Slow down. Take the time. Tea time.
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In forty years of ordained ministry I have heard countless numbers of parishioners ask, “Why do we have to send money to foreign missions when we have so many needy people right here in our own back yard?”
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I struggled over this title. To Christians these four words conjure up a scene, a song, a promise so deep that there can be only one meaning. Yet I learned about something new last week that brings another beautiful color to its significance.
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In times of war we talk about collateral damage, which means destruction of people or things who weren’t the intended target. In Missions we can use the term collateral blessings, which means benefit to people who weren’t our intended ministry target.
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Fifteen years after I met them, a photo of my first “family group” at Kambari camp in Vladimir region, Russia, remains on my bedside table, the smiling faces of orphan children and teenagers now grown—some with whom I’ve lost contact, some adopted, but all still right next to me as I sleep.
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I’ll never forget Father Andrei. Father Andrei is the priest of the Russian Orthodox church in Komsomolsk, the small rural town housing the orphanage that many of the kids from the ministry center in Ivanovo grew up in. He is a big, happy, laughing, gregarious man with long hair whiter than his age and one of those awesome greyish beards that frames and expands his amazing smile. Sort of a young Santa Claus vibe with a subtle dose of The Dude.
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A generation, a score, two decades, 20 years. It’s long enough to make a difference and be well aware how much work is yet to be done! In March and April 1994, I was working for International Bible Society living in and around Moscow. At that time, I began to realize that the greatest—and most undeserved—blessing in my life was my family.
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I invite you back to a previous post, dear to my heart. I have written often about our experiences with Orphans Tree, a ministry which supports older Russian orphan kids – once they are too old to live in the orphanage. Their plight is bleak with little education behind them, precious few resources in the present and a very foggy future before them.
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How can we ever truly appreciate the significance our mothers have in our lives? I realize this is not a very timely post being much closer to Fathers Day than Mothers Day, but the subject has been on my mind quite a bit lately.It was just over a year ago that my mom was diagnosed with stage four cancer and told she had no more than a couple years to live. This kind of news—after you get over the shock—gets you thinking, of course, about how important your mother really is.
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We were in Paris, a layover on our way back from the Ukraine, and we, our mission team, went out to see the city. I was the youngest member (or nearly), and I remember detesting the decadence, the joie de vive, and the way my team mates, mostly adults, were able to compartmentalize their grief.
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The U.S. and Russia are experiencing the most difficult relationships between our countries in almost 30 years. I’m continually asked how this tension is impacting the ministry of Orphan’s Tree or what I think about the Ukraine/Russia situation.
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Pure and faultless religion is defined as looking out for widows and orphans in their time of distress. The orphans we meet in Russia need to see human love modeled for them, in personal and practical ways, to comprehend the vast love God has for them.
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