Colombia, October, 2011 Day 1

I am incredibly blessed to once again be in my home away from home, Bogota, Colombia. I had a wonderful but crazy couple of days preceding the flight down, running around collecting Padrino gifts to bring down to the children from a dozen or more families. The flight down yesterday was wonderful. My health is the best it has ever been on one of these trips, praise the Lord and thank you prayer warriors and my dear wife and daughters for keeping me healthy. Don Waybright, missions pastor at Sugarcreek Church in Sugar Land, Shoby John, director Orphan Hope, Chris Poole, Orphan Hope missionary, and I made up our party flying out of Houston. Shoby, Don, and I had seats right next to each other and so we were able to visit all the way down and what a delightful visit it was. What sweets servants of God both of these men are and how I enjoyed our conversation that ranged from missional living, discipleship models, to passion, to suffering, to family, to anointing, to how God has put us on this plane headed to love on orphans. What a blessed time. We kept mentioning how similarly God has been working in our lives over the last 3-4 years and about that time Don asked me, “what are you reading there?” I said, “Bonhoeffer’s Cost of Discipleship.” He laughed, reached in the seat back pocket in front of him and pulled out his copy of Bonhoeffer. We all just shook our heads and thanked God for what He is doing in us. It was truly a delightful time and really prepared me for the week ahead. We arrived at the airport and were happy to meet up with another team member that had arrived on a different flight, Rachel Yeates. Rachel has been sending money and items to orphans all over the world for years through her ministry Great Comeback Kids but has never actually been into the fields of the fatherless until this trip. We are very excited to have her along. We walked outside and were happy to meet up with Dave and Gail Beach, Orphan Hope directors who had flown in that morning. We arrived at our hotel at about midnight and I was very glad to get into that bed but not before Dave Beach popped in the door and said, “special delivery” and handed me a beautiful letter from my precious Goddaughter, Heidy, whom I will see tomorrow. My heart leapt when I opened it and read, “Hola mi papito hermoso, te quiero mucho (Hello my beautiful Daddy, I love you). The remainder was just a sweet as the opening line. What a blessing these dear children are to my soul.

We rose at 6 a.m. had a nice breakfast and headed to church where our dear, dear friends Hector and Liliana are the pastors. I could not wait to hug and kiss them and their beautiful children. What a blessing this “adopted” family is to me. The joy and honor of calling them brother and sister and to see and hear their teenage children come running when they saw me this morning saying, “Tio Mateo”, “Tio Mateo” (Uncle Matt, Uncle Matt) and the smiles and hugs and kisses. These are just a few of the “beyond all that we can think or imagine” blessings that our Father has for us as we follow Him where He leads. The service this morning was glorious reunion with the children from Casa De Egreso, the workers, Jose Vicente, President of Fundacion Nuevo Mundo, many of the workers, Nelda, a dear sister in the Lord, Missy Christie, President of CDA Colombia and her mother, Jair and Shannon Montiel of Christ for the City and Pastor Pedro, National Director for Christ for the City Colombia, and many others. What a delight! We worshipped the Lord in song and praise and reading of the scriptures and the presence of the Lord filled that place.

