Hello my friends!
**Before you read this, could you take a few minutes and scroll to the bottom of this page and check out my fundraising update? Then you can come back to this and catch up a bit on my life, and leave me some comments. :) Thanks!**
This will be a relatively short post, but I wanted to take a few minutes and let you know what's been going on in my life down here in Texas.
~~This is the first weekend in the past month that I didn't have anything major going on. First we had the UPG LTE, which you can read about in my previous post. Then we had the Endurance LTE, which means we ran the Tyler Azalea 10k with the local community. Next I went to the Indianapolis BattleCry event. Finally, we had Easter break, which I spent with my room mates family in Austin.
~~As you can probably tell, springtime at the Honor Academy is crazy busy, and its getting busy-er as we approach the summer. Much of the busyness is caused by the two ministries that are a large part of Teen Mania: mainly, Acquire the Fire and Global Expeditions. Acquire the Fire youth events are 2 day concerts/conferences designed to reach middle school and high school students with the message of Christ and to transform their lives because of His love. I have to admit that when I first came to the HA I was a bit skeptical as to whether or not the ATFs really accomplished this goal. But so far I've been able to go to 2 events, and I've seen that people really do encounter God there. I love the focus this year, because it's all about Jesus. It was so cool to go the Indianapolis event and watch kids begin to grasp His love for them, and what He did for them because of it. At the end, they're given the opportunity to surrender their lives, or different sins they've been struggling with, to Him, and literally nail them to a cross. For a good 20 minutes the hammering fills the venue as 12 year olds, 15 year olds, high school seniors, parents and even youth leaders come forward and nail pieces of paper to the wood. It's a somber, tearful, yet joyful time. The worship afterwords in amazing. Being at Indy gave the 31 hours I spend each week working to make them possible new meaning, and I realized once again that it's totally worth it.
~~This weekend was our biggest event, the New York BattleCry! 13,000 people were there, and I'm looking forward to hearing how it went . . . I pray lives were changed! The ATF season is drawing to a close soon, with the last events only 3 weeks away. But campus life isn't slowing down, instead it's picking up as things transition into preparing for the thousands of youth who will be sent from here on summer missions trips with Global Expetions. God-willing, I'll be going on one too, so please keep me in your prayers for that.
~~So I just realized this update hasn't filled you in on much of my life, but that's partly because a lot of my life here involves the different ministries of Teen Mania. Other parts include my classes, my Core, and my relationship with God. Tomorrow I'll do my best to fill you in on those areas, but for now I must bid you adieu . . . Corporate exercise begins in 5 hours, followed by another challenging, growing, stretching, learning, exhilarating, enriching, fun, God-centered day at the Honor Academy. Until next time, I am . . .
Resting in Him,
Bethany
Sunday, April 19, 2009
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
UPG - Update
Hey friends,
Sorry I haven't gotten a chance to update this in a while. Hopefully I'll get a chance to write a real update tomorrow, but I have to write a paper tonight. For now, I thought I'd share with you a paper I wrote on my Unreached People Groups experience. We have these things called "Reflection Papers" which are assigned after different LTEs and teachings we have. They're not graded, but they're required, and they just want us to take time to think about what we're learning, and write it down. So here's mine . . . if you have any questions about things, just let me know. Love you all!
Actions Speak Louder than Words
---->Although it was only a day and a half long, the Unreached People Groups LTE was one of my favorite LTE’s. It taught me so much about the importance of loving unconditionally and persevering in sharing your faith. My group represented the Kotokoli tribe of West Africa, a Muslim people group known for trading and stealing. Honestly, we didn’t study them nearly as much as we should have, nor did we do a very good job of coming up with our language, learning our culture and developing the roles we would each play. But even though I went into it unprepared and uncertain about how it would turn out, I still came out loving the experience.
