Missionary Voyage to Madagascar and Mauritius

As you may have seen in my handy sidebar calendar, our short-term missionary voyage will be March 1-18! We will be traveling to both Madagascar and Mauritius, which are pretty close neighbors. In both countries, we will be visiting former CEMistes who are now missionaries!

According to Wikipedia, Madagascar has a population of 22 million, more than 90 percent of whom live on less than $2 per day. They are a former French colony and thus most people speak French. The majority of the people adhere to christianity or traditional beliefs, or mix the two. We will be flying into the capital, Antananarivo.

For the first four days, we will be joining a 49-person medical mission team of doctors and other volunteers, mostly from the US. The organization we are traveling with is called "Partners in Progress." I don't know much about them besides their name, but if you want to know more you can check their website: http://www.partnersinprogress.org/ The medical mission trip will be near Mahajanga, a northwestern port city with a population of over 135,000.

From Mahajanga, we will be flying back to the capital of Madagascar to spend the weekend at an orphanage. This orphanage is supported by the French-speaking churches. The children at our church give money every Sunday, and we will be presenting the orphanage with the collected sum when we go there. We are planning a mini-retreat for the orphans, with songs, meditations, games, and (I hope) puppet shows.

After our weekend at the orphanage, we will be flying to Mauritius, where we will participate in an evangelism campaign and then a church-retreat. As far as culture prepping goes, we learned that Mauritius will be much more of a culture shock for us than Madagascar, because Madagascar has such a French influence. In Mauritius, we are likely to encounter idols around every corner.


A schema of our voyage. Thanks to http://www.alphavilla.net/index_files/map_indian-2.jpg for the map! A fine educational website.

Our voyage is in only two weeks, and we are just now realizing how much we have to prepare! Prayer team, here are some requests to present before our God: 2 of our CEMistes are still waiting to receive their passports (should be any day now). Help us to not forget anything essential and to not get sick so that we are well-energized and helpful. Help us to be culturally sensitive and to learn as much as possible.

40 Hours in the Desert

Women's Retreat in Lille

11 women (that includes five CEMistes) took the TGV from Marseille to Lille for the annual Church of Christ French (and Swiss) Women's Retreat. I think this was my second women's retreat in my life (I seem to remember to going to one with Pitman at a hotel. What I remember the most is Cordelia's outfits as MC.)

The churches in Paris, Geneva, Lausanne and Lille were well-represented. We stayed in an old St. Ignatious monastery/nunnery/abbey that is now used as a spiritual retreat center, for spirt-building activities of all sorts. Typical monk food, as I'm told, is stale bread, soup and a glass of beer, so the food quality/diversity was better than you would expect, but it was still not very good. The building was very impressive on the outside, quite a Chateau. Inside, it was rather banal, and silence was imposed as much as possible in the hallways and in our rooms at night.


The CEM girls in front of the Lille Retreat Center.

The theme of the retreat, set by the Marseille ladies, was "the desert." We performed a humorous-yet-pedantic sketch depicting visitors to "The Desert." I played a camel, well equipped by God to live in the desert environment, unlike my whiny Bedouin master. The presentations were "Why the Desert?" (Answer: So much of the Bible takes place in a desert setting), "When my life is a desert" and "an Oasis in the Desert." My transcription/slation of the last talk is provided below:

