We have all heard stories that begin with a messenger announcing, “I have some good news and some bad news...” God’s story had been around for thousands of years when Paul encouraged the congregations in Rome to continue to hope in God. He gave them both good news and bad news. The bad news is that we have failed to honor God and live well with one another. The really bad news is that some people are saying that God doesn’t even care. The good news is that God knows our failure and doubt. The really good news is that God is faithful. He loves us and provides the right relationships we are longing for. God’s provision allows us to act with hope for the future.

Pastor Jeff has challenged us to read Paul’s Letter to the Romans each week. You can think your way through Romans with this simple outline:

Romans 1-3: God's provision of right relationships.

Romans 4-8: God's establishment of right relationships.

Romans 9-11: God's right relationship with Israel. God is faithful to His promises!

Romans 12-15: How do we act as God’s people?

The outline can be expanded for deeper study:

Romans 1-3: God's provision of right relationships.

Paul’s Introduction: 1:1-17

Why non-Jews need God’s gift of right relationships: 1:18-31

Why Jews continue to need God’s gift of right relationships: 2:1-3:8

Why we all need God’s gift of right relationships: 3:9-20

God’s provision of right relationships in Jesus: 3:21-31

Romans 4-8: God's establishment of right relationships.

God gave the gift of right relationships to Abraham because of his faith: 4:1-25

God offers the gift of right relationships even to His enemies: 5:1-21

God’s gift of right relationships is meant to free us from slavery to sin: 6:1-23

God’s gift of right relationships gives us hope even when we continue to sin: 7:1-25

God’s gift of right relationship will finally bring our resurrection to real life: 8:1-39

Romans 9-11: God's right relationship with Israel. God is faithful to His promises!

Romans 12-15: How do we act as God’s people?

We are “living sacrifices” and we live for one another: 12:1-21

God’s love calls us to cooperate with proper authorities in our communities: 13:1-14

God’s love allows us to serve the weak among us: 14:1-23

God’s love allows us to bring glory to God as we accept each other: 15:1-13

Paul’s mission illustrates how God’s love can work through us: 15:14-33

Romans 16 encourages us to celebrate God’s faithfulness in many lives and to greet one another “with a holy kiss.”

Adoration

Justin Henderson taught this morning on the meaning and nature of worship. He referred to one of my favorite verses, Colossians 3:23 -- "Whatever you do, do your work heartily as unto the Lord rather than men."

Worship can happen anywhere at anytime and is not contingent upon music. It is an attitude of the heart. You can worship while playing music, sports, working, etc. The word, "worship," is a derivative of "worth-ship." Who is worthy of our love, trust, thanks, and praise? Who alone but Jesus who died for us and gave his life for ours.

The Big Game was "Fox-tail." The game has undergone several evolutions. It orginally had the name of "whip-n-strip" when Mim and I learned it in Minnesota. You tuck a sock in the back of your pants and try to capture other items from your opposing team. The winner is the one who has collected all the items. You are out of the game when your sock is pulled, but can be "healed" back into the game by a medic on your team. It is a fun game and usually devolves into the utter chaos of a free-for-all, with no respect for the rules.

Jeff Stephenson taught the evening session accentuating the morning's theme. He illustrated the point with a famous hymn "It is well with my soul," which was penned by Horatio Spafford in 1873, who wrote the hymn on a return trip from Europe, having collected his wife after her survival of an ocean disaster in which their four children were lost at sea. Two years prior, they had lost their youngest child and all of their investments in the Chicago Fire. Broken-hearted, yet full of peace in the Lord, Horatio wrote this beloved hymn of faith.

We sang to worship CDs with words on the screen, even though we have a fully capable worship team/band, to illustrate that you can worship anywhere.

The evening ended with prayer.

More tomorrow.

Pastor Jeff

Peak Performance Camp - Lakeside, MT

We are at camp again located on the northern end of Flathead Lake, Montana, hosted by Flathead Lutheran Bible Camp. We are able to run our own week of programming while hiring kitchen and waterfront staff to assist us.

