Japan

Ok, so let say first and foremost that the Amazon Kindle has changed my life. Like, no kidding, it is epic. I have officially lost my "post-literate" status because of this thing. Ok, enough free advertising.

I'm going to vulnerable here and share some of my heart here. This feels a little bit more poignant in light of the recent earthquake.

I love Japan even though I've never been there. I feel like God is calling me there to work, possibly long term. In November and December 2009 I was kicking around the idea "what would it look like to live in Japan?" I can't think of anything in particular sparked the thought - probably just God. In January I went to a weekend missions conference and met up with a dear friend who told me an interesting story. The story was that my friend and her mother had been talking and God dropped a word of knowledge on them fairly randomly. That word was "I'm calling Stephen to Asia" (and a couple of other places, but that's not important right now). When my friend tells me all this I was floored - talk about confirmation. Ever since then I've been praying and believing for that country. The earthquake kinda rattled me. I know it might be stupid to say that but it did. I was a little teary for a couple of days. Here at CPx we have two months where we go to different parts of the world to go love people and tell them about Jesus; and me and a friend of mine were talking about putting a team together to go do our outreach with the earthquake and tsunami victims. We sat down and prayed about it first though obviously. We both felt very strongly that God was saying wait on going to Japan. There was a lot of peace in that, so, good confirmation. It was a little bit disappointing but God, in addition to saying wait, said that He wanted to do some things there before I or my buddy (or the two of us together) got there.

The verse that everyone has been throwing around concerning the earthquake in Japan is the last part of 1 Kings 19:11 - After the wind there was an earthquake, but the LORD was not in the earthquake. (NLT) It's kind of taking the verse out of context but it still rings true does it not? Not to start into a subject I know very little about but I feel that God is still good - even if things are not going well around us.

Contrary to what some people would say, I think, God loves the Japanese people. I think God has a lot of good things in store for that country, I think freedom will spring up there so that the unhealthy social pressures there will be relieved.

About 6 or 7 months ago I felt like the Holy Spirit led me to a portion of scripture that He was speaking over the land of the rising sun. It seems extra prophetic to me now.

Isaiah 61:4-9 (NASB) Then they will rebuild the ancient ruins, They will raise up the former devastations; And they will repair the ruined cities, The desolations of many generations. Strangers will stand and pasture your flocks, And foreigners will be your farmers and your vinedressers. But you will be called the priests of the LORD; You will be spoken of as ministers of our God, You will eat the wealth of nations, And in their riches you will boast. Instead of your shame you will have a double portion, And instead of humiliation they will shout for joy over their portion Therefore they will possess a double portion in their land, Everlasting joy will be theirs. For I, the LORD, love justice, I hate robbery in the burnt offering; And I will faithfully give them their recompense And make an everlasting covenant with them. Then their offspring will be known among the nations, And their descendants in the midst of the peoples. All who see them will recognize them Because they are the offspring whom the LORD has blessed.

Township

I wanted to talk about what we’re doing in Red Hill a little bit today. I realized that I’ve been telling stories from our days off etc and not so much been relaying what is happening on site. It’s said that things move slowly in Red Hill, and it’s true. There are 4 or 5 weeks left for us to be here in Cape Town and we haven’t seen that much “happen” per say. This really isn’t a discouraging thing – not to me at least. God has his own timing and we're being faithful to do what we are hearing Him say - so we're in His will.

There are now 7 of us on a team working in Red Hill. I personally wish that we could do more practicals for and with people, but we are somewhat limited as far as thought line of thought goes. We are trying to organize a pretty cool event right now. There is a movie called “Beat the Drum” that talks about AIDS awareness and debunks myths and misunderstandings surrounding the condition. There is a huge stigma surrounding people with AIDS. They lose their friends, no one talks to them, they can’t get a job and (if these things didn’t get the point across) are treated universally as out casts. Fear motivates that conduct. Fear of getting AIDS I mean. Beat the Drum talks about aids testing, how to avoid AIDS and how to get help if you do have it. Apparently there are a significant amount of people who have contracted AIDs in South Africa. Please note that I am not trying to demean this wonderful country in any way – just stating a fact. All that to say; we are trying to set up a way to show the movie in the township and have a free testing clinic if people want to get tested.

We are walking around meeting people and starting conversations about God. We have all felt the artificiality of this – not that it’s bad, just not natural. It’s not hard to bring conversation to the topic of God etc etc because we stick out like a sore thumb – white people in a shack town with no residents of that color and apparently the only Caucasians to come here come with a church group or something. Oh well. The M.O. we’re working under is to find somebody who is not a Christian or following Christ closely and who is spiritually hungry. We ask if that person is interested in doing a Bible study and if they are we teach them how we tend to do Bible studies, i.e. how to lead one. (I say “tend to do” because there are so many ways to do a Bible study or tell someone about Jesus.) We then go with them and do a Bible study with their friends and hopefully see these guys and gals fall in love with the person of Jesus and follow him just from what they see in the scriptures. The idea is that it’s not us, the foreigners, leading the group because when we leave the group will more than likely stop meeting.

