Only two more weeks...GRABE!

I am at such a loss for words. How can it be over?! I was suppose to be here for seven months. In theory, that seems like a long time. O but wait…it’s over…

VERY VERY VERY SAD!

How do I soak it all up? How do I enjoy every moment? How do I make every minute count? I am so busy. I have been glued to a computer for three days, surrounded by hoards of white American volunteers…its like I’m already gone!!!

Then a little, dirty, 3-year-old street kid climbs up into my lap. I’m still working on the computer slightly ignoring but not discouraging the new attachment. He falls asleep on my left arm leaving me somewhat disabled, and I’m in a HURRY! I’m trying to transfer files from my computer to another so I can leave and go visit another one of my teams. I needed to leave two days prior; needless to say I’m LATE. I sigh and drop my eyes to the beautiful Angel in my arms and I softly sing to him in his heart language of Tagalog, stroke his hair and watch him sleep so hard and so peaceful knowing he is safe in my arms.

With computer projects looming over my head, stress of life back home beginning to be a reality, trying to get to from one team to another in spite of illness and typhoons…I have completely gone into work/supervisor/robot mode. I have to get work done. I have to accomplish one task after the other.

Iman, my lap tenant, taught me a very important lesson that day. Stop. Be still. God is at work around me and if I don’t take a breath and look up (or down) for at least a second, I will miss out on the little moments and the kind ways in which my Heavenly Father likes to remind me, He is with me and He loves me.

Si Hesus mahigugmahon ang mga bata…Jesus loves the children…

Photo Credit: Malloree Karmine Cocchia

Peace Settled Over The Valley…and there was stillness in my soul.

Fourth of July weekend, was vacay time for several of my student-volunteer teams so they took off to Puerta Galera for some much needed R&R. I saw this as my golden opportunity to finally make it up river in Easter Samar, the area I lived during my summer mission in 2006. I wanted OUT of the city!

Immediately upon arriving in Brgy. Arroganna, I climbed down the broken, crooked steps to the river bank, sat on a pile of ply wood and gazed at my beloved river.

Those are the most soothing sights of my entire Philippines experience – nowhere else in PI feels more like home! I spent the months of June and July of 2006 up the Dolores River, going house-to-house sharing the gospel with an un-reached people group, the Warray Warray. We went to 26 villages that summer and had the most amazing encounters with the miraculous power of the Almighty God!

My heart had been burdened for years for this people and what was to be of them, now that I was not there. Nehemiah Teams has sent a team to that river every year since, even 2010. I got to meet with the team and hear about the ministry they were doing. They even told me about one man who mentioned me by name and said I shared the gospel with him, he then asked the team to come do a Bible study in his home. Wow! God you are so good, to let me even have a glimpse of the harvest being done in a place I toiled many years ago – and it only got better from there.

Sunday, July 4th, many back in the States were eating hot dogs and hamburgers, playing wiffle ball out in the yard with the kids, and finding a good spot to lay down a blanket for the evening festivities – fireworks! I love fireworks. However, July 4th in the Philippines was much different:

It was the 1st church anniversary for the church in Arroganna, coincidentally a church that directly resulted from a Nehemiah Team that went there and began seed sowing in 2008 and the team that followed in 2009. Christians from several villages along the river came; it was a great day of food, fun, and fellowship. There were three ladies from a barangay that I had visited in 2006. Since several teams have been there, when I asked if they remembered me, they at first called me "Becca," a girl who came the year after me. I said, “ No, before becca, the first visitors” and they excitedly said “O, yes, the song!” I was so excited! They did not remember my face, or my name, but they did remember the song I sang in Warray Warray – “Ikaw Ang Kusog” (You Are the Strength). Who cares about me? They got the Message!

After anniversary festivities the real fun began! Naomi ( JourneyWOman to Eastern Samar) and I had some “bucket list” experiences we thoroughly enjoyed! The afternoon proceeded with pony-ride-esque trips around the field mounted on a water buffalo, or carabao as they are known locally. “How do you get carbao grime off?” you may ask, run through the village, leap through the air off the small wooden dock into the river, and repeat. If that is not enough refreshment for you, swim across the river and back against the downstream current with an entourage of about a dozen plus kids - or at least that’s how Naomi and I did it! We then sun bathed with the remnant of afternoon light on the shore, or until a mud fight broke out and we were caught in the middle - not exactly a Sandals Beach Resort, but definitely more character!

Right before the sun took its final plunge and the night sky rose in its full starlight glory, we strolled up the hill to an overlook that viewed into the dusk illuminated river valley. The sun set and so settled my soul for a people who were once so lost. Witnessing a church anniversary and seeing so many Christians where there was once none, gave me such a glimpse of the faithfulness of an Everlasting God. He has done great things on my river, and brought eager steadfast workers. The Warray Warray will be reached and I am so blessed to have had such a small part. Hindi basta basta!

