Matt Spainhour - i'm your huckleberry.

Ash Wednesday

Wed, 17 Feb 2010 00:00:00 GMT

Friends,

It's been a long time since I've written here, but tonight I'm compelled to write some of these things out, not as a monologue or any kind of indulgence in self-pity or self-deprecation - just as a prayer that we might all find hope in this season.

To say that I have nearly been home from Africa seems strange. The lessons and prayers and joy and wounds and of my time there are still fresh and close, but most days my heart holds them at a distance. My heart seems to have grown impenetrably hard and calloused in certain places. There have been times of deep depression, deep resentment, loneliness, anger, damaging bouts of nostalgia that found me trying to crawl myself back to "who I was then." The story of Jonah resonates deep in me these days. Some days I am the grateful, worried man in the belly of a whale and some days I am the bitter, cursing man sunburned under withered vine; some days I am the fugitive prophet drunk on self-pity, others I am the failed prophet full of self-hate. Most days I am the man who hears the call of God, but has forgotten his own name. It has been a year of feeling for my bootstraps to pull myself up, a year of trying to prove my worth outside of teaching and leading teams, fathering and feeding street kids. I have been seldom on my knees outside of fits of confusion on long night drives or distracted prayers that just want a quick-fix or a good moment. And people I meet and the more conversations I have - I don't seem to be alone in these things.

But hope seems to be sprouting in spite of my stubbornness. If I have learned anything from the last year it is that I really don't have an ounce of hope outside of Jesus. It has become clear that left to my own devices, I would spend the rest of my life drafting new ways to waste it. But there has been a constant voice and constant grace fathering me along, and it has become equally clear that God is not about to let me go.

And so here we are at the edge of Lent - preparing to journey towards the cross of Jesus, to follow him into death towards a hope that nothing else has been able to provide. Today begins a season of trying to let go of the things that keep me from God - the idols I've been clinging to that have only brought me death, all my false ideas about myself, all my terrible ideas about how things should be and who I should be, all of my people-pleasing and fear of rejection.

And underneath all of these is voice of the Father inviting us home;

Inviting us to return to him in the places where our hearts are hard and calloused;

Inviting us to take a look at the things in our hands and the things that cling to as if they could bring us life and to lay them down.

Maybe we've been trying to prove ourselves to Him in impossible ways, and he invites us to rest, tell us "It is finished."

Maybe we have carried guilt or shame, or the marks of failure, and he is inviting us into his deep forgiveness.

Maybe we are using our hands to cover our deep wounds and withered hearts, but he reaches for those places to heal them and restore them.

And so we have these days, leading up to Easter, to take inventory, to let go, to turn around, to head home. So we beg for the grace that will allow us to fix our eyes on Jesus - in the face of temptations that make us want to run back to old idols, in the face of the demons that would haunt us, in the face of our addictions that scream to be fed, and our desires that long for instant gratification. We fill our time and our eyes with the things that remind us of Jesus and of the love of the father:

fasting to make space in our lives,

the scriptures,

the silent moments,

the early mornings,

the moments of confession and admitting we have been wrong,

the Lord's prayer,

time with families and spouses,

time with the people that hold the gospel in our faces and grab us by the chin to pull our eyes towards Jesus,

time among the least of these,

And all the while our eyes are fixed on the horizon -
Our hearts are made ready to receive the love that is ahead in Easter, the love that is fully present now, the love that is our only hope, the love that makes space for new beginnings

Here's hoping that in these days the voice of God becomes clearer, that our hands become emptier, that our hearts become softer, the Gospel becomes new, and that as we see the death and resurrection of Jesus we find our own.

Here's hoping we stop keeping ourselves from furious love of God.

Spirit move.

Be well.

Brokeback Spainhour

Sat, 4 Apr 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Dear Friends,

A short and sweet update on things:

Our team van was due for a checkup last Saturday. I dropped the van off, and to pass the time waiting for the van to get fixed I bought some grill food and headed to a nearby waterfall with some other leaders. We swam for a bit and were jumping off rocks into the pool at the base of the waterfall. I botched my second jump - landed hard on the water with my lower back.* The story gets a little long and dramatic after that point, but to make it short, after some medical attention it was concluded that I had compressed and fractured my spine. It became obvious that this injury was going to take some time to overcome, and surgery was becoming a strong suggestion. Surgery and physical therapy in Africa didn't sound good to me, which leads us to where I am now.

Monday I got on a plane and headed home for some good old fashioned American medicine and spinal care. I got off the plane and headed straight for the local ER. I spent most of the week in Fair Oaks Hospital. The Tuberculosis earned me a spot in isolation and a few lung x-rays to make sure I wasn't a threat. The doctors kept me hooked up to some steady painkillers, took CT-Scans and MRI's of my back, confirmed that the vertebrae was compressed to about 50% of its normal size and fractured into a lot of pieces. Surgery was ruled out, I was fitted for a backbrace, went through some minor physical therapy, and the next month is going to be a blur of laying on my back a lot and living in a back brace.

Leaving my team was pretty tough. Maybe one of the hardest things I've ever had to do. The 18 of us had developed into a pretty well-functioning family, and the honor of leading that group was the one of the best things God has ever dropped on my lap and trusted me with. I've never had to learn to lean on so much on the Father, and I've never seen Him work so powerfully in my weaknesses as I He has lately. I'm confident that my leaving is good news for the team, and I don't mean that in a cheap band-aid kind of way. I think there are some incredible things headed the teams way. For some reason God knew I needed to be out of the way for those things to come through, and he knew that breaking my back was probably one of the only reasons I would ever leave those folks. So pray for my team, for my family, my flock back in Swaziland. They are doing incredible things. I could not be more proud of them. I could not have learned more from a group of people than I have learned from living with them and trying to pastor and serve them over the last few months.

I think there are some pretty incredible things headed my way as well, and I think God knew that the only way I would really listen to him was if let me jump off a rock and virtually, completely immobilize myself. So pray that my ears would be unstopped and thirsty as I lay in bed over the next few weeks. And pray that my heart wouldn't get hard or be to swayed by the priorities of the world. I really want to choose my next path based on where God wants me, and out of the faith that He will take care of me - not based on who gives me the best insurance plan and who will give me enough money to eek out an existence in spite of recessions and anything else. That would be a miserable rejection of everything God has taught me in the last two years, and a speedy step towards bending over and becoming a slave to the world all over again. I am not prepared to take steps down those paths.

Thank you for all your prayers, during this phase and over the last few years. I know some of you are probably shocked by this news, and have a lot of questions. I should have pretty adequate and constant access to email in the next few days- I should also be relatively bored and immobile, so feel free to shoot an email my way.

peace and grace,
matt

As a brief, but important, footnote... I understand there is risk involved in jumping off of rocks into water - I also understand that by injuring myself during one of these jumps I am inviting many headshakes and statements along the lines of "This is why you shouldn't jump off of rocks into water." If you pass any of these headshakes or lines my way I will probably classify you as a ridiculous person and refuse to talk to you anymore. I will also construct a list of statistics and reasons that you should never drive a car, ride on a plane, eat McDonald's, or use a conventional microwave ever again. This footnote is partly a joke... but only partly.

Thinking about seeds...

Tue, 3 Mar 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Though I do not believe that a plant will spring up where no seed has been, I have great faith in a seed. Convince me that you have a seed there, and I am prepared to expect wonders.
-henry.david.thoreau

The Sower

Jesus tells the story of a man who sows seeds. The man doesn't seem to take much thought for where he throws the seeds. They fall all over the place.

Some fall on the road - and the birds come and gobble them up.

Some fall on the - they sprout quickly but there are no roots, so they don't last long.

More fall among thorns and weeds that choke out any chance of life they might have.

Still there are some who fall into fertile... rich... soil.

The birds lay off, the seeds take root, and not even the thorns can keep life from sprouting up above the soil.

These seeds yield a crop. Some even bear one hundred new seeds to be planted.

Jesus leaves the story as it is until the disciples probe him for the meaning.

He explains that seed is the Word of God - the Gospel of the Kingdom and of Christ - and that the condition of the soil is actually the state of our hearts - how well we receive the Word and how deeply it takes root in our hearts.

For some, the truth of the gospel is gone as soon as it falls. The enemy comes and devours the seed when it has barely even touched their heart.

For some, the gospel stirs them up and inspires them, but nothing takes root and nothing changes. There is a moment of excitement: "This is a great idea!" - but there is not change of heart, and soon the idea runs out of steam.

For some, the gospel is received and takes root, but the worries and distractions and obsessions of the world - the good and the bad - cloud and distract the heart. The busyness, tragedy, idolatry, to-do lists, and bent desires grow up and choke out the hope of the gospel.

Then there are the hearts that take the gospel seed in deep. They are soft hearts, tended in hope, and they receive the gospel desperately aware of both the brokenness of the soil and the power of the seed.

So here is our real work as followers of Jesus: tending the soil of our hearts, and the soil of the hearts around us. Our Father, out of His deep grace, has been strewing his seed indiscriminately, carefully and without caution since the beginning. Speaking his word into the darkness, bringing life and light where there was none. And His word does not return void, but accomplishes his intentions and purpose perfectly. Always has. Always will (Isaiah 55.10-11). He spoke his Word into flesh and accomplished salvation and redemption - inaugurated his Kingdom and brought us near by the blood of Christ.

There are men who mow their yards with machetes in this country. Roam their lawns and gardens leveling weeds and high grass in even, mechanical strokes.

We are an army of saintly gardeners. We level the thorns, weeds, and lies of this world with heavenly weedwackers. We keep a careful rifle sight on the Crow that would gobble the word of our Father before it takes root - the thief who comes to steal, kill, and destroy. We remain wary of our often hard hearts and stiff necks - aware of our deep need for the Gospel. This keeps our hearts fertile and ready to receive Good News.

