Eyes to See, Ears to Hear

Archive for October, 2006

We had dinner with another VMS family last weekend and heard about a church that some of the volunteers and missionaries at JAARS go to.  It is called Hope of Israel and it is a Messianic Jew church.  Simply put, they are Jews who believe Jesus is the Messiah.  What made us want to go was not only what was spoken of it but also what we found on their website.  Throughout, Dana and I were drawn to their evidential reverence for God.  So, we went.  And we absolutely loved it.  The worship style was traditional Jewish and it was wonderful.  If you live in Charlotte or ever come to visit, I STRONGLY suggest you paying this congregation a visit.  You WILL encounter the living God! 

www.hopeofisrael.info

A day of leisure and recreation has been long-needed. We’ve been so busy the past month or so with the RV move-in and house move-out that I can’t remember the last day we spent just doing some sort of leisure activity all-day. 

The day began with the ordinary; we left out late to start the day, but progressed through the extraordinary.  On top of already being behind schedule in heading to Dana’s parents’ house, we had to stop for gas.  So, we shot over into South Carolina to take advantage of the low gas prices.  I remembered a BP on HWY. 521 so we plotted our course for there.  When we pulled up to the pump I could already tell this was not a conventional BP.  Scrap pieces of paper taped to the pump with chicken-scratch handwriting told me ‘Cash’, ‘Credit’, and ‘”BP” cards are not accepted inside or outside.”  Dana asked me if I was sure it was really a BP we were at.  She also asked me to go in to get her a bottle of water so I headed for the door.  Apparently, the business owner doesn’t believe having the windows cleaned would be beneficial.  I decided to use the restroom before we proceeded on our 1 ½ hour drive.  I walked into the ‘bathroom’ and what used to be the urinal had been reduce to a few pipes sticking out of the wall.  It was my turn to wait for the one occupied ‘stall’.  This gave me a chance to notice the collection of nastiness around the bottom of the walls on the floor.  BP owner cuts overhead costs by nixing bathroom cleaning, too.  Needless to say, my hand sanitizer in the glove compartment came in handy (no pun intended).  On the way out of the store, struggling to breath because of the extreme amount of cigarette smoking that had taken place inside, I noticed a waist-high counter along the longest windowed wall.  There were scattered chairs there for what was apparently the “sit and smoke while you watch traffic go by” section.  On the counters was the source of my respiratory pain… about four overflowing ashtrays.  After I relayed my observations to Dana, she decided drinking the bottled water I got her may not have been in the best interest of her health.

Our next stop was to be Bojangle’s since our lateness prevented us from eating breakfast before leaving the house-RV-thingy.  We made it to I-85 and came upon an exit that had multiple restaurants listed, Bojangle’s being one of them.  We noted at the top of the ramp that we only had to go 0.3 miles to kill our hunger but after about 5 miles, we wised up about a little discrepancy on the interstate sign. Since we were so far off the interstate, I decided to take a small highway cut-across to our eventual north-bound highway.  Hunger must’ve been impeding my rationale.

Once we finally arrived in Hickory, we came up to a large intersection.  Pacing back-and-forth on one of the medians was a man.  He caught our attention instantly because in his right hand he was holding up an open umbrella, for shade I guess, and in his left hand was a ventriloquist dummy.  That’s not all.  Strapped to his waist was a megaphone with wired mic hung around his neck so he could speak hands-free.  Hanging from his back was a 4’x3’ piece of wood on which we wondered what was written since he was facing us.  He turned around and there they were… about 20 lines of small text the lady in the car next to him would’ve had trouble reading.  I’ve seen similar things in New York City but never thought I’d come across it in Hickory, NC.

Before going to Dana’s parents’ place, we stopped by the Lutheran Home to see her grandmother.  She isn’t doing well at all and it was hard to hear her say that there were two specific times during the previous week when she wanted death to come quickly.  I told her we would not be sorrowful when she passes because we know she’ll be with Jesus.  I asked her to save us a seat when she got there and she asked where we’d like to sit.  I told her, “In the back, of course.  I am Baptist after all.”  It was nice to see her smile.  She asked for both of us to pray for her so we did and headed out.

Pulling out, we looked down the street the opposite way of which we were supposed to go and LOW-and-BEHOLD there was a Bojangle’s!  Finally, we had our biscuits at 12:15pm!

We toured the parents’ new house before piling into the back seat of their car and heading off to the mountains to see the fall colors.  It was nice to be driven around for once!

