Honduras Day 1: Tegucigalpa

We arrived in Tegucigalpa at 11:30 am local time. The "scary" flight that everyone has warned us about was overrated. Our seat belts might have worked a little over time, but it was hardly noticeable.

After working our way through customs and baggage, we met up with Austin, our in-country Team Leader. He's worked with Orphan Outreach for about four years. Austin took us (with our driver, Willy) to lunch at a nearby restaurant.

Next came an exciting drive through Tegucigalpa to the Hotel MacArthur, our home away from home for the night.
If you never had the "privilege" to navigate the streets of a developing country, you are missing out. One word describes it all...chaos.

Our hotel is located near the old downtown area, where some streets were so narrow that we weren't sure the van would pass parked cars, pedestrians and motorcyclists without someone being hurt.

Later, after checking in, we left to head to a national park at the top of the city. We passed the US Ambassador's residence on our way.

At the top of the mountain we walked through the beautiful park on our way to overlook the city, which has a population of more than one million in the metro area.

There, Austin oriented us to the week ahead, and we prayed over the city beneath a huge statue of Jesus.

Tomorrow morning we head toward La Paz, which is about 90 minutes away.

After being up for too many hours to count, we are glad to have a night of rest.

Honduras Day 0: The Adventure Begins...

We're off to La Paz, Honduras to spend a week with 15 kids who live in the San Jose Orphanage. They range in age from two to 12-years-old. You can find their pictures at www.orphanoutreach.com if you'd like to see them.

They are getting ready to move. Up to this point they have lived in a less than acceptable home. Not too long ago, the mayor of La Paz donated land and someone from the United States donated the money to build a new facility.

We'll have the privilege of helping with some of the final projects at the new place, teaching them about Jesus, and playing, hugging and generally making them smile.

Tonight we fly out of Portland International Airport at 11:47pm. After a four hour layover in Houston, we'll head out on our final leg to Tegucigalpa, Honduras. We arrive tomorrow about 11:30 am, and will meet our in-country coordinator Austin and our interpreters. They are as excited to host us, as we are to be hosted.

Allow me to introduce our Orphan Outreach team (from left to right)
Lori Schilling, REACH Coordinator at Corban University (and Chris' editor)
Ashli Dehm, High School Student at Trinity Lutheran (and Sami's daughter)
Douglas Bonham, 5th/6th Grade Teacher at Bethany Charter School
Sami Dehm, mostly stay-at-home mom (and Lori's sister-in-law)
Chris Voigt, Worship Pastor at Dayspring Fellowship
Dana Copenhaver, Secretary at Burns High School (and Chris' mom)
Alexi Voigt, Chemeketa Student (and Chris' 18-Year-Old Daughter)

Pray for travel safety, sleep on the plane and chemistry as a team. Some of us just met at dinner tonight.

We went to Florida for a week this summer. I knew we'd have a rental car so I was smart enough to bring my GPS to help us get around. On one of the days we were driving from Orlando to Lakeland to drop our son off at music camp, about a 45-minute drive.

Even with my GPS giving directions, I was tense as we drove.  We were talking about the church we

had just visited, trying to drive safely in multi-lane traffic and taking in all of the sights. Do you know that Disney World has Mickey ears at their power substation? How cool is that? What attention to detail. On top of it all, we were hungry and looking for a place to each lunch, (eventually found Cracker Barrel...southern fried chicken...mmm good).

There was just too much input to process. Since I'd never been there, everything was new. There were no landmarks I recognized to let me know we were on the right track (yeah, even my GPS has been known to be wrong).

Fast forward four days. It was time to return to Lakeland to pick up our son. Same trip, but this time, totally relaxed. I knew where we were going. I recognized the signs and sights we had previously seen. I had a passing familiarity with our surroundings.

We who follow Christ, have the privilege and responsibility of leading people toward Jesus. Whether we do it from a stage or not, the challenge is the same.

But we can't lead people to places we've never been.

If we don't spend time in the presence of God, how will we help other people find him?

Joshua loved to spend time in the presence of God. Exodus 33 tells us that when Moses left the tent where he met with God, Joshua would linger in the tent. Just him and the afterglow of the Living God who had just been there.

