Question: What happens when two missionaries get lost in a foreign country with no map, a non-functional GPS, and no cell phone?
Answer: God does what He wills. (Alleluia!)
Last night, Amanda and I spent some time with all the fabulous folks from St. Tomas parish in Roermond (NL) for XLT. We had managed to get to the church no problem--even early, which is a feat in itself for us!--and counted it as a blessing from God, because we didn’t even have to turn around once. It was almost like our car was on auto-pilot to the church. Anyway, it was a great night: we prayed, we praised the Lord, Amanda shared her heart in her testimony, we sang, Jesus showed up in the Eucharist (!), and we got to know some of the teens and Core from the parish. God definitely moved--there was such a spirit of freedom while we were praying with everyone! After cleaning up and putting the church hall back together, Bernadette sent us home with some St. Nicholas candy (happy feast day!) and joy in our hearts.
After saying a prayer of thanksgiving for the night and asking for safe travels, we started driving home. Amanda and I were so excited on the way back--we were talking about how great it was to pray with everyone--and so we didn’t think much of the fact that we didn’t have directions for the way back home (we’re still trying to figure out the freeway system here…it’s not quite the same as navigating the freeways back at home). We trusted that God would get us home safely. And He did…eventually.
After several wrong turns, many variations of the question “do you remember this road at all?”, innumerable signs pointing to Venlo in all directions (still have no idea where it is), driving along the Belgian border for awhile (how many countries can you visit in one night? we’re up to 3 so far…), getting directions from a well-intending (albeit incorrect) group of Dutch men in a Burger King, a GPS navigator that could somehow only manage to say “make a U-turn now,” and 2.5 hours travel time for a trip that should have taken 30 minutes, I felt like I understood Psalm 139 in a whole new light: “my travels and my rest you mark; with all my ways you are familiar.”
When I first realized we were lost, I was frustrated. I was anxious--no, I was worried. How are we going to get home? What if we get in an accident? Do we have enough gas? It’s disconcerting to be in a completely foreign place, with no means of communication, having completely zero idea where you’re going, or how you’re going to get home. But even as I’m writing this, I’m realizing that last night’s adventure was a real-life example of what my spiritual life looks like, and how God is trying to teach me to trust more in Him--to trust only in Him.
At some moment along our journey (it might have been as we were sitting underneath a bridge in before-mentioned Venlo, realizing that REALLY, only God could get us home), God’s grace won over my humanness and I let go of all my worry. We were lost. There was nothing I could do about it but trust. Trust in the face of what seemed like an almost impossible situation. Trust even though it seemed crazy because we had nothing. Trust even though I had no idea where we would end up (maybe home? maybe Poland?), even though I was driving the car.
How many times have I prayed “God, what are you doing? Where am I going? How am I going to do this?” I don’t think I could count all of them--and it seems like the longer I live as a missionary, the fewer answers I have to those questions. But when I recognize that--when I admit that I don’t have anything, that I don’t know the way, or the why, or the how--and when I completely surrender to God, abandoning myself to Him in a way that seems like insanity, then I’m able to just enjoy the journey.
Amanda and I had a great conversation in the car. We were able to see a little bit of Belgium (and she got to read French, which she was excited about). We were able to witness in a very small way to the guys who gave us directions (”no, we’re not students, we’re missionaries…”). We learned a little bit more about what it means to “pray without ceasing” and to invoke the intercession of our guardian angels. And miraculously, just when we stopped needing it, the GPS started working and we ended up back at home with gas in the tank to spare. It’s amazing what God can do with a heart that gives Him the chance.
“Wait for the Lord, take courage; be stouthearted, wait for the Lord!” (Psalm 27)
Monday, December 7, 2009
Saturday, December 5, 2009
Bereiten den Weg
“A voice cries out: In the desert prepare the way of the Lord!” (Isaiah 40:3).
Welcome to Advent, everyone (albeit a bit belatedly, but welcome all the same)! Advent is all about preparation; it’s a time the Church—in her infinite wisdom, guided by the Holy Spirit—has set aside for us to really reflect about how ready our hearts are to receive Christ, and to make them ready! Prepare the way of the Lord! We’re just about one week in, and I am really loving it so far. I’m noticing that God is moving in my heart in patterns similar to the way we celebrate His movement in His people as a whole during this season; I feel like I’m living Advent!