I've never blogged this camp before, even though I have been attending every year since we first came here upon the recommendation of Kim Barton (now Iceman) who attended a Youth With a Mission discipleship training course in Lakeside. I think we've been coming here at least 12 years.

I rode the bus with our kids. The youth (Junior and Senior High) were filled with excitement the entire 11-hour trip up. We stopped at our traditional half-way point in Dillon, MT and invaded the local Safeway Store and McDonald's Restaurant.

The camp's theme this year is ACTS (adoration, community, truth, and service) and is based upon the history of the early church in Luke's book of Acts of the Apostles.

The schedule is fairly standardized:

7a - Staff Meeting
8a - Breakfast
9a - Rotation #1 (Teaching, Prayer & Devotion, or Group Initiatives)
10a - Rotation #2
11a - Rotation #3
12n - Lunch
2p - The Big Game (outdoors)
3p - Free Time
4p - Canteen is Open
5p - Small Groups
6p - Dinner
8p - Worship

I'll write more on each daily theme.

This year, I'm here with my daughter, Rebekah, who is a college-age student serving on the worship team. It is the first year, in a long time that I have attended without my wife, Mim.

I'll write more specifically each day. Suffice it to say, we are all pretty tired and sleep is inviting.

Pastor Jeff

As I said, I woke up at 06:54 completely disoriented. I set my cell phone last night, but I didn’t reset the location. Of course it is on Airport Mode, and so it couldn’t find a signal. The main screen on my phone said 8:54. This meant I had slept through my alarm, missed breakfast at 8:30, and morning training was about to begin. I rushed to the dining hall, the seminary… everything was abandoned. I couldn’t imagine what had happened. I finally checked my phone and the computer and discovered it was really 7:10 AM. I misread the 8:54 PM time on my phone in my sleep-deprived haze... Breathing a sigh of relief, I made coffee, and reset the phone AND location so that the screen and alarm will function at the right time. A couple of cups of coffee later I was ready to write the first part of this first blog. :)

We spent the day today in team training. This included a brief history of the Eastern European Mission’s involvement in Russia, a discussion about our curriculum, and an orientation to Russian culture. We gave brief testimonies about “How I got here” in Koltushi, Russia, as part of this English Bible camp. A lunch with some kind of “rice and meat” meatballs (think of a non-tomato base meat loaf made with rice, and served as two-inch ball shaped portions), cold borsch, and coleslaw made us sleepy. Seeing that we were falling asleep in the afternoon sessions, we finally walked to the village center and identified the bus stop so that team members could find their way back home if they ever got lost. “Smile and say ‘Koltushi.’ Follow the direction they point.” The hope is that eventually you would get to this bus stop and be able to walk back to the seminary. It works in theory. :) Thankfully, we haven’t ever lost anyone, so we’re not sure how it will work in real life. I hope we don’t find out!

I am completing this first blog at 4:45 during our afternoon free time. Dinner will be at 5:30. I think we will also have free time this evening so that we can get to bed early. The jet lag induced by a ten-hour time difference makes your whole body feel heavy...

We arrived in Frankfurt at about 9:30 AM (11:30 PM Salt Lake City time). Brooke said she slept a few hours. Jennifer, Wendy and I were didn’t get much sleep and we were pretty wiped out. Wendy and Jennifer both took photos of me sleeping on a double seat in the airport in Frankfurt. Oh joy. (You will have to ask Jennifer for that photo.) I didn’t think I had really slept. We had almost five hours before our flight to St Petersburg.

Our Lufthansa flight to St Petersburg was on an almost new Airbus A320-200. It was half full, and without incidence. We cleared Passport control and collected our baggage. All but one of our bags were present and undamaged. My personal bag had one outer pocket ripped open. I lost most of my gifts for my kids. :(

Bill Moberly met us at the airport and we had an interesting ride in a minivan to Koltushi. Our driver followed Russian rules for driving. It seems the basic rule is to keep two wheels on the pavement. We stopped at a small market, bought water, cheese and crackers, and arrived at the seminary about 9:15 PM. We had a brief meeting to thank God for our safe travels, and headed for bed about 10 PM.

