We Have A Puppy!!!!

2006-10-09T16:53:00.000-07:00

As of August 13th, the MacPhee family now has 6 members, though only 5 live at home, due to the older son's migration to Boulder, CO. Her name is Maggie, she is a toy poodle and has already captured our hearts!

Brazil Update

2006-10-02T18:48:00.000-07:00

1. God is God, and I am not.

I am today closer to reformed theology than I ever thought possible:) He is sovereign, I am His servant, and somehow my cooperation together with Him to fulfill what He has perfectly planned from the foundations of the universe is what this life is all about (see Job 38). It leaves me hanging on a precipice of faith half my life and I have a love/hate relationship with living there - exposed to the elements of this world that would swing me about like a wind-chime on a Colorado winter night, yet held unshakably by His Almighty Hand - His Almighty, yet ever-invisible Hand.

2. Fruitfulness is to be found in obedience, regardless of the physical evidence of such.

God desires us to serve him when we’re unsure of the next step…when there’s nothing tangible...and even often when good fruit seems to be going bad! Oswald Chambers says, “Obey God in the thing he shows you, and instantly the next thing is opened up. God will never reveal more truth about himself until you obey what you know already.”

What I knew already, I told you in my prayer update before we left (and then got on a plane):

“We're leaving tomorrow and the logistics are a mess - two men without visas as of this afternoon and all our international flights were cancelled, forcing us into a delayed itinerary without any guaranteed paper tickets in hand down in Brazil... this is a major opportunity for God to be glorified in the solutions that I can have no part in!”

And glorified He was – all the delays, all the cancelled flights, missed flights, rescheduled and wished flights (think Dr. Suess:) – were in the end His way of assuring I would have just the right people AND equipment to serve not only our intended project and missionary, but an ADDITIONAL one.

If you remember, we were serving a ministry that was rescuing kids, and ministering to families in the slums of Recife along the river that cuts through the city. In addition, we connected with a young single British woman who is trying to serve the health needs of people in a different slum neighborhood on the other side of this city of millions – another huge, despicable congested mass of human suffering with people packed in upon one another in block after block of flooded little shacks, assemblages of soaked and moldy brick and tin and planks and cardboard. And to make matters worse, most of these little shacks dealt with sanitary waste with small brick-lined seepage pits, all of which were compromised by the constant flooding – therefore all the water that these people wade through is contaminated by waste water (I’m being as polite as possible here – it’s really quite disgusting, enough to make you gag). Bricks and stones are scattered throughout roads and the interiors of homes to allow for stepping through the high water. Our half-team that we took there in the middle of our trip was able to – in one day – walk through a number of the little “roads” and survey and analyze the worst of the flooding problems and come up with some immediate, short-term actions to help serve this community outreach – and perhaps even develop long-term proposals for the government to follow up with.

Of course, hindsight is 20/20...the biggest single prayer concern I had as we left Colorado for a long trip south was that neither of my surveyors from the Atlanta area had their visas in hand when I got on the plane to head for Miami and I was flying a group of volunteers on an airline that was apparently growing more and more unreliable with each passing hour. How do you hope for the best, believe the truth of Rom 8:28, and yet still plan for the worst?

For me, that meant a lot of things. It began with having grace for my two surveyor volunteers who had forgotten to include their passports in their visa application packages the first time they mailed them to the consulate. Now before I go on, let me ask you a question. How many of you reading this right now actually know what a visa is, what it looks like, and how it is given to you? I thought so. I didn't know either before nearly a decade with eMi. Well, neither did these guys. A visa is pretty much nothing but advance permission to visit a country, applied for to a consulate or embassy for that country, by paying an extortionary amount of money and sending your passport to them with that money and an application form. They return your passport to you with a special stamp in it allowing you to pass through customs and immigration in that country. Not all foreign countries require such things - only the ones that have discovered how much money they can make by the deal.

I talked with these two men many times as they made their resubmissions, and prayed twice as much as that. We were convinced we must simply trust God - as time was running out - that His plan would be worked out,... but I began planning for the worst.

"The worst" to me was if neither surveyor made the trip. We had many acres of rural land to survey in order to develop a master plan for an orphanage and youth camp to bring the kids from the slums out to get away from the squalor they live in and witness the love of God visibly demonstrated. How could we do it without the surveyors?! Lord?? We have some basic survey equipment in our office that even I know how to run, so I had my two interns get tutored on it, just in case the three of us and my son Zac had to be the entire survey crew (the worst of all possible scenarios in my mind). We carried with us this additional equipment, all of which was basic, simple, small, and rudimentary, compared to all the sophisticated stuff our lead surveyor planned to bring.

