Ethiopia Report #4

11-26-08

What a day we had for our first full day in Burji.  The medical Clinic in Galana is going great.  This is the clinic that Ca-Vel Church and 3 other Roxboro churches are partnering with to provide medical care with the goal of winning souls for Christ.  They have seen nearly 1000 patients in the past 3 months.  In the past 6 weeks, since the Chaplain Solomon has been on board, they have shared the gospel with 53 adults.  Of those 53, 15 have received Christ!!  Solomon is getting contact info from the patients and then when they are feeling better he visits them in their homes.  God is blessing the work of the clinic!!

I got the chance to spend a few minutes with Worku, my translator.  He is my age and the pastor of the Soyama Town church.  This is the main town in the Burji District.  The church has about 300 adults and 500 children each week.  I asked him what was his biggest challenge as a pastor.  He said, “people who don’t obey the Bible, people who say I don’t visit them enough, and people who won’t get involved in serving the Lord through the church.”  I thought He had been reading my mail!!  We stopped by a village, Nedeli #2 to drop off a couple of men.  We were greeted so warmly by the people around the church.  One little boy, bent down and kissed my shoes.  That was a humbling sight!  This particular church has 175 people waiting for Bibles.  Each new member is enrolled in the Bible memory program.  This is a program where a person can earn a Bible by memorizing 9 passages of Scripture.  They total about 93 verses!  Dr. and Mrs. Black have distributed over 3500 Bibles in the Burji area alone.  Ca-Vel church receives a special offering once a quarter to help purchase the Bibles.  We have been doing this for over 2 years.

When we returned to the Soyama Church, the Lord laid on my heart to talk with Worku and pray with him.  It seemed he needed encouragement.  Little did I know that when we returned, the elders in his church were waiting for him so that they could have a meeting.  It lasted 2 hours.  I don’t know what it was about, but he seeemed tired when it was through.  He and I shared together some Scripture and I gave him some words of encouragement.  We prayed together.  God really blessed that time.  I am glad I listened to the Lord and found Worku to pray with him.

Ethiopia Report #3

11-25-08

1 Cor. 15:58 has been on my heart today as we traveled by bus for 17 hours.  It says, “Be steadfast, immovable, always excelling in the Lord’s work, knowing that our labor in the Lord is not in vain.”  What a great motivation to do whatever is needed and whatever He calls me to do!  As we began our journey at 3:50 AM, I had this thought, “Lord, I don’t mind whatever happens on this trip as long as I get back home safely and can kiss Matthea again and hug the children.”  That brought me some comfort.  Who knows what awaits us as we travel for 4-5 hours through the Guji road.  That thought settled my heart.  I was ready for whatever this trip would bring.  Then, God spoke to me in that small voice.  He said, “Jon, one day you will be safe at home with Me, don’t worry about what happens the rest of your life, since you know you will be with Me and be safe one day.”  What a moving thought!  What a convicting thought!  I don’t live everyday like that. I should.  No mater what He calls me to do, or where He calls me to go, one day I will be safe in His presence.

We had a great journey to the Burji people.  We passed 8000-10,000 people walking on the roadside.  Very few in Ethiopia have cars.  So many people simply smiled when we smiled at them.  Ethiopians are a beautiful people.  We saw so many people with many needs.  I cannot meet all their needs.  We met some foreign aid workers that scoffed at the idea of us being missionaries.  We’re not here to make the Ethiopians like us.  Aid workers sometimes think they can solve everyone’s problems.  I know reality.  Only Jesus can meet their needs and solve their problems.  My job is to introduce them to Jesus.

Along the road we received a call that it was safe to pas through the main Guji road.  This would be a 2 hour gravel road instead of the 4-5 hour gravel road.  That was good news.  We were told the road is open.  As our truck (I had moved with a few others to ride in the truck) began the journey into Guji territory the sun had just set.  It was dark.  There was silence in the truck for 20 minutes as we all watched the minutes tick by so slowly.  Then someone asked one on our team how they came to know Jesus.  This began a 2 hour conversation about the Lord’s work in our lives.  This did much more than pass the time.  We began to praise Jesus in the truck.  I was reminded of the Psalm, “God inhabits the praises of His people.”  We could sense the Lord’s presence and comfort in the truck.  We were not anxious any longer.  Even after hearing a gunshot in the distance.  Actually I think only Dr. Black and I heard it.  He slowly rolled up his window after hearing the shot and didn’t say a word about it.  We did pass a group  of 50-75 Gujis on the side of the road with machine guns.  It was a little tense, but they stood there and let us pass without any bother.

God is so good to us!  Oshe (one of the Burji leaders) told us after we arrived that no vehicle had made it through that Guji road in 6 months!  He said he knew thousands were praying for us and we should go ahead and come through that road.  I asked Oshe why he didn’t share that it had been closed for 6 months and he said, “you all had enough on your plate, I didn’t want to trouble you with that.”

