finally an update! And God's working
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Jeremy Gable
Jan 14, 2007, 1:26:30 AM1/14/07
to Palawan Newsletter
Hello again everyone!
The last time I wrote, I said that I would be able to write more often and get everyone caught up on what's been going on here. Unfortunately, mission life isn't usually so predictable as that. Things have been very crazy around here since that time. Almost every week I've been unable to get my internet time in due to urgent jobs needing to be done around here, and me being the only one able to do them. Pastor Kent George is capable of doing them as well, but he's had his own important jobs to be done that only HE can do. The couple times that I HAVE been able to get on the internet, I've had to email AFM in order to work out the details of a problem they're helping me with (you'll all get to hear about that as well, though not just yet). Today, however, I have a little time to write. Praise the Lord!
Mission life is not all the fun and glory that so many people tend to think it is. The fact is, mission life consists mostly of down-and-dirty hard work. It's waking up at 5 am so that you'll have enough time to cook and eat breakfast and have a decent amount of devotional time before your day really starts at 8am. It's having only cold showers to take, even if you have malaria and have a fever high enough to make the tropical climate you're in feel like a chilly autumn day. Mission life is getting malaria 6 times in one year and not being able to eat for 2 days (if taking Chloroquine) or 4 days (if taking Quinine) because the medication makes you so nauseated or dizzy that you can't keep anything down, so what's the point of eating any way? It's waking up in the middle of the night to the sound of a "teki" [tuh-kee] lizard (some kind of a skink, I think) clinging to the underside of your bed beneath your head and 10 times sounding his call that can be heard from one mountaintop to the next. Mission life is watching all the sick people pour into your clinic daily for medications that are the only thing keeping them alive from one month to the next in this malaria infested jungle. It's seeing hundreds of poor mothers bringing their sick little babies to the clinic with ailments ranging from colds, to worms, to malaria and typhoid fever. It's walking home every day to see a patient with tuberculosis staying in the run-down hut across from your own, listening to his stories of the mountains every day for 2 months, watching him finally leave, and then a month later hearing news that he died two weeks previous.
However, there are some bright sides to mission life as well. Mission life is getting to know a local couple who have two adorable little girls. The mother is a faithful church member, and the father, you're close friend, has a severe drinking and gambling problem. And when he gets drunk, he loses all control of his anger and fights with anyone who provokes him. Then you pray fervently for him, and talk with him. You watch the Holy Spirit working on his heart until one day, he says that he's impressed with his wife's faithfulness and says that he wants to give up drinking and give his heart to Jesus. As the days and months pass, you watch him go through many ups and downs, and one day he comes to church on Sabbath and not only stays for the whole time, but even stays for the bible study afterwards and then goes to a distant village to help evangelize that village on Sabbath afternoon! He not only comes for one Sabbath, but three in a row now, helps out for branch sabbath school each time, and this last time vollunteered to have opening and closing prayer for branch sabbath school! Every person he met along the way, he invited to come to worship with us. If they made excuses, he would respond, "So what about that? We need to be worshipping God. You can do those other things another day. Come have worship with us!"
Mission life is seeing the local rapist finally go to prison for his crimes, hearing that he tried to hang himself with his own shirt and praying for him for months that God will change his heart before he manages to succeed in killing himself. Then one day, you get news that he has confessed to his crimes, has asked forgiveness from one person whom he's sinned against and wants to patch things up with everyone else he's hurt. And not only that, has decided that he too wants to have Jesus in his life, then prays with the missionaries and his family who are there with him, and personally asks Jesus to forgive his sins and to come into his life and change his heart!
Mission life is also hearing that some of the local village elders are finally giving their hearts to Jesus as well, and want to begin bible studies and learn what they need to do to live according to Jesus's commands.
The most fascinating thing is that in each and every one of these circumstances I've described, all of us here could see nothing happening for the longest time. Then, almost all at once, the people whom we'd been praying about for such a long time in spite of the lack of change, were suddenly transformed into new people! Certainly each one still has a very long ways to go, but the change that's taken place in them thus far is stunning and overwhelming!
I wish I had more time to write more details about all these things. There are so many stories I could share about various people here; people who are daily being changed by God's grace, and people who are still in desperate need of discovering His grace! For now, all I have any more time to write, is a big thank you to every one of you who has supported this mission and my presense here, either financially or through prayer support. Your participation is deeply felt, by us, by God, and most of all by the people whose lives you've helped to change!
