Tasting God's Promises

This journey of following that we have been on, this journey that has intensified over the course of the last 6 months as we have been thrust into the next chapter of our lives has been so rich and full of goodness. It’s not been without its concerns or stresses. At the top of the list of concerns that we’ve had surrounds how Sophi and Raena would adjust to living in the Dominican, their education, their health, their tech support without specialists easily on hand, etc…

Concern is good. Concern is an expression of love. Anxiety… anxiety is different. It is the opposite of peace and inserts itself the moment trust in God gives way.  Anxiety is the perversion of concern and is symptomatic of wanting to control all outcomes on our own terms. Anxiety indulges “What ifs,” and makes obstacles of countless hypothetical scenarios kindling embers of doubt into a raging inferno of fear induced paralysis. That’s where it goes. Anxiety distracts us, leading us to ignore everything else around us because we are so consumed by things that have not happened but might. It’s an effective tool of the enemy to draw us off course and render us utterly ineffective.

Peter walked on water. He was bold enough to get out of a boat in an effort to meet Jesus who was walking on the water towards him. He did it! He was walking on water. He journeyed into the madness of trusting that if Jesus willed it the water would hold him and against all common sense and practical knowledge he was doing it. But he got distracted. He took his eyes off of Jesus and started to look at the waves all around him. He began giving the very real possibilities around him more authority over his situation than Jesus and he began to sink… But he didn’t drown. Jesus reached down, pulled him up and asked, “Why did you doubt?”

Our journey is a different kind of dramatic than that. There have been times when we’ve been tempted to be stifled and hindered by “what ifs.” But God in his grace meets us in our fear and nudges us, rescues us from our tendency to sink and reminds us that the point is to follow Him, not to stop and obsess over the rocks we could possibly trip over along the way. We’re grateful for a God that nudges. We’ve needed nudging along the way. We’re also grateful for a God that adds to our courage as we journey forward with little signs of encouragement to keep going.

Our concerns surrounding the twin’s education given their hearing loss and needed supports to succeed have been significant. If anxiety were to creep in, this is one of the tenderest areas of vulnerability for us. So the girls’ success at school has been one of the potential stones in our path to obsess over (i.e. What are we thinking moving to a place with no support, no specialized professionals, no this, no that, why the heck would we dare get out of this perfectly good boat… you get the picture). And as we dropped them off today at their first day of Third Grade in the Dominican Republic we passed through the doorway into their classroom. The door was decorated with a rainbow. There was another on the bulletin board behind the teacher’s desk. Rainbows are cool; they’re great for kids, colorful, etc. I’d seen it the week before when I was putting tennis balls on the chairs and desks to cut down on class room noise. But I hadn’t really paid attention to the detail of the door or bulletin board until this morning as the girls sat at their desks for the first time. Both the board and the door read, “Tasting God’s Promises.”

And this is when I heard Him say in my heart this morning, “the rainbows are for you, they’re for the students but they are also for you. I’ve promised you concerning these daughters of yours. I’m reminding you that they are daughters of mine and that in as much as you are their father I am more their Father and I’m yours too. I’m no stranger to your concerns on their behalf. I will care for our daughters. And to remind you of this I’ve marked the proverbial stone in your path (Sophi & Raena’s education) both within and without with a rainbow, the first marker of my promises.” And so I walked away from a Third Grade classroom this morning completely and unexpectedly floored by our Father’s love and encouragement and any temptation towards anxiety just melted away.

I love that the teacher chose “tasting God’s Promises” rather than “taste” because it conveys on-going experience in motion; it has not been completed and we are also not waiting on it. It’s happening now and it’s an on-going discovery. So “Tasting God’s Promises,” the teacher later explained is actually their class’s theme for the year. Turns out, I think it’s mine too.

