Naomi and I have been compassion sponsors since our first year of marriage. Over time our sponsor family has grown, and today it did again.

We had a very special opportunity to actually meet one of our sponsor children, Alexis (He likes to be called Alex) We were able to meet his father Antero, and his little brother Christian. We just actually sponsored Alex within the last couple weeks so havent even been able to send a letter yet. I was actually nervous to meet this punk, and he was nervous to meet us as well.

I just feel like a proud dad, so am not going to say much else, except:

• If you have ever thought of sponsoring a child #sponsorachildtoday
• If you ever have questions about Compassion. Ask them, or ask me. I’ll talk your ear off about how impressed I am with what they do.
• If you have never thought about sponsoring a child, #sponsorachildtoday

I’m done blabbing, here are some pictures of the new addition to our sponsor family. What a super kid!

First 5 minutes of us meeting each other…cautious looks

We weren’t so scary afterall

Iphone, the universal language…had to add a Mac plug

Freaky Jaguar eyeing us…

They asked if my hair grows like this…

Trying to get him to stick his tongue out. I think he thought it was rude…probably is

His little, super cute, brother Christian

Miss them already..

They couldn’t get a babysitter, so it was our blessing that Christian was able to come along. #unexpectedblessing!

Little guy got all tuckered out…

I’m a big leadership nut. I love reading about it, hearing about it, studying Scripture on it and learning from everyone and anyone about it. Today our Compassion Canada exposure team had the privilege to tour the head office of Compassion in Peru. What Compassion is doing in Peru is phenomenal to say the least, but more on that in a future post.

What struck me this mroning was the testimony I heard over and over about how much pepople appreciated their supervisor and country directory, Christina.  So, when I had the opportunity to meet her, I asked her.

“Chrisina, your team loves you, the Holy Spirit is blessing you, what can you teach me about how you lead so well?

Here are three leadership learning’s from Peru:

• Teamwork – Work with people smarter than yourself and learn from them. “You cannot do enough things together”
• Love Scripture – “Ensure your team reads, studies and memorizes Scripture.
• Serve - “My role is to serve the pastors in our country and my team who serve the children”
• Yes I know I said three. I added this one for her. Live humbly and with much thankfulness
• Christina epitomizes a humble and thankful life. She is so grateful to others and her Lord Jesus Christ.

So thankful for the consistent, sanctifying, work of the Holy Spirit in my life. He never stops convicting, teaching and extending me grace.

Loving life!

When I think of Peru, I think of sunshine and hot…

No one told me that in Winter the sun never really shines in Peru…AND…that I should be wearing a jacket. It was warmer in Edmonton today than it was in Peru. Still doesn’t really make sense to me. However, the people are as warm and friendly as I have ever met.

I decided to write a daily blog entry as a way to help me journal what I am praying is an encouraging, life changing experience for Naomi and myself. I’ve even turned off my work email. Wow! Seriously, don’t think I have ever done that before.  I want to introduce you to some of my pondering’s, experiences and people we meet at various Compassion projects. I trust their faces and my poorly worded thoughts would encourage and challenge at the same time.

Day Number One

Where:

• Today we visited a project in Northern Lima, Peru. This Church of the Nazarene has been partnering with Compassion for 22 years and have helped over 2300+children. You can see some of their beautiful faces below.

Creating a healthy staff culture is something that over the past couple years has been written extensively about. Leadership, Teamwork, all play a role. Even just saying or thinking those words bring John Maxwell to mind.

The Question. – How do you effectively assess the health of your staff team?

Now, I’m a big fan of systems, and efficiency. One of my frustrations in leading teams, staff and peers has been in determining where/how I should be spending my time so that it has the biggest positive impact on the team. To add to that questions is to also determine the impact my action has on the overall staff health of the organization. I have found it much easier to determine a staff need, versus evaluating the effect addressing that need will have on my organization.

For example let’s assume an organization scored low on both these two example questions below.

Staff are satisfied with their salary and benefit packages?

AND

Staff recommend this organizations programs and services to friends and family?

If you only had time to address one issue, and yet both concerns seemed pressing, which one should become your priority.

Possible Solution

Over the past four years our church has been partnering with Best Christian Workplace Institute in helping us assess our staff health and culture. In addition to providing a great assessment tool, their biggest help to us has been in showing us which staffing questions/concerns have the biggest impact on overall staff health.

