My trip to Jiuzhou

I just re_ently took a trip to an Asian country t_at boasts the largest populat_o_ on the pl_net. I'm still not sure whether or not I can actually say where I was, so I better just play it sneaky. It was an incredible trip. Seriously, the best missions experience that I have ever had. And so much different than I actually thought it would be.

Our mission was to train "club" leaders. We trained them in two areas: The Good News and The Family. They soaked it up. They took pages upon pages of notes. The goal for the training was to equip these leaders with what they would need to train the people in their clubs. By the end of our days together I felt as though these people were my family. They showed such love and passion. It was inspiring and humbling.

The country, especially the cities, was so much more modern than I thought it would be. The capital city was extremely impressive. What wasn't so impressive was the intense smog that was present in the cities. On a clear day the sky had a brownish tint. After a few days I could feel that in my lungs and in my eyes.

I loved the people. One thing that I realized pretty quickly was that there were people everywhere all the time. It didn't matter if I was coming back to my hotel late at night or when I was looking out my window at 6 in the morning, there were always people stirring around. And I wasn't even in a big city. There were only about 1.6 million people there :) I loved how it just seemed like everyone was just sort of in sync with each other. That's the only way that traffic works over there. I believe that everyone operates with the trust that the other person will not hit them.

Well, there is a lot more that I want to share and more details that I would like to go into, but like I said, I'm just not sure what all can and can not be said. I will close with this passage from Psalm 22:27-28

"All the ends of the world shall remember and turn to the LORD, and all the families of the nations shall worship before You. For the kingdom is the LORD’s, and He rules over the nations."

Don't Stop Believing?

This is just a quick post that I hope makes you laugh and think. I just saw this video of some motivational speaker wanna-be and he demonstrates a great spiritual lesson. Watch this first, and then I'll comment further:

Yeah, that is where believing in yourself will get you. There are a lot of people (smiley J for one, Rob Bell for another) who are perverting and changing the Gospel to incorporate this same message. They will preach that God believes in you, has faith in you and you need to believe in and faith in yourself too. That all that you really need is to tap into your inner strength. Of course, this is ludicrous. God doesn't have faith in us because we are sinful people. We are frail, fallible and faithless. Christ however is quite the opposite. He is consistent, steady and faithful. He, not ourselves, is the anchor of our soul. What happens when we want try to believe in ourselves? We end up smacking our head against the proverbial wooden board. And to God, we look about as stupid as this guy.