Category Archives: My Past

Spiritual Habits (Part 3) Prayer

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Prayer picture-flattenedI’ll never forget when my youngest son was 2 months old. I was holding him in my arms when he looked me straight in the eyes, reached out his arms to me and gave me this tremendous hug. It was breathtaking, such love. Nothing mental, no technique, just something from the deepest place of the heart, the child reaching out in love to his father. That’s how prayer should be. Prayer is really what it’s all about. The reason Jesus came, died on the cross and rose from the dead was to restore our access to the Father, through Himself.

But just like my tiny son, you don’t really have to understand it. It’s ok to try to understand it and as we get older, our minds often come to the fore much more. But prayer is a thing of the heart. So if you don’t understand it all, don’t worry, you don’t have to.

Prayer is what God wants. He loves us and wants us to love Him. And the same way we love our parents or our wife or husband or children, and want to spend time with them and talk to them and hear from them, God in the same way wants that with us. That’s prayer. King David said we should “pour out our hearts before Him” (Psalm 62:8). What a great word picture, to pour out our hearts. And that’s how it should be. Just talking to God, telling Him what’s on your heart, your joys, your fears, your thanks, your needs, your observations, God can take it all and wants to.

And the same way it’s not work or a burden or labor to communicate with your children or your dearest friend, prayer should not be some laborious work. It should be the high point of your day, something you just wouldn’t want to miss for anything.

But maybe this is pretty new to you and you’re not too sure about the whole thing. Well, just remember, “God is love” (I John 4:8). He loves you. Jesus said that “God is a spirit” (John 4:23) and then the apostle John said that “God is light and in Him is no darkness at all” (I John 1:5). So the invisible, loving God of the Universe longs to have contact and a relationship with you.

Speaking of “contact”, there’s a movie by that name and there’s a scene in it where Jody Foster is trying to see if she can get some signal back from some alien civilization by means of radio telescopes. Here’s the clip from the movie where she first gets signals back that she knows are from a distant civilization.

That’s always reminded me of the first time I really knew and understood that there is a real God, a supreme power of the spiritual world who is signaling us and wants to be in contact with us. The same utter, unimaginable wonder, amazement and joy unspeakable that Jody Foster had when hearing those signals for the first time, that was how I was when I first knew for sure that there is a real God that the Bible has told us about.

So what follows next in the movie is that she and her team, and then the whole world, begin building on that initial contact and ultimately have “close encounters of the third kind” with the aliens. But for us who know that God is real, this doesn’t have to be a movie that we walk out of. This is the reality we can live in when we have contact with the God of Eternity.

So I hope you are trying to have daily “contact” with God, pouring out your heart before Him, and even receiving His “signals” back. Because prayer isn’t a one way street. God longs to communicate back to us.

It may not be in an immediate audible voice. But I can more than guarantee you that if you are talking to Him, He’s going to be communicating with you. He said one time, “Call unto me, and I will answer you, and show you great and mighty things which you know not” (Jeremiah 33:3). And there are just oodles of promises in the Bible like that. In fact the Bible is just full of communication and interaction between God and His people.

And he wants to have the same relationship with you. He wants you to love Him and be helped by him and instructed and protected and strengthened and enlightened and blessed beyond your wildest dreams. That’s what God wants to do for you through your prayers and your time with Him.

It’s impossible to cover every aspect of prayer in such a short post here. Maybe I can write some more later or tell you about some special answers I’ve had to my prayers. But when it comes to spiritual habits, making prayer a habit and a primary part of your life is right at the top of the list.

Far Country Photos –from Borneo!

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[This is another of the newsletters that I sent to friends when I was living in Indonesia between 2003 and 2008.]

FCP from Borneo headlineIn November, 2004, 21 friends of mine took a 12 day trip into the interior of Kalimantan. This is the Indonesian portion of the island of Borneo, 80% the size of Texas and home to over 10 million people. Some of those who went on this trip were young Indonesians that I have Bible classes with here in Jakarta. Others are children of social workers who grew up here in Indonesia. And there were a few adults around my age and of a similar background, heading up the team. Their primary goal was to bring aid and God’s love to 12 villages they would visit, through personal visitation, skits, songs and classes, as well as to distribute several tons of goods which had been donated for this project.

