Coming Home... musings

 It’s difficult to put into words how I see the Lord moving sometimes – until He’s already moved and changed things. It’s also startling to look back to what was less than a year ago and realize that these past months have held some incredible changes. I thought that I came here just to prepare for missions – to understand better what being a missionary means and what it would take. What I learned was that the Lord cares more about what’s really on the inside than what these hands are doing for Him.

As I prepare to finish the program here, I barely even recognize the girl who arrived in January. Over this year, through classes, homework, outreaches, and living in a family environment with people from so many different backgrounds, the Lord has opened me up, done some “heart surgery,” pulled things out, put things in, finished with some reconstructive work and then repeated the process as many times as it takes to bring me closer to Him. On the outside I look pretty much the same. But more has changed on the inside that I even understand.

Let me interject here that I’ve by no means become perfect – and the true changes remain to be seen by those who know me.

But there are a couple of things that help me trust that God is not done with me, just because I’m leaving what we call “the bible college bubble” and going back to “normal life.”

The first thing I’ve learned is that if I stubbornly refuse to let God work in my life, I probably shouldn’t yell at Him for not changing things around me - because much of what needs to change is in how I respond to what’s around me. 

And the second is that there is not a single thing in my life that God cannot take and use for His glory. He can use challenging things like iron sharpening iron, scraping away at a dull edge to make it a useful tool. He can use uncomfortable situations to reveal what’s really in my heart. He can allow pain to draw me close. He can use things not working out the way I want to show me what He’s been planning all along.

It’s an oft-quoted verse, and awfully annoying in the heat of the moment, but true that “God works all things together for the good of those who love God, who are called according to His purpose” (Romans 8:28). But as C.S. Lewis said “Good is what we ought to prefer, quite regardless of whatever we happen to like any given moment.”

With these two things in hand and in my heart, I think I can say that Bible College has been a success… and that God can keep working on me anywhere.

I have some plans that are slowly coming together for “what comes next,” but I’ll save those to share at a later date. What comes first is that I’ll be back in Central Oregon at the end of next week and I am excited to see people from home again!  

Jemma and me on a walk after our first snowfall of the season

Rome in pictures

Rome... in pictures

Thanksgiving Break 2010

we had a long weekend, so we decided to take an outreach and visit the Calvary Chapel in Rome....

our outreach team at the Vajta train station

Italian food for thanksgiving dinner

at the Calvary Chapel in Rome... we cleaned, fixed some things and spent time with the believers there - it was a great time of mutual encouragement...

visting the church plant in Frescati (in the hills outside Rome)

we did the Set Me Free drama (from the Split outreach) and shared in the service

 Rachel with Lidia ~ who was very excited when she heard my name

(the pictures from Frescati are from Thereasa Bocca at the Frescati Church)

we played some soccer in the pastor's neighborhood

Sarah's 21st birthday

Rachel praying with a friend she made at the metro station

~a visit to the Vatican~

a treasure-trove of architecture and antiquities

this is a way cool floor... my brother actually brought up mathematical properties of the design when I was telling him about the visit

 should I look up or down?

 sorry about it being sideways

 this one too...

...somewhere in the Vatican Jason, my museum buddy, and I took a break to look at this huge painting of Constantine's conversion - can you find us?

St. Peter's Square - that's the basilica behind us

The forum

The Roman Empire at it's largest

 The colosseum!

Jemma's excited to see the colosseum.... 

and we even traveled back in time to take a picture with a real gladiator! (just kidding)

and we finished it off with gelato at Trevi Fountain...

 

 The end... and back to finals!!

Split, Croatia

Split, Croatia

I went with the 10-day outreach team to the coastal town of Split, Croatia in October. Split is a city with 2000 or more years of history. The cobblestones – slick from rain and so many years of constant foot traffic – attest to the way that things don’t change as much as they do change. People still love to walk the Riva, or boardwalk, along the ocean. The palace of Roman emperor Diocletian is still there, somewhat. There are still buyers and sellers out on the streets with food, jewelry, and music. And people still need to hear about Jesus.

This area of Croatia is known as Dalmatia and as we walked through I wondered if when Titus was here he was doing the same thing (2 Timothy 4:10) – or whether he came for the beaches.

(we missed our bus stop and ended up here - "oops!")

Street witnessing in a nominally Catholic country is an interesting thing. To be Croatian is to be Catholic – so you might just as easily find yourself talking with a devout Catholic Croatian as a Catholic atheist or Catholic pantheist or a young Catholic desiring to be a priest – but who has no idea what the Bible actually says because his priest has assured him that there’s plenty of time later “to get to that.”

The message we came to share was that Jesus came to bring us into a relationship – that He is our high priest – who came to live and die for our sin and rise again - to bring us out of sin, which leads to death, and into resurrection and life, so that we might come boldly before the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy and find grace (Hebrews 4:14-16).

Much of our time was spent either in the Global Café, a coffee shop ministry run by the Calvary Chapel in Split, or on the Riva doing street drama and talking with people.

Here are some pictures from two of our dramas (different people may be playing different parts each time) ~

"Everything" - playing the role of Love of Money with 8 year old Skylene

"Set Me Free" (my favorite)

I tried to post a video but blogspot wouldn't load it, so if I’m able to get a youtube link I will post that when I can. The videos are also on my facebook page – and they are worth seeing.

While there certainly weren’t thousands flocking to hear the gospel, the trip was an encouragement to the church, a stretching and strengthening experience for each of us on the team, and many people did watch the dramas and were interested in talking with us. Please pray for the people of Split, especially a couple of high school age guys who spent a lot of time with us, even coming early to the open mic night we had at the café and playing music with us. Please also pray for Travis, the intern who led our team - he will be moving to Split in January to serve at the church and coffee shop there.

(credit for the pictures belongs to Esther Han, Rachel Woodcock, and Mark & Katrina Ramos)