Tuesday, January 25, 2005
Whew
Only a week has gone by. I thought January was going to be slow. Amazingly I have gotten my Grant Requests finished and off. Now it is a period of wait and see. It is a weird thing writing grants. There is that difficulty of transmitting what you believe to be true into words. There is the surrender of not having a clue as to how your vision will be received. This then leaves you wondering, and in wonder returning to that source of our deliverance. It means again having to place it in God's hands.
The small reprieve of Christmas is certainly gone. I thought the busyness of seminary would not pick up again until February but that illusion has been shattered. All at once the plate is full. My wife and I have a translation project that were trying to finish for the end of January. There is my class on Congregational Vitality which will spill over into the new semester. And then there is the upcoming trip back to St. Benedict's to preach and kick off a Lenten Practice. One wonders how it will all come together?
A small sigh of relief definitely comes with having the paperwork done. Surrender is often a good thing.
My wife and I have started to look closer at information about Honduras. We have begun to prepare ourselves by looking at pictures trying to get a better taste of what it will be like to live at Our Little Roses. There is a lot of excitement. Right behind it came the worry. "How is this going to work?", " Are the kids going to be happy?" etc, etc These were the questions we pose to the unknown and the temptation is to let it dictate the experience. We'll revisit this again and again. It seems to come in waves. We'll have to go through what we have to go through to get there.
As I begin to reflect on how God is involved in all of this I find that we in our planning often see too closely our situation to the point we miss the bigger picture. We forget in our excitement and fretfulness that we even have the opportunity to "visit" in mission. Sure it may carry personal difficulties. It may even be more dangerous than our lives here in Alexandria. What becomes so easily forgotten and pushed aside, is that the girls at Our Little Roses do not have the choice. They do not have the opportunity to "try" it out. They are not "visiting" the poor to see if their call is amongst them. They are amongst them. Their's is 24/7. So our hesitancy as persons of the West pale in comparison. As I've shared with friends, even while we kid about our lack of financial means while here at seminar, our "first class poverty" is great wealth to those who have not.
So yes, this week I put out the platinum covered alms bowl so that we may follow our call to mission in Honduras. Even as I do it I hope I may remember the distinction between our "opportunity" to bring the Gospel to Honduras is very different than those dependent upon it for daily bread. May I remember the distinction that even our period of financial "stretchedness" here at seminary contains a degree of liberty that many would covet. Even at seminary we can be challenged at Christ's call to the "rich young man".
The small reprieve of Christmas is certainly gone. I thought the busyness of seminary would not pick up again until February but that illusion has been shattered. All at once the plate is full. My wife and I have a translation project that were trying to finish for the end of January. There is my class on Congregational Vitality which will spill over into the new semester. And then there is the upcoming trip back to St. Benedict's to preach and kick off a Lenten Practice. One wonders how it will all come together?
A small sigh of relief definitely comes with having the paperwork done. Surrender is often a good thing.
My wife and I have started to look closer at information about Honduras. We have begun to prepare ourselves by looking at pictures trying to get a better taste of what it will be like to live at Our Little Roses. There is a lot of excitement. Right behind it came the worry. "How is this going to work?", " Are the kids going to be happy?" etc, etc These were the questions we pose to the unknown and the temptation is to let it dictate the experience. We'll revisit this again and again. It seems to come in waves. We'll have to go through what we have to go through to get there.
As I begin to reflect on how God is involved in all of this I find that we in our planning often see too closely our situation to the point we miss the bigger picture. We forget in our excitement and fretfulness that we even have the opportunity to "visit" in mission. Sure it may carry personal difficulties. It may even be more dangerous than our lives here in Alexandria. What becomes so easily forgotten and pushed aside, is that the girls at Our Little Roses do not have the choice. They do not have the opportunity to "try" it out. They are not "visiting" the poor to see if their call is amongst them. They are amongst them. Their's is 24/7. So our hesitancy as persons of the West pale in comparison. As I've shared with friends, even while we kid about our lack of financial means while here at seminar, our "first class poverty" is great wealth to those who have not.
So yes, this week I put out the platinum covered alms bowl so that we may follow our call to mission in Honduras. Even as I do it I hope I may remember the distinction between our "opportunity" to bring the Gospel to Honduras is very different than those dependent upon it for daily bread. May I remember the distinction that even our period of financial "stretchedness" here at seminary contains a degree of liberty that many would covet. Even at seminary we can be challenged at Christ's call to the "rich young man".
Tuesday, January 18, 2005
Beginnings
First I need to write that I am a terrible speller. Please note that this fact will not stop me. So if you get uptight about these things I suggest you read some other blog. Mine will only annoy you. It's January and we're not even close to getting to Honduras. Not that a lot of headway has not already been made. The most primary came a few weeks back.
Near the end of December my wife and I discerned again. If you are unfamiliar with discernment it is simply a big word for thinking through. It's a little more than that due to evaluating the thinking to discover if resonates well with one's direction. On a simple level it is simply thinking about.
It's daunting to think about going on Mission. We have three kids and while everything has not been easy we have been comfortable. The thought of leaving that (or striving for anything new) with three children to go to a different country that we do not know brings the inevitable fear. Fear of the unknown. Fear of something happening to the children. Committing to act when the pieces are not even complete.
Our first discernment about going to Our Little Roses occurred this fall. We talked about it a few times. We prayed (a little). We agreed it would be necessary for me to get Spanish and how it would help my eldest Henny relearn the Spanish he knew as a little boy in Miami. From those humble beginnings I applied to SCOM to get the funds to go to Honduras.
SCOM rejected our grant proposal. Now what? We were rejected. At the time it did not seem like a good result. I had made plans and the rejection was not helping those plans. Looking back even a few weeks it was good that we were rejected. Our dependence was linked to SCOM and not to God. We had not really listened to ourselves. We began too. Even in rejection we began to see that we were still being called. This is important for myself as a person preparing to become a clergy but there is more than that. We discovered that this is important for our family. We need to walk together to be a part of the girls lives down in Honduras. Our children need to see them and know them. My eldest has gotten comfortable with western trappings and needs to be exposed to life not so materially secure. So we discerned again. It was here that we discovered that this really is the next right step.
Near the end of December my wife and I discerned again. If you are unfamiliar with discernment it is simply a big word for thinking through. It's a little more than that due to evaluating the thinking to discover if resonates well with one's direction. On a simple level it is simply thinking about.
It's daunting to think about going on Mission. We have three kids and while everything has not been easy we have been comfortable. The thought of leaving that (or striving for anything new) with three children to go to a different country that we do not know brings the inevitable fear. Fear of the unknown. Fear of something happening to the children. Committing to act when the pieces are not even complete.
Our first discernment about going to Our Little Roses occurred this fall. We talked about it a few times. We prayed (a little). We agreed it would be necessary for me to get Spanish and how it would help my eldest Henny relearn the Spanish he knew as a little boy in Miami. From those humble beginnings I applied to SCOM to get the funds to go to Honduras.
SCOM rejected our grant proposal. Now what? We were rejected. At the time it did not seem like a good result. I had made plans and the rejection was not helping those plans. Looking back even a few weeks it was good that we were rejected. Our dependence was linked to SCOM and not to God. We had not really listened to ourselves. We began too. Even in rejection we began to see that we were still being called. This is important for myself as a person preparing to become a clergy but there is more than that. We discovered that this is important for our family. We need to walk together to be a part of the girls lives down in Honduras. Our children need to see them and know them. My eldest has gotten comfortable with western trappings and needs to be exposed to life not so materially secure. So we discerned again. It was here that we discovered that this really is the next right step.
