Getting Ready

Well, it has been a while since adding to my blog. Bad for me, I know. It has been a difficult couple of weeks. Ask any doctor who admits to Trinity Mother Francis what their week was like. The hospital is busting at the seams. There were, on average, 23 people spending their stay in the ER rather than in a regular room because there was no room in the inn. Three of those were mine during the week before last. It would have been four but the last one was 12 and we had to find her a room since she was a minor. (no pediatric trained nurses in the ER). In addition to that my online bible class at Harding continued pile on the work. I was overwhelmed by the work and it showed. By the grace of God I was able to keep afloat by doing 2 weeks worth of homework before I started call. This was going great until last Sunday night when I realized that I did not have a 10 question quiz over Colossians 3 and 4 on that Wednesday but it was "Test 2" with 100 questions over Ephesians, Philippians and Colossians. Oh well. God granted me more knowledge than I needed. It is hard to settle for less than 100% when you've been to Medical school. I did have to settle.

We are nearing our trip to Uganda and Rwanda. We are flying to Uganda on March 10 and staying with the Cashes until March 17. We are going from the Cashes to Kigali Rwanda on March 17 and will be visiting the Jenkins, Shewmakers and hopefully the Beards while in Kigali. I hope to meet with some of the people in the Ministry of Health for Rwanda to see if there is a way for me to use my medical training in Rwanda. We will go to Ruhengeri for a couple days by car (kind of excited to drive in Rwanda, don't tell Kristin that I'm excited; it kind of worries her). When we get to Ruhengeri we will try to meet with Drs. Caleb and Louise King who are doctors in the Musanzi region. They are about an hour south of Ruhengeri. I want to see how their work is set up and by the end of the trip I would like to see if God wants to use me a pure church planting capacity or in partially or wholly medical mission manner. I truly have no idea how this will look later in the future.

We are excited about the whole trip but need prayers for endurance, especially for our daughter Grace. We pray that she will love it. She has no clear idea that we are going to move to Rwanda but she knows we have been talking about spending more time with the Koonces and Crowsons and we have asked her about whether she is interested in living near them. She seem skeptical but she is not stupid and gives us hints that she thinking about the things we have been discussing in "code" the last few months.

We really want to be blessings to the Cashes and we want to receive so much blessing from them. We hope God will show us a vision of the faith that keeps them in Uganda.

We have not started packing but will likely do so tomorrow. We are excited by the challenge of making all 6-9 trunks weigh 50 lb. It is like a puzzle. I hate puzzles.

We need prayers for
Endurance
self control
safety
vision of God's purpose for our mission
vision to see what is real in Rwanda and not let Satan cover our minds and the eyes of our hearts with false images of superficial contentment in the Rwandan people. We want to see the pain and the suffering, we want to see the emptiness and the pain that the genocide brought.
We hope that we will take your prayers with us and hope God will hear you and remind us of each person praying for us so that we can also pray for you.

Shots, shots and more shots

I am tired this week. We have began making plans for our first trip to Uganda and Rwanda. We are certainly excited but to say the least overwhelmed. This week started the shots. Shots, shots and more shots. To say the least, Grace is reconsidering her excitement about traveling to Africa. Madelyn could get hit by a truck and brush it off but Grace; Imagine a very large nurse with a needle in one hand and a determined look on her face, wildly poking at a moving target that is Graces arm with my hand around it. The odds of the needle going into her arm rather than my hand is not 1:1. My hand is in serious danger and I just had the same immunization and I certainly don't want it again, in the back of my hand. We made it. She is now immune to Meningococci. Near fatal death if caught by a teenager but fatal if caught by an 8 year old. The argument, It will be good for you in the long run did not help matters.
I have been continuing my class on the Prison Epistles online at Harding. I absolutely love it. I was sitting on a plane coming back from San Diego after a weekend plagued by delayed and canceled flights, and I realized that I had actually been reading my bible and my text for about 10 hours. I found joy in this. I do not boast because I have to say most of the time was re-reading what some British commentator had to say about Philippians. He doesn't write the way I talk. I can understand why some people get so excited about the depth of this kind of study. I can tell that I already have more confidence and ability to speak God's word (not really very good at it). I find that filling a half hour at bible study is easier. Part of this is that over the last 3 months I have continually prayed for God to give me a greater gift for speaking his word out loud to others. I'm not a great speaker nor a great student of the word but God has energized me through the deep meaning of his word. The pace at which one is expected to read the textbooks and write papers is nearly overwhelming. I certainly need prayers for this. Oddly enough I have been fasting directly for this issue and even my patients ask nearly every day if I have lost wt. Don't know how you can tell in a man who was already at 136.
Our prayer requests are for our trip to Africa. We want to be an encouragement for the Cashes. We ask that we will not be a burden on the Cashes. We ask for a safe flight. We pray that God will connect us to the other missionaries in Rwanda the way he has to the Koonces and the Crowsons.
We ask for prayer for fund raising. We pray for people and churches who can first pray for us and then pray for their giving. We ask God to provide for us in a stable way during our commitment. We pray that God will move churches and people in the year to come and prepare them financially for this giving. We have been in contact with multiple churches and ask that the Holy Spirit will weave our path in with theirs.
We continue to ask for prayers for our families as they are still trying to grasp this entire issue. They are praying and being faithful to this commitment of prayer.