The Fertilizer

Thank God for the mess of our lives, the disasters and shortcomings. By grace we can consider them all rubbish - chicken turds and compost that make our soil a little more fit for the planting, that make our hearts a little more tender and able to swallow the seed. The tragedies that plague our history, the imperfections that shadow who we are, the constant feeling in our heart that the world is not as it should be - they all serve as signposts that only prove our need for a living seed to take root. They drive us to take the seed in deeper.

Faith and The Kingdom

Jesus said if we have the faith of a mustard send, we can tell a mountain to move from one place to another, and it will move. That nothing would be impossible for us with only the faith of a mustard seed.

Jesus assures his disciples that the Kingdom of God is like that mustard seed, which a man took and sowed in his field. It is a small seed, smaller than any other seed, but when it is full grown it towers over every other plant in the garden. And the birds of the air come and nest in the result of a seed that they once could have gobbled up.

So the Kingdom, the reign and rule of God, comes in our lives as He plants the seed of faith in our hearts and causes it to grow (as he speaks his word, for faith comes by hearing).

As the redemptive seed and life of the crucified and resurrected Jesus take root - we can expect a slow sprouting of towering trees. The Kingdom comes.

The Harvest

For now, the garden is imperfect. The wheat grows with the chaff and there are wide gaps between the present shape of things and the blueprint of Eden.

After the resurrection, Mary Magdalene mistook Jesus for the gardener,
but maybe she was not too far off -
as he helps us tend our soil and plants himself as the seed.

The world will mistake him until the end,
but in the end he will take off his leather gloves and coveralls.
He will beat his ploughshare into a sword
and there will be no mistaking him.

The world will hit its knees to the chorus of, "Surely this is the Son of God!"
He will call us by name, as sons and daughters of God,
and we will cry out, "Rabboni!"

The chaff will be burned, the wheat will be harvested and brought into the barn, and then the righteous will shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father. He who has ears let him hear.'

For you have been born again not of seed which is perishable, but imperishable, that is, through the living and abiding word of God.
1 Peter 1.23

References:
Matthew 13
1-9 The Parable of the Sower
18-23 The Parable of the Sower Explained
24-30 The Weat and the Chaff
31-32 The Kingdom of Heaven as a mustard seed.

John 20:15 -
Jesus said to her, "Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you seeking?" Supposing Him to be the gardener, she said to Him, "Sir, if you have carried Him away, tell me where you have laid Him, and I will take Him away."

Jesus said to her, "Mary!" She turned and said to Him in Hebrew, "Rabboni!" (which means, my dear Teacher).

A favor I would like to ask.

Tue, 3 Feb 2009 00:00:00 GMT

The Introduction

For the past sixteen months, God hasn't let me move too far away from the idea and truth that he is my father. I am constantly surprised by how good of a father he is, and the idea of what it means to be a father is always ripe and percolating in my brain.

The fact that God gives his children to earthly parents and trusts them to demonstrate his character in really tangible ways really blows my mind (providing for them, loving them, disciplining them, and reminding them that they are wanted and needed here on earth - not because anything they've done, but because of who they are and who wove them together)...

There are plenty of thoughts in my head on this topic. I could write a strange book about it. Who knows maybe I will. But for now I am tired of writing, and I am not a father (or a mother). So I want to pass the pen to you.

The Assignment

What I'm asking is this: If you are a parent - take some time and think of ways God has taught you about himself through the experience of parenting - fathering or mothering.

Whether it was through preparing yourself for the due date, the first time you saw their little face, the sleepless nights of the early years, the temper you couldn't (or still can't) keep down, the fear of failure, the time they spouted infinite wisdom from five year old lips, the beautiful moments where you just couldn't contain your love, the days you had to ask for forgiveness for being wrong, the times you wanted to fix everything but couldn't, the time they grew up while you were at the grocery store.... What do I know? I'm just trying to jog your brain.

Don't rush it, but sit down with a pen and paper and spend some time reflecting on it. You can stop there if you want, but I would love it if you e-mailed me some of those stories and lessons. It would be good for my heart right now.

I don't care how bad of a writer you think you are. I don't care how boring of a story you think it is. I'm more interested in learning from you than giving you a Pulitzer Prize, so rest easy and be honest.

Even if you don't pass it my way, I think its still a worthy assignment - and you should consider passing your kids a copy or having the conversation with them. They'd love to hear all about the things they've taught you and the ways God has used them to 'convert' you, as Jesus would say (Matthew 18.1-6).

Whatever age they might be creeping towards, I think its a beautiful thing for a kid to know that God is using them to teach and mold their parents. It tells them that they're not a burden. It makes them feel valuable and reminds them they have a purpose. It teaches them that God is using them now - not waiting until they are 18 or eligible to be a deacon. And these are all things that God wants his kids to know.

I think it is also a good exercise in humility for a parent. A good reminder that God is using the weak to lead the strong, the foolish to shame the wise, and that unless we are striving to become like children we just don't get it - and the kingdom of God might be further than we think.

I am twenty-three and all of my words come from observations and small tastes rather then experience. So forgive me if any of these words or ideas seem pretentious or shallow to the seasoned bunch of you.

But really, you have no idea how much I am looking forward to your e-mails.

grace and peace,

matt

Are we flicking empty lighters in the dark? Or, Do these sparks suggest a sunrise?

Wed, 28 Jan 2009 00:00:00 GMT

I live in a hungry valley, an open mouth turned up towards heaven. It swallows the rain and most days its humid like the back of your throat. Somedays clouds roll in and let the valley catch its breath. Cool air from the mountains drifts in and dries out the sweat of your skin.

The rain brings a green that blinds you. It spreads out for miles, and life comes in spite of the heat. Sunsets come in kaleidescope colors to greet the tide of the hills - and you can hear the LORD say, "It is good."

There are shadows in the hills - dark, dirt roads that pass through miles of farmland and scattered homesteads. Cattle pass along the roads, shit while they stare at you, dare you to drive past - goats scramble in the ditches, not quite round enough to be eaten. These are the hills of passing fathers and dying widows. These hills are orphans themselves. Lonely backdrops for lonely deaths.

Life expectancy here is dropping fast - maybe around twenty-eight years old. Unemployment is at forty percent, and higher in rural areas; over forty percent of the population has AIDS (probably closer to half). Death runs in the blood and gets passed through ripe ignorance, innocent inheritance, oppressive expectations, and a tired hopelessness. In a nation where it feels like you can breathe the virus in, where half the folks you know are dying and poverty has an appetite of its own - the window seems slim to escape. Death seems inevitable, no matter the way it comes.

But there are lights in these hills - people who have met the resurrected Jesus, been transformed, and seen the Kingdom face to face. They have a new song in their mouth and they sing with a passion and hope that bleeds through in a congregation of harmony. They are deep people. They grieve deeply, hope deeply, and groan deeply for redemption to kiss the shadows around them. The valley groans too, deeply, from the back of its throat.

I lay awake at night in the valley and stick to my sheets. I can see the city through the window at my feet. But I think about myself more than I think about the city, I fear my own pride and weakness more than any AIDS epidemic, and some days I only love the fatherless because their loneliness reminds me of my own.

In all these things there is a taste of the Fall. Everything from my deep self-obsession and insecurity to the tears of orphans and disintegrating young women- it all bears the echo of the Liar and Accuser - bits of death and hell.

Somehow all of this time of being in Africa, all of this time of being alive, is about learning to hope - to look past the dump of the world and the card tricks of the enemy to see what is unseen: the father with fierce fists and open arms poised to lose everything and stop at nothing just to bring us home, the Father whose ears prick at the sound of orphan cries and whose blood boils when no one answers.

So I'm fighting for faith like Abraham.

In hope he believed against hope, that he should become the father of many nations, as he had been told, "So shall your offspring be."

He did not weaken in faith when he considered his own body, which was as good as dead (since he was about a hundred years old), or when he considered the barrenness of Sarah's womb.

No distrust made him waver concerning the promise of God, but he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God, fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised. That is why his faith was "counted to him as righteousness."

But the words "it was counted to him" were not written for his sake alone, but for ours also. It will be counted to us who believe in him who raised from the dead Jesus our Lord, who was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification.

After a year and a half in Africa I feel like I write the same blog over and over again: light vs. dark; the tug of orphans at my own heart and the heart of God; the brief, beautiful reminders of redemption and the confident, if impatient, longing for full redemption; the ever deepening "amen. come, Lord Jesus." that comes in the last strokes of scripture and in every moment we feel the bite of the world.

It all adds up to a moment I can't get out of, or, perhaps, the moment we all find ourselves in: the tension that comes between the resurrection and the kingdom fully come.

For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face; now I know in part, but then I shall know fully just as I have been fully known. - Paul (the fierce terrorist who met fiercer grace)

Thanks for reading these things.

Your eyes must be burned out by now. If I was something more financially rigged than a missionary we could all go to the optometrist on my dime, at the same time even, one big party of getting our sight back and comparing prescriptions. I'd get some glasses like Elvis Costello and you could try something slick like disposable contacts.

maybe someday.

grace and peace.

Swazi Swazi Oi Oi Oi

Tue, 20 Jan 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Greetings everyone,

Just a quick check-in- a longer blog detailing the last month is in the works.

I am safely in Swaziland, after a long drive from Cape Town, South Africa to Manzini, Swaziland totaling around 30 hours. We arrived on January 3, hit the ground running and really haven't had much time to look back since. Myself and three coleaders have been trying to get to know the area, find ministry opportunities for our team, keep 17 participants somewhat well-fed, and get things underway as soon as possible.