“Preparing the way” has been, and continues to be, a big theme for us here. The truth is, God has been working here, in this area, this community, long before we ever showed up; we just get to see how things are unfolding! And so our mission is one that works with and within God’s movement in this community. We have been entrusted with the task of being part of the preparation for the way of a Life Teen missionary presence here: to pray with and for the people we meet every day, to live a life of radical trust in the Lord, to invite other people into that life, to call people to go deeper in relationship with God, to be present to everyone and love them with the love of Christ. We’re not doing anything new as far as God is concerned; we’re just here, as St. Peter says, to “remind you of these things, even though you already know them [...] to stir you up by a reminder” (2 Peter 1:12,13). But we can’t just come in and DO—there is a lot of preparation, a lot of building, a lot of prayer, communication, and getting to know people, a lot of learning that is involved in this paving of the way.
I don’t know how much you know about laying paving stones—I’m not that familiar with the process myself, but I have been able to glean a little bit of information from my time spent at Covecrest (shout-out to Jason Ball—thanks for all your sidewalk-laying wisdom!). Paving a walkway is a meticulous process; it’s not just drop-and-go, you can’t just roll out a sidewalk in one day. First you have to get the bricks to the place you want to start laying them (ask anyone who worked on maintenance this summer at camp about how easy that is sometime). Next, you have to level out the ground where the walkway is going to be—and you have to be willing to re-smooth and re-level (with patience!) if someone happens to walk onto your path, not realizing you’re laying a walkway. Only then can you start thinking about laying the actual stones down (and by this time, most people are already sweating)! If you want to create a walkway with two straight, parallel edges, you also have to cut some of the stones to fit—and if you happen to have a curve in your walkway, there’s a lot of gradual filling in with little bits of stone to make it level and even. Every stone has to fit together just so, both for the structural integrity of the sidewalk and for aesthetics—you can’t just place stones willy-nilly wherever you want! Sometimes, this involves a painstaking process of going back over the sidewalk a second or third time to make sure the spaces where the stones meet are straight. Then there’s filling in, finishing touches, and—FINALLY!—you have a sidewalk.
Gosh. I’m tired just thinking about it!
In this process of our preparing—paving—a way here, I can sometimes feel rather like I’m doing it with a blindfold on; I can’t see where we’re going or what we’re doing, how much we’ve already done or how much still needs to be done. As a matter of fact, most of the time I don’t even know where the bricks are! Someone else (that would be God in this analogy) hands them to me and tells me where to put them—if I need to move a little to the left or right, if I need to cut some of the bricks in half, or shave off a little piece to make it fit. It’s hard to not know so much—and to realize that in the big scheme of things, my job is relatively unimportant. I’m just the manual labor! God has the vision and the plan, He has all the supplies and the knowledge of how to lay a walkway in the first place! He just needs me to do what He tells me, trusting that even if I don’t do it perfectly, He will come behind me and make all my crooked lines straight.
Thank you for your continued prayers as I prepare my own heart, so that I can better prepare the way, “...while from behind, a voice shall sound in your ears: ‘This is the way; walk in it,’ when you would turn to the right or to the left” (Isaiah 30:21).
Welcome to Advent, everyone (albeit a bit belatedly, but welcome all the same)! Advent is all about preparation; it’s a time the Church—in her infinite wisdom, guided by the Holy Spirit—has set aside for us to really reflect about how ready our hearts are to receive Christ, and to make them ready! Prepare the way of the Lord! We’re just about one week in, and I am really loving it so far. I’m noticing that God is moving in my heart in patterns similar to the way we celebrate His movement in His people as a whole during this season; I feel like I’m living Advent!
“Preparing the way” has been, and continues to be, a big theme for us here. The truth is, God has been working here, in this area, this community, long before we ever showed up; we just get to see how things are unfolding! And so our mission is one that works with and within God’s movement in this community. We have been entrusted with the task of being part of the preparation for the way of a Life Teen missionary presence here: to pray with and for the people we meet every day, to live a life of radical trust in the Lord, to invite other people into that life, to call people to go deeper in relationship with God, to be present to everyone and love them with the love of Christ. We’re not doing anything new as far as God is concerned; we’re just here, as St. Peter says, to “remind you of these things, even though you already know them [...] to stir you up by a reminder” (2 Peter 1:12,13). But we can’t just come in and DO—there is a lot of preparation, a lot of building, a lot of prayer, communication, and getting to know people, a lot of learning that is involved in this paving of the way.
