Pamoja

Coming up in a couple weeks, our team will be helping with a Campus pour Christ conference in the Ivory Coast called "Pamoja". Pamoja means "together" in Swahili; it is a conference designed to equip students from all over Africa to launch spiritual movements on their university campuses.

Please take some time to pray for this conference; it really is a huge opportunity to accelerate the spread of the gospel in Africa. Pray for the travel and financial needs of the students coming, and pray for their hearts to be spiritually prepared. Finally, pray that Christ would be clearly and evidently exalted in Pamoja-- that's the central thing.

Thank you so much!

Thanksgiving outreach

Hi everyone,

We are hosting students for dinner and watching "The Passion" movie on Wednesday night. It is part of Thanksgiving celebration and an attempt to explain to students why Christians are thankful. Please pray for Mbagnick, Antoine, Sophie, Hadji and Hadji. These are some of our closest friends in country. I love staying that we are friends because the Lord is really building in us love for the students to whom we minister. Our team grows increasingly affectionate for our students the longer we remain in-country. Our team wants this group of students to understand the Jesus loves them not because of their goodness, but in spite of their sin. He died to receive worship from and give new life to our students. If I might ask, please ask that the Holy Spirit would open hearts to start a relationship with Him for the first time on Wednesday evening.

Finally, my grandfather's funeral is Wednesday in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. Some of you knew my grandfather. My family and I appreciate the continued outpouring of prayer and sympathy. Thank you so much for your support. For my family, the children and grandchildren, especially my younger cousins Skyler, Garrett, Randell, and Angelina. I've been praying that the Lord would minister to the hurting in my family in a special way.

campus ministry and culture

Our team is getting established in our routines of campus ministry. We are finding there is much to learn! Meeting with students in Senegal is much different than meeting with students in America-- an easygoing sense of time and loose planning here replace the hurried pace and tight scheduling of the United States. Students here have also been generally more outgoing and willing to lend a helping hand.

We are also learning just how tied Islam is to the culture and way of life here. Many Senegalese people pride themselves on the apparent inter-religious harmony here, and there is a certain degree of religious freedom here. However, it seems to me that in many cases, orthopraxy, as dictated by the religious leaders, shrouds spiritual truth.

Please pray that the Holy Spirit would enable our team to speak words that, instead of being persuasive or wise, are full of the Spirit's power (1 Corinthians 2:4), so that these students can hear and receive God's truth.

Being Still

Psalm 46 “God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea, though its waters roar and foam and the mountains quake with their surging. There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God, the holy place where the Most High dwells. God is within her, she will not fall; God will help her at the break of day. Nations are in uproar, kingdoms fall; he lifts his voice, the earth melts. The LORD almighty is with us; the God of Jacob is our fortress. Come and see the works of the LORD, the desolation he has brought on the earth. He makes wars cease to the ends of the earth; he breaks the bow and shatters the spear, he burns the shields with fire. Be still, and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth. The LORD Almighty is with us; the God of Jacob is our fortress.”

Today as we talked with Pascal and his wife about the ministry situation in Senegal, I was pretty disheartened. There is so much work that needs to be done in this culture in order to show the Senegalese people who God is and how He loves them. The task is overwhelming when looking at it through my own eyes. Pascal shared with us about the growing influence of Islamic Middle Eastern nations in Senegal. In an attempt to promote the more fundamentalist Islamic religion, these nations are sending aid to Senegal in the form of orphanages, schools, and providing scholarships to students. Pascal explained how these nations are extremely strategic about seeking to expand their influence here, placing their followers in prominent positions so as to gain leadership. But as I read this passage tonight, I was reminded of the supremacy of Christ. He WILL be exalted among the nations. He WILL be exalted in the earth. Sometimes I need to remember to be still, and know that God is God. Nothing can thwart His plan to bring glory to Himself as the nations come to know Him. He loves the Senegalese people and desires for them to know and walk with Him. He is more than capable of accomplishing His plan and I am excited to be but a small part of it.

