Home is where the HEART is..

I remember the first time I got sick here…

I mean, REALLY head-down-the-toilet-for-two-hours kind of sick.  I was in Nazaret and had just finished my first reunion with the staff there at Women at Risk- a site I had visited two years prior to our return as a family.  I was with Nigist who is now on our staff and who had carried a vision to work with the women on the street of Zion church since her and her husband had planted the church right there smack BANG in the middle of the red light district ten years earlier.

The sickness came on just as we were getting onto the bus in Nazaret for the 45km ride back to Debre Zeit.  It was as if the enemy of the vision was saying…”Let the games begin!”  The enemy of our souls and the souls of the women who were about to be rescued out of HIS clutches put his fists up as if to pick a fight. 

Here the war intensified as we started to make progress towards the vision we both carried.

Just this past week, we met with another NGO who had been given funding to reach the street children and prostituted women of Debre Zeit.  He said to us that what they were asked to do, they couldn’t.  He said “THIS ministry is a CALLING  and it is serious spiritual warfare that takes time to battle.  We don’t have time or resources for that” the director of this mission based NGO concluded.  I couldn’t agree more.  From the GET GO, there has been a war raging that continually we have to guard against and then when we don’t, we have to recover from.  Better be on the “guarding against” side then on the “recovering from” side of the battle- even if it IS “easier to ask for forgiveness then to ask for permission.”

So we are sitting on the bus, buzzing about the meeting we had just had and something in my body told me that it wanted to come out.  We disembark and I find the closest toilet which was in the public bus station and it made it’s presence known by the horrific stench that caused whatever was wanting to come out of my body, to retreat back in.  It held through the next toilet which again begged for a clean and I wasn’t about to clean it.  We have been in the country less than two months and the cultural differences are still being adjusted to.  Clean toilets are still my pet peeve. 

We find a hotel across the road, I’m still holding it in yet the time where this is possible, is running OUT.  So I find a toilet that’s able to capture my stomach’s contents a few times over.  I’m getting put off Mirinda orange with every hurl.  I think about the woman of God who awaits me in the waiting room of the hotel and how great her faith is for healing.  I ask her to pray.  I think about my children and husband at home who await my return and it suddenly dawns on me where HOME is. 

Throughout life, never does “HOME” beckon more than when I am sick or tired.  The call of my pillow and my bed is never LOUDER than when my body calls for it to rest, to recuperate, to heal. 

So here I am, sicker than ever in this new land we have moved to and all the questions of where home is fade away.  Home was calling me and it was calling from Debre Zeit- not Auckland or New Zealand but it called within the confines of Ethiopia. 

This was home.  Home was where my heart was and where my family and I had settled.  This had become our new default when we opened up our search engine and typed in “Home”.  The default was Ethiopia.  Yet our old one still existed in our “History” folder.  Auckland, New Zealand.  This is our other home- the one that holds our heritage, our family- the one that calls when we are sick of our new Home and the things here that frustrate and stir. 

I tell my kids “the bible says not to murmur or complain” this week and they pull me up on my own breaking of this value.  I do it.  These days, far too often.  I repent and move on trying not to do it again.

But on days where we feel ripped off, begged off one too many times, and the electricity doesn’t work for five days, your other home calls all THE MORE LOUDER.  Especially when your eldest son plays his first big rugby game in a huge stadium and his team wins the championship...

And your older sister has just had twin babies and is sending you pics all the time and you realize that this time will pass and they will grow without you’re presence and not only them but the four cousins that have come into the world previously without being introduced to my children over the last three years...it can't pretend that that is easy.

Dallin and Pierce, cousin five and six who have been born while their cousins have been away in Ethiopia!

Sometimes there are days where pain and joy mix as sweetly as peanut butter and jam.  Because the battle here is being won.

In the lives of the women who we work with, battles are being won and the clutch of the enemy is being loosed  Yet on the other hand, the realities of living life as a foreigner in a third world country still exist.  And we asked for this life- I hear the little voice say- and we knew what we were getting ourselves in for…BUT as much as we know the call and obeyed the call, a break from it all and a return to the home that holds our history, continues to INCREASE its volume. 

The battle is being won on the home front too.  This week, we had a cool family time in the midst of the power strike and I tell my kids how when I met their father we were going on a camp and I was “helping” my Aunty and Uncle put together the lists of the teams who would be at the camp.  I sneakily put the new boy’s name (ie Asaua) on the same list as mine.  We end up having to do an item together as a team and we sing this song- a song that at the time of telling the story, totally eluded me- but it’s a song that rings in my heart today. 