Our first stop on the way up was at an apple orchard to buy some mountain-grown gala apples – DELICIOSO!  I also picked up a little plastic bear full of pure sourwood honey.  I even got to taste sample it in the building before I bought it.  It’s so good, I’ve got to get up from the computer and get a spoonful now… … … … that was good!

From the orchard, it was time to head up on up the mountain to a place called Glendale Springs.  There’s an old church there that has a painting in it that’s done in a style called fresco.  It just so happen that the community was having the Festival of Frescoes in an open grassy area nearby.  We got a good taste of the local culture there.

The next good chunk of time was spent on the Blue Ridge Parkway looking at the fall colors.  You can see pictures here.

One of the biggest reasons Dana’s parents took us to the mountains was to eat at Shatley Springs, a very popular country-cookin’ inn and restaurant.  When we pulled into the parking lot, we noticed the expected high number of cars.  We made our way down to the front door and Dana’s dad went in to put our name on the list.  Little did he know that Shatley Springs was now operating on a reservation system so the wait for walk-ups was 3 hours.  Do you think we stayed or left?  Pretty easy choice.

So, we got back in the car to head ½ hour down to Wilkesboro and ended up stopping at a Mayflower Fish Camp.  If you don’t know what a ‘fish camp’ is, e-mail me.  The interesting day continued as we noticed a large group of people file in, filling up one side of the restaurant.  Shortly behind them came an unexpected couple… a bride and groom.  Apparently the fish camp is the local hot spot for wedding receptions!  I even grew up around the corner of a fish camp and NEVER had seen that before!

On our way back to the parents’ place, our realtor called us about a viewing of the house by a couple who wanted to submit an offer but it had a contingency attached for the sale of their home.  We had gotten a lot of response to the house at that point so we chose not to get into a situation like that.

The day was drawing to a close so we hit the road for the RV with the Bank of America 500 on the radio.  Listening to NASCAR is nothing like watching it which is NOTHING like being there.  But, we got home with about 80 laps left in the race which became our opportunity to gear down for the night.

It was one of the more unusual days I’ve experienced.

It's interesting how much in my mind I see myself as traditional or old-fashioned, especially when things like what happened today take place.  Now that Dana has a laptop (a very NICE Sony VAIO might I add) she can understand the importance of mine in staying 'connected' to the outside world.  Forget making sure the landline telephone gets hooked up in our RV – I've got a Cingular RAZR on my hip so that's taken care of.  BUT, I have no cellular wireless broadband card to get online and even if I did, there's no coverage for high-speed data transfer out here.  I have a sense of depravity with no internet connection.

ENTER JAARS Housing…

They are in charge of all the housing situations at JAARS including the RV Park.  A great amenity to the park is DSL hook-up on EVERY site.  When we left the house last night to come to the RV to stay for the very first time, it was late and class started early this morning.  When and how was I to get my desperately-needed DSL modem from housing?!  The plans we chose were to not go back to the house until Wednesday which set me up to go into this evening with: NO INTERNET ACCESS and NO TV since it didn't make the first load out last night.  Anxiety started to really build in our last training session today from 3:00pm – 4:30pm knowing what awaited me at our new home.  So, I struggled to the surface to gasp for air and with that breath I whispered to Dana, "What do you think about going home this afternoon and getting the TV?" knowing full well it's the DSL modem and wireless router at home I want to grab.  She replied, "I don't know… we'll see."  I've become fluent in Dana-ish in the past two years and knew that I had to resort to plan B at that point.  Bad news was that there was no plan B!

I start going through the options in my head and remember that housing doesn't close until 5pm!  What's that?  A twinkle at the end of the tunnel?!  BUT, this just so happens to be Jonathan's week to stay after class and clean up.  Whoop-tee-doo.  On top of that, our guest speaker was very un-American in lecturing past 4:30pm.  Doesn't she know that's out of bounds in our culture?  (That's really not my viewpoint but is one of our culture that I had to be an advocate for in light of my situation).  So, I begin cleaning up and low-and-behold one of the VMS staff decides to have a conversation with me.  Nothing specific.  Just being relational.  Tick-tock.  Dana and I walk out of the building at 4:52pm and I reach for my RAZR with in-and-out service way out yunder in tha cuntry.  I get a ring and a live voice.  God bless you, Penny.  She says that they have ONE DSL modem left and reiterated their closing time.  I told her that it was okay because I was pulling into her parking lot as we were closing.  Relief.

