Wednesday, November 13, 2013

The Next Step In The Journey - Moving To The Philippines

So, the big news is that at the end of January 2014 I will (God-willing) be moving to the Philippines to teach (and do lots of other stuff) in an orphanage/children’s home called The Ruel Foundation. It is located on Mindoro Island, south of Manila.

This post is to explain a bit about how I got to this point, and what’s ahead.

In October last year after I got back from visiting my Compassion kids in Brazil, I was sharing some photos with friends of mine when one of them showed me an email she had received. It was from an orphanage director in the Philippines, looking for a teacher. This was the job description:
* Young Australian or American male
* Qualified teacher
* Committed Christian
* Preferably single with few ties or commitments
* Financially secure
* Able to teach sport and English to 6-10 year olds

My first thought was “You might as well put my name on it!” It was just so “me”, and the timing was just superb. My contract at the school I was at was about to run out, and because of lack of student numbers they were unable to keep me on, so I would be able to pretty much just go.

With the help of my friend Sarah Hayden, I contacted the Ruel director, we had a couple of Skype conversations and I basically signed on the line there. I then informed my Pastor, who is also an extended family member. He told me that if I went, it would not be with the church’s blessing, because they did not feel I was ready. While I strongly disagreed, I had seen what happened when people just left this church and went and did their own thing – they failed miserably. So I respected his decision, as family and as a man of God, and put it off.

As God would have it, not a week later I got a teaching job back in Melbourne, at the school I used to attend, so my immediate future seemed assured, though the job at Ruel was always in the back of my mind as a possibility.

As many of you know, in 2013 I went on three separate trips, visiting my Compassion-sponsored kids in 11 different countries, including the Philippines in April. I treated it kind of like a test – if I absolutely hated it and couldn’t stand the culture, living conditions or weather, I knew the Ruel possibility probably wouldn’t happen. Even though it was only a week, I thrived and had a great time.

What I saw and experienced on these trips really impacted me, and each time I came back to Australia, I struggled adjusting and settling in to our culture. Such affluence, abundance and prosperity, yet we are so greedy, prideful, self-sufficient and ungrateful for what we have. I have carried an increasing sense of discomfort and discontent, along with a feeling that I may be called to serve God somewhere else.

In June, I received an email from Pauline, the director of Ruel. She had been following my Compassion trips on my blog and Facebook page, and could see my obvious heart for kids and for God. She asked me if I would consider coming on board to Ruel as a part-time teacher, part-time administrator, since they already had one teacher going, but could use my skills and giftings in other areas. This confirmed things for me immediately, and I said YES straight away.

The first challenge was telling my parents. I love them dearly and they are Christians as I am, but I knew they would have trouble with my decision. Security, comfort and safety are very much ensconsed in their worldview, but I have come to see that fully following Jesus to where He wants you to go isn’t always going to be safe, secure and comfortable. My younger brother and sister were both married by 22, have five kids between them and have done the “settling down” thing, and I’m sure my parents envisaged the same thing for me. However, even though it’s what the majority of the developed world does, the suburban, domestic comfortable life has never grabbed me as something to aspire to. I can’t see that changing. I’ve been wired up differently.

From the animated discussions that followed, this seemed to be the gist of their “concerns” about what I was doing. Mum wanted me to stay to help with babysitting the grandkids (aged 1 to 5). Admittedly that will be the part I’ll miss most when I’m gone. Dad’s concern centred around the fact that I seem to jump from thing to thing, never committing long in one place, which following the same pattern he did when he was younger. That is true. In six years of teaching, the longest I have been in one place is 18 months. This is partly my insecurity in my ability at being able to handle the demands of full-time teaching, but I also think it also goes back to the restlessness and discontent I’ve felt, particularly over the last three years, and the sense that I am “not where I should be.”

Now I can’t guarantee how long I’ll be in the Philippines. Only God knows that, and I’m hoping it’s a long term thing. But I do feel in my heart that this job at Ruel is what I’ve been created to do. Everything I love to do and everything I am good at is lumped together in this one job: teaching music and sport, doing the website and blog and some office admin stuff. This does not mean that it will always be easy and fun. I know it is going to be THE most challenging thing I’ve done in my 32 years, particularly the fact that many of the kids at Ruel have physical deformities, which is something I’m not used to.

I consider my “life verse” to be Isaiah 58:10 “…and if you spend yourselves on behalf of the hungry and satisfy the needs of the oppressed, then your light will rise in the darkness, and your night will become like the noonday. The Lord will guide you always; he will satisfy your needs in a sun-scorched land and will strengthen your frame. You will be like a well-watered garden, like a spring whose waters never fail…” 

Many of you are aware that I sponsor lots of kids with Compassion, 29 at this point. God has used these last 7 years of Compassion sponsorship to change my life in many ways: heart for the poor; contentment; living simply; giving generously; investing my time, money, emotions and resources in something greater than myself – His kingdom. For me, going over to the Philippines and serving is the next step.

