And So It Ends; And So It Begins...

It's been waaaay too long since I've posted. So, in a somewhat desparate effort to keep this somewhat current, I'm reprinting here an article on our Guatemala Mission trip from the May 2008 Marine View Press. Hopefully, more will be forthcoming soon!

***************************************

Our mission team is back from Guatemala, and we are praising God for a wonderful and eventful trip. As a team, we can testify that God was faithful from beginning to end. We successfully installed over 90 stoves in homes in the remote village of Yuljobe. We gave each family we worked with a Spanish children’s Bible. We gave away over 160 bags of supplies and toys to the school children. We witnessed a contextualized movie presentation of the Prodigal Son and the preaching of the Gospel to the villagers in their native language, Q’anjob’al. We enjoyed gracious hospitality, deepened relationships with one another, and new friendships with our Guatemalan sisters and brothers in Christ. And we did it all without serious illness or injury to any team member.

Behind all of this, we are sincerely thankful for the prayers and for the physical and financial assistance we received both from Marine View and from people around the nation who responded to our support letters. We know that we could not…we did not…do it alone. Now, after months of work and anticipation, many meetings, and lots of prayer and planning, it is difficult to believe that it is over.

And yet, the mission is not completely over.

Although we were impacted in different ways and different degrees, this mission trip caused each member of the team to evaluate his or her life in light of what we experienced. For me personally, God opened my eyes to new dimensions of poverty. But it’s not what you might expect. Having been to Guatemala previously, I had already seen firsthand the impoverished conditions in which so many people live. In this regard, this year’s trip reinforced my gratitude to God for the material blessings I enjoy but frequently take for granted—it is only by God’s grace that I have received such undeserved wealth as citizen of the U.S. The new lesson in poverty actually came not as I looked at the lives of the villagers of Yuljobe, but as I looked back from their village to our lives in the States.

We are much poorer than we realize. With our material wealth we can distract ourselves and numb ourselves, but we truly live in a relationally and spiritually impoverished world. We have difficulty seeing it because we are immersed in it, but looking in from the outside it is plain to see that we are missing a lot. In Yuljobe, there is a rich, deep, and natural sense of community—they know one another, support one another, and share life with one another. Among Guatemalan believers, there is a rich, deep, and passionate love for Christ—they worship expressively, pray regularly, and speak openly about Jesus to others. I do not mean to romanticize their lives or downplay their hardships, but the rich relationships and spirituality displayed by those we encountered in Guatemala make me yearn for more of that in Tacoma.

More than once, our mission team reflected on the Scripture, “We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us” (2 Co. 5:20). In going, we sought to represent Christ to all those we met in Guatemala, sharing the love and truth of the Gospel with our words and our actions. In returning, we seek to bring to you the profound messages and lessons God impressed upon us while we were there. In a very real way, we are all now missionaries to our own homeland.

Saab Story's Happy Ending

Many have been asking what the latest is on my car. Without boring you with the details, the good news is that they were able to put humpty-dumpty back together again. I picked up the Saab last week, and am experiencing an automotive resurrection of sorts. So far, everything seems to be as good as new. The only two problems I found were a handle inside the trunk was put back on backwards and half the stereo speakers weren't working. A quick visit back to the body shop, and we're back to normal.

Unfortunately, my insurance company was never able to track to down the kid who hit me and his insurance. So, I'm very thankful for that uninsured motorist policy!

In all, I was without the car for 42 days... which is especially painful when you think that I'd only had it for 114 days before that!

Job 1:21

Guatemala Mission: Why Go?

The following is an article from the March 2008 Marine View Press, the newsletter of Marine View Presbyterian Church:

-----------------------------

This month a team of fifteen people will leave the comforts of home and normal routines and they will go to a rural village in Guatemala. As mission teams from Marine View have done for the last three years, this year’s group will invest considerable time, energy, and resources to help people they’ve never met who live in foreign culture in a remote and impoverished village almost 3,000 miles away. Why? Why do we go to Guatemala?