And look at how he led. A whole nation owes him a debt of gratitude because he led them into the Promised Land.

What kind of leader will you be, one who stumbles along, hoping to miraculously run into God? Or, one who has staked out the route ahead of time, able to enjoy the journey with the people God has entrusted to your leadership?

Building the Temple

Shortly after God adopted Israel as His own by bringing them out of slavery in Egypt, He gave them the plans to build an earthly Tabernacle, a Tent of Meeting. It was the place where His presence dwelt and where the Israelites could come to sacrifice and meet with Him. It was quite an extravagant "Tent," which you can read about in the Old Testament book of Exodus.

Until the reign of King David, the Tabernacle was in use as God's home.After making his own home in Jerusalem, David desired to build a more permanent structure for God to dwell on earth. But because his life was littered with war and bloodshed, God promised David that his son, Solomon, would build the Temple instead.

Because of his love for God, and desire to be a part of establishing the Temple, David gave much of his personal treasure to fund the future Temple. 1 Chronicles 22 says that David gave 100,000 talents of gold, a million talents of silver and too much bronze, iron, timber and stone to count.

One talent was about 75 pounds, which means that David donated 7.5 million pounds of gold. At today's market value, he donated more than $150 billion dollars in gold and silver.

After David died, Solomon began  the task of building the Temple. It tells us in 2 Chronicles 2 that 80,000 people worked in the rock quarry shaping the stone (for both his house and the Temple), and another 70,000 bore the burdens (i.e., they carried the finished stone to the Temple sight). Out of respect for God, none of the stone work was done on the Temple mount.

They spent seven years building the Temple.

All of this is background for what happened next. When the Temple was finally complete, they threw a big dedication party.

2 Chronicles 7:1-2 says, "When Solomon finished praying, a bolt of lightning out of heaven struck the Whole-Burnt-Offering and sacrifices and the Glory of God filled The Temple. The Glory was so dense that the priests couldn't get in - God so filled The Temple that there was no room for the priests!"

Did you catch that? The Glory of God was so thick that the priests couldn't get in the Temple.

Fast forward to today...to you. If you believe in Jesus, the Temple is now located in your heart. What does your Temple look like? How much of your time, resources and blood, sweat and tears do you spend making sure the Temple is the most beautiful place for God to reside?

The good news is that He will clean it up, we just have to dedicate our lives to allowing Him to do His good work. The bad news is that a battle is being actively waged to keep your Temple broken and bruised. Even this week I've felt the onslaught of the enemy seeking to widen cracks, cave in the roof and board up the windows to keep the Light out.

If we want a thick Glory of God, we must actively pursue righteousness, actively renew and restore our spirits. It's a lot of work, but well worth the effort. Once you've seen the Glory of God, nothing else satisfies.

What would your life look like if you lived that way?

A Metaphor for Life

Imagine if you will, an oasis in the middle of a desert. (Don’t close your eyes or you won’t be able to continue.)

As much as the desert is ruthlessly hot, fraught with danger and unrelenting in its assault on your body, the oasis is a haven of peace, rest and healing.

In the middle of the oasis is a well, filled with life-giving water. It is deep. It is pure. It is easily accessible. It supports the entire ecosystem that makes up the oasis.

As you crawl in, depleted…physically and emotionally, you are in awe of the richness that now surrounds you. You see the well and realize just how thirsty you are, but as your eyes drink in the sights your heart races at the possibilities as you begin to explore. Distracted by the beauty you think, “I’ll make it to the well in a moment, but I want to enjoy the cool shade.” Hour after hour, day after day you enjoy the food and the other survivors you meet.

Somehow you never make it to the well. Everything else just seems good enough. Until it isn’t.

Dehydration takes its toll. Every time you feel its affects you head toward the well. But that pineapple or mango take off the edge and the well seems less important. Eventually you die of dehydration.

Our culture is a moral desert. It is sucking the life out of us. It is as unrelenting as the Sahara. The church is an oasis in the desert. It is meant to provide and sustain life. All we have to do is drink from the well.

The well is far more than what we do for Christ. It is our connection with Christ, who we are in Christ. It is not about our salvation, but our sanctification, or growth in Christ. Though the well is rooted in our spiritual disciplines, it is not those disciplines alone. It is our orientation to find all we are in Christ, and then to surrender it all to Christ. 

