Final Thoughts about serving in Peru

I will be processing my thoughts about serving in Peru for quite a while. The trip was at times both exhilirating and exhausting and both hilarious and humbling. I felt revived at times, but I came home tired. I laughed harder than I have in quite a while, but I was humbled by the tremendous needs that exist in our world. I can't imagine that these really are my FINAL thoughts about our trip to Peru, but here are the ones that floating through my mind and they will have to do for now.

1. TEAMWORK IS SWEEEEET! It was thrilling to be part of a team that worked so well together. Everyone was willing to do whatever was needed to get the job done, to have a good attitude doing it, and to give 110% even when they were tired. We also constantly encouraged each other.

2. CHURCHES SHOULD NOT MISS OUT ON THE OPPORTUNITY TO WORK TOGETHER. It was great having two churches cooperate on this team. One of my favorite comments from the week was when one of the intern leaders said they couldn't tell which people went to which church. That's beautiful! When we work together we show a watching world what the love of Jesus is all about. When we work together, we are blessed and we bless the world.

3. FLEXIBILITY WILL ALWAYS BE THE NUMBER ONE RULE IN MISSION TRIPS. I already knew this from my previous trips and I preached it to this team, but this trip proved it again. Not only did we have to deal with a national transportation strike that kept us from going to our daily work site for a day, but we also had to adjust our kids ministry after the puppets we brought for the trip mysteriously disappeared. In addition, flexibility is constantly necessary as you face food, lodging and other things that are continually different from your preferences.

4. SERVING IS THE HIGHEST FORM OF LEADERSHIP AND LOVE. Jeff Enns, the Inca Link site director for Trujillo, and his interns displayed servant attitudes all week. They told us how much they appreciated our team, but their servant attitudes created an atmosphere that helped our team. Serving makes us and those we lead stronger. Serving opens hearts and encourages people to follow without using words. Intern Lisa Palmer demonstrated her servant heart when she jumped in to help Consuela the Churro/Manjar lady make the churros. Intern Dan Kasnick demonstrated it when he helped the sandwich lady make our sanwiches. Those were yummy churros and sandwiches, but their serving made them sweeter. Serving is the exercise our trust muscles need.

5. NO MATTER WHERE YOU GO IN THE WORLD, THE ONLY THING KIDS REALLY NEED TO BE HAPPY IS TO KNOW THEY ARE LOVED. There is no doubt that major work needs to be done to change the circumstances of the dump people of Peru and Inca Link is off to a great start in making changes. But what kids need most of all, no matter where they live, is simple love, to know that someone believes they are valuable. Inca Link is doing a great job with this along the way and we can all do this wherever we are.

6. I WANT TO SERVE WITH INCA LINK AGAIN. This needs no explanation. Inca Link is doing a great work and I want to be part of it in Peru or at one of their other sites.

A Glimpse of the Great Work of Inca Link

Our team is having a great time in Trujillo. We have been working hard at the orphanage site and also gettting a glimpse of the great work of Inca Link. To the left is a picture of a good portion of our team at work. Today we finished the footer for the security wall of the orphanage and then we went into full swing preparing a soccer court for the kids. I call it a court because almost all the soccer "fields" we have seen are small concrete courts with painted lines and that's what they are are going to have at the orphanage. We removed the very fine dirt they have here in Peru and replaced it with sand they can use under the concrete. It sounds like a small job until you consider that the dirt moving machines are us with shovels and wheelbarrows. It ends up being a huge job, but that is mission work.

On Wednesday we visited the day care that Inca Link has here in Trujillo. It provides a kind of whole life education for about 65-70 kids. Each of the kids are sponsored by people at $32 a month, just like sponsoring a child with Compassion International. The building is in another dump area of Trujillo and is the only way these kids are going to get an education and basic hygiene help. The building used for the day care was built by short term mission teams like us about 2 years ago. While we were there, we served the kids two ways. We led a VBS time with songs, games, a craft and a Bible story. There were about 60 kids that participated. We also gave the majority of our donations to the day care. Eli, the day care director, was tremendously grateful for all of donations. It's hard to consider that these families have next to nothing, so just about anything and everything is needed.