One of the main things I learned was how necessary it is to share your faith gently, without devaluing other people's beliefs. I know it’s very hard to do, since sharing the Gospel involves telling people that there is only one way to God, though his son, and this means worshipping other gods is sin. But as Christians we must speak the truth in love, or people won’t listen to us. As Muslims, my tribe was very devoted to Allah and worshipping him. Our beliefs were a large part of our identity and culture, and when our missionaries wouldn’t worship with us and told us our god wasn’t real, it greatly offended us. When they rejected our beliefs, it was like they were rejecting us, and this definitely built a wall between us that they had to work hard at pulling down later on.
---->Along with this I learned that it’s important to get to know people before trying to tell them about your beliefs, and before trying to change theirs. Our missionaries told us about God fairly early in the UPG, before they really knew us or had developed any kind of a relationship with us. Admittedly, we were deliberately making it hard for them to get to know us, by acting distant and not talking a lot. But I think that was realistic, because I’m sure a lot of tribes wouldn’t just open right up to a bunch of foreigners showing up out of nowhere. It would have been a lot better if they had worked at getting to know us before trying to tell us about Jesus. I think that developing that relationship is part of sharing your faith gently, so that you have somewhere to start from when you do begin to speak the truth of Christ, as opposed to the lies they have believed. It’s a lot easier to accept, and less offensive, when there is trust and love behind the message.
---->Because our missionaries did offend us and disrespect our beliefs, and also our culture by singing, which was one of our taboos, we treated them pretty harshly. We made them get in the nearby freezing cold pond when they wouldn’t worship Allah with us, and we made them start their own fire after one of them accidentally hit our chief’s daughter with a piece of firewood. This all took place on Friday night, and although we had a brief peaceful interlude Saturday morning, the tension grew worse Saturday afternoon after the tribal meeting. There the government(our leadership here, who were running the LTE) told us that the missionaries were responsible for the death of other tribes’ people, we believed them. Our chief teamed up with the chief of our neighboring tribe and decided to punish our missionaries together. We made them get back in the pond for a long time, and then made the girls watch while the guys rolled in the sand and we taunted them.
---->It was some fairly intense persecution, for a role-playing LTE. Looking back, I think it would’ve been better if we had been a bit nicer, although I really didn’t have much say in the matter, because in my role I was the tribe’s outcast. But although I wish we would have toned it down, I know we all learned a lot from that time. For us tribal members, it was their perseverance, their words of love and kindness to us, and their faithfulness to God in the midst of it, that really began to tear down the walls we’d set up. After that all happened, we made them leave our camp, and we weren’t sure if they’d come back. But we knew that if they did, we’d be willing to listen. Thankfully, they did come back, and all but 3 members of our tribe ended up getting saved.
---->Although after Friday night I wouldn’t have expected it to happen, surprisingly, most of what I learned during the LTE was because of our missionaries. Yes, they made quite a few mistakes, and we did too. We all could have been a lot more prepared. But through their example I learned what not to do, like disrespect people’s culture and beliefs, and try to change people without knowing them. More importantly though, I learned some valuable things to do, like love people unconditionally, and persevere in spite of hardships. The thing that struck me the most is that actions really do speak louder than words, especially if you’re from different cultures and speak different languages. They probably didn’t realize it, but we were watching them all the time. No matter what the missionaries said, we weren’t willing to listen to them until their actions starting lining up with their words. When that happened, it made all the difference, and lives were changed.
Sorry I haven't gotten a chance to update this in a while. Hopefully I'll get a chance to write a real update tomorrow, but I have to write a paper tonight. For now, I thought I'd share with you a paper I wrote on my Unreached People Groups experience. We have these things called "Reflection Papers" which are assigned after different LTEs and teachings we have. They're not graded, but they're required, and they just want us to take time to think about what we're learning, and write it down. So here's mine . . . if you have any questions about things, just let me know. Love you all!