I don’t know how much you know about laying paving stones—I’m not that familiar with the process myself, but I have been able to glean a little bit of information from my time spent at Covecrest (shout-out to Jason Ball—thanks for all your sidewalk-laying wisdom!). Paving a walkway is a meticulous process; it’s not just drop-and-go, you can’t just roll out a sidewalk in one day. First you have to get the bricks to the place you want to start laying them (ask anyone who worked on maintenance this summer at camp about how easy that is sometime). Next, you have to level out the ground where the walkway is going to be—and you have to be willing to re-smooth and re-level (with patience!) if someone happens to walk onto your path, not realizing you’re laying a walkway. Only then can you start thinking about laying the actual stones down (and by this time, most people are already sweating)! If you want to create a walkway with two straight, parallel edges, you also have to cut some of the stones to fit—and if you happen to have a curve in your walkway, there’s a lot of gradual filling in with little bits of stone to make it level and even. Every stone has to fit together just so, both for the structural integrity of the sidewalk and for aesthetics—you can’t just place stones willy-nilly wherever you want! Sometimes, this involves a painstaking process of going back over the sidewalk a second or third time to make sure the spaces where the stones meet are straight. Then there’s filling in, finishing touches, and—FINALLY!—you have a sidewalk.
Gosh. I’m tired just thinking about it!
In this process of our preparing—paving—a way here, I can sometimes feel rather like I’m doing it with a blindfold on; I can’t see where we’re going or what we’re doing, how much we’ve already done or how much still needs to be done. As a matter of fact, most of the time I don’t even know where the bricks are! Someone else (that would be God in this analogy) hands them to me and tells me where to put them—if I need to move a little to the left or right, if I need to cut some of the bricks in half, or shave off a little piece to make it fit. It’s hard to not know so much—and to realize that in the big scheme of things, my job is relatively unimportant. I’m just the manual labor! God has the vision and the plan, He has all the supplies and the knowledge of how to lay a walkway in the first place! He just needs me to do what He tells me, trusting that even if I don’t do it perfectly, He will come behind me and make all my crooked lines straight.
Thank you for your continued prayers as I prepare my own heart, so that I can better prepare the way, “...while from behind, a voice shall sound in your ears: ‘This is the way; walk in it,’ when you would turn to the right or to the left” (Isaiah 30:21).
Monday, November 23, 2009
Einladen
Let me tell you one thing about our life here: it’s amazing! God is continuing to show up in so many uncountable ways—I love it. Our life is about to become a whole lot busier (at least externally...I feel like we’ve been busy since we’ve arrived here!) in the next month or so, as God has given us a whole host of opportunities for reaching out and building community: a Core retreat for the team here in Süsterseel in November, an XLT at a parish in Roermond (NL), and two retreats for teens and young adults in December. We’ll also be spending some time with the Core teams from parishes in the Netherlands when Chris and Erik fly out in December—so excited to see some of our missionary family! There’s just so much, I could go on and on about all the ways God is providing us to be able to invite people into deeper relationship with Him.
This theme of invitation has come up consistently in our prayer (and more than once on my blog, ich glaube...). God is continuing to prove to us that all we can do is invite; nothing we could say, nothing we could do can inspire any conversion or change lives. Only God can change hearts. Our role is simply to say, “come and see.” But if nothing else, we’re learning that this posture of invitation has incredible results!
As I mentioned, we’re having a couple retreats for teens and young adults here in December—the Core is planning the Joyful Noise retreat for the teens, and Fr. Roland is preparing a silent retreat for young adults. Thanks be to God, we’ve had amazing response from teens who are signing up left and right to go! We’ve had to print out additional copies of retreat forms so that we can give them to more teens. One of the biggest glory moments for me came when one of the teens invited her friend from school to go on retreat with her. When we were talking about it in the Life Teen office the other day she said, “I’m a missionary!” with so much excitement in her face, it brought tears to my eyes (I think we startled her a little bit when we all shouted “Exactly! Yes, you are!” at the same time...). That’s what it’s all about! Little moments of invitation, one after the other, that lead up to more and more people saying “yes” to God and what He wants to do in their lives. (oh, and p.s. her friend is coming on the retreat. Further proof that sometimes an invitation is all you need...)
