Francis Chan on Taking Risks.

Below is a video of Francis Chan speaking about risk at the Challenge Conference. I will admit I discovered this video on Donald Miller's website. It really is a great illustration and it spoke to me because I feel like this time in my life has been marked by feeling like God wanted me to take a risk and me holding on tightly to the balance beam. Risk is not always fun, but like Donald Miller says in his latest book, a story cannot be a good story without risk. A story, at its basic level, is about a character wanting something and overcoming an obstacle (taking a risk) to get it.

Jesus heals with a wet willy

I made it one of my goals for this year to read the Bible through in it's entirety. One of my chapters for today was Mark 7. The thing I love about Mark is how it is that it is basically a short and to the point summary of Jesus and His ministry. He doesn't elaborate much, he just gets to the point. But here in Mark 7 he is recounting an episode where Jesus is asked to heal a deaf and mute man. I almost want to believe that the details of that healing are in here to make us laugh. Don't you love when you read the Scriptures and they say something that is hilarious and you find yourself not believing that it is actually in there? So here is the verse...

33 And He (Jesus) took him (the deaf, mute man) aside from the multitude privately, and put his fingers into his ears, and he spat..."

I read this and I thought..."Jesus, just gave that man a wet willy...that is AWESOME!"
Jesus can heal anyway that He so chooses, it is one way we know He is God in the flesh. I think if I had power to heal I would also choose to use a wet willy to do so.

state lines and life lines

December and January are a blur. The last 2 months could be narrowed down to "traveling" and "transition." I have crossed oceans, country lines, state lines and life-stage lines. I spent December in Texas, Germany, Africa, South Carolina and Georgia. In the last 2 weeks I have been in every time zone in the United States in a car and crossed 10 state lines. I drove with my best friend and roommate to move her up to Oregon. We "tried" to see the Grand Canyon. (It was 0 visibility...REALLY you couldn't see ANYTHING, which was one of the saddest days of my life because it has been a life-long dream of mine that remains unfulfilled) We saw the Hoover Dam, Las Vegas (I will admit a played a slot machine but rather unsuccessfully), the California Coast on Hwy 1 (BEAUTIFUL), tons of sea lions, San Fransisco, more California Coast, Redwood National Forrest, Multnomah Falls, etc. This was an amazing road trip, a once in a lifetime opportunity with one of my favorite people in the world. The journey ended with her staying in Portland with a carload of her belongings to begin a new journey, a new stage in her life, leaving me to begin a new stage in mine. This moment was a shift in something that has been one of the most consistent parts of my life over the last 4 and half years-a crossing of a life line. It was a beautiful journey and yet a heartbreaking one, filled with joy and yet filled with sorrow. It was a lesson in enjoying the moment-by-moment journey and not focusing on the destination.

Trusting that God knows what He is doing when He has spoken and asked you to move, to leave behind what is comfortable and familiar, to embark on a new adventure with Him, is one of life's most difficult challenges. I pictured myself over and over again like a little kid being dragged by the arms, all the while I am leaning back and digging my heals into the ground hoping to delay the shift if not indefinately, then only for a moment.

I had been in Houston since the summer ended asking God to open a door for me to do ministry there at Houston's First Baptist. I love the city of Houston, the church, the people I had worked with and met adn I had loved my life there. I didn't want to leave, so I waited. I waited and waited and God moved me, but not in the direction I had thought and if I were honest, not in the direction that I wanted. So after months of agony, crying out to God, battling myself in my own head, I submitted to what I believed God was telling me-a move that on the surface, didn't make any sense. I am in Atlanta, GA. I am working in a new city, in a new time zone, for a new church, in a ministry I have no experience in and I have asked myself many times in the last 2 weeks, "What am I doing here?" And then I am reminded of all the times in Scripture where God asked people to do things that made perfect sense both to them and the world around them.......WAIT....THAT ISN"T IN THE BIBLE. There is not one single story in Scripture where God asked someone to do something that made sense (logical, worldly, rational sense).

So here I am in Atlanta, GA-In my first full-time job, with no idea what I am doing and what God is up to, begging Him to show up, which is probably exactly where He wants me to be.

dog love.

