Spiritual Journeys Today

Yesterday morning as I spoke on the phone with our dear friends, Jenny and Jeff Gunter, I looked through the window at our garden area.  I noticed a butterfly hanging upside down on a papaya leaf, motionless, to the point of seeming to be dead.   After my wife got on the phone, I went to check it out.  What I saw was this beautiful butterfly hanging on to the clear chrysalis that had held it while it transformed from a caterpillar to the lovely insect in front of me.  It was motionless while it recovered from coming out of that little place and while its wings dried.

I was witnessing some of it’s first moments as a flying creature.  I wonder what it thought of me and my camera, constantly moving and drawing ever closer.  I must confess that my thoughts around this event drew my attention during the video sermon that morning at church.  There are many ways that I could view this but my thoughts focused around the opportunity offered by transformation and the option we have each new day to be different than we were before.  God moves in and around our lives to give us that opportunity EVERY day.  As many of you know, I spent 10-12 years as a drunk.  God called me out of that place and I am a much better child of God because I answered that call.  I had left church and God behind when I married and went to college.  Re-“turning to God” enabled God to transform my old and miserable life into something much better.  My journey and my growth as a human is far from over but truly trying to live as a Christian in my new life helps to guide and ground me, buoying me up during the darker times and putting those mountaintop “God” moments into perspective when I am fortunate enough to have them.

As a child, I was taught and accepted a very literal translation of the Bible.  This second time around of living as a Christian is a different experience for me, my world views and opinions are significantly different.  My views of “sinners” are different,  I am one, along with virtually everyone else, but I am, along with everyone else, clearly also a beloved child of a benevolent God.  I now know that I am capable of doing terrible hurtful things, often with words.  I did it quite often in the bad old days, especially when I was angry.  Those words and the hurt they caused can never be changed.

I am now able to forgive myself for my inhuman words and actions due to God’s extraordinary gifts of never-ending love and grace. The only thing that we have to do to get these gifts is to recognize and accept them.  This was Christ’s message to us over and over again. A person’s experience, faith and spiritual maturity change over time and I, personally, find my views on many things are quite different than they were before I developed and overcame my drinking problem with God’s help.  These days I understand that the Bible is an God inspired document, translated into many different languages.   We all bring our accumulated wisdom, understanding and biases with us each time we read the Bible.  That’s one of the reasons that we can read a passage multiple times and get a much different understanding of a chapter or  verse with each reading, even though the translation/version of the Bible we use may be exactly the same one it always was.  If you want to learn more about the basis for much of my theology, look up the Wesleyan Quadrilateral which teaches that we use and need to use four sources as the basis of theological and doctrinal development:  scripture, tradition, reason, and experience while acknowledging that Scripture is always primary.

As I mentioned earlier, I wrote the first part of this piece up to the words ” My journey and my growth as a human is far from over ”  while listening to the sermon Sunday.  The sermon was based on James 3 and addresses “Taming the Tongue”.

At the end of that service, one of the regular attendees, confessed in no uncertain terms that she struggles with this problem.  After she said this, she asked God to provide her with a transformation.  Her words fit in so well with what I had been writing that I shared with her what I had written up to that point.  In addition, I would like to say to her “We all struggle with something.  In my drunken days, I said terrible things to so many people.  God will provide the transformation you seek.  You are a beloved child of a loving, grace-full God.  Forgive yourself and work to be better tomorrow than you were yesterday.  That’s what new life in Christ is all about!  God loves you and always will!

Please include the following people in your prayers:

• This woman, who was courageous enough to tell others of the challenge she faces.
• A two and a half year old Guatemalan girl named Genesis. She has cancer and started chemotherapy last week.
• All those serving in mission in Guatemala and around the world.

May you feel and recognize God moving in your life today and always!

John

Jan, John Edmund and I want to thank you for your continuing support.  Your thoughts and prayers for our mission and well-being are an important part of our mission.  We think of you often and are aware that you keep us in your public and personal prayers.

Our family will be in the US from August 7-28.  We plan to spend about two weeks of this time in Rochester with a week spent traveling to visit friends and family in Indiana and Michigan.  It is hard to believe that we will have already spent six months in Guatemala at that time.  Our time here has been blessed.  I tell you this is a visit because this is home for us now.  I have been having a difficult time trying to decide what to tell you about because, in general, things have been going so well.  In many ways, life is similar to what it was in the US.  Oh, we have problems, quite likely the same ones we would have had in Minnesota.  Politics are a shambles, life with a teenager can be difficult, there’s never enough time to do all the things you want and of course, my favorite, the world can be a cruel place to live in.