Unfortunately we get distracted too easily…serving, living, surviving…too busy to ever make it to the well. And, we wonder why we’re thirsty. We’re in the oasis, isn’t that enough? We live as if our world will spin out of control at any moment, as if we’ve lost our center. We think that the more we do to make the oasis a better place, the better off we’ll be. We’ve become spiritually dehydrated.

The well gives life. It alone makes the oasis the best place to be. Drink from the well.

My nose job...

I had a nose job yesterday.

No, not the kind that will leave me looking more like Brad Pitt.

I suffered from an internal problem. According to my great doctor, I had one of the worst deviated septum he's ever seen. He's convinced that I've broken my nose at some point in the past. I must have blocked the trauma. He also shortened my Inferior Turbinates, which isn't a character statement about my turbinates - we all have them (as well as Superior Turbinates). Although, since he shortened mine I guess they are inferior. For those of you who are not Ear, Nose & Throat doctors, turbinates aid in air flow. He also fixed some concha thing that was basically an air bubble in my middle turbinate.

You'd never know by looking at the outside of my nose that there were such problems on the inside. However, you can't hide these kinds of problems from the expert who can fix them.

The same is true for our heart problems...in the spiritual sense. Proverbs 10:9 says, "The man of integrity walks securely, but he who takes crooked paths will be found out." [NIV]

Integrity has been described as being undivided. It is consistency between our public self and private self. I don't know about you, but I prefer to walk securely. I like having nothing to hide. Life is a lot less stressful when you don't have to worry about someone finding out something that you're trying to hide. And, as Solomon reminds us, the natural consequences will bring our lack to light at some point.

Of course, our lack of integrity is always known by the God of the Universe. God cares deeply about our integrity. When the outside doesn't match the inside, He finds it offensive.

And trying to worship an offended God can be a bit challenging to say the least.

Do you need a nose job of the heart?

I love my GPS!

I love my GPS. I use it all the time. Most of the time I don't really need it for directions. I am not generally directionally-challenged. I love that it tells me my speed. It even tells me the posted speed limit on most major roads. I've been amazed at how accurately it changes when I drive into a new speed zone.

My car is less helpful. The speedometer is off by a few miles per hour (that's kilometers per hour for those of you reading in the rest of the world).

When I start out on a journey, I like to program in the destination because it tells me how far I have to go before I arrive. When I am driving into new territory, it takes a bit of the stress, of which road or exit to take, away. And when I decide to drive a different direction it says, "Recalculating...When possible make a legal u-turn." Sometimes I think it should say, "Hey stupid, just turn me off if you aren't going to pay attention to me."

With the miracle of modern technology it also shows me where I can get gas...for my car or my stomach...even shows me where there are ATMs so I can fill up my wallet.

It's really quite helpful. Sometimes it even helps certain back-seat-drivers from pitching in their two cents.

My father-in-law argues with his GPS frequently.

Psalm 43:3-4 says, "Give me your lantern and compass, give me a map, so I can find my way to the sacred mountain, to the place of Your presence, to enter the place of worship, meet my exuberant God, sing my thanks with a harp, Magnificent God, my God."

In this journey we call life, God has gifted most of us in such a way that we can do normal life without much dependence on Him (not that we should, just that we can). So we do. And we spend our life reading the billboards that our culture puts up alongside the road. You know the ones: things satisfy, busyness equals fulfillment, more is better, you can have it all. Sometimes the billboards are subtle and other times they are in your face. But they lead us away from the narrow path that God calls us to walk. And it's a struggle to get back. We get so far from the intimacy God would have us experience with him that we begin to wonder if he is even real?

He's given us a lantern, compass and map. A GPS, so to speak. Do you even know how to read it? When was the last time you did?

The only thing that satisfies is the presence of God. Everything else is hollow in comparison. When was the last time you made it to the Sacred Mountain? The Secret Place where you soul connects most deeply with the God who created you for fellowship with HIM?

Maybe you should "recalculate" and "make a legal u-turn"...now. If you are off-track it may take a while to get back onto the right path. It's worth the work.