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R.B. Klama

God’s comfort

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My family still wrestles with what feels like very fresh grief over my dad’s passing last September. There are moments where things hit us and we feel this ache of his absence.

We know that he has gone to be with his Heavenly Father and no longer suffers from the limitations of this mortal coil. It’s just that sometimes, we miss him. It’s at those times when something happens that reminds us of the hope that we have in Christ our Savior, of our purpose here as followers of Christ, as co-laborers in the Kingdom of Heaven.

These reminders serve as encouragement to fight the good fight, keeping our eyes on the prize. I was thinking of my dad today and decided to read some of the devotionals he used to write for the ministry to which he dedicated his remaining years, Transport for Christ. When his health could no longer allow him to serve onsite as a chaplain, he wrote encouragement to the truck drivers and the chaplains in service.

I can hear his voice in these words. There’s great comfort in his reminder. I share his words with you so that you may also take comfort in a greater plan, and in the hope that comes from trusting God is in control:

“Most of the time, when we grieve, we grieve over something that’s happened in our lives. But there are also times when we grieve over something that hasn’t happened or “what might have been.”

Unrealized expectations and dashed hopes can paralyze us with sadness. We mourn for what we could have had, could have done or could have experienced. We live in a fog as we struggle with our unmet goals and dreams.

Are you wrestling with accepting something in your life? Mourning a shattered dream? Instead of focusing on what might have been, try focusing on what is and what could still be. Revising your dreams isn’t bad. It’s realistic. And the sooner you do, the sooner the weight of grief will let go. The fog will lift. Hope will return.”

A chance meeting?

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You’ve probably heard someone say ‘There is no such thing as a coincidence’. Usually people nod their heads and murmur agreement, but the real question is “Do you believe it?“

Are people just wishful thinkers, or is God really so intimately involved in our daily lives that He orchestrate events on our behalf? What will a chance meeting turn into later?

The idea of seeds, planting and harvest is a theme resonant throughout Scripture. Aside from the overt nature of sharing the hope of Christ, there are times we don’t recognize an opportunity at the time, but hindsight has a way of revealing it to us.

On my last day in Cairo, I was sitting in the hotel lobby waiting for the rest of the team to come down for checkout. I opened my laptop, and began weeding through emails, and getting pictures uploaded for post, and checking through Facebook.

An older gentleman (whom I’d seen at different times all week) came over and said ‘You work too much’. I told him I was just killing time and not really working at all. He began asking me questions about my visit to Cairo.

Given the upset of the country, I was still guarding my words very carefully so as not to endanger people who live and minister in Cairo. He began asking more pointed questions like “What do you think of this revolution?”

Alarm bells were ringing in my head, so I trod very carefully as I answered. I told him that it was a very exciting time in Egypt’s history. Nothing would ever be the same for the country again. To be here during this growth period was both exhilarating and a little scary.

He then asked what my friends thought of the goings on. Now, here I had to be very careful. I asked God for wisdom and told him that depended on who I spoke with. There were some who were very optimistic about the outcome, although they knew there would be a hard period to get there. Others were very pessimistic and a little fearful about what lay ahead for them. Still others were moving forward in confidence.

He nodded a few times as I responded to his question, then said, “You should come to Lebanon.” I responded “I would LOVE to come to Lebanon!” So he handed me his business card and said, “E-mail me when you come.” He wrote his email address on the bottom of the card.

Initially, I was wary about taking some stranger’s e-mail, but I figured I would not necessarily use it and I did not have to respond by giving him my e-mail. We stood, shook hands and parted. I noted that as he left, he entered a diplomat’s vehicle. Only then did I read his business card.

It read “Mahmoud Hammoud, Lebanese Ambassador”. He’s the former Foreign Minister of Lebanon, currently serving as an ambassador. I have no idea why our paths crossed. However, God orchestrated it for some reason. There are no coincidences…just opportunities. I wonder what comes next.

What comes first: chicken or the egg?

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One thing I am noticing here is how different the context of ministry is from country to country.

Ruth on assignment

MNN's Ruth Kramer on assignment.

You can sometimes THINK you understand the concept of the vehicle, like micro-enterprise, but once you hear how things are put into practice, what works and what doesn’t, you begin to see the subtleties emerge.

For example, we met with a partner yesterday who assists community development. They are unashamedly Christian, because the Gospel is part of everything they do…however, they know that dealing with poverty is a ‘must’, as well.

