Blog written by Kip Deaton of Adventures in Missions.

January 17-
It’s our first day of ministry and it’s been raining for 3 days because of the cyclone that’s in Mozambique right now. The bus we hire picks us up at 1p to take us to the hospital to meet Allison, our contacts wife. She shows us to the baby ward and with our translator close by we proceed to pray for the children and parents that are living in the children’s room at the hospital. After an emotionally exhausting hour all I want to do is crawl into bed and cry the rest of the day. “What will happen to the girl with cerebral palsy whose been abandoned? Will she get to eat this week? Will her diaper be changed today? Why won’t anyone pay attention to this little girl?”

Dealing with my broken heart and trying to ignore the pain that hour caused, I’m told our day isn’t over. We have one more place to visit, the Hope House. I don’t know much but I’ve been told it’s where people with HIV and TB live. Totally not excited about this we get out of the bus and proceed to meet the director, Sister Elsa, a nun from India. We break up into teams of 3-4 and get assigned to our ‘houses’ ensuring all 27 houses get a visit from us that day.

All the instruction we’ve been told so far is to not ask if they have HIV, a very touchy subject in Swaziland, and to pray for them and possibly sing a song. We step into our first house. There is a shy woman sitting on her bed while her teenage daughter sits on the opposite bed and Gogo (grandma) sits on the sofa. I introduce myself and shake her hand while something changes inside of me.

She tells us she’s battling cancer. What started as breast cancer has moved into her lungs. We didn’t get any more specifics, trying to respect her privacy, but it’s eating me up inside to know this woman better. We pray and sing and ask her if it’s okay to come back and see her later. Enthusiastically she says of course!

The next house we go to is a fatter lady sprawled out on her bed. She’s singing when we enter the house. We wait patiently for her performance to end and the first words she says to us is “where are your shoes?” …we had left them at her door because we were drenched, we continue to introduce ourselves and comment on the song she sang. Adamantly she can’t get over the fact that we’re standing in her house with no shoes on…I instantly think of my Grammie and all her lectures on staying out of the rain and bundling up in the cold. I smile inside, I like this woman already.

After spending a short hour house hoping at the Hope House praying and singing over the people there, I know THIS is my ministry this month. It’s not going to be convenient, I could easily stay at the homestead and walk 10 minutes to the Care Point to see the kids and call that my ministry and be just fine with that. But no, I’m not going to take the easy way out this time. I’m going to intentionally strive to come see these people everyday, they’re 30 minutes away from where we’re staying and there’s no other way but to get public transportation to see them.

January 24-
It’s been a week now and 4+ visits later I wake up in the morning and can look forward to walking 30 minutes to the road to wait for a bus that may take 45minutes to show up, to ride the 30 minutes to get into Manzini, to walk the 20 minute walk from the bus rink to finally make it to the Hope House; all to spend a few hours with new friends, learning their stories, sharing music, playing games, talking about scripture and dreams and children. Yes, the Hope House is my ministry and I thank God for pushing me to not take the easy way out this time. In return, my reward is 2 new friends, 2 more sisters in Christ, 2 more people I look forward to being reunited with once we’ve made it home to Heaven.
 

“As you learn more and more how God works, you will learn how to do your work.
We pray that you’ll have the strength to stick it out over the long haul –
not the grim strength of gritting your teeth but the glory strength that God gives.
It is a strength that endures the endurable and spills over into joy,
thanking the Father who makes us strong enough
to take part in everything bright and beautiful that he has for us.”
- Colossians 1:9-12 MSG

 

walking to the road to catch a ride into town

that dirt road on the left is our road

our adventure day, waiting 45minutes and then we ended up hitch-hiking…whatever works

Our friend Cosi, one of the tenants at the Hope House. She’s leaving this week.

Playing Crazy 8′s with our new friends.

Zandile and her girls. Pray for her, she’s battling cancer and has
the brightest spirit I’ve ever seen. I love her.

This is why I love the Hope House, getting goodbye waves from Zandile.

Thank you for checking out our blog!  To read more about Kip and her time on the World Race subscribe to her blog at http://kipdeaton.theworldrace.org/

Are you ready to let God take control of your business and it’s finances?  Are you ready to see God take your business to the next level?

Most of the time we find ourselves working frantically trying to figure out what we can do to increase revenue, reduce cost, increase margins, etc, and we forget that God is on our side and wants us to be successful.  God wants our businesses to flourish and our finances to increase, but He also wants to know that as He increases our business endeavors that we are going to give back into furthering His endeavor of sharing His love around the world.  Sounds simple right? Well it IS! Put yourself in God’s shoes.  Why would God not want your business to increase and be blessed when He know that as He increases your business that you will give back to Him?

