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Friday, July 31, 2009

Could we be in trouble?

"There can be no keener revelation of a society's soul than the way in which it treats its children."

- Nelson Mandela

Tuesday, July 28, 2009

5 Ministers

Last week in Ecuador I met five of THE best ministers I have ever know. Well, actually I already know them. I just got to see them in action like never before last week.



And here is who they are not. They are not the preacher from the church we attended. They are not the local missionaries who have been living there for years. They are not employed by Compassion International or ChildReach Ministries or HCJB or Extreme Response. They are not keynote speakers at a conference.



Here is who they are:



Matthew Schario age 13

Adam Schario age 11

Mallory Schario age 9

Jon Mark Schario age 7

Ellie Schario age 5 (going on 15 according to her dad)



None of them preached a sermon or taught a bible lesson. They were simply present. It was awesome to see Matthew get into the thick of all the soccer action and help out wherever needed. He is also a good writer and thinker. Check out his thoughts at http://www.schario.blogspot.com/. He's also pretty darn funny too. If there is a young person more interested in the animals God created than Adam I have not met them. Adam loves them all and had a hard time tasting the cuy (guinea pig) cause he knew it was once alive. Mallory has the gifts of motherhood and shepherding to the highest degree. To see her with the kids in Ecuador is a real treat. Jon Mark is incredibly affectionate and not afraid to show it. One of the most creative 7 year old's I have been around. He loved on the mission team. And then there is Ellie. Can the gift of leadership show up in a 5 year old? It sure can. I have seen it. Ellie will take anyone young or old, rich or poor, white or brown, by the hand and lead them exactly where she thinks they should go. There is no pretense or favoritism in her being. And she already knows way more Spanish words than her dad. Probably comes from all the conversations she has with the Ecuadorian kids. If Ellie is not talking, well............she's asleep.



To watch these kids minister to kids was the gospel in action. Real time spent with people. Loving them. Getting to know them. Suffering with them. That is who Jesus was.

Real.

Honest.

Present.



"And a little child will lead them."

Saturday, July 25, 2009

Travelin Man

Getting ready to leave our lodging for the Quito airport. CAK tomorrow morning at 11:45 am if all goes according to plan. G'night.

Ecuador is Burning

Well, not the whole country. Just the 1/2 acre hillside beside the building we are living in for the week. We came "home" from our Vacation Bible School yesterday to find it charred and smoking. And Dan Malloy with Extreme Response (the ministry that manages our building), who, amazingly enough, is from Akron, OH, told the story. He arrived in the afternoon to find the whole hillside in flames. And no one was putting it out. So Dan called the fire department and then went on the roof with his daughter, got a hose hooked up, and started dousing the flames. When the fire departement arrived 30 minutes later...............yes I wrote 30 MINUTES LATER..............Dan, his daughter, and a neighbor had the fire mostly out. But check this out: the fire department was 2 dudes on motorcycles with water filled backpacks! That's crazy and cool all at once. So these guys really took over once they arrived (sarcasm intended). They went up on our roof and used the hoses Dan and his daughter had used and made sure the fire was out.

So either all the buildings in Quito, Ecuador are concrete because they don't have a fire department, or there's not much of a fire department in Quito, Ecuador because all the buildings are concrete. Or both.

But what is really burning in Ecuador is the hearts of my mission team for these people and these children, and God inside them. I am so proud of how they came here open and ready to experience everything and soaked it all in. Yesterday's VBS/Carnival was a blast with 166 kids from the La Comuna neighborhood. We had about a dozen game stations and smiles were to be had all around. The sister's Finley wrote an incredible skit (performed mimed) and recruited some of the team members to act it out. It was about a girl who kept trading her heart for the the things of this world and the deceitfullness of wealth. She ended up with it torn in pieces. Jesus (aka Tom Valentine) came and blew away her broken heart and gave her a new one. I really enjoyed watching from the back as all the kids got silent and stood on their chairs to see. A sacred moment for me for sure. Video on youtube to follow.

Tuesday, July 21, 2009

HIGHlights

I've been asking the team each night to describe the highlight of each day for them. And as I think about my response to this several things come to mind.

It was pretty amazing to have 4 local families willing to host us for dinner last night. So we divided into four teams and just happened to have (enter God) four people with enough spanish to get us through and be able to talk with the families. One group went to a very small home that invited all their relatives over. Not to eat with them as they couldn't afford to feed that many, but to see the gringos. Another group went to the home of a single mother and ate with her and her daughter and a friend.