So, which came first, the chicken (community development) or the egg (Gospel)? Can they be done simultaneously and be effective? Do you really just have two eggs or two chickens?

The clear answer on that was: ‘We have an egg, it becomes a chicken’. Folks, that’s the answer to the question of questions. The hope of Christ changes the outlook for the poor in this context.

The other big question was how the community development works in the Egyptian Muslim context in the rural areas. It is in these places where it’s likely opposition will rise up and equate physical attacks. The mindset is quite different.

Micro-enterprise comes up at this point. In some Asian countries, the structure of a micro-enterprise program works like this: church committee sees community member in need (often a believer under the discipleship of the pastor), they provide a loan so this person can start a small business–i.e.—buy a sewing machine to make clothes, or a couple of goats to make cheese and sell milk…from the profits, the person tithes to the church, enabling the support of the pastor…and the person is more able to support him/herself.

However, when I asked about the structure of the micro-enterprise, it can’t work that way in the Egyptian context. There are lots of things that can really be misinterpreted within the social structure (and Islam) and this is one of them.

The set up of the program is similar, but different because it’s tailor-made to fit the need of the people and the mission of the group. That just struck me. I had made an assumption that all micro-enterprise was the same.

I made similar assumptions about vocational training programs, literacy programs, etc (thinking I adjusting for a different context, language, etc). I think it’s kind of a colonialistic thinking that we slip into.

It’s kind of like providing someone a loaf of bread (mission field)…from the grocery store (missionary). They need the food to stay alive, but the plastic around the bread is giving them indigestion. They need to prepare the bread the way they now how and all we need to do is supply the ingredients (resources) and the recipe (training).

Yes, I know you might be thinking ‘well, duh’. It is one thing to say it and to think you might even understand it, it is another thing entirely to actually see it with my own eyes, hear what works and what doesn’t from the guys implementing helps.

By the way, because they do this work well, they have just come under scrutiny. One of this ministry’s main offices was raided by the Egyptian government this week, and the hard drive with the database was taken.

All of their records on every program were on it. Everything is exposed. Their face is an NGO and they are well-known. With the events that have occurred in Egypt over the last month, it’s no surprise they’re looking at all NGO’s.

Please pray for this team. They are careful, and they are smart. Most of all, they want to share the hope of Christ with those they encounter. That love for people permeates everything they touch…including the chickens in the coop…and eggs in the community. Works for me…

The power of prayer unleashed

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Last night, I attended a prayer meeting at a church in downtown Cairo, near Tahrir Square.

MNN in Egypt

MNN in Egypt

The church was gathering to cry out to God in their distress over the recent events in the country, and cry out, they did.

As we sang together, worshiped together, and encouraged one another, I experienced something I have never experienced before. I’m a fairly reserved person and I am even more so in prayer.

It is in times of great distress that I get out of my own way and fall before the Lord prostrate. Last night, although everyone around me was praying in Arabic, I found myself humbled before the Lord and joining in that chorus of crying out.

The pastor was beyond ‘crying out’….he was screaming and sobbing before the Lord, as was much of this nearly 1,000 person gathering. Here they were, in prayer before God, confessing, repenting, requesting and rejoicing…even as tear gas seeped into the courtyard from Tahrir Square.

All of a sudden, I found myself reminding God of His promises, and asking Him to give comfort to His bride in Egypt, to give them hope and wisdom and to be asking with a fierceness I had not ever before encountered…and moments later, the pastor or worship leader would be saying the same thing, or using the same verse, or introducing the song on the same topic…that happened over and over last night.

An immediate confirmation of God’s response left me stunned. Much of what I have heard from Egypt’s Christians that I have encountered has been this is a year of prophecy coming true. There is a GREAT confidence in many of the church leaders and congregations in forging ahead…

The other thing that we’re often hearing is that Egypt’s Church is not ‘persecuted’ so much as it is a church under pressure. The boldness of this family is so encouraging, and such a reminder of the presence of the Holy Spirit…especially as they go out with joy to tend to the wounded people coming into the field hospital set up in their courtyard.

The confirmation of God’s answers to prayer gives a great boldness to those on the frontlines of the missional movement in Egypt.

While bombings, riots and general chaos looks really bad in the headlines (and it is happening), fear is not the response of this emboldened Body. Church leaders we have met with all over the city have said the same thing ‘The wall of fear is broken’.

Change is coming. Egypt will have her Revolution…and its face is the Church.

getting ready

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I am making the final preparations for a trip to the Middle East in a few days, and am predictably worried about forgetting something I might need, or not being studied up on the current events of the region.

