TEAMWYNN » General

Getting ready for Renewal Conf…

Chris — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 14:04:51 +0000

Getting ready for Renewal Conference. Yikes.

Mason and Kara series of photos

Chris — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 23:15:00 +0000

We were goofing off with the camera. We love weekends.

My Life

Chris — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 21:13:00 +0000

This is my life.

Romantic Weekend Getaway

Chris — Sun, 02 Dec 2007 16:24:00 +0000

Kara on our romantic weekend getaway. She got all dressed up for me.

Full photo slideshow of the trip.

Cool new Missionary Info Tool

Chris — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 18:34:00 +0000

I’m just getting a cool new tool out to missionaries that will allow them to distribute their personal ministry page on the WorldVenture website to virtually anywhere. This could mean that they could have their personal ministry page posted to all their supporting church websites.

I don’t know anyone else doing this kind of church support for missionaries. Very cool.

Here’s an example below of Rodger and Lynne Schmidt

We’ve arrived

Chris — Wed, 01 Aug 2007 14:53:00 +0000

Well, Kara, Elaine, Angie and I just arrived at our lodging in Mozambique. We’re still waiting for the rest of the team that should be in tonight, and the two girls from Brazil which are currently missing in action. But we’re sure they just got delayed along the way. And let me just say it is a long way.

Here’s a little picture of the place we’re staying. This should make the mothers a little more comfortable. It is much different outside the walls. I’ll have more pictures of that latter.

Hondo and Trisha in Slovenia

Chris — Sat, 28 Jul 2007 15:57:00 +0000

I wanted to pass the great news from my brother, Hondo, and Trisha in Slovenia. They’ve been there most of the summer and are running evangelistic English camps. Soon, my brother will be leading a two week training school called Operation Indigenous Empowerment, (OP.I.E.) for short.

In the long run the two of them hope to end up in Slovenia working with youth full time. I’ve done all I can to get them to think of Africa with Kara and I, but their a lost cause.

Here are a few of their photo galleries from this summer:

July 22

June 10

A few days away

Chris — Tue, 24 Jul 2007 12:51:00 +0000

Hello everyone,

Kara and I are getting our mailing list together. We leave next Monday for Mozambique and Kenya. We’ve been working through various things, like finding enough socks and underwear to bring for the kids in the orphanages, the camera I hoped to take had a broken mic so Kara let me get another video camera (watch for footage on our blog … it’s a nice camera , and Kara had what seems a strong reaction to the malaria medicine last night.

The good news is more donations for gifts for the kids have come. Kara, with our other team members, are getting some of the last things this week. We have an option of different malaria medicine, its just ridiculously expensive so we’ll decide what to do in the next few days.

It looks like we’ll be helping build a playground and paint a nursery for one orphanage in Mozambique. At least that’s what they asked for. Also, my hopes of shooting video for Tumaini in Kenya are a go ahead. While care is meeting and learning about medical opportunities around Nairobi, I plan to help tell the story of the children’s home through video, and produce some short web oriented pieces for each of the kids as a gift/aid to child sponsors.

We’ll get our itinerary up soon on the web. I know some of you aren’t to wild about hitting our website, but it’s such an easy reliable form of communication. If I post it to the blog, I know you can see it. If I email you from Africa, I don’t know if it makes it or if it makes it to everyone, or if it got eaten by spam, or whatever. We’ll send and email as we have the opportunity, but keep and eye on our website for our most current information.

We love you all,
Thank you for sending us with your prayers and thoughts,

Chris and Kara

Progressing Well

Chris — Mon, 18 Jun 2007 02:09:00 +0000

It looks like our plans for Mozambique and Kenya are locked down. Only one thing. The option of going to Chang Mai, Thailand has come up again and we need prayer. Again the purpose of this trip is to explore and maybe discover what God means by the “Go” he’s placed in our hearts.

We should know in a day or so whether Thailand is even a possibility again. In general, we are excited. The chances to serve, at least in theory, that we see in Thailand, excite us.

Thanks for the prayers.

