Meet J.C.

So...we're leaving in 3 hours.  Since we've gone before we think we can just wait until the last minute to pack... remind me not to do that next year.  Hence a short intro....

- jc

Mick 6/9

Lessons in faith even before I go…

This week at our SEA team meeting we watched a 10-minute video of a previous trip to SEA that members of our team took in 2005.

I was mesmerized.

I can't wait to see these people. Not in some pedantic "I'm American and you're not" kind of way, but truly to meet members of my family that I have never met.

There was footage of kids in the refugee camps singing songs and playing games and sharing in a joy that I take for granted here. It's easy to have joy in the states…we have little to no conflict. It's easy to go and play games or to sing songs about God, our churches aren't going anywhere any time soon.

But it's also easier to take these things for granted. If I were a Christian in Burma, for example, I may be singing praises and learning lessons one day and the next day, my church could be gone, or my pastor/leader could be arrested and taken away, or my parents could be killed in wartime violence.

How much I take for granted the life I live and the privileges I enjoy. Sure I've heard this message before and it has usually provoked guilt in me. But this time, it's real. It's no the guilt-manipulation of some far off deity telling me to clean my plate because there are children starving in China. I feel a sense of the preciousness of life in Christ: an appreciation for the mystery that God himself would make a way for me to partake in real moments with him and how tenuous that can become in a culture of affluence.

By our standards, I am not rich. I am lower middle-class at best. By SEA standards I own the cattle on a thousand hills. Yet, I am often dissatisfied. I lack. I want. I lust. I see my spiritual life like a consumer, looking for the next Costco-sized box of God that I can experience.

Oh, that God would change my heart and give me the courage to ask Him for the things I lack in my own spiritual poverty. So that I would not consume my faith or look for the next big thing in God, but that I would hunger and thirst for righteousness and therefore be satisfied.

Kahle 6/1/08

In case you’re curious…

I currently have the flu…and typhoid, Hepatitis A and B, and polio. That’s right, I’ve essentially paid the travel clinic of Santa Anna to inject me with the very diseases I was trying to avoid. Sure they‘re very weakened, something supposedly easy for my immune system to handle, BUT what if there’s a Rocky in the group. Some small but tenacious virus that is down for the count but is determined to go the distance with my immune system and makes a record come back that just wears it down and WHAM I’ve got polio. And then my very practical friends would say, “Well you asked for it.” And they would be right, I asked and paid for exactly that. 

Speaking of boxing, it feels like I got punched in the arm. Punched in the arm by a beefy guy with an equally beefy class ring. But I’m not complaining. I can take it. 

Guess what else I can take. Money. I’ve been wracking my brain lately looking for more relationships I can exploit for money for Jesus. It’s tricky. Support letters are tricky. You don’t want give too much detail because you want to respect people’s time, but you want them to know enough to be excited about it and to know what they’re getting into. You want to bring up the money part soon enough that they can glance at the email and know what you want, but you don’t want to just throw it out so soon that they think that you’re just another person asking for money. You want it to sound professional, but you don’t want to be impersonal. Hrmph. It’s just tricky.

Anyway that’s the trip related stuff I’ve been dealing with this week. So now you know and now you can feel in loop. You’re in! We’re in! We’re in this together, my pain is your pain. I hope that’s just as fulfilling for you as it is for me.

-mkm-