When I got to Denver, my first stop before Miami, I got word that my lead surveyor received his visa that morning. Living in Atlanta, he had more time before his flight to Miami that day, so he rushed to the airport. Later I learned that he got there just in time to see his flight leave without him! But not to worry, my travel agent got him another flight an hour later and he still connected with the rest of our team in Miami that night. What an amazing answer to prayer!

The second surveyor was not so blessed, and I again had to trust God when my first thoughts led me elsewhere. It was going to be another two or three days before he could get to Brazil, and the first time I talked to him after landing myself in Recife, I was less than convinced that he should still come. But by that evening, I felt once again prompted by the Holy Spirit that God had called him, that God surely knew of all these delays, and that God is not surprised by our troubles… in fact, God is somehow the coordinator – if not the literal author – of them.

So I called him back that night (Sunday) and told him not to give up, walked him through the complex process of switching from the international to the domestic terminal which we ourselves had just finished in Sao Paulo and which he himself would have to figure out all alone, and gave him all our contact numbers to reach me day or night when he made it into the country.

He arrived Tuesday afternoon, just in time for me to decide to take him, all our secondary survey equipment, and two other team members to the flooded slum. With about 12 hours on the ground in Brazil, he was literally our lead man to study the flooded slums and run the survey equipment so that we could correctly analyze the gradient of the land to determine the best way to attempt to evacuate the acres of water lying in this slum. Amazing.

And I’m still amazed. If BOTH surveyors hadn’t been delayed (because the first was bringing all the survey equipment and this risk prompted me to bring a secondary set), and IF the FIRST hadn’t gotten there on time with the team, THEN the first would have never finished his work on site – he worked all day every day – AND the second would not have had equipment with which to work in the second flooded slum! Did you follow all of that? Suffice it to say that there were enough IF’s and THEN’s in that equation that I would likely never have forseen it! But Ah, God… He certainly does – and did! And we of course have the opportunity to grow in faith in a way that never would have happened if God hadn't allowed such obstacles to come our way.

3. God answers prayer

And what about answered prayers? Besides my lead surveyor receiving his visa just at the eleventh hour, here are just a few more…

As we left the airport in Miami and boarded a shuttle to a hotel (we had to layover there before the Brazil flight left the next morning), my lead surveyor – the one who miraculously received his passport (with the visa in it:) in the mail just hours before departing, left his passport tucked in a book in the luggage cart as we boarded the shuttle! He discovered it as we unloaded our baggage and equipment at the hotel! Well, as much as I couldn’t believe this was happening, I grabbed one of my interns who was close at hand, prayed with them both that God would miraculously blind everyone to the presence of that passport and that it would still be in the cart a half-hour later, and sent them back to the airport together to search for it. They returned an hour later, with the passport, after searching around the area and finding his cart tucked away in a different area with it still left in the tray. Amazing.

And one more answered prayer for my weary surveyor... While waiting for our bags in Sao Paulo, we were delayed and risked missing our domestic connection to our final destination city of Recife. Our surveyor had packed all his equipment in a cardboard box (note to self – remind team members never to pack equipment in cardboard boxes:). Everyone had their bags but him. All boxes had to come off the plane separately and through some double doors at the far side of the luggage carousel… so he and I waited and waited… I sent the rest of the team ahead, accepting responsibility to wait for him alone, but then felt led to pray an outrageous prayer – we had seen a dozen boxes come through those doors, but not his… I prayed out loud with Him, “Lord, please let his box be the next one that they choose to pick up off the tar mac and carry to the terminal and through these doors… minutes later, you guessed it! – his box was the next to come through the doors and off we went to catch up with the rest of our team. Amazing.

4. eMi really is seeing God change the world through our logo tag line – designing a world of hope.

We at eMi recognize that there are at least three groups of people who we minister to - our missionaries, the poor they are serving, and our volunteers. I pray that you - our friends, prayer warriors, and supporters - would also consider yourselves part of our "volunteers"... and remember, the offer is always on the table for you to join one of my teams as a special guest!:)
So here are a few stories of how God is touching and changing lives in all these groups.

Our missionaries:
We visited our Boy’s Home project that I began working with back in 2000, and subsequently have sent two more eMi teams to, and they are indeed accomplishing the master plan, building out the camp and campus of the YWAM Training Base and Boy’s Home. I can still remember sitting privately with one of my engineer volunteers 6 years ago as we worked through some of the pieces of their enormous program (the vision put to paper). He looked at the physical poverty of the base and wondered, "What are we doing here? We're designing things they'll never be able to build." I was compelled by the Spirit at that time to encourage him in his faith - we're not called to figure out those things that are God's responsibilty - He is the one who will provide the means, if we will just be faithful to come along side these faith-filled missionaries and believe with them.... and today this faith is no longer just the assurance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen - it is the literal, physical fulfillment of that hope!!