I think this section from our Rule of Life defines what this mission is all about:
“Life Teen Mission bases are welcome places—a place where people are refreshed, restored, revived, and experience God; where the focus is not to escape ‘normal life,’ but to pursue the face of God and encounter Him personally. [...] Our goal is to conform our lives to the ultimate mission of the Church, the Great Commission: ‘Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations’ (Mt 28:19). We are committed to teach young people about God’s loving plan of salvation, to empower them with prayer and the truths of the Church, and to launch them into God’s mission.”
That one moment with that one teen in the office renewed my excitement for this mission, where more and more people are feeling empowered to live a missionary life—something we are all called to do—and invite people into relationship with Him. God has been doing the work long before we got here; we’re just now getting the chance—the privilege!—to watch it all unfold.
This theme of invitation has come up consistently in our prayer (and more than once on my blog, ich glaube...). God is continuing to prove to us that all we can do is invite; nothing we could say, nothing we could do can inspire any conversion or change lives. Only God can change hearts. Our role is simply to say, “come and see.” But if nothing else, we’re learning that this posture of invitation has incredible results!
As I mentioned, we’re having a couple retreats for teens and young adults here in December—the Core is planning the Joyful Noise retreat for the teens, and Fr. Roland is preparing a silent retreat for young adults. Thanks be to God, we’ve had amazing response from teens who are signing up left and right to go! We’ve had to print out additional copies of retreat forms so that we can give them to more teens. One of the biggest glory moments for me came when one of the teens invited her friend from school to go on retreat with her. When we were talking about it in the Life Teen office the other day she said, “I’m a missionary!” with so much excitement in her face, it brought tears to my eyes (I think we startled her a little bit when we all shouted “Exactly! Yes, you are!” at the same time...). That’s what it’s all about! Little moments of invitation, one after the other, that lead up to more and more people saying “yes” to God and what He wants to do in their lives. (oh, and p.s. her friend is coming on the retreat. Further proof that sometimes an invitation is all you need...)
I think this section from our Rule of Life defines what this mission is all about:
“Life Teen Mission bases are welcome places—a place where people are refreshed, restored, revived, and experience God; where the focus is not to escape ‘normal life,’ but to pursue the face of God and encounter Him personally. [...] Our goal is to conform our lives to the ultimate mission of the Church, the Great Commission: ‘Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations’ (Mt 28:19). We are committed to teach young people about God’s loving plan of salvation, to empower them with prayer and the truths of the Church, and to launch them into God’s mission.”
That one moment with that one teen in the office renewed my excitement for this mission, where more and more people are feeling empowered to live a missionary life—something we are all called to do—and invite people into relationship with Him. God has been doing the work long before we got here; we’re just now getting the chance—the privilege!—to watch it all unfold.
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
Ich spreche nicht.
I find myself in a rather odd predicament as I’m writing this blog: I don’t know what to say.
Just to clarify, this is new and different. Words are a big deal for me. My life seems to revolve around saying things (or not saying them, or wishing they were said, or hoping someone will say them…etc.), and so I’m not exactly sure what to do with this feeling of being speechless. But I think that it’s good, and that God is actually trying to reveal a greater truth through this experience; in fact, it parallels what God has been doing here in my own heart lately.
First things first: living in Germany, there is a need for us to learn German. Yes, I know that seems like a rather obvious thing to say; but what I’ve realized is that while it’s one thing to sit in the Mission Academy and laugh about how silly it is to say random German phrases from Rosetta Stone out loud, it is quite another thing to go to the dentist while using your very limited German, or to try to withdraw money from an ATM that is all in German, or to try and be relational and minister when all you can say is “Wie geht’s?” “Wo wonnst du?” “Was machst du gern?” “Was isst du gern?” (translation: How are you? Where do you live? What do you like to do? What do you like to eat?)
I am in a continuous position of being humbled through realizing that there is so much I CAN’T say; not because I don’t want to, not because I’m afraid of offending someone, not because I’m not sure if the other person is going to be receptive to what I’m going to say…I literally just do. not. have. the. words.
As you might imagine, this frustrates me to no end.
There is so much I want to say! There are so many people I want to reach out to, and I just don’t know how!
Ah….here is the beauty of what God is teaching me.
