The Great Day of Thanks and more

So I celebrated my first real Holiday in Ukraine on Thursday and it was great. We were invited to Thanksgiving dinner with 23 other Americans at the house of Blessings (that's one of the missionary families last names :P). It was wonderful. The day before I cooked my dads potato salad and then made cucumber salad. As I walked to Katie's on Thursday so that we could journey to the meeting spot together I reflected on what I was thankful for. Many things ran through my head, friends, family, and opportunities were among the first but I also felt they were very cliche things even though I am thankful for them. As I pondered about how cliche they seem I passed a dog that was dancing after using the bathroom and I started to laugh as I looked up still laughing I saw a complete stranger laughing too and we locked eyes and it was then that I knew what I was most thankful for...Sharing laughs with strangers. While this person is still a stranger to me and I may never see them again (and if I do I sure won't recognize them) I realized how it is through laughter that we turn strangers into friends. Everyone we know yes even our parent were at some point a stranger to us but through laughs we have become friends, acquaintances, and family with these people whom we love.

 

Another thought that has consumed much of my thoughts over the past days: The Body of Christ!
As some of you know and some of you are about to learn, I have a slightly negative attitude toward churches at times. I have seen much arguing over stupid things, lots of division among congregations, and I despise the idea of the separation of the church through denominations. I see these things often as the body of Christ being divided, and as we know a house divided cannot stand so what makes us think a body divided can function. It has been this idea that has had me nervous about ever working in a church. But as I walk around the city (I do it every day to get to work) I think. Today as I walked to the feeding ministry (every 2 weeks we gather with some of the other missionaries and some Ukrainians to deliver a small bag of groceries to some of the poor among the city) I noticed the body of Christ not divided. I am here as a missionary sent by the United Methodist Church, some of the other missionaries are Baptist, and some are Non-Denominational. We are different denominations, we have different theologies, but we work together as the body of Christ, we each have other parts of ministry out side of the feeding ministry that we do as well and I pondered on how wonderful that was. Even more so I begin to think about the Ukrainians that are there with us and the ones that come to our student center...Many of them are Catholic or Orthodox and I realized how the body of Christ is working not only over denominational boundaries but through confessional boundaries as well. I was shocked that I had never realized this before and I thought about just how wonderful God truly is and that no matter what his will be done!

God Bless and Happy Thanksgiving,

PS. Hopefully I will have another blog filled with stuff about my trip to Poland and our visa getting experience.

My first Sermon in Ukraine

Here you go just as I promised! My first sermon in Ukraine.

And here is my transcript version:

Jeremiah 29:11-1311 For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. 12 Then you will call on me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. 13 You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.

I am sure many of you have heard this text before, and I might not be telling you anything new tonight but I do want to give you my thoughts because it is something God has been laying on my heart.

Before I get started though there is a quote that I read one time and I use it often when planning things, “If you want to make God laugh tell him your plans”. This applies to me preparing for tonight. I am a very energetic person usually and my mind is always very scattered. That was no different when I was trying to plan for tonight. I started off thinking I was going to use this passage, but I kept jumping away from it to other passages and topics, but every time I did I heard God laugh. The first time I wandered form this passage I started looking at a passage in the book of Acts, then I was on facebook and one of my friends posted Jeremiah 29:11-13 as their status so I started looking at it again and started to write something down but was going in a completely different direction with it. But soon I had changed my plans and was looking at writing about making a joyful noise, and as I was searching for the passage I accidentally came back to Jeremiah 29:11-13.   And then again my mind started to wander this time to uncertainty about what I would preach on, I had no ideas. Then Saturday I was at Kings Cross in Oshan and made a very small statement “I really just want a drink of milk” and as I turned around after saying that there was a milk sample table and it felt like God had set it down as I said those words! That really got me thinking about Gods plans for us. That night as I was talking to my friend from America on skype someone posted Jeremiah 29:11-13 on her facebook wall and I knew that I was not getting away from this passage and that I was suppose to talk about it tonight.