So, to the question you might be asking: what will happen to them? Well, since Ruel is a voluntary position (I will actually be paying to work there), I won’t be able to continue financially sponsoring them for much longer. However, I definitely will NOT be “dumping and running.”

What I would LOVE, dear reader, if you have been encouraged, inspired or challenged in any way by the way I’m living life and the way God is using me through Compassion, is for you to consider sponsoring one of my kids, and giving them some of the love I have been. I currently have 27 kids who need a sponsor, and you can read about them here. As an added bonus, if you sponsor one of my kids I will give you a copy of all the photos and videos I took on my visits, as well as a copy of the letters they have sent, to help you get to know them better. If you are an advocate or have a blog, please put the word out. I am not abandoning these kids.

I also discussed another couple of options with Compassion. They told me there are organisations out there that like to be seen to be doing the social justice thing, and are happy to financially sponsor a bunch of kids, without the letter-writing commitment. That would be ideal for me, as I could continue the relationship I have built up over the last few years through letters and visits.

It’s certainly an exciting adventure ahead, and it comes down to this: On my Compassion trips, I discovered what it was to completely and utterly depend and rely on God, and I want that in my life. In my life I want to put myself in a situation where I have no choice but to depend and rely on God to meet my needs. I cannot get that in Australia, surrounded by affluence, abundance and prosperity. I don’t want “stuff” to stand in the way of my relationship with God, and though I live more simply than most (I don’t even have a couch in my house, and my TV  is maybe 25 inches!), I still find myself falling back into self-sufficiency, self-reliance, pride and ingratitude. So I’m following where I believe God is leading me.

Here are some links to The Ruel Foundation from Youtube and Facebook so you can find out more about who they are and what they do:

The Ruel Website

The Ruel Facebook Page

Ruel History on Youtube

Ruel Foundation - Introduction

Ruel House - Take a Tour

Ruel Foundation - Making a Difference (contains images of children with physical deformities)

Sunday, October 20, 2013

The Divine Economy

I want to share with you a story about what I call The Divine Economy.

It’s very clear from the Bible that God wants us who have much to share what we have with those who don’t have much. Here are a couple of verses which I LOVE, that illustrate this:

It is possible to give freely, yet become more wealthy, but those who are stingy will lose everything (Proverbs 11:24)

When you give to the poor, you are giving to God, and He will repay you. (Proverbs 19:17)

I want you to know that God and His Word are true, and I am living proof of the truth of these verses.

The story I’m about to share happened to me in 2011, and I want to make it clear that I don’t intend to sound like I’m boasting. I’m not that foolish, and I know that everything I have and everything I am comes from God.

At the start of 2011 I sponsored seven children with Compassion. I had a nice little secure full-time teaching job at a Lutheran School and I felt like God was pushing me to do more. I got this thought in my head:

“Imagine the impact I could have if I sponsored at least one child from every country Compassion works in” (which at that time was 26). I called it my “Crazy Compassion Plan”, and over the course of the year I put that plan into action and by the end of the year I sponsored 40 children.

Keeping in mind the above verses, during the year the following things happened:

* Soon after I sponsored 10 more kids, I was paid an extra $400 a week by my school for supervising a group of bus travellers before and after school.

* I started up after-school music lessons, and my number of students increased at the same time as my Compassion family increased.

* I made the intentional decision to become debt-free, and was able to pay off a five-figure car loan and my University loan.

* I ended up with more money in the bank at the end of the year than I had at the start.

That, my friends is called the DIVINE ECONOMY. It makes no sense in the common-sensical, scientific, natural world. Normally, the more you spend, the poorer you become financially.

However, what God taught me through this year, is that if you “give freely and receive loosely”, with a generous heart and for the benefit of others, God will bless you. I am proof of that.

And once again, none of this happened BECAUSE of me. God, in His grace and mercy, chose to bless me in this way, because He is true to His Word and His promises. Why not give it a go?

Wednesday, September 4, 2013

A Lesson in Honesty and Integrity

Luke 16:10 - 12
“Whoever can be trusted with very little can also be trusted with much, and whoever is dishonest with very little will also be dishonest with much.
So if you have not been trustworthy in handling worldly wealth, who will trust you with true riches? And if you have not been trustworthy with someone else’s property, who will give you property of your own?"

I am in a good place. I am positive that the Holy Spirit has me by the scruff of the neck. How do I know this? My conscience will not let me get away with A THING! Frustrating, but I know it’s for the best.