As I joke about nightmares of forgetting my laptop or some other key piece of equipment, I realize this is a great metaphor for the return of Christ. Unless I live as Christ, eat, drink and breathe Scripture and use every moment to live the hope that is in Him, I will probably find that the time I had here on earth was frittered away.

What it boils down to is living purposefully, so as to not be caught unprepared. My brain immediately went to the parable of the 10 Virgins, in Matthew 25. While I realize this is more about salvation issues, I wound up reflecting on it in a little different context.

The Parable of the Ten Virgins
1 “At that time the kingdom of heaven will be like ten virgins who took their lamps and went out to meet the bridegroom. 2 Five of them were foolish and five were wise. 3 The foolish ones took their lamps but did not take any oil with them. 4 The wise ones, however, took oil in jars along with their lamps. 5 The bridegroom was a long time in coming, and they all became drowsy and fell asleep.

6 “At midnight the cry rang out: ‘Here’s the bridegroom! Come out to meet him!’

7 “Then all the virgins woke up and trimmed their lamps. 8 The foolish ones said to the wise, ‘Give us some of your oil; our lamps are going out.’

9 “‘No,’ they replied, ‘there may not be enough for both us and you. Instead, go to those who sell oil and buy some for yourselves.’

10 “But while they were on their way to buy the oil, the bridegroom arrived. The virgins who were ready went in with him to the wedding banquet. And the door was shut.

11 “Later the others also came. ‘Lord, Lord,’ they said, ‘open the door for us!’

12 “But he replied, ‘Truly I tell you, I don’t know you.’

13 “Therefore keep watch, because you do not know the day or the hour.

This is what is meant to keep vigil. If I’m doing what I should be doing, there won’t be that ‘caught out’ feeling. So, I’ll finish my scramble to get the cords, bits and pieces and batteries together with extra clean socks and deodorant, but keep in my head Paul’s encouragement “to live is Christ, to die is gain.”

testing our sanctification

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There are some people in our lives who test our sanctification.  They hide barbs in their conversations, they open their mouths and pour out contempt on you.  Most of the time, smart people will back away from toxic relationships like this, but sometimes you can’t cut off all connections…sometimes you are related by blood.

I have one such person in my life, and every time there is interaction, I wonder what it will cost me later on…I voiced this thought to a friend of mine and she suggested I take a look at Job.

I was wondering what Job had to do with irritating people, but then Alistair Begg connected the dots for me.  He was talking about suffering and the fact that God is Sovereign–which means that He allows suffering but He is not the author of evil.

There’s an interesting distinction there:  He created the world and it was good….but sin entered and it became imperfect.   He gave us choice to love Him freely—and that’s what this whole story is about.  Do good because you love to do good, not just follow the rules.  It’s a choice to obey.  It’s a choice to disobey.  Obedience has great rewards, and disobedience carries natural consequence…but God is not the author of evil.

When we choose to love God in the midst of suffering (especially when it’s at someone else’s hands), we experience love that is more like Christ’s love–it’s richer, deeper and much more fulfilling…it fills your countenance…there are people I know who have born the consequences of someone else’s sin…and they do it wearing the sweet aroma of Christ…it makes a HUGE impact on everyone around them.  You know who I’m talking about, right?  They’re the people who are so sweet, you could never imagine them any other way.  When they share their testimony, you hear about alot of things that would break most people, shatter most families, and yet, here they are, praising God for His hand in their lives….thanking Him for the sorrow.

I’ll admit I was filled with skepticism when I first met a woman like this.  I was unwilling to believe that she was so content with all the stuff that she had experienced.  The longer I knew her, the more I wanted to reflect Christ like she did…and the more I talked with her, the more of Christ she shared with me.   Before she died, she told me ‘Nothing comes easily in this life.  But the struggle is part of the blessing.  It’s the real test of the light of Christ.  The more you succumb to bitterness, the more your heart closes off to the hope that is in Christ.’

Her words came back to me over and over again when I began walking a difficult path seven years ago.  Grace is never cheap.  Suffering gives us the opportunity to experience intimacy with Him, that transformative power of His sufficiency and His presence that can only come when we love Him and trust Him in all circumstances.

It doesn’t mean it won’t hurt.  Pain is like black paint in a Vermeer painting.  It’s dark, but it highlights the Light–these are opportunities He uses to draw us into Christ-likeness.   These people who test your sanctification?  Let them.  Let God.  Bring it!

my bricks

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This will be a bit of a ramble. I’m flexing my ‘stream of consciousness’ fingers starting…now.

