Masquerade

We had a costume party for our English students last Saturday. Sandi was a gypsy, Susie was a mad scientist, and I was an Indy Jones wanna be. The mad scientist is my ghoulfriend.

It was a ton of laughs. Afterward we went to Kentucky Fried Chicken looking just how we do in the picture.

What mask are you putting on today?

LSU makes the prominant newspaper in Peru

The article is about the ref getting hit in last weeks game, but hey, it was funny to look at the local news and see LSU!

Click

Hold the wax, please

We all strive to be real, having see-through honesty. At least I hope we all do. To live otherwise is to be hypocritical. There's an old Latin phrase that means honesty, openness, and truthfulness. It's sine cera. It means without wax. It's used in Spanish when we say sinceramente and in English when we say sincerely.

So what in the world are we talking about when we end our letters "without-waxly" anyway? Well...

It comes from the fact that when a when a sculptor or potter had imperfections in his work, he would smooth it over with wax, giving the appearance of perfection, when in actuality it was a con, a sham. Sine Cera, means, you are true blue, what you see is what you get.

It's how we should live our lives...who we are should never change between locations and audiences.

Thought for the day:

Nobody likes a fake Christian, not even God.

So go about your life, but hold the wax, please. sincerely, Arnold

Pray for Calvin Morris

This weekend, Calvin Morris was in Peru to lead my training seminary that I was in. He went from there to Quito, Ecuador. It appears we may have gotten him sick while he was here, which may have been a good thing. Read the email IO received and pray for Calvin:

Please pray for Calvin Morris (SAM region trainer). As you pray first give praise that because he had contracted a virus, he went to the Metropolitan Hospital in Quito, Ecuador. While there the doctors determined that he had also suffered a light heart attack. The doctors performed a heart catheterization and discovered that he had some blockages, so they put in two stints. He is in ICU, but doing okay. Please pray for healing and also lift up Devra (his wife) as she stays by his side. Calvin and Devra live in Santiago, but were in Quito for a RLT meeting.

Pray for Patch

The family is passing around a nasty upper respiratory infection. Right now, Patrick has it pretty bad. The doctor said he's got bronchitis. He's got some meds and an inhaler.

Pray that we find a way to quit passing this bug around.

Hands and Feet Project

I know you've heard me talk about the H&F Project - the orphan children's home in Haiti. I want to give you the chance to hear first hand what it's all about.

Mark and Will will do a live podcast on October 21 at 9pm CST. Please mark your calendars and tune in to hear about the passion these guys have for missions.

10/21 Podcast

Worldview

I just finished up with part 1 of my Strategy Coordinator training and boy did they lay on the homework. By the time we do part 2, I have to write an in depth Worldview study on the Central Huarchiri Quechua here in Peru.



Part of our training showed the dangers of only changing external behaviors, without changing the worldview behind it. We learned that behaviors result from what values we hold. Values stem from what beliefs we have and beliefs are set by our underlying worldview. In short, our worldview is our unquestioned reality that makes us who we are. To change a people, it takes more than altered behavior, it takes an inside out change that only God can do.

Pray that as we minister among the highland Quechua dwellers of the Andes that we come to understand who they are - what makes them tick and that through that understanding that we understand how to present the gospel in a way that they make that "from the inside" change that the Gospel message causes.

Weighing In

...to add something to a topic of conversation.

I want to once again tell you all how much it means to us when we hear feedback from y'all that you are praying for us regularly. We tell you what we are doing - what's going right; what's going wrong, and you are faithfully lifting us up to our heavenly father, weighing in on our behalf. We appreciate you so much.

...to check that a boxer doesn't have an unfair weight advantage

We have an enemy who is real. Sometimes I feel like Rocky Balboa staring into Clubber's face. Satan would have us believe that it is he that has the unfair advantage in our spiritual battle, but it just isn't so. In fact, it's opposite. It is we that have the advantage.

The Bible doesn't say that we are conquerors, it says we are more than conquerors. When I was young, I heard a radio preacher once say that Jesus was like the boxer who entered the ring and won the victory and won the huge purse, but we are like the boxer's wife who, when he returned home from the fight, turned over the check to her! That fits. We are more than conquerors. We didn't fight the battle, but we get the benefits of He who did fight it for us!

Go out and live today like the victory is yours and thanks for weighing in!

"I Am" by Patrick Austin

I Am

I am the sky welcoming everyone,
And an eagle free in the sky.
I am tomorrow for I am still young,
And a traveler waiting to find new places.
I am a Baton Rouge, Louisiana for it holds what I love,
And a book holding mysteries still to be found.
I am Patrick.

Resignation

No, not for mine, at least not from this job! The following is a letter that I wrote to my engineering coworkers when I left my job to come to Peru. I found it on my hard drive and thought I'd share it with you:

What is the purpose of life? It’s a tough question. The answers are certainly as different as the number of people asked. Some choose to go through life never bothering to ask. Still others spend their entire lives focused on nothing more.

As a Christian, the answer is summarized as: Honoring God through intentional obedience. Easily spoken, less easily executed. Perfectly carried out, you find a flawless man, which obviously I am not. Instead you see a man falling short of the person that he truly desires to be. Still the pursuit continues for each of us.

Obedience implies submission. Submission almost always involves following directives over which we have no control. We do this in our business relationships all the time. Often we find ourselves on paths that make little sense to us, but still we follow our leadership. Submitting to God is no different. I have been given a directive that I find an overwhelming compulsion to follow. I am resigning my position at Invensys to become a missionary in Arequipa, Peru.

Some of you may think me crazy for giving up so much to what will amount to a life of guaranteed hardship. Don’t worry, there’s none considering myself more insane than the man in the mirror. It’s as simple as this, from a Christian’s point of view:

Christianity is either the only means for answering the purpose of life and must be followed with complete obedience and submission, or it’s a complete waste of the few precious years we have on this earth. There is no in between.

For me, the answer is clear. I must go. I have three or four weeks remaining, one of which will be spent in North Dakota at DGC. I hope that in the remaining time I will be able to say goodbye to each one of you. My immediate path will take me to Richmond, VA for seven weeks of missions training, then to Costa Rica for a year of intense language acquisition, before reaching my final destination in Peru. For those of you interested in knowing more about my new path, you can visit our missionary website at www.reapsouth.org.