Men of peace

When Jesus sent His disciples out two by two to preach the gospel, He told them to watch out (see Luke chapter 10) for "men of peace" who would help them in every town that they came to. Over these past three days in Dakar, a man called Germain, philosophy teacher and president of the Christian Union movement in Senegal, has been that sort of person for us. From his wide network of Christian leaders, he has made phone calls and helped set up appointments for us to meet a variety of pastors and other leading Christians here in the city. At church this morning, and in a number of individual meetings over the coming days, we are connecting with ministers responsible for churches in Dakar and whole denominations here in the nation. What a joy it was for me to discover that one of them, the Baptist minister, had been a teenage boy on one of our King's Kids teams here in Senegal in the 1990s. I remember that he and his sister were with us when we took teams of African young people to minister with African American churches in Atlanta during the 1996 Olympic Games. It's my prayer that some of the young people who take part in our outreaches this summer, 2013, will also be the pastors, missionaries and Christian businessmen of the next generation.

Day one in Dakar

After a smooth and uneventful trip from Málaga to Madrid to Dakar, we finally arrived at our accommodation around midnight on Thursday. Our first encouragement of the day happened yesterday morning at breakfast time, before we had even met to pray and plan the day. Over breakfast, we got talking to some local missionaries here in Dakar, and they were able to give us the names of leaders of different churches, denominations and mission societies that we could meet with this week in order to share the vision and invite the involvement of more African youth when we bring our overseas teams to work in Senegal this summer. They also gave us names and contact numbers of mission guest houses with possible extra accommodation, so that we could make appointments to go and visit those in the afternoon. On our way to visit those locations, we stopped for lunch at a little restaurant with the very un-African name of "Colorado Grill" and the three of us from Spain had to laugh when we saw that the "plat du jour" was paella! We decided just to order some local fish (in coconut milk) instead. Here's a picture of Jean, posing in front of the restaurant.

We made good contact with the people from the other mission houses, but often they only had accommodation for 12 or 20 people. As we're expecting to be 60-100 people in August, it would be nice to find one location where all the teams could be together. On Monday, we're going to look at another place that might have room for all of us. After another meeting last night with the president of the schools and universities' Christian Union groups in Senegal, we finally went to bed, very satisfied with the good fruit of our first day.

Today we'll continue to connect with different church denomination and missions leaders, with the particular goal of forming good partnerships and encouraging the involvement of Senegalese youth this summer.

On my way...

Well, I'm on my way. Thanks to everyone who was praying. Neither of my flights were among those cancelled because of the Iberia strikes today.
This is just a short note. I'm in the airport, and experimenting with a Blogger app on an iPad. There will be more news from me whenever I can get Internet in Senegal.

Start with what you have...

There's a verse in the Bible (Zechariah 4 vs 10) that tells us not to despise the day of small beginnings. Often, as I mentor or coach people who have a vision to do something big for God, I discover that they haven't actually started to step out, because they don't yet have the people or the finances or the resources to accomplish their "big vision." In my experience, few of these God-given visions are very big in the beginning. In Austria, in Scotland, in South Africa, and now here in Spain, I've seen that we often need to step out with what we have, and do something that seems small and relatively insignificant, before we begin to see the release of the "something bigger" that God has in store for us.

In Cape Town, we had a vision for a computer ministry that would involve reaching dozens or even hundreds of teenagers to equip them with computer skills and with an opportunity to respond to the gospel. Only problem was... we didn't have twenty computers, and we didn't have the money to buy them, either. So, in obedience to God, we started with what we had: our two old computers from the KKI office. We invited four teenage girls to our house, and we had the first ever Project Powerlink "camp." It was a small beginning - but we were stepping out with what we had. A local businessman heard of what we were doing... and just two years later, we had our own "computer lab" with sixteen computers at a township school. As part of our schools ministry, we were teaching computer skills to around 270 young people every week.

Yes, I'm a firm believer in the fact that visions which are really from God will always be "too big" for us. We'll not be able to achieve them in our own strength or with our own resources, but will need to depend on God to do miracles for us. Often those miracles only happen when we step out in faith, and start to do the little we can with the few resources that we do have available now. If we hang around waiting for the "something bigger," we may never activate the faith needed for it to happen. As Zechariah said, so many centuries ago, we mustn't despise the days of small beginnings.

What has God put on your heart? Don't hold back, thinking that it's just impossible, but ask God what He expects of you, here and now. What is the "small beginning" that you need to make, in order to see the breakthrough of the bigger vision?

Recently, someone who knows that I strongly believe in this principle was teasing me about my dream to have a dog again some day. I was joking that my "ideal job" in retirement would be to train dogs for Hollywood movies, or at least to have my own border collie again that I could train to do fun and useful things around the house. "Start with what you have," she joked. "Practise by training those cats of yours!"

Well, as most people know, border collies just love to learn clever stuff and will happily perform tricks just for the fun of it, just to please you, or just to show off.  Cats, on the other hand, are much more independent, often have selective hearing (click here to read an example of that) and tend to need "bribed" with treats in order to do the clever stuff you're trying to teach them. But I had seen video clips of people who taught their dogs and cats the same tricks, and so, just for the fun of it, I rose to the challenge. For those who've asked, here is the first video of Teddi learning his "Say please" trick. Please don't despise this day of small beginnings!! And don't worry, I don't see this as a step to getting a dog any time soon :-)

Hand baggage dilemma

Okay, place your votes. Who should I allow to sneak into my hand baggage for this next trip?

Birthday Sunday

Can you believe I know five or six people who all had birthdays yesterday, 3rd March? Among those were my brother, who was celebrating his 50th, and my housemate, who was celebrating her 33rd. How amazing to think that God knows hundreds of thousands of people who had a birthday yesterday, and that He knows every single one by name. Wow!

Easter Bible reading booklets available now!

It's March, and the Easter booklet for the Reto 2013 Bible reading challenge is available for downloading now. Just this week, I was encouraged to hear of twenty two teenagers here in Spain, and thirty young people in South Africa who were waiting for the new booklet to come out.  You can get your copy by clicking the links below. As always, print double sided in landscape orientation, and then fold in half to form an A5 booklet. May God bless you as you read in these weeks leading up to Easter.

For the English booklet, click here.

Para el libro en español, haz clic aquí.