God Gives Us These Things To Build Our Faith

There it was. What we had prayed for, hoped for, consulted nearly a dozen experts on, and spent a small fortune on was sitting on a paper towel. “God gives us these things to build our faith.” That was our diagnosis today. Interesting how these words weaved together by our friend and Australian audiologist serving in the Dominican created a tapestry of courage, faith, and perseverance we could wrap our family in. Grateful that she was the one telling us disappointing news because she started with a phrase like this putting everything in perspective. The tests she performed were the same ones that slapped us in the face 8 years ago. I found myself once again looking nervously at the concrete floor hoping the tests would produce good news, rather, the news I wanted to hear. The surgery we painstakingly waited 6 years to do and saved up money to have done in May had failed. The grafted skin didn’t stand a chance against planes, humidity, ear molds, and a nasty infection that blew her new ear drum. My first thoughts led to blaming myself for what I did or didn’t do to create the situation. How do you “lessen” humidity on a tropical island? My second went to the hospital bills still pouring in and how that money could have been used to feed children here instead of on a surgery that only had a 60% chance of taking. Then it came like a tidal wave. I couldn’t look at Jeff for fear of sobbing. I couldn’t look into the big brown eyes of the fragile yet courageous one for fear of falling apart. How could I tell her after everything she’s been through that it didn’t work and we were going to have to go back to all our extra precautions, away from a pediatric ER, away from our expert surgeon, away from specialists …and then her calm eyes met mine and she reminded me that “God gives us these things to build our faith”. Before fear could consume me, Hope arrived. I learned that my faithfulness was still determined to have conditions. We would go, we would stay, if we found a teacher of the Deaf to go with us and if Sophi’s ear was healed so the risks were decreased. Our hearts continued to not only be tugged, but pushed, pulled, dragged towards moving back to the Dominican. And God has shown me on His terms that it was without a teacher of the Deaf and now, painfully, without Sophi’s ear being healed. And there it was in black ink underlined years ago from another battle with overwhelming fear “No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the Kingdom of God.” Luke 9:62

So, we walk forward in faith. We dry our tears. We dry Sophi's tears and encourage her through her fears and frustrations. So many challenges in 8 short years. Yet I look at how each challenge has grown her character deeper, her wisdom wider, her fortitude stronger, her empathy and compassion towards others greater. We can't protect our children from every hurt and every frustration. In doing so we stunt their spiritual growth, their dependence on their Creator, their character development. In overprotecting we actually keep them in shallow waters when indeed, they can swim in the deep end. We appreciate your specific prayers that the infection has not affected the electrodes in her implant and we pray against meningitis. We pray for courage and peace for Sophi as she faces old challenges.

Introducing People to GO

One of my privileges serving with GO is to introduce people to our ministry on the field, check out the brief video my friend and coworker, Reid Olson, put together about Exploratory trips with GO on the island of Hispaniola.

Opiates and Operatives

There’s a used Christian book store we pass nearly every Sunday when we take our girls to get donuts after church.  We noticed that the Book Nook must have been in a former old neighborhood drugstore because of the tile in the entryway.  It simply said, “Drugs.”

Karl Marx is popularly known for the quote, “Religion is the opium of the people.”  I imagined him walking by to get a donut and snickering a little to himself, saying, “See, I told you so.”

Opium’s medicinal purposes in Marx’s day were to sedate, relieve pain and stimulate hallucinations. So per Marx’s review religion at best was little more than a coping mechanism for the oppressed and at worst a tool for power brokers to exploit and marginalize while they secured more power and wealth.  It’s seems clear that Marx believed religion served both functions.  He believed it to be symptomatic of living in a broken world.  He assumed if we could repair the world, religion would go away.

What strikes me about this critique is considering what the spiritual environment must have been like for such a critique to be levied.  The Church is not called to numbness, to a sleepy apathy, to passivity.  It’s not called to this and when we witness it as such we must recognize unfaithfulness to the mission set before the Church.  To learn what it means to really follow this God-Man named Jesus is to step out onto water with him, to embrace any and all suffering purposefully and to pour ourselves out for others, friends and enemies alike.  And it’s not for some abstract heavenly reward… some spiritualized materialism.  It’s simply for the love and glory of God and the simple desire to see brokenness restored to rights.  It is invigorating and life begetting and can awaken radical creativity!

