Unedited and Unbridled

Tonight I'm reading Fil Anderson's "Breaking the Rules":

"For most of my adult life I've believed that nothing was more important than delivering the good news that God is in love with every person in the world. And through his sacrificial death Jesus has earned for us what we could never earn for ourselves; God has provided unconditional forgiveness for all of his creation.

"However, pondering the mystery in Jesus' declaration 'I tell you the truth, wherever the gospel is preached throughout the world, what she has done will also be told, in memory of her' (Mark 14:9) has caused a deep shift inside me. The gospel is meant to produce in me, just as it did in that woman, an unedited and unbridled response to Jesus."

During the past couple of years I've been struck by this woman. She went up to Jesus while he was at someone's house having dinner and poured expensive oinment over him. If I'm called to imitate anyone (other than Jesus) I think it's this woman and Peter. To me they represent two people who really saw Jesus, recognized that he was the pearl of great price, and risked everything -- in fact, saw nothing but truth, reality, and LIFE before them in Jesus and pursued him.

Update from Arizona

So, I'm still in the United States, and since mid-July I've been in Arizona. Here I've gotten to meet and get to know lots of wonderful people from Epic Christian Church, my main sending church. The past few weeks have been full of lunches and dinners and coffees and frozen yogurts with people from church, as well as formal presentations at community groups. I've actually been gone four years now -- and even though I've come back for a little while each year there's still a lot of catching up to do! I'm staying with a lovely family in San Tan Valley, Arizona. Their middle child was in my two-year-old Sunday School class back when I was living here. It's been fun to hang out with him and his sisters: talking about their school day, sharing Bible stories, and even spotting them as they do pull-ups (they like to keep me company as I do P90X).

I also continue to work with our team in Haiti from afar. We communicate via text and telephone -- and thankfully I finally found a reasonably economical phone card. Our office in Cap Haitien hasn't had any reliable internet for the past several weeks, though. The cable internet is not working and our neighbor finally put a lock on his wireless account.

Some of my latest projects?

• helping plan trainings with other mission organizations in Haiti
• detailing plans for a Canadian missionary couple that will be coming to join us in November for nine months
• next year's budget

I get back to Haiti at the end of the month. Some of my goals before returning:

• two-year supply of contacts -- done
• source for contact lens solution -- sort of done
• piano books for the music institute kids -- started
• new passport -- done
• appointment with a dentist -- done and in tip-top shape
• virus-free netbooks running Linux -- done
• purchase electronic items my co-workers (from Haiti to Argentina) have requested -- started
• Hepatitis C test (I got stuck by a dirty needle last fall) -- done and clear
• work on CHE lessons for our CD in Haitian Kreyol -- not even going to start
• send pictures of ministry in Haiti to our co-worker in Finland for future website use -- not started yet
• a cleaned out e-mail inbox (I'm really far from this one)