Joining Jesus in His Mission

It's always a really glorious moment in he Gospels when someone decides to try and trick Jesus - when someone thinks that they have come up with a loop hole or a way to get around the challenging teachings of Jesus.  It's so wonderful, because Jesus always handles the situation so perfectly to turn it upside down and to teach the questioner what the Kingdom of Heaven is really about. 

Today we are joining Jesus in His mission.  We have been joining together these last few weeks looking at what it means and what it takes to be a vital congregation.  As a missionary, I get to visit a lot of congregations - and I've been involved with the life of Methodist churches and church planting in many different countries.  I've had the joy of working with and studying vital congregations, and the misfortune of walking into really terrible dead churches which will shut their doors soon. 

Talking about vital congregations is a little bit like trying to capture lightning in a bottle.  It's easy to point to the mega-churches in growing suburbs and try to make every country parish follow their example - but this denies the fact that God is missional and in mission we worship and serve in ways that fit the people.  We here in Kane are different than people in Ukraine and we are different than people in the North Hills of Pittsburgh and what makes one ministry vital in one of these places might do nothing in another. 

I'm going to start today by talking a little bit about the really terrible non-vital congregations - because they all have a few things in common.  Here are a quick list of factors that all dead and dying congregations share:

- a dying church expects its pastor to be superman and to do everything that must be done in the church.  When a dying church receives a new pastor, it's a little bit like a Miss America pageant as everyone comes out to measure up his or her worth - and in the end a dying congregation will always be disappointed.  If we are waiting for our next pastor to be our savior, we will be sorely disappointed because our Savior is Jesus. 

And here is something that is unique about the United Methodist church - our pastors are appointed by the Bishop and District Superintendents.  People who love the church, our church, the pastors, and our pastors choose which people would fit which churches best.  It's a messy process, but we believe that God's hand is at work throughout the entire process.  This ensures that little churches in little villages always have someone serving them - where in churches that call a pastor can wait years before someone answers the call to serve there.  But here is our end of the bargain, we choose to accept whomever God sends our way.

Rev. Sharon Schwab told me once that she used to ask churches what they wanted in their next pastor - but after hearing the same list of demands from every church she would ask - and would you prefer him to be taller than six foot three, or is shorter ok. 

Usually they prefer someone taller than six foot three. 

While visiting Madge Adams some years ago, she said that the problem in our churches is that everyone feels it's their job to judge the pastor.  She said that pastors used to come and go at a much faster rate - and it never mattered who the pastor was, you always supported him.  Some could preach and some not so much, but you never said a cross word about the pastor.  You respected him and you understood that God had called him to this church for such a time as this.

I know of a vital congregation where every sermon the pastor preaches is a lead balloon.  But the congregation just loves him and supports him and lay people just make up for it by making sure that the Bible studies are super.  Dying congregations expect the world from their pastors and judge their pastors when he isn't Jesus Christ.  Vital congregations take responsibility for their own congregations and pledge to make up for any of the pastors' perceived shortcomings. 

If you want this church to be vital, don't ever let a cross word cross your lips about a pastor here.  If you hear someone start, cover your ears and start shouting.  You'll never hear another cross word.

- Dying congregations try to hold on to what was.  Vital congregations wonder what God could have in their future.

-Dying congregations settle for less than the best.  They allow their churches to fall down, to be dirty, to be outdated.  Vital congregations work together to make the best of a bad situation.  Grace UMC had wood paneling in every room and bright orange carpet, and room by room they are updating and renovating to become a cool place where people enjoy hanging out. 

These are things that I wanted to share with you, because this is my home church and I love you all - and these are things that your pastor cannot say. 

Did these last few minutes make you feel uncomfortable?  Did they hit a little too close to home? 

In our scripture today, a legal expert stands up to test Jesus - to try and find a loophole. 

And from that question, Jesus begins what is perhaps his most uncomfortable parable. 

And Jesus tells this story, a familiar story of a Jewish man robbed and beaten and left for dead along the side of the road - and with each character introduced - the people expect that that character will be the hero. 

This is a story about being a good neighbor.  A good neighbor does the right thing.  First it's the ____________.  And you can hear Jesus building up the suspense as the _____________ stumbles upon this man.  And it's like the longterm boyfriend who keeps getting down on one knee in front of his beloved only to tie his shoe an get back up. 