Eric Wollesen dropped his wife Jennifer, Wendy Jepsen, and myself (James) at the airport on Wednesday morning at 6 AM. Check-in, finding Brooke Gecsey (our accountant Debbie Turner’s daughter: actually Brooke found us!), our pass through security, and our first flight on Continental on a Boeing 737-800 to Houston Texas were all uneventful. We asked a barista at Starbucks in the SLC airport to snap our picture. [DENISE/FFEG: please add an instruction about where they can see the photo so you don’t have to email it to everyone].

We had a scheduled 4 hour wait in Houston before boarding our Lufthansa flight for Frankfurt, Germany. The Boeing 747-400 jet is one of the reason they coined the term “Jumbo-jet.” It seats over 300 people. There were no empty seats. We were in the very lowest class of service, at the back of economy section. I have never had a flight to Europe with so many children. All but one of their mothers had their heads covered, and I’m guessing they were Muslims from somewhere in the Middle East. For the most part, the children were well behaved. Brooke had a great window seat with lots of room. Although I confirmed aisle and window seats for Wendy and Jennifer, they wound up with non-reclining seats in the middle of a four-person center section, and just in front of the bathrooms. They listened to toilets flush the entire way to Germany!

I had an aisle seat eight rows from the back. I was seated next to one of the largest men I have ever seen. He wasn’t tall -- about 5’10” -- and he wasn’t fat. But he easily could have played line-backer on any college football team. His chest was wider than the seat so that his arms took about six extra inches on both sides. He had asked for an aisle, and got stuck between me and a woman in her 60’s from Sweden. We were all uncomfortable. I had to lean into the aisle to stay in my seat. For ten hours... Oye! Of course then I didn’t get to sleep on the plane...

But here is where it gets interesting: He is a petroleum engineer from Kazakhstan and specializes in “additional extraction methods.” I think this means that he specializes in getting even more oil and gas from otherwise exhausted wells. He had just finished an executive MBA at Texas A&M and was returning home. And he was a very talkative and inquisitive Muslim. I am the first pastor he has ever met and so we talked about God for almost an hour. He told me he was not a good Muslim, because he no longer prayed or kept Muslim customs. He asked a lot of questions! The focus of our conversation came down to this: We agreed Jesus was not God’s son conceived via a sexual union, for God doesn’t have a body. We agreed that one man could take the punishment for another man, but not for two or five. Since Jesus took the punishment for all people in the world, Jesus must be more than just a man, and so maybe there were other ways to understand him as God’s Son. He seemed satisfied with this logic, and so we talked about how one person can represent the character of another. Ambassadors do this. Sons represent their fathers in many Middle Easter countries. My fellow traveler was eager to agree that Jesus could represent as much of God as we humans could learn. It was as close as I could bring him to recognizing who Jesus is. He agreed that he needed to think more about Jesus.

Our sermon considered trying to hear where people are in their lives. What do they really want? Can we speak to their need for meaning? To their need to be loved? To their need to have a hopeful future?

The Apostle Paul bridged across cultures to consider Athenian needs in Acts 17:22-31. Can we speak about our living hope in a way that connects to people’s wants and felt needs? This is the call in I Peter 3:15-16. Let us do it with gentleness and reverence. Amen.

We’re still hee-eere. It would have been fun to write, “We’re baa-ack.” But we didn’t go anywhere. And we are called to be faithful in a million little things while we await “the blessed hope” of Jesus’ return.

It would be really good for me if Jesus returned and raptured His church on May 21. We would all be in the presence of Jesus and celebrating His victory over sin and death from a very new and different perspective. We would know what it is to be more whole, more real, and more in love than we ever imagined.

There have been at least 7 predictions of the rapture since I started in ministry in 1979. Each one has been the occasion of ridicule for the body of Christ. What should we do? Ask for patience, keep a sense of humor, and invite people to learn what daily discipleship is all about.