In the last two weeks we have been able to visit some incredible ministry sites: long-term care facilities for AIDS/TB patients where students can build relationships, cook, and take care of the sick; a hospital; numerous orphan carepoints scattered throughout Swaziland; a center that takes in street kids, educates them, and tries to teach them profitable trades as they grow older... the list goes on and on. Our team is currently trying to decide which ministries to commit to for our time here.

It has been beautiful to watch them visit the ministries. We've been into some really uncomfortable places in the last week and a half - and in spite of fear, nervousness, language barriers, and awkwardness they have been bold and creative in crossing those divides.

My tuberculosis is easing. They've lowered the prescription from 5 "horse pills" a day to 2 pills about the size of a Mentos. So thanks for all your prayers.

Happy Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. I would write a few pages about how much I still love Martin Luther King, Jr. and how profound his words still are - but I will just refer you to last years post and ask you to read it again.

I suppose since we Obama is taking the Big Chair he hasn't been so overlooked this year. Whatever the case - don't think a black president is the completion of King's dream, the end of the world, or the solution to the world problems.

For all you Republicans - don't get your panties in a wad over a Democrat being in office.
For all you Democrats - don't get cocky or be so naive as to believe everything to be solved because a democrat is in office.
Stop doing so much talking about things, lay down your figerpointing games, and take some resposibility for the nation around you.

May you eat the gospel for breakfast, lunch, and dinner
and may it lead you to love your neighbors, love your enemies,
and seek the Father's Kingdom more than your own and more than any American dream.

life.is.simple

Wed, 19 Nov 2008 00:00:00 GMT

In the midst of all of this 'missionary' business there are times when life starts to seem rather complicated. I've never believed that life was complicated. Two people in this world have the antithesis, 'life.is.simple,' tattooed on their arms in my handwriting - a testimony to a time in my life when I was almost militant about life's simplicity and making it known.

I still believe its simple. But every now and then things pile up in front of you.

Everything from the big ideas:

- the tension of relationships

- the ugliness of poverty

- the loneliness that gets so hard to shake

- the darkness of your own heart

- the sinking feeling of unbelief and little faith

to the menial parasites of day to day life:

- car trouble (or worse, bicycle trouble!)

- this mean cough (its breaking up)

- to-do lists that read like ancient scrolls

- the spot your forgot to shave

- the stain on your t-shirt (that has outsmarted Tide-to-Go, SHOUT, and the whole family of stain removers)

They all get together and put on a complicated parade complete with marching bands playing death marches and blimp sized balloons of Snoopy's evil twin. All of it leads you to fear and worry. It makes your heart sink and turns your faith into something like a whoopee cushion. There's not much hope for stepping around them and you can't keep your eyes off. You start to feel stuck and you get a bit myopic. "Maybe life is a bit more complicated than I thought," you think. And you think, and you think, and you think.

Then there are days in this 'missionary' business where life just seems so incredibly simple that you start to wonder why you ever started watching that damn parade. Its not that the parade is over, its just that something makes you turn around.

A friend sticks around on the day you feel like Mr. Potter, the sunset sneaks up on you and makes your jaw drop, street kids show you grace when you break your promises again and again. Somehow the love of God makes itself known - taps you on the shoulder, whistles from somewhere behind you, and gets you to take your eyes off of Droopy Snoopy and the Death Star house band.

You start realize there's another parade going on in the alley that revolves around mustard seeds and underdogs. The music is a little out of tune and everyone's out of step but its a really good song - the best song - and every now and then it all comes together. The melody breaks through at the same time as the sun and you know that its all headed towards redemption. The gospel becomes bright and clear and Jesus is on the bullhorn saying, "See, I am making all things new."

God makes a parade out of creation. "Look, child! I feed the birds. I make outfits for the grass. I'll take care of you, you can count on that. You're worth everything to me. So come into the place where I rule. Come find your place in my kingdom. The rest is mine to worry about."

Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life..

do not be anxious, saying,

'What shall we eat?' or

'What shall we drink?' or

'What shall we wear?'

For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all.

But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.

I keep trying to do my math according to this equation, to keep life simple, to make my one aim to seek the kingdom of God and his righteousness. I'm trying to stop pretending that I'm an orphan - thinking that I need to take care of myself, look after my own needs, hoard manna in case God doesn't provide tomorrow. I'm learning to trust again. I'm trying to leave the parade of the world for the kingdom.

I'd be silly to to think that Droopy Snoopy won't still creep in overhead and bring his shadows,

and the Death Star house band will probably learn more distracting songs, and play them louder and louder.

But I'd be a fool to think my Father won't provide.

I'd be a dead man to think his love can't trump the world's parade.

Turn Your Head and Cough

Sat, 8 Nov 2008 00:00:00 GMT

We're nearing the two month mark over here. In many ways it feels like we've been here a lot longer. In fact I can't even write that first sentence without feeling like I'm doing bad math...

The students are all in the full swings of their ministries. My team is learning the ups and downs of the kids at the Joshua Project, and they are doing an incredible job of it. Its exciting to watch some of the students really stepping out to bring new energy and ideas to their ministries. Using their own gifts to add to what's already there.

We're in the process of finalizing the teams that we will be in once January hits. It looks like I will be in Swaziland, a small kingdom that leeches off of the Northeast border of South Africa. I spent a week there last year (you can read about it here). Its a beautiful country - rural in a lot of ways, mountains all over the place; but it's a dark place - the AIDS rate in Swaziland is over 40% (the highest of any country in the world), witchcraft is pretty rampant, and the government is quite shaky, but on a positive note - it's where Coca Cola gets a lot of sugar for really cheap.... All of the teams that are coming together look amazing, and I am incredibly excited about the Swazi team. Swaziland will be a tough place to lead and do ministry, but I have a lot of faith in the team that I'm being given. God seems to have dumped a lot of grace out there.

My cough has carried through the last five weeks, but I think we've finally found the medicine to kick the old joker. This is brilliant news, because I am tired of being holed up in my house - quarantined and coughing up a lung - away from all the students and ministries.

As you can imagine. Sickness makes for a bad update. I've spent most of my days watching bad movies, perfecting sandwich recipes, sitting in the yard, walking to the gas station for exercise, and wishing I had a dog. I feel like an old man.

On the good days I've been able to think a lot. I've been spending a lot of time in John, right before Jesus gets betrayed (13-17). Jesus' last conversation with the disciples before the resurrection - the last supper, the foot washing, the disciples not seeming to understand much, the promise of the Holy Spirit. Its good, thick stuff. In the last week I was asked to lead communion and teach on the Holy Spirit, so that's only dug me further into the text.

Sickness and sitting around all day have left my brain pretty mushy - so standing me in front of people to teach for a few hours is a strange idea. But I think things have gone well, and that people have learned, and that regardless of my babbling the Spirit has pushed me aside and done some teaching of his own. I'm grateful for that.

I wish there was more to update you about. I'm sure there is more than I'm letting on. But for now pray that this sickness would continue to fade out - and that I would be able to ease my way back into life and responsibilities here. I feel like I've missed out on a lot. Getting refocused will be hard, and having enough energy to do it well will be another challenge.

But the Father has been good. He's been showing up in subtle ways and providing the things that I need - things I don't even know that I need. I pray that He's doing the same for you.

Back in the Bay

Tue, 30 Sep 2008 00:00:00 GMT

We made it to Jeffreys Bay about two weeks ago. We spent a few days getting settled and reacquainted with the town, and then spent the weekend camping out in the bush. It was a cold weekend. We zipped our sleeping bags tight and built campfires every chance we got. Its winter here in Africa - most mornings we woke up it was around thirty-two degrees.

It's strange to be back. Things aren't quite the way I left them. Some of my friends are in prison, some have disappeared, and some are worse off than when I left them. It feels like the darkness that hangs over this place is heavier than before. All of that hit pretty hard in the first few days - but God keeps reminding me that he's still here.

My friends that are still around haven't shut me out. They still trust me and listen to me to some extent. I'm learning all of the things that have changed in the world of the street kids - the hard stories about cold weather, rejection, power struggles, rape - but the basics are the same. There are somewhere around fourteen boys in this town in desperate need of fathers and the Father - all hoping for redemption, whether they know it or not.

God has shifted my heart a lot in the last few months. I still have a flood of compassion for the street kids. It has been a sweet, sweet thing to see them again and to get back into those relationships. But this go round my ears are a little less tuned into their cries. The focus of my ministry has shifted from the boys on the street to the students in the FYM program; but that's a difficult thing to explain to a bunch of streetkids that own some pretty sizable chunks of my heart. Sorry boys, you've moved down the food chain once again. I'm glad that God's ears aren't any less tuned to their cries, and I'm praying that He'll walk me through all of this shifting.

Discipleship

I'm discipling three of the guys from the team on a weekly one-on-one basis. We meet up once a week to study scripture, to talk through the celebrations and struggles of ministry, and to vent the frustrations in living in small spaces full of lots of people. It's the thing that Adventures in Missions does really well, and it's the place where we're praying to really see the students grow and come to a deeper understanding of what it means to follow Jesus.

The guys I'm discipling are: Kevin King, Matthew Hussey, and Tyler Bussanich. Pray that God will grow our relationships in a deep way, that all three of them would be challenged and encouraged by that relationship, and that God would give me wisdom as to which pieces of their lives need to be rooted up and which pieces that need to be poured into and called out. That they might become the people God has called them to be, more than the kinds of people I want them to be.

Ministry Teams

Our teams have started visiting and assisting in their ministries. My team is at Joshua Project, where I worked last year. Others are at ministries ranging from kids to clinics to care centers for children born with disabilities and deformities. The teams are doing well. They've been pushed hard, they haven't had much of a break since we got here, and they've handled it really well.

