{"id":236,"date":"2011-11-29T22:18:15","date_gmt":"2011-11-30T03:18:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/gary-smith\/?p=236"},"modified":"2011-11-30T09:45:17","modified_gmt":"2011-11-30T13:45:17","slug":"report-of-survey-trip-to-possible-outreach-village","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/gary-smith\/2011\/11\/29\/report-of-survey-trip-to-possible-outreach-village\/","title":{"rendered":"report of survey trip to possible outreach village"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"village-M-meeting1\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Dear Supporting Friends and Family,<\/p>\n

We trust that your Thanksgiving was indeed that, full of giving thanks in spite of the long hours of driving or standing over the hot stove, cleaning your house, and then struggling with indigestion (smile). We do have much to be thankful for do we not? However, if we let them, circumstances can overshadow our thankfulness and we focus on the \u201cpieces\u201d of our circumstances, thus losing our peace. This is exactly what happened to me over the weekend. Much to our surprise, the village leaders in village M said they do not want us to come and teach the Creation to Christ story.<\/p>\n

Many of you prayed (in the midst of your busyness this weekend \u2013 thank you!) for our meeting in village M. Because of the enormity of the truth, we as a church hiked up to M to show our support and hear the report first hand. We had thought that the leaders had had a change of heart and were actually wanting to hear the teaching. However, they gave us a big fat \u201cNo.\u201d They said we have caused too much division and they are content to remain as they are. They said that nobody wants to hear. Honestly, they sound exactly like the Pharisees in Jesus\u2019 day.<\/p>\n

So we left very discouraged and unhappy. And after 8 hours of intense hiking we returned to our home village with little to feel thankful about. I reported everything to my family and our hearts broke for the souls in village M. I slept very well, but at 4:30 am woke up and replayed everything in my head. The next morning I was not encouraged and honestly felt unmotivated to do any work. But through the email of fellow missionaries (Doug and Bev Croot) going through their own intense struggles, God reminded me of the power of prayer. Here is the quote from their email,<\/p>\n

\u201cSomeone once asked me if I pray because it makes sense, and I said no I don\u2019t pray because it makes sense, I pray because my life doesn\u2019t make sense without prayer. I pray to raise myself up and to keep going, when I can\u2019t even seem to get going. \u00a0In the middle of life\u2019s struggles there inevitably comes a time in each of our\u00a0 lives when we collapse on the trail, or in the office, or even stuck in traffic and I have found prayer is a path where there is none. Tears falling long enough can scar rocks \u2013 but tears falling on our cheeks can also help us to bloom and the wind in our faces, just maybe God blowing us kisses. Your life is a gift, prayer is a thank you note. So put your faith and not your fears in charge, and may you never forget that God is never more with you than when you feel alone.\u00a0 Peace and blessings. NOAH \u201c(Noah benShea is the fellow who wrote the piece)<\/p>\n

As I read that it was as though God was saying those words to me. It was exactly how I was feeling. It made no sense that the door to village M would close. I couldn\u2019t raise myself up. I so wanted to collapse on that trail! And God reminded me \u2013 PRAY! Come to me and I will give you rest. So I did, I dropped to my knees and cried out to Him\u2026 when I got up I literally felt the burden lift. He filled my heart with Himself and I understood, God is enough! He is my confidence and source of strength, not results in ministry.<\/p>\n

Then, hold on to your hats, at our Monday meeting with the bible teachers we were told some things that we missed while up in M. That a big group of people are filling out a paper asking us to come and teach without the blessing of the village leaders! They want to hear this teaching! And that the village leaders said they will allow it to happen, just not in the village. We have to do it in someone\u2019s personal area or on the outskirts of the village. In fact this was the village leader\u2019s second point in the big meeting Sunday, but I was so focused on the first point of \u201cNo\u201d that I missed this second point. So God is making that path! Just not how we thought it would look.<\/p>\n

So thank you for your prayer. Praying will make sense of all this so that we don\u2019t focus on all the pieces of the circumstances in our lives and will enable us to \u201ckeep the peace\u201d of God in our hearts. Thanks for your patience in reading all this. We appreciate each one of you.<\/p>\n

Your friends, GECCNZ Smith<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dear Supporting Friends and Family, We trust that your Thanksgiving was indeed that, full of giving thanks in spite of the long hours of driving or standing over the hot stove, cleaning your house, and then struggling with indigestion (smile). We do have much to be thankful for do we not? However, if we let […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":164,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-236","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-uncategorized","entry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/gary-smith\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/236","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/gary-smith\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/gary-smith\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/gary-smith\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/164"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/gary-smith\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=236"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/gary-smith\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/236\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/gary-smith\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=236"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/gary-smith\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=236"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/gary-smith\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=236"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}