Having said that, it is clear that God is working here in Guatemala and through your generosity we have the privilege of being a part of that work.  While our jobs here are not on the front line of the medical or education work that Project Salud y Paz (saludypaz.org) does, the work we do clearly helps to enable the organization continue to serve the indigenous Mayan population here.  The whole family has been doing work in different ways to help improve the pharmacy system, Jan is involved with a team that will improve the processes and experience for short term mission teams and John Edmund is designing a way for Salud Y Paz to let people who are coming on short term missions, know what equipment and supplies they can bring that would help us the most.

Please consider donating to Salud y Paz as a part of your giving through the United Methodist Church Advance.  They are Advance #14060A.

Thanks again for all the ways you support us!

We look forward to seeing you soon!

Jan, John Edmund and John Lage, Jr.

Hoy, voy a escribir mi primera entrada de sitio web en español(English below).  Porque yo estoy escribiendo en español, esa primera frase esta escrita diferentemente de la manera en que la hubiera escrito en inglés. ¿Por qué? Porque en inglés,  yo la hubiera escrito, ”yo estoy escribiendo mi primera entrada de sitio web en español” pero antes de esto, yo no sabía cómo escribir o decir esa frase. El unico tiempo que yo sé en espanol es el tiempo presente y ahora sólo estoy aprendiendo el tiempo pretérito, una forma del tiempo pasado. Sinceramente, he tenido que usar mi diccionario electrónico por lo menos una docena de veces desde que empecé esta entrada. Aun cuando yo lo uso, me da tres versiones y muy a menudo, ninguno de ellos traduce lo mismo.  Cuando vives en otro país, el idioma es a menudo un problema importante.  Por ejemplo, en la ultima frase, el traductor venía con “un problema importante” cuando yo escribí “a major problem” en inglés.  Yo creo que “Eso no es correcto” porque yo no dije “important problem”.  Cuando yo lo busqué, “major problem” fue traducido como “problema importante”, como “important problem”.

Como yo dije, cuando vives en otro país, el idioma es a menudo un problema importante.  En muchos sentidos, ser un cristiano es como vivir en otro país.  Todo es diferente que antes.  Usted piensa diferentemente.  Usted actúa diferentemente.  Usted es diferente.  Ahora yo encuentro que yo no entiendo como otra gente puede mirar el mundo y no lo mira como yo lo miro.  Pero no hace mucho tiempo, yo no lo podía mirar así tampoco.

Como yo dije, cuando vives en otro país, el idioma es a menudo un problema importante pero realmente es un problema menor en comparición con algunos problemas.

La pobreza esta en todas partes.  Mucha gente muere cada día de hambre y de enfermedades prevenibles.  Hay suficiente comida en este mundo para que todos comen.  Podría haber suficiente medicina para prevenir muchas de estas muertes.

Muchos de nosotros somos ricos en comparación con el resto del mundo.

¿Que podemos hacer sobre estos problemas?

¿Que va a hacer usted sobre esto?

Usted puede sentir y reconocer que Dios se esta moviendo en su vida, hoy y siempre!

Yo quiero decirle gracias a un amigo de mi infancia, Ramiro Cruz, quien me alentó a escribir una entrada de sitio web en español.  ¡Gracias, mi amigo!

Today, I am going to write my first entry in Spanish.  Because I am writing it in Spanish, that first sentence is written differently than the way I would have written it in English.  Why?  Because in English, I would have written “I am writing my first blog entry in Spanish but before this, I didn’t know how to write or say that sentence.  The only tense I know in Spanish is the present tense and only now I am learning the preterit tense, one form of the past tense.  Truthfully, I have had to use my electronic dictionary at least a dozen times since I started this entry.  Even when I use it, it gives me three versions and very often, none of them translate it the same. When you live in another country, language often is a major problem.  For example, in the last sentence, the translator came up with “problema importante” when I wrote “major problem” in English.  I thought “That´s not right” because I didn´t say “important problem”.  When I looked it up, “major problem” was indeed translated as “problema importante”, as was “important problem”.

As I said, when you live in another country, language often is a major problem.  In many ways, being a Christian is like living in a different country. Everything is different.  You think differently.  You act differently.  You are different.  Now I find that I don´t understand how other people can look at the world and not see it like I see it.  But not very long ago, I couldn´t see it much either.