By the way, here is heart-warmer:

One Minute Way to Help End Genocide in Darfur

Chris — Mon, 11 Jun 2007 14:19:00 +0000

This was forwarded to us by our good friends Aaron and Katie. This campaign refers to the tactic of divestment, i.e. withdrawing business investment, from a government or country supporting genocide, like in the Sudan.

Signing an online petition like this is a 1 minute way to help contribute your voice to efforts to end this problem. Other advocacy groups, like the One campaign, have been effectively using internet based petitions like this to influence policy makers and decision makers with influence over these events.

Here is the link: http://ga6.org/campaign/fidelitydivestment

Here is an excerpt explaining what this advocacy group is doing:

Have you heard of divestment? It’s one of the key tactics that
was successfully used to end apartheid in South Africa and it
can help end the violence in Darfur, too.

To “divest” means to withdraw investments from companies who are
supporting the genocide in Darfur by doing business with the
government of Sudan.

Join me in fighting the genocide by urging Fidelity and other
investment institutions to divest their holdings from any and
all companies doing business with the government of Sudan.

Click the link below to sign the Divest for Darfur petition now
and help cut off financial support for the government-sponsored
violence in Darfur!
http://ga6.org/campaign/fidelitydivestment

Diplomacy is crucial, but economic pressure may prove an even
more powerful way to force Sudan to cooperate with international
efforts to end the genocide.

Sudan has been very responsive to economic pressure in the past
so we have reason to hope that they will pay heed to the
divestment efforts.

Outstanding Powerpoint Background Site

Chris — Wed, 04 Apr 2007 03:15:00 +0000

This Flickr group hosts backgrounds for church worship slides and could probably be used for PowerPoints.