Rest

Some of the team has been run a little ragged. There is some sickness going around, and we're all pretty tired. Ive been feeling a bit flu-ish the last few days and running a fever. Pray for rest - the good kind. Not just a good night's sleep, but the kind of rest that goes deep and makes you feel new again - the rest that comes under God's wings. We need a lot of that.

Fire Ants and Redemption

Fri, 12 Sep 2008 00:00:00 GMT

A Brief Synopsis

Fire ants are terrible. Really, really terrible. They are practically gnawing my feet off.

The Holy Spirit is incredible. (and so is Benadryl Itch Stopping Cream)

The Skinny

The team is in - all 41 of them. It was overwhelming at first, but I'm starting to warm to all of them. Its been a wild week of watching them open up and lay out the things in their lives that have been choking them for a while, the things that get in the way of living and being alive. Abusive pasts, addictions to anything and everything, pride, the approval we start to look for under every rock. God shows up as those things come out - as we take everything we've kept in the dark and let Him shine his light on it.

Redemption = Good Day

Today my heart was pretty heavy. I woke up to a voicemail from a friend, apologizing for missing my call and letting me on some pretty bad family news. It weighed on me all day. We went out and did ministry today - tried to meet some families in a Hispanic neighborhood. I was a million miles away - thinking about my friend, thinking about her family, thinking about all kinds of things and people that I'm leaving behind.

To be honest it shut me down. During worship I couldn't really even bring myself to sing. I paced the back of the room praying and asking God to redeem things, restore things, mend broken relationships, hold people together.

Once worship was over we moved into team time. 41 of us in a circle, and there really wasn't much of a plan. We were going to play a game and go to bed, but God kind of twisted the plan around. I shared about how my day had gone - heavy heart and hung up on other things. Last year I was leaving behind really close friends, a really sick grandpa, and a friend who called me every weekend crying drunk and giving up on life. It was really hard to leave them behind, to give up any kind of control in those situations and dive into all new relationships and ministry on the other side of the world. So we asked if anyone had for the next couple of hours I watched God redeem a day that I thought had been lost. I asked the team to share things that were hard to leave behind. Story after story hit the floor of people back home who needed them in some way - people they felt like they were failing by leaving behind - people they weren't sure would still be alive when they come home - people in really hard places - and just, flat out, simple people who love them well. It broke my heart. And for every story - another teammate prayed for the situations.

We ended the night praying that God would break our hearts for every other member of the team - that as we head out to dig into the lives of people in South Africa, we wouldn't neglect digging into the lives of our team - in spite of tired we are or how irritating the other person is. That we could be like Jesus and cry with eachother, but also point each other to hope and the gospel.

We read Psalm 126 and took hope in the fact that as we go out, the tears we cry might take root and eventually yield some crops, a harvest that stirs up a song in our hearts and turns our joy into laughing - by the grace of God.

It's not surprising. Everyone is carrying a lot. And slowly we are learning to carry eachother.

We leave for the airport at 4:30 am Monday morning. Pray for good pilots, good airplane food, and good rest. I can't believe how soon I will be in Africa. I am terribly excited.

Thanks for everything.

-matt

Georgia, on My Mind

Thu, 4 Sep 2008 00:00:00 GMT

(figure 1-a)

Song-Title Super Giveaway!

I like the idea of titling my blog with song titles. We'll see how long it lasts. I'll make it even more interesting. The first one to post the original artist of the song will win a prize. A very good prize. [You can challenge a winner by listing two artists who have covered the song (but this will only win if I like the cover version better than the original)]. I hope all of that was clear. This week is easy (see figure 1-a)

Training Camp III

I am in Georgia right now at training camp, for the third time in one year. Right now its just us leaders, sleeping in plywood cabins, showering with garden hoses, being beckoned to meals by a dinner bell. We're being trained so that we can better lead for the next nine months. Its been fun to see old friends and to get to know the leadership team for my trip. I'll update more once the participants get here.

Speedy Delivery?

A few people have asked for my African mailing address, so I figured I'd post it here:

Matthew Spainhour

PO Box 921

Jeffreys Bay, South Africa 6330

I love mail. [I also love Mr. Rogers (see figure 2-a)]. Nothing makes strange days feel like Christmas more than a package or letter. I've been mailed everything from music boxes and children's books, to letters written in mirror image and a single sudoku puzzle (and I don't even do sudoku puzzles). One thing: if you do send packages, and they ask you to specify the value of the contents, specify the contents to be as close to $0.00 as possible. It makes things a little cheaper on my end - as we have to pay a tax to pick up packages.

(the phrase "speedy delivery" is merely a tribute and a joke. it will probably take a long time.)

Off Again...

Fri, 29 Aug 2008 00:00:00 GMT

In one week I head down to Georgia for training camp before I leave for Africa on September 15. It's back to packing and gathering goodbyes. Here's an update for the moment. Sorry my posts have been so few and dry lately. That should all change soon.

Support Update

I have raised a little over $6,000 of my initial goal of $10,000 for the year. That leaves a little more than $3,000 to raise towards my living expenses while I am in Africa. I'm humbled by the ways that I have seen money come in, and again, I really can't begin to thank all of you for your support. I am completely dependent on it. Your sacrifice and generosity are an example and a reminder of the way that God provides for his kids, and of the way that the church works as a body.

I've learned that the easiest way to pledge support is through the link on the left side of this blog. There's a link that says SUPPORT ME and it takes you to a page where you can donate online with a credit card. If you'd like to support but would rather use the postal service let me know and I can send an envelope your way.

Africa Update

For those you you who haven't gotten a good explanation of what I will be doing in Africa this go-round - I'll give a brief overview.

I will be helping to lead the program I participated in last year - Adventures In Mission's First Year Missions Program in Africa. I will be a part of a team of leaders that will come alongside of 50 college-age participants. The first four months will be spent in Jeffreys Bay, South Africa (the town I lived in last year) - where half of the time will be spent in ministry, and half the time will be spent in seminar type teachings on theology, ministry, culture, etc. In January, the group of 50 will be split into 3 outreach teams. Each of those teams will head to a different location where each participant will work at an internship with local ministries and churches. My role will mainly be to disciple students, and walk with them into ministry, then in January I will lead an outreach team to one of the three locations.

I'm really excited about all of this. I'm also really excited to get back to Jeffreys Bay, to see all of my friends their - especially a few hand fulls of streetkids, a Portugese cook, and the lanky dutchman who smells like Jesus.

I hope the summer has treated you all well.

-matt

Home from the Philippines

Mon, 4 Aug 2008 00:00:00 GMT

I'm home again! More on that later.

I've spent much of the day tidying up the blog so here are...

A FEW THINGS:

- I've added all my Philippines posts to this blog

for some reason they stopped posting halfway through the trip.

blog (then scroll down a bit to backtrack)

- I've added some pictures to the Philippines posts

(to give a better idea of some of the people and places.

- Some of you have asked if there is an easier way to send in support money.

If you look to the left there is a link that says SUPPORT ME. This link takes you to a page where you can donate online through a credit card - without all the hassle of stamps, snail mail, and licking envelopes! For those of you who support me monthly - there is also an option to make that process automatic.

Thank you all for keeping up with me, praying for me, and to all of you who have given to support me - I really cannot thank you enough. I'll post again soon about all that's in my brain and all that's on the horizon.

love,

matt

The End is Near

Mon, 21 Jul 2008 00:00:00 GMT

We're down to the last few days and in the process of saying goodbyes and wrapping up ministry. On Friday we started getting our taste of the rainy season, and since then we have encountered a few downpours. In the Philippines people believe that if you go out in the rain, you will get sick, almost immediately. That idea, paired with the fact that Basak becomes a mudslide when it rains, kept us from making it out to Basak on Saturday and Sunday. It gave our team some time to rest and sort through some of the supplies we will be leaving behind with the church.

Yesterday the church gave us a Farewell celebration. We went out to a beach resort on one of the other islands and spent the day swimming in the ocean, and in a few swimming pools around the place. The weather stayed pretty clear most of the day.

We're hoping for the same weather today! At noon we are headed out to Basak to visit with the kids and to say some of our goodbyes in Basak.

Tonight we will be visiting one of our friends Rick, an American who lives in Cebu and tutors local children from his home in the evenings. We have met Rick and we have heard incredible things about the work he does with the children, so we can't wait to spend some time with him.

We are a lot of time this week debriefing our time here - trying to process what we've seen and done, and reflecting on what God has done in us during our time here.

Pray that our time here would end well. That our goodbyes will be sweet and smooth, and that we will be able to serve and bless our hosts even more in our last few days. Also pray that God starts to seal some of the work he's been doing in our lives, and that he would keep preparing us for life after the Philippines.

Thanks for all of your prayers. We have seen so many of them answered, and we couldn't be more grateful.

More Basak...

Fri, 18 Jul 2008 00:00:00 GMT

Well, we've been in Basak all week - mostly spending time with the kids, singing - dancing - telling stories. We've started to build some really good relationships in the town, and today we are headed there for more house visits and a bible study. We're also showing a movie in the middle of the town tonight. Should be exciting for everyone. We've also been learning how incredibly difficult the local transportation system can be once we venture away from our side of town.

Over the last few days we've been able to go into the local elementary school to talk to the students, share the gospel, and scream a few songs. We visited a whole lot of classrooms, Pastor Ruben thinks we saw close to 1,000 students. All of our voices are a little sore from it.

This week with teaching, we've been trying to get a deeper look into who the Holy Spirit is and what He is up to in the world around us. Its been good. Hope you're all doing well.

10 Days to Go... (Basak)

Wed, 16 Jul 2008 00:00:00 GMT

That's crazy talk.

This morning we realized we're almost down to the final week of ministry. It's a strange thought. It feels like we just got here and it also feels like we've been here forever.

