This has been a pretty insane month. From tragedy and death to life and revival. God’s been on the move thats for sure. Ill never understand his ways and still I question him and why he does some of the things he does and on the other hand he continuously blows me away with his grace and mercy. He is a good good father no matter our trials and circumstances. Im learning to lean on him just as much in the hard times as I do the good. Its hard and a lot of me doesn’t want to do it at times. I like to try and fix my problems on my own when really the easiest way is to invite him in and let him have control. It doesn’t seem that way in the midst of the storm though. None the less we serve a good and perfect father whose always got our best interest at heart. Rarely does that ever pan out the way we think it ought.
I dealt with a lot this month. The death of my cousin and the death of a close friend. I woke up one morning and read my Heidi Baker devotion. It was on making everyday the best day of your life and that it was also our choice to do so. Well this morning was going to be the best day of my life! I was stoked. Then I turned my phone on and was bombarded with messages. The first I read was that my friend Zach had died in a car wreck. My heart hit the floor in total shock. Then I opened whatsapp. Boom hit with the reality that my first cousin had also been killed in a car wreck… At this point I’m in total shock and have no clue whats going on. I did the only thing I knew to do I hit my knees and I cried and I prayed. It was tough being all the way on the other side of the world not being able to really talk with anyone or do anything. So I kind of just pushed through and continued on not fully knowing how or what it looked like to actually deal with tragedy. I didn’t realize that it would later show up in my month.
Now, In Myanmar. Things are going incredible! We’re evangelizing people are giving their lives to the Lord. Its amazing! It’s insane how hungry these people are for God. They spend their entire lives searching and seeking the truth. If they knew they had found truth in Bhuddism or Hinduism or some other eastern religion they wouldn’t be dropping everything they’ve ever known to have what we have. They’re giving up religion for relationship! Praise God I don’t have to be restrained in my beliefs because of some religion. Praise God Jesus gives me freedom of spirituality where there are no walls or limitations of the greatness of our father! I cant imagine being stuck in the cage of religion? Constantly believing that you have to wear this or eat that or sing this prayer this many times or kneel here or confess over there just to get to the father. It’s so draining. Especially when the whole time Jesus is just right there knocking, inviting us in to his presence and all we have to do is open that door. Believe what you will but I don’t believe this is the kind of relationship God desires to have with his children.
Sorry about the rant! It just fires me up, thousands and thousands of years of “religion” being stopped cold by the blood of the lamb. It’s beautiful to see man. Yeah it’d be cool to sit here and say that every single person we talk to are crossing over from death to life but that’s just not reality. There’s so much to be done here. Its overwhelming to think about and nothing that our team has done has been done on our own accord. This has been a work in progress for many many years. Christians have been persecuted and imprisoned here since the beginning. The host we served with this month had everything he’s ever had stripped away by the government. All of his land, his ministry, everything he’d worked years to build up. The government walked in and took it all then threw him in prison. just because he was a christian. This wasn’t even 20 years ago. So to think its just hunky dory over he is silly. Christians are hated everywhere we go. But whats beautiful about our time in Myanmar is God’s been doing a huge work here for quiet a while and we got to be a part of it. We were just a tiny little fraction of God’s grand plan for Myanmar and he invited us into his heart and gave us a little taste of the redemption he’s working in this nation.
Not only did everyday look like going and knocking on doors evangelizing, we were also able to serve orphans at the Agape children’s home. We taught English and got to connect with the kids. These kids were precious. They were just so happy and fun loving I couldn’t help but wonder what life was like before this children’s home. For me personally I imagine it would suck to be taken from your home and family members and put up in an orphanage for God knows how long with 50 other kids I’d never met before. But it wasn’t like that with these kids. From what I could tell they didn’t feel that way at all. They all seemed to have so much joy it was unbelievable. My faith was grown and encouraged just to sit back and watch them worship and cry out to God. Truly one of the most beautiful, purest forms of worship I have seen thus far. My highlight with the kids was having the privilege to wash their feet. They were so good to us and so kind, it was such an honor to serve them in this way. There’s been a hand full of times that I can look back on and just know in my spirit that Gods presence was right there with us. Everything seemed to line up right, all the distractions and stress and worry just seemed to disappear. Nothing else mattered but those children in that moment. It was a beautifully indescribable memory that I get to cherish forever.
Needless to say it was hard to say goodbye to everyone at Agape. It was much harder than I anticipated. A few of the children cried, I think we all had to fight back the tears honestly. Then I kind of started resenting the fact that we were even serving at orphanages. The whole idea of it just didn’t seem all that fair to me. Here we are 3 weeks into forming relationships with these children just to peace out and never see them again. So I was in this mental place of wrestling with seeing the good in doing short term missions work at orphanages and the harm we “could be” causing. It honestly just doesn’t seem fair to me, even still. But after a good deal of prayer and talking to some people that have done mission work with orphans and understand my struggle, it’s not about me. My purpose is to go in there and love these children just like Jesus, period. Yeah it’s going to be hard and connections might get made that will need to be broken but at the end of the day we all got to feel the love of God and that’s all that really matters. I imagine 10 years from now they’ll remember the attention and love they were shown over the fact that I was all of a sudden gone. I have to trust in the Lord and leave the rest up to him no matter my feelings or emotions on the situation. It’s not fair for me to rob anyone of the heart of the father just because I’m not going to be there forever. Jesus will be though and he certainly knows what he’s doing.
From Pyin o Lwin (the town in Mandalay, Myanmar Agape was in) we took a bus to Bagan City where we got to spend a day riding around on mopeds checking out thousands of year old pagodas hand built anywhere from the 9th to 13th century. This was such a treat and so cool to see the quality and architecture that went into each of these pagodas. They said it was a 16 square mile area with a little over 2000 pagodas still standing. Originally there was over 4000 but with an earthquake and the Chinese invasion, more then 2000 were destroyed. None the less one of the most amazing things I’ve ever seen. From Bagan we took a bus to the Capitol city Yangon for our 2nd month debrief.
Debrief was a little different for me this month. It was a good chance for me to focus on myself as opposed to working on our team. It’s easy to work on team dynamics and not even really realize I’m not spending the time I need to work on myself. Especially after the emotional roller coaster of a month I had. By the end of the month I found myself having not spent any quality time with the Lord and if I had, the time I was spending was more of a checking it off the list kind of thing. I found myself trying to deal with my own issues instead of turning them over to God. In that, I found myself reverting to old behaviors and habits. Nothing major, just old thought processing and running from my problems instead of facing them head on. So coming into debrief it was great to have that time to really just deal with me. Sometimes the hardest thing for me to do when I face problems is to pray and read and get alone with God, even though I know it’s the easiest thing to do and my best remedy. I’m still stubborn and I’m still a work in progress and I thank the Lord for showing me grace and working with me. At the same time constantly growing me into something He already sees me as. It’s a great feeling to be cared for and loved by the creator of the universe.
