2 Prayer Requests

Wow!  Life is going by at an astonishing pace right now.  Just just over a week until Christmas.      


Christmas in the Indonesian church, at least the church I am serving at, is very different than Christmas at home.


There are 2 upcoming events that will stretch me.  Sometimes, I can't predict what will stretch me, but in this case, I know beforehand.  The built up has already stretched me.


First, I can't think of the last time I was so terrified and so excited for something as I am for tomorrow.  I will visit a gathering of people with HIV/AIDS.  This is a dream come true for me.  I have always wanted to sit and talk with people whom have AIDS.  At the same time, I am uneasy and uncertain going into this.  There will be children and adults.  Prostitutes and homosexuals.  Gathered together in one home.  


Prayers that I may be able to see and hear Jesus within and among the people I will sit beside.  Prayers that I may have the right words and actions that does not reflect any superiority, cheap charity or pride.  Pray that it may be clear that although I am a white North American, I do not come to bring medicine or money. I come to receive the stories and lives of those whom are highly stigmatized.  I pray that I can discover not their poverty and the chains that bind them, but the poverty and chains in my life that limit the full life that Jesus gives.


Secondly, I am leading a 1.5 hour session at the Youth Leadership Camp for middle-high school youth.  It is about living lives of worship--lives that seek justice.  Like everything I do, it will be in Indonesian, which is the first challenge.  The second, is that I have used words like justice so much through university, that it is a challenge for me know how to communicate that  to high school youth.  The third, is that I want to be creative, which always runs the risk of not working well. But with the other possibility that it is awesome.  So I have created different creative ways of communicating what I could say in a speech.  


Pray that I may communicate well and that my time will help create church leaders whom seek lives that love their neighbor--lives of worship.  


Pray that the youth may engage the material and be inspired to become leaders that will worship fully--which will lead other to worship fully as well.   


Thanks for prayers.  I had to deal with an intense morning of homesickness that other day.  But I take that emotion as a good and beautiful thing.  Miss you all!