around the world with Jesus

…that’s the conclusion in this article out of London.  Our Convoy of Hope interns are currently in Haiti where they’re seeing the water crisis up close.  I’ve read that today over 1.2 billion people lack access to a purified water source.  Populations are growing and the crisis is gaining momentum as clean water sources can’t keep up with the demand.

Getting water from wells, rivers and ponds is quite normal in many places around the world.  Here are some children whom we met in Ghana.

 As we know, people can’t live without water.  However, there are living people who don’t have access to a purified source so their life is full of disease, diarrhea, parasites and more.  Life could be so much fuller if only they had clean water.

 Too many times the water is dirty.  In all likelihood, this little guys legs are hurt because there is arsenic in his water.  Arsenic problems go away when a nail is put in whatever holds his water…just a nail and he wouldn’t have to deal with this…

Our interns are working hard to help.  Here’s Josh with some guys in Uganda where they built water filters that could clean the water of up to 98% of the contaminents.

There are solutions…and none of them are easy.  I pray the article is proven wrong…and that the water crisis is overcome by God’s people working to help “the least of these.”  Kudos too to our interns and others around the world who are helping.

At Convoy of Hope we talk often about meeting physical and spiritual needs.  Here’s a great example of how it works.  Our interns are in Haiti (I’ll soon join them in Cuba).  Here’s a portion of a note I got from Bethany this week…

“This morning, we will be doing a short Bible skit about the 4 soils and passing out seed kits to 50 students.  Those 50 students will be responsible for planting their seeds at home and caring for their garden.  After harvest time, the students will be required to bring back a certain number of seeds to give back to the program!!!!! The students will be learning about growing and sharing… being good stewards of their resources!!!  Also, we will be cultivating a garden for only the school’s use. ”

That’s how it can work…a good combination of meeting physical and spiritual needs.  Here’s Bethany with a couple of little guys in Haiti.

It was the top story for a few days, and spent many days on the front page…the Assemblies of God World Missions did a great story on our fall ‘09 interns.

Click here for the story. 

I had a recent conversation with Mark Entzminger, the DYD of South Dakoda.  He “called” to  chat about Convoy of Hope, our interns and more.  It’s to preview a bit of their Calibrate Conference this fall.  Here’s the conversation…

 
Calibrate Conference: Matt Wilkie from Mark on Vimeo.

Read more at Mark’s blog, www.sdyce.com.  The blog is full of resources and ideas…

I’ve wanted to memorize and pray for all the countries of the world for about 5 years. I figured since I’ve actually started, that blogging about it may help provide added accountability.

I heard a speaker at Book of Hope quite some time ago. His name is Dick Eastman and he’s with a ministry called Every Home for Christ. http://www.ehc.org/

If I remember correctly, he spoke of praying for every country in the world every day on his way to work, or wherever he was going that day. I love that idea. Of course, it’s a listing thing where he would simply fly through a list. However, with his decent knowlege of the world a passion for those people, and a greater love for God, I bet some cool things happen in response to those prayers.

The prayer…

• helps keep his passion alive and growing.
• reminds him to pray for the places he’s been and the people he’s met
• helps him be more aware when he hears of places on the news or in conversation
• connects him with the desire God has to receive worship from the nations
• is heard by our Savior, who responds

He passed out prayer maps that day. I have mine with me most of the time, wanting to actually start the memorization process. The idea is to pray for a few countries a day each day for a month, but I like the idea of just learning them all. I’ve told other intern teams of my desire to learn them all. Haven’t done it. Will do so starting now, or last week actually.

Click here to see the list.

I’ve gotten Africa, but am a bit worried about all of those Oceanic islands. Wish me luck…or even order the map (it’s free). Accountability in cyberspace has arrived.

Here’s the last photo before they headed out. Most slept little last night as they packed and cleaned, but they’re likely asleep now (except for Karen, the driver).

Please keep them in prayer as they’ll be gutting homes in Galveston, Tx, while working with local churches to help those in the community. It’s still a devasted area.

It’s been a great week. Just over a week ago, our spring ‘09 team arrived. The team will soon serve in Galveston, TX; Haiti, they’ll be in the Dominican Republic and then serve another country in the region, returning to Atlanta for a Convoy of Hope outreach. It’ll be a full 2 1/2 months. This is a great team.

Let me introduce them…(left to right)

Natalie is from the Seattle area. As a Bible Quizzer she memorized much of the New Testamant. She just graduated from Evangel with a teaching degree.

Deserai is from Sioux City, IA. She also was at James River’s Master’s Commission a few years ago. Her cousin (er, her mom’s cousin) is Rick Ryan from our Convoy of Hope staff.

Bethany is a Missionary Associate who will work with Karen to lead the team. She’s been on the Convoy team for 1 1/2 years.

The bear isn’t real or on the team.

Jorel grew up as a missionary kid and will head to seminary after the term. He graduated from Bethany College.

Karen was on the fall team and is helping to lead this team. She’s an RN with a Master’s in teaching.

We have a great team…just wanted to introduce them to you. Here are 4/5 of them on the couch.

When I was at Book of Hope, I remember working with Leah to try and go back and get photos of all of the former interns…never got it done. Too many to track down. When I came to Convoy of Hope to work towards starting this intern program, I thought it would be fun to start from day 1.

So…in the back of the intern training area we have a wall full of photos. We started two years ago with just one…Josh…

He was the lone team member that went with the field guy, Sean Kelly. We added his photo the first day of the 2nd term. Then, on the first full day of the 3rd term, we added 8 photos from our summer team. It continued. Today was the first day of the 6th term. We added 12 photos from the fall team from last year. There are now 57 photos on the wall.

I’ve always been a nostalgic guy, as a shelf in my room from growing up would prove, but the wall helps me remember to pray for those people, to see what’s up with them and their lives and to even check in on occassion. Of course, facebook helps with that too…(it turns out Noah was indeed having fun with his status change to “married).

Anyways, it was fun hanging the photos (actually Jorel did). We’ll hang more on June 19…

I look forward to seeing the wall a decade from now with knowlege of where some of those people have gone…great days are not only behind but ahead for them…

Convoy of Hope was shut down last week…but I was at the World Missions Summit 2. I wouldn’t have traded the experience for anything. It was incredible. I twittered, “it smells like missions here”. It did. Not sure what that meant, but it was a very cool week.

But I don’t think I slept much. A little…but not much. Five guys in a room with two double beds wasn’t too comfortable. I did bring an air mattress, but…

I’ve mentioned to teams that God is pretty smart. On his top 10 list, He included the obvious…don’t kill, don’t commit adultery, don’t take My Name in vain. Most people who want to follow Christ do pretty well in most of those areas. But He included another…Honor the Sabbath.

I won’t do a long exegesis on this commandment, but I will say that He wants us to take some down time every now and then. I’m not always good at that. Honestly, I can be very good at it sometimes though. I have been the last day or two. I think resting can honor God. I like Hebrews 6 that speaks of entering “that rest.” Here…I think it means more than just physical rest. It alludes to the kind of rest that we can have in our minds and hearts when we know we’re living right. That’s a pretty cool rest…

So…the idea of just being and not necessarily doing is a pretty holy thing. It brings honor to God. We were in church this morning, but I’ve been vegging for about 3 hours. It’s felt great.

Taking a sabbath…so important He wrote it in stone. Busy doesn’t equal holy. I’m going to post this and shut down the computer and get some more rest…

It'll be a great week…here is Lindsey with our "See it, sense it, live it" banner. She's on it with some kids from a refugee camp in El Salvador.