Do. The. Next. Thing.

That’s what our day has been like.  We are preparing for a two-week trip into the interior of the county, and we leave tomorrow!  So I’ve been packing and washing clothes and shopping for sheet fabric and making what I’ll call “sleeping bag sheets” out of them and cutting up a pillow to make two smaller camping pillows.  Jay has been gathering funds and doing logistics necessities for our trip and for new colleagues arriving soon.  We’ve made sure our tents are in good shape and that they have rain guards and packed some coffee in plastic bags.   And somewhere in there, we had a Lingala language lesson.

Tomorrow morning at 6:00 a.m. on our 28^th wedding anniversary, we’ll hop into a taxi with a young driver that we often use and head to the airport.  On the way, we’ll tell Cedrique some more of the Creation to Christ story that I’ve been sharing with him little by little as I’ve learned it in Lingala.  Also on the way, we’ll stop and pick up a local pastor who is traveling with us and who will help us with these trainings.  When we arrive in the city of Mbandaka, we have the joy and privilege of staying with two new missionary friends who invited us to stay in their home during our first training in the city. 

After Jay preaches at a local church on Sunday, we’ll start a “Tell His Story” training at the beginning of the week with a pastor from Mbandaka.  These trainings are some of our favorite things to do because it always brings such joy to people’s hearts to find that they can begin to have regular meaningful conversations with friends and family around stories from God’s Word.

The second part of our trip takes us on a 1 ½ day journey by motorized pirogue to another small town up the river.  I just love living life for Jesus; it’s always an adventure! There, we’ll conduct another oral evangelism training with church leaders in their town.  After that’s over, we motor back down the river (this time taking only one day since we ride with current) and catch a plane back to Kinshasa. 

How can you pray?

• Please pray for our taximan, Cedrique to grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.
• Pray for safety and no unnecessary delays throughout the journey.
• Pray for prepared hearts of participants at both trainings.
• Pray for ordinary people to catch the vision to “tell His story, tell it often, and tell it well.” 
• Pray that we will be a blessing to our new friends that we’ll be staying with, even as they have already been such a blessing to us.
• Pray for good health during this time.  We’re taking our malaria prophylaxis, and we have a cure just in case, but we’d love to come home without having to use it.
• Pray for that sometimes-difficult missionary task of eating what you’re served.  As we head up the river, we don’t know what to expect as we’ve never been to the forest of DRC before.  But we know that the God we serve expects us to be gracious guests.

Praying friends, thank you so much for your participation in our journey and ministry.  We can’t do this without you!

Your Kingdom come, Your will be done...

...in my life as it is in Heaven.

We just finished a three-day training with four Baptist associations here in Kinshasa.  It was the first of two modules of a church planting and evangelism training called Four Fields.  60 people were there for all three days of the training; up to 120 people attended at least two days.  Sometimes it can be frustrating that folks show up late or that they don’t come all three days. But we choose to be gracious toward people who work hard just to make daily ends meet, and since we ourselves have been stalled as long as 2 hours in Kinshasa traffic jams, we also offer a lot of grace to the latecomers who are arriving in taxis and buses.

One of my favorite parts of this training was getting participants to think about how life would look if the Kingdom of Heaven were to come among all the social and professional layers of their society.  Our friend and fellow-trainer Pastor Elnathan asked people their profession and then divided them into groups accordingly.  We had groups of pastors, evangelists, business people, government office workers, technical workers like mechanics and electricians, and finally students.  Each group was asked to consider how life in their profession would look for them and those around them if God’s Kingdom comes and His will is done in their lives as it is in Heaven.  Our learners quickly put themselves to the task and visualized what would happen.

Students (above) said that there would be no more cheating, no more paying for grades – either with money or with sex.

Business people (above) said that there would be no jealousy among peers and colleagues which leads to lying and stealing.

Technicians (above), who have a notorious reputation here for telling people that they need more repaired than is really necessary and who are also known for taking a super long time to do their work, said that these things would change – that they would be honest with people.

Government workers (above) said that corruption would disappear.

And these pastors?  Well, they said a lot of things, but one that stood out was that there would be no more “ministry wives.”  That’s when you divorce your first wife because she’s not “good for your ministry” and find a second one that you consider worthy of your calling.

As with all our interactions around the Word of God, I found myself thinking through my own life and work.  As the Kingdom of God grows in my heart and in my thoughts, as I seek to see His will done in my life as it is in Heaven, what will change?  It’s a good thing to think about and pray through.

Will you join me?