This “Far Country Photos #3” will give you a pictorial glimpse of some of what went on during that time. These pictures will begin from the time after the team had left the capital of the province, Pontianak (population: 390,000 and situated directly on the Equator), and had driven into the interior to a training camp deep in the jungle.

Trucks pull in to Tikalong training camp, 4 hours drive into the jungle.

Rolling out to the first village. “Do you think those planks will hold that truck?” “They should, they’re teak wood.”

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Hawks and doves Part 3 – Proud to be an American

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Having lived outside America for 36 years in Christian service, my relationship to my country has been affected by that time abroad. Part of it is identity. It is very common, if not completely normal, for individuals everywhere to identify themselves, in more than any other way, as being of their nationality. They’ll say “I’m Chinese” or “I’m German” or “I’m Brazilian”. And certainly for Americans their sense of identity is strongly fixed around being Americans.

For me, it’s not totally the same. I am American; my relatives came here in 1650.  But my years abroad brought me to where I think of myself more than anything else as a person of faith in the God of Abraham, and specifically as a Christian.

I suppose most people want to be proud of their country. For Germans, their attitude to things like that has been altered by two world wars. Still, they have a lot to feel proud about. Even people from small countries feel proud of their country. But for Americans, to be proud of America is a major element of the national culture. I haven’t always totally felt the same. But I’ll tell you two times while I was abroad on the mission field that I really did.

The first was around 1996 or 1997 when I had returned to Budapest, Hungary after living a year in Moscow. What happened was that a former President of the United States came to Budapest. There was no 21 gun salute, no military parade, no fly-over of fighter aircraft.

Former President Jimmy Carter, working with Habitat for Humanity to help provide housing for the poor

Former President Jimmy Carter, working with Habitat for Humanity to help provide housing for the poor

This former US president and his small team traveled north of Budapest to an area near the town of Vac, not far from where I’d lived before. They were there to start building low cost housing for the many “Romani”, the Gypsy population which make up a large minority of Hungary. Almost all live in deep poverty. He had his hammer, he was working on building houses, this former US President. He was Jimmy Carter. That was one time when I really felt, “Well, son of a gun, there’s an American and some Americans I can feel proud of”.

The other time was a little more than 8 years later. I’d been living in Indonesia for around 18 months when the Asian Tsunami of December 2004 struck. The worst hit city of all was Banda Aceh, the capital of the province of Aceh, at the northern tip of the island of Sumatra.

As it turned out, 3 friends and I were able to make it to that city 8 days after the tsunami struck, when aid workers were only just beginning to arrive in the isolated, war torn area. Within a day we were in a large refugee camp to the north of the city, assisting some Korean doctors who needed translators and trauma councilors to work with them. There were thousands of people in the makeshift camp, the weather was very hot and there was nothing there that wasn’t brought there by trucks, no water, no food, nothing.

Suddenly an unmarked helicopter circled overhead. Everyone noticed and watched. After it looked over the camp, it landed a few hundred yards away and began throwing out aid before taking off again.

The USS Abraham Lincoln, a US Navy aircraft carrier that provided critically essential services to Aceh province, Indonesia, in the immediate aftermath of the 2004 Tsunami that devastated the area

The USS Abraham Lincoln, an aircraft carrier that provided critically essential services to Aceh, Indonesia, in the immediate aftermath of the 2004 Tsunami

It was a US navy helicopter, coming from the US aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln that had steamed to the area to see how they could help. Refuges from the camp brought the boxes back to the camp. They were marked “US AID”.

“Doggone”, I said. “There’s something I’m glad to see: using my country’s vast resources to genuinely and freely help people in their desperate time of need, even people who are Muslims.” In the next weeks the US navy became one of the only ways that my friends and I could travel south of Banda Aceh to the even more seriously destroyed towns and villages down the south coast where the destruction was the worst. Every single bridge was washed out and the only way to reach people was by helicopter. The US forces worked eagerly and tirelessly with aid groups to help people in that time and to do medical emergencies on the ships off shore as well. It was a great time to feel good about my country.

Speaking of pride, someone has said that, of the 31,000+ verse in the Bible, there’s not one that speaks well of pride. While in this world, pride is extolled and honored, in God’s eyes it’s not. “God resists the proud but gives grace to the humble.” (I Peter 5:5) So I don’t think too often about feeling proud of my country. But I’m sharing here some times when I felt really good about my nation and how they were “going everywhere, doing good,” (Acts 10:38) like Jesus did.