Initial impressions

Hello everyone!

After arriving in Dakar on Monday, our team is slowly adjusting to Senegal. Actually, we are not-so-slowly adjusting in some important ways [heat, language, time zone] thanks to the hospitality of our campus minister and two of his students.

In no necessary other, here are some early impression from the city:

1) Dakar is really hot. I'm not kidding. It is almost November and as a Pennsylvania boy, I'm ready for winter jackets and hot chocolate. The sun is unrelenting, but if you get close enough to the ocean, there is a nice breeze.

2) There are more young children begging in the streets near campus than I anticipated. As an American, this is very new. As a Christian, it is disturbing. Most of the children work for local political/religious "leaders" who profit from the children's begging.

3) Senegalese food is good. I've yet to have a bad meal. Mainly egg-based products and breads for breakfast, sandwiches/panini for lunch, and chicken or beef dishes for dinner.

4) The US dollar goes a long way in Senegal. The purchasing power of our dollar should appreciate further as the US economy moves out of recession in the next six month or year.

5) English is more widely understood than I anticipated. That said, we cannot live here without learning French. Right now, we are getting by on the French skills of Ryan, Ashley, and Dayton. Christy and I are learning [more rapidly than I expected---thanks Rosetta Stone and shout out to Bubba Heisler].

6) Our hotel is cheap by western standards [roughly $26/person/night], but expensive relative to anticipated monthly rent. Two weeks of living in a hotel chews through a month's rent; hence our desire to finalize an apartment or apartments soon!

Airport!

As I write this, I think Dayton just landed at Dulles Airport. The rest of us trickle in throughout the afternoon. I arrived the latest at roughly 3:45pm. We leave for Dakar shortly thereafter at 6pm.

On another note, we have some leads on housing in Dakar. Nothing definitive yet, but some real possibilities! Thank you for your prayers on this. I am greatly relieved of anxiety on the matter and trying to rest in confidence in the Lord.

a funny video and a serious thought

Today I enjoyed watching this clip on youtube. (The man speaking French is explaining how the glass panes have been removed from this door for an experiment.)

While this clip unfortunately shows how immature my sense of humor is, I think there is also a spiritual truth that can be seen through this.

The people who stumbled with the door had trouble because they didn't use the door according to the designer's intentions (that is, not pushing on the glass but instead using the handle-- admittedly, rather low in the clip).

I think, when it comes to God's plans, many times I am similar to those people in the video-- I get through the door of God's plans, but it's rough and jerky because I don't fully listen to God's intentions for how to do it.

As I approach leaving for "a whole new world", I find God graciously pointing out to me that I really need to pay much closer attention to His direction, a word that I think can easily apply to all of us. It seemed to me the question He would pose is "what areas of my life would change if I was operating entirely according to the good news about Jesus' rescuing?"

I think these verses do a good job elucidating what the true norm for us should be:

Psalm 119: 128-136

Your testimonies are wonderful; therefore my soul observes them.
The unfolding of Your word gives light; it gives understanding to the simple.
I opened my mouth wide and panted, for I longed for Your commandments.
Turn to me and be gracious to me, after Your manner with those who love Your name.

Establish my footsteps in Your word, and do not let any iniquity have dominion over me.
Redeem me from the oppression of man, that I may keep Your precepts.
Make Your face shine upon Your servant, and teach me Your statutes.
My eyes shed streams of water, because they do not keep Your law.

Nous avons un jour pour volant á Dakar!

It's true, we do have a date for flying to Dakar! October 25th marks the date of our departure, so 27 days and counting!

Today I read the story of how Solomon asked God for wisdom to govern Israel. (When I realized this was the same man who wrote Proverbs 1:7, "the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge", it put that verse in a whole new light for me.)

As October 25th approaches, I ask that you pray something similar to the following prayer that spins off Solomon's prayer in 1 Kings 3.


