The Big News
My wife is about 7 weeks pregnant, so the trip for our family had an overarching theme of nausea and exhaustion. We are totally happy about having another baby, but it was a little bit of a downer on the trip. God graciously provided a lot of people who were willing to watch Joanna or give Sarah a place to chill out.
Evangelism
Of course, the whole purpose of the trip was to learn more about evangelism and to put it into practice. The week had a wonderful effect of freeing me from a lot of my bad evangelism prejudices. Handing out tracks and going door to door with a survey are forms of evangelism that I have always hated because they are impersonal and obnoxious (in other words nothing like Jesus). However, this week I learned that some people will never have any contact with Christians unless we walk up to them on the street or knock on their door. I had a wonderful feeling of being the first step in God's process of calling people to become His adopted children. Now, I want to pursue learning more about how to share the gospel in St Louis.
Hinduism, Islam, and Sikhism
As I prepared for this trip, I began to fear that I would not be able to overcome our cultural worship of tolerance. I was afraid of making exclusive "truth claims" about the Bible. However, all of those feelings went away as I visited the temple, mosque and gudwara and heard from their representatives about what they actually believed. There was really no hope and no answers; just empty religious rituals and philosophies. I was also struck with how easy it is for people (like me) to practice a Christianity that is just like these other religions. Without the gospel of Jesus Christ, Christianity is just a bunch of rituals and philosophies.
The Hatches
It was great to hang out with Chris and Josephine but we were a little too busy to have actual quality time. If you are their friend and you want to go to spend time with them, I would not recommend doing LEAP.
I hope that our church sends a team again next year. I think it would benefit everyone in our church to experience the London Evangelism and Prayer Conference. I also want to add that our team was a lot of fun and it was great to get to know these friends better.
I'm glad it was a good trip. And we are so excited about the baby - the girls have been tracking his/her development on a chart on the fridge, and I've been praying for Sarah's nausea.
I'm so excited for you and Sarah and Joanna!! It was great to get to know you all better too!
Amen to your thoughts on evangelism and other religions. I agree about people going next year- I've already done a bit of recruting!
We sure miss you!!! So glad we got to be some of those folks who helped with Joanna! Much love.....
Congrats on the latest newlyward. I became a bit suspicious right before you left when she mentioned not feeling well, but was vague about it... we mama's have a sense about these things, maybe.
In the vote for nausea vs. no-nausea, I vote for nausea... all of our miscarriages have followed "no-nausea" pregnancies. So, I'm glad to hear Sarah's nauseous, while at the same time praying for her relief from it!
We're so glad the trip went well, and are looking forward to getting back into our weekly routine once the fall gets going again.
Yeah!! Congratulations you guys! When is the due date? I hope Sara starts feeling better soon - it's a bummer that she had to be sick in London. But I'm glad that the trip went well and that you guys were able to go and be used by God there. It sounds like you learned some good stuff while there.