The How

Every morning at 9am we divide up to have a discipleship time.  The ladies of the house go to the pavilion, and Brittany leads them in a study of English and the Bible.  She started in Genesis with them, and they are enjoying it.  The men of the house meet in the living room.  We share what God is telling us through His Word, then we pray together and then talk about the logistics of the day and week. 

In the men’s meeting we have had some great discussions over the last week on how to not only do more ministry, but do what God calls us to and how to do it.  We are teaching classes five days a week for 2 hours per day, but we have time for more.  The question is not what to do but HOW do we go about doing it.  Last Saturday through Monday, 3 men from our church in Smyrna were here to checkout Haiti: Peyton, Pat and Scott.  These men had some great insights into our ministry which led us as a house to have some great discussions this week.  In Haiti it is very easy to see need and opportunities for ministry. The difficult part is figuring out the How question.  How can we serve this group of people or that group of people?  God has opened our eyes to many needs here in Haiti. We are now praying for God to give us direction on how to minister to those groups of people. We want to build disciples in everything we do.  To build a disciple requires many things.  Jesus built his disciples by doing a few things: he taught them the scriptures, did life with them to provide them an example, he built a relationship with them over a long period of time and then, finally, he sent them out to do the same.  Jesus is our manual for building disciples.  We want to make disciples just like He did.  How to do that is always where we need God’s wisdom and guidance.  As we develop more ministries we are going to make sure they are being taught the Word of God, that we are an example to them by doing life with them, that we develop a relationship with them over a long period of time and finally, that we empower them to go out and make their own disciples.  I am reading through Ephesians right now, and I read Ch. 4 Friday morning.  Versus 11-13 stood out to me:

            “It was he who gave some to be apostles, some to be prophets, some to be evangelists, and some to be pastors and teachers, to prepare God’s people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.”

If we tried to do ministry here individually it would be very difficult and probably unsuccessful.  I am thankful to God that he gave us a body of believers who can sharpen each other to make the team more impactful for God.  We are learning a lot from each other and I believe God is about to do some great things with our ministry.  I thank God for the people in this house.  We are all a little different but combined I believe we are a strong ministry for God. 

Please pray for us that we will not chase every ministry opportunity in Haiti but will only seek after the ones God wants us to and that he will show us HOW to do it.  We are nothing without His power and direction.  We want more of you God and less of us. 

Praying from the Heart

I have been going through Genesis 1 with the ladies, and I wanted to share a prayer god has put on my heart. 

Father, authority of all things, I pray that I will remember the beauty in your creation everyday. You are Lord of heaven and Lord of this earth, and I pray I will not forget to seek your power over my life. I do not want to take you for granted and not forget how great you truly are. I seek your perfect will for this earth and for my life. I am saddened we cannot experience this perfect will on this earth and look forward to the day when I can. I pray that you will meet our daily physical needs while we are in Haiti. I ask for restoration in our relationship and forgiveness of my sins and judgement among others. I ask for help to forgive those that hurt and wrong me. I owe you everything and want nothing to stand in the way of our relationship. Keep me from temptations to sin and judge others as this is not your will. I depend on your direction and ask you to protect me from satan in all aspects of my life. Thank you for your saving grace. Please help me to be graceful toward every person I come into contact with. I seek to be more like you. I love you.

Amen

Please continue to pray for me as I teach the ladies of the house and at the children's home English and the bible. I will also start teaching the children at the children's home English and the bible. They are all so excited about this and so am I. 

    This is Francia, our new translator. 

We have also enjoyed some familiar faces being here this week. Pat, Peyton and Scott have all been here from our church, LifePoint, for the last few days, and we have definitely enjoyed having them and gaining insight and wisdom from them. 

Brittany