Leading from the Outside in an Inside Community

This past month has been one of many trainings.  We started off the month by doing trainings with our national partners and continued with some language training, and finished with a time of learning how to better work within our master strategy plans, while packing in time for Suzie to have surgery on her leg.  This has been a busy month and it has entailed a lot of traveling.  Praise the Lord we made all our flights and we have stayed relatively healthy through it all.

As we have participated and led out in these trainings we have realized that we still have a lot of work in becoming native with our people.  We love the Malagasy people, we attempt to live life in a way that shows honor to their culture (food, lifestyle, business practices, greetings, etc…), work hand in hand with them and speak their language. However, we have also realized that it might be that we will always be outsiders in an insider community.

What does this mean?  It means that in most the places where we have invested ourselves the people live in community.  They make decisions together, they farm together, they eat together, they plan life together etc...  That doesn’t mean there aren’t individualities in the people it just means that when the big picture is given there is a togetherness in how they live out their lives.  Our desire is to one day be an insider with them.  We know that they love us and respect us and we all have a desire to see the Kingdom of God come.

This is the key to how we can be effective in our ministry.  We take the One thing that matters most and set Him as the vision for us all to follow.  Therefore, we ourselves aren’t the ones leading.  We just follow and obey the one who has all power and authority.  We follow Christ and trust that He will be the uniting factor for the work that He has called us to.  This is in only reason that we have a hint of success.  It is all because of Him.  He has allowed us clear outsiders to have influence in communities.  He has allowed us to train and equip these people so that the Gospel of Christ can be heard by all in Madagascar not by means of the outsider’s but by those who are insiders within their own communities.  Therefore, we faithfully submit ourselves to the Lord and ask and pray for Him to bring up leaders within the Malagasy people themselves.  We expect to see thousands of new believers grow up in Christ Jesus and we expect to see thousands of disciples going and sharing with their friends, families, neighbors, regions, provinces, country and to other nations the amazing story about Jesus Christ.

Praises:
The Trainings went very well and our national partners are motivated to seeing God's Kingdom come
We had safe travels to all of our destinations so far
Suzie had a successful procedure on her leg
Baylee and River are getting over their colds and feeling much better
The Lord is alive and at work

Prayer Request:
Adam's back surgery and recuperation
Suzie to continue to heal well
Safe travels back to Madagascar
National partners, hands on girls and Diana
Phoebe, Emma and Baylee have lots of school work to complete
Wisdom for us all.

 Tsihombe Training

 Relaxing in Indonesia

 New Animal Adventures

 Working Hard

 Second Group

 Becoming more of an Insider

 Stroll

Places to go and When