October's Readings

The Camel Method by Kevin Greeson- This is a book written on an evangelism method that uses the Quaran as a bridge to the Gospel. It uses the commonalities of the Chosen Christ, Angels announcing the birth, the Miracles of Jesus, the Eternal Life Jesus offers that both the Quaran and the Bible speak of. It was a great shot in the arm to read such terms as reproducible, culturally acceptable, and church-planting movement again outside of training courses. 

The Beloved Disciple by Beth Moore This is a study/devotional book based on the writings of John. John has always been my favorite account of Jesus, and this Beth Moore in depth look is really educational and edifying. I am learning and having my heart worked on at the same time. 

Blink of an Eye by Ted Dekkar-this is an adventure-romance novel that takes place partly in the US and partly in Saudi Arabia.  It deals a tiny bit with Christian-Muslim relations, and Middle Eastern culture, I found those parts really interesting. The whole story is interesting though, it was a page turner, I finished it in a weekend! 

Forks Over Knives-The Cookbook by Del Sroufe I watched the documentary by the same name on netflix and was really impressed with it. The whole concept is basically preventative medicine-here is a quote from the back- “if you want to lose weight, lower your cholesterol, and prevent (or even reverse!) chronic conditions such as heart disease and type 2 diabetes, the right food is your best medicine.” So this cookbook has over 300 recipes of dishes based on fruits, veggies, whole grains, tubers and legumes. So yeah, no meat or dairy-I have not gone this far myself, but am trying to include more of the above and living here just automatically cuts out a lot meat. I am learning some new eggplant recipes- which is good because eggplant is one of the few vegetables we can count on being at market every week without fail. 

The Spiritual Danger of Doing Good by Peter Greer This title caught my attention on amazon when I was book shopping. Greer is the CEO of Hope International and has experience in humanitarian/missions work in difficult places in the world. He is also transparent and  very humble in his warnings of the common pitfalls of this line of work: doing the work to please others or make yourself look better to God, judging our brothers and sisters who are living in America too harshly, putting work above family, putting “sacred’ occupations over “secular” ones, etc. I would recommend this book to anyone working in missions or humanitarian work.

Why Islam in Growing in the West

While presenting on where I was headed and what I would be doing to churches and family and friends a couple summers ago, I was surprised at the level of fear/alarm present in the reactions of some when they heard I was going to a region predominantly Muslim. I blame a lot of this on the American press.  I also think we are scared of the things we don’t know about or understand. Jim Denison is a pastor and founder of the Denison Forum of Truth and Culture in Dallas, TX. He has extensively studied Christian-Muslim relations.  I receive a devotional he writes based on world events by email. This month, he is writing his blog based on readers’ questions. I thought this one would be good to repost here- I hope you learn how to better pray for our Muslim friends, coworkers, and neighbors.

Why Is Islam Growing in the West? The global Muslim population will grow by 35 percent over the next 20 years, from 1.6 billion to 2.2 billion by 2030.  This reader's question seems relevant today: "Why are Westerners drawn to Islam?"  Other readers ask similar questions: "What is the contrast between salvation by grace vs. works in Islam?  And what is a true comparison between Islam and the Bible?"  How should Christians respond? Let's take the second question first.  "Islam" is typically translated "submission," in this case to the will and laws of Allah (the Arabic word for "God").  These laws are often summarized as the "five pillars of Islam." First is the "witness" (shahadah), declaring that "there is no God but God and Muhammad is his prophet."  Second are the prayers (salat), five times a day facing Mecca.  Third is hajj, the holy pilgrimage to Mecca, the birthplace of the Prophet Muhammad.  Fourth is fasting (sawm) during Ramadan, the month when the first revelation of the Qur'an was given to Muhammad in AD 610.  Fifth is alms-giving (zakat), at least 2.5 percent of one's goods to the poor. Here's the point: no Muslim can know if he or she has kept these laws well enough to be granted a place in paradise.  By contrast, the Bible teaches: "by grace you have been saved through faith.  And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast" (Ephesians 2:8-9).  In religion, we try to climb up to God.  In Christianity, God climbs down to us. Why would a works-based religion be popular in Western culture today?  Actually, the vast majority of "new" Muslims in Europe and America are immigrants or children of Muslims.  Only 20,000 Americans convert to Islam each year, a number smaller than one of several megachurches in the Dallas area.  Since the Muslim birthrate in Europe is three times higher than non-Muslims, it's easy to see why Islam is growing on the Continent.  But its works-righteousness is not the primary reason why. What about Islam and the Bible?  Muslims are taught that God revealed himself in the Old and New Testaments, but Jews and then Christians corrupted his revelation; so he revealed himself a final time in the Qur'an, which is his "pure" revelation to mankind.  Actually, textual scholars are convinced that the Old and New Testaments we have today are almost identically the same as the original manuscripts.  However, not long after Muhammad's death, so many different versions of the Qur'an existed that Caliph Uthman ordered all but one version destroyed.  As a result, no Muslim can really know if the Qur'an he or she reads today is consistent with the original.  Let's close with my favorite story regarding the grace of Christianity.  An elderly professor of world religions surprised his colleagues by declaring his commitment to Christ.  He explained: "It was as if I had fallen into a deep, abandoned well.  Muhammad came by and told me it was the will of Allah that I be in this well, then he left.  The Buddha came by and told me if I would cease desire I would cease to suffer in the well, then he left.  A Hindu teacher came by and told me if I was faithful in the well I would escape through reincarnation, then he left.  Confucius came by and told me if I'd not tripped I would not be in the well, then he left.  Jesus came by, saw me, and got into the well with me.  That is why I am a Christian." Why do you need such grace today?