Last night Krista said Monday was the best day of her life. That's exciting for me to hear from an 18 year old college student who spent the day painting, playing soccer with the neighborhood kids, and leading her group in conversation at dinner with her spanish. I would bet that 90% of the rest of the 18 year olds from the United States would describe the day as their best ever after lounging on the beach or getting an iPhone.

But I will have to answer this question for me with seeing two girls at the Nuevos Amigos site that I have not see for two years. Carolina and Veronica. I had lunch with them over two years ago there. And these are girls with hope thanks to Compassion International and Nuevos Amigos. One wants to be a teacher. The other a nurse. As the day was winding down Christy wanted to pray with the kids and we ended up asking Carolina to pray. And it was in Spanish and not translated and sounded like beautiful music. Maybe that's why in Revelation our prayers are described as being like incense to God. They are transformed into something more than words.

And they transform.

Thursday, July 16, 2009

mission team dynamics

So as usual I am really looking forward to getting my team to Quito, Ecuador this Saturday. It's the first mission trip for all but one and most have never been out of the country. We're a part of ChildReach Ministries (www.childreachministrie.org) and will spend time painting at Nuevos Amigos Christian School, visiting Compassion Internationals child survival and leadership development programs, meeting the kids we sponsor, attending a cross cultural worship service, putting on a VBS/Carnival and seeing poverty on a level that is hard to compare with anything in the United States.

And my team doesn't realize it yet, but we will become fast friends. I am always amazed at how this takes years to accomplish when we are all wrapped up in jobs and school and parenthood and whatever but takes about 4 days on the mission field. Why is that? I believe it's because of what we experience together: incredible joy, deep sorrow, a God who comes on strong and is way bigger than we ever imagined.

So are you ready Tom, Christy, Shawn, Krista, Kim, Jeff, Marty, Lisa, Jonathan, Rachel and Karissa? Ready to meet people who live in extreme poverty but have incredible joy?
Ready to have your heart broken by the beautiful brown haired, brown eyed children of Ecuador? And ready to make some friends and have an experience you will remember for the rest of your life? Here we go............

Saturday, July 11, 2009

god moments

I'm learning that most "God Moments" happen along the way to somewhere else. They are unexpected, unplanned. They seem like interruptions. I think I end up missing most of these moments. I'm a planner and don't like changes to my schedule.

Jesus was good at this. Much of his interaction with people seems to have occurred on the way to somewhere. He was great at being truly present in the moment. He soaked in every opportunity to be with people.

Last night at the Lock 3 concert in Akron we met a dad and his two daughters. But not until we were leaving. It was crowded so my wife Chris told them they could spread out a little into our space (they were sitting behind us on the lawn). We chatted a bit and were amazed to discover they are driving up from Columbus every weekend for these concerts. "We don't have anything like this", the dad said. He told us hid oldest daughter, who looked maybe 12, loves older music like The Beatles.

And as I walked away and drove home, I thought about them. I wanted to connect with them in a deeper way. Like offering them a place to stay when they come up. But I didn't.

Did I miss a "God Moment" last night?

Friday, July 3, 2009

"ReJesus: A Wild Messiah for a Missional Church"

I don't know about you, but I'm bored with middle-class, good mannered religion. And just like God vandalizing the temple curtain, authors Michael Frost and Alan Hirsch spray graffiti on the church wall. But not out of contempt. They do it in deep love for her, asking her, asking you and I, to turn; to re-turn to the core of the founder. Jesus the Nazarene.

While the book is somewhat of a difficult read, I recommend trudging through it. Their sentiment about the church, especially in the West, resonates with me:

"To be sure, we do not like gatherings of strangers who never meet or know each other outside of Sundays, who sit passively while virtual strangers preach and lead singing, who put up with second-rate pseudo-community under the guise of connection with each other, who live different lives from Monday to Saturday than they do on Sunday, whose sole expression of worship is pop-style praise and worship, who rarely laugh together, fight injustice together, eat together, pray together, raise each others' children together, serve the poor together, or share Jesus with those who have not yet been set free. We do not like the church if it's a fractured organization with hundreds of competing creeds, names, and doctrines, teaching a multitude of contradictory beliefs and insisting on compliance with a raft of recently invented traditions. But if it's a family of Jesus followers striving, no matter how inadequately, to be Christlike, holistic, peace-loving, worshipful, devoted, graced, holy and healthy, then we will love it with every ounce of physical and emotional strength we have."

Amen.