If you asked me to say when the rapture is coming, I would have to say “Only the Father knows.” Jesus gave His disciples the task of being His witnesses until His return. Our orders haven’t changed. Carry on knowing we are one day closer. “Even so, come quickly, Lord Jesus!”

We arrived in Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) Some 85 percent of all residents in Saigon own motorcycles. There are approximately 12 million people in Vietnam and 7 million of them live in Saigon. Can you imagine about 6 million motorcycles? The street traffic lights are on a 22 second cycle. With the countdown visible to the approaching motorcyclist. Most of the intersections are either 3-ways or circular roundabouts. At one red light, I looked down the street waiting for the light to change and there was an entire city block backed up with motorcycles -- 10 wide! Our bus passed by the old presidential palace where invading North Vietnamese tanks entered the compound and forced the surrender of the South Vietnamese government, ending the war between the south and north on April 30, 1975. We are staying at the Rex Hotel in the old section of the hotel (still very nice). P. Jim commented that everything has changed around the hotel in three years. He hardly recognizes the place. So much was torn down and there is new construction everywhere. Vietnam adopted a free market economy under socialist principles (much like China), realizing that a Marxist economy just does not work. Consequently, several western businesses, who are willing to make a long-term commitment to Vietnam are invited into the country and given tax breaks. The minimum wage remains very low ($1-$2 per day). We've recognized some big manufacturing names: Honda, Canon, North Face -- all made now in Vietnam. The Vietnamese economy is really booming. Times are changing for Vietnam. The TV and the internet has connected the world. More people are aware of how each other lives and their standard of living. Women have a more prominent role in society and are often the bread winners in the family through their entrepreneurial pursuits. Both husband and wife share in the domestic responsibilities of the family and raising children. More Later, P. Jeff

Unexpected Blessing at Thuan An Deaf School We started the morning with a devotion from Matthew 14:13f, the feeding of the 5,000 men plus women and children with 5 loaves and 2 fish. As we are nearing the end of our trip, we are, of course, tired and a little exhausted. But, now is no time to stop giving. There are plenty of children yet to be served by the medical clinics. The Matthew 14 text opens with Jesus having compassion upon the crowds and healing their sick. After a long day of ministry, the disciples were ready to call its quits for the day and encouraged Jesus to disperse the crowds, but Jesus told them to give them something to eat. What they had amongst themeselves were five loaves of bread and two fish, but in the hands of Jesus it was more than enough. Today we we traveled to Thuan An Deaf School, which has a state administrator, but is run by the nuns. The school and children were obviously well-loved and clean. It did not matter what religious affiliation to which the children belonged, only that they had a need. This school served the hearing and speaking impaired. Almost all of the children wore hearing aids and all of them signed. I couldn't help but think of our own deaf ministry at the church spearheaded by Kim Russell. She would have really enjoyed herself. Some of the signs were easy enough to pick up, and, for the first time, I felt that I actually communicated more and better with the kids than all the previous clinics. They were well-educated and I found myself in a sign discussion about the English Premiere League and their favorate football (i.e., soccer) teams. Several of them are avid Chelsea, Manchester United, Arsenal, and Liverpool fans.We served about 307 children and a few adults with basic hygiene, general medical exams and dental work. At the end, the children offered their thanks to us for coming through a sign interpreter. Then, spontaneously, without prompting, they all came up to us and gave us hugs and vigorous handshakes. It really warmed our hearts and there were quite a number of wet eyes on the team. Once again, a most valuable lesson was relearned about the power of love communicated not just through words but through tender and kind actions of compassion with eyes full of grace and mercy. The nuns were watching us and remarked later that they could see how much we truly loved the children. And, the children did feel loved. And, they did respond to that love. Today's experience somehow made the entire trip worth it. When we got back to the hotel, the rains came. I've never seen it rain that hard and long. It was a deluge -- and people were still riding their motorcycles in it! They bring out their ponchos which fit over the front handle bars and cover entirely a passenger in the back. It is really something watching the mass of humanity negotiate a four-way intersection. I still marvel that no one is killled. Somehow, the whole thing is like a dance which they all intuitively know. They make left-hand turns across the flow of traffic all the time. Tomorrow we travel to the Youth Shelter. Evidently every COPI trip has ended serving here. The youth shelter is really a shelter for abandoned children who served their purposes for prostitution in other countries, but now have contracted diseases and are considered worthless. All orphanages and shelters are officially state-run, but his one is also helped by the nuns. This is our last clinic -- eight in all. Altogether we should serve around 1800 children by the end. Thank you for your prayers. It has been a great encouragement knowing that people are reading the blogs and praying for us. Please pray for one more day of strength and energy so that we might pour our lives in to the children. P. Jeff

