As my work on the book winds down this summer, it looks like some more travel ahead as fall rolls around.  I’m putting some of the finishing touches to the final chapters now and then will take one more spin through the whole thing before sending it out for editing. Hopefully I won’t have to blow it up and rebuild it again.    

I’m already committed to the Olympic Peninsula in Washington State on July 6, and now in Clovis, CA on July 26.  If you’d like to join us at either event, please see our Travel Page for more information. These are all conversations to help others process their journey in learning to live loved and connect in more relational ways with other believers.  

Also, it looks like trips are in the works this fall for 

Atlanta, GA  •  Houston, TX  •  San Antonio, TX  •  Austin, TX  •  Kentucky 

Even though these aren’t final and we don’t have dates for these yet, I’m letting folks know in case you are in those areas and want to tag on to the trip with anything else while I’m there.  It helps to know that before we get tickets nailed down.  

At the end of last week I received the following poem in my email and was so touched by it that I shared it with almost everyone I was with this last weekend.  So I wrote him to ask if I could share it on my blog and with his permission you’ll find it below.  It captures the whole story of redemption in a magnificent way and ends in just the right spot.  

I met Jimmy last summer at our Seeding Community Conversation in North Carolina and was touched by this young man’s story, his passion for God’s kingdom and his willingness to follow Jesus even through painful and difficult places.  Recently my brother suffered a very painful loss and is processing that in his own journey.  I suspect this poem might have grown out of that.   

Genesis

by Jimmy Wolfe 

After the Beginning, my world
was formless and void.
Darkness,
           Doubt,
                     Chaos,
Covered and hovered over my heart.
There was light. Until there wasn’t.
Succumbing to the weight of night,
           the sun surrendered and
I could  not see what was good.
Dusk without dawn.
           How many days?
The earth stopped bringing.
           Life stopped living.
                      I stopped believing
but not trusting.
Dusk without dawn.
How many days?
On a seventh day, through the stormy silence,
I heard the Word speak
           “Rest, I will.
                     Trust, I Am.”
His whispered Breath filled this dust and
           Light broke through,
                     a garden grew,
                               a Kingdom came.
As I saw Him seeing me,
my fig leaf fell and His love
drove Fear and Shame through
the Eastern gate as fiery angels
turned West to hem me in.
And on One Tree Hill, He said,
           “Eat. Drink. Remember.
                      You’ve known good and
                                you’ve known evil.
Now, you know Me.”

© 2014 by Jimmy Wolfe

We got some good news this morning from Kenya. As you know we’ve hired a well company to come in and dig three new wells in the northern regions where a severe drought has caused great disease and death, and the people have had to walk 40 kilometers to get water from the nearest well.  The wells are costing $31,000 each to drill and we’ve been waiting for news that they have been successful.  This is the report we got today:  

The good news is that the water is now found in plenty for the first well.  The water came with great force and the manager of the company said that he did not expect water like this.  The water will serve a huge number of the community and their animals, God is good for this!

God is good even without this, but this is good.  I’m so grateful that they found water in the first drilling.  Two more to go!  The people are so excited to get life-giving water much closer to home.  

The first drilling in the northern region

The pharmacy continues to rise

The school rooms and pharmacy are being built with volunteer labor.  These people have been working tirelessly in that region not only to get the wells in with solar pumps, but to also build the school rooms and pharmacy to help with more enduring needs.  We sent an additiona $8000.00 last week in food supplies to help with the volunteers and to help with some of the elderly who didn’t get enough food the first time around.   

We also received some news about the orphanage and school. State inspectors will no longer allow the orphanage to provide its own education without procuring an additional five acres and paying wages that were prohibitive for the orphange.  They have decided to close the school at the end of this term and just maintain the orphanage there.  The children will be enrolled in nearby schools during the day and return to the Living Loved Center to sleep and eat.  Overall the costs will decline a bit, though student fees will still have to be paid at the schools, since they do not have free education there.  Costs will be about $8,000.00 per year to enroll all the students and that will increase over the next few years as more students move from primary to secondary schools.  And I do like the idea of these children not remaining on an island unto themselves, but engaging other students in their neighborhood as well.  That willl help acclimate them to live beyond the center at some point.  

