An Introduction to Our Trip

For those of you just tuning into our team's journey, welcome. We are now around 48 hours away from our first team leaving for the adventure that awaits us in Ethiopia and wanted to give you all an idea of what is in front of our team and ask that you would follow along over the next few weeks and pray with us.

We are so blessed to be able to partner with a great ministry like E3 Partners and their staff here as well as their staff on the ground in Ethiopia. Our main task is to partner with them for the purpose of spreading the gospel of Christ to those who have yet to hear and to work with the local church in Asela, Ethiopia to establish new church plants among the villages around that city. Even this week, the E3 staff in Ethiopia has been training the men and women that we will be working with, called "Disciple Makers" who are Christ-followers living in and around those villages to prepare them for their partnership with us as well as the ongoing work they will have once we leave.

Once on the ground, our team of 20 will be divided into 4 teams of 5 and will travel to 4 separate mission sites, each equipped with at least 2 translators and 2 or more "Disciple Makers." Our main activities will be establishing relationships with the people of the village using soccer, hand ball (volleyball), and other games and taking advantage of opportunities to share with the people of the village our stories of God's grace in our lives and the hope that He offers to each of them. We will do this by telling stories from God's Word and using the "Evangecube" a great tool developed by E3 for sharing the gospel. We will also have opportunities to pray for the physical needs of people and be the hands and feet of Christ to people in impoverished areas of Ethiopia.

This trip is the culmination of a long journey of preparation that started back in October of 2009 and has included hours of preparation collectively and individually and the raising of thousands of dollars of support. Our work will follow to 10 hour flights and a 3 hour van ride to get to Asela and will be followed by the same on our return. We have two teams going, one traveling with us on July 16th and returning on the 25th and the second team leaving July 23rd and returning on August 1st. Five of our team will be staying for the full 17 days. The Lord has provided in amazing ways for the members of our team and has provided us with an amazing team. Tomorrow I'll let you hear from some of them and what their hopes and prayers are for the trip.

Starting today, you should find daily updates here and pictures from the field as well as stories of how God is working through our teams, so check back daily. The following is a video we shot last year of the church in Asela (Sagure is specifically the name of the village) celebrating our arrival and praising God for bringing us to partner with them (the camera work is awful thanks to yours truly, but you get the idea).

God's Continued Work in Ethiopia

Even as we gear up for our trip this week, we are reminded that God's work is in full swing already in Asela and the surrounding community. This past Sunday, we ran DK's story in the Watermark News, a story of how God used DK's faithfulness in sharing his faith with a man named Geda last year. Be encouraged by this great story and reminded of God's loving, relentless pursuit of His people.


http://watermarkblogs.org/stories/07/god-at-work/

Getting Ready for Evangelism

We are now 3 days away from Team 1's trip to Ethiopia and are continuing to prepare our hearts and minds for the trip. Since the vast majority of our time will be spent sharing our faith with the people of the villages, we did a little exercise with our teams a few weeks ago, breaking them into small groups and telling them to go out and share their faith with at least one person before coming back for our team meeting. One of our team members, Claressa Norrell, wrote about her experience on her blog and we thought we'd copy and paste the story here for everyone to enjoy. Here's her story.


http://claressasstory.blogspot.com/2010/06/africa-update-3.html

Oral Bible Storying as a Tool for Evangelism and Discipleship

One of the best tools we discovered last year shortly before our trips to Ethiopia was this concept of Oral Storying, or story-telling as a means of evangelism and discipleship in non-Western cultures. Story-telling is the principle means by which people in the majority of the world learn everything from farming to leadership to directions to the neighbor's house. Ironically, if you read through the gospels, you see Jesus using this as his primary means of teaching and training for the crowds as well as the disciples.

Recently, the Lausanne Movement (http://www.lausanne.org/), "a worldwide movement that mobilizes evangelical leaders to collaborate for world evangelization" has posted some thoughts on the value and necessity of this strategy for reaching the unreached people groups of the world. Here are 3 recent posts on this topic.