Yes or No As time passes from the trip and my body slowly adjusts its internal clock to this time zone, I find myself at a juncture of needing to assimilate the good and present realities from the Vietnam trip into the present realities of life at home. God blessed me while serving his people in Vietnam, but he also blessed me to be a blessing to those whom I love at home, here in Utah. One of those blessings came from a teaching moment that surfaced in my memory in the dreamlike state between being fully awake and fully asleep this morning. The memory is of Binh interacting with our team members in the heat of the moment of scrambling to set up a clinic while 300 children were waiting in the cold. Binh's response to a team member's protest as to the lack of ideal conditions for their particular station was simply this: "Do you want to move here or there, yes or no?" The team member, at first, responded with a litany of what ideal conditions should look like, but Binh interrupted, "yes or no!" "Tell me what you want to do, move here or there." It was a call to action given the circumstances. Make a decision, choose a path, and make the best of it, regardless of circumstances, adapt where you can improve, forget about whining, just put your nose to the grindstone and get to work. There's a job to be done. The children are waiting. If you've ever experienced Binh in this way, you understand what I'm talking about. She is intense and definitely present in the moment. In that moment you are forced to make a decision and to get on with life, put your hand to the plough and don't look back. Just in the few days upon my return, I heard updates of how close our church is about to pay off its mortgage. People are wondering what to do with the excess money. Some are concerned that attendance at the church has been declining at a slow rate. I heard litanies as to what ideal conditions should be and the list of circumstantial woes: the economy hasn't helped, people are working more or distracted, etc. But, in the final assessment, we will simply be faced with a "yes or no" proposition. Will we go to the people in Jesus' name, proclaiming his gosple in word and deed? Yes or No? Will we do what needs to be done? Yes or No? Vietnam offered many decision points:

1. Will you serve children at risk in Vietnam? Yes or No?


2. Will you conduct a clinic in a locale even if permission was revoked? Yes or No?


3. Will you conduct a clinic in less than ideal weather conditions? Yes or No?


4. Will you serve until every child is seen, regardless of the time? Yes or No?


5. Will you personally serve when you are tired? Yes or No?


6. Can you conduct your particular role in the clinic with given resources? Yes or No? If no, want do you need? Can you make due? Yes or no. If not, who will go get what is needed?


7. Will you serve all children at risk or only certain ages? Yes or No?


8. Will you serve disabled children? Yes or No?


9. If you need some resource in able to serve the children, will you go get it? Yes or No?

In a similar way, Jesus offers us decision points:

1. Will you go and make disciples of all nations in my name? Yes or No?


2. Will you feed the hungry and thirsty, welcome the stranger, clothe the naked, visit the sick and those in prison, care for the least among us? Yes or No?


3. Will you love one another as I have loved you? Yes or No?


4. Will you do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with God? Yes or No?


5. Will you care for the orphaned, the widowed, and oppressed? Yes or No?


6. Will you lay down your life for the sake of another? Yes or No?


7. Will you lose your life for my sake and the gospel, take up the cross and follow me? Yes or No?


8. Will you love God with all your heart, soul, strength, and mind and your neighbor as yourself? Yes or No?


9. Will you pray? Yes or No?

While in Vietnam I was reading the Capetown Commitment, a document produced from the recent worldwide meeting of church leaders to discuss world evangelism. I was amazed at the document, since it framed evangelism within the framework of love and community. It's call to action serves like a mandate and clear vision of how we are to serve Christ by serving those he came to save.

