On Earth As It Is In Heaven

This past week was incredible!  The coast lived up to it's reputation--amazing food, beautiful beaches, & did I mention amazing food!  Not only was the resort kind of like a taste of Heaven, I feel like God really spoke to my heart this past week about that phrase "On Earth As It Is In Heaven!"  This post is a little lengthy, but I tried to include more pictures to give you an idea of life on the coast.  A picture really is worth a thousand words, but unfortunately, I don't have many pictures to bring to life the words I heard from the Spiritual Retreat--I only have my notes.  But God was really speaking through the guest speakers, & I tried to include the things He was speaking to my heart.

Many of you may be wandering if the coast was a little "European".  Wouldn't that be difficult to battle that sort of temptation on a Spiritual Retreat?  Were the bathing suits revealing? Yes!  Below should basically sum up the sort of temptation I was facing this past week ;)

Yeah, that's about the extent of the "European-ness" at the resort.  For some reason, the requirements for "skimpy" bathing suits--like this man's speedo--seemed to be old, overweight, & male!

Day 38: A Whole New World

Left from the “Lodwar Airport” this morning to Nairobi.  I noticed the check-in counter by the landing strip this time, but I still wouldn’t consider it an airport.  It was pretty crowded & we heard that a flight had been delayed the day before.  We were talking to some people & learned that the plane had crashed upon landing--really comforting to hear right before taking off!  But we later learned that the plane had been full of goats (who knew they liked to travel!), & no goats were harmed in the process.  Ends up the plane didn’t actually crash; the tires just blew out & it almost ran into the giant pile of rocks at the end of the landing strip.

 

…Gene picked us up at the airport in his CMF Cruiser.  I can’t believe they drove all the way from Lodwar earlier in the week.  I asked Gene how the drive was & he said terrible!  Gene looked like he was ready for a blizzard.  He was wearing long pants, a sweater, & a vest.  And it was probably mid 70s!  But it really did feel cold getting off the plane in Nairobi compared to Lodwar…Driving in Nairobi is a whole different ballgame.  I thought Atlanta was crazy; Nairobi is insane!  You’ve got people cutting each other off left & right, bicycles driving between cars, people in the middle of the road selling newspapers & bananas, & we even saw one of the Matatus (their taxi vans) driving on the sidewalk to weave around traffic!   

And Gene’s like a madman behind the wheel.  At one point some guy was trying to cut him off, so Gene said, “Look, this guy’s trying to ace me!”  His window was down & the guy heard Gene & just told him to go ahead.  He gets competitive & it’s really funny…We drove by some of the embassies over here, including the U.S. Embassy.  At the front is a sign that says not to take pictures, but we thought what the heck, why not?  Little did we know they take those words of warning pretty seriously.  One of the guards saw Kyle & my cameras through the windows & tried to flag us down but Gene kept driving until another guard stood in the middle of the road to make us stop.  A whole team of guards, including a couple w/ AK-47s came up to the window asking to see the pictures.  Kyle was sitting up front so they saw his camera in his hand, but I decided to just slip mine in the backseat pocket & not mention it.  Kyle had been videoing the drive, & when he turned off his camera, it didn’t save any video from the embassy.  Nevertheless, they looked at his camera, made him get out of the car, & took pictures of him, his passport, & the car.  If only I could have gotten a picture of all of it!  Of course all my pictures were respectfully deleted ;)

Day 39: Words of Life

Didn’t sleep well last night.  I actually got really cold; they said probably in the mid 50s.  In the states I would have loved it, but I wasn’t used to sleeping with so many covers on top of me after the past few weeks in Lodwar…Church this morning was awesome.  And when we pulled up, there were monkeys on top of the building!   

