Arctic Hope

While thousands of miles away, we received a great blessing this week. Our friends in Colorado Springs, Johnny and Nancy Whitaker, took our newly purchased travel trailer and secured it, worked the paperwork, cleaned it up, made some minor repairs, richly provisioned it, and prepared it for a long journey to Ft McPherson. They worked through a number of minor and potentially major problems that could have created great difficulties.

This morning, my granddaughter Lauren led David Hahn out of the Whitaker’s driveway on the first leg of the travel trailer pony express to Ft McPherson. David will take the trailer to Ft. Simpson, NT, we are partnering with his team to hold a Youth Bible Camp. Then on to Ft McPherson. Please pray for traveling safety, mechanical reliability, and no problems at the border.

Thinking on the effort it took to prepare the trailer, I recognized that Johnny, Nancy and my daughter, Jennifer (their daughter-in-law) served as our ‘hands and feet’ even though we were not there physically. They did the things we would have done had we been there. They accomplished many things in our name and looked after our interests because of their love for us. To paraphrase 2 Corinthians 5:20, “They served as our ambassadors, as though we were making our appeal through them.”

I am reminded of song entitled ‘Hands and Feet’. Christ is reminding us that Michelle and I are serving as His hands and feet in the Northwest Territories and the Yukon. “We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making His through us.” We become Christ’s hands and feet as we share His love in these places.

Some days we don’t feel much like His hands and feet. In fact we feel more like an ingrown toenail: a bit inflamed, irritable to the touch, just wanting it all to go away. Please pray that we will have few of those days as we keep our eyes on Christ (Hebrews 12:2) and as we adjust to the wonder and challenges of this great adventure.

This week we have been able to pray and meet people in Old Crow, Aklavik, Inuvik and Ft McPherson. We have found strong faith among some of the oldest generation, but we have found the younger generation adrift, cut off from hope, having a bit of religion, but having no relationship with Christ, no real purpose and living self- destructive lives.

In Old Crow we met some of the elders who have genuine faith. They’re trying to hold on to what was before, but have little impact on younger generations of the community.

We have also discovered that there is an independent Baptist work ongoing in Tuktoyaktuk, Aklavik, and Inuvik among the Inuit/Inuvialuit people. We plan to meet this week to find ways we might partner with them in reaching these communities.  Please pray God will lead our discussions and plans.
As we walked, prayed and visited, we struggled with the exact focus for our efforts. Do we tie ourselves to that which seems to be dying? Do we try to start a new work as if there had been no faith in this community before? How do we focus our efforts? What are you saying Lord?  How do we join You as You build Your Church?  The answer was simple, ‘Make Disciples.’ It is as if Christ is saying, “If you will make disciples, I will build my church.”  Pray for us that God will give us discernment and energy to invest our time in making disciples.

Finally, we have filled out our ‘dance card’ for the rest of June and most of July. It seems the first half of our summer will be one of exploration and beginning relationships. We are asking God to continue to orchestrate our summer and ask Him to allow us to begin building the disciples whom He is raising up.

We are certain we are carried along by God’s answers to your prayers. We are blessed.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 17th, 2008 at 14:45 and is filed under Summer of Exploration, Blogroll. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.