Far Country Photos from Jakarta

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While I lived in Indonesia from 2003 to 2008, I would, from time to time, send a newsletter to friends which was mostly photos. A picture is certainly worth 1000 words and this “Far Country Photos” shows a slum school project I was involved with in one of the very worst areas of Jakarta. This newsletter was sent to friends in August of 2003, after I’d lived in Indonesia for 5 months.

In my Fields newsletter from February I told you about the street kids’ school that I visited when I was in Jakarta in September of last year. Through the recent gift sent from some kind friends in Austin, I’ve been able to make a first monthly contribution towards sustaining the staff’s brave efforts to provide a local school in one of the worst slums in the city. Our hearts were thrilled to be able to help the founder of this project and his little band of dedicated teachers. I hope these pictures give you a glimpse of what the need is and how your gifts help and make a difference.

The gift that some of you sent means we’ll be able to help these ones through the end of 2003. Part of it will go for needed special supplies. But most will go towards providing some steady income for the 4 teachers who’ve been working as volunteers till now. Our gift to them is a drop in the bucket, if measured by Western cost-of-living standards. But in this 3rd World setting, it’s made a major difference in the teachers being able to devote more time to the kids. As the school becomes more grounded in the community, more parents will be willing to send their children to school rather than to work, beg or steal at an early age, as they do now.

I’m sitting outside the main school building, Sept., ‘02, when I first visited there.

 

The head teacher said, “This has been a dream for me.”

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Hawks and doves (Part 2) Istanbul, Turkey

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I’d been living in Indonesia for 4 wonderful years, but I was certain it was time for me to move on from there.

The Hagia Sophia mosque in Istanbul was formerly the holiest church of the Orthodox faith, built in 537. The Hagia Sophia went from being a church to a mosque in 1453 when Constantinople was conquered and became Istanbul.

The Hagia Sophia mosque in Istanbul was formerly the holiest church of the Orthodox faith, built in 537. The Hagia Sophia went from being a church to a mosque in 1453 when Constantinople was conquered and became Istanbul.

I wanted to continue a life of full time service for God and my fellow man and didn’t really want to move back to the West. After much desperate prayer, the Lord had led me to contact some friends who’d been living in Turkey for many years.

In July of 2007, I was able to visit them for 2 weeks, to gauge the situation and to see if the Lord would lead further to make a move to that part of the world. You come to where you know in your heart whether a thing is the Lord’s Will or not. But you test it and go slow as making a major move like that is very serious.

A man I met that day. He was from the Middle East and sold rugs in the large central market I visited with my friends.

A man I met that day. He was from the Middle East and sold rugs in the large central market I visited with my friends.

Of course the Turkish culture is not at all like Indonesia and it’s not like the places I’d lived in eastern and central Europe in the years before. But it is a very beautiful and very historic city. Napoleon was quoted as saying something like, “If all the world was one nation, Istanbul would be its capital.”

My friends took me around to parts of the city, to get a better feeling for the place and to get to know the people, the most important thing. We went to a very famous covered market, like almost everything there, many hundreds of years old. There were spices, carpets, electronics, all kinds of foodstuffs and the whole place was just very much the essence of Istanbul.

My friends were introducing me to folks they knew and we were going from one booth to another. In one place they introduced me to a man and I asked him where he was from. He said he was from Iraq.

Suddenly something pretty strange happened and in a sense it was embarrassing. I suddenly started crying, almost uncontrollable, in public in front of a bunch of Islamic Turkish men and my friends.

I took the man’s hand, tears in my eyes, and told him, “I’m so sorry for what my country has done to your country. And I know millions of Americans feel the same way I do.” When meeting this man, the first Iraqi I’d ever met, suddenly it was like I saw behind him the hundreds of thousands of  Iraqis who had died in the war America had brought to that land. I felt so stricken at that moment, it was so sudden and so spontaneous that I was almost surprised myself at what was happening. But I felt afterwards that perhaps it was just the Holy Spirit within me, helping me to do what just one person could do and say to another person to try to atone for the horror that had happened to his people. He humbly accepted my apology and said he held no grudge against Americans, thanking me for saying what I’d said.