The sermon today was awesome, probably one of the best sermons I’ve heard in a long time.  The preacher at the church was great, & you could tell he knew his stuff academically & didn’t shy away about things, but he also knew the practical side too, a tough balance to find.  He preached on Luke 17: 20-37 & talked about the coming Kingdom.  He discussed how so many of us are sitting around waiting on Heaven, & we forget that God put us on this earth to work for his kingdom NOW!  It was a great sermon, & he asked a question that really struck me: “What are you involved in that will outlast you?”  What works am I doing for eternal glory?  And that’s tough b/c we want to feel important—I  know I do—so I want to feel like I’m needed in order for the things I’m involved in to succeed.  But if my ministry is dependent upon me, then who’s kingdom am I working for?  The preacher talked about how the glory is not for us; it’s for God.  And this world was created by God, so when Jesus returns, he will be coming to reclaim His creation.  God invites us to be a part of bringing “on earth as it is in Heaven” to practice.  And he made a great point; he said we can’t be overwhelmed by all the problems in the world.  We have to take it day by day & just keep moving forward.  And all of the sudden all of the work we’ve been doing started to make sense.  These wells, these Bible studies, the work that’s going on in Turkana—it’s all bigger than me, & it will outlast me when I’m gone.  And for the first time this summer, I really started to ask God if he was calling me to the mission field.  I hadn’t felt like he was b/c I didn’t feel that useful over here.  But it’s b/c the work over here is for a kingdom so much bigger than the world that I sometimes try & make revolve around me.  Being a missionary—that’s giving your life to something that will outlast me.  But I also know that you don’t have to travel across the world to be a missionary…At the end of the service, the pastor had people raise their hands if they really wanted discernment.  And I figured, what the heck & raised my hand along with many others.  And people from the congregration actually moved around & prayed over one another.  Kyle & I prayed for each other & it was pretty cool.  And behind me was a friend of mine from the States who is having to return briefly b/c of some medical issues.  During the prayer time, it was powerful to look behind me & see her not with her hand raised, but praying over the lady next to her.  The girl who’s having to return home wasn’t asking for prayer, but praying for people.  Tells you something about her heart—I think she’s involved in something that will outlast her, she’s working for His kingdom.

Day 40: Mother, Mother Ocean

We got here at 11:30 PM last night, just in time for the end of the Women’s World Cup-what a heartbreaker!  This place is unreal!  It reminds me of the resort from Forgetting Sarah Marshall & I keep waiting to see Aldous Snow pop out singing his hit song, “African Child!”

 

…We’d heard we were going to be sharing the room w/ some other missionaries teenage sons, so I figured we’d either be sharing beds or sleeping on the floor.  Which was okay w/ me—I’ve been sleeping on the ground most of the summer.  But we walk in the room & discover bunk beds, a twin bed, & a king size bed.  And the teenage guys picked the bunk beds, so guess who got the King size bed since Kyle got the futon in Nairobi—this guy!...Slept in & hit the all you can eat breakfast buffet--Omellette & French toast stations, sausage, & even watermelon juice!  It’s all inclusive, so it’s a lot like a cruise (minus the boat) & the food is even better!...After breakfast we went to check out the beach.  There were some tour guides that showed us around.  They were cool guys and sounded Jamaican.  We walked along the beach which is nice but covered in seaweed at this time of year.  But the seaweed is dead, so it doesn’t stick all over you & just feels like you’re walking on dead leaves.  They explained to us why the resort is called Turtle Bay.  It’s b/c theirs a huge rock in the ocean here that looks a lot like a turtle.  We took kayaks out there later & the other side looks like it even more.   

Yeah, that’s another thing—free kayaking, windsurfing, & who knows what else here.  We saw some cool stuff walking around with these guys.  There’s dead coral near the shore so you can walk on that, 

 

& there’s tons of stuff living in there.  We saw starfish, 

crabs, &eels.  The kept trying to get one of the eels to come out far enough by teasing it with some crab on the end of a stick so that they could grab it, but they couldn’t quite get it to come all the way out.  

 The said the biggest one, which they call “King George,” is about 1.5 meters long!...Made it back just in time for water polo in the pool.  It’s a pretty cool resort in the fact that they have tons of activities going on & they really try to get their guests involved.  Water Polo was awesome!  It was in the shallow end, which messes with you b/c I would try & run, but between being in the water & the slick floor, I probably looked more like a cartoon character.  It gets pretty physical since it’s tackle, so you’re exhausted afterwards

...Dinner was awesome—pork tenderloin, beef brisket, these cabbage rolls that were amazing, & banana foster… After dinner was our first session for the Spiritual Retreat.  Before the session, I didn’t really understand why we were coming here.  “Spiritual Retreat”—that must be code for vacation to the coast!  It definitely is a chance for these missionaries in Africa to relax, but it’s about much more than that.  It’s much more similar to a campus ministry Beach Retreat.  It’s a time for these missionaries to reconnect & fellowship w/ one another, maybe not feel like an outsider for a change.  And it’s about having someone pour into them for a few days.  

A group from Heritage Christian Church in Georgia is here to lead the sessions.  The session tonight paved the way for the rest of the week.  Doug, their head minister, talked about how we are more than sinners saved by grace.  We definitely are that, but we are so much more.  We’re not just misfits God decided to tolerate.  God created us & we are his prized possession.  B/c of sin, we’ve become “junk”, but that’s not what we were intended to be, & b/c of Christ, we can return to our Creator, w/o blemishes or burns.  It’s awesome stuff we’re talking about, & it’s a lot of stuff that’s really been on my heart lately.  I came here feeling a guilty (but obviously not too guilty since I came!) that we were getting an “off-week.”  But I feel like God brought me here for a reason, to learn something from these missionaries & the guest speakers.  I feel like God’s after my heart, & I’m being continually reminded that I am a child of His.  And that means I’m loved more than I can possibly imagine…The Disco was a little cheasy, which I kind of expected.  I’m pretty sure they arrest guys w/ beards like mine who are doing the YMCA with teenagers, so I decided it was probably time for bed!