Working further backwards in time, we had a wrinkle in our plans on Tuesday. The transportation workers of the entire country decided to call a strike, which shut down all transportation including the bus we use for the 15 minute drive to the orphanage site and other ministries. It was a totally safe strike, but it means we had to exercise the number one rule of short term missions -- flexibility. In the morning, we had an extended worship time and then we went to the roof of the guest house we are staying at to pray for different areas of Trujillo. It was a great time. In the afternoon, we gathered the kids of the neighborhood and played games and did our VBS stuff with them. The picture here is of the Bible story time led by Kellianne and Melissa of First Alliance. They told the story of the Lost Sheep using a pop out book. The kids loved it. Everyone on our team showed great teamwork and was great at caring for kids.

For those of you wondering, most people on the team have been completely healthy. We have had a few minor stomach issues, but nothing too overwhelming. Thank you for your prayers. We will be home in less than 3 days. We have had a great trip and the only thing we miss at home is our families. (Well, I guess we miss being able to flush our toilet paper, but that's a story for another day.)

Peru 2009 - Beauty, Teamwork and Unfathomable Needs

It's already been a great trip in many ways. Here's a picture of the coastline as we drove up from Lima to Trujillo. We had sand and mountains on one side of us and sandy beaches on the other side. The airplane ride from Newark to Lima was about 8 hours and then we went to sleep at house of a kind woman from one of the churches in Lima. It was a short night of sleep before we caught the almost 10 hour bus ride from Lima to Trujillo. The good conversations and card games along the way the were obvious signs that this mission team would work well together.

Our first day of construction at the orphanage proved we would work well together. Here's a picture of some of us in action. We spent the morning moving rocks, mixing cement and hauling cement to prepare the footer for part of the wall around the orphanage. It was a great feeling to work hard together. It's a high crime area so the wall is important to the safety of the children.

After our hard work in the morning, we went to the dump site where families live and work. I wish there was some way I could describe the needs we encountered. It's hard to fathom the desperation that must be felt so that people would live and work in this dump. The trash trucks bring in the garbage and then adults and children sort through it trying to find items they can sell like aluminum, glass and rubber. They compete against the pigs to sort through the trash because pig farmers actually pay the dump to let their pigs feed off the garbage. Just about every step leads to the possibility of stepping in pig dung. It smells beyond imagination. In addition, they have no running water so the people have dirt caked on their hands and clothes. One of the greatest acts of love we could show the people was to hug them and kiss them and shake their hands. We sought to honor them with our affection in this way. We spent the time giving away fruit, playing soccer with the kids and some adults and giving away balls, bubbles, hygiene items and clothing. It was sobering to experience this need and I honor IncaLink for carrying on this ministry.

I do not know how often I will be able to do this from Peru, but I will definitely write a post to sum up the trip when I get home.

Godliness, God's Goodness and the Greatest Invitation Ever

I'm both excited and challenged with some fresh perspective on some of God's truth. Let me get straight to the point.

God is good. His goodness is so good that we can't get our head around it. It's a goodness that exceeds both our understanding and our expectations. He's so good, that David blurts out in Psalms 34, "Taste and see that the Lord is good." In other words, "Try it, you'll like it."

This good God loves us with a never-ending, faithful love AND he invites us to live life in his presence. The cross of Jesus has pulled back the curtain and made it possible for us to live life in God's presence. When Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit, they hid from God's presence, but because of the death of Christ on the cross for us, we have been invited to "Draw near to God with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith." (Hebrews 10:22) Don't miss this crystal clear invitation. We have been invited to live in God's presence, to experience his presence in every aspect of life: not just when we pray or read the Bible; not just when we go to church: but also when we work or play or brush our teeth. Can you fathom this? The God of the universe, wants to share his life with us!!

We've already seen the first two steps to enjoying God's presence in Hebrews 10. First, we must sincerely want to be near him. Second, we must be fully assured that he accepts us in his presence because Christ's blood has cleansed us from our sin.

