Exchange

Mixed feelings.

Today is the day we’ve been looking forward to for a while. Today is the day that our co-workers the Fachners are to return from Home Assignment and make the Mesi team whole again. Today was supposed to be one big community party. But today is also the day when our good friends and co-workers the Hostetters are leaving to seek medical help. We don’t know where their journey will take them, or how long they will be gone. The issues that they are seeking to address are not simple and have steadily worsened over the last year. Who knows, they might be back in a few weeks, but today they are leaving. So today will be a day of alternate joy and sorrow.  

 

The Worst/Best trade of all time.

We’ve been talking with the Mesi believers about what exactly it meant for Jesus to trade his heavenly home, continual eternal adulation of the angels, and all that He was due for His perfection, to come to earth, take upon himself the consequences of our stubborn sinfulness and suffer in our stead pain, shame, and death. In terms of exchange, our Mesi friends have some very strong and very clear opinions. An offer of what they consider unequal exchange may simply be ignored or given a sneer. And yet, Jesus, for the joy that was set before Him made the most unlikely trade of all eternity.

In the next two years, our Mesi friends will be making some very hard choices. We will be asking some of them to give a significant amount of their time to come alongside us to plant other Mesi churches. There are very practical and real sacrifices that they will be making along the way. They will be giving up the known for the unknown. Wealth for (often thankless) teaching and reteaching of the same truths. Life with family and friends for life under the close inspection of others. Will you trust God with us for 20 men who will be willing to make those exchanges starting this year?

 

[4] Surely he took up our pain

and bore our suffering,

yet we considered him punished by God,

stricken by him, and afflicted.

[5] But he was pierced for our transgressions,

he was crushed for our iniquities;

the punishment that brought us peace was on him,

and by his wounds we are healed.

[6] We all, like sheep, have gone astray,

each of us has turned to our own way;

and the LORD has laid on him

the iniquity of us all.

 Isaiah 53:4

 

Giving

So, over the last 8 years we have watched men and women choose to suffer great illness because they desire not to part with $.10 for medical help at the aid post. With that in mind, consider the change in the hearts of the believers here. They are taking up a collection within the church to provide nails for the new literacy school building in N village! The reasoning that they have is: “We want to follow in Jesus’s ways and to give freely because He gave freely to us. We are excited for them to hear the truth of Jesus .” This is the first ever time that they will be putting their money where their mouths are as it were. Thank God with us for working in their hearts and bringing His gospel out in life-actions and not just in speech.

 

Thanks so much for standing with us these days. There are many other urgent things that we need prayer for so stay tuned.

Nate for us