Ee-Taow!!!

So, its been a couple of weeks, I know! Its just that so much has happened and I could write a novel about it all if I had the time and energy. So, maybe a little rundown of the last couple of weeks, but I'm sorry for lack of details. I would absolutely LOVE to talk about it more in detail later though!

So, the weekend of the 28th a guy named Justin spent the weekend with us (He's a Messianic Jew--and he leads summer pilgrimages in Israel for college students-it sounds awesome, I know!). He took us to a local Messianic Synagogue and shared the entire layout of the bible with us, and how ALL OF IT points to Christ. There is so much in scriptures that I never saw before--how many times the word "nations" is mentioned, and the parables, and Jesus' life. I learned so much about Jesus' culture and His humanness but also the incredible part of him. His ministry was only for 3 years, but in those three years the world was changed forever, it was turned upside down. This man is Jesus, Emmanuel, Messiah, Healer, Redeemer, Lover (not that kind of lover! He's a lover of people in its truest sense). I learned the incredible parallels in the feeding of the 5000 in John 6:1-15 and psalm 23 and also the comparison of the details in the feeding of the 5000 and the feeding of the lesser talked about 4000 in Mark 8:1-13. It opened my eyes a whole lot to God's heart and who Jesus is!

The next week we finished up the Perspectives course which was also overall incredible and eye-opening, I finished up with a 93%, oh yeah! Then we went through Perspectives coordinator training, so I'm all trained up to start up or help out with a new class basically anywhere I live, even overseas, which is quite exciting. We watched an amazing video called Ee-Taow!! about this couple and a huge team of people(there with them, and at home) working with this tribe in Papua New Ginea for years learning the language and presenting the gospel in a series of stories starting with Genesis and pointing out God's promise for a redeemer and someone to die in our place. Once the tribe saw that this promised one was Jesus, the entire tribe accepted Him as their personal Lord and Savior and now they have shared this gospel in all the surrounding villages and are preparing to take it to other tribes and learn a whole new language and culture. That is the gospel power! The gospel is so encompassing and life changing and HUGE. God is really moving in the world, and until every people group has had a chance to hear the gospel, the end won't come (and Jesus won't come for a second time)(Matt. 24:14).

4th of July was great fun. I got to spend it playing volleyball and barbequeing and going around philly with a Japanese girl, then fireworks and a free live John Legend concert. We left at 7:45 the next morning and headed out to Massechusetts to the very sites where men like Stott, Moody, Mills, Wishard, and the Wilders who said stuff about missions like, "we can do this if we will" and "I am willing to go anywhere, at anytime, to do anything for Jesus". We stood and prayed at the very same places students just like us stood and prayed over 100 years ago. These were the beginners of the Haystack Prayer Movement and Student Volunteer Movement http://www.thetravelingteam.org/?q=node/98 , http://www.thetravelingteam.org/?q=node/99 (a bit of what we learned while there).

Then we spent last week hearing from some experts on knowledge of the major world religions. As a project we then went as learners to visit some local temples including Buddhist, Hare Krishna and a Muslim Mosque. I don't really have the words to explain my experience with this. I might have to elaborate more later....

This past weekend was absolutely great. We got to relax on grounds surrounded by mountains and we had lots of freetime. We stayed at a New Tribes Mission Center and heard (and experienced) what it would be like to go into a tribe that has an unlearned language and culture to the rest of the world, and go in there and start building relationships with them, spending about 5 years minimum learning the language and making an alphabet, teaching the tribe how to read and write it, translate the bible into it, and to start teaching them what the bible says. I was blown away. One of the guys had worked for 14 years with a tribe in Venezuela and saw pretty much the whole tribe come to know Christ and be transformed--until the government kicked out foreigners. It was incredible spending time with the NTM staff!

Today we spent in Chinatown talking to people. I got to talk to a couple of Vietnamese women and we ate some tasty authentic Chinese for lunch. Tomorrow we're getting up early to go serve breakfast in an innercity homeless shelter and just to talk to people and love on them, I'm kind of excited for this!