Sunday, May 18, 2014

Do You Know God Like This?

IF YOU are a Follower of Christ, and have not participated in a worship service in another culture and another language, you are missing out on a big part of who God is. It’s one thing to know in your head that God is praised all over the world, in many cultures and different languages, but until you have personally been part of it, you cannot fully understand. There are some things you can only get through personal experience.



This concept of personal experience even applied to Jesus: the bible says…
            seeing the people, He felt compassion for them – Matthew 9:36;
            When He went ashore, He saw a large crowd, and felt compassion for them – Matthew 14:14.
Certainly Jesus knew about the people, but the bible says that when he saw the people, he had compassion for them.


If you are able to see people who do things different from you, eat food you’re not used to, speak a language different than yours, in a different part of the world, giving praise to God the same way you do, it will change the way you understand God. You will see Him as bigger than you could otherwise know. You will see Him as caring for people you never even dreamed about. You will see how small you are. You will see how blessed you are that you can be part of such a large family. And if you are a servant of His, you will know how privileged you are to be chosen to serve.



I have been fortunate enough to see people praise God in six different languages. I have seen preachers fervently preach and teach about God in six languages. I have an appreciation for how vast God is because of these experiences, yet still, with each worship service in another culture, I am amazed at the great size of our God and the impact He is having, at least in the parts of the world I have been able to visit.


My plea to you is simply this: visit another country where the language and culture is different from yours, and attend a worship service. If you do not know the language, by all means go with someone that can translate for you. See the passion of the people as they sing the words that you may not understand, see the enthusiasm of the preacher as he proclaims God’s message and know he is teaching about the same God and the same bible you know, be changed for the better! You will not regret it!

Thursday, May 8, 2014

You bought the bins!


Remember our call for donations to buy bins so we could sort and organize the material and supplies that had been donated? Here are some before and after pictures of the material in suitcases, empty boxes, and empty shelves.

WITH YOUR DONATIONS we were able to buy all the bins we needed and Sandy and another “tia” sorted and filtered the donations so now we know what we have and can easily find what we need!

THANK YOU!

Before:



After: