the village

Yesterday we had an amazing opportunity.

You know us Americans - always trying to feel like we've 'saved the world'! That isn't how it works in Cambodia.

Our part to play is partnering with the Asia's Hope amazing staff. The indigenous people are FAR more affective in reaching their country for the Lord then we will ever be.

Yesterday was a prime example of us supporting the staff as we went to a very poor area where the chief brought together the most poor of 3 individual little villages. He was kind of like the mayor of that area.

When we arrived the people were patiently waiting. Some sitting in the hot sun. Children behaving as I've never seen before.

First the Asia's Hope kids danced for them - the words to the songs they had chosen truly telling the story of Jesus. And then they heard the message of salvation from Ron and Savorn.

And from what we could tell, people responded. So powerful!

We then got to serve them with a small amount of money for each family, a small amount to us - which equaled 2 days wages - significant to them. I was impressed again watching the organizational skills of the Asia's Hope leaders having each person's name on an envelope - knowing exactly who was included so that there was no 'extras' wondering in.

We then opened suitcases revealing toys, clothing and candy for the kids. And the fun began!



This beautiful lady and I kept locking eyes - I wanted to know her so badly


So far, this is my favorite picture. I found myself fascinated by this man.

I'm not sure what it was that I found so intriguing about this man? I wanted to know his story, if he had a family or was alone, will I spend eternity with him - a brother in Christ?

Below are the faces of grateful people receiving their gifts.

generous toy and clothing contributuions

One of my favorite team mates serving this beautiful lady!

How can I return to such wealth compared to the rest of the world? Why has God poured out His blessings on us?

Surely our over abundance of physical blessings must come with accountability, with Godly expectations and responsibilities?

Lord help me to know what is required of me!

what I have seen

It's impossible to describe all that we've seen here in Cambodia, the best I can do is to show you some of what I have seen.

A simple lively-hood

Motos everywhere with entire families on one

overloaded electrical

A very sad life-long pursuit of a false god

Despite the poverty - the same beautiful sun that we see back home sets each night

Faithful giving from ministries around the world provides more new homes

Thank you Crossroads for giving to the clean water project here in Cambodia!
This is a new water tower purchased with your generous gifts!

Today we visit 3 of the most poor villages in the area - and only the most desperate people get invited to join us...I wish you all could experience this.

It changes you, it lets you see how blessed beyond measure we are back home.

simple things = clean water

I'm gaining a greater appreciation for simple things.  

I'm growing more satisfied to just be home, more satisfied reading instead of being on the run, and I hope gaining in understanding of what Christ talked about when He offered us rest in Him, and encouraged a more simple life.

Perhaps the most simple physical need of man, is clean, germ free water.  We take it SO for granted - taking long showers, swimming when we choose, drinking directly from the facet, running our washing machines and yet a great deal of our world spends many waking hours trying to provide their family with enough water just to get through each day.  

When water filters are built in Guatemala, wells dug in Nepal and water storage and filters provided for the rescued children in Cambodia, it also creates the opportunity to share the top need of all mankind, the eternal rescue that only Jesus can provide.  It creates a chance to walk along side of people who had no hope even for their most basic needs, and to give them the true hope found in our Savior!

Today we listened to Crossroads' special guest for the weekend, Gerber describe his country, Guatemala and their needs.  We as a staff got to surround him physically to pray for he and his family.  We got to physically touch and pray for a man making a great difference in this world.  He reminded us how Jesus always used the simple things to accomplish great things.  He also talked about how Jesus used what and who were available - very convicting about being 'ready' not too busy!

We prayed for generous offerings this weekend to address the needs of precious, less fortunate people that we love in Guatemala, Cambodia and Nepal.  We can send our touch across the world by being faithful this weekend.

Will you help us provide physical life and the hope of Jesus to our brothers and sisters across the world? 

Preparing for Christmas at Crossroads

As our team spent hours preparing all the little details involved in Christmas at Crossroads - it's easy not to fully personally participate in worshipping God's gift of our Savior.  I find a longing in my soul for silence and personal, prolonged time to fully focus on Him.  

I found this amazing sentence in my devotional this morning...

"The angel explained... All the laws of nature are amendable by the one who wrote them...."

I long to wrap my heart around the truths of Christmas, the story I've been taught since I was born.  The sacrifice I take so for granted because I've known nothing else in my comfortable, Godly environment.

In America, Christmas is buried under gift-giving, and rushing around, things in themselves that are not wrong - just distracting.  In other countries Christmas provides a once-a-year opportunity to proclaim this life-saving Christmas message through special events like the one Savorn (the country director of Asia's Hope) just had in Cambodia.   Nearly 600 people attended to possibly hear the Gospel message for the very first time!

I wonder what it would be like to be lost and never have heard this message before?  Can you imagine discovering God's sacrifice for the first time, learning that the Creator of the Universe chose to become the Created?

I was reading recently about a movement of women in India who are telling their stories about how they've been abused, nearly killed over and over again and how they have no control over anything in their lives.  They have no voice.  Their stories are starting to be heard and creating change through a deep belief they now have in Jesus Christ as their only chance for survival.  A people who are completely desperate for a saving truth.

I want to be desperate for Jesus.  To understand that my life also is completely out of my own hands, and will only be fully completed in Him, in His timing.  I want to remember the longing my heart feels for Him, when I'm silent and listening...

Please join me in fighting your way through what Christmas has become with a renewed focus on what it really is,  God's mercy on us in our broken, sinful, rebellious state.  The laws of creation were amended through the miracle of a VIRGIN giving birth to the world's Savior!

Merry Christmas!

weekend report

Every weekend that I get to stand and watch all of our staff and volunteers' weekly work come together to create the services and children's and student's classes- takes my breath away.  Why the Almighty God of the universe chooses to use any of us is one of the greatest mysteries known to mankind!  But, that's how He chooses to spread His Gospel.  

And this weekend we added a beautiful guest family and Executive Director from Asia's Hope to be part of our worship services.  There are perhaps no one I admire more then these people who give their lives to rescue children from horrible circumstances in Asia and India.  It was a weekend of taking account of our own lives as we worshipped with them and learned more from them.  Here's a few pictures from our time together!

Our Setlist:

Announcements

Jesus I Come

Oceans

10,000 Reasons

Message:  Justice - Pastor Dave

Special Music:  Break Every Chain - John McCullom

To watch or listen to our services on line go to www.crossroadswired.com

To see what other ministries used in their services go to www.theworshipcommunity.com

We'll see you next weekend as we begin a very powerful message series on Nehemiah!

what I learned today

Today I learned how much God can use people in the most hopeless of circumstances. 

Our GoMissions team is currently in Cambodia - and for one of their outreaches they visited a remote village where every person there has the HIV virus.  This was caused by a well-meaning doctor who used the same needle to give every person shots.

How sad that the very thing intended to help the people - doomed them to sure death.  And chances are very high they've never heard about our Lord.

Our Crossroads team held them, hugged them, talked to them and the Asia's Hope leaders gave them everlasting hope in the message they taught.  All the people listened intently and were very, very grateful!

Our team took them money for rice, a few clothes and the hope of Jesus Christ.  They are praying to turn a death-sentence into a life full of hope found only in our Savior even if HIV makes their time on this earth limited.

Please continue to cover our team in your prayers!   It's so amazing to understand that Crossroads gets to share in the lives won for eternity each time we send teams 'out' as Jesus commanded.

Obedience = eternal results

Can't you just see the day when we all gather around the thrown of Jesus to celebrate the ways God used Crossroads people to deliver this precious message?

What a day of rejoicing that will be
When we all see Jesus
We'll sing and shout the victory

To pass the time

On these long flights bringing us home from Cambodia - I have watched movies to pass the time.

One old movie I had never seen before was The Last Emperor. 

It caused me to sit afterward and marvel again at how mankind makes the same errors over and over again.

From the beginning of time every sin and problem has been caused by man himself.  Usually over a struggle to be in charge or out of a desire to make his own decisions instead of yielding to the only true God - the only one who can offer us satisfaction and eternal fulfillment.

