Treasure in Jars of Clay

PRAISE, THANKSGIVING, and PETITIONS:

God is good! We are so amazed at all He is doing here! THANK YOU FOR PRAYING!

God Answers Prayers for Fruitful Conference Abundantly!

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for praying!

God heard your prayers! Your prayers are fruitful!

Joel, your translation was SO WORTHWHILE and SO USED by God! You will be very surprised in heaven by the thanks you get for it from a lot of people I think! God is so incredibly good. I don’t even know where to start in telling all He has done!

There are so many things to tell about God’s work in and through the conference!  I can’t share them all on this blog but will share a smattering and can’t wait to share more at home.

One small thing that happened on the last day is a beautiful kind of summary statement of God’s goodness and promise keeping. The last morning of the four mornings, as we gathered as a family to pray at 6:30 AM God gave us the verse from Isaiah about his word being like the rain and snow that come down from heaven and water the earth and always bring forth fruit, so that his word will accomplish what he purposes and bring about His desire … we prayed that morning feeling inadequate and ignorant and wondering what would come of it all, and we were casting ourselves on God, saying please make what we say true to  your word and then keep this promise and make it water hearts and make it bear fruit, accomplish your purposes through your word. We pleaded with God to keep this specific promise about His word bringing life and watering hearts.

Not knowing anything about us, or our prayers of the morning, a lady stood up after the conference was over and said, “ I can never thank you enough I don’t know how to tell you how life changing this material has been to me.  I came here with no hope at all. Now I know that because of Christ I can raise children with love even though my parents did not raise me with love. I feel like a new person. I can’t think how to tell you about it, but it makes me think of a verse from somewhere in the Bible that I heard once about God’s word being like rain that makes things come alive and grow. I feel like “these materials” have been to me like rain. They brought me life. Thank you thank you thank you. “ Liesl and I just looked at each other and started weeping.

One woman came to Christ the last day of the conference after hearing about how the Exodus verse on I-do-this – because parenting was based on the same gospel as Colossions 1:27-29. She was So happy and so excited and just flowing with gratitude to God. She said, “I never had any idea that God loved me that much!”

God just showed up everywhere! One of the most moving things to us was what happened after I  talked about praying for our children.  WE were passing out cards for people who wanted to write down some prayer requests for each of their children covering each area of needs in their children’s lives, so that they could grow up to love God with all their heart, soul, strength, and mind. So they were going to think through the current physical, intellectual, emotional and spiritual needs of each of their children and write them down and begin to pray over them. When we were passing cards out donw the rows of chairs, kind of like passing offering plates row by row, they got kind of hung up in two different rows for a longish time and I wondered what was taking so long. Turns out, that the couple who is now care taker in the orpha with the 80 kids in it asked for 80 cards to write out these detailed prayers in each area for each child! And the same with the old man who is living in the discipulato with the teen aged guys. He asked for forty cards! While this  may be totally impractical and over ambitious of a goal for these dear people to cover that many kids in such detail in prayer, those of you who know the problems and needs in the orphanage here in the past few years will understand our utter joy and delight in this! Just for the seed to be planted. Just for them to be aware of each of these kids having emotional and spiritual needs as well as physical and academic ones and to have a sense that as they are acting in place of parents, meeting needs in all these areas is something they need to pray about and work toward. IT was incredibly moving to Luke and Liesl and to Steve and I too! They really did see it in a new light and they really do want to approach things in a new way and find a way to meet all these needs! It was SO COOL!

Antoher woman who was really excited about praying these kind of specific prayers for her children was  so painfully sweet in her appreciation for the idea! She was very moved and very excited. At one point she said, “O please, tell me, how many times a day do I need to pray these prayers for my children. “ I thought of what you might have answered, Jesse, as I think her question might sound different to your ears. But however it sounded to any of us, it was so precious in God’s sight.

I really want to keep telling you stories of God’s goodness but it is almost one AM and I should quit as I need to post this over at Pastor Earl’s house very early in the morning before Luke leaves.

I’ll try to write about just one more amazing story. Excuse my writing as I must write quickly.