ENTER Windows VISTA or HP or REALTEK – I don't know who this is contributed to…

The short drive to the RV was pleasant as I was looking forward to having internet access in our new home.  I run the wire from the box on the site into the RV.  I plug the power adapter into the wall outlet.  I plug the phone wire into the back of the DSL modem.  I plug the ethernet cable from the modem to my laptop.  I plug the power cable into the modem and its beautiful lights begin to glow.  What's this?  Unrecognized Network is what Vista is telling me and go figure it's one of their new terms.  I tried and tried and couldn't figure out how to get my laptop to recognized the DSL connection.  There was one final solution possibility before I had to accept being 'cut off' for another night… and it worked.  Remember Dana's VAIO?  Well, as it sits, it is probably one of the most expensive wireless routers out right now.  DSL into her Ethernet, out of her wireless and into my wireless.

Reading back over this causes me to assess my 'dependence' on being connected.  There could be danger lurking in what I see as an essential part of my life.  We'll see…

I'm excited to see some great options come to the theaters.  It was such a discovery to Dana and I when we noticed by what we were allowing ourselves to be 'entertained'.  Our conclusion was heavy when it hit us that if in real life we wouldn't like to be around situations of profane language, half-naked people (married OR unmarried), and flat out dishonor of God (just to BEGIN the list) then why would we pay money to bring it into our home on the television or go to a theater to watch it on a 30-ft screen?!  What we as American Christians now entertain ourselves with is an avenue of filth that has quietly been accepted as permissable in our society, even in the Christian home.

That's why I'm glad to see films such as this one come out.  It is not only a film that displays the morality we 'support' as Christians, or at least should support as we pursue holiness, but one straight out of the Bible.  I hope to add a review to this post at a later date.  In the meanwhile, make the plans to go see this and if you do, let me know what you think about it!

The load we are experiencing right now is quite heavy with the move to the RV, VMS training, getting the house ready for sale, commuting 2 hours a day, trying to do partnership development and the list goes on.  Once a person decides to go into the ministry, in our case into full-time missions, exemption from trials and tribulations is far from the truth.  As a matter of fact, I could make a great argument that they indeed increase.

Earlier this week, I wrote about how easy it is to forget that people are more important than anything temporal.  What God showed me this morning as I spent time with Him was that the same temporal distractions can cause me to forget about something more important than people… HIM!  We’ve dedicated all of our resources to prepare to go to the mission field and in doing so, I have forgotten that at the core of it all it is not even about the people to whom we will minister.  At the core of what we are doing is God and Him alone.  But, the busyness and strain of our preparation has caused me to allow bondage in my life to those very things, thus distancing me from the One it is all about.  So, what am I to do?

Enter a beautiful ingredient of salvation: FREEDOM.  The things I do have nothing to do with God’s forgiveness of me and my place prepared in eternity with Him.  ONLY what HE did has secured that place and that same act also set me free while I spend my days on earth.  Galatians 5.1 says, “Stand fast therefore in the liberty by which Christ has made us free, and do not be entangled again with a yoke of bondage.”  Lying within that liberty of Christ is the ability, strength, wisdom, everything we need to not be entangled again with a yoke of bondage.  In our salvation is our freedom from bondage of striving for our own righteousness.  That can make such a difference in how my day is spent.

What really hit through the time this morning is something even better out of this verse.  God’s holiness requires perfection, The Law.  The Fall prevents any of us from being able to accomplish this regardless of how we try, thus severing our relationship and closeness with God.  We are in bondage to the perfect standard of which we cannot even fulfill.  BUT, the “liberty by which Christ has made us free” isn’t just a path out from under the law or just an escape route out of being hellbound.  That liberty puts us back into communion with God.  We can talk directly to the One who was there before time.  He created time, space, us, trees, love, relationships, family, compassion, faith… the list is deeper than the ocean.  We can spend time ONE-ON-ONE with HIM!  Not like submitting a request and hoping customer service will get back to you.  Not like dialing the number of a friend hoping they are there to pick up.  Not like sending an important e-mail and waiting anxiously for a reply.  Not like asking for forgiveness of a wrong and wondering if it will come.  Our avenue to Him is instant, live, real… as real as anything can get and it is accessing the source of ALL wisdom, might and love.  That is Who we have access to as the Redeemed.  That is Who the liberty put us back in touch with and we can spend any amount of time we want to with Him whenever we want to! 

 The liberty by which Christ has made us free!  WOW!