In the daily hustle and bustle of a newsroom, it’s easy to overlook the non-emergency things until they become emergencies.

Some of you might even be thinking ‘been there, done that’…and I find myself taking shortcuts to speed up the things that I have to get done in order to get other things finished.

There are some days I go home and fall into bed exhausted and while drifting off to sleep I find myself thinking “Can’t call it a day yet! I’m not unconscious!  I still have to…..ZZZZzzzzzzzz.”  We joke about this in my family…we’ve even given it a nickname: ‘dooobee’—as in ‘do a lot’ and  ‘busy as a bee’.  In the story of Mary and Martha, I totally ‘get’ Martha.  As a kid, I was always mad at Mary. ‘C’mon! Come help get this meal together! It’s not fixing itself!’ And when she didn’t move, calling in the reinforcements and asking Jesus to get her off her hiney…only to have Him side with her??   I was bafffled. (We’ll get back to this later)

The reality of it is that there are too many times I fall into the Israelite’s way of thinking: I am the sum of the bricks I made today.  You do that too many times, and you start to believe it.  There are a lot of bits in the Bible about rest…it even starts early in Genesis with God setting aside some critical time to REST.  Yet much of His creation is frenetic with the doing, and lost in the ‘being’…which is what happens when you rest.

In the quiet of rest, you can actually hear things.  You can hear our Heavenly Father telling you what a beautiful child you are…or maybe He might be whispering that answer to the question you keep asking (like a toddler: ‘now? now? now? how about now?’).

How do rest and bricks travel down the same road of thought?  I’m not really sure they do.   The bricks can create a false sense of worth, which leads somebody like me into thinking I have to keep producing in order to be valued.  Rest helps me re-new…and I can understand worth far better when I’m being spoken to by our Father through the Word.   Ah…Mary and Martha.   Mary understood knowing Christ.  If she knew His voice and understood what He was saying, it was much easier to obey.  Martha understood the doing end with her servant gifting.  As those gifted this way know, it’s very easy to take on too much and then stress over the details, even if it was originally meant to serve Christ…not being able to BE with Christ prevented her (and us) from the depth of relationship we sought in the first place.

This has to have a conclusion…so I’ll wind up by saying take the REST seriously.   We are not the bricks we make because our worth was summed up in the death and resurrection of our Savior.  Just sayin’.

 

 

 

 

back home again…

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tricky internet connections made posting more often a challenge during the trip…but i wanted to share some afterthoughts about it.

Ruth in Uganda

Ruth in Uganda

one of the highlights was the kids in baale singing us into their home church.  it was such a blessing of worship, and i thought about these believers as i sang with our worship team on sunday.  i thought about how pure their worship was and how wonderful it is to share God with others halfway around the world.  one of the other highlights was my visit with my sponsor child, misac.  as we got acquainted, i found that although misac’s grandfather is a preacher, misac has not made a profession of faith.  now, i know how better to pray for him.

 

as we spent time together assembling a lego set (tell me i’m ridiculous for giving him a toy with a million tiny pieces to lose out in the bush), we talked about his family and his village.  misac had not been outside his village ever, so a bus ride into the big city, a stay in a hotel, restaurants,   elevators, electric lights, swimming pools and white people were a bit overwhelming. english is also not his first language, so the project worker who chaperoned him also served as an interpreter.

we ended our visit by exchanging gifts.  one thing i gave him was a soccer ball, covered with the colors of the wordless book.   i explained to him what the colors represented, and in so doing, also gave him the Gospel.  it was such a privilege, although misac didn’t seem like he was paying much attention.

still, as we parted with smiles and hugs, i came away praying the God would water the seeds that were sown…i left a piece of my heart in uganda, i think…

pics from uganda

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church in ugandamom overcome with emotion at how much she has benefitted from Compassion Internationaldancing in churchlearning a tradebabies in child survival project

learning how to make basketslearning how to embroiderLDP students telling their stories

it’s gonna be really hard to get these pictures id’d correctly.  here goes:

from left to right:

1) picture of a chapel at Child Survival Project UGCS27 Kitimbwa CDC/UG611

2) a mom who was sharing how Compassion International has helped her and introduced her to Christ.  she became so overwhelmed sharing her testimony, she cried.

3) dancing in church…I know. how awesome is that?

4) this same mom is learning how to sew so she can learn to tailor and help support her family better.

