Canada: Week 1

It’s the end of our first week at camp.

A lot of the week has been spent trying to get settled in.  We are living in Lakeview at the moment, but we can move into the Loon’s Nest as soon as we get a bed.  I’ve been shopping around but it’s hard to decide what the best option is.  I hope to get something settled soon so that we can stop living in two places.  It seems that what you need at the moment is always in the other place.

Work teams have been here this week, including men from our home church.  Pete, Clayton, Wayne and Joe have spent the week building two decks and installing a sliding glass door in our cabin so that it will be cool enough on the hottest days. 

 We had curtains made by Janie Johnson at Talk of the Town, and they are beautiful.  When she was concerned about who would be installing the rods we told her about the men coming and when we mentioned Clayton she informed us that he was her brother.  He helps her often and knew exactly how to install everything.  Praise the Lord!

Phil was able to take the guys fishing a couple of times before he had to leave for New Mexico.  They had great luck and enjoyed it tremendously.  You can tell by the looks on their faces.

An last, but not least, there is our friend Pete.  He's been "working" on different projects and fishing with Phil.  So glad he brought the guys up here.





The week has ended with the whole group of us watching the kids put on a talent show and then playing “Catch Phrase” in the lodge.  Lots of laughing and fun…a good end to a good week.

The Adventure Begins

 The routine has become familiar.

We spent last night with Phil's dad as we travel the first leg of our trip to Bloomington.  We had a very nice visit with Roger who is doing much better since he was at our house for Christmas.  He had surgery shortly after returning home and his health has greatly improved.  We also visited with Phil's cousin Connie who is staying the summer in Bloomington and keeping Roger company.  It is a good arrangement for both of them.

We left the house at 5:30 a.m.  and traveled nearly twelve hours to arrive at International Falls, MN.  We ate lunch at the Culver's in Chippewa Falls, WI.  We had a lot of rain in Wisconsin, but the weather cleared as we got closer to our destination for the evening.  We checked into the Hilltop Hotel, and then shared the walleye dinner at the Chocolate Moose Restaurant.

The best part of the day was listening to Donald Miller read his book,  A Million Miles in a Thousand Years.  I had just attended the Storyline Conference in Nashville which grew out of this book.  I had read the book a couple of years ago, but Phil had never read it.  The way Miller develops the analogy of living life like you would write a good story is so powerful.  It lead to lots of good conversation, and a celebration of the wonderful story that we see unfolding in our lives at this time.

It was a long day, but a good one.  Tomorrow we hope to be up and on the road early in hopes of seeing some wildlife on our three hour drive into camp.

Canada, here we come!

Mysteries of Prayer

I just finished reading Prayer by Philip Yancey.  I know that my prayer life is not what I’d like it to be so I wanted to see if I got any insights from this book..  I highly recommend it because I really liked the ideas presented here.  I’m borrowing a format one of my friends uses often to share some of my favorite parts here.

Great Question:  “Why Pray?”

Great Answer:  “If I had to answer the question ‘Why pray?’ in one sentence, it would be, ‘Because Jesus did.’  He bridged the chasm between God and human beings.  While on earth he became vulnerable, as we are vulnerable; rejected, as we are rejected; and tested, as we are tested.  In every case his response was prayer.”

Best Analogy:  “I accept Jesus’ assurance that his departure from earth represents progress, by opening a door for the Counselor to enter.  We know how counselors work: not by giving orders and imposing changes through external force.  A good counselor works on the inside, bringing to the surface dormant health.  For a relationship between such unequal partners, prayer provides an ideal medium.

            Prayer is cooperation with God, a consent that opens the way for grace to work.  Most of the time the Counselor communicates subtly:  feeding ideas into my mind, bringing to awareness a caustic comment I just made, inspiring me to choose better than I would have done otherwise, shedding light on the hidden dangers of temptation, sensitizing me to another’s needs.”

Funniest description:  Teresa of Avila, a great pray-er from the Middle Ages, determining to pray until the hourglass runs out, then shaking it to make the sand run faster. (Haven’t we all felt this way?)

Most thought provoking:  The idea that even Jesus had prayers that were not answered.  He prayed for “this cup to pass,” and yet it did not.  He prayed for his disciples to be one as He and the Father are one.  Unity is still eluding the Church today.

Favorite Quote:  “Prayer and only prayer, restores my vision to one that more resembles God’s.  I awake from blindness to see that wealth lurks as a terrible danger, not a goal worth striving for; that value depends not on race or status but on the image of God every person bears; that no amount of effort to improve the physical beauty has much relevance for the world beyond.”

Most Challenging to me personally:  “Mystery, awareness of another world, an emphasis on being rather than doing, even a few moments of quiet do not come naturally to me in this hectic buzzing world.  I must carve out time and allow God to nourish my inner life…(quoting Tugwell) God is inviting us to take a break, to play truant.  We can stop doing all those important things we have to do in our capacity as God, and leave it to him to be God.

Resonates with me:   “I wonder if prayer is a pious form of talking to myself.”

Best explanation of our attitude in prayer:  “Somehow we must offer our prayers with a humility that conveys gratitude without triumphalism, and compassion without manipulation, always respecting the mystery surrounding prayer.”

Best “What If?” Statement:  “What about Islamist radicals who now oppose the West with violence?  What effect might it have if every Christian church adopted the name of one Al-Qaeda member and prayed faithfully for that person?”