Yesterday we began our ministry in Basak. A community about half an hour away down quite a few bumpy roads. We spent the day going door to door in the community learning about problems the people face, hearing their stories, and sharing some of our own stories.

Some of the houses are simple concrete buildings with basic utilities, but most of them are empty bamboo huts - raised up on stilts (to avoid flooding) with see-through floors and leaky roofs.

We met a paralyzed man, a set of parents whose daughter was assasinated less than a year ago, drivers of some of the Jeepneys that drive us around town, some beautiful others - from all walks of life, and a whole lot of children.

Once 4:30 rolled around we gathered the children in some open space to sing songs, play some games, and to teach the story of the prodigal son. They are an incredible group of kids, they sang really loud and were glued to the story while we acted it out.

We also invited them to a feeding that will take place this afternoon at 4:30. We are thinking there will probably be a ton of kids. Yesterday there were close to 100 and it was only our first day in the community.

Pray for the rest of our time in Basak this week - that the language barrier wouldn't be too much of a problem and that the Spirit would come through in our conversations to give birth to things that last.

That's all the time we've got for now.

We'll post again soon - maybe even with some pictures.......maybe.

Is it raining or am I just sweating profusely even though we're in the shade?

Fri, 11 Jul 2008 00:00:00 GMT

Well, we're almost through our first week of ministry. After the weekend we've settled into a rhythm of ministry at Cebu City Alliance Church (C.C.A.C.).

In the afternoons (and on a few mornings) it serves as an afterschool program for well over 100 children from the community called Loving My Neighbor. Most of the kids are sponsored through Compassion International and come to get a little love, hear a little gospel, and eat a little rice and meat. This week we've been giving a lot of love, trying to present the gospel through songs and stories, and eating a little rice and meat with them. We're usually not used to whatever mystery meats show up on our plates - but usually by that point in the day we're hungry enough to live with the mystery.

Tuesday we were welcomed by the local church. We had a big meal and a bit of a dinner party where we played youth group games with a bunch of local pastors. It was a blast watching a bunch of foreign pastors cheating to try to win The Human Knot. We even played charades, during which someone mistakenly took my "Beautician" gestures for a "Prostitute!" Overall, it was a beautiful time of sharing our stories and a lot of laughs with the leadership of C.C.A.C. and breaking through a few more cultural barriers.

This weekend we will be finishing our time at Loving My Neighbor, so pray that our last few days with the children will be incredible and that they truly will see Jesus through our feeble attempts to show them love.

Saturday, after we visit Loving My Neighbor for the last time, we will be teaching and singing at a feeding in the community of Lorega. Lorega is a squatter camp in the middle of a gothic-style cemetary. The houses are mostly tin and scrap metal built around the above ground tombs of the cemetary. The tombs are broken, grafittied, or modified into pulpits, coffee tables, or beds. We've been able to visit Lorego twice in the past week, and some of the children regularly attend Loving My Neighbor. There are loads of children, mostly dirty and hungry. There is also a lot of drug trafficking and prostitution that go on around the community.

Saturday afternoon, we will be helping to facilitate a True Love Waits conference on the campus of a local college. We had an orientation meeting last night to learn more about the event, and it was probably one of my favorite times we've had so far. Trying to communicate in English with the people of Cebu is sometimes a challenge, but when the communication revolves around topics like sex, and when you play games in which each member of your team receives and imaginary sexually transmitted diseases - the communication becomes hilarious.

Sunday we will visit a new church as well as the church pastored by one of our hosts, Pastor Ruben.

This week as a team we've been studying the mind of Christ - trying to dig into what it means to think like Jesus thinks and to see the world like Jesus sees it. Since Jesus seemed to disagree with the Pharisees on a lot of points we've looked at the things he had to say about the Pharisees. We have been trying to find the parts of our hearts and minds that operate more like the Pharisees and less like Jesus - so that we can drag those things out of our dark corners and closets and into God's light. All of this in the hopes of having our minds renewed and transformed to be more like Christ's.

Also, if you want to see a lot of really bad car accidents ALMOST happen right in front of you, you should come to Cebu City. It really gets your blood flowing - and once you get used to it, its really entertaining.

with love, from somewhere in the Pacific,

matthew

Hello Philippines

Mon, 7 Jul 2008 00:00:00 GMT

Well, we made it. After a pretty long flight that took us through Los Angeles and Manila - we finally set foot on the island of Cebu.

We noticed the heat and humidity immediately, and we have spent the last few days studying the art of running fans on high speed and pausing oscillating fans when they are aimed directly at our bodies. We are a sweaty, sticky bunch of misisonaries... to say the least.

Our hosts met us at the airport and treated us like long lost friends right off the bat. They took us shopping at the mall and bought us lunch. We dropped our things off at our house and dove into ministry immediately, attending a feeding in a small community close to the coast. We were able to get to know many of the children while we watched a Bible School program unfold. After the feeding we had to navigate a muddy walkway. Outside of a few stepping stones most of the path was deep mud and sewage. Emily took an unlucky step and wound up sinking knee deep in the sludge. When she pulled her legs up out of the mess her shoes got left behind. It didn't take 5 seconds before a few of the children were reaching into the mud up to their shoulders to try and fish out Emily's sandals. Another couple of kids brought over a bucket of water and started rinsing her legs. We all laughed for a while about the situation, but it was a beautiful thing to watch the people of the community rush to take care of us - completely rinsing the sandals, and an older woman working hard to clean of Emily's legs.

The house we are staying in is a little ways above the heart of the city. Its in the middle of a garden and it's mostly made of concrete. We are sleeping on cushions on the floor, bathing with buckets, and squatting over toilets with no seats. We've started to get pretty used to it. And we're needing the bucket showers pretty often as much as we are sweating. There's a herd of stray dogs that roams around our house and at night. They get into fights and yelp in the early hours of the morning. Sometimes the stray cats get invovled. It's a terrible sound.

We attended 5 church services yesterday. One in a pretty nice church with some swinging contemporary music, one in the middle of a squatter camp with houses built in the middle of a graveyard, and one at night in a small community on the other side of town. We performed our drama again and again, and judging by the crowd response - we're the closest thing to Broadway on this here island. One of these days we'll have to post a video here so that you can all see the act that is taking Cebu by storm. We have also taken to singing worship songs, all five of us with one guitar in front of a church or two. Something akin to the Von Trapp family at the end of the Sound of Music.

Today we had a bit of a rest day. We did discipleship - the girls at the local McDonalds, and Trevor and I at "Coffee Dream." The girls had tiny McFlurries and read the bible, and Trevor and I had a long chat while we crammed packet after packet of sugar in our coffee. Eventually it was nothing short of delicious.

We love it here. We are growing as a team and learning to laugh at all kinds of things. We are all still catching up on sleep and getting used to the time zone, but we have seen so much in two days and we could't be more excited about all that is to come. Everyone is healthy.

We'll post some pictures here soon. We just had a few moments to spare for some internet time and figured we'd give you all an update. Continue to pray for good health, ways that we can overcome the language and cultural barriers, and for growth as a team.

Ciao.

matt

Training Camp Update #2

Tue, 1 Jul 2008 00:00:00 GMT

The last few days have been great. We're all finally used to showering with cold water from garden hoses, waking up a little bit after the sun rises, and getting really dirty all day long.

Two days ago our team went through the Spiderweb, a bunch of strings strung from tree to tree out in the woods - our team of five had to make it through without touching the strings AND we had to coach three blindfolded people through the course with us. The team did an incredible job.

Yesterday we went through an obstacle course - bilndfolded across balance beams, one at a time up a cargo net, trying to get our whole team through a tire without touching the inside, lift eachother over a twelve feet wall, and a few other challenges. We made it through the course and then managed to set a course speed record of 4 minutes and 38 seconds. Some people think its because our team only has five people, we tend to think its more because of our skills.

Here's a few pictures:

Training Camp Update #1

Sun, 29 Jun 2008 00:00:00 GMT

Well, our adventure is officially underway. On Thursday the whole team arrived at the airport in Atlanta. We made our way back to Gainesville and spent the rest of the day getting to know each other, worshiping, and waiting for bedtime to come around.

Friday.

In the morning we learned about "Timelines." Basically how to tell the stories of each of our lives and the way that God has changed our lives. As a team we've started sharing our timelines at night as a way to learn more about each other, and more about our team as a whole.

We sat in on another talk about children's ministry. Alli Mellon walked us through effective ways to put together children's programs - we even learned a few songs with some pretty spectacular hand motions. At the end each team was given 5 minutes to put together one day of a Vacation Bible School program, and at the end of 5 minutes we had to present our program in front of the entire training camp. Our team did really well. As leaders we were really impressed with the way that Team Philippines gave it everything they had. Each member pulled their weight, used a lot of energy in front of the group, and we all agreed that if we had been small children - we would have liked our program the best.

In other news - our team won a pretty intense dance competition and spent the rest of the day doing team building exercises.

Saturday.

Saturday morning we spent time learning how to minister cross-culturally. We compared our own American culture to other cultures around the world and even did an exercise where half of the camp pretended to be an indigenous tribe, while the other half was given the task of engaging culture and ministering. Luckily, our team was part of the indigenous tribe. We got to do strange things and act out some awkward indigenous traditions. We did a great job of frustrating the missionary teams, but in the end it was a good learning experience for everyone.

We spent the afternoon learning dramas that we can present and use as tools to break through language barriers. Last night we had a worship service and spent a lot of time letting God really deal with us and set us free from anything that might be holding us back from seeking Him more.

...We've had a little bit of rain, but mostly at night so we've stayed pretty dry. Today we are learning about Spiritual Warfare and going through a few more team builders. That's all for now. We'll blog again soon to keep you updated. Everyone is doing great and we are all getting more and more excited about all that lies ahead.