The thing is, No matter where home is, if your heart is with Jesus, He is everywhere and we just need to find HIM in the struggle and the pain.  For where He is, there you can be and if you find Him, you find peace and comfort for your soul… And that’s what keeps me going

Here are the words to the song -

I am weak but Thou art strong

Jesus keep me from all wrong

I’ll be satisfied as long

As I walk, let me walk close to Thee

Just a closer walk with Thee

Jesus grant my humble plea

Daily draw me close to Thee

Let it be, dear Lord, let it be.

10 things I had never done before we came to Ethiopia

Tomorrow it is the third anniversary of our departure from New Zealand which means that in thirteen days, we will celebrate our third anniversary of being here.  Boy how time has flown and so much has changed, including dynamics within our family…In our relationships, in our daily lives and in our habits.

There are some things I never thought I would find myself doing until I came here.  Things I had spent so much time instilling into my children have soon gone out the window- like “don’t eat with your hands”- total waste of time.  So I thought I would make a list- not just of things that I have found myself doing, but also the members of my family.  The list could have gone a lot longer but we have limited it to these ten.

1.  Ate a green orange.  So we came here from the land of fresh fruit and vegetables, complaining about the lack thereof in our new found home.  One of the disappointing things for us was the fact that we couldn’t find any orange oranges.  They were all green- as if they had been picked prematurely and that was okay.  While for the first year or so, this bothered us to the point where we would totally abstain, now, we get excited if we find out that these green oranges are cheap and we can buy a few kilos.  Sour and pip infested, we can consume a kilo in a split second.

2.  Picked my nose in public.  Dust and dry environments call for dried up mucus casing your nose.  It’s a known fact and can cause even black dry snots to form in your nose, disallowing you to breathe.  So the fact is, when you gotta pick, you gotta pick!  Not only is this habit culturally acceptable it is quite common and very contagious.  Like a yawn.  You see someone else do it, and your body naturally responds by wanting to do the same thing.  Asaua has even discovered that by picking his nose in public, that he in fact gets less attention by onlookers than he would if he did otherwise.  It’s always good to know what will make one fit in more.

3.  Drove a bajaj.  Actually, we had never ridden in a bajaj until we came to Ethiopia.  It’s now one of our four methods of transportation- other than the horse and cart, the minibus taxi or catching a ride with our friends.  So we have a trusted bajaj driver who has become a family friend, who we can send to get our kids, pick up some materials for our house, get visitors to their desired destinations and teach us how to drive.  On one clear road where most bajaj drivers learn to drive, I have also done the same- this is what I do when I need to get my driving fix. 

4.  Held hands with someone of the same sex for an extended amount of time.  This one’s from Asaua.  It’s true though that most of us have found ourselves been caught in the clutch of someone else’s hand for a longer length of time than we are comfortable with- to the point where we are walking down the road holding that person’s hand in brotherly affection.  What can start off as a shaking of hands can soon become a holding of hands.  And we’ve come to accept it’s perfectly fine for us (as long as the feeling of affection is mutual) but can still initiate a chuckle when we see it with other people.   Yet at the same time it can also create a sigh of relief as we see our brother’s and sister’s here defy consciousness to be so closely reunited with a love one that they have to physically be in close proximity to them. 

5.  Cooked by fire.   Now I’m not talking about Barbecues or gas stoves.  I’m talking about a small metal fire cooker that we originally bought so we could freshly roast some coffee beans on it and look professional while doing it.  Never did we think that we would need to use this many times over for cooking our meals when power would cease to supply.  Personally I have only done this once or twice.  Asaua and the kids have done it more frequently as they have greater patience for it and see it as a novelty.  But what I have also learnt here is that what is a novelty to one person can be a nuisance to another.  And also what is at one time a novelty to one person, can soon also become a nuisance to that very same person.  Bring in no.6.

6.  Rode in a taxi with 23 people.  This is my personal record and I was excited to get a record when a friend of mine told me her record of 21 people.  This is in a 12 seater van where four people fit on two seats, two people sit on the tire hub and maybe a couple of kids are squeezed onto their parents laps.  Of course it’s not only the kids who are on people’s laps- everyone is basically on everyone else’s laps.  My funniest moment in this situation was when we had jumped in a van coming from a distant suburb and more and more people had been added to the van.  A visiting friend of ours was squashed in the back and yelled out to me in the front- “BY THE WAY, DID I MENTION I DON’T LIKE PEOPLE TOUCHING ME?!”  No one in the van other than us could understand what she was saying. It was hilarious.

