While the wife's away...

So Colleen is working this weekend so I figured I had better update our blog.  Just to warn you, I am not as eloquent of speech as Colleen nor can I keep an audience hanging at the edge of thier seat as she explaines something with so much depth it makes me feel like I'm right there part of her story.

This week I've felt quite inadequate.  In my new job where I'm working, I got to use a jackhammer for the first time in my life.  You may say "Blake, I thought you were a journeyman carpenter and you don't know how to use a jackhammer?"   Well, I do now.  My experience has been mostly working with wood, both rough carpentry and finish carpentry, I've done a litte drywall, I can do siding on a house like nobody's business, but concrete/masonry work is something that has eluded me.  But I got to tear out concrete and replace it with new stuff.

You may ask why I am telling you this.  Well, I was reading Dwight Lagore's blog this week (http://www.dwightlagore.blogspot.com/) and he was explaining work to be done on the Pastoral training centre in Mozambique.  As I saw the first picture it was a wood roof and I was all excited because this is something I know and something I will be useful to do.  Then the next 10 or so pictures were of brick, mortar and concrete.  All things that I practically know nothing about.  Sure I took the theory of how to build with brick when I went to Carpentry School.  But I also learned how to disect a person in biology and I don't think anyone wants to hire me as their surgeon to remove their tonsils anytime soon.

As I looked at my inadequesies, I started thinking about how I think I am a poor evangelist.  Of all the mission trips I have been on, and all the youth and children's clubs I've helped with, I have led a total of 1 person to Christ.  It happened 10 years ago in the little town of Caronport, before I had traveled the world to proclaim the Gospel, or worked at camp, it was a simple program at the Caronport Elementary School.

In my personal devotions, I am reading through Acts.  One person really stands out to me, Barnabas.  He is an encourager.  When Paul was converted and the church was afraid to take him in, Barnabas went to Antioch and enabled the church to accept Paul.

At camp in 2009, I was a senior councellor at Big River Bible Camp, and I didn't get to lead any of my kids to Christ, but I believe (and hope) that through a little of my encouragement and example, my junior councellor led 3 kids into the Kingdom.

I may not be called to be the one to harvest the fields, but I know God has a place for me in His work.  I may not know how to build with bricks, but I believe I can be an encouragement and someone eager to learn about those things.  I may not lead another person to Christ, but my prayer is that those who see me and know me will see Christ in me and desire to have that relationship with Him as well.
On an encouraging note for us, our tickets are bought.  We are officially going to Mozambique!  We leave Calgary on January 17 and return home July 19.  Many thanks to the churches of Bow Island E. Free and Vegreville Alliance who let us share with them the vision we have to share Christ's love to Mozambique.

I'd like to end my post with an apology to my wife, I'm sorry honey if this is not what you had in mind for a blog.  Also an apology to you, the reader, for having to endure my lack of tact.  But I hope you were encouraged by my stories of  how God sometimes uses people to encourage others and that encouragement is an important gift to the Body.
Until Next Week, (I pray God sustains you till then)

Blake

Superman or the Kid Next Door?

  As trick or treaters embark on a candy adventure one can't help but see a crazy parallel between them and real life.  Each halloweener wears a crazy get-up or disguise as they seek to hunt down every last drop of candy a town has to offer.  But underneath those crazy costumes are the same little kids that bike past our house on their way to school or who we see shopping with their parents in the store.  The same seems true for us. As a child growing up in the church I used to look at missionaries that were visiting and think wow those people must be really holy to be a missionary or their walk with God must be better than most for God to call them overseas.  It always seemed that missionaries were a notch above the rest of us normal people as they served God wherever He called them.  Only special people got to go reach the lost, you have to be a person who has their life completely in order.  You cannot doubt your faith or struggle with any sin.  These were prerequisites to what I thought was standard missionary protocol.  Now that it is a reality for us we truly have realized that God uses imperfect, ordinary people to do His will.  We at times struggle with faith and obedience in our walk with the Lord and we still disagree and sometime argue in our marriage.  Yet, we have this amazing God who has out of His great mercy has chosen to use us as He works in Mozambique.  What a privilege and blessing!  That to us is amazing grace. 

As we have started to prepare for this upcoming journey we have been praying that God would use us to bless people as we share the vision of Mozambique.  What an irony that as we seek to bless others, we are much more abundantly blessed in return.  God has used our home church to bless us through the people there, especially the number of people who have told us they will be committed to pray for us over the next several months.  God truly is at work in His people in our home town and across the seas in Mozambique.  We are so blessed to be able to join  His work there and to have numerous ordinary, yet God empowered people standing with us as we follow His call for our lives. 

So even though we must now don the uniform/costume of a missionary we really are just ordinary people, who we pray, because of Christ, will be used to extraordinary things for Him.