Day 41:

Another great breakfast this morning & then we started our sessions for the Retreat until lunch.  The sessions were awesome—seriously, if you’re looking for a church in the Atlanta area, then check out Heritage Christian Church in Fayetteville.  And I feel good promoting them b/c they’re a church plant of Southwest Christian Church, who supports ACF & GT CCF…This morning Doug dove into a pretty thick question: “Why did God even bother to create us in the first place?”  It’s a tough question, & it actually ties into a lot of the stuff Mike, Kyle, & I have been wrestling w/ this summer regarding freewill, Satan, sin, & salvation (we’ve argued about just about everything you can think of!)  It’s pretty cool b/c Doug went to KCU (Kyle’s undergrad) & Emmanuel (my seminary) b/c it seems like our professors are on opposite ends of the theological spectrum.  Doug talked a lot about Satan & his rebellion & he raised some good questions.  I respect the way he teaches too b/c he prefaces by stating that he doesn’t know everything & a lot is merely his speculation (a good quality he probably learned at Emmanuel!)  He discussed stuff like “Why didn’t God just destroy Satan?”, “What’s really our purpose?”, & “Do we worship God b/c we love Him, or b/c we’re trying to get something out of him?”  Good stuff!  And he had an awesome definition for “glory”.  He described glory as our returning to the image of God, what we were originally created to resemble.  And he talked about suffering.  We worship an all-powerful God that has the ability to stop suffering, but he doesn’t; that’s tough to swallow.  He talked about how suffering allows God to mold us, shape us, refine us.  But he gave an awesome illustration.  He told a story about a silversmith putting a blade into the fire.  Someone asked the silversmith how he knew when it was ready to be taken out, & he told him, “When I can see my reflection in it.”  I thought that was powerful!  When does God see His reflection in me?  And Doug closed with another great question:  “What is it you really want from God: comfort or glory?”… After the session, got some some lamb kabobs & fries & headed to the beach to try to windsurf.  We get one free 30 minute trial since we’re staying at the resort, so we figured we gotta try it.  They won’t let you go out very far out & part of the time is training, but it was still pretty cool.  It’s basically like snowboarding/wakeboarding except you have to switch your feet position on the turns.  

We eventually got it figured out & hopefully Kara’s pictures make us look like experts!...This place kind of has a Caribbean feel to it, especially since a lot of the locals sound Jamaican.  But when I saw a camel on the beach, I was reminded that I’m in Africa. 

 

I had to get some pictures, which the guy who owned it hated since I wasn't paying to ride it.  But when he started using some choice profanity involving words that start with “F”, among others, I felt like I was back in America ;) … Doug’s voice was about gone for the night session, so Steve, Heritage’s associate pastor, took the reigns.  He made a great point that really stuck with me: “Love the Hell out of people”.  He said you can’t convince people to Christ, you gotta love them.  And he touched on what the pastor talked about Sunday—creating things that will outlast us, being willing to let someone else get the glory…We ended up playing cards after the session down by the disco floor.  We didn’t start until after 10 PM, & Gene & Melba still stayed up & joined us.  They really are awesome people.  I couldn’t ask for better host missionaries.  They put the nose to the grindstone when it’s time to work, but they also know when to cut loose & have fun.  

And they really know how to love people.  I’m honored to get to be a part of their ministry this summer.  Gene even pulled Melba out on the dance floor for a slow song—they’ve still got it.  Looked like a couple of teenagers out there!

Day 42:

