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Character begins at home.. |
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A Pharisee is hard on others and easy on himself, but a spiritual person is easy on others and hard on himself. A.W. Tozer
Spiritual Preparation
We try to prepare spiritually for this trip with prayer, and by reading some books on people who served in this area. I had read Shadow of the Almighty by Elizabeth Elliot years ago, and begin skimming through it again. Scott and Kelcee begin reading it, and our boys also add it to their school day. We are all impressed by Jim Elliot's singlemindedness and level of commitment, as well as the love and compassion of the other four men and God's forgiveness demonstrated through their wives.
We rent Beyond the Gates of Splendor from BlockBuster while spending a weekend at the Tarasiuks. Our decision to have Joel (who is ten) and the younger Tarasiuk children, Emily and Nathan, watch a different video is a good one as this documentary is intense. It is also somewhat intimidating. As I listen to Elizabeth Elliot explain how she went into the jungle to meet and then live with the very people who had killed her husband in order to demonstrate the love of God to them, I come face-to-face once again with my own shallowness and personal fears. I realize I am still in spiritual preschool, so to speak. I also remember I have had this realization before, the most recent being last October as I drove the boys through a horrific thunder and hail storm as we crossed Kansas in the middle of the night on our way home from California. Each time lightening flashed, the prairie to my right lit up for miles. As I looked out into the eerie light, I imagined what my life would have been like had I been one of the pioneer wives, sitting not in a heated, dry van going 50 miles an hour with sleeping children and the promise of a drive-through with hot food and coffee ahead, but instead scrunched down in a freezing cold wagon with sheets of rain driving through the canvas openings onto my children. Cold, soggy blankets, shivering children, cold food, no electricity, nothing but mud to walk through, the openness of the prairie with no privacy or protection on any side, dangers all around. In comparison, my hair still rises on the back of my neck if I hear the slightest rustling in the woods at our cabin if Bill is not around. So, when I put try to put myself into the place of pioneer women who have gone before me (whether in Kansas or Ecuador), I realize there is no comparison. Without a miraculous work of grace, I would have been a sniveling, whining, wretched wreck.
But, thanks be to God, our spiritual preparation begins to stir good things in our hearts. Daniel, Stephen and Patrick all decide it's time to be water baptized. Here, our pastor, Eric Redmond, asks the guys about their faith in Christ, before their dad baptizes them.
Daniel and Patrick ask to have Bill baptize them and pastor (Eric Redmond) is open and supportive to that idea. Stephen decides that either Dad or Pastor would be fine, and opts to "go with the flow" with Dad in the end.
Bill likes to have each child wait until they are fully convinced in themselves it is something they are ready to do, and that time has been different for each of them.
As each one has received a special gift, employ it in serving one another as good stewards of the manifold grace of God. Whoever speaks, is to do so as one who is speaking the utterances of God; whoever serves is to do so as one who is serving by the strength which God supplies; so that in all things God may be glorified through Jesus Christ, to whom belongs the glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen. 1 Peter 4:8-11
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Eric
asks Dr. Mike Hamp
ton,
a missionary to Indonesia, to preach on missions the Sunday before we leave.
Mike then heads up a Commissioning Service, asking our church family to join
together to pray for us and send us out to Ecuador. Click