Archive for August, 2009

Counting many blessings

Friday, August 28th, 2009

There’s an old familiar hymn I used to sing growing up: ‘Count your many blessings every doubt will fly,’ and the familiar chorus rings out, ‘Count your blessings, count them one by one / And it will surprise you what the Lord has done’.

I have felt spiritually discouraged lately. Feeling like what I’m doing has no Kingdom value, like I’m just taking up space and writing words and none of it is going to make a difference. I know these thoughts come from the evil one who wants to take us down, defeat us and claim victory in this battle. But knowing in my head these thoughts are not from my King and keeping it from affecting my heart are two different things.

So I spent some time this morning just reflecting on the blessings in the Pockets of Change project these last few months. It is not by our strength or smarts this project will be accomplished or be of Kingdom value. It is through Christ alone. When people ask how we’re doing this, I want to always point them to my King. Because He blesses His people and enables them to do His calling. We’re just thankful He chose us to be a part of it.

We’ve been on the road three of the last six months, between our Canada and abroad travels. We’ve enjoyed the travels and have enjoyed the time in Chilliwack as well. It’s been a good experience thus far and we’re now looking to prepare for our final leg of travel.

Going way back to June, we arrived back from our South America travels at the beginning of the month. After in-depth debriefing and catching up on sleep, we spent a couple weeks sorting through interviews and photos and preparing ourselves for the Mexico trip in July. We also spent a fun-filled week in Cranbrook to attend my 10 year grad reunion and catch up with old friends.

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The children of the canyon

Tuesday, August 18th, 2009

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The sense of being wrecked

Monday, August 10th, 2009

People say it changes you to go on a missions trip. They’re right. Although as I reflect on what it means to be changed, I suspect that might be the wrong word. Wrecked is more accurate. It really does wreck you, this whole missions thing.

There’s a part of you that gets left behind when you leave a mission field. I don’t really feel whole anymore in the way I did before. I guess it’s because I know what’s out there in a much more personal, tangible way. I can close my eyes and see the high mountains of Peru. I can breathe deep and imagine the smell of rain falling in Mexico’s Copper Canyon. I can slide my tongue on the roof of my mouth and taste the fresh cooked fish in Ecuador. In the silence, I can hear the sound of worshipers in the open-air church in Haiti.

Once you can see a people that live in need, and hear the cries of a school teacher as she laments the life of her students, and smell the stench rising from the dump where salvaging is a way of life, and touch the hands of a servant of God, and taste of the life that abject poverty brings, it’s hard to shake out of your senses when you come back home.

My head has has been filled with these places, these people. And my life – a life pieced together with comfort and convenience – seems less than what it was before. The smells and sights and sounds of my life seem more an echo than the real thing now that I know what is beyond my own little comfortable world. And it takes me apart to know that my world is so much smaller than I once thought.

My senses have been wrecked. And I praise God for it.


Heal my heart and make it clean
Open up my eyes to the things unseen
Show me how to love like you have loved me
Break my heart for what breaks yours
Everything I am for your kingdom’s cause
As I walk from earth into eternity

- from ‘Hosanna’ by Hillsong United

A man of vision

Tuesday, August 4th, 2009

It’s hard to find someone worth following. There’s usually not a lot of substance in the men and women we place ahead of us. Celebrities, world leaders, local politicians – they all lack the ability to gain my trust.

In the grocery store line-up, I see celebrity magazine covers splashed with news from the icons this world chooses to follow. But those leaders let people down. You don’t have to watch much TV or stand in grocery store line-ups to know that Jon and Kate are no longer plus eight. The perfect family splits up, now who do you follow when it comes to marriage and kids?

Then there’s the political leaders. I think of Barrack Obama. It was like the second coming of Christ when he was elected; people followed him like lambs, vowing everything would change for the better. The world would be a rosy place with Obama in charge. Now the realities of his role have hit and we find he is not the knight in shining armour many had trusted he would be.

We follow the footsteps of these leaders, in the hope that the lives they live and the decisions they make will lead to a better tomorrow. And we are let down. Even in Christian circles this happens, for we’re all susceptible to the sins of this world.

Yet there are leaders worth following in this world, if you look in the right place. Look, for example, in Mexico and to Pastor Tomas. I know I’ve mentioned Pastor Tomas in a couple posts from Mexico. But mentioning is not what I want to do. I want you to know him; I want you to feel as if you have sat down and listened to him speak because I’m sure God has given him a gift of vision that is passed along through his words.

He is a man of strength, a man of vision, and a man of action. He has such passion for the people of the Copper Canyon, the unreached and hard-to-reach people of Mexico’s deep valley areas. He was called to the people of the Copper Canyon many years ago, after hearing of the great need that existed there. And he has not looked back since.

Sitting in the the teacher’s humble room at the orphanage in Guacaivo, Pastor Tomas took the time to share with me this passion he has for the lost people in this stunningly beautiful place.

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