I am glad to get some rest now.  We were greeted with singing and rejoicing as we arrived at the Burji District Church Compound.  This will be my home for the next 2 weeks.  Mary and Cindy will be here as well.  The rest of the team of 12 are dividing up and going out to different areas.  God has shown Himself mighty in power and we’ve only just begun our work.

Ethiopia Report #2

11-24-08

It was a humbling experience today to speak at the Evangelical Theological College in Addis.  It was great to minister to these students who sacrifice and suffer so much simply to gain more theological training for ministry.

Tonight before our prayer time we got word that the main road into Burji is closed due to conflicts with the Guji Tribe.  The Gujis are a warring tribe that is bent on overtaking their neighbors.  We are going to have to take the back road in.  This will be a 4-5 hour trip on a bumpy gravel road instead of a 2 hour gravel road journey.  There may be hostile Gujis along the route.  News of this trouble might lead some to make other plans.  God has called us and He knows the situation.  We are putting it all in His hands.  Paul could not go wherever he pleased, only where God led Him.  We must operate in the same manner.  Could there be a reason for this disruption in “our” plans??

After a sobering prayer time tonight, BeckyLynn said, “We don’t see His glory without risk.”  Whata true statement.  In our prayer time, Jamie thanked the Lord for our safe journey tomorrow to the Burji people!  What a promise from the Lord.  He has gone before us for sure!

As the song says, “wherever He leads, I’ll go.”

Ethiopia Report #1

Over the next several days, I will post entries from my journal during my 19 days in Ethiopia. God moved in mighty ways and I look forward to sharing with you.

11-23-08 – After 30 hours of travel from home to the airport in Addis, Ethiopia, we have finally arrived. I was not emotionally prepared to meet these brothers and sisters that I have prayed for over the past 2 years. Some of them I have only known their names and certain prayer requests for them. Now I see them face to face. We were greeted with Roses and smiles and hugs.
I am reminded of Eph. 4:1-6. We have One Lord, One Spirit, One Body of Christ. There is such unity through prayer. We can experience this by praying for people around the world, or down the street. Our prayers unite our hearts together with the Lord. What an amazing God we serve!
On top of this time at the airport, God has provided a miracle. We did not even have to pass through customs! We were carrying 24 large suitcases with supplies. Many of these things would have caused us to pay customs. The customs officials just waived us on through! Simply amazing!

A picture of the church

Tonight was a beautiful picture of the church.  We met in the Fellowship Hall and worked to roll bandages for the Ethiopian Clinic.  We also made preparations for the crafts for children for Personality.  This is an annual event in Person County that draws thousands of people.  Many of these folks do not know Jesus.  It was a great time at the church building tonight where the church (the people) worked together for His Kingdom.  Some were cutting paper to make indian headbands, some were rolling strips of bed linens to be used by a clinic 7000 miles away.  We had a great time of fellowship, laughter, and some coffee and finger foods to go along.

It was a good night together.

Verse 28 is before verses 29 and 30

One great tragedy in the church today is biblical illiteracy.  Among Baptists, we believe the Bible, but we often don’t know it.  An unfortunate feature of the King James Version is that each verse is set apart of a separate paragraph.  It makes the Bible look like a book of disconnected sayings and phrases.  We often treat it as such.  When life gets hard, we turn to a verse or two we have memorized and expect comfort from it.  The truth is the Bible is a book where God reveals Himself to us.  It contains several genres of writing.  The Letter is one of those genres.  No one writes a letter with disconnected thoughts and sentences.

There is a verse that most Christians know, it is Romans 8:28.  We quote to our friends when tragedy strikes, we quote it to ourselves in those times as well.  It is a good verse.  No, it is a great verse.  But it’s greatness is seen in light of verse 29 and 30.

(28) We know that all things work together for the good of those who love God: those who are called according to His purpose.  (29) For those He foreknew He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, so that He would be the firstborn among many brothers. (30) And those He predestined, He also called; and those He called, He also justified; and those He justified, He also glorified. (HCSB)

Verses 29 and 30 tell us why we can rest at peace that God will work all things together for good.  Because God has an overarching plan for believers.  It is a 5-fold plan.  The believer is foreknown (God knew who would put faith in Christ), the believer is predestined to be made into the image of Christ (this is our growth as believers.  God working in our lives to make us like His Son), the believer is called (we cannot come to Christ apart form being called to Him), the believer is justified (God declares the believer “not guilty” because of his faith in Jesus), and the believer is glorified (he will one day be perfected in Heaven with the Father and Son).  This is God’s plan.  Because of this plan, we can be at peace knowing He works all things together for good.

It goes one step further.  All five parts of this master-plan are in the past tense in our English Bibles.  When Paul wrote this, he used the Aorist Tense.  This means it denotes a completed action.  Here’s the dilemma…how is it a completed action that we have been glorified while we are still here on earth?  Simple.  In the mind of God, it is as good as done!  You can count on it, you can live your life believing it without reservation!  In fact, it is also a completed action that we have been made into the image of Jesus.  So know that our trials and struggles are being used by God to make us more like His Son.  This is a task He will spend the rest of our lives working out for us to see.  We’ll see it unfold as He has already seen it happen!