Oral Bible Storytelling -- Why This and Why Now?

http://conversation.lausanne.org/resources/detail/10042

Oral Bible Storying Part II

http://conversation.lausanne.org/conversations/detail/10217

Bible Storying as Entry, Presence, and Exit Strategy

http://conversation.lausanne.org/resources/detail/10112

Ramping up for Ethiopia in 2010

That long silence you've heard here on the blog is us preparing yet another two teams for a great week of ministry in Ethiopia. We have spent the past several months casting the vision for these trips, sorting through applications and interviews, prayerfully selecting our teams, and now training those teams both for a week of ministry in Ethiopia and for ongoing lifetime ministry here in Dallas or wherever the Lord may take us.

Tonight, our teams begin a portion of our training where we meet for 5 weeks to do some specific heart and head work in preparation for our trips. Namely, we'll be working on developing our personal story of grace, learning to effectively use the Evangecube, and discovering how to implement the art form of oral storytelling as a means to engage with the hearts of the people of Ethiopia.

Please be praying for our teams as we begin to make these preparations for a trip that is just over two months away now. Can't wait!

What God taught Holly

I said a couple of days ago that I would be trying to get more stories from our team members so you could hear more directly from them. Well, this is a great story from Holly Holmes on her blog. Rather than post the whole thing here, let me just give you the link and encourage you to read this great story of how God taught Holly what sacrifice, both great and small, looks like.

http://www.caringbridge.org/visit/hollyholmes/journal

The End of the Beginning

Sorry for the lack of posts over the last few days. We had more than a few issues with phones and internet while away and we were basically in the technological dark for the last few days. Nevertheless, team 2 returned safely back to DFW yesterday afternoon.

As we return, we bring with us the joy and satisfaction that comes from obedience to God and participation in His mission for the world. In moments like this, we are more fully aware of what we were created for than perhaps any other time in life, that is being used up and spent for the sake of God and His glory. There is no greater satisfaction.

The report from last week reads like this: We shared the gospel with over 1300 individuals last week and from that, the Lord saved 297 and adopted them as His sons and daughters. Amazing! Combined with the first week, we were able to see 394 individuals come to a saving faith in Jesus Christ. Only God saves and only God accomplishes things like this.

But as the title indicates, this is only the beginning on a couple of different fronts. First of all, our friends Dimecca and Tarikua will return back to Asela this week to train and equip the disciples makers we worked with the last two weeks so that they can effectively follow up with each and every one of the 394. They will equip them to start Bible studies in the villages and it is likely that several new churches will begin in the coming weeks. Please pray for this wonderful couple and the work they have ahead of them in Asela. Jesus said that the kingdom of God is like a mustard seed, small at first, but undeniable in its majesty in time. The number of believers is merely a mustard seed there currently, so pray that their faith will grow, that they will endure persecution that will surely come, and that they will be emboldened to declare the gospel to their friends and neighbors.

On the second front, this is, for our two teams, the beginning of a new season of life. Most had never experienced any kind of trip of this nature, and it is doubtful that any of us had every experienced a trip like this. We were encouraged, challenged, convicted, and broken over the condition of a world apart from Christ, both in Ethiopia and, now more prevalently for us, in Dallas, TX. We consistently refer to these trips, not as mission trips, but as discipleship trips. Pray for our teams, that the discipleship they experienced during their time in Ethiopia will bear much fruit in their lives here in Dallas, that many of our family members, friends, and co-workers will hear and respond to the gospel as we are newly emboldened to share with them in the days and weeks to come, and pray that this is not merely a flash in the pan, but true change that God has done in our hearts that will carry us as long as the Lord gives us breath.

Lastly, as you've followed along over the last couple of weeks, you've only received a sampling of the stories from this amazing trip. I am going to ask many of the members of the team to email me their favorite stories from the trip and continue to update the blog in the weeks to come with some of the stories you haven't heard yet, so keep checking back. I'll also try to get updates from our friends in Ethiopia about the work that continues there and will update you as I receive that information.

Thank you all again for your prayers, and please continue to pray!