Like I said, when you live in another country, language often is a major problem.  But in reality, it is a minor problem in comparison to other problems.

Poverty is everywhere.  Many people die every day from hunger and from preventable diseases.  We have enough food in this world to feed everyone.  We could have enough medicine to prevent many of these deaths.

Many of us are rich compared to the rest of the world.

What can we do about these problems?

What will you do about them?

May you feel and recognize God moving in your life, today and always!

I want to thank a childhood friend, Ramiro Cruz, who encouraged me to write a blog entry in Spanish.  Thank you, my friend!

In one corner of our Guatemalan kitchen, is a handcrafted Japanese nativity set.  It has our name on the manger in Japanese characters.  It is a treasured gift from our son and daughter-in-law, Jeremy and Leanna Wares, but that is only part of the reason it will be on display in our home year-round. 

Much of the amazing wonder of this Godly adventure that landed us in Guatemala has been the people who have played a role in our journey.  I want to tell you about one of them.  Her name is Carla Behnke.  Jan and I first became acquainted with Carla through our church choir.  Carla was one of those people whose smile lit up a room.  She had a zest for life and an amazing connection with children of all ages.  Carla had a friend, a little old lady named Faith Friendly, who would tell children of the wonders of Christian life and of God’s precious gift to mankind, Jesus.  The funny thing was that although both Carla and Faith Friendly each acknowledged their close friendship, you would never, ever see them together.  Carla loved Christmas and had an amazing collection of Nativity scenes from all over the world.  Carla liked to tell people that she loved Christmas because it was the beginning of Christianity and that she loved each day because it could be a new beginning.  She’d say that since we had a chance to share God’s love with others each day, that every day could be Christmas.

It’s now been a little over 5 years since Carla passed away.  I still miss her.  Her memorial service was a key triggering event in the creation of this website.  At the service, it became apparent to me how little I knew about Carla’s (and Faith Friendly’s) journey and ministry in this world of ours.  I was determined that people should have a place to tell the stories of their everyday journeys and encounters with God.  I don’t remember too many dates in my life very well but I know that the weekend of Carla’s memorial service also provided the trigger for Jan and I to experience our first mission trip to Guatemala.  That story is documented elsewhere on this site.  Please go to the dedication page for this site to learn more about Carla and even hear some of her story in her own words.

If you haven’t guessed by now, Carla’s love of Christmas, her Nativity scene collection and her desire to tell the story of Jesus’ birth in an effort to touch others by offering them an opportunity for a new beginning through Christian living are the other reason why we have a Nativity scene in our house year-round (and a collection of our own in storage in Rochester).

So, it’s March…Merry Christmas!

May you feel and recognize God moving in your life today and always!

John

Last Tuesday marked the one month anniversary of our coming to Guatemala.  To say that it has been an amazing month would be an understatement.  Here are just a few happenings and differences.  We moved to another country and into a new home.  After being here in this apartment less than a week, we decided to sign a lease for a year…the lease we signed is in Spanish.  We have attended church here held in the home of a friend.  There we have fellowship with friends we have known for quite some time and with new friends we have only just met.  We have disinfected and cooked with new foods that we have never cooked with before such as chayote or güisquil, as it is more commonly called here.  We have found that buying some foods we have used in the past isn’t quite the same here.  In some cases, we can’t find them at all and in others it is just different.  For instance, we have been unable to find cumin powder but can readily buy the cilantro seeds that are ground up to become cumin.  Yeast is purchased in bulk here and can’t be found in handy little pre-measured packets.  A dozen large calla lily blooms can be had for 10 Quetzales…about $1.30.  Jan and I have finished 4 weeks of Spanish school already.  Our work with Project Salud Y Paz begins in earnest next week. Last Friday, I drove a vehicle for the first time in over a month, successfully navigating the downhill drive from Camanchaj (where the main clinic is) to our new home town of Panajachel (Pana, for short).   I am averaging around 10000 steps a day so far.  The produce in this picture cost $4.15, believe it or not.

I think I’ve given enough words to trivia concerning our move so I’ll proceed to the meat of this blog entry.