We’re still making mistakes, still learning, but are also having a lot more fun along way.

Feedback?

So, how do you do this at your organization. I’d love to hear and learn from your experience.

Loving the journey.

Judah and I had the opportunity to spend an evening together recently and all we did was talk about Star Wars, play Star Wars and watch Star Wars. The only time we didn’t do something related to Star Wars was when I wanted to watch my hockey team play out the remaining 10 minutes of the third period. (they lost)

Judah decided this was boring and declared, “I’m going to go make some fun.”

Here he is “making some fun”

I love watching my son play with his Star Wars toys. Everything is so real for him. He literally does create a preferred reality to his current one. (He didn’t like watching the Oilers lose) Like most children, he goes and “makes some fun” when there is none for him. He creates this world where he gets to live out being a hero and save the princess. Simply put he decides to choose change and then acts on it.

Why does our willingness to create a better narrative, create a better story for our lives seem so much more difficult as we get older? I know we can, I know I can, but the willingness to do so….Are you willing to go and make the change you are thinking about?

“A powerful truth is…if you know you’re not living a good story, do what a writer would do. Grab a blank piece of paper and start writing. Amazingly God has given us blank pages, our lives are blank pages that we get to write our story on. Start writing a better story.”

~Donald Miller~

There’s no better time than right now to “go make some fun”.  I love how God uses our kids to remind and teach us each and everyday.

I love being a Dad!

There are moments in life that grab us, shock us, move us to tears because of the awe and wonder or the pure horror. Times that cause us to ask more questions and times that leave us speechless. This picture evoked one of those moments for me. What will come of this moment I’m not sure, most likely very little if anything at all and that reality leaves me speechless again…

Picture from “The Big Picture”

I’m pretty sure you have these moments.

• you feel crabby to start out with. (starting with a bad attitude never helps)
• You start thinking negatively about someone or an event.
• You choose the high road ahead of time and make the decision to be positive once you encounter the situation
• you arrive and do exactly the opposite of what you’ve been just contemplating, promising, and even panning to do.

Today, God pointed out Romans 7:21.  I actually kinda laughed when I read it. 

v.21 “So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand.”

Paul, this week, I related to you all too well.  It is incredible frustrating to rationally, calmly think out the proper , God honoring, course of action and then fail so miserably.

Can you relate?

At least we can have confidence that there is always hope.

No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. 38 For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, 39 nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. Romans 8:37

Do you ever have times when you get pretty down on yourself? You doubt your ability, you start to believe lies about yourself. I know I do every once in awhile. Below is what I remind myself of when it happens, and thankfully, the more I remind myself and stay in Scripture, the less it happens.

Almost a year ago I read Vicki Kuyper”s book Wonderlust. One of the chapters talked about her taking the epic hike to Machu Picchu. She felt very self conscious about her ability to keep pace with the team, she ended up always being the last one. In her effort to try and keep pace with the others, she was starting to lose strength, courage to keep going and confidence in her ability to accomplish the task.

I can’t help but compare myself to others. One of my main strength’s is competition and significance. It’s part of who I am, it helps me be great at certain things, but it also haunts me on many occasions. My focus can easily change to trying to be someone else, striving hard to do what they do. I end up doing things that don’t come naturally to me, which then of course don’t have the results I was hoping for which then cause me to doubt who I am, and ultimately & indirectly doubt who God made me.

Ouch! Did you catch that? I end up telling God, indirectly, but He hears it loud and clear, “You messed up God, I’m missing something, I’m not that good, I can’t accomplish the passions you’ve given me, so somehow you screwed up.”

I’ve come to realize there are 2 truths that I need to remind myself of when I start to believe this lie.

1. Be Patient.

If there is one thing I consistently struggle at it is patience. When it comes to my life direction and goals, my lack of patience is almost always a direct result of me comparing myself to others. My impatience, and lack of thankfulness, almost always comes when I start to compare finances, ministry reach, fame, authors who write so incredibly well, dads who are super creative, etc, etc. (whatever it may be for you)

Vicky, in her book Wonderlust finishes her Machu Picchu story by sharing that when she was about to quit the trek her guide, Manolo, walked back down to her and said, ” You have been working so hard trying to keep up with everyone else. You’ve pushed yourself to walk at their pace and not your own. Right now you need to learn the walk of the patient one. It isn’t called this because others have to be patient with you. It’s because you have to learn to be patient with yourself. It’s not about being first, it’s about enjoying the journey. It will feel slow at first, but you will keep moving forward and you will regain your strength.” I appreciate the advice Manolo.