1) We Go for Theological Reasons:

We go to follow Christ. We are disciples or apprentices of Jesus who said, “As the Father has sent me, I am sending you” (Jn. 20:21 niv). If we profess that Jesus is Lord, then we must respond obediently when the Master says to go. Jesus also came not to be served but to serve, and he has given an example of humble, active love for us to follow (Mk. 10:45; Jn. 13:15). We go to Guatemala out of a desire to serve Christ by serving others in his name.

We go to show Christ. “What good is it, dear brothers and sisters, if you say you have faith but don’t show it by your actions? Can that kind of faith save anyone? Suppose you see a brother or sister who has no food or clothing, and you say, “Good-bye and have a good day; stay warm and eat well”—but then you don’t give that person any food or clothing. What good does that do? So you see, faith by itself isn’t enough. Unless it produces good deeds, it is dead and useless” (Jas. 2:14 nlt). We go to Guatemala to show the love of Christ in both actions and words. We go to share what God has graciously given to us, not only material things but the spiritual truth that God is reconciling the Guatemalans to himself through Christ, not counting their sins against them. We are Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us to his beloved ones in Guatemala: “Be reconciled to God” (2 Cor. 5:19-20).

We go to know Christ. Mission is not a part-time activity of the church; it is a full-time work of God. Throughout the scriptures, we encounter a God who is on a redemptive mission in the world. Throughout the world, we may encounter a God who so loved the world that he sent his Son not to condemn but to save. We go to Guatemala to meet Jesus there among those who suffer under the weight of poverty, malnutrition, and injustice.

We go to grow in Christ. On a short-term mission trip, we see ourselves and our world in a new way. We discover the breadth of God’s love and the depth of our need. By leaving our comfort zones and all our props, we are forced to rely on God’s faithfulness and strength. When we return, we see our lives and our culture differently; we’ve been changed. We go to Guatemala so that we might become more like Christ.

2) We Go for Personal Reasons:

For some of us, we go because we want to make a difference in the world; we want to help those who are in need. For others, we go to experience a different culture; we go for the adventure. For me personally, I am going back to Guatemala because I know that there is more there that God wants me to see and experience. I recently wrote in my journal: “Going to Guatemala will once again force me from my comfort zone. I will once again be in over my head and forced to trust God. And that’s something I need to do more of. I rely too much on my own strength. I miss out on the transformative power of God often.”

3) We Go for Practical Reasons:

The need in the Yuljobe, Guatemala is very real. For centuries, indigenous Maya living in this remote area have cooked their meals using an indoor fire pit located on the house floor called a “three-stone fire.” These open-flame wood-burning fires have caused burns from the flames, respiratory illnesses from the smoke, and deforestation from the inefficient burning of the firewood.

In an effort not only to improve the health conditions and quality of life of the villagers, but also to show tangibly the love of Christ, the 15-member mission team will be working alongside Guatemalan families to install dozens of cast concrete “ONIL” stoves.

You Are Needed Too!

Marine View will be purchasing and installing 90 stoves. The cost per stove is $140.00. In addition, the HFPF staff will conduct critical follow-up with our stove installations, traveling to Yuljobe each month for a six-month period to make sure everyone has adjusted to a new way of cooking and that the units are working properly. The benefit of this effort is that HFPF has a 97% success rate with the installations.

You can participate in this mission both financially and prayerfully. First, use the donation cards found in the pew racks in the sanctuary to make a contribution toward the purchase of the stoves for Yuljobe and the team members’ expenses. Because of the increased size of this year’s project and team, we need to raise approximately $21,000. To this end, the Outreach Team will be designating funds from this year’s One Great Hour of Sharing offering toward the Guatemala mission. Second, please commit to pray regularly and specifically for the team members and the villagers they serve before, during, and after the trip. Prayer guides will be available at the Information Counter.

On behalf of Marine View’s 2008 Guatemala Mission Team, thank you for your support and partnership in ministry!

Choosing My Religion

Question of the Day: Who gets to choose your religion?