And then, certainly the next character will be the hero.  The _______________ will certainly stop and help!  The suspense builds.  Jesus share a bit about this man's character.  People think of their own beloved______________________ and they know that he will save the day - and like the football team that punts instead of going for the touchdown - he crosses to the other side of the road. 

And then Jesus introduces the next character.  The Samaritan. 

When we share this story in Ukraine, we might retell it with a gypsy helping the young man.  It is met with shock, disbelief, and horror - but in the states we don't have that guttural disgust of gypsies.  I've heard this story told with someone from the opposing team's high school being the neighbor.  But none of these capture the awkwardness and shock that fell from the slack-jawed mouths of Jesus' original audience. 

The Samaritan's were half-breeds.  They were muggles.  They were in-bred, un-clean, and they missed the entire point of the Jewish religion - they mixed it and molded it until it became something else.  You didn't go through their part of town.  You didn't stop and ask them directions.  The Samaritan is a person who strikes fear and disgust into the heart of the listener. For a racist this might be a black person, for a homophobe it might be a transgender person, for a church goer this might be an atheist. 

But Jesus get's to this final character - the despised one - and when the Samaritan stoops down, the crowd assumes he is going to rob or beat the man some more.  When the Samaritan lifts this man up, the crowd grows angry at this blasphemous insinuation. People yell.  Jesus' piercing eyes ask the question,  You want a hero - here is your hero.  Your enemy. 

Landa Cope, a mission theologian once said, "Do you want to know who your neighbor is?  He's a muslim.  He's a terrorist.  He's queer. He's got AIDS.  He's got a bomb strapped to his chest and he's walking toward you to blow it up.  This is your neighbor.  This is how Jesus defined your neighbor." 

You can hear the anger in the man who had tried to trick Jesus.  When Jesus asks who had been a good neighbor, he mumbles a lame reply because the man can't even bring himself to say the words "the Samaritan".   

We talk about church vitality and what makes a church vital and what helps a church to grow.  And this is it. 

Vital churches have people in them who really believe what Jesus said about our neighbors and who really go out and love their neighbors. 

When we as a congregation choose to join Jesus in His mission, we go to our neighbors.  Our filthy, disgusting, no good, very bad neighbors and we offer them Christ. 

Did you hear the directions I gave to the children during the children's moment?  It's that simple.  It's that hard. 

This is what it will take for us to become the vital congregation God is calling us to become.  Are you ready? 

God forth this day and share the love of Christ with someone unexpected. 

Amen.

Spending time with Baby Hemi

Life is a wonderful thing. 

I love being an uncle, and I think that Hemi likes having me as an uncle.  He's so little and so perfect. 

I'm having a great time out in Illinois with my sister, brother-in-law, and nephew.  I'm beginning the long and painful process of healing from the Lyme Disease I picked up in Ukraine.  I'm tired and often in pain, but luckily - in this house - naptime is a thrice daily requirement!  I just take my naps with a baby in tow, which is fine by me. 

I'm hoping that this recovery doesn't keep me from returning to Ukraine right on schedule, but I certainly won't return until I'm well enough to do so - life and work in Ukraine really takes it all out of you, and at this point I don't have a lot to give!  But, I trust that I will heal quickly and be back in no time. 

Next week I head to Florida for a few days of vacation with my grandparents, aunt, uncle, and cousin - and then back to PA for some visiting and then off to Mission U! 

Life is wonderful, and although I miss my friends tremendously - it is nice to function in my own language and eat at buffets and get average American fat!

Annual Conferences are Coming!

“The people of God… must convince the world of the reality of the gospel or leave it unconvinced. There can be no evasion or delegation of this responsibility; the church is either faithful as a witnessing and serving community, or it loses its vitality and its impact on an unbelieving world.” - Paragraph 130, 2012 Book of Discipline. 

“Our best days are still ahead of us. I really, truly believe it, and I’m going to keep saying it until it happens. Our theology and DNA is perfectly poised to reach the next generation.” - Pastor Adam Hamilton

Annual Conferences are beginning.  It's that time of year, when around the world the people known as United Methodists will gather to evaluate, reflect, and change for the future.  I read this report from the Detroit Annual Conference and it really made me think.  Because, Detroit is one of those places in America where everyone is getting out.  Just like my home conference, people are fleeing to warmer weather and better jobs.  My adopted conference is in the fastest shrinking country in the world.  