With love in Christ,
Jeremy
The last time I wrote, I said that I would be able to write more often and get everyone caught up on what's been going on here. Unfortunately, mission life isn't usually so predictable as that. Things have been very crazy around here since that time. Almost every week I've been unable to get my internet time in due to urgent jobs needing to be done around here, and me being the only one able to do them. Pastor Kent George is capable of doing them as well, but he's had his own important jobs to be done that only HE can do. The couple times that I HAVE been able to get on the internet, I've had to email AFM in order to work out the details of a problem they're helping me with (you'll all get to hear about that as well, though not just yet). Today, however, I have a little time to write. Praise the Lord!
Mission life is not all the fun and glory that so many people tend to think it is. The fact is, mission life consists mostly of down-and-dirty hard work. It's waking up at 5 am so that you'll have enough time to cook and eat breakfast and have a decent amount of devotional time before your day really starts at 8am. It's having only cold showers to take, even if you have malaria and have a fever high enough to make the tropical climate you're in feel like a chilly autumn day. Mission life is getting malaria 6 times in one year and not being able to eat for 2 days (if taking Chloroquine) or 4 days (if taking Quinine) because the medication makes you so nauseated or dizzy that you can't keep anything down, so what's the point of eating any way? It's waking up in the middle of the night to the sound of a "teki" [tuh-kee] lizard (some kind of a skink, I think) clinging to the underside of your bed beneath your head and 10 times sounding his call that can be heard from one mountaintop to the next. Mission life is watching all the sick people pour into your clinic daily for medications that are the only thing keeping them alive from one month to the next in this malaria infested jungle. It's seeing hundreds of poor mothers bringing their sick little babies to the clinic with ailments ranging from colds, to worms, to malaria and typhoid fever. It's walking home every day to see a patient with tuberculosis staying in the run-down hut across from your own, listening to his stories of the mountains every day for 2 months, watching him finally leave, and then a month later hearing news that he died two weeks previous.
However, there are some bright sides to mission life as well. Mission life is getting to know a local couple who have two adorable little girls. The mother is a faithful church member, and the father, you're close friend, has a severe drinking and gambling problem. And when he gets drunk, he loses all control of his anger and fights with anyone who provokes him. Then you pray fervently for him, and talk with him. You watch the Holy Spirit working on his heart until one day, he says that he's impressed with his wife's faithfulness and says that he wants to give up drinking and give his heart to Jesus. As the days and months pass, you watch him go through many ups and downs, and one day he comes to church on Sabbath and not only stays for the whole time, but even stays for the bible study afterwards and then goes to a distant village to help evangelize that village on Sabbath afternoon! He not only comes for one Sabbath, but three in a row now, helps out for branch sabbath school each time, and this last time vollunteered to have opening and closing prayer for branch sabbath school! Every person he met along the way, he invited to come to worship with us. If they made excuses, he would respond, "So what about that? We need to be worshipping God. You can do those other things another day. Come have worship with us!"
Mission life is seeing the local rapist finally go to prison for his crimes, hearing that he tried to hang himself with his own shirt and praying for him for months that God will change his heart before he manages to succeed in killing himself. Then one day, you get news that he has confessed to his crimes, has asked forgiveness from one person whom he's sinned against and wants to patch things up with everyone else he's hurt. And not only that, has decided that he too wants to have Jesus in his life, then prays with the missionaries and his family who are there with him, and personally asks Jesus to forgive his sins and to come into his life and change his heart!
Mission life is also hearing that some of the local village elders are finally giving their hearts to Jesus as well, and want to begin bible studies and learn what they need to do to live according to Jesus's commands.
The most fascinating thing is that in each and every one of these circumstances I've described, all of us here could see nothing happening for the longest time. Then, almost all at once, the people whom we'd been praying about for such a long time in spite of the lack of change, were suddenly transformed into new people! Certainly each one still has a very long ways to go, but the change that's taken place in them thus far is stunning and overwhelming!
I wish I had more time to write more details about all these things. There are so many stories I could share about various people here; people who are daily being changed by God's grace, and people who are still in desperate need of discovering His grace! For now, all I have any more time to write, is a big thank you to every one of you who has supported this mission and my presense here, either financially or through prayer support. Your participation is deeply felt, by us, by God, and most of all by the people whose lives you've helped to change!
With love in Christ,
Jeremy
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