Seek ye First the Kingdom of God and His righteousness and all these thing will be added unto you...

Read this verse.  Meditate on this verse...

 It solves ALL the world's problems, it brings everlasting peace, it puts us right in the middle of God's will and let's us abide there.

If every day, every hour we Seek First the Kingdom of God, then we'll spend our day abiding in Him - He will control our words and actions - He will be pleased with us and His Kingdom can be established through us.

In the movie The Last Emperor - the young boy at 3 was appointed emperor and over and over asked or stated that 'he could do whatever he wanted' - he could force people to do whatever he wanted - he had people waiting on him hand and foot- and yet the only thing he really wanted he could never have...freedom from it all.  When you have too much, material things, power, or wealth you are perhaps the biggest slave of all.

Later in his life his kingdom fell - he was imprisoned - he lost all material things.  And his title meant nothing to the new society in which he found himself.  Sadly this is the situation even the most powerful of our time will find themself in if they are outside The Lord.

God allows this creation He created, to rise up and fight and destroy one another over the desire to rule, or to Seek Him First...  

Funny how a secular movie can reveal a deep spiritual battle and just assume they're only telling a story.

Simplicity

Matthew 6:33English Standard Version (ESV)

33 But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.

Yesterday we studied 'Simplicity' .

We talked about how we've made Christianity something completely different from what God intended in many cases.  We've made it way too difficult, empty of grace toward others, and continuous busyness.

"It's the wavering between the gods of things and THE God of everything, and that's what has us drowning in it all.  Every moment you live, you live bowed to something". This is a powerful quote from Ann Voskamp.

EVERY MOMENT I LIVE, I LIVE BOWED TO SOMETHNG...

The reason The Lord told us to Seek Ye First the Kingdom of God and His righteousness - is because if we live that way everything else He has for us lines up, falls into place.  Is as He created us to be.

Simplicity ...this place Cambodia is simple yet even in their simpleness they bow to the wrong gods.  I believe the children of Asia's Hope raised up and nurtured in The Lord can be used by Him to change everything here!

Simple.

We all worship something

Whenever you sacrifice to go on a missions trip you will be confronted with many things.  

You'll feel overly blessed with what you have back home - almost guilty when you see how content the people you're ministering to are with so much less.

And you'll be tested with burdens or concerns that should be turned over to the Lord but fight to remove your focus from what God longs to teach you on your time away.

Being down to my last day in Battambang I realize what my self-examination must be.  It's to honestly answer - what do I worship?   As a believer the very reason I was created was to worship Him, and if I take my eyes off of Him - if they drift toward other things, then those things become the object of my worship!

In the most remote village I've ever been to, I found evidence of the need to worship.  In the midst of nothing -an idol existed.  

Remnants of little sacrifices were left behind by a god that cannot fill the emptiness or fear that exists in the hearts of these people.  

This challenged my heart to ask - what do I worship?  

 Is it honestly the Lord, based on how I fill my days?

Could it be my family?  My church?  My opinion?

What?

The very fact I'm asking indicates idols exist in my life - I can never criticize the physical idols I see in Cambodia because they are honest about them.  What's far more dangerous are the hidden idols that exist even in the lives of the children of the one true God... 

Far away

There are many places, hidden places far away from everything in Cambodia!  Today we found one of those places when we went with a local pastor to a place our bus could not go.

Some of these elderly people were here when the country was ravished by the ruthless Khmer Rouge soldiers.  We saw many without limbs and haunted eyes - and behind those eyes possibly stories of things that they witnessed long ago...stories we will never hear.

But, there is news - the good news of Jesus, salvation from the evil agenda of men!  The new soldiers in this country are the soldiers proclaiming His truth and providing escape from their past.

These are the images we saw as we gave each family money for rice, balls for the children and some clothing - among which were athletic jerseys from Lexington High School that we carried around the world to give away!

 

This is the path we hiked to a remote village.  

Before giving them out we prayed with the people and were given opportunity to tell them the news of Jesus by Greg through Samuth our amazing interpreter !  

We pray the love of Jesus Christ sinks deep into their souls and creates an insatiable desire to know more about Him!