So the work continues, as do the costs.  Your prayers are most welcome.  If you can and want to help financially you can direct it through Lifestream as contributions are tax-deductible in the US.  As always, every dollar you send goes to the need in Kenya.  We do not (nor do they) take out any administrative or money transfer fees.  If you would like to be part of this to support these brothers and sisters and see the gospel grow in this part of Africa, please see our Sharing With the World page at Lifestream. You can either donate with a credit card there, or you can mail a check to Lifestream Ministries • 1560 Newbury Rd Ste 1  •  Newbury Park, CA 91320. Or if you prefer, we can take your donation over the phone at (805) 498-7774.

In my last blog post, I shared a bit about my dad and where he is on his journey today.  It just so happens that yesterday my brother on his web site, ttp.tv, just posted an interview of my dad telling how this journey began. It’s the first in a series, but gives you a picture how a heartfelt cry of wanting to know if God is real opened up a better road for him to travel on than the one he’d been on.  

Though he expresses his story in terminology I wouldn’t use today because it can so easily be misinterpreted, this will give you a great picture of my dad and the legacy from which my life springs.  I often tell people who are as yet unsure that God exists or that he is a loving Father in the way I’d describe him, to ask God himself.  “If you’re real, would you show me who you really are?”  It’s a prayer he answers.  Not necessarily overnight and not necessarily by the expectations we’d want to lay out in front of him.  But in the way that will most grant us access to him and to his heart, he will make himself known.  

Life in Jesus is a revelation, not a bunch of rules and rituals to follow.  

I visited my dad this weekend.  This is not an easy time as my mom is in a nursing home after suffering what we assume were a series of strokes that has robbed her of mobility and affected her capacity to process life going on around her.  I have always respected my dad as a rock in this world—his decades-long passion for God, his care for others, his honesty and integrity even at personal cost, and now the way he gives up his life every day to make my mom’s a bit more pleasant in the twilight of hers.  I would have to tell you more history than is appropriate to help you understand the depth of what my dad is going through in this the sixty-seventh year of their marriage, but trust me I am undone by the sweet and tender way he attends to her every need when there is little coming back to reward him for doing so. 

One morning he told Sara and me that God had spoken to him as he woke up and confirmed to him that he was in control of every bit of this process, that he was drawing both of them into a greater season of dependency.  “As painful as this is, I wouldn’t trade it away for the depth of connection it is giving me with God,” he told us choking up.  God also assured him that he was at work in Mom as well, deeply below the surface shielding her in the pain and drawing her closer as well even though it isn’t so visible on the surface.  It reminded me of what we wrote about Missy in THE SHACK, that God was in the truck with Missy, even as the abductor sped away.  Our fear for others (and for ourselves) always removes God from the situation as we assume people at the extremes are all alone in their suffering and pain.  I love being reminded that they are not. 

Every day he goes down to the nursing home to spend the day with my mom in the middle of circumstances he no longer controls.  Every night he returns home to take care of all the details of their lives and prepare for the next.  He takes her food every day because it isn’t so good where she is.  It is a lonelier life now for sure, and their isn’t much happiness in the circumstances he bears.  But my dad was on the front in an infantry division in World War II in the northern reaches of France and thinks this is still far easier than that was.  So he soldiers on every day determined to make each day as sweet as possible for his bride at this stage of her journey. 

So now he is leaning into God’s reality each day more than he ever has.  He has no idea how long this stretch of the journey is so he takes one day at a time and simply does what is before him.  And I treasure every moment I get with both of them, Mom in the narrowing space of life, and Dad in his deeper touch with God.  It’s easy to understand why we all hope for “the good life,” and think of it as circumstantial ease that allows us to enjoy life on our own resources.  It seems that only in times of extremity are we reminded that we weren’t created for this broken age and that we cannot endure it alone.  Our hearts long for another reality, and then we discover again it is right here with us. 

Jesus said as much.  “You’re blessed when you’re at the end of your rope. With less of you there is more of God and his rule.”  (Matthew 5:3, the Message)  The more disconnected we are from the kingdoms of this world the more drawn we are into his.  In a world that lots for amusement and easy it is so easy so easy for us to complain when our temporal joy is disrupted with brokenness and challenge.  I love the legacy my dad is giving to my brothers, our children, and our grandchildren.  This world and its “joys” are ever-fleeting, but a live lived in love—the Father’s extravagant love and the love we pass on to others who may be able to do little for us in return—draws us into the space that is far more real and far more enduring. 