Adam Hamilton explained that the United Methodist church will bottom out in the next ten years.  Bishop Bickerton as referred to it as a church decline tsunami.  In ten years we will have to weigh all of the facts and figures and make the decisions that need to be made.  

As a young person, I'm not much for waiting.  After our tragedy, our wise and humble bishop sat me down and told me that nothing would look or feel normal for at least a year.  My boss at GBGM sat me down and explained that real recovery wouldn't begin for at least a year.  I didn't want to believe them.  I wanted to fight that notion and press full steam ahead.  As almost always happens, wisdom won out over impatience.  I still have the occasional four hour conversation with a student from our ministry who is trying to sort out the theological and personal implication of the tragedy.  Every month I feel that things are moving more and more in the right direction, but I feel that we still have a few months to go before we will be back to "normal."  

But what is extraordinary, what is the life blood of this moment, is that in this "tsunami" - in this "bottoming out" - we have grown, and developed, and changed.  When things were going great and attendance was up, we didn't have to ask the hard questions.  We could rely on easy sermon topics and momentum to carry us through.  We weren't constantly stretched and pulled from place to place.  

It is in the crucible of death, that change can become a reality - and it is in the reality of change that we may find our hope in Christ and not ourselves.  

As I think about the future of the United Methodist church, I am filled with great hope.  I've had the unusual privilege of worshiping with United Methodists in eleven countries.  I've worshiped with Methodists from far more countries than that.  In my lifetime, I've probably worshiped with more than 500 congregations.  And in those contexts and ministry settings, I have seen the challenges and problems.  But I have seen the warm hearts of the worshipers and the swift movement of the Holy Spirit.  I have seen the tremendous hope of the future.  

And at Annual Conferences around the world, we will gather and discuss our challenges, failures, successes, and opportunities.  And hopefully we will see and heed the need for change.  And hopefully in all of this mess we will find the living Christ who is our hope.  

Amen. 

Can a country die?

Today I read a very interesting article about the slow death of a country.  Go ahead and read it.  I'll be here when you get back.

It was interesting, right?

Now, I consider Ukraine a very unusual choice of country to highlight.  With "only" 43 million people is my adopted homeland really on the verge of extinction?  Many Eastern European countries have fewer than 10 million and have a similar shrinking problem.

On Sundays I sing with the older adults who gather near the monument of Ukraine's great bard.  I love the way they sing.  It's much throatier and meaningful than the way young Ukrainian's sing.  There's this one woman with platinum blond hair who might be 50 might be 80 - and she opens her mouth so wide when she sings.  I follow along with her, because I can always tell what word she is singing.  This group grows smaller and smaller and there are no other young faces to take their place.  I ask my friends - my truly patriotic friends - if they know these songs, and they don't.  And I wonder who will sing these songs when they are gone.

Oh, the cancer gets many.  It's a symptom of a below average health care system and a possible side effect of Chornobyl.  The scientists say that there was no rise in cancer risk associated with the meltdown, but no one believes them.  Death is a fact of life here.  Working with University students, I see mostly the deaths of grandmothers and grandfathers.  In the gypsy village, most only live into their 50s - many don't reach the retirement age in Ukraine: 55 for women and 60 for men.

It seems that those who beat death up until that point are excessively good at tricking it.  Like the obituaries in the Mission Monthly (Gertrude Elizabeth Oglethorpe, ___insert impossibly advanced age___ almost died of cholera and dysentery as a missionary in Africa in her 20s, but after surviving that, nothing was going to take her out.) it seems like those who survive truly thrive.  The elderly here have the edge on many things.  Not just singing.  Shoveling snow for example.  I don't think you can legally shovel snow unless you are 80, or at least look it.

The birthrate here is lower than any other country on earth I've been told.  1.3 children for every married couple.  They literally pay women to birth children here.  They pay you to raise your children.  They give you years of maternity leave.  And yet it seems that multiple children are a sign of great wealth of terrible planning or both.  When multiple families share a one room apartment, I wonder how children happen at all.  There is no economic certainty, and few people see a way to get their heads above water.  Even though many of my friends have stable jobs, none of them have more than one child.