Yes, the bible warns against the dangers of wealth.  But the danger is not in the wealth, it is in the love of that wealth. Jesus speaks in Matthew to a rich man that is trying to earn eternal life. The man wants to know “What good thing must I do to get eternal life?” Jesus replied “obey the commandments” and “if you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven.”  The bible says the man went away sad because he had great wealth.  Jesus then turned to his disciples and said, “I tell you the truth, it is hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God”.  Many people believe that this passage of scripture is saying that money and wealth are evil, but the point Jesus is making is the man loved his money and wealth too much to give it up when asked to do so.

God wants us to be wealthy! Not wealthy so that we can boast and show off, but wealthy so we can fund the work of the kingdom.  God is looking at our hearts and is going to use people and businesses he can trust. Many times we forget that “From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked.”  God can’t use your businesses to the extent He desires if you are not willing to “sell everything and give to the poor”. Does this mean he will ask us to sell everything, probably not, but it does mean he wants you to trust and follow Him to the extent where you would.

This concept is simple, but it is the application of the concept where we often miss it. It’s easy to tell ourselves, “As God increases my business I am going to give more back to the kingdom” or “I’m going to give a percentage of my revenue to God”.  This sounds great, and then our bills start coming in and our inventory costs were high this month and payroll processed this week and our receivables are late and on and on…  All the sudden our commitment to God has slipped down to the “if we have anything left” category.   When really the commitment we made to God should be at the top.  This is the type of trust God desires, a commitment to put him first no matter what the circumstance.  When we do this and God truly knows we put him first, the sky is the limit for what he can do with our business.

This campaign is not a ploy for Soul Mission to get money; this campaign is simply a way to get businesses and business owners to think about what you are doing for the kingdom of God as He blesses you.  Soul Mission is an avenue that God has placed here for your business to really trust him.  For us at Soul Mission the premise is simple and biblical, Paul speaking “Not that I are looking for a gift, but I looking for what may be credited to your account”.  Yes, we are going to fund mission trip and yes every donation helps, but as important for our ministry, is teaching the concepts of trusting God with every part of your business, including the finances.  Something we say a lot around here.  “As you give into what God is doing, God WILL give into what YOU are doing” God will not let you down!

Here’s how to get involved!  Click on this link  “DONATE” to be taken to the donate page for the Soul Mission website.  Now you can either sign up to give via credit/debit card or you can download a PDF of our pledge card to fill out and send in with a check to our Soul Mission offices.

Thank you for taking the time to read about our heart for businesses and missions!  We know the wonderful things God has in-store for you and we are excited God has chosen us to present the opportunity!

God Bless,

Alex and Kelsey Little

Scripture References:

• Matthew 19:16-24
• Luke 12:48
• Philippians 4:17

Let me begin by telling you that I have not been sick in almost two weeks! How much higher is my quality of life you ask? MUCH higher. I also just came back from a pretty great holiday season that was both restoring and rejuvenating.

Last month was downright exhausting. We had two trainings, one Freedom Training with the 50 we rescued on Thanksgiving and one Leadership Training with a group of 30 that have just finished our two year Aftercare Program. These trainings are so encouraging to see, because I get to see how IJM’s work is truly changing lives. I am constantly thanking God for allowing me to do this work that has been a dream for so long…I can’t believe HE is allowing me to do it! Leadership Training was awesome because I got to see all the differences between people just entering the program (Freedom Training) and people who are just coming out of the program. The people at Leadership Training were a blast. They are the clients who have been elected within their villages to be the “leaders” and the points of contact for IJM within their villages. It was such a blessing to see the confidence, independence, and better physical health that these clients had after at least two years of freedom. Our Aftercare program is working! The week after Leadership Training, we had Freedom Training, which I have written about before. Freedom Training is the program we put on for our clients within 30 days of their rescue. They learn about their rights as a human being, how to not get rebonded, and many other important skills. This Freedom Training was a blast. We were all still exhausted from the previous week of training, but this group was energized and excited about their 3 week old freedom. This is a group that had been in bonded labour their whole lives, as their parents had and as their grandparents had. This was generational bonded labour. I also liked this group because they found me very entertaining. I’ve been learning some Tamil, which they loved. I can’t imagine why. Apparently I have an accent when I speak or something like that….All this goes to say that I love my job. I love seeing the results of my co-workers hard work and I love seeing people come to freedom and start dreaming of a future. It. Is. Beautiful.
This past month was emotionally exhausting as well. Missing Christmas and Thanksgiving was just rough. I tried to invent some Christmas cheer, but it was a difficult task. It got to the point where I would search for places that I had heard had Christmas decorations. Thankfully, a week before Christmas, the mall met my needs.