Is there something else we are missing? Yes, there is, and it comes with a clear understanding of a rather mysterious word in the New Testament. That word is godliness. Some have taught that godliness is living by a certain set of rules or commands. Others have taught that godliness is simply reverence and respect for God.

This second idea does scratch the surface of what it means to be godly, but there is more. The Greek word for godliness in the New Testament is "eusebia", which literally means, "good respect" or "good reverence". But to say that godliness is summed up by having a healthy fear of God keeps us from seeing the beauty and depth of this word and it also makes us miss out on God's great invitation to us.

Follow me on this. Paul challenges Timothy to "train yourself to be godly." So we are to train ourselves to have a "good reverence" towards God. To revere someone is to stand in awe of that person. This God before whom we stand in awe, knows everything, is present everywhere and is all powerful. To be godly we need to connect what we know about God with our standing in awe. It is illogical to say we "stand in awe" of God while at the same time ignoring his presence in our lives all day long. To be godly is to be aware of the presence of the holy and loving and gracious God everywhere we go. The degree of our godliness is in proportion to the degree of our awareness of his presence in our lives. You could say that to be godly is to be "God-conscious", to be conscious of God's presence in everything we do.
Unfortunately, we face an obstacle in our pursuit of "God-consciousness". As descendants of Adam and Eve, our natural tendency is to avoid God's presence, or at least to subconsciously forget about it. We do this because being in the presence of a holy God reminds us of our sin. But PRAISE GOD! That has all changed through the cross. Because of the cross, we can draw near to God in full assurance that he accepts us in his presence. Yes, being in the presence of our holy God will make our sin more obvious, but as we walk in his light and confess our sin, "he is faithful and just and will forgive us sin and purify us from all unrighteousness." (1 John 1:9)

And here's where the training part comes in. Paul tells Timothy to train himself to be godly, that is "God-conscious", because we are accustomed to trying to do life without God. Before we put our trust in Christ, it was our normal pattern to ignore God's presence everywhere. But now that we can draw near to God with bold confidence, we have to relearn to live in God's presence, to be aware of his presence in everything we do. We can do this by staying in conversation with God throughout the day and inviting him to live his life in every area. Thank him when things go well; ask him to show his life through you as you encounter various circumstances; ask for his wisdom and help, even when you think you can handle something on your own.

The best part, Paul says, is that being godly has value for this life and the life to come. It is advantageous to us here and now to live fully aware of God's presence. Even better, this is a win-win with God. He is honored by me acknowledging his presence in every aspect of my life and I am blessed by having his presence and life flow through everything I do. This is the biggest win-win imaginable and it is the greatest invitation of all time.

Faith and Love Growing Together

If you worship with our Community Alliance family, you'll recognize this picture as the graphic for my current message series. I chose the picture to communicate that part of God's plan for us is to form our hearts to receive and give love. It is no doubt an understatement to say that Jesus' preferred end result of his teaching is love. This could not be more clear.

His goal, however, is not just to get us to do loving acts, but to actually transform us into loving people. Loving people are people who do loving acts genuinely for the good of others. They are people who do these loving acts, even when they know they will most likely not receive loving acts in return. This is the love of God and it's the kind of love God seeks to develop in us when he calls us to put our trust, our confidence, in him. Authentic trust in God will express itself in genuine acts of love. (see Galatians 5:6)

Unfortunately, we get into trouble when we try to love without letting God do the rest of his work in us. There is a certain amount of love I can fake, such as saying kind words or doing a good deed. Sometimes I do these acts for the good of another person, but sometimes, if I am honest enough to admit it, I do kind acts because of the benefit I will receive. It's possible to do acts that look loving and sacrificial, but are entirely self-serving. When we try to do loving things and at the same time resist the rest of God's work in us, we end up with an incomplete love and it will eventually catch up to us.

In the Harrisburg area recently, a pastor resigned after being charged with solicitation of prostitution. I used to get mad when I read stories like this one and I guess I still do a little bit. But my biggest emotion now when I read stories like this is sadness. A newspaper article indicated that this pastor had a counseling ministry that maintained the goal of helping people find wholeness. That means that somewhere along the line in this pastor's life, a disconnect developed. He tried to help others find wholeness while a major fracture was going untreated in his life. He attempted to give love without letting God do the rest of his work in him.