2. You Really Can’t & Believe and have Faith That God Can Through You

Most of us know the truth that we really can’t accomplish the God given passions without God. Yet, at least for me, we still try and do it on our own. We get impatient, forge ahead and then complain when it doesn’t work out. Beth Moore (yup, I’m an interim womens Pastor too) reminded me of an interesting truth the other day. She said,(with my paraphrase) “the Israelites “sin” when they wandered in the dessert wasn’t that they didn’t believe God could do miracles. They saw Him do it every day. Mana in the morning, quail at night, water gushing out of a rock, walking across the bottom of a great sea, pillar of smoke and fire, etc, etc. Their sin was that they didn’t believe God could work through them as they entered the promised land.” They were afraid of the giants that God said they were suppose to conquer, because they didn’t believe He would and could through them.

So after I calm down, after I stop sending indirect and subtle outbursts to God, after I stop questioning His plan and purpose I’m thankfully still  left with a small voice in my head reminding me yet again of the plans and purposes He has for me. I’m also convicted and realize yet again, my need for forgiveness. So, I’m still learning to believe, have faith the He can, will and, incredibly, even wants to accomplish His plan through me. So here I sit, still working on patience, and believing in His promise to accomplish through me….how humbling

4 Steps to reading this post. (Yup, this requires some time and work)

• Read 2 Peter chapter 1. (ESV version of this text is here)
• Check out the awesome 6 minute video from Granger Community church below.
• Re-read 2 Peter chapter 1. (ESV version of this text is here)
• Write down what stuck out for you. Meditate on that this week and act accordingly.

For me, this is what I loved, felt challenged by, and what stuck out to me:

• A great history lesson on Nero, the burning of Rome and how the Christians suffered because of it.
• Incredible context on 1&2 Peter. (I will never read these books the same way again)
• A good reminder that I have never had it “that bad.” That was incredible suffering they endured for Christ’s sake.
• I love Peter’s passion to be constantly reminding other believer’s of the faith, hope, and power we have through Christ.(2 peter 12-14)
• To also share and be a “reminder” of Christ’s good news to others. (it’s funny to me how easy it is to separate being a disciple and disciple maker)

So, what stuck out to you?

So I’m sitting home alone, I just took a nap and feel like crap. However, my foggy head is starting to clear. A good cup of Starbucks helps with that. I’m feeling quite reflective at the moment and am missing Naomi and the kids.

So this past new years I caught myself staring out the window praying and asking God for what He thought I should focus on in the coming year. I felt like he said, “people”. In my mind I replied back to Him and said, “but God that’s my job, that’s what I already do every day. My whole job description is about people.” And yet it felt like He just said, “focus on who they are, who i have made & called them to be. Pray that you would see them as I see them. Be more intentional. Don’t be so rushed always.” I agreed and didn’t think much further about it, except that I would try and do so.

This past Monday I went and saw Avatar with my sister. Fresh off of my conversation with God I was struck by the phrase “I See you.” The Na’vi, when they meet each other, greet each other with the phrase “I see you.” Of course they physically see each other, but to the characters in the movie there was a much deeper meaning.  There was this understanding, a shared empathy between both individuals, a recognition of sameness (why they greeted Jake that way even before he was fully Na’vi), an acknowledgment of the divine.

While I don’t want to get carried away with over analyzing a plain ole fun movie to watch. It did serve to remind me to fully “see” people as God see’s them. Deeply loved, full of promise, unworthy of Christ’s grace and still the great potential to be called sons and daughter’s of the most high God. So, a good reminder for me to see people not as “us vs them” or “me and you” but see you as Christ see’s both of us.  Simply, the same. Unworthy, yet patiently loved beyond measure. I don’t have that perspective nearly often enough.

So, there’s my New Years resolution for 2010. Praying to have His eyes.