The Good, the Bad, and the Philippines

Fri, 20 Jun 2008 00:00:00 GMT

Hey there folks,

Sunday I'm headed down to Georgia to train and prepare for my trip to Cebu Island in the Philippines. My month at home has gone by at warp speed. Its been beautiful to have some time to rest and catch up with people, but I'm getting a little restless - so I guess its about time to get busy again. I will be in Gainesville until we depart the US on July 3, and we will be in the Philippines until July 26.

Please pray for my team:

I will be leading with my friend Aaryn Phillips, from my team in Jeffreys Bay - and our team is as follows:

Trevor Perla

Ansley Stewart

Gina Mathes

Emily Davis

Pray that God would give Aaryn and myself the energy and wisdom to lead well, and most of all that our ears and eyes would be open to the ways that God is at work in our team - I guess in a way, that he would give us hearts like 'spiritual parents' as this trip wears on.

We will be making occasional updates from the field, so I will keep you all posted on things that are going on and ways that you can be praying for us. Thanks!

As a sidenote - Clint Eastwood has been fairly instrumental in helping me rest, as has the Father's Day DVD sale at Wal-Mart that included quite a few of Eastwood's old screen gems from the 60's. I've traded out my blog picture for a nice photo of Clint in his younger years. I hope this small tribute will give his career a boost. It's about time he caught a break.

If there comes a summer night where your family doesn't know what to do (and you're all old enough for some good old-fashioned violence and witty backtalk), go rent:

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly - early spaghetti western that took Rawhide to a new level.

Unforgiven - 'a western to end all westerns' i suppose, with Cowboys going straight and a subtle discourse on the peril of firearms.

Dirty Harry - An unconventional cop tracking down a sniper-serial killer. You've got to ask yourself one question: Do I feel lucky?

If you find yourself with a cancelled vacation, or a whole week where you've got nothing to do - take a loan out from the bank, head down to your local Best Buy, as a family try to find and purchase every movie that Clint Eastwood has ever acted in, directed, or produced. Take the pile home, pop a few boxes of popcorn, fire up a few two liters, and I'd say your problem was near about solved.

If it hits two weeks you can all choose to act like a specific Eastwood character for the second week - communicating only through disrespectful one-liners and cold squinty stares, but still, you're the good guys.

Thank you for humoring me and reading this far. Have a great July. And Happy Early Birthday to the US of A.

one for the road...

Tue, 13 May 2008 00:00:00 GMT

So I have a few days left here in Jeffreys Bay, South Africa. The twenty of us (my team) are cleaning out the house we've lived in and littered for the last eight months. The walls are getting bare and all of our things are disappearing into various bags and donation piles. Some of us are getting teary and saying sentimental things like, "this is the last time we'll ever eat popcorn in the living room at 7:05pm," some of us are in denial, some of us are bursting at the seams to get our hands on a little Americana/Canadia (though none of us are very excited about the two day plane ride) - but regardless we're all struggling through goodbyes and rubbing our eyes at the fact that 9 months have gone by since we all met each other and started this journey.

At the end of the race I'm exhausted - physically, emotionally, relationally, spiritually - pretty much on every level. We've spent the last few days in Cape Town resting, processing, debriefing, but i didn't get too far past just resting. On the other hand I'm pretty amazed at all that has happened over here and so grateful for the way that God has walked with me and bent my heart and mind and spirit in new ways. But I am so ready to give all of the noise and busyness a rest - and to just be still for a while. I need it.

I'll be shooting a letter out to all of you once I get home summarizing all kinds of things and telling you where my life is headed from here. But I'll give you a brief summary here:

Once I'm home, I'll be around for a month, visiting, resting, processing the last nine months, playing outside, and hopefully recording some music.

On June 22, along with one of my teammates from the past year, I will be leading a group of 4-5 high school students on a month long trip to the Philippines with Adventures in Missions. We will be coming alongside a couple of newlywed missionaries on Cebu Island, probably working a lot with kids, but my main responsibility will be discipling the students on the trip and walking deeper with them into the questions and motion that come with following Jesus.

Upon my return (July 30 or so) I'll have another month to recuperate and then I'm headed back here to Jeffreys Bay, South Africa to work as a leader in the program I just finished. I'll be in Jeffreys for the Fall, will probably be leading a team to another location in the Spring, and it will all wrap up next May.

Its strange to write all of that out. It isn't exactly the way I pictured life looking once this trip was over, but I have spent a lot of time talking to God about all of it and these are the places he keeps pointing at and pushing me towards. I have no doubt that these things are going to continue to teach me about how I really can't do much of anything without God and that I am going to be stretched far beyond what I'm capable of at the moment, so please continue to pray for me. Pretty soon I'm going to be a African-American-Filipino, culture-shocked out of my mind. So pray that I can sort things out, get some rest, and find an anchor in the Gospel and the Kingdom that are not bound by culture... or anything for that matter.

I can't tell you how excited I am to get home. To see all of you, to share meals with you in the wide world of American options, to trade stories about what God has been up to - in my life and in yours, and in the people around us. My heart does some pretty serious acrobatics at the thought of it all. So leave a light on for me, maybe I'll come around. I have a feeling my time at home is going to fly by (as all time does), but hopefully I'll be seeing you in one form or another.

There is so much more to say. I'll guess I'll talk to you soon.

See if you can do something about those gas prices before I get home.

still alive.

Sun, 13 Apr 2008 00:00:00 GMT

It has been over a month since I bounced any signs of life back to all of you. I'm sorry for that. A lot has happened in the last month, so I'll try to list off the essentials.

In the last few months I've gotten really close with a car guard in town named Eric. Eric is 27, he spent six of those years in prison, but God got a hold of him at some point and now he's one of the closest things to Jesus I've ever seen. A while back he made his shack a little bigger and took in about thirteen street kids. He treated them as if they were his own kids, looked after them, disciplined them, forgave them - the list goes on. It was a beautiful thing to see, and the love that he showed them changed their lives in really tangible ways.

Some time has gone by and the thirteen street kids are down to two or three. The rest decided they enjoyed the 'freedom' of the street a little more - running around on their own, begging, and smoking glue and petrol (not that they ever completely stopped, there was just a lot of progress being made in breaking that cycle). It has been hard to watch that shift happen, and it has been hard to know how to best look after and pursue those kids, but even with all of that, my relationships with all of the boys are better than ever. There is a depth to many of our friendships that I thought would never come, and we understand each other far more than we did even a month or two ago. My friendship with Eric is incredible. I have learned so much from him about life, about these street kids and their culture, about forgiveness, about following Christ - the list goes on.

Pray that God would continue to teach me how engage this street culture that, in many ways, is still completely foreign to me.

My grandfather died on April 5. Last summer I was able to move in with him and my grandmother to help take care of him. We watched more Sanford & Son than you could possibly imagine, and he told me story after story from his 83 years of roaming the earth. I celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary with them, and all summer I got to watch the kind of love that gets born out of watching sixty years go by together. I don't know if I have sixty years left in me, but I hope that kind of love lives inside of me somewhere. Living with them for the summer was one of the best decisions of my life. I've been playing through the home videos in my head in my head all week. I think my grandfather is excited, because He's been talking about going to see Jesus for a while now - and the food in heaven is better than the food at Oak Hill Assisted Living Center, even if you have to share it with Mexicans (I am pretty sure his seat at the banquet table is next to a Mexican, a black man, and some old friends and family that he's been missing for a long time - and I think when you share food that good in the full-on presence of God, fellowship and racial reconciliation happen faster than you can say, "Pass the nachos.")

Keep praying. I can't even begin to tell you the impact of your prayers, or how much peace comes from knowing that you are all praying - even if it's only every now and then. I will try to be better about keeping you updated in the next few weeks. I only have one month left until I hop a plane back to the grand old U.S. of A. Has the election gotten out of hand yet? I sure hope so.

sunday again?

Sun, 2 Mar 2008 00:00:00 GMT

Another week has gone by. It felt like a few hours. I really can't say that I know where the week went.

I don't know what to say about this week. I miss America - more than that: Americana.

I want to walk around in corn and tobacco fields. I want to move in with Kevin Costner in Field of Dreams.

I want to go to a baseball game, in Baltimore, on the harbor - listen to bats crack and buy a beer for seventeen dollars and fifty cents. (Send my regards to Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens. They look good in suits.)

I want to drive an old Chevrolet through New Jersey, make some friends in a diner over some snapper soup, drive to Strathmere Beach, and light a fire somewhere in the sand - Springsteen blaring in the background.

I want to sit at Lincoln's feet next to the Potomac, sometime after midnight - once the tour groups in matching T-Shirts are long gone and tucked in at the District Motel 6.

But I'm glad I'm here. Something tells me that the minute I checked all of those things off the list and paid a few of you a visit - I'd be aching for this place far more than I ache for America right now.

That's a scary thought with only two months left here...

a few photos from the week -

This is James. or Pietey Boy.

This is Christo.

This is Simon. Car guard extraordinaire, self proclaimed N.W.A. - wikipedia the term if you'd like.

what.would.jesus.do?...

Sat, 23 Feb 2008 00:00:00 GMT

...to be honest I don't know anymore. The first time someone sprang that little motto on me I was taken back. I think it was the seventh grade. My world turned upside down

-Jesus would talk to the lonely kid at lunch with no one to sit with
-Jesus would bake cookies for dying old people
-Jesus would stay after church to stack chairs
-Jesus would do his homework (and get good grades)
-Jesus wouldn't talk back to his parents

It was simple really. In any given situation: Jesus would be an incredibly nice guy.

