Colombia, an invitation to something new...

This life is filled with choices. And we get an invitation, there is always a choice to be  made.

This week, I choose to say yes to the invitation...

This week I am going back to Colombia. I was invited by my friends Carlos & Maria to teach at their school  for their ministry Cultura del Reino...

I will be teaching there on creating a new culture that values honor, love, respect, discipleship, and celebration.

I love Colombia. It is like a promised land, a frontier, a place of exploration and mystery, but it's not just the land that is beautiful. It's the people that I have met and started to build relationship with. I am excited to share life with them.

How do we create a culture that values honor, love, respect, discipleship, and celebration?

I think it first starts with the question, "How do we love the brother that is right in front of us?"

A lot of times, that is just listening, it's listening and hearing, and sensing, what are the gifts of my brother...what his unique gifting in this world and how can we make that come alive.

There are so many unique gifts we have had in our house--talented and gifted in so many ways--from performing in plays, to dancing, to singing, to leading solar race car teams, to leading worship and starting record labels, to building software to change the world.

These last two years of living in community here in Atlanta have been trans-formative to say the least.. It has marked the time where my career in working with computer languages has taken off the ground... It has marked the time that I have learned that relationships, language, and travel are true passions in my life.

I have been living in a full house of so many different types of people...each one with their own unique charm... so different, from wild to quiet, dirty to clean, messy to neat, anal to careless, musically gifted to so out of tune it hurts, from those who find it awkward to give hugs in their own house to those who try to kiss you all over regardless of where, from those who arrive home with bottles of whiskey and vodka to those who prohibit drinking, from those who walk around almost naked in the winter to those who walk around in suits in the summer, from those who wake up every morning at 6 AM to those who don't go to bed until 6 AM. From those who love Jesus to those who love Jesus, because everyone loves Jesus... To each I love, and from each i have learned...and it's through learning how to love and find unity with all sorts of different types of people with different types of talents that we find ourselves and our purpose....Pursing Jesus, love and unity together...

Subido al Pico Loro

Today, I went with some friends into some communities in the mountains...we came along some people who were fasting and playing worship and we joined them and one of the women made us lunch and we went to a mountain top...and prayed, and came down and went swimming in a river with waterfalls. My friend David shared the gospel with single mom and a guy in heroin addiction on the way back home in the bus. It was an amazing day! And as we arrived in Cali we saw many lights and people celebrating festivities of Christmas! It was a very special time!

May the fire burn in our hearts with a sacrific of love never dwindling.

During my time here in Cali, I have had some incredible encounters with God. A few friends of mine from a church community have been starting some projects bringing out food and praying for the poor in the slums. We have been enjoying some incredible times of worship and intimacy with the Holy Spirit. Through an incredible worship experience that I had with a friend of mine, David Cruz, I felt the Holy Spirit revealing something to me about the power of sacrifice. We sang together, "May my life be a burning sacrifice of love consumed by your desires." I realized that something greater awaits us. If we can become the people who fully sacrifice all there is something greater, there is something that awaits us in our community. Imagine our community as a garden and Jesus as a seed. If we fertilize our garden with Love, what awaits us are fruits beyond our hearts wildest dreams. Trusting and having faith, a fully rendering love, a love which is a total sacrifice comes with pain for only a moment, for the Kingdom of lovers is before us. A family is awaiting to be revealed in the garden--a family of lovers which we were created for. Dissention, wounds, sins, and ills try to seperate us one from another. There is a choice for each of us. There is a choice to go our own way and take care of ourselves or to sacrifice all and trust in the Love pouring down on us. Sacrificing all is about a choice to overcome the sin of others with love, sacrificing all for love, until we are totally consumed by love. Trusting in Jesus is a lot of times about trusting in others. It's about trusting in those who are around us who are the body of Christ. It's about trusting in those who have become our brothers and sisters. It's about believing that love wins. It is trusting that if we sacrifice all we will be caught in a beanbag filled with love. The truth is. It hurts when others are not willing to sacrfice. It is like falling backwards on the ground and having no one to catch you. But when we learn...It is like falling backwards into the warm embrace of lovers. We must ask, "are we willing to be to the hands and feet of Jesus in whom others can trust with all their life?" When we get to live in this new transformed revelation of sacrificing love, a new world of love opens up before us. It is written that a gift brings a man before a king. So then imagine a burning sacrifice of total surrendering love--what can that open up for us! It's behind our wildest dreams! Love has a creative power that goes way beyond restoration...I had a vision of my friend Tony Brown, he's a guy who is always making sacrifices for all those around him--always buying food for others and driving people around in his beautiful antique van...I saw him sewing a seed of love which would be rewarded with a harvest of lovers. The point of this all is that...there is something awaits us...if we just surrender and trust. A glowing fire of love awaits us. If we follow in step and surrender all, what awaits us is an abudant life, the joy set before Christ before the sacrifice...there is something on the other side and it's worth it! :-) It's worth it for us all! It's way beyond worth it! If we can just open our eyes and see, we will be transformed and be unleashers of the consuming power of love! So may the fire burn in your heart and may you become the burning sacrifice of love consumed by the desires of something much greater than yourself. The desires of the one who gave everything for the greatest prize. The desires of the one which have the greatest reward. You were meant for something greater!