I continually pray for all of you who have prayed for us.
God bless.

Climbing Water Towers

God has been showing me for months just exactly how he wants me to see him and how he wants me to trust in him and rely upon him for my future.

I missed this lesson for months but as I was relating a story about my son Samuel I realized that God had been speaking to me for a long time about what I would say is our future in Rwanda.

For over a year Samuel has been conjuring up ideas in his head of what he wanted to be when he was big. He first followed the same path as many boys his age and said he wanted to be a cowboy. He then graduated to being a cowboy and living on a farm with a big RV that he and daddy lived in. He wanted me to work on the farm with him when he was older. I could think of nothing more wonderful than living with my son on a farm. After a couple of months he changed his plans and decided that he wanted to be a water tower painter. He and I were to climb the towers and paint them when towns called us. We spent months listening to the loud cries of a 4 year old in the back seat each time we passed a water tower, "Daddy, we're going to paint that water tower, you and me!" Then it was on to moving to Hershey Pennsylvania, where I did my medical training, to work in the chocolate factory. He and I are going to make Hershey Kisses and candy bars.

In each plan, he has one recurring theme. It will be he and I. (english majors keep silent about that last statement) He has no concept of a future without me right there with him, helping him do whatever hard work there is to do. He is not even afraid of climbing water towers as long as I am there with him. WOW! What a picture of God.

Deuteronomy 31:6
So be strong and courageous! Do not be afraid and do not panic before them. For the LORD your God will personally go ahead of you. He will neither fail you nor abandon you.”

Romans 8:31
What, then, shall we say in response to this? If God is for us, who can be against us? 32He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?

I can go on and on. But my point is that just like Samuel, I know if my Father goes ahead of me and is there when I get there, I will not fail. I will be able to climb water towers. And they will be beautiful towers when we are done.

Prayers

Over the last number of weeks we have visited congregations we have never been to before, spoken with people we have never met and worshiped with strangers. We had people coming up to us by the end of the worship and telling us that they were praying for us and would continue to do so.

In addition, I am taking an online class and have mentioned on that website that my family and I are going to be moving to Africa and the number of people who have emailed me and told me they were praying for me was 100% of the members of my class.

These and the number of our dear friends and beloved family that continually encourage us in prayer are staggering and quite humbling.

I am truly humbled by Gods spirit in these great worriers. I have always read and been aware of the "body" analogy that Paul uses to describe the church. I don't know why I am always amazed when someone says that they are praying for me since they are the body and image of Christ. In Ephesians 1 Paul states "22And God placed all things under his feet and appointed him to be head over everything for the church, 23which is his body, the fullness of him who fills everything in every way." Paul is saying that the body, the church is the fullness of Christ. It is to be and represent all that Christ is in all his attributes. Christ always prayed. He always took his fears and the needs of others to the father. I thank all of you who go before our great Father to pray and fast for me and my family, for being the essence and fullness of Christ. We cherish your prayers. Keep them coming. They are working.

We also want each of you to know that we have prayed your name to God so that your strenght and endurance will continue.

The Roller Coaster Ride

This has been quite a month. Over the last month, Kristin and I have been asking God to show us his will for our lives. We have had an emotional roller coaster and in the end, as most roller coasters do, we glided to a smooth steady halt. But unlike the roller coaster analogy, the ride is far from over. We have been praying and fasting over the month of December in order to see more clearly what the Holy Spirit has planned for us.