And every time another friend leaves for the states, rumors swirl that he or she is planning to immigrate.  It causes me great pain to see the best and the brightest run away from an impossibly broken system to try to make their way in another broken system.

A true patriot will have many children (for Stalin, for Hitler, for whomever is in charge of propaganda) but this case falls apart in Ukraine for political reasons.  I wish the article would have explored these political forces in more depth.  They are powerful, and at least for Western Ukraine, they hold the answer to this riddle.

But, this country is filled with life.  Economic growth is a little slower than inflation, but it is happening and will speed up soon.  My married friends talk about having babies in the plural.  Some want three or four.

At a picnic, they asked those in the circle if they could only have 10 children or none which they would choose - and every Ukrainian answered 10 children.  It was purely hypothetical (and, to be fair, there were more Ukrainian men than women answering the question!) but it is telling.  I think that our young people see a way forward.  Yes, they want jobs and careers and to be successful, but they care deeply for the families they will create - and they care deeply for the country they will live in.

They give awards for families with many children.  In a televised acceptance, a haggard mother of eleven brushes her gray hair away from her eyes and squints into the light.  How does one prepare an acceptance speech for such an honor as this?  Her brood fidgets in a line from tallest to shortest as she tries to sound educated in front of people who seem to think she's an idiot.  In the end it seems she is only defending her alternative lifestyle.  This is her choice, and she is happy with her decision.

Long gone are the large farm families where each child is an insurance policy against poverty in old age.  Only gypsies and the truly devout eschew birth control and the choices it ensures.  But perhaps, as Ukraine finds its financial footing, more and more women will make the choice to grow a large family.  In support of their beloved country.  In deference to their own mothers who just want more grand-babies.  Or, perhaps, because that is just what they want to do.          

The move

I'm one of those people who believes in filling a home with lots of laughter and good memories.  I have loved the apartment I've had for the last year and a half.  When I think about it, I remember the 1AM Ukrainian lessons Nazar and I had when I was suffering from jetlag and he was suffering from a Master's thesis back in my first months here.  I remember when Mefodyi was a kitten and crazy.  I remember sitting in the hammock and watching the day fade into night.  And dinner parties with friends, and staff retreats, and Masik showing up on death's door and being brought back to life, and Thanksgiving fun, and all of the other good times.  

But it was a hard year and a half.  My home was filled with frustration and hurt and sorrow as well. There were problems with the house,too. The bathtub was too small, and the hill too steep, and the walk to the grocery stores very far, and the neighbors were mean and sullen, and I couldn't shake the feeling that something was missing.  

I'm good at making a house a home.  It broke my heart that after so many months, it still just felt like an apartment I was renting.  When the landlord came with lots of excuses and wanted to raise the rent - I knew that I could do better.  

My realtor is really wonderful.  She puts up with so much from me - this is the third or fourth time she's helped me find something for different reasons; and she always finds something just right.  I told her I wanted something that cost less than I was paying, was near the center, and could handle a dog and cat.  She usually finds three options very quickly - but this time she found only one option.  

It's much smaller than my current apartment - but it feels a bit like home already.  The yard is filled with fruit trees and gardens.  My hammock is hung between two trees.  Masik runs outside all day and Mefodyi is quietly stalking every corner of the house.  It is really just outside of the center - and most of my friends live much further out.  It's on the road to the biggest suburbs and is surrounded by dormitories.  It's the smallest house on the street, and is surrounded by monstrous mansions.  There is a big stone patio out front which has already been filled with great people. 

Moving has been an extreme inconvenience - especially over the Easter weekend.  My brain is just fried from trying to remember where things are, but it is slowly coming together.  

And I believe that this will soon be a home.   

I continue to wrestle with all of the new things God is teaching me about the Roma people.  I signed on to joining a team of Americans to explore Roma ministries in Slovakia with some reservations.  While I love traveling, I hate crossing borders.

In an official first world problem post, I have no more room for stamps in my passport.  The thought of crossing into and out of Ukraine in the same week makes me exhausted.