Pretty incredible, right? I was very pleased.

Yes, we did ride the train.
A few days after the hunt for Christmas Spirit, I set off to Sri Lanka. I have nothing, but positive feelings for this little country. Sri Lanka offered me endless Christmas cheer (decorations everywhere and they are even a Buddhsit country!!!!), hours on beach, elephants, some of the kindest people around and a time of restoration…not to mention I was surrounded by some pretty stellar people. It was an awesome Christmas vacation. If I couldn’t be at home, I might as well be in Sri Lanka.

These trips were so good for my soul. It was great to just be in fellowship and community with so many wonderful people. I think community is my love language.

Moldova = LEGIT

You know life is good when you don’t even have enough time to share all the stories of how awesome God is.  This week has been incredible though…as all weeks spent in intense pursuit of the Lord are if you can keep the right perspective.

I have never before been so in love with Jesus.  I feel like we have had a lot of worship times on this trip now and I have had a lot of quiet times where I have asked the Lord for just a bigger or deeper revelation of His love for me.  Today though, He gave me something weird.  It was like he gave me a revelation of how much I LOVE HIM now!  He showed me my heart and let me see how much further I have fallen into relationship with Him over the past couple months.  It was sick.

One more story that is awesome.  Last night, my teammate Kacie Lester was in charge of feedback.  Jesus gave her such a cool idea for what to do with our team.  Kacie had each of us take a sheet of paper.  She then gave us each a marker (assorted colors…I got gray).
We then each wrote down all of the lies that the enemy has been feeding to us over the past week or so.  Some of them were lies that we have spent some time believing, others were just ones that we were sick of fighting against.  After we were finished writing them down, we each went around and read ours aloud to each other.  Then the other 5 would speak truth to each of those lies!  It was super sick!

After we were finished with going around the circle.  We went as a group out to the squatty potty (hole in the ground with a wall around it which is our bathroom this month) and each took turns going into the squatty to do whatever business needed to be done.  We then each wiped our butts with our lies and threw them down the crap hole!  Now whenever the satan (people in Moldova always put a “the” before “satan” which I have kind of adopted…he’s just a THING…a nasty thing) tries to speak these lies to us as we go forward, we can just look him in the “face” and say, “hey, douchebag…I wiped my butt with that lie already.  Shut up suckka!!!”

I love it.  Kacie is legit and she hears from the Lord in a really cool way that always just brings such life to our team.  You should check our her blog too (link on the side of my page)…i’m sure that she will write this story out in a much funnier way cause she does stuff like that.

OK, so I have also attached a video which I hope you all enjoy.  The pig fat that I eat in it blows my mind.  It was literally a 3 inch thick slice of pig fat with the skin (hair) on it still. Sick the freak out but it was good.  (good and raw!)  I am so crazy about my team still.  These people are exactly who I needed to walk with for these months at least!  I love them each dearly and I would love for you to check out each of their blogs (links to the left). I am also really enjoying getting closer to some of the guys with us this month.  Kyle Markel is a BALLER.  He is the team leader of another team and the dude is just FULL UP on wisdom and knowledge of the scripture.  Love the dude and I am excited to walk out another 9 months with dudes like him.

I love you guys.  I really do. There are like 60 people that come in my head when I say “i love you guys”.  I can see the list of people who follow my blog and seriously, I really do love you guys and I miss you guys.  I miss my family, my close friends, my coworkers at GT, and (if i’m being honest) my lady Leah most of all.  Next time I post, I might be on my way to NEPAL!!!

Link:  http://christianroderick.theworldrace.org/?filename=trippin-out

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We are Skip and Carol Hedrick and we would love to share about some of the mission work the Lord has lead usto be involved in.   In 2003 we began to partner with Tito Sevilla in Peru.  Awe Star Ministries had taken a team to Peru and discovered that the Lord was working in a mighty way drawing people to salvation, but there were few strong Christian leaders, very few pastors and almost no evangelical churches in the northern half of Peru.  We felt called to go and be of help with whatever was needed.  We fell in love with the spiritually hungry people who seemed to be ready to know the Truth that could set them free.  That first year we helped to start two house churches in villages where no church had been.  We also prayer walked around another village with no known believers.  Many people came to know the Lord that year as we had the privilege of sharing Jesus with them on the streets, in their homes, at the 2 afternoon VBSs, and evening crusades.

Every year since then we have had the privilege getting to return to serve our Lord in Peru working in some of the original church plants and in many other villages along side Tito Sevilla and young pastors who are discipling the new believers. The Lord has grown almost all of the churches to the point of needing larger places to meet and the believers are growing in their faith.