http://www.flickr.com/groups/worshipgraphics/

Cement Pad

Chris — Tue, 26 Dec 2006 01:33:00 +0000

As I neared the addled soul, she put a filtered Marlboro into the corner of her mouth and lit it. Dawn was a few hours ago and she had been smoking since before then, I figured. Her eyes were on me.
A cool wind came from the north. The naked maple trees and the brown grass all waited for spring to quit teasing and show up. The apartment complex had acquired the smell of cheap burnt wood, which still lingered heavily in the mornings. I liked it. I liked the cold. She probably didn’t. She hardly wore anything.
A blue jean jacket, which would have done her scrawny white shoulders some good, laid over her backpack, her mobile dresser. She acted like she was sunning herself, like she wanted to be there.
She sucked her cigarette, spit out the smoke, and spoke while I still walked over. “You look like a man with something on his mind.” Her voice wavered.
“I am,” I said.
She adjusted her seat on a cement pad built for the air conditioning units. We were in a grassy area hidden behind the last building in the complex. Except for this patch of winter-brown grass, the complex was all parking lots and painted lines. I often went there seeking solitude. Over the fence grew a stand of maple trees and tangling shrubs with an enchanting set of tire tracks, overgrown with grass and disappearing into the underbrush. This morning, the spot clearly suited her too, since it was a place to sit and out of the way and behind everything.
The bright sun made the grass and the building and the cement pad blanched like exposed film, and she looked like an angel; her pale skin glowed like holiness. We both squinted to see.
“You come back here the other day,” she said. “I saw you over there.”
Of course she had. That was when I had started to say something, made a butterball expression, buckled, and slunk away.
What worried me most was I lived here. If something went wrong, I mean, I couldn’t just disappear. It was the kind of complex most people simply came and went from, and kept their heads down while doing it. But even so, it wasn’t big enough to disappear: one entrance, one exit. It wasn’t like the brochures either, if it even had brochures, I’m not sure it did, but I imagine, if it had brochures, it wouldn’t be anything like those. The place was good for students who had no money, for single mothers working two jobs, for the government assisted. But there were others. They were why you kept your head down, people who hadn’t found peace with the world or didn’t want peace with it or something.
How many nights ago had I called the police? I can’t even remember, now. I heard gunshots in the parking lot, half a dozen of them, which woke me up; or maybe it was the woman screaming. I don’t remember. But when I came back from the phone to the window to listen to her scream some more, I felt stupid. I should have called the cops to save the fool who shot the gun, because as loud as she could, in the dead of night, with the whole place listening, that woman gave that gunman the most ferocious, seamless, verbal battering, I ever heard.
In any case, things like that made people guarded around here. It did me.
I knelt down in the grass four feet away from her shoeless feet and chipped pink toenails. Her narrow shoulders and bare arms pinched together, as I imagined they had in the cold hours before dawn.
“Did you spend the night out here?” I asked.
“No. Not all the night,” she said. “I stay awake. I nod, but I wake up. So, it’s not bad. My boyfriend . . .”
She made a backhanded, swatting-fly motion to fill-in the rest of the story, which she assumed I could guess.
“Well, I know some people, if you need a place,” I said.
“No, my boyfriend. He’s just testing to see if I leave, and I won’t. Just a broken heart, that’s all. Testing me, he’ll let me back in, maybe a little while.” She took a hasty drag. “Only threw me out this morning, so, it’s all right. Stayed awake. Things you do for love. You know?”
She dug into her backpack for something but didn’t find it right away and gave up. One of the broad blonde curls over her forehead bothered her, and she brushed it to the side with a flick of her hand. To me it didn’t move at all, but she turned her attention back to her cigarette, satisfied. She took another pull and expelled the smoke through whistle-tight lips.
A flood of stupid things to say splashed around my mind, but I ignored them, for which I’m glad, now that I think about it.
“That’s hard.”
“You have no idea, no idea,” she said putting her hand up, palm towards me, shaking her head as if words couldn’t communicate what she knew. And maybe they couldn’t. They probably couldn’t.
“Well, I saw you out here the day before, and just wanted you to know there are other places . . . if you’re in trouble.”
She finished with her cigarette and stubbed it out on the cement pad. I saw the other butts sitting there in a row beside the black ash mark. She took the extinguished butt and lined it up with the others, so they were all even and ordered. Then she slapped her red and white Marlboro box. A brown filament poked out. Pulling with her lips, she drew it from the box and went again into her backpack, rooting around for something.
Inside her backpack were crumpled shirts, faded blue jeans, curling iron, can of hairspray. As she dug, these contents slowly spilled over onto the cement pad. A padded bra— red, with ribbons—rolled over the other clothes and onto the grass. My first thought was to hand it back to her. My second led me to pick up a stick and poke at an anthill near my feet.
After blaming Jesus Christ for not finding what she looked for, she asked me, “Do you have a light?”
“Nope, sorry,” I said, but at the same time pointed to the folder of matches beside her right thigh.
“There they are,” she said. “Sometimes I put these in the funniest places, always looking for them. I must have a hundred stashed around our apartment, makes him crazy, having so many. Yells his head off about it.” She grinned at what she had said.
As she talked, I thought of the white slip of paper management had left on our door six months ago. Public Safety Notice: “At 3:00 am, Sunday, October 17, two black men, late twenties, forced entry to Apartment #303 and fought with a tenant and shot his wife before fleeing the complex. The woman was taken to the emergency room. Police are still searching for the suspects.”
The real story came out a few days later from management that there were no black men involved. The woman and her husband were fighting, and she had locked him out. He got a gun from somewhere, his truck or something, and when she finally let him in, he shot her. Of course she lied to the police.
Now, when I hear shouting in the complex, escaping from behind closed doors, at night, when sound travels, I wonder. Not about the yelling. People yell. My wife and I yell. What couple doesn’t yell? But when raised, angry voices echo down the apartment canyons, and then halt, abruptly, I wonder.
“If you needed a place . . .”
“My boyfriend is just testing me, you know, I know. To see if I go away, but I won’t. This is what I do for him. I do so much for him. You have no idea. To treat me like this . . . I love him. Damn these things.”
The wind kept blowing around the cup of her hands and putting out the match before she could light her cigarette.
“I’m in love too, but . . .” I said and shrugged my shoulders. “There’re other places . . . other guys.”
I felt I crossed a line. She got her cigarette lit.
I poked at the anthill, and a troop of red ants came to the surface to do battle with my stick. I had turned their smooth dirt dome into a volcanic bowl.
“I know what it must look like. I know. Like I’m a hoe, sitting out here with my backpack, barefoot. But that’s what you do, for love. He’s all I . . . it’ll be all right, I know . . . my parents don’t even know . . . my mom thinks . . .”
Whatever traversed her mind left me out. She sniffed like she might cry. I saw her eyes wet over. With her middle finger she dabbed the side of her nose.
“But I don’t care,” she said. “I love him. He’ll see. He’ll take me back when he sees.”
Other ants surfaced frantically to rebuild their mound.
“There’s options, you know,” I said. “Other options. I can make a phone call for you. I live just over there in number five.”
I pointed. She couldn’t see from where she sat, but she acted like she could, craning a careless glance the direction of my finger.
“I have a place,” she said. “Some people might say I’m . . . but I’m not, I love him, what can you do? It’s love. I don’t care what it looks like, what people say.”
“Hey. I’m not judging. I’ve gone down my own roads. I’m just…”
“I’m fine.”
“Alright.”
I had more to say, but didn’t. I wanted to say something about Jesus and hope and God and life can be different, but didn’t.
In the cold wind she crossed her arms and rubbed her bony shoulders: they would have done better under the jean jacket still lying beside her. I think she said thanks and I said no problem. I just remember the ants, more than anything, freaking out and trying to put their dirt mound back together.