We walked on and finished our afternoon. As it turned out, I didn’t end up moving to Turkey but instead, back to the Russian speaking part of the world I’d lived in before. But it was something I have never forgotten as it was so surprising and unplanned.

I certainly don’t mean to write this against the individuals of the armed forces who were part of the war in Iraq. But, whoever the individuals are who are responsible for that event, it shames and saddens me deeply that my country brought such suffering on a distant nation for what turned out to be false information and purely political/economic factors.

King David said, “I am for peace. But when I speak, they are for war.” (Psalm 120:7) Jesus is famously quoted as saying, “Blessed are the peacemakers” ( Matthew 5:9) and there are innumerable verses in the New Testament that point toward the people of God as being the meek, the healers, the peacemakers, the reconcilers, not the proud, the war-wagers  and haters of others. Only in the coming Kingdom of God on earth will the Prince of Peace rule and bring peace on earth. Meanwhile, for those of His people who are alive here and now, we are still called and commanded to love our neighbor, not kill, invade and dominate them. “If it be possible, as much as lieth in you, live peaceably with all men.” (Romans 12:18)

“Jesus coming back? No way!”

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No Way-2-flattenedWhen I was 20, I’d sometimes meet Christians who’d talk to me about Jesus of Nazareth. I usually really enjoyed it. I felt I could always argue with them and usually make them feel stupid or embarrassed about their faith. Back then, I liked to do that.

So I know how nutty it can seem to some people when they hear about the idea of a person who died 2000 years ago “coming back” to our modern world.

I won’t tell you how I came to believe in God, that’s another story. But, if you’re not too sure about this whole thing and wonder how anyone could have such an eccentric idea, let me give you some information which you may not know. Maybe you’re a very rational person and like facts. Let’s look at some.

First, let me introduce you to something which you are perhaps not familiar: prophecy. Now, don’t run off. I said I wanted to share some facts with you. But the word “prophecy” may conjure up for you some crazed fellow in robes, running around shouting about the end of the world. Or maybe some strange mumbo-jumbo of predictions someone said was going to happened, when there was nothing really prophetic about it.

But what if there was a phenomenon of prophecy that consistently came true? What if there were people who really had a proven track record of foretelling future events and those events happened? Well, there is. And this is going to bring us back to our original subject, Jesus of Nazareth.

[By the way, one of the videos that I have produced is explaining the whole phenomenon of prophecy, against the backdrop of the history of ancient Israel. It’s called “An Introduction to Prophecy in History.” You can view it here.]

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Hawks and doves (Part 1)

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hawk&dove-flattenedAn hour ago I was on a walk, something I often do after getting back from church. Suddenly I started flaying my arms wildly as it sounded like a flock of birds was flying right at me. Then I saw that a dove or quail had been in some cactus right next to the sidewalk I was on and had taken off as I passed by. It flew into some bushes a few yards away and was followed closely by a small hawk.

The hawk perched on the eve of a house, directly above the bush where the dove was. This was surprising and looked interesting. I walked up the sidewalk and stood there to see what would happen. Basically nothing happened for several minutes. Standing there, I was thinking about the whole thing. Hawks stay alive by killing things. That’s just the nature of hawks. And of course the dove had been hiding from the hawk probably down in the cactus I’d just walked by and was simply trying to stay alive. I found myself sympathizing with the dove, although I understood the hawk’s viewpoint. I thought about shooing the hawk off but I would have had to walk into someone’s yard to do that. Also it wasn’t really essential that I get involved with this, even though my thoughts were with the dove.

I walked on down to the park, took my prayer time and walked back home. As I walked back by where the hawk and dove had been, I noticed that the hawk was gone. No feathers were on the yard or around. So my guess is that the hawk got tired of waiting for the dove to fly out of the bush and it went off, seeking better game.

I walked back home, thinking about my experiences at church today and in the last months. And I was thinking some about the hawk and the dove. There was the hawk, trying to prey upon the dove. And I was thinking if any of this was significant and maybe why the Lord let that happen right in front of me.