Then Pastor Hector introduced me to preach and I was humbled and blessed when Missy Christie, an international hero in orphan ministry stepped up to translate for me. Wow. We prayed and asked the Holy Spirit to come and speak to us and then I began to share with the church about the Grand Adventure that awaits all those who follow God on His mission to reconcile the world to Himself, through Christ, and with our blessed involvement and restore it to a world of love, joy, and peace. I told them of how the Trinity enjoyed perfect fellowship, love, harmony, and joy and as Daniel Fuller used to say, “God’s complete joy in Himself as a Trinity led Him to want to double that joy by extending it beyond Himself to the human beings He created” and so God has been on mission ever since to share Himself and His joy with the world just like Jesus says to His followers in John 15:11 “These things I have spoken to you so that My joy may be in you, and that your joy may be made full” and then again to His Father in John 17:13 “But now I come to You; and these things I speak in the world so that they may have My joy made full in themselves.” The ancients captured this when they made the first question and answer of the Westminster catechism, “What is the chief end of man?… to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.” When we get in the presence of the blessed (happy) God (1 Tim. 1:11) we get happy (Psalm 16:11 In Your presence is fullness of joy; In Your right hand there are pleasures forever) as Joni Eareckson Tada says so well, “God happily shares His gladness, His joy comes flooding over heaven’s walls filling my heart in a waterfall of delight, which then in turn always streams out to others in a flood of encouragement, and then erupts back to God in an ecstatic fountain of praise. He gets your heart pumping for heaven. He injects His peace, power, and perspective into your spiritual being. He puts a song in your heart. I want to know God like this! Shove me under the waterfall of the Trinity’s joy, which splashes and spills over heaven’s walls. If He’s always in a good mood, I want to catch it.”  And we get holy because no pleasure derived from any sin can compete with the joy of being filled with God’s love and joy as C.S. Lewis said so well, “We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and   ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.” And so the Grand Adventure is following this amazing God wherever He leads. It is, like Peter, James, and John, leaving their nets and boats and everything they had known at the shore of Galilee when Jesus said, “Come” never knowing the incredible adventure that awaited them of seeing the blind healed, the lame made to walk, the dead brought out of the grave, Jesus transfigured before their eyes and speaking with Moses and Elijah. They could have had no idea that answering that call of Jesus to, “Walk with me and work with me—watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won’t lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly.” Matthew 11:28-30 MSG, would take them all over the then known world preaching the gospel and seeing the world change before their eyes. And all they did was obey a simple command, “Follow Me.” And that is what we must do if we want to experience this all-satisfying God of love and joy. We must join Him in total trusting, obedient, faith. We must listen for His specific call for our lives. We can’t assume that what He asks of someone else He will automatically ask of us. He has created an adventure to enjoy with each of us specific to each of us. He told many to “Follow Me” and yet He told the maniac of Gadara, “Don’t follow Me but go home and tell your friends and family what great things the Lord has done for you.” Each of us must listen to the call of our Master as He has ordained a specific way in which each of us will fulfill His general call to “Go and make disciples of the nations.” Like Pastor Matthew Barnett says, “When you were born, God instilled many things within you. One of them was a great CAUSE that He wants you to embrace. In His unique grandeur, He created a universe in which the cumulative effect of all people faithfully pursuing the cause within them would result in a transformed world – one in which everyone’s needs would be met and every servant’s heart would be filled with the joy of blessing others. Unfortunately, we live in a traumatized world – in part because so many people fail to identify and pursue the cause He has given them. Even though it would provide the happiness and fulfillment they have been seeking, they have failed to build their lives around that cause.” So let’s not miss His call. Let’s get in His presence and learn of Him and listen for His instructions and then step out with Him in faith and walk on the water. Let’s go to work with Daddy and change the world.

After the sermon there were several testimonies and beautiful music and celebration. We finished up and then went across the street for lunch and then met back at the church for some time with Pastor Pedro and Jair and Shannon of Christ for the City as well as Pastors Hector and Liliana and the OHI team. We had a marvelous afternoon of sharing and learning as Pastor Pedro unfolded for us the amazing work that Christ for the City Colombia is doing and ways that we can help. He invited us to Medellin, a city in northern Colombia at our earliest convenience to see what God is doing with their ministry there and pray about how we can be involved and since we discovered that he is an international marathoner we invited him to come to our Orphan Hope marathon February 11, 2012 and he heartily accepted. What a blessing! What a grand adventure. We also heard from another friend of Jair’s about a curriculum they have developed for children that uses the Jesus Film and then follows through with discipleship and how they have implemented it in schools in several Latin American countries and how we may use it in our work. It was a tremendous day in His presence and with His choice saints and we thoroughly enjoyed it. To God be the glory for the great adventures He is pursuing and He has asked us to join Him.