Funds are a raising

So I'm pretty sure I'm around $1100 into my initial fundraising goal. All the numbers haven't come in yet from the office, but from my estimate, that is where I am. All this has come in in about a month. At this pace I'll meet my goal of $2500 in no time.

God is doing this. This has probably been the most rewarding fundraising experience I've ever had. Over and over God is re-affirming that this is a worthy mission. I'm beginning to stop asking in my heart if I should go, but rather how fast I should be going. This has been a fundamental shift for me in terms of my mission.

In other news, I've been reading C. H. Spurgeon. I have this huge one volume selected books and sermons. I bought it one day when I was still working at that Christian book store. I got it 30% off plus I think it was on sale, but I never really opened it up. I'm only about fifty pages into his autobiography, and I find his character both a kindred spirit and a Godly example to aspire to.

By my age he was already preaching to his own congregation, but when he talks about his desire to do the ministry of God my heart sings along with him! I think I'm going to get a lot from the rest of the collection, and this is going to help me prepare spiritually for the ministry I'm going into.

Remember! If you want to invest in me and the work God is doing in/through me, please show your support via the directions in the upper right corner.

What this blog is all about

Skits and Starving Ethiopians

So I've been thinking lately. I've been doing the missions thing for a while, and the stories that most people seem impressed by are the ones where I am in a developing nation feeding street kids. And I have to admit, sometimes they are the most fun to tell.

They act really impressed that I would go out of my way to bandage lepers and feed starving children, when now-a-days it's more sexy to do that, than preach on a street corner.

I remember when I was doing training with YWAM; the lecture period where we all learned gospel skits was (at least for me) the most painful. We would be going to a foreign country where non of us would be able to speak the language, and this was probably the closest thing any of us could get to personally communicating the gospel message. Even though they feel excruciatingly corny.

Thinking back; those skits were probably the closest thing to pure missions work we got. What you see in the first great missionary push ever were three things (mainly):

1. Gospel preaching

2. Church planting

3. Miracles and stuff

Now I'm not saying that mercy ministry is bad, but I think I might be able to make the case that it's just a function of the established church. It might not even be true missions in the purest sense of the word. 

What I mean is that unless giving food to a starving Ethiopian is accompanied with proclamation of the gospel, it's not. I mean, what is more important?

What does it profit a starving Ethiopian if he gains education and clean drinking water but his soul is forfeit? 

Salt

You know what I love? I love when God does things that make me giddy.

Like, knots at the top of your throat, do a punch dance in the middle of the room giddy.

I don't have any numbers at all yet, but people are saying yes to supporting me short and long-term. Almost everyone I've talked to has said yes. That blows my mind.

And this isn't because I get to go to New Zealand completely funded in no time. But it means that people believe in the mission I'm doing.

Going to New Zealand isn't sexy as a missionary field. So I will take all the confirmation I can get.

One of my supporters actually took $100 out of his wallet and handed it to me. It blew me away.
Part of why he said he wanted to support me was because of how his son looks up to me and talks about me. For a long time I wondered if I was even worth my weight in salt. God has shown me that I am, in Him.