Now, O LORD our God, You have given this team of Your servants this ministry, yet this team is young and new to these experiences, in many ways like little children, not yet knowing the ins and outs of this ministry or of life in Dakar. Your servants will be in the midst of Your Senegalese people whom You have chosen, a great and numerous people. So please give Your servants understanding minds to obey you and to discern between good and evil. But even more importantly, please give Your servants hearts to love Your people, for without such a gift, who is able to love adequately this (or any) great people of Yours? For it is only because You have first loved us in so mighty a way that we can have hope-- and indeed it is a great hope!-- to tackle this Your assignment for us. May you get much praise, Isa al-Masih, for Your indescribable gift of true life!

Messianic Rosh Hashanah Service

Last night, I attended a Rosh Hashanah service at Congregation Beth HaShem. The church meets in Durham on West Club Boulevard, the same site as the Summit Church West Club campus. Some friends from Cambridge Christian Fellowship at Duke invited me. We went to church at 6:45pm and did not leave until shortly before midnight due to a wonderful time of prayer and fellowship after the service.

The church was interesting and markedly different than my typical Protestant church experience. The differences were mainly in language [multiple prayers in Hebrew], custom [Jewish traditions], and liturgy, not in theology. The theology sounded evangelical to the core. I was curious to see how the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament would be used in the service. From what I gathered, the Hebrew Bible is understood prophetically to speak of Jesus and the redemption God would bring through Him.

I thought to blog about the service namely because my team and I will be entering into similar situations in the next year. No, we will not be attending Messianic Jewish services--but we will interact closely with Christian brothers and services who do not "do church" our way. In Galatians 1:6-9, Paul speaks in very direct terms the importance of not "perverting the Gospel of Christ" by either distorting, add to, or subtracting from the Gospel. I look forward to God exposing distortions in my understanding of the Gospel in Dakar through Christians brothers and sisters there.

Flooding and Health Risks in Dakar

The CNN story about recent torrential rainfall and the associated health risks in Dakar is linked here. The government and medical NGO's fear malaria and cholera outbreaks.

As you read this, please ask the Lord to protect the men and women of Senegal from the worst and thank Him that He is sovereign over all things; even things like sin, disaster, and tragedy will eventually be used of God to bring about redemption in the world.

Resources from training and other goodies

Hey everyone!

Here are some great resources for your walk with the Lord that were given to us at team training or that I stumbled across this summer.

Books:

The Crescent through the Eyes of the Cross: Insights from an Arab Christian by Nabeel T. Jabbour.

-Jabbour's book teaches Western Christians to share Jesus in culturally sensitive ways with Muslims, particularly Middle Eastern Muslims. Although our campus is comprised dominantly by African Muslims, I expect Jabbour's book highly relevant to our ministry.

StrengthsFinder 2.0 by Tom Rath.

-This book was given to team leaders at training. Rath's book is selling well in business circles. Very simple thesis: We would be more effective, happy, and productive if we spent time identifying and building our strengths as opposed to mitigating our weaknesses.

The Hope of Glory: 100 Daily Meditations on Colossians by Sam Storms.

-Excellent devotional commentary on Colossians. Storms' commentary is not overly academic and is helpful for studying Colossians on a daily basis.

1 Samuel: Looking at the Heart by Dale Ralph Davis.

-Dr. Davis' Old Testament commentaries are very reliable and really break open the Word to help the Church see God more fully. I am a big fan of Davis' style: a little academic for some, but he is really a pastor at heart.

Music & Sermon Links:

-The band from team training was Page CXVI [Duke students might remember when they visited campus and played at Campus Crusade's large group in March]. Their rendition of "In Christ Alone" is excellent.

-British author and teacher Graham Cooke is a recent discovery, thanks to my friend and fellow Crusade staffer Craig Muckenhirn. I'm currently working through five sermons linked here.