Best Explanation of my Goal on Facebook:  "In medieval times, and still today in monasteries, the chiming of a church bell would cause all who heard it to stop and say the prescribed prayer.  It forced them to remember God.  Living in a place where church bells do not ring, I must make a deliberate effort to remember.”  (I hope my posts lead my friends to stop and pray, especially for things that they would not normally think to pray about.)

Joy in the Congo

One of the things I like best about my job is that it is flexible and can take me in so many different directions.  Today was a good example.

My seventh graders had to create a lesson to teach to the rest of the class.  Today we finished this up by listening to Rhianna share "the greatest power point ever created" (this was actually in her narration).  She loves music, wants to produce music for her career.  Her power point was about how music affects us, especially our moods.  After her lesson, we had some time left over, and though I had planned to use that time to play a game, I remembered this story that I had watched on 60 Minutes last month.  It seemed to me a perfect connection.

The story is about a man who started with absolutely nothing and created an orchestra in Kinshasa, the capitol city of Congo.  The part I liked best about the story was the way the people had used music to bring a different reality to their lives.  They had very little material wealth and no hope of travel or entertainment.  Music is their way to "take a trip to a different place;" they have "left the planet."

Can't you see the joy?

And so as I shared this story in all the rest of my classes.  We got to discuss how people in the United States also find ways to escape reality...movies, XBox, exercise.

In my last class I had enough time left to also talk about the dream of the man who started the orchestra, and how he didn't let anything deter him from making the dream happen.  I was able to connect them to the experiences I had this past weekend at the Storyline Conference.  The main theme of the conference was that we ought to live lives that tell better stories.  Certainly the man in this story had done that.  So this became my challenge to my students:

Tell a good story with your life.

It was a good thought to finish up a wonderful school year.  I love my students, and hope they have an adventurous summer.  I'm planning already to have a good story to tell them when I return in the fall.

Masterpiece

Over the last couple of weeks I’ve had some conversations with people about how to look at life.  There are a lot of metaphors that I’ve heard and even used myself.  One friend said that she thought of it like a tree with lots of branches.  Sometimes God has to prune the branches that don’t produce fruit (could be from sin and bad choices that we make).  But then new branches grow in other directions and the tree is healthy.  Of course, this also brings to mind Jesus' illustration of the vine and the branches.

That’s a fair enough comparison, but I like the idea that comes from Ephesians 2:10: “For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.”  That word “handiwork” (or “workmanship” in KJV) has the idea of “masterpiece,” which “in modern usage refers to a creation that has been given much critical praise, especially one that is considered the greatest work of a person's career or to a work of outstanding creativity, skill or workmanship.”  (Wikipedia.  I know, I know)

Now the great thing about thinking about it this way is that, not only is God completing this great work in us, but He is allowing us to participate in its creation.  When we look at how God has chosen to work throughout history, we see that “consistently, God chooses the course of action in which human partners can contribute most.” (Prayer by Yancey)

This made me think of a chalk artist I saw when I was a young child.  I remember watching this man draw a beautiful picture, all the time talking about God’s work in our lives.  Then, in the middle of the talk, he took a big black piece of chalk and made several random marks on this beautiful picture.  I remember being really shocked by this.  But then he began to work on the black marks until they also became parts of the picture and again it was a beautiful scene.  It made a distinct impression on me that has stuck with me all my life.  It still gives me comfort to think of God working in my life like this.

I told this to a dear friend the other night and although she liked the idea she said, “I feel like the picture of my family has turned out like a drawing a five-year-old would draw, with all the people distorted.”  I can understand this.  We don’t always get the happy, beautiful portraits we long for.

I just sent her a note with this picture attached.

It’s a Picasso.

It may be distorted and hard to understand, but it’s a masterpiece nonetheless.  Another comforting thought.

Mr. Adams

I love this picture of Mr. Adams and his great-granddaughter Anniston.  I've been doing a lot of thinking about Mr. Adams and our (mine and Phil's) connection to him over the years.

When we first arrived in Dunlap and started teaching Mr. and Mrs Adams were among our first friends.  Mrs. Adams taught 8th grade English and Phil taught 7th grade English.  She was so helpful in making his first year of teaching a success.  It was through her that we got connected up with the rest of her family.

Mr. Adams became a great friend and mentor to Phil because Phil was interested in so many of the things Mr. Adams knew so much about.  Phil learned so much about hunting by spending time with Carl.  They hunted all over the county... hunting quail, doves, crows and grouse.  Mr. Adams also helped Phil get his own much loved bird dog, Pearl.  In later years, Mr. Adams was the number one salesman for Phil's honey.

My first year of teaching was miserable.  I was teaching 7th and 8th grade reading and struggling every day, often coming home crying.  I spent many an afternoon with the Adams family trying to get over the trauma.  There was always a place at their table for us if we needed it, and we often shared meals with them.

Phil told me that Mr. Adams was one of the most encouraging people he has ever known.  In the last few years, Mr. Adams often told Phil how proud he was of him, and how glad he was that Phil had come to Dunlap.

When we attended the funeral Sunday, we were both struck by the number of people who had the same story as us.  Mr. Adams reached out to people over and over throughout the course of his life, and left his mark on them.  He enriched their lives and made them better people.  What a great legacy!