And the ministry we were directly serving this time? As we worked through our proposal at the end of the trip of a phased approach to developing an orphanage and a camp to bring slum kids to, our Brazilian national missionary host, Lecio Wanderly, was in tears. The fulfillment of his life’s dream and vision, projected before him on the screen in three-dimensions, was vivid enough to believe we would see this thing come to pass. His work has been directly "adopted" and supported by a trio of couples who banded together to form Volunteers for Christ, their primary mission being to fund hundreds of thousands of dollars into this Brazil work to rescue kids out of the slums. One of these couples - Landry and Elizabeth Burdine - joined our team and facilitated our trip the whole time. Their lives have been profoundly changed by adopting this work, the burden for these kids, and as they shared at both the beginning of the trip and the end, it was obvious that their experience with our eMi team worked some profound results as well.

The people our missionaries serve:
One of the most poignant memories for me came when we visited their existing orphanage on the edge of the slums. About 20 kids live there, but over 150 kids come every day to the after school program that they run. As we visited late in the afternoon, lots of children were there. We played soccer, and running games and contests, and passed out candy as rewards and gifts... the children were understandably anxious to each get their share of treats, and they began cupping handfuls in their shirts. In the excitement, I watched one girl, with a huge smile on her face, run smack into another boy and her entire stash of treats went flying. Within seconds, all the other children had scarfed up her share, and there was none left. As the crowd continued to run and play, she sat alone sobbing on the concrete in the middle of this chaos of play. I wondered, "Does anybody else but me see her pain?" I watched the whole thing go down. I felt like time stood still - like in a movie where all the action stops but for you - and I knew I was somehow connecting with the heart of God in a significant way. The next time you wonder, "Doesn't God see my sorrow?" or like we were asked so many times after the 2004 tsunami - "How could a good God let this happen" remember my little lesson... Her disappointment happened because of the selfishness of the other kids, not because of me, but I did see her sorrow, I made my way into the middle of the crowd, I took her by the hand and lifted her up, and gave her the only few pieces of candy I had left, and then led her around to a few other team members and we eventually made a new gift of candy and treats for her.

Another powerful moment for me came when we were walking through the slums. This would not normally be a place we as outsiders could ever enter safely, but because we were escorted by our trusted missionary hosts, the people only mildly resented our being there:) Really, a few people actually looked at us almost with a smile, but most just stepped back against a wall and stared as our team quietly passed them, single-file, full of disbelief at what they were seeing – poverty at such a scale. I was invited into the “home” of a woman who had recently had a baby. The older sister was busy neatening the bedspread on the musty bed – the only piece of furniture just inside the doorway of this 6’ x 8’ x 6’ high room – just behind was a sink and stove, and a toilet room… that’s all there was. They were pleased to invite us in, and most prodigiously proud of their new little girl and ready to show her off. All I could think of was how the door to relationship with these people has been opened to us through the identification of this missionary and through our partnership, to us. It’s just as Christ identified with us in all things, becoming like us in every way – yet without sin – so we are called to step into the world of those around us, knowing them, embracing their lives, loving them, without judgment, in order to lift them up.

Our volunteers:
On the evening of our closing meeting together, our volunteers took turns sharing the high points of the short-term trip for them. We always do this with our teams, and it is always one of my personal high-points. Well, one young woman said something like this, "I was caught up in being the latest, last-minute addition to the team....caught up in thinking how much I might be able to contribute to the work of this team, and how much I'd like to be a part of this team to Brazil...but as we made our way through the slums along the river that day [peeking into the very personal and painful struggle of so many people] I realized how much I "didn't get it." She became quiet, and choked on her tears, and just ended it there, saying no more.

I was moved to tears myself, as I am yet again just writing this… I mulled that over many times in the next few days as we returned home. I thought about my own first mission trip I volunteered on in 1996, and realized then for the first time how much I “didn’t get it” - that I never knew nor understood the cries of the world beyond our own little world. I understood that this life needed to be less about me and my stuff, and more about others and their need. And you know the rest of the story – you’ve been writing it with us for most of the past 10 years – and we love you for it.

One final note –
5. Brazil really is all about soccer.

We were there during the World Cup Games. Brazil=soccer. Need I say more?
One Sunday, after struggling through an entirely Portuguese service with an interpreter trying to whisper in our ears, we joined what appeared to be most of the church packed into a fellowship hall with pot-luck lunch plates to watch Brazil play – everyone dressed in yellow and green… and this wasn’t just the youth – we were next to grandma’s and grandpa’s and they were also screaming! Never let it be said that an eMi team can’t identify with the local people… we were screaming too:)

* “God is in the details.” Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (1886 –1969), arguably the leading architect of the modernist style. Weren’t you just dying to know??!!

eMi with the MacPhee's

We Have A Puppy!!!!

Brazil Update