On the morning that we taught about nurturing our children’s bodies so that they can grow up to love God with all their physical strength, we were talking about meeting their physical needs but also teaching them everything they should know about their bodies, about sickness and about death and about sexuality and purity and modesty. Parents were very interested in talking about how to talk about these things with their children. After the main sessions we broke up into a men’s group and a women’s group.  We had great translators for all 16 hours of the conference talks. For this workshop afterwards, Pastor Earl went to translate for Dad, but we women did not get a translator. There were about 85 women who stayed for this afterwards session. Not exactly a small intimate group for discussing this sort of topic.

I had brought along an article I had written on this subject – one that emphasizes the positive and talks about five amazing gifts God has given to women, gifts that define us and bless us and bless men and children too. And then it goes on to discuss how those gifts can be wasted or destroyed.  Liesl started out  trying to translate, but two American missionary women, short term people, were chiming in right and left and interrupting and making suggestions and then getting others involved in asking questions before we had really presented the material. It became utter chaos and was very discouraging. Lisel said to me afterwards that she hasn’t felt frustration in such a long time, about anything, that she was rather baffled at the feeling coming upon her, but she was quite frustrated because she felt the potential was so great and people who should have known better were being so foolish and messing things up so badly. We ended up kind of quitting, but as we quit, a lady said could you PLEASE PLEASE translate this material into Spainsh, in writing, and make it available to us. Could you do this and then set up a time when we can read it and ask you questions about it. So Liesl and I agreed to try to do this for the next day. We went home rather frustrated with how that had turned out, but willing to do what we were asked to do. We ended up spending four hours with Mary, the principle of the Verbo School here at the orphanage, in a little dark windowless “office” at a desk working on it that night. Mary got so into the project, and into talking with us and getting to know me, she already knew Liesl very well (and had a great respect for her and tended to forget often that Leisl is 18 years old.)But she was so into the project that she forgot that she had an online class for her master’s degree she is working on and she missed it and was very worried about having missed it. And Leisl and I were severely attacked by mosquitoes sitting there with lights on and no windows or doors.We referred to it as “our mosquito feeding center” (because everyone here is always talking about “The feeding center” where Pastor Earl feeds 400 kids a meal a day  and of course those are all Miskito Indians)When it got to be really late and we were only half way through the translation, we decided it could not be accomplished for the next day and that we would have to apologize to the women at the conference and ask them to wait another day. The next night, while I was madly at work finishing revising the last sessions of the conference for the next day, Liesl and Mary worked late into that night, till midnight, another four hours, and came very close to finishing. Liesl got up early and went to Pastor Earl’s house to paste in the Bible verses in Spanish and finish the last few sentences up herself. By then it was getting near 8 AM and time to go over to launch the last day of the conference.

Luke took over the job of finding a way to print the newly translated article and make 85 copies of it. (This is a big deal. Pastor Earl had a printer, but it was not working. Anyway, it was no small feat for Luke to do th is, and it cost another $30 dollars after all the other expense…  crazy! But it got done and was ready. So after the whole conference       had ended and all the sessions were done, we announced that if any women were still interested they should gather in the corner and we could read the article aloud, and they could have a copy and ask questions is they wished to.

WOW! We had NO IDEA what that was going to be like! Luke made 85 copies and there were only two left , which have long since been begged for so it was a large group of women again. This time a very sweet lady read the article aloud, and a fairly good translator came to help field questions. The response to the article was astounding! There must have been twenty ladies crying when she finished reading it, and by the time we ended there was not a dry eye in the whole group! It just hit a cord. God used it in incredible ways! And all that frustration from the earlier workshop failure that Liesl and I experienced was so obviously God’s good providence working out what HE wanted to do. Had that first time gone better, we would never have    ended up translating the thing and it was obviously meant to be translated! (AND by the way Mary very excitedly came and told me that for the first time, ever, her online professor had missed class himself that night and she had not had any consequences for missing the class. She was thrilled. )   

AN entire row of young single adult women, late teens, early twenties, stood together and expressed tremendous gratitude, for the article, saying they had never heard anything like it before and it would completely change the way they lived. They were obviously moved.