And the thought came to me that this was all a bit of an allegory of how some things are in some churches and in Christianity right now. Jesus said to His followers, “Be wise as serpents and harmless as doves.” (Matthew 10:16) When the Holy Spirit descended on Jesus, it was said to be like a dove. (Luke 3:22) Often God’s people are pictured as sheep but sometimes they are pictured as doves. Jesus called them “harmless”. So I suppose a real church or gathering of the people of God should be somewhat like a flock of doves, harmless, together and free. But from this experience today that the Lord was letting me have, I do have to admit that some churches I’ve been to are like that dove in the bush with the hawk just above it.

In 2010 in Houston, Texas, after returning from a lifetime of missionary service abroad, I was somewhat desperate to find a home church. I ended up going to a large evangelical church in north Houston, hoping to find Christian friends to connect with. The first Sunday the sermon was pretty good. I went on to the adult Sunday school, somewhat wandering in as someone new, a guest. Before the meeting was started, a woman began talking to me about President Obama. She went on and on about how he was just the same as the former dictator of Romania, Nicolae Ceausescu. Others from the class were standing around as she talked to me, a visitor.

As a missionary, I was in Bucharest, Romania for four months in early 1992, at a time when the social upheavals in Romania were still very much in flux. For much of my life, Eastern Europe had been the field I was called to. So to compare our President to a Communist dictator was not something I felt comfortable with, either factually, or emotionally.

Also it was heartbreaking that this was a well known evangelical church, with the latest in facilities, its own school and thousands of attendees. I was someone who was really seeking for a Christian family and then I was set upon as soon as I entered a Sunday school by a radical political agenda. I tried another Sunday school group in the same church next week. Again the Sunday school theme of the hour was also dominated by a strong political agenda, with much in the way of disparaging comments about those of the opposite view.

“The hawks” were preying on “the doves”. I ended up ceasing my search for a church home in Houston. Probably if I’d looked and looked, I could have found something. But I had a demanding job and also I felt still called to work on the series of videos that have finally been hosted now on a web site.

But even here in Austin I find  “hawks”, people in the congregation I go to who feel that the body of Christ is the place to recruit and propagate their strongly political, worldly message on Sunday mornings. I don’t begrudge people having their political views. I was brought up in a very politically minded family and there’s a time and a place for that. But I am a dove and that’s what Jesus called His followers.  I don’t want to be attacked by hawks in church on Sunday morning.

(How about you? Have any thoughts about “hawks and doves”? I love to hear from you about it. You can use the reply box below. God bless you!)

Wishing you a Merry Christmas

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Just a short personal note here, I’d like to wish you a happy, joyful, faith-filed Christmas. The very fact that I can be doing a post on a blog like this is like a little miracle, something that was only a distant hope or dream last Christmas. I know in my heart I really have a lot to be thankful for. I’m in my 60’s now and my parents are up into their 90’s and they are still hanging in there. So it’s been a wonderful year for me, perhaps one of the best I’ve had.

If you keep up with the news, current events and the world around us in these times, there’s so much to be saddened about, to feel afraid of or to be furious about. I was brought up in a family of activists in political and social matters. Then, when I went from being an atheist to being a Christian, that same activism carried over into a life of Christian service abroad for 36 years. But still, when I see the fear, the confusion, the tragedy, the lies and misinformation that are so endemic in society today, it is a struggle at times to keep my eyes on the Lord.

But then, He has the best ideas and solutions because He really is real and is more concerned about all these things and more able than we are. And I remain determined to try to do what I can to be used by Him to bring truth and change to this world, as He leads. May God help us all to focus in prayer all the more this coming year and to commit our time and energies to His Highest and best, perhaps as never before.

It was said in the Bible of one obscure woman , “she has done what she could.” That’s my prayer: that I can know in my heart in the coming year that I have done what I could, for Him and for my neighbors, the people of this world. I pray that the same can be said for you too: you’ve done what you could.

Best wishes for a great Christmas and an amazing New Year.

Your friend in Him,

Mark McMillion

Fields newsletters

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In 2003 I moved abroad again after of living in Austin, Texas for 2½ years. I’d been living outside the US for most of my adult life before that and was in need of a break, as well as time with my family. But the Lord led me again to “go into all the world” for Him, this time to far off Indonesia.

I wanted to stay in contact with friends and it worked out that I was able to start a series of newsletters which I would send to friends back in the States and elsewhere. I’ll include here the first Fields newsletter I did, which was completed shortly before I left for Indonesia in early 2003.

