Light in Darkness

Eric smiling about his new found love for sushi!

I found out recently I really enjoy sushi! Sorry Dad! Especially the California rolls with crab, avacado, cucumber, and teriyaki sauce. And now onto the GAP front:

Last weekend was a difficult and stressful time at Splash 2. I was sick, had two babies to take care of and was my first time doing respite at this house. My wife and I went to bed crying on one night and not happy on another night. We were crying out to God to get us through to our next break. But in the middle of this I got to talk to one of the teenage boys. As soon as I came over this teenage boy brought me into his room to show me where he had stashed some condoms and talked to me about how he wants to be a gangster. God provided for me the opportunity to share with him about how sex, girls, drugs, and selfish living is empty... but Jesus Christ is the one who truly gives life. By the look on his face it seemed he heard what I was saying.

Then the next day we had a check in while my wife took some kids to the football game because I was sick. While they were gone I got to share the gospel with the new girl. She ended up looking up videos on YouTube about God changing peoples lives, people being raised from the dead, and Jesus Christ's forgiveness of sin. After each video she would say, "Wow, that is cool." She has continued to have some good conversations with the hosue parents. While I was sharing with her another girl who was home at the time said, "You are not a Christian? I love Jesus!" I can only imagine this is God working through the house parents. My wife also got to share the gospel with the two other boys.

I want to end with this verse from Colossians 1:6. "All over the world this gospel is bearing fruit and growing, just as it has been doing among you since the day you heard it and understood God's grace in all its truth."

Prayers: We need God to give us His perspective again and again to go through trials to build His kingdom and reach out to these rough kids! Otherwise we will not make the sacrifices. This job can be very hard.

Praises: God provided chances to share about Him and the gospel this week. And my wife was led by the Holy Spirit to share as well! Pray for God to open the eyes of these kids to the truth.

Pork Chop Bloopers

Eric and I have enjoyed a very relaxing 4 days in between respites. It has been a great chance to recover and be together while we prepare for our upcoming schedule. It seems like it's been a while since we were just able to hang out together every day and not have a million errands and things we're trying to get done. We did a little apartment decorating, ate ice cream, watched movies, and I finished part of my scrapbook while Eric played video games. If only the weather would cool off more so we could go enjoy some outdoor activities. That will come later.....

One of my favorite things to do for Eric when we are home is make yummy dinners for him and make the table look nice like at a restaurant. I had not done this for a while so on Saturday night we got some pork chops out of the freezer and I looked up a Rachel Ray recipe under the "Romantic Dinners" heading to find something that sounded adventerous and yummy. The people that had just stayed in our apartment left us some strawberries and asparagus so I was hoping to find something that would put these components to use. Sure enough! There was a recipe for pork chops with strawberries and I could just make the asparagus on the side. We agreed that it sounded unique and possibly tasty. The following picture shows the result of our meal of "Columbus Pork Chops", asparagus, and bread.

Eric was very pleased with this meal! We thought it was very yummy. I will post the recipe on our recipe blog if anyone is interested. It's very easy to make!

Unfortunately, we had one little blooper with the pork chops. After dinner when we were cleaning up I started cooking the last two pork chops so we could have them for left overs the next day. You start the process by searing them in the skillet and then putting the whole skillet in the oven for 10 minutes. I put them in the oven and forgot to set a timer! We started watching a movie and then just went to bed. I woke up the next morning to a funny smell and realized that I never took the pork chops out of the oven! The following picture shows the result:

Fortunately, my nice big skillet is not ruined and nothing caught on fire! Thank you, Jesus!

Praises: We have had a great couple days off and we have had a much easier month so far than September was. We are also coming up on a big break and the Adler parents are visiting which is very exciting for us! We have also been able to see how God has used us to bless the people we are working for and with. We are thankful to be working with awesome co-workers! One couple even bought us a Coldstone gift card to show their appreciation for us.

Prayers: We are about to spend 5 days at the toughest house in GAP. The parents are new to us this summer and all of the kids are new to us this summer as well. All of the kids are struggling with behaviors and this house is frequently visited by the cops. There is also a set of twin 1 year old girls who will be keeping us on our toes and possibly prolonging our desires for our own children. (Well....possibly.)