-I came across a unique ministry about financial stewardship called Generous Giving last week. Generous Giving has several free resources. You can hear part of the Bill and Vonette Bright story, the founders of Campus Crusade, here. The Brights have an incredible testimony; Bill once won $1 Million as the recipient of the Templeton Prize and gave it all away.

Hope these resources are useful for you! Feel free to leave comment with other suggestions.

Team prayer meeting

At 10pm tonight, our team is having a prayer conference call! We will to set aside some time tonight to pray for our supporters, so if you want us to lift something up tonight, post a response below. If your prayer request is a little more sensitive, then contact one of us in private and we'll pray about your request.

On a different note, I had the opportunity to present for six or seven minutes at West Shore Church of the Brethren [http://www.westshorecob.com/]. West Shore is a small community church where I immediately felt at home---which is strange, because my home church [http://www.fumchurch.com/] probably has 1,000 members and my college church [http://www.summitrdu.com/] is home to about 3,000 on any given Sunday. Meeting with the Lord God seemed to be the crux of the gathering. The senior pastor, Frank Leaman, so obviously cares for his flock and wants to introduce more and more people to Jesus.

My dad and I talked about how little fanfare existed in the service. Personally, I return again and again to God's Word in Isaiah that His house shall be called a house of prayer unto all nations---not a house of preaching, a home of entertainment, or even a house of great fellowship. In the "absence of distractions," I felt ministered to by the Lord and His Word. I loved being among that congregation and am eager to return next year to report about what God is doing in Dakar.

straight from the Bible and STINT briefing

"But whatever things were gain to me, those things I have counted as loss for the sake of Christ.

More than that, I count all things to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them but rubbish so

- that I may gain Christ, and may be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own derived from the Law, but the righteousness which is through faith in Christ, indeed the righteousness which comes from God on the basis of faith,

- that I may know Him in the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death, in order that I might attain to the resurrection of the dead.

Not that I have already attained it or already become perfect, but I press on so that I may lay hold of that for which also I was laid hold of by Christ Jesus. "

--Philippians 3:7-12

Though this selection could certainly be extended to include more of the surrounding passage, as I come away from our STINT briefing in Copper Mountain, Colorado, I find thoughts of this section swirling in my mind. One of the primary ways God has used this STINT briefing in my life is to confirm for me the transformative power of the gospel. Simply put (and in the language of Steve Douglass, the current president of Campus Crusade for Christ), the good news about Jesus Christ's rescuing changes lives.

That is what I see from this passage from Philippians. Paul says these things because his life has been utterly transformed by the good news about Jesus. Paul's statements are bold and deeply charged-- "Compared to knowing Jesus, everything else is loss-- everything, even the things that really are good, like family, friends, community, health, peace-- Jesus is just worth so much infinitely more that they look like trash compared to Him." I find that my feathers ruffle at this, and I look for some way to qualify it-- but there is none. Jesus is simply the best-- there is no other even close to worthy enough to receive the glory for His sufferings and His resurrection.

Thus, it is with tumultuous excitement and newly-stoked conviction that I look forward to pressing on to laying hold of THAT for which I was laid hold of by Christ Jesus. "What's the capitalized THAT, dayton?" you ask. THAT, as I understand it, is the new life in Christ which brings Him the recognition and praise He so deserves for all He has done and continues to do, the new life through the Holy Spirit that brings Him the part of the reward for His poured-out love that is mine to pour back.

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Oh Jesus, I pray that your feet would be well-washed by this our version of alabaster perfume and hair-dryed tears. May we, both those going to Dakar and those supporting, in small but whole-hearted fashion, reciprocate your love through this specific mission. It's in trusting you Jesus, that we pray this. Yes indeed.

Brooklyn Tabernacle

A woman from my home church in Pennsylvania recently related an encouraging story to me about how God is calling people near and far to pray for the Spirit to move in Dakar. She was attending a famous church in New York called Brooklyn Tabernacle. Those of you who attend the Summit Church should recognize Brooklyn Tab because their choir and worship ministries exert much influence over the DNA of Summit worship services [by Pastor Gaynor's confession, not my depths of perception or anything].

