Congratulations to Mary-Lynn, who won a free copy of Jesus on Every Page by David Murray! Enjoy!
If you’re feeling sad that you’ve missed out on such an excellent opportunity, don’t worry! You can still get the book at amazon.com for a very reasonable price. Buy it through one of the links below, and you’ll be helping a missionary too!
Wouldn’t it make a great gift? 😉
Great news! One person – just one – can get a copy of Jesus on Every Page by Dr. David Murray free!
I’ve been authorized by the author and publisher (Thomas Nelson) to give away one paperback version of the book. This week only!
Here’s what you have to do:
That’s it!
And now, a word from the author:
We just got back from a long weekend of fun and ministry.
It all started with a drive to a part of Mexico City called Ciudad Azteca. I was admittedly feeling horrible that day, but thanks to a kind wife who drove us I was able to make it!
 |
In Ciudad Azteca we got together with Camino Global team mates the Topps. It was a rare opportunity to catch up and hear more about what’s been happening with the Topp family and their ministry.
On Sunday we visited their church, Iglesia BÃblica Ciudad Azteca (Ciudad Azteca Bible Church). It was a very special Sunday, the grand finale of a kids’ club that had been going on for the past few days. So there were a lot of guests, and a special presentation of the Gospel.
Shari and I shared the special music, but we especially enjoyed hearing the songs that the kids had learned over the past week. Karla Topp uses sign language as a part of her ministry, and the kids sang the songs both in Spanish and in sign language.
We had a great time after the service talking with the Topps and others from the church about ministry and evangelism in both Ciudad Azteca and Jesús MarÃa.
Then we rushed home and got ready for phase 2 of the long weekend.
Shari went on a special “girls-only” trip with our co-workers and friends Tiffany and Tina. They headed out on an overnight bus trip to Oaxaca de Juárez, a city about 5 hours south east of Mexico City. This is the time of year of the Guelaguetza, a famous cultural festival originally in honour of Centeótl (the goddess of corn and agriculture) and la Virgen del Carmen Alto (yes, at times both of them together). So they were able to see some cultural events and also take a tour to see some famous sites around the city.
Meanwhile (well, from Monday to Tuesday), the kids and I went to Valle de Bravo, about 3 and a half hours west of us. Valle de Bravo is the home of a man-made lake, and lots of tourist activities such as paragliding, boating, and horseback riding.
We didn’t have time to be too touristy, but we hung out in a fun bed-and-breakfast, had a snack on a boat-restaurant, and checked out some local sites.
 |
Even the drive to Valle de Bravo was beautiful. It looked like a lot of small family farms, plus some beautiful evergreen forests. During the trip we listened to lots of stories from Acts thanks to Mrs. G.
We got back Tuesday afternoon in time for the Tuesday night Bible study. It was study #5 of our evangelism study.
It’s been so great to hear about peoples’ experiences sharing the Gospel over the past week, and to see them (and me!) learning how to be more effective. (By the way, if you want to be the first one to help with the study, click here!)
Early this morning, Shari returned home, and we’re all united again! So, I’m working on some documents (this time tax related, not visa related. Though I was frantically working on visa stuff last week!), preparing for a keyboard class on Saturday, doing laundry, and lots of other odds and ends. So excuse me – I’d better run!
June is Migraine & Headache Awareness Month, so I thought I’d write briefly about something I rarely write about – migraine!
I’ve had migraine disease for more than half of my life – maybe all of it. Migraine has been called a genetically based neurological disease. We know it is connected to genetic defects, and we also know it’s connected to neurology – that is, the messages that are sent throughout your body using things like electric impulses and chemicals.
It used to be thought that migraine was caused by changes in changes in blood vessels (constriction and dilation), but now we know that this isn’t the case.
One possible symptoms of migraine is headache (from mild to severe). However, not all migraine attacks include headache, and if they do they may not include it all the time. Migraine without headache can be very disabling, as can migraine with headache.
Common symptoms include nausea, sensitivity to light and noise, vertigo, pain in various parts of the body, trouble speaking, confusion, numbness, hallucinations, congestion, and many more strange things.
For your interest I’m posting a chart of the intensity of my symptoms over the past 12 days (not including yesterday). Let me note just a few things.
First, this records the level of symptoms, not necessarily headache. The higher the red part goes, the more intense/disabling the symptoms.
A very good day would be 2 or lower. None of those over the past 12 days.
3 is pretty normal. Get to 4, and it’s really on your mind.
At 5 it gets hard to do normal things. At level 6, I may be cancelling appointments, and could be in bed.
At 7 I may or may not be able to get anything done at home – probably in bed. Hopefully not out and about.
At 8, I probably can’t even sit up and read. At 9 – well, it’s not something we’ll talk about.
10 is a theoretical number – I would hopefully pass out from pain that intense. I’ve recorded 9.5, maybe 9.75 – but never 10.
The last 12 days have had low numbers that are unusually high – that is, very little below 4. But the high numbers have maybe been unusually low – I didn’t record anything beyond a 7. So this may not be typical – just what the last 12 days have been like.
Here you are:
Our very own Samuel Valtierra designed the banner above for World Outreach Week at Corban University in Oregon.
Our very own Tina Barham took the photos, and people from our church are the “walkers” in the background, led by visitor Stephen Predtechenskis.
And the hands are – well, my very own.
And I wrote the words – No Reserves, No Retreats, No Regrets.
My first hand modelling job. Something to add to my resume.