The trust that goes deeply into God when life deals you challenge and pain, is a rare and precious treasure.  I have a front row seat for one example of it right now.  My inbox if full of many others who are being swallowed up by the pain of this age. Trust me, there is a place deeply in him that can set a heart at rest even in the midst of great extremity.  I pray you find it too.  

I’m going to lump a number of things into this update, since so much is going on.  The TellitCon event scheduled for June 20-21 in Visalia, has been postponed due to a lack of enrollment for that date.  Bummer!  I was excited about some of the things on my heart to share with young storytellers, but I figure there is a better time and place ahead.  We’ll see. Perhaps a podcast if nowhere else, eh?  

Also, I’ve gotten some new pictures from Kenya of the walls going up at the school.  Wow do these dear folks work fast!  

Check out the scaffolding.  Pretty sure that wouldn’t work here in the States.  I hope they are all being careful.  The work on these buildings is all being done by volunteers who have come up from the Kitale area to help.  Such amazing generosity!  

Along with the pictures came this report:  “Greetings in Jesus name, sorry for not being in touch for sometime it is due to running their and here inclusive to make sure that we put things in order, some of the license I was so needed to sign it. For every process, I thank God that everything is ok in Northern parts project, the drilling water company are ready to start the work on Tuesday, they will be travelling on Saturday, well equipped and ready to drill water. Expects updates report from entire of the week. Concerning the dispensary and the school, the work is going on well done and the roofing will start also next week. Our volunteers have done wonderful work and some of them are going to rest for some days while the new others will take on for the completion.  We appreciate your involvement in every steps.  Thomas will be updating in every steps including pictures from the ground.  I am now familiar with the people of Northern Parts.

Finally here are some podcast updates.  This week and next John Lynch (BO’S CAFE, ON MY WORST DAY) is my guest on The God Journey. He shares quite openly from his journey and his passion to help others find a home in the Father’s love and affection.  

Finally, for the past two weeks I have been a guest on the Dustin Daniels Show talking aboout HE LOVES ME.  You can find those interviews here:

Show 72: What Really Happened on the Cross?
Show 71: He Loves Me – Learning to Live in the Father’s Affection

All for now.  Life is good.  Fullness amidst challenges.  What could be better?  Fullness without challenges, I guess, but I seem to suspect that the fullness I get to live in today has a lot to do with the challenges God has met me in in times past.  A blessed weekend to you all. 

I subscribe to the Daily Dig hosted by the Daily Plough and get a short tidbit every morning from some amazing saints whose seasoned lives point down the road to a more vibrant, transforming faith.  This morning they posted this quote from a twenty-three year old, written in the 1500s from a dungeon where he had been imprisoned for his faith:

Love is like fire – When it is first kindled in a man, small troubles and temptations smother and hinder it; but when it really burns, having kindled the man’s eagerness for God, the more temptations and tribulations meet it, the more it flares, until it overcomes and consumes all injustice and wickedness.  (Love is Like Fire by Peter Riedemann)

This image could apply to a lot of conversations I had over the weekend in Phoenix.  Living in the Father’s love is a growing reality and as we’re growing to engage that love, it will help if we have an honest sense of how strong that love is in us at any particular time.  In the early days it can feel fragile as it succumbs easily to religious condemnation, gets challenged by events in our lives we don’t understand, or can even be swallowed up by our own distractions and indulgences.  Like a small fire in the wind, it may be difficult to sustain and it may be true that we’ll have to avoid some places and people where love in us is challenged or thwarted. 

But as we grow in the reality of a Father’s affection we discover that his love in us is the strongest force in the universe like a raging wildfire where the wind only makes it stronger.  Now it consumes the same influences that it sought to avoid so that we can be in those same places, or hang out with the same people.  No longer feeling challenged by their brokenness or judgment, we are free to love them as love finds its way toward justice, truth, and joy.   I used to think love was such a weak way to live in the world, and discovered that there is nothing stronger and nothing richer.  

So let love grow in you.  If you need to be careful for a season of those places where it is challenged, do so. But watch as that love begins to grow how free you’ll be in those settings that used to challenge you the most.  

