Pavilion Village Update

Early Sunday morning (Feb. 24) Marge Clarke left Birmingham, Alabama bound for Pavilion Village. Marge will take her place as one of two rotating American directors at the orphanage. With 3 weeks of relative calm in Nairobi, the decision was made to send Marge on. Please keep her in your prayers at this time. Marge lived in Kenya for over a year working for another orphanage over 10 years ago, but returned home due to a temporary health issue. We are excited about the addition of Marge to our staff and about the experience she brings. She hsa been and will be independently raising her entire support.
I spoke to Debbie who told me that everything is going well at the home. The relative calm in Nairobi has brought an even greater level of peace to this rural community, although, they had felt little effect from the tension. A dispute remains as to one acre of our property that a local man has atteampted to "steal" and this is the biggest issue facing Pavilion at this moment. Until the land dispute can be resolved, we cannot run power to the house. Please keep this matter in your prayers as well. Our prayer is that God will invade this man's life and that conviction will overwhelm him to act rightly. However, we recognize that he must be willing to yield to the Holy Spirit, so we are also praying (just as David did) that should he be unwilling to yield that God will cause his feet to stumble and his will to fight to fail and that justice will prevail.

Preparing for TheCall - Montgomery

This is one of those rare moments when it seems like a spiritual high could last for an extended time. I have just finished a weekend with Lou Engle as he rallied the state of Alabama to prepare for TheCall in Montgomery on April 5. It began Friday morning when I drove to Montgomery for a meeting with a group of leaders who will be working to get the state ready. It was an amazing experience of prayer and preparation followed by a meeting with pastors and youth leaders from around the state. On Saturday morning our church hosted Lou as he shared with prayer leaders. It seemed that an anointing rested on Lou at every meeting I attended and as they progressed it seemed to rub off on me and those around me.
Several things stood out to me during the course of the weekend. On more than one occassion Lou spoke to the idea of the right to life movement being a legitimate successor to the civil rights movement. Interestingly enough, on Friday night in Montgomery on of the last remaining members of the old guard among the civil rights movment, Johnnie Carr, died. She was Martin Luther King, Jr.'s successor as president of the Montgomery Improvement Association. It would seem that a new time of succession is at hand. In addition, one of our members who regularly engages in sidewalk counseling at the local abortion clinics in Birmingham had a particularly successful morning on Saturday. For some who read this it may not seem like much, but to me it was a confirmation from God that the time is now for Alabama to arise and be a spiritual leader in the nation.
So why do I say that it seems that this anointing or spiritual high will linger for more than a short season. Well, it is because with everyone gone from Birmingham, and with the Pre-Call rallies complete our Sunday morning service today had a particularly strong anointing. I believe that we have seen a breakthrough that is lasting and will produce much fruit in the coming days.

E.T. Phone Home

I was recently pondering the words of Jeremiah 33:3, where God tells him to "call to me and I will answer you". As I thought about this passage, an interesting thought crossed my mind and I was drawn back in time just over 25 years. I wish I could say I was drawn back to my childhood, but I supposed that would be stretching things just a bit. Anyway, I thought about the move E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial and realized that the script could have been written entirely around Jeremiah 33:3. In my musings I came to the conclusion that this was a prophetic motion picture (it was even released on June 11 - 6 is the number of man and 11 is the number of the prophetic).

I won't go into all of what I saw here. If you are a part of the church I pastor, then you have heard it all already anyway. If you are not, then you can check out the media player at the bottom of the page and listen to the message I preached on it. I do, however, want to speak to the issue briefly. The entire concept of extra-terrestrials is overrated. I mean after all, we ourselves are extra-terrestrials (extra meaning beyond and terrestrial meaning this earth). We are strangers and aliens according to 1 Peter 2:11 and thereby we are something not of this world. Just like E.T. we don't belong to this earth, however, we differ from E.T. in one important way.

The tag line for the movie E.T. proclaimed, "He is afraid. He is alone. He is 3 million light years from home." E.T. spent the entire movie trying to figure out how to call home and get help. The difference shows up right here. As christians we have come to think of ourselves as being 3 million light years from home. Heaven has become a concept of something we will one day attain in the sweet by and by that will arrive somewhere out there in the future. According to the Word of God, this couldn't be farther from the truth. Jesus himself taught us to pray, "Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven". Our home is not light years away, because we merely have to cry out and bring it into existence in the earth around us. E.T. took the limited resourcs he had in an alien environment and focused all of his attention on contacting home. We too must begin to long for home - for a relationship with our Father - and call out to find it. When we do we will find that God is standing by, anxiously awaiting our call and that he desires to answer. Jeremiah 33:3 (Message) goes on to say, "I'll tell you marvelous and wondrous things that you could never figure out on your own". This is what I want. I want to call out to my Heavenly Father, bring the plans of Heaven into existence in the earth right now and learn all about those marvelous and wondrous things that I could never have figured out on my own.

Pavilion Village Safety

Several folks have emailed me to ask about Debbie and the kids at Pavilion Village. I am sorry that my last entry did not identify how they were doing. I had been so moved by the news about the churches, that I simply forgot to talk about Pavilion. I guess that is partly because I had just talked to Debbie and they were all doing well. Two years ago when we were setting up the orphanage, I was somewhat disappointed that all of our children and all of our staff were Kikuyu. This was not because I don't have a heart for the Kikuyu people, but rather because I wanted to see a multi-tribal family at the Pavilion. Well, I guess you can say that this is one of those places where "Father Knows Best". Today, Pavilion remains safe and secure because it is located in region heavily populated by Kikuyu peoples and everyone at the facility is Kikuyu.

Debbie has indicated that they barely know what is going on in the rest of the country because it is so peaceful where they are, however, their lives have been disrupted in various degrees. Patrick, our farm foreman, lost a sister-in-law and another is in critical condition as a result of the violence. Many travel plans for the orphanage have been disrupted and Marge Clark, our newest American staff member has been forced to indefinitely postpone her trip to Pavilion. We are, however, thankful that things are safe in our home.

Since it seems that so many people are interested in what is taking place in Kenya and our news reports are less than fully covering the event, I will try to keep information current on my blog in the days ahead.