An oasis in the desert
Who would like to be blessed? Who is blessed?
It’s true that sometimes we suffer in silence, and no one knows it, but that’s our fault. No one should suffer in silence when he is in the Lord. If we are ashamed to confess our faults and to share what is going wrong in our lives, we have a problem. We are not a family. It is a sin to suffer in silence. We have too many verses in the Bible that tell us that we are a family. We are wrong and we sin against God when we suffer in silence. We are missing out on the richness of the desert God is sending us through.
We know our Bible verses, but we don’t hear them anymore.
Recount your desert. The Bible is a book of witness. We underestimate witness. It’s not just coming up before a group and crying. It’s glorifying God in your life. If we don’t witness, we are keeping God from blessing us and others. We each have a desert; each desert is different.
When we cross the desert, what do we see? Sand, sand. We are standing in the desert, we lie down in the sand, not to take a nap, but because we can’t survive anymore. We eat, drink in the desert, but we drink and eat sand.
Suffering is suffering. Don’t try to compare your suffering. Each one suffers with what he has, what he is. At the giving moment, in the desert, we are crushed by the heat of the sun. In this desert, we are alone. Why? Often, because we have chosen to be alone. We are tired. We finish by sitting down in the sand. From this moment, we start to ask good question. What are the good questions?
There are 2: What do you want me to do? What do you want me to learn?
When I asked God these questions, two verses came to me. Matthew 6:23: "Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and his justice." I prayed this verse after that. Why did God give me this verse? “All these things shall be added unto you.” After I started asking these good questions, I abandoned my solitary life. Ask God to forgive you. We have feelings that we’ve injured God; we shouldn’t stop to ask him to forgive us. When we are suffering, we feel like we don’t exist, like we’re useless.
Sitting down in the desert, we put ourselves in position to listen to God. In this period of suffering, we don’t think about blessings. We don’t see the way out.
(reads Footprints in the Sand)
Can we be blessed in difficult moments? Yes! The first blessing is that when you are suffering so much, your Father carries you. Blessing and promise are basically the same thing for God.
Blessing is a good thing that appears at the right time, if we are faithful to God.
God gives us his blessings. We have the blessings of God every day. We “wait for” blessings, but they are already there! Unfortunately, we have forgotten the blessings! We haven’t meditated enough on the word of God. We don’t need to search for blessings, they are there. We have everything we need: God and us.
Blessings:
Before he left them, Jesus said to his disciples, I will give you the Holy Spirit.
The Holy Spirit contains the Fruits of the Spirits. We have the peace of God in our oasis. Are we convinced that we have God’s spirit in us?
The Love of God. Unconditional, real love that is a force in suffering to overcome guilt.
We have the gentleness of God. Anger, rancor keep us from coming near God. Gentleness helps us to help others. Others will come to us and we can tell them what isn’t going well in our lives. When you are in the desert, don’t have a face that tells people to stay away from us. Be careful of what your face is communicating.
Faithfulness. It is in perseverance that we will have deliverance.
Kindness. Are you conscious of how much we have? We search for good for others. Without kindness, we spend our time worrying about our suffering, instead of helping others.
Goodness. The world doesn’t need hopelessness, it already has enough. God shows us how we can get away from hopelessness.
Patience. God gave us his entire spirit: don’t say you don’t have patience! God gives us what we need to endure until we can resolve our problems.
Joy. When we are convinced that we are delivered, that we are more than conquerors despite the circumstances. We know that our suffering will not last forever: it’s not in the plan of God that our suffering endures. God gave his son a quick death, his suffering does not last long.
Self-control. Will help us to avoid creating other problems instead of dealing with the problem we already have.
Use these blessings! When it’s going badly, ask God what fruits of the spirit you need fortified.
Barbara told me to read Romans 8. I know what’s in Romans 8! I’ve already read it. Barbara said: Read Romans 8 every day! I read it because Barbara told me to. Roman 8 is a summary of all the blessings we have, of everything we have that will help us cross the desert.
Listen to Barbara, read Romans 8 every day!
I was thinking of other blessings of God, and in the spirit, other blessings came to me. One of them is the Presence of God.
Praise.
Light. The Lord is my light and my salvation: whom shall I fear?
Rest. It’s not you who will win the battle. God fights for you.
Protection.
Thankfulness.
Strength.
Service.
We need to be on our feet! What do we ask God? God, give me strength! Get me out of here! We ask for things for ourselves. We demand comfort and blessings. But maybe it’s not for us that we are suffering. We should be serving those who God has sent us. That is how we grow his kingdom. We have every gift that we need to serve him. We have gifts and talents. The only way to get out of the desert is service! Service is a double-blessing. Buy one get one free. Why don’t we use our free will to help others, to work for each other? That doesn’t mean we should crush ourselves in serving others. We should be ready to listen. No one should suffer in silence. God had another plan. We’re going to get out of the desert. We want to get out as quickly as possible, but if we don’t use what God gave us to, we’ll never get out. We might die there.
HOW do we use the blessings that God has given us?
“I have come to give you life, and in abundance.”
Stop thinking blessings are just for you.
“Alphabet of God’s promises.” Written by an old woman. We have a lot to learn from old woman. “Worries never keep me from sleeping. I say to the Lord: take care of my worries, and I sleep well.” She reads the promises of God, she falls asleep by the time she gets to promise “D”. But be like this woman, who says to God, “You can take care of my problems, so I can sleep. Then I can have the strength so I have a good night’s sleep and can attack my problems tomorrow.”
Don’t be a hypocrite with God. He knows already that we have problems. God wants us to tell him when we have problems.
What is the final goal of these blessings?
First, to change us. To feed us spiritually. God’s response is spiritual. We want to be comfortable in our bodies, but that’s ephemeral. Physical problems never end.
The final blessing that we have is eternal life.
The 2nd purpose of blessings is to teach us to know the law of good. We’re afraid God will ask us to do the things we don’t want to do. We should ask him what his plan is.
Mary said “I am the servant of the Lord. May it be unto me as you have said.” We have a fear of the unknown. God will never give us a task that won’t nourish us.
The third purpose is to teach us to live for the essential. What is essential for God? Listen and serve. We can’t just do anything that we want.