Christians believe that the world is broken as a consequence of an alienated relationship with God that has lead to the unraveling of creation.  Human ingratitude and the refusal to accept God as enough was the first manifestation of sin in the Garden.  It alienated us from God, from ourselves, from each other and from creation.  We live at least in 4 layers of profound brokenness.  But Jesus makes possible the healing of these relationships.  We can be whole and can grow into that wholeness and call others to it.  God, through Jesus, invites us to partner with him in redeeming, renewing and restoring creation!  God’s dealing with human sin is not the end of our spiritual journey.  It is the beginning.  Now we can be made useful and can engage the world and our neighbors as stewards and friends rather than exploiters and strangers. 

There’s no time for sedation.  The world is on fire with the consequences of our brokenness set in motion long ago.  Christians have the spiritual resources to engage these fires with grace, mercy, humility and faith.  We can face the hells of hunger, of malnutrition, of poor medical care, of desperate tragedy, of cancers, various expressions of injustice because hell has no power over us because of Jesus.  We can face the hells of inner city poverty and drug addiction because hell has no power over us.  The fear of death should not hold us.  The fear of God is the end of all other fear.  We can move into slums, we can befriend drug dealers, we can provide homes for orphans, we can share our resources, collaborate and build more secure futures so that as creatures made in God’s image we can share in a life characterized by that common dignity.  We can find ultimate meaning in the everydayness of whatever career we might have if we recognize the eternal value of those we work with and engage them daily as such, co-image bearers worthy of our love and sacrifice.  Marx had a view of the “faithful” that was characterized by a numbness that was checked out from the real world and real problems.

Smokejumper

But those that have learned about the established and coming Kingdom are not so faint hearted, apathetic and diminished.  We’re equipped to be more like smokejumpers.  We’re like those that parachute into forest fires to put them out, put an end to their violence and restore the lands compromised by them.  We parachute into the impoverished inner city.  We parachute into the slum run by the local drug lord.  We parachute into messy lives and relationships at work or with our next door neighbors.  We parachute into conflict to make peace by Jesus’ means of making peace. 

We’re smokejumpers and clandestine contrivers.  We make inroads into other countries, sometimes hostile to our presence, for the sake of the Gospel.  We develop organizations to rescue children from sex-slavery.  We establish businesses to provide dignified wages for women who formerly prostituted themselves.  We dream about how we might leverage ourselves for the sakes of others.  We find ways to serve, simple and profound.  We risk… we risk.  Because we know that everything we have belongs to God and because the fear of God brings an end to all other fear and because death has lost its sting.  If we lose our skins along the way, we’ll just trade them in.  Christians, at least in our most faithful expression of what it means to follow Jesus look a whole lot more like operatives than those under the influence of opiates.  Rather than avoiding conflicts of all kinds, we are called into them as peace makers, as first responders, as pioneers in Jesus’ name.  This is the ministry of reconciliation.

Just Two Days a Week

Imagine that your neighborhood only received water twice a week, that though your house is plumbed and you’re connected to the main, that the utility only provided service to your neighborhood 2 out of 7 days. That’s 8 days of access to water a month. Imagine also that the water never runs on the same 2 days. That’s what the community of Los Perez lives with. In fact, neighbors leave the tap on so that the sound of water alerts them to waters presence in their neighborhood and then they shout and spread the word. Imagine how your life would be different living around the availability of water and your ability to store it well. Imagine how it would affect how you do laundry, wash dishes… wash yourself. Imagine having to randomly stop what you’re doing and switch over to your water based chores… you’re reading this post and then suddenly you have to stop because the waters on and dishes need to be washed and so does the baby. Along with all of that, imagine the likelihood of waterborne disease in the water you have been able to store and is all you can afford to drink.