Ephesians 4:7,8

Chris — Tue, 26 Dec 2006 01:29:00 +0000

Ephesians 4:7,8 “But grace was given to each of us according to the measure of Christ’s gift. Therefore it is said, ‘When he ascended on high he led a host of captives, and he gave gifts to men.’”
This quote from the Psalms speaks of two things Christ did in his victory on earth. He led a host of captives and he gave gifts to men. But since this is quoted from the Psalms the understanding of Hebrew poetry should led us not to divide these phrases, but to look in what way they compliment each other. In other words, what level of parallelism can be seen in these?

I ask the question because I see a strong connection in the Christian life to the freedom of being lead out of captivity and the acceptance of the gifts Jesus has given each of us. Writing, although not listed explicitly in Ephesians directly after this verse, could be seen as serving the building up of the body. Its service could be evangelistic, pastoral, educational, or even prophetic. A Christian writer should embrace this connection and burden. Freedom and fulfillment of the gifts walk hand in hand—they are ultimately connected to the building up of the body.

Praying this morning

Chris — Thu, 21 Dec 2006 01:31:00 +0000

Praying this morning, or rather attempting to pray this morning, I
found each moment in my silence flooded with things I wanted to
accomplish during the day. As I tried again and again to quiet myself,
to put those things away for the moment, another flood of to-do lists
began scrolling over my mind.

One way to respond to this would be to whip myself and try harder, or
maybe to give up and say I’ll try latter, but I think spiritual guides
like John Owen and St. John of the Cross would council something more
forthright. Admit it.

Instead of denying the spiritless orbit of my soul by either trying
harder and harder to overcome in my own strength, or ignoring the
problem and hoping it will go away on its own, I am called to confess.
That my soul has become a field of thorns choking out any lasting holy
thoughts of God and his Son is sin. And sin I am to confess…to look
square in the face, which is actually my face, ugly as it is and
confess: this is how I look. I want to look different; I have hope of
looking different by God’s grace. But right now I look like
shit—metaphorically. (Scubala, if you prefer a biblical word for the
same thing) I’ve let me soul become a field of thorns and thistles; I’m
a bride unavailable for my groom.

But I’m no slave to this, nor doomed. Jesus has set me free from sin,
free to fight in his grace and strength. Though my to-do list threatens
me saying, “Get me done or you’ll die. You have to finish me or else.”
I can rebel for two reasons.

