"Lord, Reign in Me"

On our Choral Tour back in April, the Harmony Chorus had a repertoire and a fixed order that we stuck to every night. Our last song was "The Lord Bless You and Keep You," but our last last song (as we almost always sang for an encore) was our French translation of "Lord Reign in Me" which, translated back to English, is:

"Be the Lord of my desires,
My life, my heart and my future
I submit to you all that I do
Come be the King over all of me."

And in this last minute of the concert, this song would produce a flashback/forward moment in my head, "back" for a view of all the crazy things I'd done in the past year as a missions apprentice, and "forward" as though peering over a cliff into the unknown of location, vocation; singing next to Joelle who has all the same questions plus that of marriage and finances; looking out over an audience that had just sat through a spiritually moving evening that challenged them to reevaluate what they were living for; hosted by a church congregation so small that its future was clearly in the hands of God.

Three months after the concert tour, I have finished my year as a CEMiste/missionary apprentice and am back in a position where anything can happen if I rest in God's hands.
And you, faithful reader, I challenge you to accept the challenge of "Lord Reign in Me", and the lessons you've learned from this blog and to "be strong and courageous."

The Harmony Chorus at All Saint's Church in Dublin

The 2013 Graduating CEMistes ready to face the future!

This is intended to be the last official post, but if you wanted to hear any more anecdotes about the year of CEM or have any questions for me, feel free to comment below.

Time Travel Day

I am spending my last 2 weeks in France volunteering as a counselor at Harmony Bible Camp, at Centre Bonnefoi (the camp which Pitman COC was fixing up a few weeks ago). The theme verse is "Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and for eternity (Hebrews 13:8) and in our morning devotionals, we TRAVEL THROUGH TIME to hear the stories of faithful Christians throughout the Centuries. Our voyage is directed by 3 blumbering, quirky characters who never arrive at their intended destination in time and space.

The Friday that is smack-dead in the middle of the week is THEME DAY, where we form 12 teams of 10 kids of all ages, and compete together/against eachotehr in a variety of creative games.

Theme day began with our excellent time travelers disequilibrating, disengaging, and straight-up-breaking the time travel machine. The teams were set out to find clues which would help us find the missing part that could repair the machine, by journeying to 12 different time periods! The games included:
A Roman Relay: an obstacle course run in teams attached as slaves by a cord
A 15th Century Pirate Naval Battle: launching "cannon balls" to knock down bowling pins
A visit to Martin Luther King Jr., where groups wrote poems describing their dreams to improve the world
A Bible Copying Relay at an 8th Century Monastery
Identifying ingredients in a possibly poisoned drink for King Louis XIV
An 80's Dance Composition to a Michael Jackson Remix
Build a human pyramid for the Pharaoh and Queen Cleopatra

The challenges concluded with each team assembling their clues into a puzzle, and then each team's puzzle fit into a larger puzzle which contained the clue as to where the missing part for the machine was hiding.

Upon reinstallation of the part, the three bumbling time travelers still could not bring us back to our own time period!
Because the time space continuum was still entirely screwy, the monk from the year 792 appeared. Though he came from a technologicaly-impaired era, he was able to inform us of what our machine was missing. The monk knew that what was essential for travel in the space-time continuum was a fixed point. "When you traveled through time and met so many different persons, was there any person who was there for all of it? Who is present throughout all of time?" The key point, around which we could orient our machine and our lives permanently in space and time is Jesus himself.

After his speech, the monk exited the scene and our voyagers oriented their machine (their most difficult acting assignment yet) and took us back to the future.

After years of coming/sending other people to Centre Bonnefoi from the Pitman Road Church of Christ for their week of construction and renovation of the camp, it is neat to see the Harmony Bible Camp in Action.

The camps' mission statement includes getting kids to appreciate God and his creation. Until our evening of tent camping, and hearing all the whining of "I can't wait to get back to where everything is paved over!" I didn't realize how many of our campers were uprooted right from the city and plopped into the mountains.

As a counselor, I lead devotionals with my 4 campers every night. They are usually quite tired after a long day of 2 activities of choice, an hour long Bible class, and an evening activity, but they enjoy discussing the Bible passages and singing songs simultaneously in English, French and Italian (I have 2 French and 2 Italian girls in my room). It is already Monday, and camp ends on Friday.

I also have to organize four activities for the campers. I already lead a class of the Hebrew Alphabet and sewed Hackysacs. Tomorrow I am leading the first French version of World Vision's Tribe game, and Thursday we will be making Flipbooks and learning about the Animation process.

Time flies when you're having fun!

The Parable of the Sower

This past week of "Christians on Mission Intense Summer Session" was spent sowing seeds for the Kingdom, as they say...

During CEM week, we spent our mornings hearing great speakers talk about relevant Bible topics; the seeds of knowledge.
Young people from all over Europe met each other and learned that they are not alone as christians: the seeds of hope.
7 CEMistes received their certificates of apprenticeship completion, sending them back from whence they came; I'd describe us as faith saplings ready to be transplanted.
5 nursing homes in Marseille were visited by 20-person choirs of young people, showing the elderly that the youth haven't forgotten about them.
A choir of over 60 people sang in concerts on Thursday and Friday night and 20 people participated in skits that share aspects of the Christian life and the plan of salvation in an amusing manner.
A group of about 10 people went every morning to share croissants and coffee with persons "without permanent residences." Meeting, sharing and talking with the downtrodden will prepare Europe's future for a life of service and a more heart-felt desire to help with the problem of homelessness.

On Saturday morning, we took time to share feedback on our weeks. A teen from the Geneva church shared the following insights on the seeds we've been sowing:
"I feel really uncomfortable around older people; I even left a hospital room earlier than everyone else because I felt so uncomfortable. But, when we went to the nursing home, I tried very hard to overcome my discomfort and to talk to the residents.
I started by asking a woman her name. She said "oui oui."
The next woman I talked to, I asked her name and she responded, in a rather unfriendly manner, "why?"
I moved on to the next woman, who responded with her name but didn't want to talk anymore.
I asked a fourth woman her name, and she not only responded, but we launched into a great conversation!"
And this is what evangelism is like!"

This teen relived and then recounted to us a modern version of the Parable of the Sower, and learned a whole lot about evangelism, discouragement and persistence from 30 minute meet-and-greet after our concert.