This year we were invited back once again to serve in Peru with Tito.  We were very excited and willing to go, but our financial situation was not very good because of various circumstances.  We began raising funds by praying, doing odd jobs outside of our usual ones, selling fundraising t-shirts, and having a mammoth garage sale.  God did bless all of these efforts, but the price of our airline tickets for the trip greatly increased over what we have ever paid in the past.  We believe the Lord brought Alex and Kelsey Little into our lives to help make this mission possible (no pun intended).  They told about Soul Mission and their desire to help missionaries and encouraged us to apply.

We want to say thank you once again to Soul Mission for allowing the Lord to use them in this way and help us with the expenses for our trip!!!

Needless to say, we were both able to go.  This year we had the joy of working the first week up in the Andes Mountains in the village of Huamachuco.  There we helped with follow-up from the Awe Star Ministries team by talking with people in their homes and on the streets.  We held “Total Family Ministry” in the afternoons, which included children, youth, ladies and men’s Bible studies.  Then in the evenings we held church services in the new church that had just started in February this year and had 7 members.  Many more people accepted the Lord and have started attending the church now.  We were able to spend time with the adults for a few days helping them to study God’s word, understand how to lead their families and become faithful church members.  The second week our team divided to work in two different villages near Trujillo.  We did the same type of work sharing Jesus in the villages and working to enlarge the house churches in Las Delicias and Manuel Arevolo.  We were able to give paperback New Testaments to each new believer.  The Lord was glorified and that is what really matters!

Now that we have returned home, a huge piece of our hearts is still in Peru.  We know that the Lord allowed us the privilege of seeing glimpses of His glory as people came to know Him personally.  That desire to share the gospel is still a strong part of our lives.  The Lord worked both in and through us but He wants us to continue being available to Him everyday no matter where we are.  We know we must be obedient to the Lord and be on mission all the time.

Soul Mission, thank you again from the bottom of our hearts!

Skip and Carol Headrick

At the beginning of 2011, God put an incredible desire in my heart to go share the Gospel on a missions trip, and I knew it that if it were to happen, it would have to be God’s will. Not only because I needed support both financially and through prayer, but because I had no clue where I was called to go. So I messaged a friend of mine and asked him if he knew of any organizations that took students on missions trips, and he told me about Awe Star ministries. I got on the Awe Star web site, and the Panama trip popped out at me. I spent some time in prayer, and it just felt like the perfect piece to my puzzle. However, what didn’t feel so right was the price. I knew that if I was called to go that God would provide the money, but I still couldn’t help but worry.

Then I heard about Soul Mission, and so I turned in an application for a scholarship and got accepted! So thanks to God for providing the money through Soul Mission, I got to go to Panama and share the Gospel.

Now I would like to tell you about the great things God has done through our team in Panama. My team and I started training for the drama on the first day, which was in Dallas. You could tell God was evident because we had almost immediate unity in our group.If  you have never heard of the Freedom drama, let me tell you a bit about it. It’s a twenty minute drama performed with music and a narrator. The drama is about a Gentle Ruler (who represents God), a Good Prince (represents Jesus), Good Knights and Bad Knights (angels and demons), People of the Land (represent you and me), and the Nightmare (that’s Satan). I got to be a Bad Knight.The drama basically tells the story of how Jesus came and died for our sins even though we rejected Him and nailed Him to the cross. It’s really an incredible drama.So after we learned the drama, we headed to Panama. Our first stop was a Cuna village called Icandi. We drove two hours from the city and rode on boats for another hour to get there. Once we arrived, we were greeted by a ton of children that were so thirsty for love. We got to spend a few days loving on the children, teaching English, giving our testimonies to the people, and performing the drama. It was incredible to see the joy in the eyes of the Cuna people, even though they had such living conditions without bathing, electricity, piping, or really any of the luxuries we take for granted here in America.

After a few days in the village, we went to Panama City to perform our drama on the streets and in schools. We got to personally go and speak to the Panamanians after we performed each drama, and God moved in so many ways! Several citizens, students, families, and even police officers came to Christ, and we were privileged to be a part of leading them. We were so blessed to be God’s vessels. We even got to perform in the Rakatakas; the slums of Panama. It was so incredible to show God’s love to the most rejected and cast aside people of Panama. I have no pictures of the Rakatakas, because it wasn’t safe to bring a camera, but I can tell you it was a broken place filled with broken people, and yet God loves them all the same. In places like this, fear and excitement mixed together, and we got to experience the awe of God.

I can’t tell you how grateful I am that God called me on this trip, and that He provided the funding for it through Soul Mission. I imagine that in the future, I’ll be applying for another scholarship.

And how can anyone preach unless they are sent? As it is written: “How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!” – Romans 10:15