5) the moms in this at risk area are learning a lot of things, including how important it is to play with their babies and letting the babies play with each other.

6 and 7) many of the moms have learned a crafting trade so they can make goods to sell at a market.  one mother learned not only how to market her ability, but how to save enough money to buy a pig.  a pig can fetch a good half year’s salary in this area, so she’s learning how to save, invest and build up her business.

8 ) these are just some of the students in Compassion’s Leadership Development Program.  they are the cream of the crop from the sponsored project areas–kids who excel academically and who can handle college-level material.  the LDP program is not automatic for a sponsored child–it’s a high-level program that takes the best in Compassion International’s child programs, sends them to university and trains them to be servant leaders.  of the 300 LDP students attending university in Uganda, Uganda Christian University is educating 153 students.  there are several  attending other public univeristies and at least three studying at Moody Bible Institute in Chicago, Il…

these pictures represent the ministry, vision and future of Compassion–primarily, they aim to build the kingdom of God.  The Gospel is open and often repeated…and for every child that accepts Christ in Compassion’s projects, leaders say at least 10 others also come to Christ through their faith walk.

…all with the help of a sponsor and $32 a month.

uganda

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Red dust covers everything in Kampala, Uganda.  When it rains, the red earth becomes brick-colored mud and it gets into everything.

As the team from our sister station, WCSG, Compassion International and MNN visited project sites, we tracked it everywhere.  There was a notable difference between our footprints and those of the people who lived in the villages we were visiting.  For the most part,  our footprints were the outlines of shoes. The throngs of kids and some of their parents we visited were barefoot.  A few people had shoes, but they were the rarity.

Why did that strike me?  I felt really gross when we got back to our hotel after a day of trekking through the bush.  I could wash off the mud.  The people whose homes we’d just visited could rinse, but for the most part, the next time they stepped outside of their home, they’d get dirty again…except that was their way of life.

That difference alone was a stark contrast.  The village we visited yesterday was less primitive than some.  Subsistence farmers can eke out roughly $11 a month…stretched to five mouths to feed.   The people we met had a home.  They had a roof, walls and a floor.  One had furniture.  There were three really worn out toothbrushes and a cracked mirror hanging off the front door of another house…whose kitchen was essentially a lean-to in the yard.

Yet to see their faces, they were so happy Compassion International had taken an interest in them.  Before Compassion began their project in Kitimbwa (about 66 km west of Mukono), the infant mortality rate was high.  Few children, if any, got a chance to go to school.  Mothers and fathers struggled not only with their marital relationship, but also with raising the children.

After Compassion launched the Child Survival Program, basic things like hygiene, nutrition, pre-natal care and infant care were taught.  Mothers were encouraged to play with their babies to help them develop.  Mothers began getting together for play sessions.  They were also given the opportunity to learn a trade so they could earn some money to help lift the family out of poverty.  Once a child gets into the CSP, when they turn three, they can get into the Sponsorship programs.  From there, children get food, medicine, love and given the chance to go to school.

Most importantly, these people, once wallowing in poverty and hopelessness, were exposed to the Gospel on a nearly daily basis.  They heard it, they saw it in action with the Compassion staff, and then some of them felt it.  As we spoke with the project directors, we were told that for every Compassion child that comes to Christ, ten other people also come to Christ because of the reality of the transformation they see in that child’s life.

For the staff we spoke with, that transformation is the driving force behind everything they do.

But, kids grow up.  They age out of the school system, and then what?

Compassion International has introduced another program for the best and brightest of the sponsored children: the Leadership Development Program, or LDP.

Once accepted into the LDP, the sponsored student can go to college.  As we’re told, many of them are excited about getting their law degrees, or social work degrees with the express purpose of continuing that transformation.  Some go back to their villages as part of Compassion International.  Others take change outside of their villages and hope to advocate for families in a court of law.  Still others are making a definite footprint on a national level in government.

It’s so exciting to see how $32 a month can give a child such hope.  It’s even more exciting to walk step by step with them and see where their footprints lead.

On Thursday, I will meet with Misac, a little boy my family is sponsoring from one of the project areas near Kampala.  He shares the same birthdate as my son.   I am so excited to share the hope that we have invested in him.  I asked one of the LDP students I met this week, Joseph, to record a quick encouraging word for Misac. Their stories are very similar, and I thought that for Misac to hear that someone was like him at his age, to know that he can rise above his circumstance, that God is moving powerfully through boys like this–and I realize it’s like the story of loaves and fishes all over again.

God takes so little and creates so much for His glory…