Night Out on the Town with the Charismatic Catholics

Last night, Joelle and I “snuck out” after Chorale Cool to take the subway downtown. We headed to the Sacred Heart Basilica, where our friend Marie had invited us. We met Marie at the service for prayers for Unity a couple of weeks ago, and she had invited us to her prayer group. Marie is Catholic, and her prayer group consists of Catholics “who pray with the gifts of the Holy Spirit.” When my church talks about “praying with the Holy Spirit” we mean being unusually perceptive of someone else’s need for encouragement or being led to a Bible verse with a message we needed to here. I expected something similar from Marie’s group, especially considering that she was 1) Catholic and 2) over 70 years old.*

We arrived on time for the mass. The Basilica is huge. The first four rows were filled with members of this prayer group, wearing white and blue, and behind us were the regular Tuesday night church going crowd (the size of the group wasn't very impressive but I am impressed to find even 20 people in the Tuesday-night-churchgoing-crowd.)

The priest's sermon was on Christian martyrs, including a martyr buried in the Basilica’s crypt. (Our meeting was in a crypt, but I didn’t see any bone-burial markings.)

After the mass, we descended into the crypt, and then it got funky. There was a drummer, a guitarist, a flutist, a pianist, and about 40 people who joined us. The bread, the body of Christ, was placed on a pedestal before us. We then proceeded to sing. In between songs, people would spontaneously offer prayers or give testimonies (“today, I gave a poor person something to eat, and shared the love of Christ!” or “two weeks ago, I met these two young girls at the Prayers for Unity service, and they came with me tonight.” That would be us). One woman shared visions and their interpretations.

The worship was very lively; some members of the crowds had tambourines, people were raising their hands and dancing in place all around us. There was a very festive feel to the worship, like the ark of the covenant had returned to Jerusalem, or like we should have all the time. The crowd was mostly in their ‘60’s and up, but there were a few persons in their 30’s and 40’s. I’d say we were the youngest.

Joelle and I had a good time until the end, where almost everyone went up front to get down on their knees before the the body of Christ itself up on the pedestal. Joelle and I didn’t go down and at least 2 members of the community came and asked us to go forward and ask for prayers, applying quite a bit of pressure that made us start counting the minutes until the end.

After the service, Marie drove us home (she lives in our neighborhood) and explained a little more about the movement to us. Marie has been a member of the Catholic Charismatics since the beginning. A priest was healed by some Pentecostal Protestants in America in the early 80’s, and so he started this movement within the Catholic church to use the gifts of the Holy Spirit. He came to Marseille and started the communities here. Marie says that her group is still a part of the Catholic Church, though they strongly resemble the Protestant charismatics.

Joelle and I are at the same time encouraged (by the fervor of the love of Christ we saw displayed by our Catholic brethren), confused and a bit creeped-out (because of the altar call and the atmosphere of the crypt). I don’t know if we’ll go again, but now we know that the Charismatic Catholics exist and what they are about.

*No offense meant to anyone in one or both of these demographics. But I'm sure you too have preconceived notions about how someone in this demographic would comport themselves at a prayer group. Mainly, that they don't dance around and see visions.

How to Support a CEMiste

Throughout this year, I have been encouraged by the support I've received from my friends, church and family: prayerfully, financially and encouragement through cards and emails. This support lets me know that I'm not "out of sight and out of mind."

My CEM roommate does not really have a church family, and her biological family is not willing to support her. Over the past 6 months, she has received checks in the mail from people she barely knows or wouldn't have expected to have the money to support her. It is touching to see the financial sacrifices that others are making so that she can stay here at CEM. We really have seen her prayers answered.

Other forms of support mean alot too! One of the women in our church is great at doing hair, and fixes my roommates hair for her, saving her loads of money. We are frequently invited over to eat (at-least) 3-course meals with members of the church, providing us with good company and good food. Our food budget is cut in half by the left-overs we receive from the camp and from events at the church. I was invited on a day trip to see a Car Show in Nimes by a Marseille Church member, an opportunity to travel that I otherwise wouldn't be willing to pay for.

I also want to encourage all you older-than me church-people to encourage and mentor the youth around you! I had a really great experience when I was working this past summer in Germany. The families at the Church in Bremen, seeing that I was alone in a new country, took me under their wing, so that I was mentored (and fed and watered) by many families and Saints older and wiser than I. If you don't already, hang out with someone younger than you to share your life's experiences and your faith with them.

P.S. If you're not already "Supporting a CEMiste", you are welcome to do so! Contact me to find out how. Some of our CEMistes need more support to be able to finish the year in Marseille. We/I also love getting mail!
P.P.S. To all my supporters and my church family: Thank you so much for your prayers and support!