I LOVE this little dog!

Houses- all different kinds.

Below is the house that I stayed in while I was in Langano. I hesitate to show it because it makes it look much less rustic than it is. There was indoor plumbing, but no electricity except for 2 hours a night from a generator.


This is the Health Clinic at the Langano missionary station. I worked there several days of my trip delivering babies, performing surgery......WAIT that's a lie. Since I have no medical training I just weighed babies and handed out nutrition stuff.

This is a hospital in a nearby town. While we were there getting medicine this donkey drawn carriage pulled up with a group of wailing Ethiopians and a mother and son. The son had malaria and looked half dead, but later we passed them on the road and the son was sitting up and looked fine. Ethiopians can be a little dramatic with medical stuff.

This was maybe the worst experience of the trip for me (other than getting sick). This is a public bathroom.....a wooden shack with a tiny hole in the ground. A tiny hole that you have to hover over. It is one of those moments in life that it would really pay to be a man. I have smelled few things more foul than this.

In Ethiopia (in the bush) this would be considered a nice house. It actually looks like a house not a hut and it has a metal corrugated roof and windows.

This is the "Container Bridge." It is the point that separates the villages from the missionary compound. It is a shipping container they turned into a bridge.

This is the church on the missionary compound. It was definitely an interesting Sunday. A lady with a guitar and a guy singing worship in their language and a guest speaker who spoke vigorously for about an hour with a translator (not translated into English mind you). It was neat to see, but I am not sure how I would feel about doing church their every week.....you would literally have NO IDEA what was being sung or spoken.

This is the typical house in the bush...a hut. The outside is mud and sticks and the roof is made of sticks and straw. Crazy!!

Ethiopia is about 50% Christian and 50% Muslim. It is a very strategic country for the Muslim world and they are evangelizing like crazy. There are Muslim mosques everywhere. This mosque below is in the middle of the bush. It is the strangest thing to see a beautiful building like this in the middle of an area where people live in huts.

This is the school building out in Dawe. The kids sit on logs while they learn and yet they are more eager to learn than almost every American student I have ever met.

Strawberry stand where you can buy fresh strawberries on the side of the road.

This is a house up on stilts on the drive from the city to Langano. Pretty crazy.

Landscape

People-The Most Exciting Part.

This is Moses. The Smith's adopted him from Zambia when he was a baby. The adoption story is amazing and a miracle from God. His story can be found here. He is 5 now and living it up as a curious little boy in Africa.

This is Moses' oldest sister, Hannah. She is 12.

And this is their middle child, Mia. She is holding a bird with a hurt wing that she had great compassion on. She tried to save its life, but a day later she witnessed the cat eating it. It was very tragic for everyone, especially Mia.

This is Kara. She is my age and she has been in Ethiopia through SIM for 3 months. She just extended for another 2 months. She is a nurse and was such a blessing to be around. She is eating sugar cane like a champ.

The missionary compound has a ministry that takes in babies whose mother's have died in childbirth and they nurse them to health for 6 months until they can go back to their families. This is one of those babies. SO CUTE!

On a Saturday we decided to take a donkey cart ride to a nearby village and when I say donkey cart ride it means exactly what it says! Anytime foreigners (white people) go anywhere they attract a following. This is a picture of our donkey cart being followed by all types of natives.

The next 5 pictures are just random photos of people and kids that I saw on my trip. Nobody wears underwear in the bush and most kids don't wear pants so don't be to alarmed when you see a kid pantless...it is definitely part of the African experience.

This mother is carrying her child on her back, which is how all mothers transport their babies. It is fun to watch them get it all situated.

Below is a picture of the school I went to in a local village called Dawe. This would have been an amazing chance for pictures, but I hardly got any because me being white and being there was a huge distraction in itself to the learning process, so I had to be discreet with my camera.

To the right is the missionary who runs the Langano school, Ms. Joan. Beside her is a boy joing us on the way to the school in Dawe. Once a week she walks out to this school and teaches for them. It was about an hour walk.

This is a really nice guy we met in a souvenir shop. He laughed at our attempt to speak his language.

Few people ride horses in this area, but this woman did. She had ridden her horse to the clinic that day.