We are nothing less than completely blessed in this opportunity that God has called us to.  The produce in the picture is but a small part of the beauty and the bounty that envelops us.  That bounty includes friends and family in the US that have been donating time, money and resources to help meet our needs.  It includes Heather Nielsen (seen here with us), whom we had the pleasure of hosting last weekend as she stayed here in Pana before joining a group from her grad school.  It includes a community of new and pre-existing friends here in Pana who have embraced us, surrounded us with love and provided us with tips and help to ease our transition here.  It includes the incredible Guatemalan people whom we will start serving soon.  I’m somewhat embarrassed to tell you that our transition has been far easier so far than we have any right to expect.  Oh, we have encountered problems to be sure, problems both new and old but we are feeling very much at home, except that we miss all of our friends back home.  It seems as if we belong here already.    To steal a line from an old MasterCard commercial, that is priceless.

As always, we want to thank all of you for your support!  Without it, living God’s call would be so much more difficult.

May you feel and recognize God moving in your life today and always!

John

One of the neat things about our Spanish school, Jabel Tinamit, is that they have activities in the afternoon and evening for the students.  Neither Jan or I have been able to participate in any of them until last night when I signed up for a cooking class.  Jan stayed home with John as he is alone each day from before 8 until early afternoon while we are in Spanish school.  At the bottom of the bulletin board that tells us about the activities for each day, there was a note that there needed to be at least two students signed up for an activity in order for them to go through with the activity.  Having read this disclaimer, my expectations for attendance at the class were pretty low and I was partly right.  Only two of my fellow students at the school showed up, Marina ( I pray I spelled this correctly) and Elizabeth.  However, I was in for a pleasant surprise that turned out to be an opportunity to be in mission.  The school had arranged for us to be joined by a tour group composed primarily of folks who appeared to be mostly somewhat older than me.  I believe they said they numbered 23.  Most of them were from Arizona.

The cooking class was to be a hands-on cooking class to teach us to cook Pepia´n and mole.  I will say that the class was extremely interesting and the food turned out great but the cooking and eating is not really what I want to tell you about.

Jan, John and I came to Guatemala to serve in mission primarily with the Mayan population here.  God obviously has more in mind than that.  During the class, I had the opportunity to meet and talk with a number of the people there, including both of the other students and some members of the tour group.  I’m not very good with names as most of you probably know but I remember meeting and chatting for a least a short time with Anne, John, Win, Stevie, Vivian, Roberta and Beth, in addition to Marina and Elizabeth.  Some of those conversations gave me an opportunity to hand out business cards for this website and to let people know about our mission and that of Project Salud y Paz.  I talked with a few of these people for a more extended period of time.  They seemed genuinely interested in the people and the history of Guatemala.  They had been given a presentation by another non-profit, Mayan Families, earlier in the day and were obviously very interested in the efforts that many people here are making to help address a number of the serious problems in Guatemala.  I very much enjoyed these conversations and on the 20 minute walk home, I realized that God had also placed me here to be in mission to these folks from the US as well as to you, my readers.  As most of you also know, I place a great deal of importance on telling the stories of our encounters with God.  I believe I was supposed to be at this cooking class last night and that God provided all the ingredients to produce an unexpected mission encounter.

May you feel and recognize God moving in your life today and always!

John

For two days I have tried to decide what I was going to write to keep you up to date with our journey.  In truth, this first week of our journey has been quite mundane if you think about the possibilities of moving to another country where you don’t speak the language.  God has blessed us with some time to settle in.  I finally decided to just give you a few peeks into our everyday life so far.

Life has still been very busy but far less stressful than the days before the move.  Today was easily my most stressful day, but our biggest challenge to date was solved.  We have reliable internet at home!  Not having this proved to be a challenge in a number of ways for all three of us, but none of those will have any true long term consequences.  We all survived, even John Edmund.  God is good!…All the time!

My most stressful moments of the day came while the Spanish-speaking internet installers were here.  I realized that the three of us had left 2 doors open in the house and that the front gate into the alley was also open while they worked.  I couldn’t find the cat.  It took me at least ten minutes to locate Christmas who was hiding under one of the beds that I would swear I looked under before.  She was not roaming the streets, as I feared.  I must confess that I said more than a few unrepeatable words along with my desperate prayers, mostly about the extent of my stupidity for losing the cat after all the effort it took to get her here.  God is good!…All the time!

Most of the inevitable tension we have been facing as a family seems to have evaporated.  We’ve played games together, found ways to work as a team and helped each other out over and over again.  God is good!…All the time!

John Edmund is excited about the possibility of helping Salud y Paz with his technology skills.  It’s fun to listen to him talk about it.  God is good!…All the time!

