It's been such a long time since we've posted any blogs!  Life has been hectic these past few months.  Ministry is going well and we are for the most part still enjoying living in Tanzania, although there have been days...

I wanted to post a short prayer request for those of you who still check in on our blog.  Recently Heather and I made the decision to release a few of our workers in an effort to be better stewards of our ministry budgets.  The struggling world economy has made it difficult some months to handle the expenses of all our workers. After doing some calculations ...

My spirit was troubled today.  I went to town on Monday with the teacher at our tailoring school to buy sewing machines.  The service that we received was bad and what seemed like an easy outing turned into a whole day affair.  My patience was worn thin, it was really hot, and by the end of the day I was really irritated with the sales people.  They seemed to be making things much more difficult than it ...

The first week she showed up to the TEE (Theological Education by Extension) discussion group, her eyes were downcast and her heart was not in it.  You could practically see “I do NOT want to be here” written on her forehead.  This was really unfortunate because this pastor had been chosen by her area to be the facilitator for the weekly discussion group.  She had agreed, only because the social pressure and culture wouldn’t allow her to turn down the request very easily.& ...

“…the opposite of sacred is not secular; the opposite of sacred is profane. In short, no follower of Christ does secular work.  We all have a sacred calling” (p. 65)

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I was truly blessed in church yesterday.  It’s not every week that I really get a lot out of our Swahili church services – not necessarily because of language, but because the general culture of worship and interpretation and congregation is so different.  Tanzanian church just isn’t cutting it for me quite yet in my continuing adjustment to life here.< ...

Every now and then I get a reality check that reminds me of how much bigger God is than me.  Sometimes it comes as a result of an amazing incident where God provides beyond our imagination or where we witness miraculous power.  Other times the realization comes as a result of difficult situations and an increased remembrance of our dependence on the Holy Spirit.  Lately for me it’s been the latter.  < ...

I’ve been reading up on the term missional recently.  I am a missions guy and I understand what it means to be personally missional, but the term missional as it relates to an organized community of believers living out their faith in everyday life and relationships and where that community can even take the place of a traditional church, is a relatively new field of thought for me.  I’m very intrigued at how biblical this idea of being missional is though.  ...

I was recently directed to an interesting blog post differentiating discipleship and following Jesus as a fan.  I was interested because I had recently written a similar blog.  As I read, however, I realized that the approach of this particular blogger was in my opinion cynical and pessimistic about Christians.  It reminded me of a line in the movie “The American President” with Michael Douglas and Annette Benning.

On nearly every application I have ever filled out for a job or program, there are usually two questions that are a little awkward to answer.  We’ve all had to answer them – What are your greatest strengths and what are your greatest weaknesses?  The first is tough to answer because you don’t want to sound arrogant or full of yourself and the second is tough because you don’t want to give anything away that might hinder you from being hired or accepted to whatever it is you’re applying for.& ...

As a college student interested in missiology I read a lot of books and attended as many classes as possible about the principles and theory of missions.  One of the most influential ideas I can remember reading about was the idea of incarnational ministry.  Incarnational ministry is based on the idea that using Jesus’ example of coming from heaven to earth as a human being and learning to live and breathe in human form, missionaries should do all they can to remove the cultural barriers between themselves and the people they s ...