Romans 10:14

"How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believed in the one of whom thay have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them?"

Who Exempted You from The Great Commission?

Last week during team time with the Mindoro Nanny Team we were reading through the J. Hudson Taylor biography and after I had finished sharing how the story had impacted me and which parts I liked, Meredith asked me about how I came to know that I wanted to be a missionary. I smiled and said, “Well a long, long time ago, back when I was a freshman in college (they act like I'm so old!), I had really started to get my life on track and become more focused on God. I was very involved in our campus ministry; I was on leadership, taught Bible study, attended weekly worship and helped organize all social functions. Therefore, when my campus minister approached me with an application for “Summer Missions” I thought, “Why not! I do everything else involved with our campus ministry.”

However, my idea of summer missions was a little bit skewed. I had done “summer missions” in high school and we would go to a different state and do backyard bible club or visit some nursing homes for a week. But come 2005, I had landed myself on tiny poor fisherman islands off the north shore of Bohol, Philippines going hut-to-hut sharing the gospel for a total of two months! A far cry from Missouri retirement homes…

I further explained to the girls that I thought I knew what it meant to be a Christian before I arrived in PI that summer, but my eyes were slowly opened to the myth of comfortable Christianity being an option. I thought you were to live an upright life for people to see and possibly even desire to emulate, share the gospel with your co-workers (on the rare occasion that they flat out asked you to do so), raise Christian children, tithe, participate in some Church related activity (teach Sunday school or take my monthly rotation in the nursery), pray, read my Bible and call it a day. But after 2005 I can no longer claim ignorance, I now see through different eyes. Read and hear what the Lord is telling you.

“What does the landscape of our Christian scene look like? We have workbooks, podcasts, multiple Bibles and translations. We have the Men’s Bible, Sports Bible, Waterproof Bible, Hunters Bible, the Spirit-filled Bible (I thought they were all Spirit-filled?), John MacArthur’s Bible, Henry Blackaby’s Bible, Joel Osteen’s Bible, the Teen Bible, Children’s Bible, etc, etc, etc, while there are still 2000 languages without the Scriptures in their own language. We have Christian radio, small group Bible studies, Sunday morning, Sunday night, and Wednesday night worship. We have concerts, seminars, and workshops. We know! But we are a people starving in the midst of abundance! A people empty while running from one activity to another. A people ‘honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me,’ declared Isaiah.

Knowing about Him doesn’t necessarily mean you know him. Singing a song doesn’t necessarily mean you worshipped him.” – Kuya Jess

“A tiny group of believers who have the gospel keep mumbling it over and over to themselves. Meanwhile, millions who have never heard it once fall into the flames of eternal hell without ever hearing the gospel story.” – K. P. Yohannan

“1,700 languages have not a word of the Bible translated. Ninety percent of the people who volunteered for the mission field never get there. It takes more than a ‘Lord I’m willing!’ Sixty-four percent of the world has never heard of Christ. 5,000 people die every hour. The population of India equals that of North America, Africa, and South America combined. There is one Christian worker for every 50,000 people in foreign lands, while there is one Christian worker for every 500 in the United States.” – Jim Elliot’s Journal

“How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them?” – Rom. 10:14

“How can any honest Christian say he must have a special call not to do that sort of thing? How can he say that, unless he gets some specific call of God to preach the Gospel to the unreached, he has a perfect right to spend his life lining his pockets with money? Is it not absurd to suggest that a special call is necessary to become a missionary, but no call is required to gratify his own will or personal ambitions?”
 – Robert E. Speer

“I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me.” – Gal.2:20

“Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,…” – Matt 28:19

“It will not do to say that you have no special call to go to China. With these facts before you and with the command of the Lord Jesus to go and preach the gospel to every creature, you need rather ascertain whether you have a special call to stay at home.” – J. Hudson Taylor

“However, I consider my life worth nothing to me, if only I may finish the race and complete the task the Lord Jesus has given me – the task of testifying to the gospel of God’s grace.” – Acts 20:24

"Reality is...many of us have subsituted our American value of self-preservation for Christ's demands to take up a cross and follow Him." - Kuya Jess

“Some may wish to live within the sound of a Chapel bell, I want to run a rescue shop with in a yard of Hell.” – C. T. Studd

“After this I looked and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and in front of the Lamb…” – Rev 7:9

Wothy is the Lamb!

I beg you to break free from the cult of American Christianity – complacent and undisturbed by the cry of blood from millions of people heading to eternal Hell without ever hearing the name of Jesus!