Greetings and God bless you. My name is Mark McMillion and I’m preparing to move abroad after being in Austin for the last 2½ years. It’s certainly been a wonderful time here in many ways, with new friends and new experiences. But over recent months I have been feeling the Lord’s tug on my heart to move back to the way of life that He called me to live for around 30 years, before I came back to Texas in 2000.

So I wanted to put this newsletter together for some of you who have gotten to know me here, to let you know a little more about my hopes and plans. Also I’ll add a few pictures from years past when I was living outside the US and was involved in full time Christian service. My hope is that this newsletter will be the beginning of something I can continue to send to you from my new field, in order to keep in contact with those of you who I have gotten to know and grow close to while here

I thought to call this newsletter “Fields”. Jesus used this analogy several times, saying in one place, “…the field is the world…”. He sends us to sow and share freely the seed of the love and the gospel of God. I’ll add some pictures here next of some of the foreign fields He’s allowed me to go and do the work of a sower of the Word over the years.

FIELDS OF THE PAST

I don’t have many pictures of my early years. But it was often spent on the streets in personal talks with other young people in places like Hollywood Boulevard and Greenwich Village, or in similar places in London, Amsterdam or Copenhagen.

Here’s a photo from 1976 when I was talking with a young girl in a fishing village in northwest Denmark. Yes, that’s me with the Bible, she has a gospel tract in hand, and I have hair too!

In 1986 I moved from Europe to central India, along with my sons Andrew, JJ and Ariel.  During this time I home schooled the boys as well as some children of other friends we knew and worked with in the area. We spent the next year and a half there in a variety of ways. At times we went door to door to meet people and present Christian material. Or we would use the boys’ musical skills in small performances or when we went to schools like this one in Andra Pradesh in the next picture. It was all not without incident. But it might come as a surprise to some how much of a blessed time this was and how much we felt the Lord’s favor and protection.

At the end of this time, doors began to close for us there. We moved back, somewhat sadly, to Scandinavia, the area my former wife is from. Unbeknownst to us, the Lord all the while was working to have us back in Europe just as the doors to Eastern Europe would open at the fall of Communism in 1989. Central and Eastern Europe had been our vision and calling in the late 70’s and early 80’s and it was with great joy we were able to go back there again. From 1990 to 1998 almost my full time was spent there and in Russia.

In this picture I’m at the Nagyatad refugee camp in southern Hungary in 1994. With me is a Christian sister, Rebecca. She is from Sarajevo in Bosnia. The conflict in the region brought 1000’s of refugees pouring over the borders and we daily visited this abandoned Russian military camp, full of Bosnians of an Islamic background.

The couple with me in this picture were considered the elders of the camp. The woman was an Islamic religious woman and much respected. In the camp there had been a refugee who was deeply troubled emotionally and spiritually and no one could help her. Through our council and prayers the woman was delivered. So this Muslim matriarch recognized God’s power working through us and told the ones in the camp that we should be accepted there.

One day Rebecca and I talked with a dozen young Bosnia men. They’d been in the Bosnian army but they told us they’d mostly been roving bands of undisciplined irregulars, killing and being killed. I prayed desperately to know what to say to these men who’d recently been through such trauma and had witnessed the death of their wives and children. One of them is in the picture at the right.

With Rebecca translating, the Lord led me to talk to them about forgiveness. My own time of divorce and losing my family came to mind. It was not the same as they had experienced. But it was when I needed to call out to God to help me not allow bitterness and revenge to take hold of my heart. They listened and responded as we opened our lives to each other. It was a few hours of heart-to-heart talk among people who had been deeply wounded and needed to find a way out. I’ve prayed that the seed sown there and elsewhere in that region will grow to a new generation of people who will break the cycle of hatred and war.

FIELDS OF THE FUTURE

Last September I visited some Christian friends in Indonesia and they’ve encouraged me to help them in the work they do. While I was there we visited this school in Jakarta for street children that they help regularly. The students are not orphans but their parents are too poor to provide an education for them. That day we delivered crates of pasta, sacks of rice and several used computers which businesses had given us to pass on to poorer schools like these. It’s a predominately Muslim country of 240 million people but there is also a large minority of Christians. I had several meaningful evenings of Bible study with people there, similar to ones I’ve had here in Austin with some of you.