I think the saddest part of this story for me was the last sentence of the newspaper article. The reporter attempted to contact neighbors about the man, but neighbors said they only knew him to wave at him. How can that be? Maybe that should have been a warning flare. If a man who makes it his job to serve God and love others can be completely unknown by those who live closest to him, there is some kind of problem underneath the surface. Authentic faith and love will always grow together and will permeate every area of our lives. Our neighbors will know us by our love. We won't be perfect, but our heart will be evident.

Chickens and Eggs and WWJD

Ahhh, the age old question: Which came first, the chicken or the egg?

Actually, I have a much more important question. Which comes first, trusting Jesus or acting like Jesus? Maybe the answer seems obvious, but I think we get it backwards much of the time. Our thinking tends to go something like this.

"If I consider myself a Christian, I better live like Jesus lived. After all, John, his closest disciple said, 'Whoever claims to live in him, must walk as Jesus did.' (1 John 2:6). I want be a faithful follower of Jesus so I'm going to start trying my hardest to do what Jesus would do."

And so we start trying to do what Jesus would do. It sounds right and it feels noble. We hold onto WWJD, the oh-so-popular question, "What Would Jesus Do?". The problem is that just trying to do what Jesus would do gets frustrating. We end up evaluating ourselves by our ability, or inability, to do what Jesus would do. We fail too often and feel disappointment. We feel like Peter as the rooster crows for the second time.

Our thinking needs to change. Trusting Jesus must become before trying to do what Jesus would do. Do I really believe that Jesus' ways are the best "good" I can find in this world. Do I trust his wisdom to always be right? Do I trust his love to always want what is best for me? Do I trust his power to guide and lead me even when my circumstances go south? If we don't trust Jesus, we will give up obeying him quickly and we will most likely get mad at him. Our relationship with him will be dry and cold.

This is not to say that we have to have perfect trust before we can begin living like Jesus lived. God will be refining our faith throughout our lives. But trust must stay centered in our hearts and minds. When faced with the temptation to go opposite the way of Jesus, ask yourself some of these questions:
Do I trust my Lord and Savior?
Do I trust his love?
Do I trust his power?
Do I trust his wisdom?
Do I believe in my heart that Jesus is completely trustworthy?

Asking these questions will help us stay grounded and growing in trust. Trusting Jesus will lead us to experience the truth of his words in John 14:12.

"I tell you the truth, anyone who has faith in me will do what I have been doing."

Beauty and Faith

What is beautiful?

Maybe you have stood at the base of fantastic mountains, like these in the Grand Tetons, and your breath was taken away. Maybe you have stood on the shore of a perfectly still lake in the early morning, as the morning mist was lifting, and the silence and beauty captured your heart.

I am convinced that one of the obstacles that keeps us from growing in faith and from becoming like Christ is that we don't see God's holiness with that same sense of awe. The truth is we have a vision problem and our favorite optometrist can't correct it. Our problem is that when we consider God's holiness, we don't see beauty. We see rules and morals and an unattainable purity that weighs us down rather than inspires us. We need God to open our eyes to see the beauty of his holiness.

Consider these words of David in Psalm 27:4.

"One thing I ask of the Lord, this is what I seek:
That I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life,
To gaze upon the beauty of the Lord and to seek him in his temple." NIV

David had great vision. The reason He was so passionate in His pursuit of God, was that He "saw" the beauty of the Lord. When I met my wife, one of the things that drew me to her was her beauty. When I "gazed" at her beauty, I was highly motivated to pursue her. That same motivation is possible in our relationship with God. I'm sure Paul felt that way when He wrote about knowing Christ in Philippians 3.

This is why in Psalm 29:2, God commands us through David to,

Ascribe to the Lord the glory due his name; worship the Lord in the splendor of his holiness. NIV

Splendor is an "awe" word, it's a breathtaking word. When we see the beauty of God's holiness it takes our breath away and it motivates us to pursue the Lord. Faith and beauty walk hand in hand. Beauty inspires faith and faith pursues the ultimate beauty, the beauty of the Lord.