Now the words themselves are actually credited to William Whiting Borden. So I thought I’d write a bit about Borden, in today’s and tomorrow’s posts. And those who have taken my 2000 Years of Missions seminar will recognize a lot of the background of this story.
Actually, there’s a bit of a mystery behind those words – but I’ll get to that tomorrow.
In 1887, Chicago was a hangout for many of the world’s richest. The Armours were making a fortune in meat packing. And, actually, my great-grandfather was an Amour, living in Chicago at the age of 17. The connection between the two Armour families remains uncertain.
Also making a fortune were the Bordens. While the Armours preserved meat, the Bordens preserved milk. The New York Condensed Milk Company was expanding around the country.
The company would later become the Borden Company, a familiar fixture in North America and beyond. (Actually, although the company itself no longer exists, a part of it is still going as the LALA Foods – we buy our milk from them and still see ads with the Borden cow Elsie.)
Gail Borden, the founder, was gone. But his family continued to run the company. And one of his sons, William Borden and his wife Mary, were expecting their third son.
William Whiting Borden was born on the 1st of November 1887, in Chicago. (Yes, Whiting was his mother’s maiden name. My great-grandfather, William Findley Armour, also of Chicago, suffered the same fate!).
7 years later, William’s mother Mary came to Christ. She started attending Chicago Avenue Church, a mega-church of thousands at the time, which would become Moody Church. The pastor was R.A. Torrey.
Under Torrey’s preaching, William himself came to know the Lord.
In 1904, at the age of 16, William graduated from high school. His reward, a gift from his parents, was a trip around the world. By this time, he had a growing interest in missions. In fact, part of the purpose of his trip was to visit missionaries. Travelling with Rev. Walter Eerdman, he visited missionaries in various places, including China.
In 1905 William headed to Yale to get an education. He listened to the president, Arthur Twining Hadley, speak to the students about the need to “have a fixed purpose”.
William was discouraged at what he heard and saw, writing:
He neglected to say what our purpose should be, and where we should get the ability to persevere and the strength to resist temptations.
Morality without Christ? What could be done? Well, Borden didn’t waste any time. In the first semester, he started a prayer meeting. At first, it was just Bill and a friend, meeting before breakfast.
By the end of the year, 150 students were praying together.
 |
In 1906, Borden went to Nashville to attend the 5th International Convention of the Student Volunteer Movement for Foreign Missions. One of the speakers there would change William’s life forever.
The SVM started just a year after William was born, and had grown considerably. The goal of the organization was to encourage students to consider missions as a career. Students who wanted to become missionaries would commit themselves by signing cards. Only 3 years after the movement began, 321 new missionaries had already sailed overseas. And it had grown since then.
Samuel Marinus Zwemer is a name few know now, but in the first half of the 20th century he was downright famous. He lived in the Middle East for most of 38 years, but wrote and spoke frequently. At the time, he was living in the USA, about 38 years old, and working for the Arabian Mission. Today Zwemer is remembered as the Apostle to Islam. He had a huge part in introducing the West to the needs in the Islamic world.
In one of his speeches at the convention, he spoke passionately:
Of course it will cost life. It is not an expedition of ease nor a picnic excursion to which you are called… the man who asks the question, whether any Christians have lost their lives in preaching the Gospel of Christ to the Moslems, asks a wiser question than he knows. It is going to cost many a life; and not only lives, but prayers and tears and blood. That is where Jesus calls us, and the very leadership of this movement is a leadership of suffering.
Zwemer believed that there were 30 million Muslims in China alone, with no one to share the Gospel with them in Arabic. (Others estimated the numbers to be closer to 5 or 10 million. Today, there are likely over 20 million Muslims in China.)
Borden returned to school with a renewed passion. He and his friends Charlie and Jeff split the class between them (a class of about 900), planning to get to know their classmates with the goal of introducing them to Christ. Of course, Bill chose the people no one else dared to reach.
Borden was also looking to the future. He was seriously thinking about going to China with the China Inland Mission (today OMF International).
Along with a group interested in reaching out even more, he rented a room in a rough neighbourhood in order to reach those no one else was reaching. Eventually, not lacking cash, he purchased a whole building, helping to start the Yale Hope Mission.
 |
By his fourth year at Yale, it was obvious that something was afoot. Over a thousand students now attended the prayer meetings that had started so humbly. And Bill was not only involved in Christian work, but regular campus life, and lots of athletics.
Princeton was next for Borden, and life was busier than ever. His father had died a few years earlier, and his mother Mary hadn’t been well. She came to live at Princeton as well, along with Borden’s younger sister.
Family and financial responsibilities, school, and of course his outreach work continued. His interest in work in Islamic areas, particularly in China, continued to grow. He was even made a trustee of the Moody Bible Institute.
But he was still looking to the future – and still thinking about China. In 1910, that desire would solidify during a trip to Edinburgh, Scotland.
To be continued tomorrow!
So, as you may have guessed, it’s pretty busy around here! So I think I’m going to put the 30 days of memory verses on pause temporarily.
I might be able to keep going over the next few days, but I’ve enjoyed writing the summaries of the verses and I don’t think I’d be able to get those done too.
So I’m going to pause for a few days. I’ll try to carry the verses I’ve memorized so far so that I can review them, then when I can I’ll finish off the 30 verses.
Meanwhile, I’ll keep trying to post a little on what the MI Team is doing for those who are in Canada. And it’s been fun to get into the Word with them this week (we’ve spent a little time in Isaiah and Ephesians lately).
So stay tuned, and we’ll be back with the rest of our 30 verses soon! 🙂