SPLICE – JC Mission

I seek for love

As part of the recent training (SPLICE) I went through they asked us to write our joys and thanksgivings everyday (which as a side note, I highly recommend) and during that time God placed an observation on my heart. I wrote the following in my journal:

Before SPLICE I would say that I have an addictive behavior. I would say that my addictions were caused by something inside of me that I cannot control. I could not do anything about them because my genetics determined that I get addicted easily. My addiction to food was because of genetics; my later addiction to exercise was because of genetics; all of my addictions were because of genetics and not because of anything else. I didn’t want to admit that it could be anything else. During SPLICE God opened my eyes. Through godly insight from others I have come to realize that it has nothing to do with genetics and it has everything to do with idolatry. I grab onto the thought of marriage or the taste of food or even exercise to fulfill me since I don’t always love myself. I need to shift my focus to God and search for love there and love myself because he first loved me. I have never loved myself fully and I have been searching for love from people and things and no matter how great people or the things make me feel for a short time they never can make me feel loved until I love myself.

Whenever I would read the commandment about not having any other idols before God, I always felt pretty good about myself in that sense. I never had a wooden idol or image of another god that I would bow down and worship. Man, was I wrong. I was worshiping so many things and Satan was hiding it so well from me that I never really had a clue. I never realized that I was idolizing marriage, or the way food or exercise made me feel.

I was clueless, but no more. It is my full intention to seek for love from God alone. When I do anything for myself or for others, I will look at motives and if they include the word I at all, then I will pause, pray and ask God for the right motives. Not only will this allow me to live a more healthy life, but also a life that will have more of an impact on others for His sake, not mine.

If I recognize His love for me, then I can love myself and if I love myself then I can truly love others.

5 weeks and a whole lot of learnin’

As some of you know I just got back from Colorado after 5 weeks of the most intense training I have ever been a part of. My time in Colorado was amazing to say the least, but it was also very draining.

The training was filled with information, laughter, tears and fun. I met over 60 people from all over the US and one from Northern Ireland who will be going to all ends of the Earth. It was very easy to see how the Great Commission was being (partially) fulfilled through that amazing group of people. We literally had people in our group going to every continent other than Australia and Antarctica. Isn’t that awesome!

In the evenings and on the weekends we had free time (even though there were “blizzards” on two of the four weekends) and so I was able to see some of gorgeous Colorado.

The first two weeks of training was all about learning how to learn a language. I didn’t actually learn any German, but I learned some Russian. While learning Russian I was introduced to some techniques that I am planning on utilizing as soon as I get to Germany and find a German or two who would be willing to help me. The techniques are fun and work very quickly to help people learn not only words, but sentences and sentence form as well.

The next three weeks were called SPLICE (Spiritual, Personal, Lifestyle, Interpersonal, Culture and Endurance/Enjoyment). These three weeks were very emotionally draining. I seriously haven’t cried that much in almost ten years. It was ridiculous! It was all about helping each one of us adjust to whatever culture we are going to and preparing us spiritually, emotionally and habitually for leaving our culture and entering another culture.

If I had to have only one take away from my time in Colorado it would be my new found passion for helping Missionary kids (MK’s) become devoted followers of Christ and preparing them for their next stage in life which is most likely college in the US. Black Forest Academy is a MK boarding school in Kandern, where I will be living and working. I really feel God has given me this desire to help them in any way that I can. My goals are to disciple some of the MK’s and also be someone who will be there to attend things that they are involved in through their school.

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Traversing the Chaos

In life we all go through transition. We all have times that we are dealing with changes in our lives. Adjusting to a new job. A new home. A new relationship. No matter what, we are going to have periods of transition. When you go through periods of transition you go from settled, to unsettled, to chaos, to resettling, and then to a new settled. The picture we were given was like crossing a bridge from solid land to solid land.

How each person interprets each stage of the bridge crossing is vital to the way they cross the bridge. This is how my bridge broke down, one word for the strongest feeling for me a that stage.

Settled – Contentment
Unsettled – Progress (My current stage)
Chaos – Busy
Resettling – overlooking (I meant it’s easy to ignore the minor difficulties here because they pale in comparison to the chaos you just went through)
New Settled – Relief

How would you describe each stage for you? What stage are you currently in?

While learning about this we watched/participated in a demonstration. There were four chairs, three bosu balls, and then four more chairs on our “transition bridge.” The first two chairs were normal, the second two had blocks underneath that made them wobbly and then the last four chairs were the same as the first four. The people traversing the “transition bridge” were members of a team, two singles (one leading and one in the rear) and a family all tethered together with “relationship ropes.” Everyone lining the the sides were the support, the ministry partners, the headquarters staff and anyone else who is willing to provide some help while this team is dealing with change.

Here is a link to the video.

https://www.facebook.com/video/embed?video_id=10151352898373977

Everyone reading this blog is my bridge support. I will need some of you more than you know. I want to thank you in advance, because without this team I would not be able to do any of this. We are a team, hand-picked by God and together we can do amazing things!

Conflict Rezoolution

These last two weeks at MTI have been amazing. God has been working on me so much that it is pretty ridiculous. I do plan on sharing more details of that, but not today. While there is a blizzard going on in Monument, CO (yet again) I figured I would share how a couple of the guys at the training with me spent a day last weekend.

One of the things we have been learning about during SPLICE is our conflict style. You can be a lion, a teddy bear, a turtle, a fox or an owl. Check out this video and see if you can figure out what conflict style you are.

https://www.facebook.com/video/embed?video_id=10151360368938381

What conflict style are you?

What conflict style do you think I am?

Language learning fun

So the last two weeks has all been about language learning. I came in with the erroneous thought that I would be learning German and instead I learned some Jeh and Russian and bent my mouth to make sounds I never even knew existed. The past two weeks have taxed my brain and mouth and I hear the next three weeks will tax my heart. Today’s post will be a quick one, but I want to share with you all a video my friend made that will kind of show you what it is I have been doing for the past two weeks.