7.  Ate raw meat.  It’s a delicacy here and originates in a specific region of Ethiopia called the Gurage region.  It is often mixed with butter and beriberi but it basically looks like the packaged minced beef you would buy from the supermarket.  I found out about this delicacy from the ladies at Women at Risk in Nazaret back in 2009 when we went around and asked them what their favourite food was.  This was top of the list.  Eww! Was my first response.  But after you live here for so long and see other people eat it and have it offered to you, it becomes tempting.  So on a couple of occasions now, I have eaten it.  One of those occasions was the girls’ 13^th birthday, after which I was sick for a few days.  At least we can say we tried it!

8.  Preached through a translator.  Actually I hadn’t preached at all in a church setting before we came to Ethiopia I don’t recall.   I had taught in Sunday School or in Youth Group, had shared my testimony in church but had never actually PREACHED to the Sunday morning service.  Funny thing is though, I had always wanted to.  Not to be on stage or to get recognition, but because I felt called to, gifted to and inspired to.  Here we often get invitations to speak (not just Asaua, but ME too!) as having missionary status means we are here to bring the gospel, so it is what we are expected to do.  Doing it through a translator though, adds another dimension.  It calls for trust (because you don’t know if they will actually relay what you’ve said) and patience (because there is a massive delay on both parts as each part is shared.)  We have had many translators here and appreciate each and every one of them for their patience in trying to understand our accents and often random terminologies!

9.    Checked eggs and milk before we used it.  We have made many purchases of milk (which we have to buy in a 500ml non-transparent plastic bag) where the contents have sat in unpowered refrigerators for a day or more and have often ended up on our breakfast cereal.  The same with eggs which have sometimes turned out black or rotten when we have thrown it into our already half prepared cake or omelette mix.  Maybe we should have thought about this earlier but the solutions to such things that we normally take for granted, like fresh milk and eggs, don’t automatically come to mind.  So we have learnt to pour the milk or crack the egg into a separate bowl BEFORE throwing in with some other food.  We hate to waste food here.

10.  Been into a brothel.  While brothel conjures up a different image in different countries, here (in Debre Zeit) it is nothing flash or secretive.  It’s an open room with a bar at the front and a bed either at the front or in the back room.  It’s a place you can freely go into at any given time of the day.  While I never thought this is where we would be, we have found ourselves in a brothel.  The reason being is that our church neighbours a whole bunch of brothels.  They are not just work places for prostituted women but they are also the homes of them and their gorgeous children.  It's not beyond God to go into brothels.  In fact, we can often find Him there- waiting for His children to come and rescue His beloved. 

So we have changed in so many ways.  Living overseas does that to you.  So let us know what you think?! 

Created to be SENT!

From before time began God had a plan. He had a plan for you and me. In fact He said before we were born our days were already written.

Psalms 139:16

Your eyes saw my unformed substance;

in your book were written, every one of them,

the days that were formed for me,

when as yet there was none of them.

Gods intention for us was even greater than our intention for ourselves. Look at the next two verses..

Psalms 139:17-18

How precious to me are your thoughts, O God!

How vast is the sum of them!

If I would count them, they are more than the sand.

I awake, and I am still with you.

I AM STILL WITH YOU! Powerful words. We find them in Matthew 28. In what is called the "Great Commission."

Matthew 28:18-20

And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

In some translations, the last statement reads, "to the ends of the earth", a thought that is carried on through in Acts 1:8

Acts 1:8

But ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you:and ye shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judaea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth.

I am with you even to the ends of the earth. These are the final instructions Jesus gave to the simple men he called his disciples. Where, may you ask, is the "ends of the earth"?   Certainly back when these instructions were given, the known world was a lot smaller.  But in Matthew 12 we see a reference to the ends of the earth in that day.

Matthew 12:42

The queen of the south shall rise up in the judgment with this generation, and shall condemn it:for she came from the uttermost parts of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon; and, behold, a greater than Solomon is here.

This text refers to the uttermost parts of the earth as the the place where Queen Sheba (the Queen of the South) came from.  Ie. The ends of the earth was in fact, Ethiopia (a fact I was just made aware of by author of Jesus in Ethiopia- James Rankin.)

They disciples were not the ones who would go to the ends of the earth though.  Now the ends of the earth are so much greater.  We can now Google Earth our way around in just a few seconds. The ends of the earth are for you and I.

I always find myself going back to Gen 1:27. It reminds us that we were created in the image of God. He perfectly created us to be a reflection of his nature here on earth.