As well as being a teacher, during the week I also deliver a couple of newspapers in my local area. Not sure why. It’s certainly not “all about the Benjamins”. It does get me some exercise and keeps me humble I guess.

Right from the start I was being overpaid. They were sending more papers than I had to deliver, so I always ended up with a bunch of leftover papers and a few extra bucks in the pocket. It was only single digits, so for the first couple of months I didn’t worry about it. Their mistake, their loss.

However, last week as I was doing the deliveries, I was convicted. I am a committed Christian, and I know my Bible well enough, so the above verses popped into my head. When I stand before God, nothing will be hidden, and I won’t be able to justify myself. There are no such things as “little sins” and “big sins.” I was doing the wrong thing, even if it was a total of less than $100.

One thing that I thought about was next year. I have lined up a significant job that gives me a level of even greater responsibility and trust than my current teaching job. How could I expect God (or anyone else) to trust me with that when I was dishonest over a few dollars? How could I expect to enter and have any responsibility in Heaven when I acted like this over a few dollars?

I went through every possible justification of my actions in my head. It just seemed so petty and insignificant, but I knew what I had to do, and I wouldn’t feel right until I had done it. Today I wrote a money order for an amount less than $100 and sent it to the company.

So thanks Holy Spirit. My lesson is learned, and I can only hope God still wants to trust me with more. Looking forward to what’s ahead.

Thursday, July 4, 2013

Thoughts on this old chestnut: “You can be anything you want to be.”



I’ve always had a problem with this well-meaning sentiment of the self-esteem brigade. I consider it to be unhelpful at best; a flat-out lie at worst.

This view has not been formed to stir anyone up, or cause controversy, rather from personal experience.

I’ve been blessed with great parents, yet not once did they tell me growing up that I could be anything I wanted to be. Instead, they gave me every opportunity to follow any path I chose and by process of elimination I found out what I liked and was good at and, conversely, what I didn’t like to do and sucked at.

Armed with this information I made the decision to intentionally live my life focusing on those things that I was good at and loved to do. It just made sense to me.

By the time I hit high school, my areas of weakness were painfully obvious. It also happened that several of those areas formed the core curriculum of Years 7, 8 and 9. Here they are:
* Drawing and painting
* Cooking
* Woodwork
* Dancing
I have never had the desire, inclination or ability to pursue any of these areas. I quickly reconciled with the fact that I would never become a chef, an artist, a builder or a dancer. I was not wired up that way, and I’m perfectly fine with that.

Hypothetically, imagine if my parents had drummed into me as a child that I could “do anything I wanted to do” or “be anything I wanted to be”, then these infernal home reno/cooking/dancing shows came on TV. Fuelled by my desire for 15 minutes of fame and ignoring the fact that I was never any good at any of them, I pursued it, and proceeded to “epically fail” on a national stage. I imagine what would follow would be a life characterized by shame, embarrassment, disappointment, unfulfilment and even resentment, as the reality sets in that there are some things that we are just not good at, and yet I had believed the line that I could be anything I wanted to be.

Fortunately for me that scenario will stay in the realm of imagination, because by concentrating on my areas of strength and ability I have been blessed to live an adult life of significance and purpose, positively impacting many people.

My areas of ability and enjoyment are teaching, music, sport and technology. Everything I do in my adult life revolves around these four areas. I have taught in classrooms and music lessons; played drums, bass and guitar in church and musicals; coached, played and done stats in sports teams. My motivation is that I want God’s glory to shine through who I am and what I do. I know this can be achieved much more effectively than if I tried to carve out a life of struggle in an area of weakness motivated by riches, popularity or fame. Those things won’t last.

So, here’s my alternative to the “You can be anything you want to be” philosophy. In my years of teaching, coaching and sponsorship with Compassion, this is the message I try to imprint in the lives of the children, young people and adults I interact with, whether I tell them explicitly or not:
* You have been created by God for a specific purpose and you are unique.
* You have been given strengths, abilities and talents, not to use for yourself, but to help others.
* Do your best to find out what those are, and spend your life focusing on them.
* Use your gifts, talents and abilities to glorify God and have a positive impact on others
.  

In my personal experience it’s a pretty good way to live. 

The Challenge of Being an Introverted “Do-er” Living a Worldview That Demands Relationship



I am easily pleased. If I could spend every day with a newspaper and a couple of drinks in front of the football or a U2 DVD I would, in a second. That is my “ideal life” I guess. If I could have any job, it would be data entry. Give me a computer, a bunch of data to input, as long as I could have my music, I’d be set.

From the above paragraph, you would guess correctly that I am not a people-person. There has never really been a serious girlfriend. I never “mucked around with a bunch of mates” in my teenage years. I don’t really do the “catch up with friends over coffee” thing. Conversation is not my favourite activity. I am a “doer”. I enjoy and relate to people a whole lot better if we are doing something together.