For years now, Pastor Nico, has served this community. He lives here with his family and has established a church. Through G.O. his church is able to provide a nutrition program to the children there that would otherwise be hungry. He and his wife have taken it upon themselves to teach the illiterate adults in the community how to read and write. They have a chalkboard mounted to the exterior wall of their little house under a makeshift patio.

This summer we were able to collaborate with Pastor Nico and Mac Parrish to install a water purification system. For Pastor Nico it was an opportunity to provide safe drinking water to the people of his community in Jesus’ name in an affordable way. 5 Gallons of drinking water goes for 40 pesos (about $1.50 US). He is able to offer it for 10 pesos. This meets the people of his community where they are financially and helps to run the cost of the program. Because water is scarce we later constructed a cistern to hold enough water to be purified throughout the week. For Mac this was an opportunity to execute what would be a tremendous Eagle Scout project. At 16 years of age, he took on this very ambitious project, the fruit of which will not only improve lives but save them. This is one of 8 water project G.O. has done on the island to date. Take two minutes and check out our quick clip highlighting this great project.


The Clean Water Project in Los Perez, Dominican Republic from Jeff Rogers on Vimeo.

We are moving our family to the Dominican in June.  If you'd like to help us and help further this kind of ministry please consider making a one time contribution to "Send Us" as well as partnering with us monthly.  Details and links to donate via the web are in the panel to your right.

Three Gifts our Daughters Gave us Last Night...

Last night was a gift the Lord gave us from the girls in three parts.  The first was a song from Sophi at Taco Bell.  At Taco Bell Sophi was writing this song based on “Jesus Loves Me,” a sort of remix.  She was totally unprovoked.  She was entertaining herself.  She was singing it as she wrote it at the table.  It reads:

“Jesus, Jesus, Jesus,

Loves, loves, loves, me, me, me,

Yes He does, does, does love me

The Bible tells me so

He is strong but we are

Weak, weak, weak,

Jesus loves you even

When you sin and that’s

Why he loves you so much.”

The 2^nd and 3^rd gifts came right before bed.  Later on last night I read the Bible story about Zacchaeus to the girls. After their devotional, Raena told me that she thought everybody should be missionaries. I got to explain to her that all Christians are no matter where they work, whether they're firemen, vets, doctors, dance teachers (or at least they can be and should see it that way)... they're missionaries where they are, loving and serving people where they are at. Not everybody has to move someplace different, that's just the journey that we happen to be on. She's getting it (gift #2). It's very cool to watch.

After hearing the story of Zacchaeus, Sophi wanted to make sure that we were giving enough money to help the poor (gift #3) because he committed half of what he owned to the poor as well as repaying those he cheated four times what he had taken from them.  I explained to her that because of the work that we do, we get to help all kinds of people in all walks of life that suffer from all sorts of circumstances and especially those facing the challenges of material poverty.  These kids are keeping an eye out. Accountability comes from all over the place.

We have often wondered what our approach to life and ministry will make of our children.  We thank God for his grace in giving them hearts compelled to love others whether those others be kind or mean and spirits that desire to be generous.  They seem to be grasping things at 7 that took us longer to understand.  Our prayer is that they would grow in wisdom and peace, expressing forgiveness, mercy in humility.  They appear to be on the path…  What a blessing.

Blessing in Transition...

February 18-24 was a special time for Vicki and me.  We went back to the Dominican to help lead our annual G.O. Staff meetings.  We went down 2 days early to visit our new apartment as we prepare to move down in June.  It was a significant milestone for us as we stood out on the patio our last night there, looking up at the moon and stars with prayers of thanksgiving on our lips.  11 years prior we looked up into that same Dominican/Haitian sky on our first trip to the Dominican with Southeast Christian Church and asked God why he had brought us here.  We’ve spent 11 years discovering the answers to that question.  And so… we’re coming back.  It was a special week for one other reason.  Bob Russell came down the same week to visit our ministry and do leadership training with our staff as well as our pastors and seminary students.  Bob’s special for a lot of reasons.  His presence with us has led me to reflect on the ways in which he’s been special to me in particular.