What a powerful view of love, and a powerful observation by a twenty-three year old!  How I wish that were the predominant  heritage of the Anabaptist tradition from which Peter Riedemann came rather than their rigid theology.  I suspect most of our traditions had rich beginnings in people who came to discover and live in the depths of Father’s affection, only to have subsequent generations miss that reality and give more effort to systemitizing their beliefs than propogating his love.   Sad isn’t it?  Since it is only the ferocity of God’s love that changes a world, not all our doctrine or rituals.  

The intervention in North Pokot is well underway.  A couple of months ago our friends in Kenya discovered 120,000 tribal people who were being wiped out by a prolonged drought. Their economy has collapsed. They had no water and their unsanitary living conditions had allowed disease and death to run riot through their families.  No government services or NGOs have dared to go into this area because the need is overwhelming and the costs to transport supplies into that region too costly. 
Yet teams of volunteers from IGEM have gone there to build schoolrooms so the people can be educated, a dispensary for needed medications to be available to the sick, and to drill three wells to put water within a short walking distance of the people.  (If you want to read the details of their plight please see my earlier blog.)  Their compassion for their fellow countrymen amazes me and I’m blessed that through the contributions of many of you we were able to empower them to make a difference in so many lives.  Four schoolrooms are being constructed so their children, who have never had an education, can begin.  Uniforms have been donated and teachers have volunteered to go into that region to teach the students. A dispensary is rising that can provide needed drugs to the sick and infirm. They also hope eventually to get a van that will be able to take the medications out to people who are too sick to travel.  A pharmacist from Australia has volunteered to help in set up the dispensary and train the workers.

A geologist has identified three sites for wells and they are drilling now in hopes of putting a well within a short walking distance from the population.  One man in Texas donated $135,000 for all of that to happen as I reported earlier.  The pictures below document the process they are making.   But there have been cost overruns with a truck breaking down and other expenses of getting building materials into the region.  They will also need some ongoing funds to pay teachers and provide food for the schools, so the need continues.  

Your prayers are most welcome for the people in need and the volunteers who are in Pokot right now.  If you can and want to help financially you can direct it through Lifestream as contributions are tax-deductible in the US.  As always, every dollar you send goes to the need in Kenya.  We do not (nor do they) take out any administrative or money transfer fees.  If you would like to be part of this to support these brothers and sisters and see the gospel grow in this part of Africa, please see our Sharing With the World page at Lifestream. You can either donate with a credit card there, or you can mail a check to Lifestream Ministries • 1560 Newbury Rd Ste 1  •  Newbury Park, CA 91320. Or if you prefer, we can take your donation over the phone at (805) 498-7774.

The bricks arrive

The digging is handwork by volunteers

The footings are almost ready for the dispensary

The new foundation is complete

The geologist finds the best place to dig the wells

The drill truck arrives

The children were excited to get the new uniforms donated by Kenyans in Kitale

These pictures were taken more than a week ago.  I will post more when the team returns, hopefully with good news about the drills finding water and school starting in a place where they’ve had no schools before.  The people from IGEM in Kitale, whom we have been working with for more than seven years now, are making a profound difference in the life of this remote region and sharing the gospel to hungry hearts who have never heard about Jesus.  Awesome!  

I don’t know if I’ve ever booked a trip this late, but it’s been one I’ve been in discussions with for some time.  Well, it is finally happening the weekend of May 29-June 2.  There are a lot of personal engagements during this trip that I’m excited about and have been trying to schedule for some time.  

Over the weekend we’ll have two events that are open to anyone who would like to join us and meet some other folks who frequent the Lifestream or GodJourney websites:

• On Saturday we’re going to hold a couple of conversations about Living Loved, one at 2:30 pm and one at 6:30 pm.  In between we’ll be having a BBQ dinner and fellowship time.  
• On Sunday, I’m just going to hang out at home for a day of more personal converations between 10 am and 4 pm. Drop by any time if you want to connect. For those there around noon lunch will be provided.  

These will be at a home and possibly a park across the street if we need it in Gilbert, AZ.   You’ll need to RSVP to come so they can be prepared for you all.  My hosts are  Greg and Kim and you can get all the details from them.  You’re more than welcome at any or all of these proceedings!