But I couldn't pass up the opportunity to travel with Diane Miller again.  Diane is the reason that I ever had the chance to start traveling, and the reason that my family had the courage to send a 15 year old to Russia.  Diane led my sister on a trip to Russia the year before I went, and helped organize many of my travels.  Mom and I traveled with her to Nicaragua, and I was thrilled to travel with her to Slovakia.

Our goal was to learn more about the ministries that work with Roma people in Europe - and we certainly did.  I think deep down I also had the goal of getting answers to some of my harder questions - in that goal I failed miserably.  I ended up with many more questions than when I started.

  I was surprised to meet anglo pastors serving Roma congregations.  I guess that it is certainly no more strange than my own appointment to a community of a different tongue and culture than my own.  But, it felt strange and complicated.  Part of working with Roma communities is banishing unfair stereotypes.  This goes for the people who work with them as well.

Pastor Svetlana is young by United Methodist clergy standards.  It's an odd thing to write about a United Methodist pastor, but she is refreshingly United Methodist in her theology.  One might be surprised by the number of clergy in Eastern European UMCs that exhibit almost no signs of Methodism.  Svetlana has worked to bring stability and order to a number of mission sites spread out around Slovakia.  She has a sharp mind, and an authoritative tone to her voice.  Her husband acts a bit like Mr. Bean until it's time to pray, and then he's dead serious.

Svetlana merged one congregation into two.  I don't want to use the term "church split" because our new church plants in Eastern Europe take so much time to firm up into a real community - I think that Svetlana saw that there would be problems in the future, and corrected mid-course.  She saw fear and trepidation among slavs about worshiping with gypsies, and she saw a hunger for a different worship style among the gypsies.  She is still actively working on planting the Slovak speaking congregation - but has successfully planted a Hungarian speaking Roma congregation.

We worshiped with a Roma congregation that Svetlana had pastored and handed off to a new local pastor.  It was wonderful to worship in the Roma style.  It was good to see so many children and a clear love between pastor and congregation.  Svetlana has visited the church 3 or 4 times in the four years since she left to plant new churches.  The congregation is only 12 miles away from her new church plant site.

Pastor Svetlana has invited short term American missionaries to start English language programs.  The last one had to to teach in a bigger city 40 minutes away because the schools just weren't open to having an American from this strange Methodist church come and teach.  When they heard that I guest lectured at a university, they were willing to let me come and teach.  By the end of the day, they promised that the Methodist church could send any American they had to teach.  It helps to not be crazy, I guess.

My most interesting conversation of the trip came with the vice principal of the school.  She is also the head of the English department, and it was interesting to get her very honest opinion about the Roma people.  During the class, I asked students what they enjoyed about their town.  One student loudly said, "It's a nice place, but there are too many gypsies."  I waited for the teacher to quite him down, but I found every head nodding in unison in agreement.  I followed up and asked some hard questions, and got some very interesting information from the teacher.  We talked a lot about opportunity and laziness.  It was a challenging but fruitful conversation.        

It's when you're sitting in the back of an uninsured car filled with gypsies blasting Roma praise music.  It's the specific moment when the Roma pastor next to you recommends that you pray that we don't get pulled over.  It's at this moment that you begin to question every life decision you've ever made.

And I can imagine my conversation with the police, as I would desperately try to use my broken Ukrainian to explain that I come from a good family, I translate Shevchenko, and I'm just a little bit lost at the moment.  I had planned a rather conventional trip to visit my District Superintendent and then to cross into Slovakia to spend a few days with a mission team.  Pastor Volodya recommended that we get out of the train early and take a bus the rest of the way.  It would save time he promised.  Three hours and thirty dollars outside of my plans, we finally arrived at the District Superintendent's house.  I was exhausted and almost in tears.  

I don't understand Roma culture.  I don't know when I'm doing something wrong.  I'm so at home in Ukrainian culture - it fits like my own skin and I wear it well.  I'm so out of place in a gypsy home.  Nothing fits for me there.  I feel like I'm back in India again, I feel like a spectator.  I feel more like I'm walking around a zoo than enjoying a forest.

After another difficult day of travel I made it safely to Slovakia.  I'm having a great time, but I am apprehensive about these upcoming days.  I feel like visiting gypsy camps in the company of five other Americans will only intensify my feelings.