       I am going to tell you something a little personal about myself, my greatest desire is to have a family, a beautiful wife, energetic loving kids (that hopefully aren’t like me), a house, you know the kind of family you carry pictures of and show off to everyone. My biggest fear though is that I will never have that. But I really hold close to one verse when I think of this, its Psalms 37:4 “Take delight in the LORD, and he will give you the desires of your heart.”
But even with this promise I am still human I still worry and I still have fears. But Saturday I laughed at how amazing God can be with his little reminders that his plans for us are good and are to give us hope and a future.
        So here is a little bit more about the milk story. When I lived in America I drank a lot of milk. But since I have been here I barely drink it at all and the last few weeks I have wanted some but just never bought any, I wouldn’t think of it when I was at the store usually or I would get a coke because I know how to say coke in Ukrainian. But Friday night Illya asked me to bring some milk home. I can buy stuff in the store and its usually not that difficult  I just point a lot, so I walked in and I asked for some milk and pointed at the bigger bottle cause I knew I really wanted some and then later found out it was Kafir. So for a few weeks I had wanted milk and still had not had any and just as I mentioned it I was given milk!
        To me that milk was a desire of my heart, but it was something very small that I just didn’t ask for and the moment I asked for it, it was given to me. I am not saying that every little thing you ask for God will give you but he knows what you truly desire and he knows what is good for you and what will give you hope. That small glass of milk was hope for me that if I desire something so small for such a short amount of time and am blessed with it how much more will I be blessed when God delivers the true desire of my heart.
We can not desire what is outside of God though. We can not think that just because we want it really bad it will be given to us. If we think that then we are ignoring half of both of the passages. In Jeremiah it says “You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.” Psalms say first “Take delight in the LORD,” then it says we will get the desires of our heart.
When we seek the Lord, when we earnestly search for him we will find him. That is what we are promised. It is only once we search for him and find him that we can delight in him, and when we delight in him our desires will be for things that are of him and pleasing to him. Its like walking in the sand, at first Jesus is standing there waiting on you to find him. Our foot prints are all over the place, you walk this way then turn around and walk that way, maybe even do a dance that makes no since. Then as we find God and we walk with him our steps are in order with his our foot prints go right along side of his and when you dance your dance makes since, when he chooses to go down a path we go with him because we want to not because we have too. What happens at this point is that what we really desire falls into line with what God wants. We are delighted to be with him.

This  doesn’t make it wrong to want a house, a job, or a family, or that it is wrong to desire things for ourselves, but what we need to not forget is that God has plans for us that are not to harm us but to give us hope and a future. If you desire a family God may give it to you, but that doesn’t mean you will marry the person you are with or that you won’t adopt children. If you desire a job it might not be the one you have picked out for yourself that you receive but one that will be better for you inside of Gods plan. When the Jewish people were wandering the desert they wanted food and God gave them manna from heaven. They desired food and he gave them food, but not enough to keep for long times he provided it daily.

Often times we are selfish people thinking of only what we want and that we want it now, and not thinking of how that will affect our future or other people. but when we delight in the Lord and allow him to work his plans and stop laughing at ours. Our future will be filled with much more hope and much more meaning. So as we sing and pray think about what plans you have, ask yourself if this is what God wants for you, or is he laughing because he knows there is something better for you.

Lets do it!!

A stressful job? Whats that? I thought this week was stressful but now that everything I thought was stressful about it is done I realize that it really was not stressful at all I just thought it was.

This weekend as Saturday came up and it was an every other Saturday. That means we had the feeding ministry. But before that I journeyed to Kings Cross which is a HUGE mall. But I will tell you more of that adventure later :P. During the feeding ministry we took hot tea with the foods we were handing out and the people seemed so grateful. Many of our regulars were not out this week but we still found nice homes for all of the bags and we had a few more people from our Youth to Jesus show up (still trying to get people outside of our leadership team though). Next time we do it though the Blessing family will there (they are who started the ministry and were gone to Israel for a few weeks) and so we will be staying at the church talking and building the relationships with the people that we meet there!