Jan and I started Spanish school on Monday.  It has been fun.  Our Maestra (teacher), Patricia Buch, is a joy to work with.  She is expecting and will have a new baby in March.  She likes to tease me and is supported in her efforts by my beloved spouse.  This morning in class, she asked me if I ever broke plates while doing the dishes.  I don’t think she thinks that I ever do the dishes, and mostly she is right.  I had to tell her I had chipped one the night before.  We had one of many good laughs for the morning.  In the summer of 2013, we had the pleasure of dining with her family, along with a missionary couple, Joe and Cindy Betsill.  It was a fascinating evening.  After finding out that Patricia worked at the Spanish school, we requested her as a teacher.  It was a great choice!  We will contact Cindy tomorrow so we can get together again with them soon.  God is good!…All the time!

We shop a little for household goods and groceries each day it seems.  The just-picked fruits and vegetables are simply great.  We’ve already had fresh pea pods, avocados, tomatoes, potatoes, pineapple, broccoli and onions in the house!  A pound of fresh snow pea pods was less than a buck and even John Edmund thought they were great in a chicken stir fry I made.  We get our water in five gallon containers which cost just over $2.  Our apartment has quickly become home and we have decided to stay here for at least a year.  God is good!…All the time!

We have been walking a lot, only taking the tuk tuk (a three wheel motorcycle taxi) once as a family since arriving.  That was after dark Sunday night after our Salud y Paz party hello and goodbye party.  It served to welcome us and one other volunteer, Katie Taylor (who we knew from our Volunteers in Mission class in Georgia last February) while also saying goodbye to Betty Conley who is going back to the US to be a flight nurse.  Good luck in all your endeavors, Betty!  God is good!…All the time!

I took 4 tuk tuk rides in an hour or so one afternoon in what should have been recorded as a slapstick comedy of errors.  We found out we needed our passports to get one of the phone SIM cards.  I had already walked into town twice that day so we agreed I should take a tuk tuk back home.  I jumped in and got much of the way to the apartment before I realized that Jan had the only set of apartment keys.  I was too embarrassed to tell the driver to turn around so rode to the street in front of the apartment.  I got out, I flagged down another tuk tuk, and went back to Jan.  She had figured it out while I was gone too.  I then took another round trip and came back with the passports.  It would have been easy to be mad but it didn’t seem to benefit anyone so we just laughed about it as we walked back home.   God is good!…All the time!

All in all, it’s been a great first week of preparing for mission here in Guatemala!  We want to sincerely thank all our donors, both the people and the churches, that are supporting us financially.  Perhaps even more importantly, we want to thank all of you for your prayers, your best wishes and your feedback through Facebook and other mechanisms!  We can’t thank you enough for thinking of us!  God is good!…All the time!

May you feel and recognize God moving in your life today and always!

John

We arrived in Panajachel around 8 pm last night. God granted us safe travels. Courtesy of a very kind gate attendant from American, our three flight day with very short layovers between each flight, turned into a two flight day with a three hour layover in Miami. We had time to eat and recharge ourselves and our electronics. The apartment was as advertised with a private yard and rooftop patio. I’ll post some pictures soon. Christmas, the cat, traveled extremely well, only fidgeting in the last hour when the roads got rough. Wayne and Janet Wiley have treated us royally, meeting us at the airport and driving us to Pana through traffic, darkness and fog. Janet took us shopping for household goods and groceries this morning, while she and Wayne also provided us with lots of timely and helpful information. We have yet to figure out a plan for consistently accessing the internet so our Magic Jack phone isn’t working yet. Language school starts Monday for Jan and me. We’re tired but glad to be here. More to follow soon.

John Edmund is posting pictures here.

May you see and recognize God moving in your life today and always!

John

This verse, which I use as my primary centering phrase, seems immensely appropriate at this moment. All 4 of us, sitting in the airport in Miami, seem calm and at peace right now. The hustle and bustle to get ready is over. The successes, failures, and struggles of the past couple months are done. What we have with us today will be all that we have and truthfully, will be so much more than we need in the coming days. We will be surrounded by those who have far fewer material things and often far greater faith and trust in God than we do. We have felt so incredibly supported by those around us in so many ways. We appreciate each and every one. John Edmund has been sending photos out and receiving many replies encouraging and supporting us. Thank you for your prayers, your donations of time, money, services, and prayers! We could not be on this amazing journey that God has called us on without all of you.

So be still, join us in a moment of prayer of thanks and know that God is, and always will be.

May you feel and recognize God working in your life today and always!
John