However, just because I would call myself a “lone ranger” doesn’t mean I shut myself away and avoid the world. Over the years I have been actively involved in churches, Bible studies, coaching and refereeing basketball, teaching music, doing stats at football and basketball clubs. All involving social interaction. I’ve just never been comfortable with it.

A few years ago, so desperate was I to make friends that I even auditioned for a death metal band led by a mild-mannered guy I knew from doing stats at a football club. Needless to say it didn’t work out, since while I was rockin’ out on the bass I spent the whole time wondering why they would devote themselves to a worldview obsessed with death, destruction, chaos and hate.


Considering all this, my social struggles and contentment with being on my own, it is quite ironic that I ended up embracing and living out a worldview that demands relationship. I am a Christian, and I believe the best summary of Christianity is “Love God, love others”. I am called to love. Not just accept, tolerate or interact with others. But LOVE them.


Also surprising was that teaching ended up being my career, considering I’d ideally settle for data entry. Regardless of what “experts” (ie every schmuck who’s ever been to school) might think, after 5 ½ years I can tell you that teaching is a profession that is relentless in its demands, and requires everything that a person has to give. I am single and I am barely keeping up. I could not do it if I had a family, and I salute those who do. You have to be able to form positive relationships with students, parents and other staff. It is really a job for a people-person. In teaching, every day is a challenge for me, but God sustains me in His grace.
 
For the first 25 years of my life I lived the comfortable me-life that so many people do, even though I had been a committed Christian since I was 21, and had grown up in church and known about God all my life. Something had to change, and God used Compassion child sponsorship to make that change. How could I ignore verses in the Bible like 1 John 3:17 “If anyone has enough money to live well, and sees a brother or sister in need and yet refuses to help them, how can God’s love be in that person?”

Growing up, I felt like I lived in the shadow of my two younger siblings – physically, academically, sportingly, socially. I desperately wanted to find something to make my life count for eternity, and God provided that thing.


Despite my flaws and weaknesses, God has chosen to use me to impact many lives. This has been mainly in the lives of little people. Over the last seven years I have sponsored 54 children with Compassion, and been able to visit 29 of them. I have taught hundreds of children in schools around Victoria as a classroom, music and emergency teacher. I have taught after school music lessons, as well as coached and refereed basketball for 11 years. I also have five little nieces and nephews who I’m blessed to be able to see and play with regularly.


Looking back over my life so far, the Compassion child sponsorship is what sticks out to me the most. As much as I’d like to say I do it because “it was the right thing to do” or “I’m a good person”, the only plausible reason for it is the overflow of the love of God in my life. His mercy and grace has flooded my life, and I can’t help but pass it on to those who need it most.


My first trip with Compassion was in 2009, when I ventured to Bolivia, Colombia and El Salvador. At this point I was still a relatively new sponsor, and it was still really just a good deed I was doing. However, it was still an eye opener for me, as I experienced poverty for the first time and got a “kick up the bum” for not writing enough.


In the last nine months I have been on three more Compassion trips, to nine different countries, most notably the Central America trip in January, which took in Mexico, Guatemala, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Ecuador, Haiti and the Dominican Republic. It was mind-boggling and heart-breaking to see the harshness of the reality of life for these families who God has connected me with, and at the same time, see the difference God is making in their lives through Compassion.

While I certainly have not (and never will) become an outgoing, extroverted party animal, it is clear that God is working on me and changing me through my experiences as a Compassion sponsor. This trip took me way out of my comfort zone, with the added complication of communicating with people from a different culture, who speak a different language.

There were definitely moments of silence and awkwardness, but God gave me courage to ask hard and honest questions and interact with these families I was connected with previously only through writing and God’s love. They responded in kind, and we were able to have many deep and profound conversations, filled with joy and gratitude.

I was able to show them that because of God’s love in my life, I cared enough to come and visit them and be involved in their lives, rather than remain at a distance, which would have been the easy comfortable way out for a quiet introvert like myself. In return I have been repeatedly shown what true faith, hope, joy and contentment looks like, and been humbled by incredible hospitality and generosity.

I have laughed, cried, hugged, played and prayed with these precious people, all because I made the decision to follow God outside my comfortable little life, stop making excuses and immerse myself in the lives of the people God connected me with. It hurt, and still hurts, but Love demands action.

As uncomfortable as it is for me, God’s love also demands relationship. He demands that if I call myself a Christian I am to love others: friend, family, foe or stranger, because of His extravagant love for me: unearned, undeserved. I’m definitely a work-in-progress, and still wouldn’t say no to the data-entry job and the day in front of the TV with the newspaper and a couple of drinks, but thanks to His grace and mercy, I am doing what I can to make an eternal difference in the lives of others.