Sophi & Raena's Baby Dedication

I grew up at Southeast.  My mother was a part-time secretary there when I was little.  I can still remember the smell of the ink of the newsletters and the clacking sound of the automated folding machine that she would use to get the letters out.  “Brother Bob” had his office down the hall.  I remember when I was 7, before I was to be baptized by my Dad, meeting with Bob in his office as he reviewed the Gospel with me, ensuring that I really understood (as much as any 7 year old could and as much as any adult can) what I was getting myself into.  For years I sat at his feet as a member of the congregation, listening to his teaching.  He was there when the twins were dedicated at the church and was present for my ordination into ministry.  And now, in what is a significant life transition for our family in moving back to the Dominican Republic, he has been present, discovering the ins and outs of our ministry and has poured his wisdom into people I care about both with regards to our staff and the local leaders we serve.

Bob teaching G.O. Pastors
& Seminary Students

Bob with our G.O. Field Staff

 

We don’t stand on our own feet.  We are not self-made people.  We are the sum total of those whose combined influences have made us who we are today and who we are becoming.  In Christian community this is how the Spirit teaches and guides us in part, through others and their lives and the lives of those that influenced them.  I’m grateful for Bob’s humility and influence, I’m grateful for his obedience.  God has used him to lay the spiritual foundations of many of which I am just one.  And I’m blessed to have been able to share a little bit of what that influence has meant in the life of our family and ministry.

Bob doesn’t like to travel outside of the U.S. much.  He’s pretty frank about it which makes me grin.  He was  outside of his comfort zone coming with us to the Dominican, but, Brother Bob, I’m so glad you did.  You were a deeper blessing and encouragement than you will ever know.  Thanks for your service on behalf of the Kingdom and your willingness to be poured out for the sake of others.

 

A Longing Fulfilled...

Eight years ago this past January, we moved to the Dominican Republic.  For the four years prior, we traveled back and forth for a few months to six months at a time between our International Headquarters in Louisville to the field in the Dominican.    A few weeks before we departed, we discovered we were pregnant.  A month after moving we discovered we were having twins.  So, our journey would include two little ones a little earlier than we had planned, but we had learned to trust God’s plans. 

Our hearts were filled with anticipation for this new journey; to have a more permanent residence, more consistent relationships, and simply to serve on the island our hearts had been bound to.  Many of you know our story and what happened next.  After only 5 short months, we landed back in the States.  What was supposed to be a short stay after our delivery, turned into an 8 year journey of faith through tears, challenges, incredible joys, victories, and miracles.

Our hearts were never released from the Dominican.  While we were not serving full-time on the field, we served stateside with G.O. building relationships, recruiting teams and partnerships, helping with the organizational structure and spending our summers in the Dominican.  While we tried not to let our roots grow too deep in Louisville, hopeful this was only a stop on our journey, God had other plans.  He led us to incredible relationships through community, inner-city ministry, and a growing understanding of Deaf culture.  The resources He poured out on our girls’ with state-of-the art medical professionals in the NICU, therapists, teachers, Deaf adults, and  other families with Deaf children was both generous and encouraging.  Even more gracious, He added another angel to our family with the healthy birth of Ella Jayde in March 2010.

The deep longings in our hearts for the Dominican and Haiti painfully remained.  For the past eight years, we’ve prayed for God to make a way for us to return.  With our girls’ special needs, we were prepared for that to be much later in our lives.  However, last summer, God began showing us in numerous ways that the time was coming sooner rather than later. 

 I type now from our apartment in the Dominican after painting the girls room because will be returning to the Dominican this June to live!  Can you stop for a moment and rejoice with us!!  I continue to read and reread “Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life.” Proverbs 13:12   Such a sweet deep longing is being fulfilled!  Thank you, God for your continued hand and guidance.  Thanks to all of you who have continued to support us on this journey.