Please also pray for a set of house parents who just said good-bye to two little boys who have been in their care for 3 years. They were adopted into a permanent home leaving behind their long relationship with these parents as well as their 13 year old sister who is up for separate adoption. It is a bitter sweet time for them.

We miss and love you all!

GAP and the Gospel

Recently the director of GAP Ministries was gracious enough to get together with me. It always helps me to meet with him because then I can get more of the bigger picture of what God is doing with the ministry than what it sometimes appears God is not doing with a child. The main thing I wanted to talk to him about was the ministry's view on the gospel. Our meeting was quite interesting with a lot of bible stories and interpretation thrown around. I think this comes from working for a ministry where multiple denominations are coming together to accomplish a common purpose. He was also trying to make a biblical case for relational evangelism over proclamation evangelism. I have no problem with this but I think it is a kind of tricky case to make because you are trying to biblically say, “There always needs to be or should be a relationship before the gospel is preached.”

This past year God has been beginning to put a desire on my heart for the gospel message. I remember being given the opportunity to be the “speaker” one weekend for a youth retreat. I got the opportunity to give two talks. The first talk I was able to do on faith and God. I was able to speak from the heart about what God was teaching me about faith. The second night I was appropriately supposed to talk about Christ, which I did, but this message was flat and foreign to me for some reason. I realized I was not living day by day with a very real understanding of what Christ accomplished on the cross. That has been changing for me recently.

Last year while ministering on a college campus a freshmen friend of mine pulled me aside one day and quoted the following scripture to me from 1 Corinthians 1.

“For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written: “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise; the intelligence of the intelligent I will frustrate.” Where is the wise man? Where is the scholar? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe.”

He went onto explain that we can talk to a pagan about the evidence of morality, God's action in history, and creationist science but the gospel will always be foolishness to those whose eyes God does not open. But for those whose eyes God does open the opposite happens – the foolish message becomes the power of God unto salvation. Since then I have become ever increasingly interested in telling people the things listed below. These are essentially the main points of the gospel. See Acts 2:22-38 to read about Peter presenting the gospel message or take a walk down the “Romans Road”.

• God is Holy and lives in unapproachable light. [1 Timothy 6:16]
• We all are sinners. [Romans 3:23]
• God cannot be with sin. [Adam and Eve]
• Jesus takes our penalty of sin [Cross] and then gives us His perfect righteousness. [Colossians 1:22]
• Once our sin is taken away he gives us the Holy Spirit to be our counselor and guide. [Acts 2:38]

Now my desire is to see God use the gospel to change lives-- not great moral teachings or good loving friends. The bible says the gospel is the power of God for salvation [Romans 1:16] and that the gospel grows and bears fruit [Colossians 1:6]. Not only that but it seems the proclamation and appropriation of the gospel is commanded [Mark 8:35, Mark 16:16, Matthew 28]. So I guess if you feel unable to preach the gospel to anyone else, preach it to yourself until it changes you. A good lead into a gospel discussion is the question, “Do you think you are good enough to get into heaven?”

So the result of my discussion with the founder of GAP was that he was very willing to let me preach and teach about the gospel but he doesn't want it to prevent me from doing my job for the state well. I should try to prevent having the gospel be a reason kids are blowing up in my house and case workers are calling me. I guess there are drawbacks from being state funded but I don't foresee this being a problem especially if I am simply trying to be faithful.

Prayers: Bethany and I are still in a tough place where part of us wants to leave our job and have more time for each other and friends. I also want to stay in a place where I am growing in “losing my life for the sake of the gospel” and make these sacrifices to see God change these kids lives. The only way Bethany and I can stay in this job is by the power of the Holy Spirit working in us and the kids to make our desires more for God then for ourselves. So we ask you to pray towards that end. Pray that Bethany and I would be like Paul and really find contentment in all circumstances and joy in our trials. Pray that God would provide in every way to sustain us and praise Him. Otherwise it is only a matter of time until we move on. Pray also for us as we start at a new house this week with 11 kids! We are once again intimidated and will try to press into the Lord for strength.

Praises: Eric had a good meeting with the founder. We both had good times hanging out with friends from small group this break.