First, I am no long a slave but a free man. The words “have to” are
words for slaves, and I am no longer one of those, even to God. He
won’t have it that way, either to Himself or to anything else. Second,
I can’t die, either in the sense of a grand failure because I drop all
the balls I’m supposed to be juggling, or in the physical sense of
losing my job and going hungry. Neither death can kill me. The former
fails because my worth is based in the unchanging love of God and the
love gift of Christ for me. The latter fails because I no longer
consider this life to be my end and could it all joy to go to God when
my time here is done.

So in the freedom of Christ I rebel. I’ll starve my obsession. Right
now I’m planning multiple hours a day over the next week where I’m
going to sit still, doing nothing, until the quiet re-enters my soul
and I again have space for prayer.

Pray for me.

End of U.S. Missions?

Chris — Thu, 18 May 2006 16:14:00 +0000

Who thinks the missionary movement in the U.S. is coming to an end? Raise your hand.

I know this is not a positive attitude. Being that I work at a mission sending agency and labor every day to support the discovery, sending and support of American missionaries, you would think I might cheer the matra "America, we can do it" a little louder.

But I can’t.

I can’t ignore the trends I see. Churches in the ’50s gave 10% to missions; churches today give 1.5%. Across the board, missionaries on the field are aging with the baby boomers. Blah, blah, blah. I’m not raising the question because of what I see in America, because every inch of this planet is a mess.

But. What I see in Asian churches and African churches COMPARED to the US makes me consider that the future of Christian missions in the 21st century will be the story of Asians and Africans, not Americans, just as it is no longer Europeans.

I believe we will begin to see Asian missionaries planting churches in our neighborhoods and African missionaries doing youth ministry in our public schools. They will struggle against the secularism of the US, like missionaries in Europe struggle against the great wall of secularism there.

I believe we are seeing an end of our influence as a mission sending country. I hope I am dead wrong.

Letter to the Church

Chris — Thu, 30 Mar 2006 04:32:00 +0000

We’d like to invite you to participate in a journey with us. We will be spending the month of April in Mozambique in various villages in and around Maputu. Marlene will arrive March 29, Kara will arrive April 15, and we’ll return on May 2. There are several things we hope to accomplish and/or get started during this time. First of all, we will be working in at least three orphanages, all of which are in great need of vaccinations for the kids. Our understanding is that vaccinations are available; there is just no one qualified to give them in this area at this time. We also plan to provide needed community education on HIV, which is a huge issue in this area, hygiene, infant care, infection control, and general health and sanitation.
Our biggest task will be to establish a long-term medical clinic in the Center for Leadership Development in Maputu that can be staffed by medical professionals on an itinerate basis until permanent providers are found. We plan to bring a significant amount of medical equipment, medications and antibiotics to leave at the clinic to facilitate future medical missions. There are several medical professionals at our church who are open to travel-ing to Mozambique for a few weeks out of the year to provide medical care; until now there has been nothing in place to enable this vision. If possible, we hope to establish mobile clinics in Djuba and Umbeluze in the future. LMCC has already had church planting efforts in these two villages over the last two years. We are also hoping to meet with the Ministry of Health in Mozambique to offer our help in providing immunizations, education and ongoing medical care through our clinics.
Please keep us in prayer during the month of April. There are still many details that have not been worked out. There are no medical professionals in the area to plan with, and communication as a whole has been difficult, as it usually is. We are still purchasing and gathering equipment, as well as trying to get a feel for what will be most beneficial to bring with us. Getting there with all of our equipment will be a feat, especially since the airline has recently lowered its baggage allowance. Some equipment is best to buy there if it is available so it can be serviced as necessary. We’re hoping to sleep in the orphanages to cut costs, but we’re not sure if that is possible. We also need to establish reliable transportation, which will probably mean renting a van and hiring a driver. And of course, as we have experienced in past trips, seeing the poverty and sickness in these areas first hand can be completely overwhelming. I know the Lord will give us the strength we need, and I’m confident He will allow us the opportunity to bring hope and healing through His Gospel. This trip, like the others, will be a mix of uncertainty and dependence, feeling sad and helpless, fun and adventure, awe at God’s grace and work in people’s lives, and hoping we’ve blessed others as much as they’ve blessed us.