A mustard seed eh...

Last week I had one of those light bulb moments, that kind of time that you just stop and have a big “OOHHH” moment. I was reading through Numbers where Moses sends out the 12 spies to check out the promise land. The paragraph that I read about that section of the bible was the cause for the “oh” moment. What it said was simply this. “ Caleb didn’t have great faith in God, He had faith in a great God” suddenly it hit me, “faith as a mustard seed”! it makes sense! Faith as a mustard seed actually makes sense! I feel a bit stupid admitting to this, but honestly that verse in Mathew never made sense to me. Yes, after 4 years of Youth for Jesus training (one month a year), after going through most of Witness for Life which included ARISE, after a year of bible working, yes even after teaching how to bible work, now teaching the bible here in Africa, after being a Christian for about 5 years, that verse just didn’t click with my mind. But it has finally become senseacal to me. Lets put it this way, if you have infinity and you divide it in half how much of that infinity is left? Well… infinity is still left. You can’t divide infinity and get anything less then infinity, it’s a mathematical and philosophical impossibility. When you divide infinity by anything the end result will still always be infinity! So, if you have an infinitesimal faith in an infinite God, even say as a mustard seed, as long as that faith is in a Great and infinite God that faith is still adequate, to say the least! When we take the burden of needing to have some mighty and impressive faith off of us, and we put the burden of being mighty and impressive on the One who already is, it just makes so much more sense. God doesn’t call us to have great faith, rather He calls us to have faith that He is great! Faith as a mustard seed!

And Jesus said to them, Because of your unbelief: for truly I say to you, If you have faith as a grain of mustard seed, you shall say to this mountain, Remove hence to yonder place; and it shall remove; and nothing shall be impossible to you. Mathew 17:20

Death burial and Resurrection

There we were, at the river getting ready to start the baptisms, the pastor’s rose their hands and started off with what I assume (but couldn’t understand since it was in Lingala the local language) was “Because soandso loves God and has dedicated her life to Him, I baptize her in the name of the Father, and the Son and in the name of the Holy Spirit, Amen.” And then here comes the best part, the death, burial, and resurrection! Last Sabbath we had the great pleasure of getting to see this 51 times! Out of every experience of working for God, nothing quite beats seeing someone being baptized for me, (except perhaps helping someone except Jesus as there savior and deciding to be baptized, there’s only one word in the English language that can describe it… AMAZING) When we think of baptism and simply watching someone getting dunked under water for a brief minute it all seems a little boring and monotonous, but next time you see it think about it, really think about it. Think about how this persons life has just changed, think about the amazingness of the choice they just made, and yes think how this person has now made the choice to be in the kingdom! From sickness and sorrow to joy and peace, from despair and misery to love and health! Next time you see it, make sure you really see it, see it for what it really is, a new life. These baptisms were after and through Gods greatness an evangelistic meeting. Keith Mosier preached in Swahili and a local pastor named Ongasa translated into Lingala. Every night there were round 2,000 people coming out to listen. And this all took place in the middle of town! We rented out the town center and set up our big horn speakers, and blasted all of the area. We are looking forward to many more baptisms once they finish getting cleared. We have happily planted a new church and CFM’s (Congo Frontline Mission) first plant! We also finished our first lay-training program and have rained over 50 lay-men and woman as local missionaries, God is so good! As soon as CFM gets the land cruiser that we bought about a month and half ago delivered (Congo has VERY slow delivery times) we will be going out to small villages to place them and visit them in their new field of mission. So all in all the time has been very good, the garden that I planted is now starting to grow! But the unfortunate thing is that I’ll never get to taste the food from it. I have 6 more weeks before I come back to the states! Wow, oh how time flies, it seems like just last week that I got here, and now I’m learning the languages (not very good mind you, but I can mostly get around on my own) and instead of getting settled, I’m thinking about packing up and heading back to the states. I’ve been here for about 4 months now, I initially was planning on being here for a year but due to some problems with time I decided on 6 months. But I am ready to go back to school and get that over with so that I can come to the mission field full time. But yes that’s the update on the Congo, God Bless.