I read this article recently about Ministry with the Roma.  It made me nervous.  I feel like anytime we build a building far outside of what the worshipping community could afford that we are not being in ministry WITH those people.  I am nervous about the building plans we have in Lviv for the same reason.  Please continue to pray about both situations.

On the train, a gypsy came in and played a broken fiddle - each note less comforting than the last - and then walked the path expecting our change.  When he saw the gypsy man in a suit sitting in first class, he stopped and began yelling at him in Romani demanding money.  Pastor Volodya was clearly embarrased but, he didn't have any money to give.  He didn't make eye contact.  He looked strait ahead until the man left.  He looked at me, and said, "I don't know how some people live like that."
     

Pastor Volodimir preaches from under the arch that separates his kitchen from the living room.  It serves as an altar of sorts, and his sermon feels a bit like a Martha Stewart cooking show as he reaches into drawers to pull out objects to help make his point.  The kitchen cupboards are lined with stuffed animals, animated faces peering out over the congregation like a spirit-filled choir - they fill the cupboards that should be filled with food.

Volodya's sermon is a string of Bible stories with few notes of explanation.  He tells one Bible story after another and strings them together.  At the morning service we hear about Jesus and at the evening service we hear from the Old Testament, literally just telling the stories.  If I preached in this way in the states, I would be fired in a heartbeat - but the congregation leans in to hear every precious word.  Only 10% of the adults in his village can read.  This is the only time they will interat with these stories.  That afternoon, his daughter proudly stated that she could read, and opened the Bible to pick out the three or four letters that she knew.  At eight, she is in her first year of school - and well ahead of the curve in scholastic feats.

I sat with the "gadjy" teacher the day before, and asked if it was hard for a non-gypsy to teach in a Roma village.  She replied, "That's a hard question."  Which is probably the right answer.

I never think about the color of my skin.  My family doesn't celebrate any ethnic heritage - although we do blame our stubborn streak on different ancestral lines depending upon the season.  The children would push one another toward me and scream "o gadjo." "He is a  not-gypsy."  I routinely have interactions in Ukraine, where the person I am speaking to doesn't figure out that I'm a foreigner until part way through the conversation.  Oh, my accent is painfully strong - but a lot of people here talk funny in their own way.  It's only when I mix up some gender or case that it become obvious that I am an outsider.  In Seredne, I am absolutely an outsider.

The "gypsy camp" was founded almost 70 years ago by some counts.  Some families can count six generations who have lived there, but generations move quickly.  Every time I meet some young man with a child or two crowding around his knees, I can't help but ask him how old he is, and try to remember what I was doing with my life at his age.  The oldest single person I met was nine.  I didn't ask the age of any 10, 11, or 12 or 13 year olds.  The youngest married person I met was 14.  I asked one man how many grandchildren he had and he answered 56.  Thank God I was able to figure out that he hadn't heard me and gave me his age.  He only has 15 grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.  We were at a party and there was a lot of noise.  Pastor Volodya had promised that there would be 10 people.  With more than sixty people bursting the seems of the two room house, I counted the adult men - all 10 of us.  10 people.  

Volodya had explained that their congregation had to make many difficult decisions.  He couldn't preach over the noise of the children.  Only half of the adults could come to worship, and the other half had to stay home with the children.  They are praying for the money to build a new church so that they aren't meeting in the pastor's home - they need around $1,000 total.  Total.

Of the hundred or so buildings in the village, only six have finished plaster exteriors.  Two are churches, two belong to the Baron of the region, and two are pastors' homes.  And I can't escape the reality, that I spent a lot of time in the village thinking about how I, or a team of my friends, could make things better.  We could build a church, we could put plaster on the church and make it look beautiful.  We could teach these kids to read.  The reality is that outsiders made the decisions to plaster the churches and pastors' homes.  This might be why they are full of children, but few adults attend.  The government made all the decisions about what the school should look like, and that's a big part of the reason why education doesn't get the respect it needs.

Everyone in the village invited me inside for tea.  The women would prepare a meal - bringing water from the only well in the village, killing and cleaning the chicken, slow roasting it over the firewood they chopped themselves, etc -  and then watch as the men, or sometimes only I, would eat.  I don't think I've ever felt more uncomfortable than when eating in front of an audience!