A previous prostitute stood up and said if only she had heard these things before, but she was so glad to hear them now and she knew from the gospel we just talked about in Colosssians that God loved her.

A single mom stood up and begged all the women there to take this material to heart.

Woman after woman stood up and gave a testimony to how she needed to hear this and how it would change her.

There were quite a few teachers in the group and they asked to take the article to school and teach it there. People from three different churches asked if they could teach it in their churches. One lady stood up with tear in her eyes and said “ I want you to know that not one of these papers is going to sit in our houses and gather dust on a shelf! Every one of us is going to take this to our friends, our families, our neighbors and tell them about it. This material is going to change Puerto Cabezas!”

The rest of the workshop session turned into a testimonial regarding the entire Raising  Whole Child Conference and it was moving and mind blowing. People said they had new hope, people committed to having family worship, people said they learned now why their parents failed them and could forgive their parents. God was so present and at work! I got about sixty tearful bear hugs and thanks in a row.

Today when the nurse came to visit Elsie with the doctor in our room, she said to me, “Do you know me? “ I said  yes, I know you, remembering her from the conference. Then being fuuny I smiled at her and said, “Do you know ME?” And she         said, “O YES! I know you! I know you very very well!” And she told me that today, two days after the conference, she gathered 25 women together and read that article to them and talked with them about it. SO, who knows what God will do with this. IT has been really truly exciting to his  mighty hand at work. Thank you so much to all of you who prayed for him to do so!          

One lady took a Charles Spurgeon book (in Spanish) that I brought and borrowed it and brought it back the next day saying how good it was!

Another lady was so excited about the description I gave of the Jesus Story Book Bible. She came up and asked me over and over         again how long she could keep it if she borrowed it. I kept saying as long as you need it. Finally she           said no, I can’t take it. Why I asked? Because I don’t know if I can get it back. I  want to take it to my son to read to his family in the jungle in Hondurus and maybe I can’t return it! Take it. Keep it. This book is for Hondurus I said. She was too thankful. It broke my heart and made my day to think of it going off to Hondurus to her son. J

We are working on setting up a library with the few books we brought. The reading part of the conference went very well. Pastore Earl helped me some, Joel, to think through how to approach and speak carefully.

Nurse meeting me two days later to check Elsie saying you know  me? Yes, I smiled remembering her at the conference. Do you know me? I laughed. O Yes, she said, I know YOU VERY WELL!  She taold me that she gathered 25 women together today and read the paper to them and talked with them about it!

People came out from three different churches in Puerto Cabzas and all three churches asked if they can get the notebook and use it to teach this in their churches.

School teachers here asked if they can use both the conference notebooks and the article on God’s gifts to women and how to waste and ruin them with students in their schools.

A short term missionary teacher  who is a school teacher from the US that works with inner city Latino’s wants to get copies to use with families there.

(About 150  some people came to the conference, number grew from 100 the first day up to 150 the second day.  We made only 125 notebooks, 25 people that came did not get one, some people who missed knowing about the conference but have heard about it are asking for a book now. )

                                                                       

 Current Big Requests

·         Luke is leaving in the morning to go try to find Raphael and spend three days with him. Pray for him to find him, for Luke to see and understand Rapha’s heart and be able to help him see how much God’ loves him and get him on his feet spiritually and physically. Pray for Luke’s safety traveling around in Nicaragua!

·         Elsie to get well before we fly next Wednesday. And no one else to get sick.

·         Fruitful last few days here.

