Missions ... where are you serving?

"The silence as all creation holds its breath while God creates another African Sunset."
Reference  Psalm 19:1-6

  The Calling
       Have I ever told you I love to write.  It is very cathartic for me.  I seem to have a 6 liter heart for feeling and emotions, and it almost becomes infected if I don't purge it regularly by writing.   So what you read may not always be cogent or well formed, but it is certainly real.
       It is that time of year again.  School has once again begun, and Rosemont Baptist Church
is having its missions conference.   Al Jackson from Lakeview Baptist Church in Auburn, Alabama, was the key note speaker at the banquet last night.  It was 32 years ago that Pastor Al led a marriage counseling group that Lynne and I attended before eloping.   His text was Luke 9:57-62.   The text is about counting the cost of following Jesus ...  of being obedient to the calling in Matthew 28:19-20 ... in being a selfless servant of the one true king.
       I sat there last night listing Pastor Al, reading over the list of mission opportunities in the coming year, and telling God, "I will go wherever you send me!  You know God I would love to go to Guatemala.  Most of my students are from there and I have never been to Guatemala!  Uganda (pronounced ooooh  ganda) would be cool."  God said, "go to school on Monday", and I began to see the faces of my ESOL students who are in a foreign land, learning a foreign language, and have only me to advocate for them.
      At the end of the banquet, my friend and brother in

Christ, Blu Tidwell came over to talk with me.  I told him I dream of just one hour sitting in the ciikuta at New Day listening to the children play, the pots rattling in the kitchen and the whisper of the wind through the dry grass as the sun sets on the day. I told him I miss my water tower, and the fellowship of the staff at New Day.   He told me there is an open hut where we could stay.   I asked him to pray for us.  Some would say, "just go and God will bless your work there."   Just as Paul desired to go to Asia, Lynne and I desire to return to Zambia where we left a large part of our hearts.   However, just as the Holy Spirit prevented Paul from going to Asia, the Holy Spirit within us tells us to be peaceful and be still ... bloom where your are planted.
      Lynne and I have ministries here beyond the kitchen at Rosemont and my classroom.  It is not important what they are but that we are obedient in going to those to whom God has called us.  If you see us around church or Lagrange with a far away look in our eyes, listen carefully.  You just might hear the chatter of village children returning home after Saturday Kid's Club, or the chatter of a foreign tongue mixed with English resounding in the thatched roof of the ciikuta, or the clanging of pots as the day's nshima is cooked in the kitchen.