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.
