Where did you recieve your call?

Interestingly we just took a survey in ywam staff meeting and only 2 people recieved their call to missions while at their home church. 8-10 people recieved a call to missions while on a short term mission trip. Most people recieved their call between 20-30 years old, a few people knew as kids they wanted to be missionaries and 1 person after 50 years of age.
So hey, next time we send some young adults off overseas and wonder what they could do, just remember if even only one of them decides to go into long term missions and the rest just come back with a greater understanding of missions...its worth it!

Last post of outreach

So hilariously, the rest of our filming became so exhausting that I didn't manage to write again.
Here are some photos of the process though:




One of our locations we filmed in...beautiful areas.




The 'older brother' acting out a scene where he explores meditation as a way to relieve his guilt.




On the last day of filming the headman's wife asked if we could pray for the family, the village and the Shan people. They had only 1 son left alive out of 4 children.




Then we had a big dinner with all people involved and they laughed themselves silly watching a trailer we'd made on the fly.
All together it was extremely hard work but extremely fun too. However, i caught some unidentified fever on the last day and am still recovering!

Radio & Formulas

Last week I was interviewed on radio about my faith and missions. Overall it was a good and comfortable chat and I thank God that I was able to get clear phone reception out in the fields we were filming in.
But, like many public presentations I've done, I was kicking myself later about one answer I gave. Ross Clifford, the interviewer, asked me "what does the gospel of Jesus mean? For my radio listeners." Now, admittedly I am standing in the mud of a rice paddy in a small village and am having trouble picturing the average Australian listener at that moment, but really that is no excuse for the jargon and ramble about love, salvation, hope and heaven that came out then.
Peter says to be ready at all times to explain faith, and after all this I should certainly be able to do that. Yet, currently I am reading a Donald Miller book, 'Searching for God knows what', and in it he says that we sell Jesus short by trying to present the gospel as a set of theological ideas or 5 step formula.
And while I do believe in knowing clearly what you believe, I think in half hashing through formula on radio is where I went wrong.
It caught me off guard. In reality, the person of Jesus and all that He means to me is too hard to fit into sentences, although I'll try now.
Jesus is the great holder of my hand as He tugs me wildly through this adventure that is my life. And although we career together into crazy and unfathomable places, He will never let go, even if I might sometimes, until we reach the final eternal holiday beach resort in heaven where every tear is wiped away and all the kids I've met suffering from HIV are playing in the sand. Till then I will try to introduce more people to Jesus and see His influence spread, because through watching suffering I have branded on my soul the realisation that only His kind of love and reign can heal the world...because only God can change the heart of men.
Ok, I love you Jesus and that was a way better attempt to explain that!

"Have you seen my brother?"

Today we are filming in a Shan village the story of a young man who sets out to find his brother as the dying wish of his mother. The search takes him back into Burma, where his family had originally fled from, and where his brother was last seen trying to revenge their father.







A flashback shot of the brother.

Filming has been fun... Villages and fields, myself running around madly dressed as a Shan woman in a village on fire scene, swordfights and 4 wheel driving late at night.

Reality TV

Last week, 4 friends and I were in a truck seeing one of us flying off and we were joking that I should make a reality TV show about our lives because they are so strange. There's B, my neighbour who is missing the front bumper to her truck that we were in because it was used to rescue a tribal leader in danger of assassination by the Burmese and on the way back they stopped to pull another truck out of an avalanche and so the bumper was lost.
And then there's K, who randomly gets offered rides anywhere by men who are definitely not taxi drivers, R, who just left for 3 weeks of village filming and I, who will soon join her. This morning I patted and bathed a baby elephant at a farm run by an ex-Hell's Angel bikie.
Our lives would seem so completely unbelievable if people at home knew what happened to us each day.