I was praying about this the other day, and how frustrated I was with not being able to speak, to share, to talk, wondering why God would want to bring me to this place where I can’t say anything (!); and God just spoke into that (haha, “spoke,” I know…let’s just say he revealed it to me), reminding me that in all my discerning about coming here this year, in all of our prayer in preparing for this mission, in everything He’s been revealing to all of us regarding our presence here, there has never once been any mention of speaking. I’ve been so caught up in the frustration of not being able to speak, that I’ve been missing out on all the other ways God is asking me to reach out, to invite, to love. God wants to stretch and change my conceptualization of what it means to be missionary; learning how to fulfill the Gospel call to “go out to the ends of the earth and proclaim the Good News” without words.
I’m starting to realize that I’ve been exerting so much effort I didn’t really need to exert in the first place. I’ve been thinking and acting like any of this mission depends on me or my ability to share (in a speaking sense of the word) God’s plans, and that if I can’t speak, then the “real” mission hasn’t started yet. I’ve felt like I’ve failed in a lot of situations because of my lack of ability to speak. The beautiful truth of the matter, though, is that God is bigger than any words I could use to talk about Him, and that in this moment, He is calling me to be even more dependent on Him through my inability to use words—to point back to Him through my living and acting and BEING more than through anything I could ever say.
Jesus is the Light and the Truth.
It is Jesus who converts. It is Jesus who reveals. It is Jesus who speaks.
All I can do is turn back to Him, to live as best I can the truth He’s revealed to me. All I need to do is be loved by Him and to love in return—to hope in His promises, to walk in His freedom, and to be a vessel of that hope and freedom for others.
Just to clarify, this is new and different. Words are a big deal for me. My life seems to revolve around saying things (or not saying them, or wishing they were said, or hoping someone will say them…etc.), and so I’m not exactly sure what to do with this feeling of being speechless. But I think that it’s good, and that God is actually trying to reveal a greater truth through this experience; in fact, it parallels what God has been doing here in my own heart lately.
First things first: living in Germany, there is a need for us to learn German. Yes, I know that seems like a rather obvious thing to say; but what I’ve realized is that while it’s one thing to sit in the Mission Academy and laugh about how silly it is to say random German phrases from Rosetta Stone out loud, it is quite another thing to go to the dentist while using your very limited German, or to try to withdraw money from an ATM that is all in German, or to try and be relational and minister when all you can say is “Wie geht’s?” “Wo wonnst du?” “Was machst du gern?” “Was isst du gern?” (translation: How are you? Where do you live? What do you like to do? What do you like to eat?)
I am in a continuous position of being humbled through realizing that there is so much I CAN’T say; not because I don’t want to, not because I’m afraid of offending someone, not because I’m not sure if the other person is going to be receptive to what I’m going to say…I literally just do. not. have. the. words.
As you might imagine, this frustrates me to no end.
There is so much I want to say! There are so many people I want to reach out to, and I just don’t know how!
Ah….here is the beauty of what God is teaching me.
I was praying about this the other day, and how frustrated I was with not being able to speak, to share, to talk, wondering why God would want to bring me to this place where I can’t say anything (!); and God just spoke into that (haha, “spoke,” I know…let’s just say he revealed it to me), reminding me that in all my discerning about coming here this year, in all of our prayer in preparing for this mission, in everything He’s been revealing to all of us regarding our presence here, there has never once been any mention of speaking. I’ve been so caught up in the frustration of not being able to speak, that I’ve been missing out on all the other ways God is asking me to reach out, to invite, to love. God wants to stretch and change my conceptualization of what it means to be missionary; learning how to fulfill the Gospel call to “go out to the ends of the earth and proclaim the Good News” without words.
I’m starting to realize that I’ve been exerting so much effort I didn’t really need to exert in the first place. I’ve been thinking and acting like any of this mission depends on me or my ability to share (in a speaking sense of the word) God’s plans, and that if I can’t speak, then the “real” mission hasn’t started yet. I’ve felt like I’ve failed in a lot of situations because of my lack of ability to speak. The beautiful truth of the matter, though, is that God is bigger than any words I could use to talk about Him, and that in this moment, He is calling me to be even more dependent on Him through my inability to use words—to point back to Him through my living and acting and BEING more than through anything I could ever say.
Jesus is the Light and the Truth.
It is Jesus who converts. It is Jesus who reveals. It is Jesus who speaks.
All I can do is turn back to Him, to live as best I can the truth He’s revealed to me. All I need to do is be loved by Him and to love in return—to hope in His promises, to walk in His freedom, and to be a vessel of that hope and freedom for others.
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