Early Saturday afternoon:

I’m sitting in our room watching over Elsie who is drifting off to sleep. She has a fever of 103 right now, diarrhea, cough, and sore throat, two big puffy swollen red spots that are very hot, on her legs above her knees where her worst mosquito bites were big and swollen yesterday. For the time being we are assuming that it is a bad cold and that the diarrhea and puffy red spots are unrelated. But we have alerted the nurse here, about it for a number of reasons. Dengue fever is here. The team delivering food to homes a couple days ago just a few miles from here found a man in one hut, and a woman on the floor in another hut both near death with Dengue fever. There is no medicine to stop or cure Dengue fever, (it is passed on only through mosquito bites of infected mosquitoes.) Most healthy people recover from it, but it is very awful, and lasts for a long time. (The people that receive food from the feeding center here are all suffering from serious malnutrition and near starving, and do not always recover from Dengue fever. ) So pray with us that this fever is from a cold. I am not leaving her side at all. It’s hard here sometimes. We are often without water and often without any electric. Most of the time that’s not a big deal, but occasionally it feels hard. Right now there is neither electric nor water. (So I can only type here as long as the battery lasts on this computer.) Having a fever, with serious diarrhea, and no water to flush a toilet, and no water to wash hands from the diarrhea or the germs from a cold, trying to recover in a room stifling hot and somewhat dark, no fans and opening the windows with only remnants of old screens on them, to get what little breeze you possibly can, thus letting in the very mosquitoes you are sitting here praying did not make Elsie sick with Dengue fever feels hard right now. Like “I-want-to-go-home-hard.” Please pray for Elsie.

NOTE LATER:

Doctor and the nurse came to our room to see Elsie. They said there is a lot of Dengue right now so they are keeping a close eye on everyone with fevers. But he said he thinks he sees infection in Elsie’s throat and he has given her some antibiotics and the nurse will come check on her again on Monday.

The other night we got back to our room very late after singing and reading to all the little people over at the orpha. Because of the Broken Parents Raising Whole Children conference, I had spent very little time with the girls and I could tell I needed to do that. (A Little IRONY there.) They very obviously were needing mommy time. Elsie and Elaina and I hadn’t bathed for two days because the water had been off every time that was available to us. Two days without bathing of course is normally fine, but when you sweat so profusely, in streams all day, and play in a really dirty place, and your body is getting infected sores from all the mosquito bites the kids are scratching, when a good number of the kids you are hugging and holding and playing with all day have lice crawling in their hair, and when you have had several layers of sticky 100% DEET sprayed all over your body , so that it is dissolving and eating right through your rubber flippies and making all the dirt stick to you like a coat of glue, you feel desperate to bathe your kids, not to mention yourself. So despite it being very late, I wanted to bathe the girls and myself before bed. (That way our sheets would not disintegrate with all the DEET we had on.) I thought, okay they need me, and they need a bath. It’s horribly late, but I will combine these two needs and make it a fun relaxed shower that we play in altogether and sing and frolic in the shower before tucking them in. I got both of them wet, lathered up their hair with shampoo, coated their bodies with soap, starting soaping myself up, and BINGO, the water was gone. Not a drop. Our fun mother daughter shower time became one more challenge to get through before collapsing into bed. (Steve was our hero, going back and forth between the house we are staying in , and the outdoor laundry scrubbing station by Pastor Earl’s house that has a spring of water flowing, carrying buckets of water for me to rinse us off with.)

While I have gotten into this complaining mode- One more not-so-funny-at-the-time, funny story along the same lines of how there can be challenging moments. The conference was held in the big church building just outside the orphanage compound. It was from 8 AM to noon Monday through Thursday. We had a brief break with a little snack provided about half way through each day. On Monday, I had a little trouble with my stomach while I was speaking. When it was time for the break some people wanted to talk with me. So I was waiting and hoping I could get time to use the bathroom before it was time to start speaking again. It was just touch and go time wise but I really had to go badly so I asked where the bathroom was. It turned out to be pretty unpleasant which caught me by surprise because the church building itself is pretty nice. But I rushed into one of the stalls just in time for my own bout of stomach problems and then looked around to see there was no such thing as toilet paper anywhere to be seen. Uhhh? Yikes. What was I supposed to do? I was in very serious need of toilet paper and there were 150 people out there waiting for me to come back out. What to do. No such thing as paper towels. Nothing in the bathroom at all. In desperation, I lifted the back lid of the toilet and reached in and scooped up water to try to wash myself off. It was a nasty situation and I was kind of shaky and rather grossed out but trying my best to take it in stride. I figured, “Well, there is a sink out there and I can wash my hands and all will be well, except my rather wet bottom causing my dress to stick to me a bit”… but when I got to the sink there was not only no soap, but there was no water either. I was so totally grossed out going back up in front of all those people feeling so disgusting and defiled. I had to talk another two hours and then chat with and hug a lot of people afterwards before I finally got back and made a bee line for a sink that had both soap and water available on the compound. The next morning I decided I would not eat any breakfast at all before the conference in hopes of no repeat. J

