Being Conformed

Conformed to Love.

“How do I (continually) do what is right? When I fail, how do I make that right again?”  - Mesi believer.

Mesi men and women have been asking the same questions that we all ask as we grow in our understanding of the truth of the gospel. As a church, the Mesi believers have been ruminating on the truths of Romans 12 – the idea that, because of God’s historic and perfect acts of redeeming love on our behalf we can and should cast ourselves upon Him and purposely set Him as the Lord over our whole selves. They are beginning to ask questions like. “Is this in line with God’s character?” rather than “Is there a law about this?” They are learning to love the Divine lover, but it is not an easy transition.

 

There are many who are coming to the teaching who still very much prefer a set of rules to follow – a prescribed order or life that they can look to to determine whether or not they are good with God or not.

 

Please pray for us and our friends here that the reality of the gospel will be lived out in the community here.

 

Simply not so simple.

When is the last time you took a “vitamin I”? About a month ago, while playing capture the flag with our sons and a bunch of Mesi youth, I took a fall and (apparently) broke my rib. Let me tell you that, without the wonders of Tylenol and Ibuprofen, I would not have slept well for those first three weeks. Even with pain meds on board, every time I shifted or rolled over, the stabbing pain in my side would bring me back to consciousness. During those times, I was reminded of our Mesi friends who live in near constant physical discomfort. Whether it is from a tropical ulcer, intestinal parasites, malaria, residual soreness from the back breaking work that they do in their daily lives, wounds, burns, or even broken bones of their own, our friends seem to live with pain all of the time. OK, just so you know, pain is merely one of the myriad of challenges of life that our Mesi friends deal with. Here we will talk a little about this one aspect of helping them so that you, who give to and pray for this work, can better understand and intercede on their behalf.

 

So, about pain, what can we do to help? Do we, with our good resources and supply chain, provide pain medicine free to the community? Do we train them in techniques to prevent certain kinds of illness and therefore limit the pain that they actually feel? Do we look at the amount of pain that each individual faces and throw up our hands crying – “it’s hopeless to try anything because nothing we do will really provide relief”? If we provide some pain medicine, what guidelines will we have for fair and just distribution?

 

If we are thinking about the long-term good of the Mesi people, we cannot simply ignore their pain. Neither should we train them to just depend on us to remedy their problem. We want them to be able to care for themselves and each other – whether or not we are here. But how do we do that? Training takes time and pain is a today kind of problem. What would you do? It never seems simple.*

 

As you think about and pray for the Mesi church, would you please pray for us as we seek God’s wisdom. Meeting needs, training, developing leaders, evaluating our programs, in all of what we do we must make choices today that have far-reaching consequences.

 

A few other prayer requests:

·        We are doing teacher training for our literacy program. 67 Mesi men and women showed up. Of those, 40 passed their exams and are in the training. Please pray for us as we are making a special point to mark people who are supporting the gospel work in their daily lives.

·        We are building a literacy support building and team office this week. It’s been in the works since March and has been rescheduled several times due to problems with our mission helicopter. Please pray for endurance for us all as we keep going with teaching and other things as well as this building project.

·        Malaria has been a big problem here lately. The government used to help with medicines, but lately there have been none at the aid-posts within 2 days hike from here. We have bought some at pharmacies in town, but its been hard to keep up.

·        Some Mesi couples have been on track to lead our believing community, but a couple of them have been experiencing problems lately. Please pray for Atamok and her husband especially.

 

Thanks for praying for us and supporting this work!

Nate for us

 

* Try this specific situation: A man came to us for pain medicine with what was apparently a broken wrist. After some conversation, it came out that he had been beating his wife and when she put her arm up to defend herself his wrist took some damage. Would giving pain meds in this case be an act of mercy or enabling?