After the feeding ministry I decided I had neglected cleaning the last week or two and had never really deep cleaned my apartment so I started. I washed every mirror, and table top in my room and then washed all my clothes and sheets and just completely made my room CLEAN! Then did the same for the hall way and living room (it took all day and into the night and I had help). We hid so many fake flowers (it looked like an old lady lived here not 3 young guys). But during that time I realized that we had neglected to plan for English club which is what we are suppose to do on Friday, and I didn't work at the student center again until Tuesday, the day of English club. Also I realized I had not started my sermon for Thursday or small group planning for Wednesday. I was SO STRESSED!!!!

In order to plan for English club and not have to work to much on my day of Monday me and Katie were able to just plan it through emails and it worked out great and I think it was a very successful week at English club.

Small group is starting to draw to a close with only 4 more weeks left, but we finished up Chapter 2 finally discussing the picture of the first church in Acts 2:42-47 (If you have not read this lately you might want to and ask yourself if your church is following this pattern!!). We decided to that since we only have a few weeks left to each pick part of the book that we want to study and work on studying those the next few weeks, next week will be Chapter 10 when Peter had his vision and visited Cornelius.

And for my sermon that I preached tonight!!! Well I won't spoil it just yet, it was recorded and I should have it tomorrow and will try to put it on youtube and on here so I can share it with you. :) If that does not work out I will post what I wrote down on here tomorrow (if your are lucky I might do both). But I fell so alive after it and I felt even more alive during it!!!

One last note I am still trying to raise the extra $100 dollars a month for the rent so that we can have the original agreement we made with my roommates before we realized there was some miscommunications about rent from GBGM. So if you would like to help out with that please go to http://secure.gbgm-umc.org/donations/advance/donate.cfm?id=3016163&code=14055A and let me know how much was donated so that I am able to keep up with it, so far we have raise $400 of the $1700 needed. If you would like to support me and other missionaries please visit here http://secure.gbgm-umc.org/donations/advance/donate.cfm?id=3021336&code=3021336, we are asked to raise $2500 a year to help support overhead cost such as salaries and travel of ourselves and other missionaries (this amount barely covers travel for me to get here so its not unreasonable).

THANK YOU all so very very much I love every one of you who read this and pray for me! May God Bless you and give you the desires of your heart!

Let the Festivities Begin

What a great time it has been since my last post.

For me the holiday season has always started on Halloween. Just a few days after Halloween is my birthday and then just weeks later is Thanksgiving and Christmas and New Years.

This year is a new year with new kind of festivities. Instead of trunk or treat and Halloween parties I celebrated Halloween by watching a movie, then the next day was a Halloween party at English club with face painting, pumpkin carving, and Its the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown. Also the very next day I decided that a bit more celebration was in order and listened to Orsen Wells War of the Worlds Radio Broadcast. So what is usually a one night celebration in the States turned into a three day mini celebration in a country where the holiday is not even celebrated :).

Thursday was my Birthday!!! And it was amazing. I made brownies (not from scratch but from brownie mix sent from the states sorry) and took them to pilgrims. At Pilgrims I was very pleasantly surprised with a cake from Katie, the Pilgrims got me a traditional Ukrainian dress shirt and a giant stuffed penguin (for those of you that do not know I love penguins and in fact have a tattoo of chilly willy on my calf). But before I was presented with these gifts I was made to close my eyes as everyone dressed up as chilly willy (wearing caps and scarfs and many having come in black and white and orange socks). After Pilgrims I was met with many hugs and a few more gifts and can honestly say this was an amazing birthday!

But again on Saturday it was time for Halloween again!!! As you know there are a few of us young adult missionaries from the States here in Lviv. We try and meet weekly or every other week for fun and fellowship and due to bad planning we didn't get together for Halloween until the Saturday after, but it was amazing we simply watched The Lost Skeleton of Cadaver. If you have not seen it and you enjoy truly stupid movies this is a must see!!

I am having a blessed holiday season and am excited to see what other blessings God has in store for me as the rest of the holidays arrive (American Thanksgiving, St. Nicholas Day (dec. 19th), American Christmas, New Years, and Ukrainian Christmas (January 7th))