Find Your Gifts

Wednesday, September 27, 2017

(7th in a series)

Haiti Missionaries

1^st Peter 4:10

Jeannette and Ryan Karstensen

It is a monumental responsibility to lead a mission trip to a foreign land. The people who will be the recipients of your charitable efforts will most likely gain a lifelong impression from the team’s comportment. If there is a language barrier, then our demeanor and body language speaks for our faith. On this Haiti Mission trip, there are eight folks from three different Churches with two on their very first excursion. The bottom line is “God has given us some special abilities,” and it is up to us to make them blend and become faithful stewards of God’s Grace in all its forms.

Our repasts together, breaking bread, are always a time to coalesce once again. Tuesday our team was having lunch together and I presented them with Jeanette and Ryan’s scripture passage from 1 Peter. We went around the table and each member of the body reflected on how the Word spoke to them. I took notes as they shared. The Holy Spirit translated as follows:

The mission becomes our great commission when the true goal is “to make disciples of all nations,” (Matt. 28:19).  As the “Body of Christ,” each one of us is a single chapter in Yahweh’s epic novel of grace titled “Humankind.” The mission now becomes a gifted quilt made of individual scraps, throwaway fabric that now stitched together warms each soul it comforts. Our unique gifts manifested become a tapestry of colors woven into Abba’s glorious creation of Love in His Son Christ Jesus.

Often it is through our willingness to serve and at the point of our Christian action where we begin to discern what are the gifts we have received from our heavenly Father. Surely for us to keep and maintain those gifts we must give them away.

Father, may we always remember your precious gift of grace can never be earned and we will always be engulfed by it as we give it away. Amen

Bradford Bosworth

A Universal Language

(5^th in a series)

The Language of Love

John 15:1-7

Randy Pettit 

Even with a cursory glimpse or review of Haiti’s history one can glean that there has been and still is a continuous thread of corruption and greed in the upper echelons of the political power base. Slavery has been ever present on this tropical island since Columbus literally stumbled upon it in Christmas of 1492. Thusly he named the place he found “La Navidad” and then his settlers turned around and forced the native Taino people into slavery. Today almost 600 years later the Haitian people are still enslaved, now by poverty.

How do we apply today’s scripture to these people? To the untrained eye there is little or no fruit here. To eyes of the world the deforested infertile land here is not suitable for growing ragweed! I want to ask Abba, the vinedresser, “Why these people”? I find myself searching for branches that bear fruit. Now I am in the vineyard closer to the Vine. On the third day I saw four young men already clean because of the Word spoken to them. These members of the “priesthood of all believers” have been our interpreters. On a Saturday morning upon arrival at the Haiti Deaf Academy their role changed.

We saw them bear a glorious fully ripe and sweet fruit with the young children who, without words, spoke the universal language of Christ, a quiet language of Love. As all who were present joyfully remained in him and he in us, the young men, who at first thought they could do nothing, suddenly were able to do everything in service to these beautiful ones. It was a miracle, a beautiful thing. The teachers became the students as the youngsters gleefully taught us all about sign language. If the children could have spoken they might have said, “Se’ yon bil bagay!”

Father may we be ever mindful that none of us can bear fruit by ourselves. May we desire always to abide in your precious Son. Amen

Bradford Bosworth

Not Forgotten nor Forsaken.

Sunday, September 24, 2017 (fourth in a series)

Haiti Deaf Academy

Deuteronomy 31:6 and Hebrews 13-5

Joyce and Michael Newsom

I often subscribe to the belief that we, the American people, are the same as the Israelites, God’s chosen people. Our ancestral pilgrims settled in a promised land, a land flowing of milk and honey. Oh how evident it is that we have forgotten from whence we came. But, you know what? These Haitian people, they too are God’s chosen people. Maybe they have just not found their Moses yet nor crossed through their Red Sea. Do you want to know something? These people are strong and courageous!

A few days ago our team arrived here on the heels of four ferocious hurricanes that passed by this island also known as Hispaniola. It is as if God has said to these people, I will not forsake you, my children, you have enough on your hands now and I have some of my other children who need a wake-up call! I’m not sure if Joyce and Mike intended it? A link exists that ties these two pieces of scripture together across a millennium or more. Moses’ exhortation, “Be strong and courageous.” is repeated by his successor (Joshua 1:9). In Hebrews, the writer is reminding his audience - Jewish Christians- that the covenant of Moses, carried forward by Joshua, has been superseded by the new covenant of Christ Jesus. Our presence here is now about the Love of Christ.

Our mission team’s humbly joyful interpreter/guides are mere boys content with what they have. Gel, Achka, Benson and Jhon are the vines bearing fruit that brings daily the new covenant Love of Christ to the poor. The chosen people of Haiti know the Lord has said to them, “Never will I leave you.”

Yahweh, through all the storms of our lives may we remember that nothing can separate us from your Love which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. Amen

Bradford Bosworth