What I have been reading lately

Ideas Have Consequences by Richard M. Weaver- so, this book was recommended to me by my friend who read it for one of his seminary classes. I don’t mind telling you this is one of the headiest books I have read in my life….I started the forward and freaked out a little, but then when I actually started the book itself, it got better. I really don’t know how to summarize this book, so I will take a quote from Weaver’s introduction “The book was intended as a challenge to forces that threaten the foundations of civilization.” He is basically showing how different parts of Western culture has declined in the last century or so, the funny thing is this was written in 1948, and he is lamenting the loss of morality then…..I really enjoyed reading this book, didn’t understand all of it, but the parts I did challenged me to look at history and how it shapes the way I think today. 

The Student Vegetarian Cookbook by Carole Raymond –don’t anybody freak out; I am not becoming a vegetarian. But we don’t eat a lot of meat here in the bush; Brit and I decided we didn’t feel like having an all-day canning party for just the two of us to have meat .So, I needed inspiration for preparing main dishes without meat, this book has been helpful, really for general ideas rather than specific recipes. I think the only recipe I have tried is the honey mustard vinaigrette, which is delicious! 

Reaching for the Invisible God by Phillip Yancey- Brittany and I are reading this one together, and I am really enjoying it. As always, Yancey has so many great insights into the Christian life. He is so down to earth and inspiring at the same time. He addresses doubt and suffering in a Christian’s life in this work. And Yancey is soo well read, he references and quotes all kinds of authors in his books. 

Emma, Mr. Knightley, and Chili Slaw Dogs by Mary Jane Weaver- super cute! It is part of a series called ‘Jane Austen takes the South,’ I already read Pride, Prejudice, and Cheese Grits, they are modern day retellings of the romantic tales- and we have already established I am a sucker for all things Austen.

  

I thought I should maybe do a post in which I wasn’t whining, so people wouldn’t get the wrong idea of my life here. It is a beautiful life. I am just going to share some humorous quotes we utter here in West Africa that I doubt you have ever heard or said in America.

“ I totally saw a white guy at market today!!”

“It’s raining, are our buckets out?”

“It rained a lot yesterday, we should do laundry today.”

“ We should go greet them[neighbors] , we haven’t seen them in like three days.”

And lastly, I would like to share how God answered one of my prayers this last month. My window leads out to our neighbors’ yard.  In this yard is the bathroom behind a wall. The hole for the latrine is getting full. When the wind blew  a certain way, my room was becoming unfortunately odiferous.  I was getting sad about this one evening, and I prayed about it. Soon after that, the rains began coming every night with regularity- and every night right before the rain I can smell a lovely flowery scent wafting through my window. It is sooo nice! God sent me some aromatherapy, He is faithful, even to my nose!

On Idols

I listened to a sermon by Matt Chandler called “American Monkeys” talking about idols- he was pointing out aspects of life  that we as American Christians tend to idolize. He told a story about visiting a Monkey Temple in India, then continued to draw comparisons between those literal idols in India to the idols we have in our culture.  This is one of my favorite messages to listen to- I think I will need it especially around home assignment time. Here is a great excerpt:

“What I’ve found about missions trips is this: you tend to romanticize the culture you’re in and feel bad about  your home culture….but here’s the reality, in all cultures everywhere, there are good, beautiful, God-besotted, rhythmic, redeemed things, and there are rebellious wicked things that in the end, the scriptures command to be set straight.” 

It has been so easy to find sinful aspects of the culture here. I have not grown up with those practices being considered normal everyday life. But I have come to learn that there are aspects of my home culture that are just as obviously sinful to outsiders to which I have been blinded. 

 I think leaving my own culture has really helped me in seeing places in my life that where I am not living like Jesus calls Christians to live. Most of the areas I am finding are the more culturally accepted sins in American culture. It’s like that whole, ‘you boil a frog in the pot with a slow heat, that way he won’t jump out, but just gradually cook unawares’ thing. For me it has taken leaving the gradually heating waters of compromising movies and media, overeating and overspending to see that these are areas in my life that I had just melded to my environment instead of following the standards set in the Bible. 