I put two clocks to the right on my blog here.  The top one shows our local time and the other shows time in Tanzania.  So, why the one from a place over an ocean away?  Well, Dana and I have begun communication with the Uganda-Tanzania Branch (UTB) exploring a possible assignment with them.  This is ONLY the preliminary stages and we have not even received an invitation from them.  But, what happens from here is they will receive our personnel file, review it and vote whether they's like to extend an invitation to us.  Then, it is up to us to accept and begin looking at some sort of time frame.  Of course the latter part is EXTREMELY hard to judge as it is dependent on how our partnership development grows.

The position that UTB wants to fillis focused on a 10-language group called the Mbeya Cluster.  There are over 1 million people among these 10 language groups so the potential for impacting lives is great.  If we end up taking this assignment, our first five months there would be spent in Swahili language school and UTB orientation.  We are excited about possibly ending up in Africa!

The other night I was driving home alone from Wal-Mart when I heard some Bible verses being read on New Life 91.9.  I can't recall what they were but they spoke of the passing away of temporal things and nothing being left but the eternal.  I heard this just as I was driving into our housing development or what will soon be our former one.  As I passed house by house, I thought about how much we value our house and how hard it is leaving it.  Then, the passage I just heard came to mind and as I looked around, the only thing I could see that was eternal, the only thing that was going to last forever, was me.  No house, no tree, no truck, no car, no mailbox, no satellite dish, no irrigation system, no contoured yard… nothing… nothing but a person.  People are the only things that are here that will last forever. (not including the unseen supernatural world around us)  It put me in a position to assess what I truly value in this life.  Is it my laptop?  Is it my TempurPedic king size bed?  Is it my programmable thermostat?  Is it my rose garden?  Is it my digital SLR camera?  That seems to be the case, but in light of what I just heard God say (in the Bible passage), those values are useless and in vain as every single one of those things won't be around forever.  Most of them won't even be around for another decade or two.  What about the people in my life?  What about the people in a foreign land to whom God is sending us?  What about them?  How much do I value them?  How much do I pray for them and think about them instead of getting the website up-to-date, mowing my grass with sleek landscaping-style lines, or searching online for satellite tv options for the RV?  The sad answer is not much at all, if any.  People are eternal.  Our friends.  Our family.  Our supporters.  Our people group who will be reached with the audio-visual creations God will bless us in making.  It is people that matter.  That's God's viewpoint and I hope to make it mine.

Today started out quite hectic but ended up being one of our best of recent.  For a few weeks, we have had a partnership development presentation scheduled for the Sunday School class of one of our dear friends.  Their class meets at the same time ours does at 10:30am at North Campus.  Two days ago, the other married couple that went to Honduras with us in July called and told us they were set to do their presentation to one of their parents' classes at Main Campus and was wondering if we'd like to come do a partnership development presentation there as well.  It was at 9:15am, so we jumped at the opportunity. 

Aside from being prayed for and added to numerous long-term prayer lists, the love that was shown to us by the Long and Leopard classes was phenomenal.  If you are in one of these classes, we thank you again for loving us and encouraging us this morning.  How you treated us this morning we believe modeled what the relationships between believers should and could look like.  We praise God for the work He has done, is doind and will do in your lives.  God bless you!

  No, it is not a rare species of cat in east Africa. Long and Leopard are two very special names to us. Each refers to a different Sunday School class at our church. This morning, we had the opportunity to give a presentation to both classes.  The schedule was tight as the Long class is at Main Campus @ 9:15am and the Leopard class is at North Campus @ 10:30am. 
  The Long presentation had to be kept to a minimum but we were so encouraged just in that short amount of time we were there.  Before our time came to get up in front of the class of about 40 people, they went through announcements and updated their common prayer list.  We saw each person whip out their own sheet, most of which had been in their possession for a couple of weeks at that point, and make updates to the recent requests.  It was beautiful.  It was family.
  So, the point came for us to pass out the invitations to partnership and the first thing that was said in response was the teacher saying, "Well, Jonathan, y'all are going to be on that (pointed to someone's sheet) prayer list from now on."  I'm not scared to say that I about started crying right there on the spot!  That means so much to us to have such a group supporting us with their prayers.
  The Leopard class had arranged for us to have the entire period to do our presentation so we did a demonstration with them using two foreign Bibles, one Arabic and one Hawaiian Pidgen.  The class responded very well and presented us with a card at the end.  EVERY person in the class had signed the card before that day when most met us for the first time.  Also, they had taken up an offering to give us.  It was a substantial amount of money and it set Dana and I in awe.
   God keeps on doing things like this as we go into each new day as missionaries.  He is good.