Psalm 42 Illustrated

Why are you downcast, O my soul? Why so disturbed within me?

Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God.

Deep calls to deep in the roar of your waterfalls; all your waves and breakers have swept over me.

By day the LORD directs his love, at night his song is with me-- a prayer to the God of my life.

What Motivates Someone To Be A Missionary?

I've often wondered why people become missionaries. What is it that prompts someone to leave the familiar, change their lives, learn languages, put up with inconveniences, and endure hardship?

I don't have the final answer, but I've asked some missionaries what moved them to do what they do. I am interested, in part, because understanding motivations will be the key to recruiting the next generation of cross-cultural ambassadors for Jesus. So, here are a few of my ideas about why people might choose to be missionaries:

1. God told them to go. Almost everyone I talked with cited some sort of call of God on their life as formative in their decision to go on the mission field. Several didn't even know where they wanted to go, but that God wanted them to go.
2. Expectation of a heightened walk with God. (i.e. – John Paton, Hudson Taylor, David Brainerd or Jim Elliot). Read one biography of the men listed above and you are ready to sign up. Read more than one and someone will have to restrain you from going because of the dynamic nature of their spiritual experience.
3. Opportunity to invest your life in a way that will make a difference. I remember stories of missionaries who have gone for a variety of reasons, and God used them to open up entire countries to the gospel. Others left a legacy of hundreds of churches. Others have given their lives to fields that required sacrifice and their blood, sweat and tears won only a handful of converts in a hard field.
4. Be part of the action. This is closely akin to #3. It’s more fruitful in some places than it is at home. There is more opportunity for service in places no one wants to go than there is at home. Missions offers opportunities to be in the fray where it may feel more like the sidelines at home.
5. Love for a certain group of people motivates missionary service. Some missionaries speak of an overwhelming compassion for the plight of a certain people group. Others find themselves mysteriously drawn to the lifestyle in a culture not their own.
6. Ability to relate unusually to a certain group of people. For some it is similar to #5. They have an unusual ability to identify needs and speak to spiritual issues in a group of people. This and #5 are often ways that the call of God (#1) looks to people when they are in the process of decision making.
   

I am hopeful that this will be a start to help someone think about giving their lives so that the nations might be glad (Psalm 68).

We're Home!

We're Home! We loved our trip AND we're excited to be back. Here are some stats from our trip --

Trip Stats

Days way from Home: 53
Nights in a Motel: 16
Breakfasts at McDonalds: 0
Museums: >17
Number of times Marcia's cell phone went off during the changing of the guard at Arlington Cemetary: 1
Total Miles: 10,609
Lowest Gas Price: $2.49 (Two places)
Highest Gas Price: $3:26 (Ann Arbor, Michigan)
Quarts of Automatic Transmission Fluid: 7
Pictures: 5324
Minutes in the car with tears: 4
Mosquito bites on Lisa: 147 (more or less)
Most common question: Where was your favorite place?

Thank you for your prayers and love for our family. We returned with a renewed love for each other, for the Lord, for our country and for our church that would allow us to be gone for so long.

Mount Rushmore

Mount Rushmore, in one sense, is in the same category as Wall Drug and the Corn Palace. It is a preposterous attempt to get people to South Dakota. It is, on the other hand, a magnificent and awe-inspiring tribute to the birth, growth, preservation and development of the U.S. of A.

South Dakota

South Dakota gets credit for doing the most with the least. I cannot believe the marketing moxie of this most barren of our 50 states. The Corn Palace in Mitchell and Wall Drug are boondoggles that were created simply to convince people to come visit are interesting only because of their preposterous marketing. You are in the middle of nowhere the whole time you are in South Dakota. . . and you need to stop at these places simply to take the car off auto-pilot.

Walnut Grove, MN

We left Niagara Falls and drove through Ontario. We stayed at Ann Arbor, Michigan. They raised the price of our hotel, we paid the highest gas prices of the trip and they refused to feed us when they learned we were from Oregon! We saw Hillsdale College and Olivia Wolcott the next morning and then visited Moody Bible Institute that afternoon. The next morning we toured Wheaton College with Heidi Mitchell. (The people are in the "Friends" post, but I thought I wouldn't bore you with pictures of schools). Then we drove to Mankato, MN so we could get to Walnut Grove for our final Little House on the Prairie destination. Here are our final "Little House" pictures.

Niagara Falls

We left Connecticut and drove through upstate New York in the rain. We saw the house I lived in when I was in kindergarten and first-grade. Then we spent the night at Niagara Falls. The sound is more impressive even than the sight of the magnificent waterfall.

