In All and Through All

Last month, I wrote:

"My goal this week?  Get everything done before leaving for the U.S. for a few weeks.

My goal last week? Introduce a few different women to the Peace that surpasses all understanding. We sat there praying for a woman's husband who has had this Chronic Kidney Disease for the past 14 years. Her husband is in and out of consciousness. I hadn't seen him this bad before.  Hundreds of prayers have been prayed over this man.  He's even been literally on his death bed a year or so ago, but after much prayer he began to recover.  So as we prayed for her and him, I cried feeling the immense weight she was under. We cried together. I knew what the Holy Spirit wanted to do for her like he had done for me in the past...bring His peace. He is so good at that. He's a fantastic comforter.   Though so many in this village numb themselves to the grief of sickness and death, the Holy Spirit still desires to meet them in those moments.

My goal the week before?  Make sure to have accommodations complete for a man who is avidly working to find the cause of this Chronic Kidney Disease. [He is a water expert that has been working for the past 5 years to help see this community free from the devastation of such a large amount of loss]."

This week one of my goals was to meet with the couple who is running their own store out of the New Song base, just to make sure their finances are going well and that they are doing well.  I got to pray with them over their business and pray blessing over their finances.

It's amazing to me how differently God shows up and how many different ways He wants to use us.  Providing accommodations and making sure someone's bed and food are prepared for them, are not what comes to my mind to define "ministry."   But that's part of it, and I love that.

It is also amazing to me how God reveals Himself to each one of us so differently so that we can show others one part of His nature.  He has revealed His peace to me in so many moments, by so many simple words. I can confidently relay this peace to others.  "This is who Jesus is for me, and can be for you if you let Him."

Each gifting and each revelation are our own, given from the Father. Nothing forced, contrived, or even worked for. It's by the power of God through us.  We each make up an important part in restoring this world to a relationship with God. We raise up communities. It is all by the work of His own hand, nothing I can boast of myself, but it is Him only.  It's beautifully simple, completely unexpected, and so good.

5 There is one Lord, one faith, one baptism, 6 one God and Father of [us] all, Who is above all [Sovereign over all], pervading all and [living] in [us] all. 7 Yet grace (God's unmerited favor) was given to each of us individually [not indiscriminately, but in different ways] in proportion to the measure of Christ's [rich and bounteous] gift.  Galatians 4

12For just as the body is a unity and yet has many parts, and all the parts, though many, form [only] one body, so it is with Christ (the Messiah, the Anointed One). 13 For by [means of the personal agency of] one [Holy] Spirit we were all, whether Jews or Greeks, slaves or free, baptized [and by baptism united together] into one body, and all made to drink of one [Holy] Spirit. 14 For the body does not consist of one limb or organ but of many...  1 Corinthians 12

Reinstating True Identity

It happened again. But this time it was worse than when it happened a few years back. A well known man in the church was drunk and stumbling in the streets. This time some of the kids who looked up to him saw him. Word got around the village quickly. The man's face who was always at the front of the church, was now the topic of the gossip around town.

I've seen this happen several times growing up in church.  A leader falls, people start talking, he/she are asked to step down and then they're never seen again.

Luckily, this story headed a different direction.

I have worked pretty closely with this guy since I got here.  God has changed him completely since I came in 2009, and yet he had a slip up.  But this slip up was not an indicator of who he is or how Jesus saw him. Luckily, this time around there were enough people inside of the church who know who he really is.

The next time I saw him he stood outside of the property of the church that he dedicated himself to so faithfully.  His head was held low. Emily and I ran up to him to hug him. I'd envision Jesus doing the same thing, but more like an all out tackle.  We talked a little. Then the pastor, whom he had apparently been avoiding, walked up to him. They talked. The pastor told him he was more than welcome to come in the property lines, come to church, that he had been looking for him and wanting to talk. They decided they would talk later.

The next week I had a talk with him after he had been received back by so many, his heart seemed so full. He seemed to be doing well.  He told me that in the past, he had gone to several churches in the area and that no other church would ever treat him with such love like our church community did. My heart welled up with joy.  He said he felt so loved by us, the pastors, and even his kids came and ran up to hug him shouting his name.

"When I first heard what happened, I knew that isn't who you are. You are not that person." I told him. "That love that you felt from all of us, that is the smallest, just the tiniest portion of the love that God has for you." He had no response. He just nodded his head. As I said that, my heart welled up again, and my eyes. He needed to know that. He already knew what everyone else thought. He already knew the gravity of what he did. God wants for him to know how God feels about him, that God did not want him to get swallowed up by an alcohol problem; that God created him for much more. That's what we get to do as believers. Tell people how God sees them.  I believe that when people understand God's heart for them, then they want to know the Father.

God was pouring out this kindness on this guy.  God wants to see him set free.

It confirmed something in my heart that says "This is the purpose of life and the reason for any ministry. People need to know the Father."  I've never been great at group Bible studies, or church ministry.  I don't lead 5 people to Christ per week or see 10 healed a month or complete any other figure that many missionaries can rejoice about. But with those whom we get to share the Father's heart, even if it is only small instances, it is worth anything and everything we can offer. People need to know who they are, who God is, His kindness and liberty, and that He wants them to live in their true identity.