This woman from my home church was in New York visiting her daughter and decided to attended a mid-week prayer meeting at Brookly Tab. She went to thank the visiting speaker for her message during the service. The speaker was a woman formerly on staff with Crusade in North Africa. My friend was excited and told the staff woman that her family just came on my support team. The Crusade staffer prayed for our team and asked to add our team to the Brooklyn Tabernacle's prayer team. In other words, a 24-7 prayer team just agreed to intercede for our team for the next 30 days. Praise God for the mountains of prayer being heaped upon the ministry in Senegal!

If you want more information on Brooklyn Tabernacle: http://www.brooklyntabernacle.org/

My favorite sermon by Brookly Tab senior pastor Jim Cymbala: http://www.sermonindex.net/modules/mydownloads/singlefile.php?lid=1722

Amazon link to Pastor Cymbala's great book [shout out to Mark Weston for lending me the book last year]: http://www.amazon.com/Fresh-Wind-Fire-Jim-Cymbala/dp/0310211883

Church presentation about ministry in Dakar

Thank you to all the supporters who prayed for me when I preached at First United Methodist in Mechanicsburg, PA yesterday.  I loved preaching among my home church and am so blessed that First Church is sending me to Dakar.  The Lord is gracious, His Word is powerful, and yesterday there were at least two people who indicated a decision to follow Christ as Lord and Savior!  Pray for these men and their protection from spiritual attack.

The audio from the sermon, entitled "Christ and Him Crucified," is link here:

http://www.fumchurch.com/audio.html

Big news

Our team has expanded from three men to a full team of six, count'em six, campus ministers. We are thrilled to add Christy Seamon, Kristen Moorefield, and Ashley Peterson to the team. Having the three girls on our team is a huge answer to prayer and a sign that God has not forgotten the women on our campus in Dakar. I'm jazzed to know that God has been working in the hearts of women on our campus even before we had a team of female campus ministers to share Christ with them. Praise God for this awesome news!

Incredible sermon on missions and evangelism

Check out this sermon by Paris Reidhead, one of the most formative preachers of the American missionary movement from the 1940's-1970's.  This sermon was at one time the most downloaded sermon on SermonIndex.net.  The reason is because Reidhead challenged the American church to reconsider our motives for missions.  I've had the opportunity to discuss the theme in the sermon with many of you and thought I should make the material available.

"Ten Shekels and a Shirt" by Paris Reidhead

http://www.sermonaudio.com/sermoninfo.asp?SID=710081423448

Definitely worth your time [50 minutes].  I promise.  It might shake the way you conceive of missions and...incline you to go on STINT with Campus Crusade?  If you want to join us, Dayton and I have volunteered Ryan to sleep on the floor.

update for our prayer team

Thank you in earnest to each of you who has helped us thus far on our journey towards Senegal! We do take it seriously and with great joy to be teamed up with you.

To give you all an update, Ben, Cash, and I are all in the range of 60% on our financial support. Praise God that this means He has provided over $85,000 so far towards our needs-- that is an amazing display of His faithfulness!

Here are some of the things for which you can be praying for us as our departure date gets closer:
-- that our relationships with God would be our first priority everyday of our preparations.
-- that we would have favor in setting up meetings to share the vision of this awesome work to which God's called us.
-- that our visas would be approved in a timely fashion.
-- that our immunizations and other travel details would come into full alignment with God's plans.
-- that God would put tremendous, intense care in us for the people we'll meet in Dakar.

Thank you so much!

Welcome to our blog!  We are three men living, working, and studying in Dakar, Senegal for the sake of Christ.  Ryan, Dayton, and I will add pictures, stories, updates, and prayer concerns to this blog.  Our team blog is meant to help energize all of our faithful supporters about what God is doing overseas.  Thank you for the chance to serve you in this way and may God be pleased as we all join together under Him.