Actions Speak Louder than Words
---->Although it was only a day and a half long, the Unreached People Groups LTE was one of my favorite LTE’s. It taught me so much about the importance of loving unconditionally and persevering in sharing your faith. My group represented the Kotokoli tribe of West Africa, a Muslim people group known for trading and stealing. Honestly, we didn’t study them nearly as much as we should have, nor did we do a very good job of coming up with our language, learning our culture and developing the roles we would each play. But even though I went into it unprepared and uncertain about how it would turn out, I still came out loving the experience.
One of the main things I learned was how necessary it is to share your faith gently, without devaluing other people's beliefs. I know it’s very hard to do, since sharing the Gospel involves telling people that there is only one way to God, though his son, and this means worshipping other gods is sin. But as Christians we must speak the truth in love, or people won’t listen to us. As Muslims, my tribe was very devoted to Allah and worshipping him. Our beliefs were a large part of our identity and culture, and when our missionaries wouldn’t worship with us and told us our god wasn’t real, it greatly offended us. When they rejected our beliefs, it was like they were rejecting us, and this definitely built a wall between us that they had to work hard at pulling down later on.
---->Along with this I learned that it’s important to get to know people before trying to tell them about your beliefs, and before trying to change theirs. Our missionaries told us about God fairly early in the UPG, before they really knew us or had developed any kind of a relationship with us. Admittedly, we were deliberately making it hard for them to get to know us, by acting distant and not talking a lot. But I think that was realistic, because I’m sure a lot of tribes wouldn’t just open right up to a bunch of foreigners showing up out of nowhere. It would have been a lot better if they had worked at getting to know us before trying to tell us about Jesus. I think that developing that relationship is part of sharing your faith gently, so that you have somewhere to start from when you do begin to speak the truth of Christ, as opposed to the lies they have believed. It’s a lot easier to accept, and less offensive, when there is trust and love behind the message.
---->Because our missionaries did offend us and disrespect our beliefs, and also our culture by singing, which was one of our taboos, we treated them pretty harshly. We made them get in the nearby freezing cold pond when they wouldn’t worship Allah with us, and we made them start their own fire after one of them accidentally hit our chief’s daughter with a piece of firewood. This all took place on Friday night, and although we had a brief peaceful interlude Saturday morning, the tension grew worse Saturday afternoon after the tribal meeting. There the government(our leadership here, who were running the LTE) told us that the missionaries were responsible for the death of other tribes’ people, we believed them. Our chief teamed up with the chief of our neighboring tribe and decided to punish our missionaries together. We made them get back in the pond for a long time, and then made the girls watch while the guys rolled in the sand and we taunted them.
---->It was some fairly intense persecution, for a role-playing LTE. Looking back, I think it would’ve been better if we had been a bit nicer, although I really didn’t have much say in the matter, because in my role I was the tribe’s outcast. But although I wish we would have toned it down, I know we all learned a lot from that time. For us tribal members, it was their perseverance, their words of love and kindness to us, and their faithfulness to God in the midst of it, that really began to tear down the walls we’d set up. After that all happened, we made them leave our camp, and we weren’t sure if they’d come back. But we knew that if they did, we’d be willing to listen. Thankfully, they did come back, and all but 3 members of our tribe ended up getting saved.
---->Although after Friday night I wouldn’t have expected it to happen, surprisingly, most of what I learned during the LTE was because of our missionaries. Yes, they made quite a few mistakes, and we did too. We all could have been a lot more prepared. But through their example I learned what not to do, like disrespect people’s culture and beliefs, and try to change people without knowing them. More importantly though, I learned some valuable things to do, like love people unconditionally, and persevere in spite of hardships. The thing that struck me the most is that actions really do speak louder than words, especially if you’re from different cultures and speak different languages. They probably didn’t realize it, but we were watching them all the time. No matter what the missionaries said, we weren’t willing to listen to them until their actions starting lining up with their words. When that happened, it made all the difference, and lives were changed.
~The end!
OH, and here's a picture . . . this is what I looked like for most of the LTE, except my hair was pulled back by a scarf, and I probably smiled every now and then.
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