Matt Chandler gives ten questions he got from Timothy Keller to help us identify idols in our lives. Chandler talked a lot about how American Christians tend to idolize relationships with children/family. This hit me hard- a lot of the answers to the below questions had to with my family. It is biblical and godly to love my family and want their best, as long as my relationship with Jesus is still the strongest and most important relationship in my life. 

What are you most afraid of?

What motivates the things that you do?

What is one thing that can change your mood in a second?

What consumes most of your thoughts and feelings?

What brings the highest amount of frustration and anger in your life?

What would your friends say is your favorite topic of conversation?

What do you yearn for?

What is one thing that you wish God would do for you?

What are some things that you feel you can’t live with?

 What brings you solace?

I hope this challenges you as it has me.

Ever since I was little I have loved "keeping in touch." After summer camp I pen-palled with friends 'til they dropped the ball. I had years of exchanging letters with several friends, through middle and part of high school. That is just part of who I am, I love staying in contact and feeling connected. As I have grown up, I have seen how this become harder and harder as life happens. And, apparently, boys don't share  this need to keep updated on their friends' lives. Weird.

    As a missionary living in Africa, you can see how this can be problematic. One of my concerns is coming home on home assignment and not really knowing how to make conversation with friends and family. I'll feel like a dork for not knowing any real details about their lives for the last year or two. "Oh, you moved for your job..what's your job again?" "Oh, you guys broke up? Ten months ago? Ohh.." These are the dialogues I would like to avoid. 
   So i have tried the whole "email me and let me know how you are doing" line in newsletters, and for the precious few who have responded, you really are precious! You have helped me feel connected even on days when I feel completely disconnected and far away. Also, hearing about your problems in America helps me remember that we will have problems wherever we go until we get to Heaven, so my African problems are no bigger than yours!
    This post wasn't meant as a guilt trip for those of you who have not emailed me...but if you are feeling guilty the best way to assuage said guilt is to drop me a line or two about life lately in your neck of the woods!

On Driving

 “The road…it can beat you!” A visitor from Liberia made that statement after being on the roads here in our area. What a great way to put it.

I remember when I was trying to get a good picture of life here in West Africa while talking to Brittany in Texas, I asked her what some of the hardest parts of life here were. She listed traveling the roads in her top three. I so understand that now. This post is not designed as a woe-is-me rant about driving, rather a way you can see how to better pray for us when I say we need prayers while driving.

The roads are bad. This statement doesn’t seem to cover it really. We just finished our tree day trek to the capital, the last day we took a road that resembled a dry creek bed at parts. The thing for me that is so fatiguing about driving here is it is just a never-ending chain of decisions to be made: right, left or through the mud hole? Is four wheel drive through this part necessary? Should I brake for that chicken or depend on its supposed survival instinct to cause it to move? Which is preferable, those rocks or that mucky mud? What do I want to eat out of our travel-snack basket? Should I go into third even though I know I will slow down for a pothole five seconds later? Some questions can be easily answered through experience, regarding snacks for example, peanut butter jars should be opened only on paved roads.

The roads here are worked on, generally grated. The problem is every year at rainy season the semi-trucks carrying gas in wear out the road again. It is kind of just an accepted cycle as I understand it.  Being a passenger is hard in a different way: the driver has the steering wheel to hold onto- the passenger does have a couple of handles, but it is just a rough ride however braced you are.

Poor Betty (our truck), we have aged her sadly. We are trying to be responsible of course, nonetheless the jolts and bumps she goes through are making her look much older than her nine months of being driven.

Quick anecdote from this last trip: one of our African friends asked us if we could haul some tin to his house, and give his ride there too. The village is right on the way between the capital and our destination, so we said we would. We loaded our stuff first and had him tie down his tin how he thought best. It looked awkward, but we trusted his tying skills. About ten minutes after leaving the compound the morning of our departure, I am at an intersection when we hear and feel the metal leave our truck and fall to the street. The edges of the tin were just like a knife working those ropes and bungee cords. What followed with the police was a loud, gesturing, crowded, cultural argument of which I took no part in, staying in the truck while our friend who had loaded and owned the tin did the debating. This was probably the best thing we white people could have done in this situation, let our friend handle it for us. In the end, we didn’t end up paying any fines, the tin was tied better, and we were off, God is good.

I have never been an adrenaline junkie: not big on roller coasters or scary movies, if someone asked me if I wanted to go mudding or off-roading in the states I would not think twice before refusing. God is funny.  Our routine prayer before going through a stream or pool of water, or other rough patch is “ok God, here we are again, please get us through.”  And He always has, and even if He didn’t, I know He would work it out.