Not many people currently read this blog and I feel I know the names of most who do so I hope I can safely write the things that need to be said. I ask that unless previously stated, the contents of this blog will remain only in the hearts of those invited to read. A time is quickly coming when all will know what God has planned for us but today is not that day.

Over 10 years ago, God began to speak to Kristin and me about his plan for our lives. We began to feel a burden to become missionaries. As I am accustomed to doing, I took it upon myself to "figure out how this would look in the future" and after visiting the Predisan clinic in Honduras back in 2001 I was convinced that God wanted us to do full time medical missions in that region. We spent many years waiting for God to bring about the right time for this transition but he just kept saying, "No, this is not the time".

After moving to Tyler, Texas we settled into a life that was pleasant and plentiful and enjoyed this for years. The burden of our student loans and the need to begin a journey towards becoming debt free began to weigh us down. Now looking back this journey has been intermingled with the journey to fulfill our first desire. To become more for God. We had no idea that both would come at us in such amazing, but painful ways.

When we sold our house in 2005 we were just numb from the experience. We new we could afford it, we knew it was a good size for our family but it was just painful to us to be bogged down with that much debt. We began seeking God's help with our debt and after taking Crown Ministries debt class we felt that we could do more and that God had a purpose for this pain.

We spent and amazing weekend last month with Marty and Louise Koonce and after spending hours with them we have realized that God was calling us to the mission field very soon. But, we could not understand why he was not calling us to Honduras. In addition to this, we had become comfortable with where we were at and have become "emotionally attached to our future". After a month of praying and fasting we were blessed with the chance to meet Murphy and Christine Crowson while they were on furlough in Ft. Worth. We fell in love with them immediately, just as I had experienced with the Koonces. We just felt that God had pulled us together do something greater than we could have imagined for ourselves. We discovered that they and their parents had been praying for more teammates that were skilled and wired in a way that complimented their skills and personalities.

Now we look back over the last 10 years and realize that God has been calling and preparing us for this very task at every turn.

Kristin and I are giving up our emotional attachment to our future, this is painful, and we are taking our family to Rwanda in 2009 and we will accept both the difficulties and the great joy God has planned for us and our family among a people who are so spiritually scarred and lost.

We ask for the prayers of everyone. This blog is open to all who will support us and as of today it will become a place to read about our journey to Rwanda.

Untouchables

I have to give some credit for these thoughts to Tad Tolleson. His class discussion a couple of weeks ago on Jesus and his interaction with Bartimaeus. This particular class made me more aware of the true nature of Jesus. As Kristin and I sat in class and listened we each (confiding in each other later) spent much of the time going over in our heads the names of the “untouchable” people we experience each week. People like Shadow, Cherilyn, Victor and Sheri, Carl, Harold and the guy that lives down the road from our house in the empty lot next to the loop. These are the exact people God continually uses to teach us about himself.

There are many instances in the bible where Jesus and later after much pain, the apostles stop to touch such people that society deems untouchable.

In the story of the blind beggar, Bartimaeus sat on the side of the road and when he heard that Jesus was near began to shout "Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!" Those around him began to ridicule him and rebuke him but he called out only louder. Jesus brought him near and asked what I would consider a “duh” question, What do you want me to do for you? “I want to see” was the reply. Jesus gave the man his sight and restored more than his vision but restored his value.

One of my favorite stories about an blatantly untouchable woman (probably Mary) occurred in the home of Simon the Pharisee. Jesus was asked to lunch one day by Simon and during the meal a “sinful woman” came in and started cleaning and kissing Jesus’ feet. Now, as Ortberg puts it in his book, the word sinner in this context makes no pretenses. She is a prostitute! The fact that she is in the home of a pharisee is almost makes the story unbelievable. So Simon uses this woman to point out that Jesus could not be a prophet or he would know that this woman was a sinner and certainly would not allow himself to be touched by her. I love Jesus’ reply: You did not give me any water for my feet, but she wet my feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair. You did not give me a kiss, but this woman, from the time I entered, has not stopped kissing my feet. You did not put oil on my head, but she has poured perfume on my feet. Therefore, I tell you, her many sins have been forgiven—for she loved much. But he who has been forgiven little loves little." She dared to come to the teacher and actually make him unclean according to the Law. Yet as a reward for her boldness, she was given eternal life. Simon had no idea what he had lost.

