Encouragement

Do you give it?

The biblical idea of encouragement pictures one person coming alongside another. Presence. Participation. Conversation. Walking together. Working together.

Interestingly enough, that is how the Holy Spirit of God is described also.

God empowers people to encourage other people, and the best kind of encouragement is specific rather than general. "Good job" is OK, but "I really appreciate you because _________" is much better and longer lasting.

Can you come alongside someone this weekend to provide encouragement in a specific way?

It’s a good way to imitate God!

Friday!

Good morning! I hope you have had a good week! Keep an eye to the sky today. Usually, however, when storm predictions are hyped like they are this time, they turn out to be less. I hope that's the case this time too. 

I'm still way behind in my prep for Sunday, but I'm OK with all that. I'll just take it as it comes. Yesterday was a busy day. I did get some of my sermon started, but then I left it to go see people and do things. I saw a man who is dying. He's afraid. There are lots of challenges with this one, but the biggest is that his speech is hard to understand. I had trouble following all that he was saying.

I saw a few other people yesterday also, and I went to an ethics committee meeting at St. Vincent Dunn. I really enjoy these meetings and always learn a lot. One of the weirdest things that I learned yesterday is that people steal the crucifixes off the walls of the hospital. Wow! That's complicated! Think about it. ha ha.

The ReGeneration Store is a regular hangout for me. Yesterday was no exception. It's a great place to see lots of people. The store continues to do amazingly well. We had our best February ever. By far. This means more ministry dollars to help people in need. It is an awesome blessing to so many. We are so thankful for it all.

Yesterday evening we got to have dinner with Lester and Maddie. They were down to close on their house in Bedford! We are so happy for them and are so excited to have them coming back home to live. They get possession of their house in mid to late March but won't move in until May.

The picture above is from our adopted village of Guajire in Honduras. It is a grandmother with her granddaughter. Steve, Dan, and Warren built a house for the little girl and her family. I got to visit them a few days later. They were so grateful. They are members of the church in Guajire.

Tomorrow I am driving the Mitchell track team to DePauw University, so I will be gone all day. This means I need to do my long run, a 20 miler, sometime today. I'm going to have to do a detailed study of the weather to see what window opens. Could be a challenge in several ways today. I am hoping to get 50 miles this week, which means, if I get 20 today, then I will need to run 5 more tomorrow. Doable!

My quads are still burning from my 10 miler in the mountains of Honduras on Tuesday. I hope to post about running in Honduras next week. It was quite an amazing experience!

OK, here we go!



Got your back

Isn't that funny?? ha ha

From Mike Cope's blog.

Today

As a rule, a man’s a fool

When it’s hot, he wants it cool

And when it’s cool, he wants it hot

And he always wants what’s not

I memorized this decades ago. Speaks volumes, doesn’t it?

We talk about the weather a lot, even to strangers. Is it because it’s one of the most basic things we share in human existence? A lot of people complain about the weather. Why?

My running buddies, always positive, laugh and say, "There are no bad days to run, just bad running clothes."

God says, "This is the day the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it!"

Can we do that even on cruddy weather days, all days, always?

I do better when I remember that each day is a gift given by God.

Thursday morning

Wow, I slept well last night! I guess I was making up for the night before. The day we left Honduras I got up and ran 10 miles, so I started the long journey on the tired side. Our trip home was good but long. We leave Honduras around 1 p.m. Central time and fly to Houston, which takes less than 3 hours. In Houston we usually have around a 3 hour layover, which is not too bad. We have to clear passport control, pick up checked bags, go through customs, re-check the bags, and then go through security again. It takes a while to do all that, and by the time you get something to eat, the wait is not all that long. The flight from Houston to Indy is less than 2 hours, arriving around 11 p.m. Eastern time. It's always good to get back home.

Yesterday I tried to get myself back together and focused on what is coming rapidly: Sunday. I got up at the usual time and forced myself to do some things, including going for a 5 mile run. I'm right in the heart of training for Boston, so I can't miss too many workouts. It was hard to concentrate yesterday, but I got a few things done. Today I have a busy schedule, which will hinder sermon prep. It's all OK. I've got tomorrow and Saturday to get it all done.

I better go for now. I have lots more to share about the trip and other things, and I will over the course of the next few blogs. 

Link to Facebook photos

I think this will work. I will try another method as well.

Honduras February 2012 Final Report

I was not able to blog consistently on a daily basis on this trip, so I will provide you a summary. It was an unusual trip in lots of ways but a good trip. Steve Gilstrap, Dan Kerr, and Warren Crawford left Indianapolis for Tegucigalpa on Saturday, Feb. 18. I arrived on the 22^nd.

