jamie's wanderings

I've been meaning to sit and write for a long time, but it hasn't worked out with this crazy time schedule I've been keeping. So many things to blog about, but I'm going to take it one subject at a time. Last Saturday, one of our American students was baptized in the Med. If you wanna see pictures, Andrew's got them posted to his Facebook profile. I love the picture he has of Ben coming up out of the ocean. Several months ago, Ben came over to have lunch with Andrew and I and told us this was the first semester he'd had time to properly read his Bible. He'd realized as he read his Gospels that Jesus wanted us to obey Him by being baptized. We talked with him a bit, and he told us that as an infant he had been baptized. However, as he read the gospels, he saw baptism as a decision he needed to make, that He personally needed to proclaim to the world the work that Jesus had done in his life. And so, we rejoiced last Sat. We sang, we heard testimonies of our s...

Worship should happen not only when we are happy, or sad, or rejoicing, or crying, but it should also happen when we don't feel like it. I have a friend preaching tomorrow, Pentecost Sunday. Tomorrow, I'm leading worship in our church. Both of us have had long weeks, with lots of problems. Frankly, I don't know if I'm up for leading worship, and I imagine he feels stressed and worried about preaching. However, we weren't called to minister/worship/preach/witness when we feel good. In fact, Paul discusses this in 2 Corinthians 3 and 4, and this has been my mediation today. Its too long to quote as a whole, but these are my words of comfort this afternoon. "BUT we have this treasure in earthen vessels, so that the surpassing greatness of the power will be of God and not from ourselves; we are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not despairing; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying about in the body the d...

As you can tell, its been a busy spring. I've scarcely had a moment to write, even though I've had more than my fair share of moments to ponder different things and see God working in dry land. When I went to Moody, personal evangelism was a favorite class, but not a favorite pastime. I had this really incredibly passionate proff, Dr. McDuffee, and he spoke a lot about sharing the gospel. I don't remember much he said, but I do remember his passion, and I like him for it, even though I could barely understand why he had such passion. He would even go out on the streets of Chicago and preach. I admired him for his guts, but still thought he was pretty nuts. 13 years later and I'm here in Southern Spain, and I think I've gone as nuts as he was and probably still is. How did I get from point A to point B? Frankly, it all started in Africa, when Andrew and I trucked over the Uganda to do a project for ACTION. We ended up in the north, in the worst part of the world I...