Preparing the Ground

At the beginning of this month, we sat eight of us in our big room four days in a row in close to 100 degree weather.  With ideas and opinions being tossed about every which way, we accomplished something necessary for any organization or business- stopping normal productivity to cast and communicate vision.  We called it our "Seek Week."  The vision was for this week to become an annual time of casting vision and preparing the ground for the year.

New Song has been working to change the lives of the people here in Candelaria since 2002 and has faced many obstacles, failures, blessings, and successes along the way.  Those things can cause an organization to ebb, flow, and attempt to throw it off its primary purpose.

It can also throw a person off their purpose.  That is why it's important to consistently step back, look at what you are doing and ask yourself what it is you want to do and what you are doing to get there.

We also looked at several challenges we were facing and how we need to approach them. The biggest challenge being: how do we continue to give to those in need and not create a dependency on Americans?  If there is one thing we want everyone to understand is our dependency on God- not the dollar or the cordoba.  (Even talking about this challenge causes us to have a greater dependency on God because we need Him to guide each step!)

We've had meeting after meeting because we want to enforce a structure and foundation that will last and bless this community for years to come.  It's amazing what sort and amount of communication is necessary to see a project like this succeed!

Then we prepared to bring in our first mission team since January. Two families came down from N.C.'s coast for a week.  They completely blessed us by offering to give free dental care to a few in the community who really needed it.  They also brought uniforms, soccer equipment, art supplies, and gave gymnastics lessons for the kids around.  It is amazing how those who visit for such a short time can greatly impact our community in Candelaria. One of the ladies also taught our team about the importance of social media in communicating to those in the states what is going on here, so hopefully you will be getting a better idea of what we are doing here than just a monthly blog.  These two families were so kind and so ready to help.

We also had a family for Canada come through for the night just interested in what New Song is doing.  Though they were here for a day, they were so ready to pray for those around and brought us stuff for our kids and music ministry.

Having those who support us from the states, or come to serve is really a huge blessing for all of us here.  We get to spend time with kids, minister to the sick, love the broken, and the lost, but you are the backbone how you love us!  So thank you all for all that you do.

Seek Week 9 a.m. meeting

 Moving foam mattresses on top of the taxi, down to the base to prepare for the families who came

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God Among Us

"I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God has been making it grow.  So neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but only God who makes things grow."  1 Corinthians 3:6-8

As I sat with Rosa on Friday in the homes of some of the sick and the widows in the village, I got to hear some of the testimonies of how God healed a son of theirs or how God healed another from a stroke. Then I was at an outreach village woman's meeting with my friend Whitney.  I was listening to each woman tell three things that they were thankful for.  Some of the women went on and on about how grateful they were for what God has done in their life.  One woman was specifically grateful for how the Lord has released her from fear over her daughter's safety.

When I listen to these woman recount these stories, I realize even more how powerful God really is.   God is working in these small little villages in remote parts of Nicaragua healing and restoring lives. Several men have come to know God because they saw the life He gives, not because of rules or fear of going to Hell. Not to say that God hasn't used people to pray or to tell people about Him, because He has, but He has been doing the work in people's hearts.

I was reading about John the Baptist.  He stood out in the middle of the desert announcing Jesus' arrival.  I wondered how he was so sure and convinced of this?  Was this common family knowledge because of what the angels said to Mary, Joseph, Elizabeth, and Zechariah? Or did the Holy Spirit stir this in him on a separate occasion?  The word says the Lord spoke to him about how to identify Jesus.  My guess would be that God told him to go baptize people as well?  Either way, I think it was a mix of it all.  God is the one who speaks, who delivers, and who heals.  He will lead us and guide us.  As we spend more time with Him and opening ourselves up to Him, the Holy Spirit rises within us giving us the desires to move where He is moving because we are more attracted to Him the more we are around Him.

This gives me more faith that He will come through especially when I leave the results up to whether He comes through or not.  He does the growing and grows where He wishes.  We have the easy part of sowing or watering.

When I see these people affected by His goodness, that they also know this God that I have come to know, I realize how powerful He is.  He isn't in a movement or the work of man's hands or a conjure of emotion.  He shows up when He wants and where He wants and it is real when He does just as He did by writing the 10 commandments in front of Moses, or by descending on Jesus like a dove at His baptism.  It's important to me to see that He does this. Maybe I am still combating this internal intellectualism that began in college, but it reminds me of this quote by C.S. Lewis:

"Compared with the development of man on this planet, the diffusion of Christianity over the human race seems to go like a flash of lightning—for two thousand years is almost nothing in the history of the universe. (Never forget that we are all still ‘the early Christians’. The present wicked and wasteful divisions between us are, let us hope, a disease of infancy: we are still teething. The outer world, no doubt, thinks just the opposite. It thinks we are dying of old age. But it has thought that very often before. Again and again it has thought Christianity was dying, dying by persecutions from without and corruptions from within, by the rise of Mohammedanism, the rise of the physical sciences, the rise of great anti-Christian revolutionary movements. But every time the world has been disappointed. Its first disappointment was over the crucifixion. The Man came to life again. In a sense— and I quite realise how frightfully unfair it must seem to them—that has been happening ever since. They keep on killing the thing that He started: and each time, just as they are patting down the earth on its grave, they suddenly hear that it is still alive and has even broken out in some new place. (No wonder they hate us.)"