This is the country I feel the Lord is leading me to, to be a help to the ones I know there and to return, God helping me, to a life of more fulltime Christian service.

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I stayed in Indonesia for nearly 5 years and it was an incredible, blessed experience. In future posts on the blog here I will be adding more of these Fields newsletters that were written while I was there.

Moving abroad again in 2003

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This is the second Fields newsletter that I sent to friends in 2003, shortly after I arrived in Jakarta, Indonesia at the beginning of what turned out to be 5 amazing years in that wonderful country.

Hello to you again, this time from Sweden! Since my last newsletter, many things worked out well so that I was able to fly from Austin, Texas and arrive here on March 20th.

Visiting my kids and former wife on the Swedish countryside, on the way to Indonesia, 2003

Before going any further, I’d like to thank the many of you in Austin who helped make it possible for me to move on like this. Quitting my job with the State of Texas, closing the apartment, selling my car and getting rid of most of my things was all a lot less traumatic than it could have been and none of the things that I was afraid might happen actually did. Thank the Lord and God bless you! I’ve been staying on the Swedish countryside with my former wife and her husband and seeing my children.

A surprise

A year ago I was preparing to make a video of a Bible class I’d been teaching in Texas.

Reviewing texts before filming

It’s one I also taught before on the mission field, in such places as Hungary. My son, Ariel, and I prepared a number of charts and maps for the class but, after most of it was ready for videoing, complications arose and the project was shelved.

In March I was saying goodbye to some friends in Texas who’ve had years of experience in videoing. The subject came up about the class and they said they really hoped they could film it before I left.

From a map that’s used in the video

My schedule was tight but I was able to take 2 days to try to do the filming. The class is on the subject of Bible prophecy and the history of Israel, an introduction to both. It’s primarily aimed at those who are new to these subjects, spiritually hungry but possibly without a background or knowledge of Christianity.

Ultimately it did get done but it was a fight. Do you ever wonder why strange things happen right when you are trying to go forward for the Lord? The first thing was that, 48 hours before we were to start, I came down with a really bad cough, just out of nowhere, the first for me in many months. Hmm.

But since everything had been prepared a year before, mainly what was needed now was that I “know my lines”, the 25 minutes of the class which I needed to quote on camera, like in a theater or play. In some of the pictures you can see me with a text in hand. I’m furiously doing my last bit of rehearsing before the camera roles for the next part of the class.

Filming in Texas, 2003

The first day went well and by the evening I was totally “horse”, only able to whisper. Meanwhile their professional camera had broken down. The backup camera was set up for Europe and so things were looking bleak. I mentioned to my friends that I’d brought my own handheld camcorder and they thought they might be able to complete the filming with that. We prayed desperately for my health and the technical side and decided to try it again in the morning.

The next morning I was rested but still couldn’t even talk. So it came down to one of those “Lord,-we-need-your-help-right-now!” kind of prayers. The Lord promises power for the hour, “as thy days, so shall thy strength be” (Deuteronomy 33:25b), for that day.

But sometimes, “as they went, they were healed” (Luke 17:14), we have to do the “wenting”. I kept rehearsing and praying, believing and preparing and they kept getting set up. I had to drive back to Austin in the early afternoon so it really was now or never.

Well, it wasn’t a sudden flash of healing but I got better. By late morning I was finding enough of my voice that I was able to go back on camera. In the end it did get finished, a real answer to prayer and a blessing  that this project was able to be completed before I left.

Leaning against a papaya tree,
Jakarta, Indonesia

I’ve been in Indonesia now for about two weeks and it’s been wonderful. It reminds me of what Mark Twain said, “95% of all the things I ever worried about never happened.” Here’s a picture, next to a papaya tree. In the yard are also coconut, star fruit, mango and jackfruit trees. So in some ways we don’t have it so rough.

I have had some involvement with the projects my friends have here. On an evening last week I went to a Christian orphanage and I have an appointment to do a Bible study with the young people there next week.

FOR NOW…

They say, “out of sight, out of mind” but that’s not been the case with my thoughts of you to whom I send these. I think of you often, pray for you and look forward to hearing from you. Please do continue to pray for me, it really does matter and help. And I very much enjoy hearing from you, how things are for you as well as any reactions, questions or comments you have on the things I’ve sent you.

With love and prayers, your friend, Mark