Steve, Dan, and Warren did lots of good work before I arrived. They visited our adopted village of Guajire to build a house, distribute food and clothes, and to further build relationships with members of the church and the community. They fed people at the dump, and they worked at the school across from the dump, installing a new pump. The school had been without water for many weeks. Getting the water back at the school was a huge event in many ways.

When I arrived on Wednesday, the 22^nd, Marc Tindall picked me up, and we headed straight to the Mayor of Tegucigalpa’s office. There we met with the Mayor’s wife. She is genuinely concerned about the poor people who live in and around her city. She and Marc have worked together on several projects. The main focus of the meeting was to partner in rebuilding the downtown market that was destroyed by fire. The fire destroyed the meager livelihood of 1000s of people.

We spent a couple of days, Thursday and Friday, at the Farm at Zambrano. I really like this place and project. The dream is that it will feed lots of hungry people, employ several people from the dump, and provide a revenue stream to do even more ministry. Our two days there were focused on helping to build a building out of block made from the dirt on the farm. Our job was to move these 20 pound blocks. We moved 1200 of them, handling them 3 times before they got where they needed to be!

Dan and Steve left Saturday to come back home. Warren and I stayed behind to finish some business that we, mostly Warren, had been working on for a year. After leaving our 2 amigos at the airport we went back out to Guajire to visit some of folks from church. I got to see the newly constructed house and meet the grateful family living in it. We visited other church members and did a little scouting for our summer trip.

On Sunday we took off for Santa Rosa de Copan. It turned out to be about a 7-8 hour trip, twice as far as I thought it was going to be. Why did we go there? To see the ambulance that IU Health donated to our work. It is now in use there, helping a medical mission group. They are using it and will soon be using it even more. It was great to see it and meet the wonderful servants who doing great things for the Lord. The ambulance is a useful tool in their hands.

On Monday we returned to Tegucigalpa and then to Santa Anna, where we stayed. On the way back we stopped at some Mayan ruins, which was pretty cool, and we ate the fish you see pictured above. It was caught out of a lake next to where we ate. After we got back to Santa Anna, we started packing up, anticipating our trip home. We flew out Tuesday about midday and made it back to Mitchell around 12:30 a.m.

It was a really good trip! Perhaps one of the most significant things to come out of this trip is how we plan to build houses in the future. We plan to make the move to building block houses, which will take considerably longer, but they are so much stronger. We think it could take 5 days to build a house, and we really like this. Our plan is to partner with the church and the village of Guajire in constructing a couple of houses this summer, perhaps building 2 at the same time.

We like this idea because it will allow us to work side by side with Hondurans. We may not be able to speak to each other fluently, but working side by side is a loving way to communicate about God’s love. We think building block houses will really help us deepen our relationship with the church there.

Thanks for all your prayers! Our summer trip is scheduled for July 8 - 18.  I hope to post more pictures from this trip soon, so come back.

Honduras Day 3 February 2012

[Photos related to this post are below - click on the picture to go to the album]

I’ve got a little time this morning to write this morning, since Steve and Dan are leaving. Mark will take them to the airport in a little while. I think Warren in going with them, and I am going to stay here and try get a 10 mile run in. That will be a challenge with the hills and the altitude. I’ve run the last 2 mornings and have done pretty well, getting a 3 and 5 mile run in, shortly after daylight.

The last 2 days have been spent at the Farm. I really like this developing ministry. It’s creative and has the potential to change a lot of lives. Nathan Hale and Donnie Anderson are living there and working to develop the property. We’ve have helped out this week, as we have done on previous trips. We have moved tons of blocks. Literally!

The work on the farm is different in that we do not interact much with Hondurans, beyond the few men who are working with us. There are no children around to play with, but that’s OK. We have those opportunities everywhere else we go. The time at the farm is helping us develop a strategy for our work in Guajire.

We talked a lot how we can build block house out there (Guajire), partnering with the locals over a week’s time to build 3 houses, perhaps even sleeping in the village some. Our goal has been, and is, to develop relationships with the locals, sharing our common love found in Christ, providing loving encouragement and support, without enabling. It’s all pretty exciting, because it seems like we are moving toward doing that in a better way.

One of our friends who lives here, Byron Sommardahl, opened a coffee shop yesterday in Santa Rosa. We were his first customers. Byron is a really neat guy. He recently married a Honduran woman and now lives here. He runs a computer business from Honduras now. He is very talented.

This afternoon we are going out to Guajire to visit some of friends. The weather is perfect: 60s in the mornings and around 80 in the afternoon. Keep praying for us.