We want to show the love of God in practical ways. Red Hill is a remote place with no running water. So there are big water retainers outside of the community that are supposed to be kept filled to be used by all of the residents, but sometimes are left empty. We have been able to bring some water to a couple of people we are working with who did not have any in reserve or were (according to them) did not have a lot of money for water from the store. We have done this once or twice. We have plans to help shore up a shack but we need to locate some lumber etc. It is very very windy in Cape Town for most of the year. We are trying to be wise with what we give and to whom we give such help to because, frankly we are poor students without a lot of financial backing to give aid on a large scale and people always love to take advantage of the Americans. Just a fact of life. Suffice we do a lot of prayer with people for practical needs like jobs and are seeing those prayers being answered.

My man TR leaves tonight. He has spent something like two weeks with and has been a huge blessing. He has been an awesome sounding board for our dreams and an open ear to the plans we have for the future ready with wise advice and/or a word from God on it. To give and example and to hint at the next post, TR helped me and a friend process the possibility of taking a team to Japan for our outreach months.

All that to say things are going well here, we are trusting for a revolution in Red Hill, God is starting to put dreams on the student's hearts and we all love our new friend TR.

An overview of recent happenings

It's been a very full couple of weeks.

I think what I will do is just give an overview of what's happened recently in this entry and unpack more thoughts and experiences in subsequent posts. Thank you for your patience. :)

A friend came to visit Bowen and I in the first few day of March. Tom is his name and loving and serving people is his m.o. I met Tom 10 years ago. He is a real joy to be around, he's a deep thinker and it's so cool to bounce ideas off and talk about life with. He has a unique, humorous and peaceful outlook; very untroubled by anything not of God. He met a lot of the CPx students and staff and blended in quite well. He, Bowen, some of the staff and myself on a day off went and made a day of it. More of that and pictures later. It was a sad thing when he had to leave.

God has been teaching me trust. The way you learn is to choose to trust even if you don't want to. It seems like you have to become like a child in order to learn (or relearn) to trust God. You make a simple choice, stop spinning your wheels and enjoy what is around you. Humility is key.

A bunch of us went to a rugby game on Saturday night. It was a Cape Town team versus a team from New Zealand. It was awesome. The only other time I've seen a rugby game was when I watched a buddy play a collegiate game a few years ago now. I really liked how it wasn't near as commercialized as American football.

We are deciding where we want to go for our 2 month "outreach phase" of our Church Planting Experience. I didn't really feel any strong direction so I went with my gut and signed up for Zanzibar and we'll see what happens I guess. I'd sooner go to Japan then anywhere else right now.

We got to skype with heavy hitter church planter David Watson. He does things somewhat different then All Nations. It was good though, David is very strategic in his approach to outreach.

We have cool kid here hanging out with the students for the next couple of weeks. I call him TR and he loves on people and tells them abut Jesus in countries where it's not allowed. Hence me not using his real name or adding a picture. There seems to be a trend of our speakers needing their identity protected because they are seeing cool things happen where Jesus is not allowed.

Let me just take a moment to say that it is because of our love for Jesus that we tell others about him. We don't want people to live without the hope of who Jesus is. He said "go and make disciples of all nations.... (Matt 28). And the gospel will be preached to all nations...and then Jesus will return (my paraphrase of Matt 24:14) We as humans are jealously loved by God - he came, lived a sinless life, was killed for our sin in order for us not have to be separated from God and then rose again nullifying our fear of death and sent the Holy Spirit to us so that we can be full of peace and joy until his return and see the dead raised the sick healed and the epic news of all the above spread to the whole world. And all this we do in love - not yelling at people about going to hell and being judgmental and not not telling people about him. *pant pant* *gets off soapbox*

So this guy TR, he's doing the whole telling people about Jesus in crazy places and is here with us to share his experiences and just listen to our hearts and give counsel about what we feel called to by God. It's a blessing to have him.

So, that's probably enough there. Sorry to go on a rampage there, but how can we must not remain silent and opt out of a life of obeying Jesus (in whatever we're called to) when our neighbor across the street is having a hard time in the States or there is such abject poverty of mind, spirit and resources and blatant racism in places like South Africa and when there is awful destruction in places like Japan.

So, I love you, whoever you are reading this (I don't think there's a big audience for this blog though). Thank you for reading this, know that my prayer for you is that you will have a deeper revelation of God's love for you. More pictures and actual details to come later!