I never got a WWJD bracelet. I thought they were a little cheesy, but mostly I just had a hard time putting them on - to put that fabric through the clasp, with only one hand? Impossible. But still I wrestled with the question. What would Jesus do? And doing the best I could with the answers I was given - I became a perpetually nice guy.

Today I was supposed to play baseball with my young friends who live on the street. They showed up toying with a sick bird and high from sniffing glue - glue cans in their pockets, another stash tucked into the front of their shirts, and a sick bird passed and squeezed between the palms of their hands.

They were throwing the bird in the air - it would try to fly free but end up twenty yards down the road with a boy chasing after it to catch it and repeat the process. It was devastating every time, to watch this bird flap its wings hysterically and almost get free, only to be choked out by the calloused hands of a twelve year old. I spent some time trying to save the bird. It ended up in a tree. It's probably still there, wondering how in the world it survived playtime today.

Eventually, I wound up chasing one of the boys for a few blocks. I wrestled him into an ATM booth to fish the glue out of his shirt and his pocket. I did it out of love. I did it because I think there are better ways to fight off the ugliness of the world than sniffing glue. I did it because I love this kid more than I love anyone else on the planet at the moment and I don't want his brain to melt out from behind his eyes.

He got angry. He fought me. He told me he wouldn't play baseball. He got worked up until he fell asleep on a trashbag next to a dumpster in the open lot where I was teaching baseball to a few of his friends.

See, it's not so easy though. It isn't clear cut: Glue is bad - so Matt saved the day. That's not it at all. I don't blame him for sniffing the glue. His parents might as well be dead. He spends all his time on the streets. He was raped by an older boy about two weeks ago, and he's carrying around deep pain and humiliation and anger that I can't even imagine. He wants a way out of the life he's been handed, and the glue is the cheapest ticket.

So what would Jesus do? The glue isn't the issue. He'll get more. It costs five rand (less than a dollar) at a little shop down the road. The issues are far deeper. The Jesus I've come to know loves to cut to the root. He doesn't spend much time fighting the obvious, outward symptoms - he takes his sword to the root and brings his life to the dead places in me. But at the same time he has wrestled me into all kinds of corners to break me of my addictions - to take my eyes off of the easy fixes and to call me out of my hiding. So I'm sitting here, hours later, staring at this can of glue and wondering: is it worth it to save a kid from glue for a day - to leave him pissed off next to a dumpster exhausted in his anger?

Maybe.

All of our most sincere actions - even the things Jesus would do - ring loud and empty when they come without love. So tonight I am praying and hoping that God can bend our actions that seem to fall in the gray when they come out of love. I'm begging that God would let the ringing that comes from love be louder than the question marks that cover the things I do. And I'm starting to believe that God can turn the things we do in love, even the ridiculous things that we can't really imagine Jesus doing, into echoes of his own love. And that he can shape and tune them to ring like bells - to signify the coming of something new, full and loud. God breaking in. My habit lately is to skip over asking what would Jesus do - to just beg Jesus and the Spirit to come and take over and do their work, because most of this is far beyond me.

I will probably see the boy tomorrow. He will probably ride on my back to the store where we buy bread. He will probably reek of glue and gas and piss and sweat. He will probably smile again and ask me for things. He will probably be more careful to hide his glue from me from now on. But I hope to God he keeps catching glimpses of the fact that I love him. And those are the bigger questions: Father, how in the world are we going to love that boy tomorrow? How can we get to the root of all this? I admit I have no idea what I'm doing. Teach me. Show me what to do. Breathe some Spirit into this kid. Draw him into you.

The boy's name is Jonathan. Pray for him. I really do love him more than anyone on the planet right now and God wants him bad. I hear his name or see his face and my heart breaks and leaps at the same time.

Sorry for the length - sorry for the word vomit. I just needed to write.

father.and.son

Fri, 15 Feb 2008 00:00:00 GMT

Sometimes I want to be like Jesus because I think he had all his stuff together. I think my generation (even more than most generations before) suffers from this deep desire and temptation to arrive and to have it all together. We long for the fast track, to be finished and complete - to fill our heads and find the answers - and to miss out on the struggle and the suffering.

I'm not saying Jesus didn't have his stuff together, but I'm realizing more and more these days how much that misses the point. When I follow that line of thinking it doesn't take long before I've neutered the gospel in to a self-help plan, or at least a crutch to make me feel a little better on my weak days - the days when I can't get past my own crap or work up enough courage to love myself. And I start sing that gross little song, "Someday I'll be past this. Someday I will be exactly how I should be."

I mistake this journey of walking with and being in relationship with Jesus for an unbroken upward spiral towards holiness.' I forget that Jesus said, "Follow me." I wish that he said, "Come here.... There you go. All finished, rest easy, now you are on my team!"

I've been spending a lot of time in the gospel of John. The first time I read it through slowly - a piece of a chapter at a time, hanging on every word - the last few have been speed reads in one or two sittings, trying to let it all sink in. Still, the one thing that jumps out at me every time is that chapter after chapter Jesus defines and defends himself again and again with one fact: that his eyes are set on his Abba, his Daddy. Jesus does what he sees the Father doing; and loves those whom the Father loves.

Jesus usually has to give these explanations after all kinds of prodding from the pharisees (the ones who thought they had all their stuff together, or at least thought they were on their way). They try to stump him with twisted questions and they like to say, "Who are you?" until they are blue in the face. Jesus always, always, always brings it back to this: I am the Son. I do what I see my Father doing. He makes it clear that he is not around to give all the answers, he's not trying to be the most profound rabbi of his time, he is not about ideas and theologies and interpretations of the law, he is about his Father's business. He fully and perfectly understands what it means to be a child of God, and he is desperately trying to bring us into that kind of life - to remind us all of who we are and who we are meant to be: children of God.

That is good news for this shabby bunch - all of us who have been living like orphan's in our Father's house. "Follow me," Jesus says. "Daddy is doing things all over the place and we get to watch and take part."

The Son can do nothing of his own accord, but only what he sees the Father doing.
For whatever the Father does, the Son does likewise.
For the Father loves the Son and shows him all that he himself is doing. - Jesus
john 5.19-20

No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing;
but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you. - Jesus
john 15.15

our love is all of God's money

Wed, 6 Feb 2008 00:00:00 GMT

Our love. our love, our love is all we have.
Our love, Our love is all of God's money.
Everyone is a burning sun.

-from the song Jesus, etc. by Wilco

Our team has been reading, thinking, and talking a lot about money lately. God has been teaching me about money since the moment I got here, so it's been great to bring some of those internal conversations out into the light and to hash them out as a group and as a community.

I've spent a lot of time reading through the New Testament, watching the way that Jesus treated money, and trying to hear out the things he had to say about it. It doesn't take long for it to feel like Jesus is turning over tables and going to war with the ideas that I've always swept under the umbrella of "good stewardship." Every other chapter Jesus is telling people to give things away (sometimes everything). In between he's telling stories about forgiving massive debts or paying workers the same wage, regardless of who has worked more hours. And on top of that he's pulling coins out of fish's mouths, turning water into really good wine, making one kid's lunch enough to feed thousands of people, and all kinds of other miracles of some kind of provision.

I'm starting to see how much faith I've put in money over the years. It makes sense in a way - money has done a lot for me, and my family has never been too short on cash. Money has clothed me since the day I was born, fed me more Chipotle burritos than there are hairs on my head, and healed me through doctor bills and bottle after bottle of NyQuil. Not too mention the fun stuff - the dinners and movies with pretty girls, the guitars, the cocktails and pipe smoke, and the gasoline to get my thirsty car to all points in between. Money has met my needs in spectacular ways and made me a pretty comfortable dude.

Sure, God provided the money, but over time it seems like our faith can get invested in the cash and currency. I know this because most Christians I know are keen on burning non-Christian CDs and dumping heathen girlfriends, giving away canned foods and donating old shoes and shoulder-pad dresses (even new clothes), but I think if we were in the shoes of the rich, young ruler - met with that strange sentence, "One thing you still lack; sell all that you possess and distribute it to the poor, and you shall have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me." We would stumble over our words a little (Good grief Jesus, how can I fix my lack by giving things away?), and we might end up walking away 'grieved,' just like he did.

Somehow I've devised beautiful ways to serve both God and Mammon, and quite honestly, I'm not sure where Jesus gets off telling me I can't serve both. But he says it anyway, "No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will hold to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon." Keep it coming, Jesus. "For this reason I say to you, do not be anxious for your life, as to what you shall eat, or what you shall drink; nor for your body, as to what you shall put on. I not life more than food, and the body more than clothing?"

On and on he goes, talking about how God takes care of the birds, and how its not because they've been stocking food up in a barn somewhere. Then he tells us how God clothes the flowers, and how it isn't because they've been sitting around the loom weaving petals and leaves. It's because God loves them and provides for them.

And somehow this is linear: You cannot serve both God and mammon, so stop worrying about all of these needs of yours. Don't even think about tomorrow. Seek the Kingdom today. Then God, who knows your needs, will take care of the rest. Leave mammon alone. Put your money down.

That's wild.

Beyond all of this, God has been teaching me that my life and my love are his money, the money of a God who intends to buy back (redeem) the world little by little. So lately I've been walking around asking God to spend me like money and to let my love be his currency. He seems to be doing it. At the end of most days I feel pretty spent, and there seems to be a slow process of redemption happening in my own life and in the lives of these people around me. It makes the whole money thing easier - if my life is God's money, it starts to get difficult to spend very much money on my own life, and my heart starts longing to pour money out in ways that might work towards redemption as well.

matthew, what in the world are you doing over there?