Again, Jesus in the presence of important, rich and influential men brought value to a woman who is likely considered one of the most untouchable and unclean creatures on earth. I would guess that some pharisees would eat a vulture before being seen sitting at a table with this woman. The pharisees had saw themselves as valuable and irreproachable and were proud of their stature. They truly expected the Son of God to come down from heaven and give them praise and honor for their perfect attentiveness to the law. He would make them the rightful leaders of God’s kingdom on earth.

I am guilty of such thoughts. I have found myself denying love and comfort to those in need. I am like Peter, I needed more than one vision to convince me that it is okay to love and commune with “untouchables”. How could I be so foolish. Now that God has opened my eyes to these wonderful people in need, I can never go back.

Jesus came to give value. He came to touch. I ask the Lord Jesus to live in me and give me a spirit of compassion and the desire to touch those who are untouchable. I hope that everyone will find a way to notice and touch these people this year. Find a way to feed a man who missed his last meal, or two. Find a way to keep a man warm on a rainy winter night. Find a way to hug a woman who gives sex for a warm coat, then gives the coat away for food or drugs.

My guilt comes not from these challenges but the challenge of giving help and compassion to a patient who wakes me up in the middle of the night to ask me about a problem outside of my specialty or about something my nurse could have done in the morning. Or how to love a man whose life I have saved 6 times this past year and will do so at least this many more times this year, despite his lack of love for himself or me.

God give me a compassionate touch, a heart of Christ and words that give value to untouchables. Help me not to put boundaries on my love. Amen.

Impress them on your children

I have entered into a new phase. In my family, it is a right of passage to ride to school in daddy’s truck. I after 4 years, I know take three kids to school in the morning. I truly love it. One of the great things about this time is the singing. It would be truly appalling to anyone listening but I know to my ears and I hope to God’s ears it is a sweet melody.

My favorite music is contemporary Christian music. I have loved to listen to this genre since I broke away from Sting and the Doors in medical school. The Doors and I did some things that were not so “right” in those days and I have sworn off such things and unfortunately, also the Doors. This likely makes many of you cringe.

I have had a number of people mock me for the music I listen to and some were very close to me. I sat in a room with two people whom I truly respect and listened to them bash the music and those who listen to it. I know they were not aware of my thoughts and feelings about Christian music but it hurt really badly. I sat there and listened but did not respond. I asked myself, why do I listen to Christian music and why do I fill my house and my work with this melody. Then one day, when Samuel and I were riding in my truck he just blurted out, “Daddy, can we sing Oh no you never let go”. I thought, what, how does he know that”. If you don’t know the song it is by Matt Redman and the words are like this:

Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death
Your perfect love is casting out fear
And even when I’m caught in the middle of the storms of this life
I won’t turn back
I know You are near

And I will fear no evil
For my God is with me
And if my God is with me
Whom then shall I fear?
Whom then shall I fear?

Chorus:
Oh no, You never let go
Through the calm and through the storm
Oh no, You never let go
In every high and every low
Oh no, You never let go
Lord, You never let go of me

I decided then just why I listen to this music. It truly fills my heart and my family with the spirit of God. I realize that the theology of each song may not be accurate and some people may not “need” this music or may be “beyond” it but if you know anything about education or the process of learning, you know that music is a powerful mechanism for laying down memory and at this age, it can actually be associated with laying down personality.

Samuel is now riding to school with us in the truck and has taken up the job of saying each morning, “can we listen to the radio” or “can we sing”.

Well this week, on Sunday night while waiting in the van, my sweet Aaron blurted out of the blue, “Daddy, can we do dat never wet go”. My heart broke. Aaron was receiving just words on the radio but he also sees the excitement it brings between my other children and myself and the connection we have when we sing together at the top of our voices and he will soon realize that we don’t sing the songs just for entertainment but we believe the words we sing and we believe in their promises.

Deuteronomy 6:4-7 states Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. ⁵ Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. ⁶ These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts. ⁷ Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up.

Now I know verse 7 relates specifically to the words in verse 4-5 but the words in 4-5, to me, mean make the Lord your God. Love him, serve him, and write this commitment on the hearts of your children so they will know who you are and who you stand for. I will commit the remainder of my life writing this on the hearts of my children and all those I encounter. I will never apologize for this and I will rejoice in the mocking I receive because of it.

God bless Aaron.