A Fortnight Away

Let me start off with a story I read from 2 Kings 7 last night. It's one I have heard, but one that hit close to home since I leave in two weeks for training. It's a story about 4 lepers. While sitting outside of the entrance to the city, they say to one another, "Why are we sitting here until we die? If we say, 'Let us enter the city,' the famine is in the city, and we shall die there. And if we sit here, we die also. So now come, let us go..." So they rise up and go to the only place where they even have a chance of living, to the camp of the enemies - the Syrians. As they were headed down to the camp of the Syrians, God made these lepers sound like a great army coming to fight. Because the Syrians feared that a mighty army was coming to besiege them, they fled. In their fear they left everything behind them. "When these lepers came to the edge of the camp, they went into a tent and ate and drank, and they carried off silver and gold and clothing and went and hid them." They just found immense treasure and everything they needed to stay alive, as this was what compelled them to approach the Syrians to begin with. But they hid it. They kept it to themselves. Remember, there was a famine in the city, and upon finding all that the Syrian army had left behind they chose to hoard it for themselves rather than share this great news with the others. Then they realized what they were doing. They said to one another, "We are not doing right. This day is a day of good news. Let us go and tell..." So they went and told the king's household. Then, all the people went and plundered the camp of the Syrians and were able to have abundant amounts of food and drink.

While reading a commentary on these verses I found a quote from Charles Spurgeon, "If the only result of our religion is the comfort of our poor little souls, if the beginning and the end of piety is contained within one’s self, why, it is a strange thing to be in connection with the unselfish Jesus, and to be the fruit of his gracious Spirit. Surely, Jesus did not come to save us that we might live unto ourselves. He came to save us from selfishness."

I have been blessed greatly by the family that God has given me and the friends that God has surrounded me with. Most importantly I have been blessed by God by being able to call myself a son of God, to receive an inheritance greater than anything the earth has to offer. Therefore I cannot keep it to myself. Just as the lepers went and told the nation of Israel, so I must go and tell.

Many of you know that I am headed out to training here in two weeks to start my two months of training. After this I will be heading down to Brazil sometime between mid-October and mid-November. At that point I will go through another 5-6 months of training. Then I will start my missions job. Amazon RACE - Radical Approach to Church planting and Evangelism. I will be paired up with a native Brazilian. We will canoe down the Amazon River in search of a particular river-community that will be our new home for about a year and a half (not a year and a half straight though, we will be there for 3-4 months then back to the city of Manaus for 2 weeks, then in the river community for 3-4 months, then back to Manaus for 2 weeks...). As the Amazon RACE name implies, my job will be to develop relationships that lead to Christ-centered conversations that will lead to discipleship that will lead to church planting that will lead to sharing the Gospel in surrounding river communities. I am definitely excited about the next two years of my life. There is absolutely no telling what God will do inside of me and around me. Clearly, at this point I need prayer, and lots of it, so here are some things you could be praying for:

- That I would learn more about God and depend more on Him and less on myself each and every day.

- Language learning, I have been told that this is one of the most important things at this point.

- Visa, that the visa process would be pain free and not delay me in going to Brazil.

- Last, but definitely not least, that God would prepare the hearts of those I am going to be ministering to and that He would use me to bring people to Himself that at this point have never even heard of Him.

Thank you all! I am so excited about this.