difficult it is to work on a large team. We've had several heated (note the "heated) discussions in our class of 45ish students about various things in the simulation. Things you never would have thought would be an issue. Things like how much to pay someone for helping you learn their language and culture. Apparently, that's a really, really big issue in many places around the world. In some locations, how much you pay your language helper can totally ruin the tribe's society because they aren't used to receiving money like we are.

Another sore topic has been smoking and drinking. Think about it. If someone in the States offers you a beer, it's ok to say no if you don't want to drink. There's nothing wrong with it. However, in a lot of locations around the world, refusing a sip of beer could completely jeopardize your relationships with the people. They might take offense at your refusal simply because it is a way of life for them and it is a way they show that they are friends. And if you don't know the language very well, it could be really hard to fix that mistake.

And there are a million other minute details that you would never even consider when going into another culture. Add to that the 45 different personalities represented by our class, and you've got quite the simulation on your hands.

So yeah, it's been good, but somewhat stressful. All the details, information, and interpersonal issues make it a challenging class, but it's also helping me think through a lot of good stuff. For instance, am I really going to make a good teammate for my coworkers on the field? Am I working to solve issues or simply stewing about things that don't go my way? Am I focusing on building relationships or am I focusing too much on the task at hand? What would Jesus do if He was in the situation?

I guess there's a lot of questions, and I'm still learning the answers. I'm glad I can begin to learn them here instead of on the field where the results could be a lot more disastrous.

Lies

Clint and I were reading this book last night. It's about lies that we as Christians often believe. I've read the book once before, but as Clint was reading the first chapter aloud to me, I was struck by how strongly I believe certain lies. You'd think after 20 years of living on planet earth, I'd be able to discern my thought patterns and habits. Actually, I think the longer you live, the more you realize you're an idiot most of the time, at least in your thought life. Ok, so maybe that's just me, I don't know. It's not usually something I go around asking people, "So, what lies are YOU believing today???" But maybe I should start. Because lies are so incredibly destructive to each one of us.

I guess I've been thinking a lot on this lately because I've been seeing different things that I'm doing every day that are displeasing to God, yet I don't want to give them up because they feel right to my humanity. I feel like that bird that always flies into the window yet never gives up because it thinks there's another bird there. Dumb bird.

And then I look at my life and have to say, dumb human.

I mean really, sometimes we're so incredibly dumb. It'd be almost funny if it weren't so incredibly not. We whine and complain about the craziest things, all because we don't believe that God is really good. Everything He's placed in our lives has a purpose. He has a rhyme behind His reason. And we sin. All the time. Habitually. Returning to the very things we've vowed over and over to never repeat. How dumb is that? Again, we don't believe that God is really good.

Lies affect us so much. They cause us to do stupid things. Cause us to doubt God and therefore get all worked up about things. But we don't see them so often. Here are some that jumped out at me that I believe:

1. "I have to be perfect" Is that really a lie???
2. "My worth is determined by my performance" Yup, believe that one all the time
3. "Life should be fair" Well...shouldn't it? Good American lie right there
4. "I must have everyone's love and approval" .........um yeah guilty.......
5. "God's acceptance must be earned" ouch...looking at it makes it sound bad, but I know I act on it a lot

So yeah, lies definitely affect my thinking. I believe them without even trying. I want to get better at finding them. At weeding them out of the garden of my mind (yes, there is a garden. Not a very organized one, but it's there).

As John 8:31-32 says, "If you hold to my teaching, then you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free."

I want to be free.