But direct mandates force decisions. I learned that my heart was often unwilling. Though with my lips I said "yes," in my heart I wanted to say "no." Ultimately it came down to behavior and my actions. Jesus said, by their fruit you will know them. I call it the Forrest Gump principle (from the movie starring Tom Hanks), "stupid is as stupid does." Lovers love. The kind are kind. The merciful show mercy. The compassionate show compassion. Those with servant's hearts serve. The ambassadors proclaim the message entrusted to them. Teachers teach. The thankful show gratitude.

In the near future, we will be exploring what it means to be the church of Christ. Don't be surprised if you are confronted in your own life with a yes or no proposition that tests the willingness of your heart.

Remember the rich, young ruler who asked Jesus, "What must I do to inherit eternal life?" Jesus' response was not "believe in him as the Savior" and then live for yourself. Jesus loved him and challenged him, "go and sell all your possessions and give them to the poor, then follow me." It was a "yes or no" test of his heart. Would the young ruler love Jesus with all his heart, soul, strength, and mind? The first test was trust. The young ruler, sadly, was unwilling. His answer to Jesus' proposition was "no."

I'm looking forward to living the blessing of the Vietnam Medical Mission Trip among you. May our response to our Lord be "yes" as all of his promise to us find their "yes" in Christ.

Thanks again to all who prayed. Your prayers made the difference.

Pastor Jeff

It's good to be home How do you put into the words of the impact of a mission trip upon your life? The changes are often subtle and initially too deep for words. Time with tell, especially through small changes in thinking and behavior the effect of the trip. I experienced, however, a surprising revelation today as I served communion in our worship service this morning. What I experienced was an awareness of muscle memory, also known as motor learning, which is a form of precedural memory that involves consolidating a specific motor task into memory through repitition. When a movement is repeated over time, a long-term a long-term muscle memory is created for that task, eventually allowing it to be performed without conscious effort. This process decreases the need for attention and creates maximum efficiency within the motor and memory systems of the body. As a stooped down to look into people's eyes, who were kneeling at the communion rail, while I place into their hands the wafer that is received by faith as the body of Christ, I realized that his felt very familiar. It was the same posture, the same act of looking into the eyes, and the placing into the hands toothbrushes into the hands of Vietnamese children and aged adults, who had been forgotten, neglected, abandoned, or marginalized by society. The solemn and reverent act of handing out toothbrushes with love, kindness, and compassion was connected with the sacred and holy. My spiritual act of worship, loving the Lord whole-heartedly, was through performing the act of handing out toothbrushes in most loving way I could imagine to the glory of God. This is what the Apostle Paul refers to in 2 Corinthians 4 when he writes: "We proclaim not ourselves but Jesus Christ as Lord, with ourselves as your servants for Jesus' sake. For God, who said, 'Let light shine out of darkeness,' has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpasing power belongs to God and not to us." God often works in hidden ways to reveal himself and his glory. The ultimate expression of his love was the gift of his Son, Jesus, who also in a hidden way, through his death on the cross, reconciled the world to the Father, through his atoning sacrifice and resurrection. As God's children, marked and sealed in Christ by the Holy Spirit, we show Christ to the world as he is hidden in our daily lives and common tasks. We are all ambassadors of God's love to the nations and peoples of the world through diverse means, whether it be teaching hygiene, giving medical exams, performing dental work, or fixing electrical problems. All human interaction is a profound moment to embody and reveal Christ's love in word and deed. What I realized today is that the act of handing out toothbrushes, in Christ's name (not spoken, but embodied through action) can be as profound and pleasing to God as distributing bread and wine as a pastor. Both are an act of spiritual worship and both are to God's glory. Thanks to all of you who prayed for us. Your steadfastness in prayer was a tremendous encouragement to us on the team, and, who knows the hidden effect and lasting impact of those prayers. P. Jeff