Posted on February 24th, 2009 by admin
Today they did a bronchoscopy in Madrid and found that the bronchial tube is down to 6 mm which is half of it’s normal width but more than Dr. Starnes in Cincy expected at this point. The Doc here said that the dilations (widening of my bronchial tube every three months) will not do any good and he recommends either just living with the 6 mm bronchial tube (which he says will hold at that width) or having another invasive surgery to fix the stenosis (pinching of the bronchial tube like a bent garden hose). I am waiting to hear what Dr. Starnes in Cincy thinks of this. She is supposed to be calling the doc in Spain today to talk about his findings. Then she is supposed to call me and tell me her opinion.
I’ll let you know when I hear from her. I am not sure if this is good news, bad news, or no news at all. We’re drawing no assumptions yet, just waiting on and trusting in our great God of heaven.
Meanwhile I have a wonderful wife back in North Africa who has just learned to drive stick shift and is venturing out all alone with the car for the first time. The roads and traffic in North Africa are nothing like Europe or America. She is doing great. She actually got rear-ended today by a girl about 20 years old. In the traditional Muslim style of handling things the girl went hysterical for about 20 minutes saying it was my wife’s fault. Right. It’s usually the fault of the person in front of you who isn’t moving, right? So a police officer arrived and this girl continued to yell at the police officer. My wife left the scene since minimal damage was done to hear car while the two (along with a considerable crowd) continued to yell. Pretty proud of her. She’s a tough lady (and beautiful). I’ve only been gone 36 hours and look at me falling apart.
Posted on February 22nd, 2009 by admin
We started the Ancient Prophet’s study this week and it’s already drawing fire, so I guess it working!
Suffian went on Thursday afternoon with a portable DVD player, the Prophet’s DVD, and his Bible to the house of two friends. Here tribes are very important. The connection one has with his tribe or those from his village is life long and close to being as strong as an immediate family. So Suffian is from a village of 200 people. Few people stay in Suffian’s village (or villages like it) since there is no work there. Once a boy grows up he moves out to find work. The families in these villages often have 10 kids or more. As a result, these mountain villages are like population factories for the cities. Many of them never learn to read well or read at all. Suffian is the exception. So, Suffian held the Bible study with two young men living in our city from his village. They called a couple other and by the end of it, he had shared the story of Adam and the protoevangelium (first promise of the Messiah) with eight.
This caused no small stir in our city. One of the young men at the Bible study works with Suffian on a construction crew of more than 30 men. Yesterday, Saturday, the word had spread like wild fire that Suffian was a Christian and was trying to convert people. They laughed and said, “Come see the Christian!”. All day they blasted Suffian with questions. “Why do you worship the cross? Why do you think Jesus was God’s Son? Why don’t you believe in the prophet Mohammed? etc) Suffian boss advised him to shutup before some killed him. Suffian informed him that he couldn’t be scared shut by threats of death. So, seems like the prophets study is working.
Morad found an open audience with two young men from the south of our country named Abd Allah (They both have the same name). At least once a week we go out and witness to people in parks. This is how Morad explains to me the normal conversation between him and person x:
M- Pretty day.
X- Yep.
(Other pleasantries exchanged)
M- So are you a Muslim?
X- Of course! Aren’t you?
M- No, I’m a Christian.
X- So you aren’t North African?
M- Yes I am.
X- That’s impossible. We don’t have any Christians here.
M- Sure you do. There’s a bunch of us.
X- So your mom and dad were Christians?
M- No. They were Muslims.
X- Why did you become a Christian?
M- I’d love to tell you why…
From there Morad shares the gospel starting with Adam. He has started a few Ancient Prophets Bible studies that way. This is a big prayer request. So many North Africans don’t even know there are Christian in their country and neither have the ever heard the gospel. We have much work to do.
Posted on February 19th, 2009 by admin
We are starting this week an outreach using a Bible study called “The Ancient Prophets”. It is a series of six lessons about the prophets and how they all pointed to Christ. They are in order: Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, David, and Isaiah. We take the “God’s Story” film recorded in the North African dialect of Arabic which shows the stories of all these prophets. Many people we know are curious about Christianity but not ready to believe. Instead of shooting the whole gospel at them at once and then having nothing else to talk about, we are going to try to do it in six sessions in order to get the seeker more into the Bible.
To teach each lesson will take about one hour. The video part each time is about 15 minutes and then the rest is question and answer and a conclusion with an explanation of the prophecies and how it meets our need for forgiveness of sin. I taught the first lesson on Tuesday to four guys and this week we are all going to teach this same lesson to an unbelieving seeker. Suffian is sharing it with two guys from his village tomorrow. I and Munir will be meeting with two different guys on Sunday to do this lesson.
One cool thing we are doing with the money that was donated for the mp3 players since we had more given than we needed is that we are buying two portable dvd players. These allow us to take the DVD anywhere and teach this lesson. Please pray. I’ll report more.
Posted on February 13th, 2009 by admin
I am watching with interest the first few days of America’s new president from North Africa. It is noticed here but not really a big deal. They seem to think that it’s all politics as usual. For me, as for many Christians, the policy of greatest cause for anger is his radical position on abortion and exporting abortion. As I think about the millions of babies that Americans have murdered since Roe vs. Wade my mind goes to something I have been studying recently. Abortion actually played a role in the incredible growth of Christianity in the first three centuries.