We actually turned the air conditioner off & I still woke up w/ 2 blankets on.  Turkana’s rubbing off on me!...Doug had another great session today.  He talked about the spirit that lives inside of us & he made some awesome points.  He really wanted to focus on what it is that sustains us through tough times, b/c they will happen.  And he talked about how we have the same power that raised Jesus from the dead living inside of us.  He made an awesome illustration of what it must have been like when Jesus took on the sins of the world.  He asked us to think about the worst thing we’ve ever done & think about the guilt associated with it.  And then he said to imagine the guilt of all of the worst things we’ve done in our life combined.  Then he said to imagine taking on the guilt of the person next to you, the whole room, the whole country—you get where it’s going.  Imagine taking on the guilt of the whole world.  And while I was trying to play out this scenario, I got a sick feeling in my stomach.  “I don’t want this God!”  I’d never thought about Jesus having to deal with all the guilt of our sins when he died on the cross, but that’s what happened.  It’s tough to imagine the pain he endured.  Luckily for us, it doesn’t stop there.  B/c Christ didn’t just die, he was resurrected.  Doug made another awesome point about Rev. 3:20, which talks about Christ knocking at the door of our hearts.  He discussed how many of us have Christ in our hearts, but he’s not really operating in our lives.  He said that perhaps Christ isn’t trying to get in our hearts; perhaps, he’s knocking trying to get into our lives, from the inside out!  And he discussed how Satan’s lies prevent us from being healed by the Spirit.  And he posed another great question (this guy’s the king of great questions!): “Are you going to believe God’s truth or the lies of Satan?”… I definitely think God’s bringing clarity in my life about the reality of spiritual warfare.  Doug mentioned that we’re in a spiritual war & when we stop believing Satan’s lies, it doesn’t mean things are going to be easy.  We just picked a fight w/ the devil!  But we serve a God who gives us the strength to stand firm in our battles…We didn’t have a night session, but Steve did a comedy routine.  He used to be a stand-up comedian, & this guy is hilarious.  And he’s got a gift for finding ways to preach through his jokes… Checked out the snake show for the resort.  They had all sorts of snakes in cages, including pythons, vipers, & spitting cobras.  The guy would talk about the snakes, making sure to highlight how dangerous they were & then take them out of their cage.  The guy was really funny, but also nuts to handle deadly snakes for a living.  They even “milked” (drained the venom) the Viper & got the cobra to spit at this paper owl cut-out.  Pretty crazy!

Day 43:

It was a little sad today knowing that our dream vacation was finally coming to an end…In the session today Doug talked about the power of persistent prayer.  His questions for the day were, “Who have you stopped praying for?” & “How do you know when you’ve prayed enough?”  He had us write the name of someone we wanted to commit to never stop praying for & I wrote down a name.  And I hope to never give up praying for him, & I hope one day he will know just how much God loves Him.  But I think you gotta take Steve’s approach: “Love the Hell out of people!”… The second morning session was really good.  Doug talked about having “A heart open to God & hands that are open to others.”  And he talked a lot about the symbolism of hands in the Bible.  He said that when we “lift our hands” to God, we’re symbolically inviting God to inspect our hands.  Kind of made me wander if I really want to lift mine.  Do I really want to pray that prayer?  And Doug talked about how we need “clean hands” to go before God.  It gave new meaning to the song, “Give us clean hands, give us pure hearts.”  And Doug made a great point saying that we need to make sure our hands are open—open to receive God’s grace & His blessings & open to love His children.  We need to make sure that are hands are being used.  It made me think a lot about my life in Johnson City.  Yeah, I’m studying the Bible in seminary, but what am I actually doing for the kingdom?  Are my hands open?...After the session we ate pretty quickly & headed to the glass-bottom boat Gene rented for us.  It was awesome!  

There’s a strip of glass down the middle so you can see the fish & coral under the boat.  And it’s covered & you can chill on top & soak in some rays.  We went out a good ways & did some snorkeling.  The coral was gorgeous & there were a ton of cool fish, including some that looked like the blue one in Finding Nemo.   

I’ve been snorkeling before, & trust me, I’m no expert.  The beard made it a little difficult to seal the mask over my nose, but my main problem comes into play with the snorkel.  For some reason, I get this feeling like this thing works like gills, & before I know it I’m drinking water instead of breathing. 

But I got the breathing somewhat under control & got some cool pictures with Kyle’s underwater camera…Passed on water polo today, & decided to channel my energy into eating & playing cards.  So I ordered some steak & fries & played some cards.  And then a burger & fries.  And we were still playing cards, so why not more steak & fries!  Needless to say, I wasn’t too hungry for dinner, but considering my food options in Turkana, I still managed to scarf down some filet & fresh fruit … Got packed up before dinner & had to tell everyone bye.  These people are awesome—the missionaries & the guest speakers.  I’m blessed to have gotten to be a part of their Spiritual Retreat.  It was definitely cool getting to hang-out with a lot of the people here.  Words can’t express the admiration I have for the work they are doing for the Kingdom.  One lady even adopted quadruplets—yeah, adopted!  Their mom died during childbirth, & she chose to adopt them.  When I first heard about these four 5-year olds, I joked that if my wife got pregnant with quads, it would be my nightmare. 

I had no idea she voluntarily chose to bring these children into her life.  Tells you just how big her heart is.  And I’m getting to see more & more just how big of hearts Gene & Melba have.  When we were leaving, they told us they’d miss us this next week, & you could tell they meant it.  They genuinely love people, including me, & for that I am grateful.  I’ll miss them too next week—along with steak, the ocean, water polo, & an endless supply of food!

Back in Lodwar & getting ready for my last week with the Turkana.  Please pray that God will help us finish strong!


Peace,