Genesis 1:27-28

So God created man in his own image,

in the image of God he created him;

male and female he created them.

And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”

Here is our first command to go into the earth. He says to fill the earth. Not to just stay in one place. He says to fill.. Which by definition means "to put someone or something into a space so that is completely or almost completely full." This is the first instruction of mankind.

For this to happen it means there must be some travelling, expanding of existing borders, sometimes self established borders, sometimes borders that are established by nature or governments. But this movement of man was established from the beginning of time.

So of course when God establishes something, the enemy attempts to disestablish it. He questions it in the minds of people... Did God really say that? He whispers oh so subtly. He creates fear in the hearts of people so that they don't ever experience their potential in life. He distorts Gods word to bring about confusion. I know this from first hand experience. From a young age God called me to travel the world but from a young age the enemy planted fear in my heart about travelling. From the time we were in Australia to the times where I had to go to camp in my teenage years- I feared leaving HOME.  That seed was planted in my mind. But the word of God says

2 Corinthians 10:3-5

For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war after the flesh: (For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strong holds;) Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ;

Knowing God is key to bringing down the lies that the enemy tries to place against us.

So God, what are you like?

 If we were created in your image, 

what then am 

I meant TO BE like?

There are many aspects and attributes of God that we could study. Our beginning verses point out some.

He is EVER present. He is OMNIPRESENT.

He is TRIUNE. This is one attribute that sets our faith apart from others. He is three in one. God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit.  Here's some proof ;)

1 John 5:7

For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost:and these three are one.

John 1:1

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

The Word is God. Jesus is The Word. Jesus was sent by the Father into the world. He was with God but He was also God. For humans, it would make no sense, but for God, He supersedes sense.

John 3:16-17

For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved.

God sent His Son. Jesus testified of this over and over again. Just in the book of John, We find Jesus referring to God as the one who "sent me" 33 times. Verses like this one we find in John 4.

John 4:34

Jesus saith unto them, My meat is to do the will of him that sent me, and to finish his work.

Then as He gets ready to depart from this earth, he prays this prayer to His Father for His disciples:

John 17:17-20

Sanctify them through thy truth:thy word is truth. As thou hast sent me into the world, even so have I also sent them into the world. And for their sakes I sanctify myself, that they also might be sanctified through the truth. Neither pray I for these alone, but for them also which shall believe on me through their word;

That's YOU and ME. As WE believe through the Word the apostle John left for us, we enter into the "Recipient" file of Jesus' email He sends out right here. He is saying that He has sent US! Hmmm.

John 20:21-22

Then said Jesus to them again, Peace be unto you:as my Father hath sent me, even so send I you. And when he had said this, he breathed on them, and saith unto them, Receive ye the Holy Ghost

John 14:26

But the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you.

God the Father sent the Son, the Son sent the Holy Spirit, The Father sent the Holy Spirit, so as we were created in their image, so we too were created to be sent.

God is in the sending business. He is the greatest human trafficker of all time. But unlike those who are trafficked for evil and under great deception nowadays, God directs His traffic of believers into the world to carry His light and truth.  To be carriers of His Love and Presence.

At the end of His prayer to the Father, Jesus says this

John 17:25-26

O righteous Father, even though the world does not know you, I know you, and these know that you have sent me. I made known to them your name, and I will continue to make it known, that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them.”

As Jesus was about to leave this earth, He knew that He needed bodies in which to carry out the Fathers will. To carry that great love that the Father had for His son into the world. He wanted that Love to be known in the world. So He I looks for some love carriers. Even if they are jars of clay, they can still carry his love treasure.

Romans 10:12-15

For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; for the same Lord is Lord of all, bestowing his riches on all who call on him. For “everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.”

How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching? And how are they to preach unless they are sent? As it is written, “How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news!”

The pinnacle of the matter is here. If we are not sent, people will not get to hear the gospel. They won't hear it so they can't believe it. People, Gods most prized possession, the reflection of His image will miss out on the destiny here on earth and in eternity that He had lined up for them. All because we don't understand that that desire in us to go into the world is an innate desire that reflects the nature of the One who created us in His image.

I think about that in our life. What if we never came? What if these ladies never experienced the love of God that He had placed in us? Oh we have a great responsibility. It is an act of worship. Of shifting our focus off our own desires and comforts and letting God live His will through us. Abandoning our own agenda for His agenda. That's exactly what Jesus did and expects us to do too.

And if God can use people like US, surely He can use ANYONE. He wants to use those who are willing to GO!