Lots of things happening, as usual. Our family has "adopted" a 20 year old daughter. We've known and cared for her for a few years now and are blessed with the opportunity to love her as a daughter. Hard to tell who is helping who as she has truly been a blessing to the growth of my family the past month. Please pray for her (Emily) as she has many struggles within herself and her children.
Marshall has returned to his ex wife as she battles cancer.
Russell's brother Scott has also returned to the jail.
It appears that I could be joining a mission project that is building a local water supply for a poverty stricken portion of Jamaica. It also looks like my oldest son Josh may go with us in July and minister to the children in the community. I have begun working already on making the connections with the engineering team to offer any assistance and donations I can come up with, but Josh and I are hoping that God will provide the means for us to do "all that we can do" and join them first hand for a couple weeks in July. Still praying to "make sure" this is something God wants us to do as taking my firstborn out of the country like this makes me and mama a little uneasy and there will need to be some major provisions for funding. If it's meant to be it will all just happen. No worries. As always, pray persistently and seek out God's will if you consider helping us make this happen.
I have had a lot of questions lately about what "I teach" when I go to the jail. It's very simple, really, I share my experience in coming to faith in God and ask others to join me in pursuing a deeper understanding of God (truth). I do not claim to know all or even any of the answers, just my own thoughts and faith. I do believe that God's truth will always prevail and I don't need to worry about having the answers. If I were worried, then I believe that worry comes because I am trying to have faith in myself and not God. I present people with an NIV concordance and bible dictionary listings for salvation and baptism. Not sure how to be more complete than that, unless I try to cover all translations. I believe that would be too much. I tend to be growing in the faith that "We are the equipment...." as Jesus described it to the apostles. Essentially the "plan" that I approach every visit to the jail is to let go of my control freak issues and entrust it to God's control. Seems like I have times when I have a half hour or so in the waiting area before I'm checked in and often open up the bible or daily inspirational books and immediately find something that is relevant, or else I already have something on my heart from my own personal bible studies or from sermons I've recently heard that have struck a chord within me. Here is an example from this past Sunday. A mother had contacted me earlier in the week to consider speaking with her 14 year old son about atheism and how I had come out of that into a Christian relationship with God. That Sunday morning verses had been shared in the sermon from Hebrews about faith is having hope in what is unseen..... Obviously this is not your typical salvation / baptism study starting point , but then again maybe it is yours...anyway, without a plan of my own, this scripture and life issue was on my heart and I shared it with the inmates after asking them if they had anything they wished to discuss....3 out of the 5 groups of men I met with were interrupted by one or more of the men in that group describing how they had been trying to sort out issues I was adressing and were surprised that it was just a coincidence that I was bringing them a lesson that was exactly what they were struggling with. I also shared from some long ago lessons from John Clayton who came to preach on the campus of WIU in my college years....yes I'm getting older.... one of the inmates was amazed at the approach of evolution and creationism working together as evolution seems to just be the way the God did it so to speak. He shared that he was studying physics in college and my major was biological sciences. Needless to say, we hit it off and hope to further our relationhsip when he gets out. I have also been blessed to know his mother and father from our participation with their church family and study groups here in Macomb and only recently made the connection that he was their son. I know with confidence that I could never plan or coordinate any of this and firmly believe that God is truly honoring me to be used by Him in His plan for all of this. This is what I mean when I say " I don't go there with a plan, just His plan." Things like this happen consistently throughout all of the ministries my family and I participate in, whether it's the jail stuff, the SA stuff, the meals in our home stuff, the benevolence stuff, etc.....when we let go of our plan and wait (pray, meditate, etc.) for His plan. It drives control freaks like myself nuts, because everyone knows you gotta have a plan!!! No, actually you don't, just His plan. Hopefully we can continue to grow in our readiness to get out of His way and continue to learn how to live a life of faith, not just study and teach about it.
Anyway, I could go on forever,
Love and peace to all
Brian