When pastor Volodya told me that he was the only one in his family who could read, I really couldn't understand.  I remembered the feeling of helplesness that consumed me for the first few weeks in Korea before I learned to read Korean.  I just stared at him, because I couldn't process the idea of not being able to read and being fine with that.  I couldn't get it.  I couldn't understand.

On the way to the train station, Volodya and I apologized to one another for the ways we had offended the other.  I don't know how many times I did something offensive, but I'm sure there were plenty. We laughed and talked some more.  At the train station, I push started his car and watched him drive away - drive back to his wonderful life without the distractions of the internet and stress of the 9-5.  I couldn't help but be a little bit jealous.    

I have this memory as old as my first car, lost and rusting away somewhere. We sat in the front yard of the dilapidated house, our clothes, hands, and hair stained white by days of paint. We ate squished sandwiches, bruised apples, and patently American snacks brought with us for the journey. We had to drive the thirty miles to the closest place to buy paint for the trim, and we were trying to decide what color to buy.

 I remember the whole conversation- each person on our team voicing a different idea about what color the shutters and door should be. My mother had chosen brown shutters for her white house, so it seemed a natural choice. In the end our group decided to buy black paint.

It was my first mission trip, and I had let the leaders in on the secret that I wanted to grow up to be a missionary, so they gave me lots of extra responsibility. The old woman who owned the house baked an apple pie, and I along with our team leaders where the only ones invited to join her for it. We talked about faith and about the Methodist church.

She reminded me of Issy our next door neighbor who put coffee in my baby bottle. I wanted to plant a flower garden to surprise her, but mom insisted that surprises are the leading cause of death among the aged and made me ask permission first. She didn't want a flower garden. Years later when she was in the home, she wanted to buy a school-fundraiser candy bar from me for us to share - but it didn't seem fair to take money from someone in a home so I paid for it and let her eat half.

I rode in the old green van with the leaders to buy the black paint. We got a bit lost, and stopped to ask directions of some teenagers in a truck. As they rolled down their windows, smoke billowed out and later I learned from our leaders what the word "hotboxing" meant.

We brought back the black paint, and I was put in charge of leading the trim work. It was a big responsibility for a teenager - and the house looked stunning when we were done.

On our team's last day, the old woman's daughter came by. She knew my mom and invited me inside. I was sitting on the brown-knit sofa (the same style that my great-grandmother had given to my family when she went into the home) when I overheard the daughter-mother conversation.

 "Why did you have them paint the shutters black, mom?"
"Oh, I didn't know they painted them black."
"Why didn't you have them paint the shutters green like they always have been?"
"Oh ... They're not green anymore?"

 At the end of the day, we led the woman out into her yard so she could see the good work we had done. The house looked much better, and she was clearly thankful - but I could see her eyes scanning each shutter, squinting to see if the color was really different than before.

I don't know why we didn't ask her what color to paint the trim. It never crossed our minds.

Years later, when I had made the paper for something, I received a card from the older woman. Although she lived more than two hours away, she still subscribed to The Kane Republican to read about her daughter and grandchildren when they made the paper. She thanked me for doing such a great job, and let me know that she had joined the United Methodist church in her small town, and wrote that it had been fun reading about all of my accomplishments in the paper over the years.

Eight months ago, someone stole the keyboard from our church.  We knew who the individual was, and he claimed that it had been his keyboard all along because he had been the musician at one point. 

The pastors of our church and I prayed, fasted, and negotiated for the return of the keyboard.  We fasted for three or four days at a time while praying to get the keyboard back.  On more than one occasion, I felt like giving up and buying a much cheaper replacement keyboard.  The one that had been stolen cost somewhere between $500 and $1000 new. 

Over and over we went back to God in prayer for wisdom in how to deal with this situation.  Although all three of us were frustrated beyone belief, I am proud to say that none of us ever lost our temper and screamed.  We never cursed or did anything unloving. 

Last Thursday, the teenager from our student ministry who plays piano played along with the worship band on the keyboard.  God returned it to our ministry safely.  The person who stole it came back, apologized, and said that he felt awful for what he did.

We don't celebrate these little miracles enough.  This was a huge act of God, and we need to celebrate it. 

Would you do something special to celebrate this small miracle with us?  Eat an extra piece of cake, spend a bit of time in prayer of thanksgiving, tell a friend about what God is doing here and in your own life.

Amen.