Sanders Party of Five

The Desiring God conference was an incredible privilege to attend. I flew up there with a group of nine from To Every Tribe. David Sitton, the president of To Every Tribe, spoke on Friday afternoon during the international missions breakout segments. That night, he had a pretty entertaining Q&A session with John Piper and Greg Livingstone of Frontiers. We were also able to speak to dozens of people who were interested in coming to the CPCP here in Los Fresnos.

Here are links to the messages if you want to listen to any of them:
David Sitton’s main session
John Piper Interviews Greg Livingstone and David Sitton
Speaker Panel: David Sills, David Sitton, and Jason Mandryk

The rest of the messages are available here. Of particular note, are the messages from David Platt, Michael Ramsden, Ed Stetzer, and John Piper.

While listening to Platt and Ramsden Saturday morning I was once again broken by the need to take the gospel to the nations for the sake of God’s glory. In a stroke of providence, a few of us met up with a local missionary in Minneapolis that afternoon. He is trying to reach Somali Muslims in the area. With him, we were able to visit some shopping areas and a housing development full of Somali ex-patriots. Minneapolis is home to the largest Somali population outside of Mogadishu. Please pray for this people and those trying to reach them with the gospel.

After returning from the conference, I left with a small group for a fishing village in north eastern Mexico on the Laguna Madre.

To Every Tribe has been working in this village for several years and has a house in the village that we were able to stay in. This village was devastated by Hurricane Emily in 2005. The population plunged from 300-400 to around 150 people that live there today. They have no electricity or running water, but are able to make a living fishing in the Laguna. There are very few believers in the village, but we were able to have a Bible study with 3 believers and several unbelievers. We also spent the evening playing horseshoes and eating dinner with a few families in the village. Here are more pictures from the trip.

The next trip to Mexico will be in about two weeks. There will be a few more people on the upcoming trip, and we’ll be splitting into two teams. The team I’m on will be going to a farming village further inland.

After travelling the last two weeks, this week we were back in the classroom. The first part of the week was spent in a Bible exposition class from LRI. This curriculum was developed from the Simeon Trust model of  Bible interpretation but tailored for international settings. The goal is for us to be able to teach the material to national pastors so that they can then train the next group on their own. This week we worked through the book of Jonah. We were to focus on the text itself, pull out all of the individual data points, observe any literary features that might influence the passage’s interpretation, put it in historical context, and then try to determine the main idea or point of the text as well as any pointers or references to Christ. It was a truly humbling experience. This is going to take a lot of practice and some more reading to be able to teach it to national pastors efficiently, but  it is worth the effort if not only for my own handling of the word of God, but also for the ministries of the national pastor’s I will hopefully be able to teach one day.

The end of the week consisted of another Systematic Theology class and the first World Christian Movement class. It was a pretty intellectually draining week for all of the students but well worth the time.

Prayer Requests:

• The hundreds of people at the Desiring God conference who made a decision to go to the nations. Pray for them, their families and their churches as they try to figure out how to best pursue God’s glory among all peoples.
• The Somali people in Minneapolis and those trying to reach them.
• The believers in the fishing village in Mexico that we visited as well as those who are lost and without Christ. Also pray for the upcoming trip into Mexico. Pray for our safety as well as the people to whom we will be going to minister.
• All of the students and families here at the CPCP.
• For our family to be continually bound together. Pray for my time management skills to be increased exponentially and to keep my priorities in order as more demands are made of my time. Pray for Kandy as she continues to home school our children. And pray for Sam, Olivia, and Everett to continue to be drawn into the mission God  has for our lives.
• That we would continue to be connected with people excited about taking the gospel to the nations.

I’ll close this update with a passage from 2 Corinthians 4:1-6. It just seems fitting after the LRI class this week:

Therefore, having this ministry by the mercy of God, we do not lose heart. But we have renounced disgraceful, underhanded ways. We refuse to practice cunning or to tamper with God’s word, but by the open statement of the truth we would commend ourselves to everyone’s conscience in the sight of God. And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing. In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. For what we proclaim is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, with ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake. For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.