The Beloved

I am just amazed on Henri Nouwen's teaching about the beloved.

If we could just know that we are God's beloved children and His loved in whom He is delighted. Imagine! The challenge is embodying that truth and living it out.

There is something beautiful that happens when we are called beautiful, love, desirable. It's amazing...

If we could live in the identity that Jesus lived in, knowing that we are truly God's beloved, our lives could become blossoms which are a fragrance to all creation.

There is something that stirs deeply in our soul when we know that there are great riches that are before us, one who loves us and desires us with His heart and speaks well of us, and one who gives us the food and substance that we need to live. True riches are not attains by our own hands, and true love is not earned, nor is what we need brought forth through our own efforts. It was in these was that Jesus was tempted. True love and sustenance is a gift for sons and daughters of the one true YHWH God.

2010 Trip Colombia and Brazil

In March, I was invited by my friends Steve Phillips and Michael Ellis to do the boot camp school for Nehemiah Ministry International at Rey de Reyes church in Cali, Colombia. I was privileged to stay with one of the inspiring youth leaders Jonathan Calderon. It was truly a life changing experience as we went through the counseling material as a community. It was exciting to be a part of a church community, with closely nit small groups, which is alive and growing. I was amazed by the love of the people for one another in the church. After the course, I had to take the offer of my friend David Cruz to go back and stay with them for a few more weeks. We celebrated birthdays together, went to small group meetings together, went to the streets of Cali to promote Jesus to the people, and enjoyed a weekend leadership retreat.



After the course at Rey de Reyes, I traveled to the three frontiers of Brazil, Peru, and Colombia in the Amazon. I soon connected with a mission called AmazonXpeditions through a friend. I met the son of the founder David Gonzalez, and I was amazed by his passion to use all the resources he could to bless people out on the river. I had the chance to join them in going out to small communities on the river bringing food supplies and water purification systems. There is something truly satisfying about being able to bring food to people who need it. Going out on the river with them to do missions was the nothing less than the experience of a lifetime.

During my time there, I had the privilege of staying with the Ticuna people in a little village close to Leticia, Colombia. They would smile as I would walk through their village of houses built on stilts paved by muddy paths. I spent a good amount of time with one boy named Fabricio. He was very nice, smart, and friendly, and he enjoyed showing me around his little village. But I soon noticed that he like many of the others would come to a feeding program, because there just wasn’t enough food in his home. It made me think about what James wrote about in the New Testament, “Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world” (James 1:27 ESV).

After my trip in the Amazon, I was privileged to stay with pastors Jairo and Doris Niño in Armenia, Colombia. I met them through pastor Penn Clark a friend of mine. We spent time together and went through the inner-healing and deliverance material together again. They taught me many things through their experiences in the international field. I loved staying with them. I really enjoyed their loving family, warm hospitality, time of fellowship, and their church. I saw the needs for music ministry, and media ministry, and discipleship among the youth, and which all add to my desire to go back in the future.

The trip was life changing. The course on inner-healing and deliverance was really good. I made some great friends and I was able to participate in some great missions with the indigenous people in the Amazon.

Cali

These last two weeks in Cali have been amazing. I was able to go to take a course at the Rey de Reyes church in Ciudad Jardin. I have been able to meet so many youth who are excited about God and desire to see His name glorified throughout the earth. Their hospitality was amazing as I was very welcomed and experienced the warmth of these Colombian people. The course on inner-healing and deliverance was very good as I learned so much about counseling and why we are the way we are. There were many times of rejoicing. But the best part was making new friends. I met new friends that were very excited about going to the streets and reaching out to the homeless and feeding them. One night, we went out and we found ourselves among crack-dealers on the streets of Cali. It was amazing, as we were able to talk with one guy who was totally captivated by us and even ignored his customers so that he could just talk with us. It was amazing to see the transforming power of Jesus on the streets of Cali and it was so special to have a bonding time with the guys.

Medellin

It has been a very busy day today in Medellin. We went to the comunas ( slums ) on the north side of the city. Then we went up the famous gondolas to the top of these beautiful Andes mountains. It was breath-taking. However, on the way down, we came across a homicide site. It was shocking to see a dead body in the middle of the street. People were gathered around. The pastor told me that it is common to have 8-10 homicides per day here in Medellin--though the statistics reported are much lower. After that, we went to a cell-group. It was really nice to have fellowship, worship, and get to know the people in the house churches here in Medellin. It was inspiring. My heart was taken away by the people who live in extreme poverty in the midst of drug-related violence that plagues the city.