Most of the time it is not that desperate staying here on this compound, it’s just isolated incidents. They have things set up amazingly and we are not suffering any hardships at all. They take incredible good care of us all. They have gone to incredible extends to make us comfortable and try to provide things we are used to in the states. We are well fed (although I confess I can’t wait to get home and eat something green) and even our laundry is scrubbed for us. It would be impossible to come here and not be totally overwhelmed with how absurdly blessed we are!

General Encouraging Things:

 New Building amazingly different! Less rats more light

New Couple at the Orpha  they are just awesome and beautiful  A real answer to prayer

Another couple coming to help in the discipulato

Getting to know so many so well. Blessed with really good conversations with Damarice, Candy, Mary, Pastor Earl. Feel like God has blessed time here so richly..

Luke and Liesl’s plans for six months here and then one year here falling into place.

Poignant Vignettes:

1.       Pastor Earl’s wife, Domarice told me she was walking over to one of the houses hurrying along to pass a message to someone when she heard voices coming from the sky. She looked around befuddled until she finally saw that amongst the green leafy branches of the biggest mango tree were a whole group of boys hanging on branches and perched on others. She was about to scold them and tell them to get out of the mango tree and stop snitching all the mangoes when she saw Luke was up there too. “So I listened to them a moment instead of scolding, and lo and behold, Luke was up there sharing the gospel in the tree.”

2.       I was walking down the street outside the compound and I saw a thin somewhat haggered looking woman stepping out of one of the typical tiny (about ten feet by ten feet) battered broken down wooden shacks on stilts that are home for those blessed to have a home here in Puerto Cabezas. I was thinking about her and imagining what her life was like and my heart was just breaking thinking of all I have had compared with her. I walked down the street behind her on the way to the church building for that morning’s conference ready to talk about nurturing our children’s minds. All of a sudden I saw in her hands the conference booklet that I had been working on for weeks at home in Charles Town and that Joel worked so hard translating, and she turned to enter the church in front of me. It seemed so unreal and so amazing somehow.

3.       Last night we were sitting on the porch of the new orphanage building until pretty late. It was a very mellow time. Singing, reading aloud to kids, holding kids, watching some kids (who were reluctant to miss any of the fun, music or love out there) fall asleep stretched out on the trash strewn muddy cement porch, lots of chatting, and,  as always,  a bunch of kids were running around wildly creating havoc. Steve and I had a few moments of quiet and just sat looking around us in wonder. Every direction we turned our heads there was a beautiful portrait of Christ like love being poured out. Luke had one little boy on his lap and was teaching an older boy some guitar chords and singing with him. Caroline had two little girls on her lap and was singing with a group of older girls. Austin was reading a pile of books to bedraggled pile of little boys, a few of which had already fallen asleep. Liesl had on tiny one on her lap looking ver sleepy, and was engaged in deep conversation with a teenage girl who was wiping tears from her eyes. Jeff was scratching the back of two little boys. So much thoughtfulness, kindness, gentleness, creative expressions of love… Despite all the dirty clothing, sweaty dirt stained faces, and general insanity, it somehow seemed like a foretaste of heaven with kindness and love flowing like a river. A mellow summer evening outside… And then we looked around us to see    where in all this Elsie and Elaina had wandered off to. Elaina was holding the hand of the little baby boy that was born here to one of the older orphans, and walking him all around. and Elsie was squatting on the ground helping a little girl scoop dirt and stones into an empty water bottle which then became a “ball” that they kicked back and forth to each other for the next half an hour. We felt so rich, so glad to be here, and so incredibly blessed to know so many wonderful people made in God’s image. Were it not for the mosquitos we might not have been able to tear ourselves away from the porch that night either.