Turns out that Pagans who had fully bought into the Hellenized philosophy of the day which prevailed, worshiped in the body above all things. So they worshiped sex as a god. They even had a god who was the god of sex. Men often never got married but had frequent sex with many women. Thus many women became pregnant without a husband to promise to take care of the child and as a result aborted that child. Men also could order an abortion without the consent of his wife. Baby girls were often aborted or “exposed” which is the practice of simply letting a child die after birth and in some cases leaving the still leaving baby to the wild beasts. This is evident in a Roman General far from his wife who had found out that she had given birth to a baby girl. He commanded her to “expose” the baby since he would soon return and they would try again and see if they couldn’t get a boy. The worship of sex above human life reminds me of western culture and specifically America.
As a result of the gross medicine practiced in those days, abortions often ended in the death of both the mom and the baby. One particularly fatal method of abortion was drugging. The woman would take just enough lethal drugs to kill the fetus but keep her alive. Since people have different reactions to drugs, the woman would often die. These abortions was the norm in for Roman Pagans and even the law at certain times. See Plato’s REPUBLIC. Other instruments used for abortions were crude and left the woman sterile or dead. As a result there were much fewer women than men and a decreasing popultion. The eventual thinning of numbers as a result was a major cause for the fall of the Roman Empire.
You can read how this contrasts to the Christians by their belief in the teachings of Jesus that we still have in the Bible. A Christian man who loved Jesus, as a general rule, married a wife and loved his family. He believed in life. He and his wife were pure on their wedding day. Justin Martyr was one of the first to petition Rome for the outlawing of abortion. Combined with two great plagues that killed off many pagans, the Christian population grew from .4% to over 20% in just over 200 years.
So since the abortion of millions of pagan babies led to a growing percentage of Christians in the Roman Empire, should we be happy about this trend that is repeating itself in America? God forbid. However I do believe we can learn a couple things from history:
1. The heart of the king is in the hand of the Lord. We do not know what things God accomplishes even through evil leaders. We can rest at night knowing God is on the throne.
2. America is NOT the city on a hill. Jesus gave that specific, historic description to his disciples. Don’t confuse America with Christianity like the Muslim world does. The church flourished and grew in the Roman Empire and it will do the same today in America. We will continue to send out missionaries and preach the gospel at home. We must preach that truth.
3. We as Christians should still fight abortion like Justin Martyr and the early Christians did. Sure, it’s not the babies of born-again Christians that are being aborted (for the most part) but should we have any less compassion on the unbelieving girl and her baby?
I was just encouraged to see the parallels to the generation I am living in and the generation that saw such amazing growth of the Gospel. May you be encouraged as well to live for Christ.
Posted on February 5th, 2009 by admin
The forth lesson that I learned from Pastor Austin’s visit last week is:
You can really get people excited about suffering by preaching the Bible!
The believers here were ready to attack hell with a water pistol after Bro. Austin finished preaching through the Acts 4,6, and 28. Bro. Austin left on Friday and on Sunday 6 of us went out on the streets to witness. Three nationals, myself, and my two Latin American friends. In about an hour and a half we had shared the gospel with 12 people who had never heard it before. A couple of them left angry, a couple of them argued, but more than a few listened. It was the perfect culmination to the teaching of the week. Too often we learn and don’t use. We are working now at following up on those who we witnessed to last week and are going out again and again.
Posted on February 5th, 2009 by admin
The third thing I learned from Pastor Austin’s visit was a lesson I may have heard around 1,000 times:
My aim is to be the coach, not the whole team.
I was planning on going south to disciple a new believer and follow up on contacts once every two weeks. The idea was this: Why do that when you can teach Suffian the same lesson you would teach on Sunday, send him down on Monday where he can stay till Wednesday following up on contacts and staying in the home of the new Christian and other contacts. Then he can return every Thursday, be part of the church services like before, get training, and return the next Monday. So that’s what we’re going to do. Train a running back instead of running the ball ourselves. Sure does accomplish more, give others an opportunity to minister, and saves me from killing myself.
I have a tendency to think that I need to do it to make sure it gets done right. The truth is I need to do EVERYTHING EXCEPT do it to make sure it gets done. What do I mean by everything? Well, I need to train those who will do it. I need to repeat the training. I need to provide them with the resources to get the job done. I need to follow up and check their job. I need to help them correct their mistakes. Then I need to train them again.
The last two Sundays we have gone out after our morning service to sit down with some solo fellow on a bench somewhere and share the gospel with him. Six of us went out last week and four this week (one was travelling and one was working). It has been awesome to see the power of multiplied affects. Over 20 people have received a New Testament and heard the Gospel in person. It’s awesome to hear the stories of the conversations the believers are having with Muslims. I will write about that next time, Insha Allah.
Posted on February 5th, 2009 by admin
Yesterday I shared the first and greatest lesson I learned from Pastor Austin’s visit.
The second lesson is:
Don’t hold back. Life is short.
For some reason I found myself holding back. Instead of trusting God for the finances, for the manpower, for the wisdom, for the strength, etc I hold back and don’t start things that I know will lead to greater productivity and more souls saved. I guess this is partly from my fiscally conservative personality and partly from my fear of “getting kicked out”. The truth is, I would rather be kicked out for accomplishing something for Christ (or at least attempting to accomplish something) than to stay and waste years plodding along. I have asked myself this question, “I could accomplish X in Y (unknown amount of years) by going all out. Or I could go cautiously and slow down Y by three times, still accomplish X except in Yx3. Which one makes most sense with just one short life in view?”
There are a couple things that I keep rolling over in my mind but don’t just step out and do. Here’s another Pastor Austin quote: “If I were here, I would go for broke.” I guess that’s what Paul, Peter, and all the rest did after Christ ascended.