Mon, 4 Feb 2008 00:00:00 GMT

So, I realize I really haven't given many of you a clear idea of what it is exactly that I'm up to over here in Africa. Some of you might think I ride an elephant into poverty stricken villages everyday, or that I'm involved in some sort of cave-painting ministry. Some of you may have seen pictures and started believing that I go to the beach and surf everyday, preaching to penguins and great white sharks or some nonsense like that. I figured it's probably about time I gave you a pretty concrete idea of the structure of my life over here.

I came over to Africa with a team of nineteen other people. Out of the twenty, four of us are of the male persuasion. That's sixteen girls and four dudes. This is made even more interesting by the fact that we all live in the same house. The girls all live upstairs, divided between two bedrooms. Two of the males are leaders and married (to two other women) and have their own rooms, the other two of us live in a little room in the back of the house that probably used to function as some kind of storage room. It's cozy. We like having our space.

My team is great. We have all gotten to know each other really well. We know the different foods that each team member eats for breakfast, which means we know who to be mad at when there are gobs of yogurt on the counter or clumps of Crunchy O's skimming across the floor when we wake up (its probably me). We call ourselves a family. We act like a family, and we feel like one too. We work together like a family and even get a little dysfunctional just like a real, live family.

Three mornings a week we spend a few hours together in discipleship. All that really means is that we read books together and dig through scripture together and have conversations about what it means to follow Jesus.

During the week I spend most of my time at the Joshua Project. The Joshua project is a simple, blue and white building on the edge of a township called Pelsrus. A township is basically a really big neighborhood of makeshift houses piled on top of each other. The folks who live there don't make very much money, which is terrible, because they have more needs than any people I've ever met. Huge families live together in a few rooms. Most of the families have at least one really sick relative that they're all taking care of, and a few kids to keep things interesting. A lot of fathers have left these families behind, and you can imagine how tough it would be to juggle a sick aunt, your dead sisters two kids, your dying mother, and a few of your own kids minus any kind of father figure: not much time for a 9-5, and not much food or money for the twelve person family in the scrap metal hut.

In the morning the Joshua project serves as a school for some of the elementary - high school kids from the township that haven't been able to get very far in the local primary schools. The teachers at Joshua are incredible. Most of them are Dutch. They know how to teach really well. They also know how to love and discipline these kids really well.

I'm usually at Joshua in the afternoons, once school is out. The after school program is led by a Dutchman named Japp (Yop = see the face painting picture). He is almost seven feet tall. He loves to laugh and dance and to make parables out of cleaning toilets, shoveling dirt, and drilling holes into walls and he's been working at Joshua Project for somewhere around five years. He reminds me a lot of Jesus, so I try to learn from him and to do what he does. We walk around the township to pick up all kinds of kids. We bring them back to a big room and try to engage them in some creative arts - to express themselves:

Mondays we hang out and go to the beach, or a playground, or to the Chicken King for some ice cream. (Sometimes they wipe vanilla ice cream on the faces and do strange dances. They call it "dancing like a white guy." You really must see it)

Tuesdays we make art and create things with paints and paper and our hands.

Wednesdays we learn about drama. We dress up in crazy clothes and pretend to be someone else for a little while.

Thursday is wood-working day. We build things like jewelry boxes and doghouses, xylophones out of bamboo, or if we are feeling particularly spunky we pull nails out of old crates we find behind factories so that we can turn their scraps into something new and incredible.

I love every one of these kids a lot - which is odd, because sometimes it takes everything in me not to slap them across the face or shake them violently. I'm sure that sounds terrible, but the 250^th time a ten year old takes your cell phone, or punches you in the back, or makes a devastating sexual joke about a girl in the room, your heart breaks and you get tired and you are much more prone to lashing out. I'm getting better though. I promise.

Throughout the week I also spend a lot of time with the street kids and homeless folks in town. Most of my heart beats for them - kids without parents or homes to go to. Some of them are 13 and some of them are 30. Most of them spend the day pointing out parking spots and guarding people's cars while they shop or eat. Sometimes they beg; sometimes they stir up trouble; but they are some of my best friends on this side of the world. They make me laugh and make sure that I remember to share the things that God gives me. I teach my friend Simon to write English on Tuesday mornings before he goes the Joshua Project for school. I find my friend Patrick passed out on the side of the road sometimes and hold him until he sobers up so that I can put him to bed in his dumpster full of cardboard boxes, sometimes I yell at God for Patrick because I don't think any thirteen year old should be lonely, orphaned alcoholic. My friend Benjamin is an orphan too; he's almost thirty now and still trying to make his living parking cars, nothing better has ever really come along. My friend Shaun is rude and literally drags me into Chicken King to try and get me to buy him a chicken burger. I tell him he's rude, and sometimes I buy him a burger.

That's my life in a nutshell these days. My hours get filled with some of the most interesting people I've ever met, some of the most lonely people I've ever met, and more troubled kids than you could shake a No Child Left Behind program at. I love it. I'm learning a lot. Jeffreys Bay has become a strange kind of home for me. It seems so far from the way the Kingdom of God is supposed to look - but when bits of the Kingdom come, and when light starts to break through in the badlands and the dark places, and when God comes through on all of those promises of being a father to the fatherless and home for the lonely (Psalm 68), its bright and obvious. The scales fall from my eyes and I start to see the river of Redemption that is pushing its way through all these dams we've built and demons we've made friends with and brokenness we've gotten to know so well. Sometimes I even find the faith to swim in the river a little bit. Those are the good days.

I miss you all. Find your way to the river. Hack at the dams a little bit on the way.

God has a Dream...

Mon, 21 Jan 2008 00:00:00 GMT

Today is set apart for Martin Luther King, Jr. I have been listening to his speeches over and over in the last few weeks - as I run, as I fall asleep, as I walk through a town that is still terribly divided by race and social class, and every other line we draw between people and peoples, and as I look out at a world that is hardly different.

Dr. King has taught me a lot in the last few weeks. I've been thanking God for the audio-recording technology of the 60s that can carry his voice over all of these years. I'm in awe of the man. I wonder if God ever wove a betters set of vocal chords. The man's voice could make you believe that Peace put skin on and started talking, and he could string words together in the most beautiful and powerful and truthful way I've ever heard (in my book he might come in second, only to Abraham Lincoln).

The man was a prophet. I have no doubt about that. I believe that God was whispering in his ear just as much as he was whispering in the ears of the Old Testament prophets and the writers of the New Testament. Maybe that seems silly, but maybe God still loves to raise people up to lay His dream out in front of crooked people and crooked nations.

Yesterday as I was running, I listened to Beyond Vietnam - a speech King gave exactly one year before he was murdered. It's haunting. So much of what he speaks about Vietnam is true of the situation in Iraq. So much of what he speaks about the United States of the 1960's is still terribly true of the United States in 2008. And I think that's what I'm getting at....

For God's sake don't celebrate today as the day of a black man whose dream for black people came true. Martin Luther King, Jr. was a child of God who longed for God's dream for humanity to become a reality. It's the same dream that prophet after prophet delivered to Israel, and prophet after prophet they killed. A dream that we would see everyone as a child of God - the poor and the rich; the black and the white; the capitalist and the communist; the American killed in the World Trade Center and the pilot who hijacked the plane; the American soldier and the Iraqi child killed by American bombs; Martin Luther King, Jr. and James Earl Ray.

He said America was a nation that was sick, that racism and the war in Vietnam were only symptoms of a deeper sickness. I think America is still very sick, and could still stand to listen to his diagnosis. He was done with war and violence and ready to lay down his life for his enemies and men that hated him. He was broken and flawed and had the world (not to mention the F.B.I.) on his trail to point out those flaws - but I long to be like him - to have that fire in my belly, and that willingness to lay my life down for God's dream.

So pull out your Bibles today, read through the prophets (God's "I have a dream speeches), and if you are my friend at all - do not let this day go by without digging into some of MLK's words. There are links here to help you do that. Get your families around the computer speakers or the stereo and have a listen.

Letter from Birmingham Jail
A letter to Alabama clergymen urging them to stop talking and to take action.

Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break the Silence
King's call to peace and an end to the war in Vietnam. Incredibly prophetic, especially for today.

I've Been to the Mountaintop
The speech King gave the night before he was murdered, in support of a strike by city sanitation workers in Memphis. He seems to know the end is near, but he doesn't really seem to care.

I Have a Dream
The big one.

Holiday Fever

Tue, 1 Jan 2008 00:00:00 GMT

So, the holidays are over. It's 2008. A few friends and I spent the week before Christmas in Cape Town touring the city and frequenting the movie theater (we also ate Cinnabon cinnamon rolls every single night). You should all try and get a hold of Lars and the Real Girl. Its a beautiful movie about community and human beings and falling in love with plastic dolls. I'm not kidding you MUST see it. We saw some phenomenal museums - Holocaust Musem, District 6 Museum, the Castle of Good Hope - we made it out to Robben Island where Nelson Mandela and other political prisoners were held during apartheid. It was an incredible week. Relaxing, refreshing, educational, and the list goes on.

Christmas was hot and strange. Here is what I did on Christmas:
- I watched Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves
(the greatest movie in the history of human beings)
- Those of us left in town had a bit of a feast
- I visited with my street kid friends for a bit
- I sat around listening to a CD my friend made all day long
- I called people in the US until 5 in the morning
- I ran down to the beach and watched the sun and waves rise until 7:30am
- I went to bed happy

New Year's was rainy and strange. Here is what I did on New Year's:
- I watched Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves
(the greatest movie in the history of human beings)
- I fell asleep at 10:45
- I woke up at 11:50
- I said, "Happy New Year Tag and Caleb?!"
- I fell asleep for the night

Happy New Year to all of you Amerikaners. And a special shout out to the state of New Jersey. This is the first time in 4 years I have not rung in the New Year in Jersey. You have no idea how devastating that is. I'm serious.

Happy New Year.