Two very different news stories this week have raised the question about who decides what religion a person might be. One I read in the Tacoma News Tribune (01-29-08)--a story about a prison chaplain who is struggling with fallout from a new regulation that allows inmates to be a part of more than one religion. Under the new rules, to select a religious preference, all an inmate has to do is fill out a form. Further, they can change their religion once every six months.

The second story involves an Egyptian man named Muhammad Hegazy, a Muslim convert to Christianity who is requesting that the Egyptian government officially change his religious affiliation. According to the ruling of an Egyptian judge, "He can believe whatever he wants in his heart, but on paper he can't convert."

So, is one's religion really just a matter of filling out the right paperwork and having it approved? And the deeper questions: Who decides what religion an individual truly is? Can a person "self-convert," or must a person be received by the religious community of which he or she seeks to become a part?

As Americans, we are heavily biased toward the individual. We have been trained by our culture to believe that the individual is the center of authority and decision-making power: I decide what to buy; I decide what I want to be when I grow up; I decide who to vote for; I decide what church to attend; I decide what is true for me. But such a perspective is somewhat unique in history.

Even looking across the history of Jesus' followers and the Church, we see that there has always been a place for the community in conversion. In the book of Acts, an individual's conversion or coming to Christ would often be attested to by others who were already a part of the early Christian community (e.g., Saul by Ananias; Cornelius by Peter; Samarians by Peter & John). In addition, acts such as baptism and the laying on of hands accompanied the individual's conversion and reception into the faith community. These acts would be formalized over the years so that becoming a Christian included not only a public confession of faith in Christ, but also a period of training or catechism and the sacrament of baptism. The value of the community is sorely missing in much of American Protestantism.

And as much as we must wrestle with the role we play and the role the community of faith plays in our choosing our religion, we must also look ultimately to God. Jesus said, "No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him" (Jn. 6:44). Paul the Apostle likewise understood that it is God who chooses us long before we might choose God, writing that God chose us in Christ before the creation of the world and decided in advance to adopt us as his children (Eph. 1:3-5).

So, how do you understand your conversion? If you are a Christian, how did you get there? What did you do? What did the Christian community do? What did God do?

Michael Vick's Redemption

God continues to give me opportunities to learn patience through waiting. My computer that I have used for blogging got infected by a virus a few weeks back. I couldn't get it off. The computer techs couldn't get it off. So, they wiped everything off the machine, and I've had to start over with reloading everything back on. As my father-in-law might say, "That sucketh great wind!" Anyway, all that to say that I haven't been writing here for almost a month, but I hope to get back at it more regularly. A quick thought for today...

You've probably seen the news stories on Michael Vick, the former NFL quarterback with the Atlanta Falcons. Vick was convicted in federal court for charges related to dog fighting and sent to prison. In one of the countless articles on the fallen football star, I came across the following quote attributed to Vick as he was preparing to face his jail sentence: "Through this situation I found Jesus and asked him for forgiveness and turned my life over to God....I will redeem myself. I have to."

With all due respect, Michael, if you have to redeem yourself, then you haven't found Jesus!

I truly hope that Michael Vick turns his life over to God and asks for forgiveness. But the reason he needs to do so is precisely because he can't redeem himself. Jesus came to live, die, and rise again because redemption is out of our reach. Even the word "redemption" implies the need for another outside ourselves to be intimately involved. To "redeem" means to "buy back" or to "free from a lien." We can't buy ourselves back from our enslavement to sin. The price is too high, even on an NFL superstar's salary. Futher, redemption always involves an exchange of some sort. When I was a kid, I remember redeeming Coke bottles for cash. But in case of our own redemption, Christ takes on our death and gives us his life in return. The Apostle Peter wrote: "For you know that it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your ancestors, but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect" (1 Pe. 1:18-19 TNIV).

Hopefully, the Spirit of God will lead Michael Vick to a place where he can say, "I will not redeem myself. I don't have to. Jesus Christ has redeemed me by His power and grace."