New York, New York

We took a train into the city and then took a tour-boat ride around New York City. We had a beautiful day to do it.

Connecticut

We went from Philly to Connecticut to see Marcia's Family. We had a great time there. They are gracious and generous people.

Friends Along The Way

We all agreed that one of the chief highlights of the trip has been seeing people. I mentioned already we saw the family of a friend who was in our wedding. We also saw the Searls, all the Wibaux/Glendive cousins and Marcia's cousin and aunt in Connecticut. We met my fourth cousin once removed, Ken Reavely, who has in one notebook more than anyone knows about our branch of the Reavely family. We stopped by and visited some colleges and saw Janelle Austen, Olivia Wolcott, and Heidi Mitchell. Here are some pictures of the friends, old and new, we saw on this trip.

Pennsylvania

We left D.C. and drove through Lancaster, PA on our way to Philadelphia. We saw Amish country, ate the largest meal ever conceived, and visited historic Independence Hall.

Washington, D.C. #3

Here are the rest of our Washington, D.C. pictures of the Washington Monument, the Capitol, the Library of Congress and the Supreme Court Building.

Washington, DC #2

In order, these albums are the National Cathedral, the White House, the Holocaust Museum, Ford's Theatre and the Smithsonian Air and Space museum.

Washington, DC

I have several albums from Washington, DC. They are in order: Korean War Memorial, Vietnam War Memorial, DC at night, and Arlington National Cemetery. I'll save the others for another post, so this one isn't so long. The key thing you need to know out of all these stops is that Marcia's cell phone went off DURING the changing of the guard at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier!

Washington, DC Day Trips

We made a home outside of DC our home base for ten days. Here are some of the day trips we made. We went to Fulks Run, VA, a quaint little wide-spot in the road where my 4x great-grandfather lived. We met a distant relative who happened to have a display board of my relatives and we saw their school house and cemetery.

We drove to Gettysburg and visited my friend Steve Burlew, the director of Banner of Truth in Carlisle, PA.

Manassas Battlefield, the site of two decisive Confederate victories, was another favorite. It is the place where Thomas Jackson earned his nickname "Stonewall".

Mount Vernon was the place that most exceeded my expectations on the trip. It was beautiful. George Washington retired as president because he would rather be at Mount Vernon than be president of the United States.

Annapolis

We stopped for a few minutes at Annapolis, MD where Taylor and I went to a conference four years ago. It is a beautiful city and home to the Naval Academy.

Williamsburg

We had three great days in Williamsburg. We could have used more. We went to Water World and Busch Gardens (we got pictures from neither place because we didn't want to hang on to the camera).

The historic areas were great. We met Rosie Jonson, the wife of an old friend who was in our wedding. She, in God's kind providence, happened to be dropping her daughter Sarah off at William and Mary.

Monticello

From Lexington we went to Monticello, Thomas Jefferson's home seen on the back of nickels. It was fascinating and beautiful. We also saw Ash Lawn Meadow, home of James Monroe.

Lexington

We spent the next night in Lexington, VA. Marcia is a big fan of Stonewall Jackson. We saw his gravesite and the tomb of Robert E. Lee. We drove through Hazard, KY, where my mom was born.

Day Trips

While Marcia and I were at A Quiet Place we took some day trips by ourselves. We went to Old Fort Harrod, a revolutionary war era fort in KY, on the far western frontier.
We visited the bloodiest Civil War battlefield in Kentucky, Perryville. The confederates won the battle but, as in much of war, could not maintain their gains for lack of men, supplies and ammunition. So, even though they won, they retreated out of Kentucky and surrendered the Ohio River as a key transportation route to the North.

One of the interesting stories from this battle came when a commander from the South saw some troops ahead who were firing on his men. He mistook them for Confederates and rode up saying, "Stop firing on friends." When he got to the top of the ridge, the commanding officer ask him to identify himself. It was then he realized that he had mistakenly ridden into the Union line. He mumbled his name and then rode down the line hollering, "Cease fire." He then rode back to the Confederate line and told them to fire and will and they mowed down the Union soldiers. The commander was so flustered from his face-to-face encounter with the enemy that he didn't effectively follow up his brigade's pounding of the Union soldiers!


We drove to the Shaker Village of Pleasant Hill. It is a National Historic place now. The Shakers believed their leader Ann Lee was the second coming of Christ. They were named Shakers because of their charismatic trembling in their services. They didn't believe in marriage and even separated married couples who converted. Consequently they didn't have any children except orphans they raised. So, they eventually died out. They believed in simplicity and hard work. One of their slogans was, "Heart to God, Hands to work."