ADVENTURE! Tales of Moving to Brazil
www.sethbartal.comADVENTURE Update: Busyness
You may wonder why there haven’t been any posts lately. The answer is: we’ve been incredibly busy! We are officially members of PIONEERS now, and that means we will be putting together new photo magnets as well as a newsletter announcing all of the details. If you’re on our mailing list, watch you mailbox in the next week or two. If you’re not on our mailing list, send me an email, and we’ll get the letter our to you.
We are going to be attending the Pre-Field Connection with PIONEERS during the first week of March. We’re really excited about our partnership with PIONEERS and are thankful for how things have worked out with them.
Now that we’re back in town for a while and things are settling down (for a few months!) I will be posting more regularly.
The blog is back
In preparation for our new work with PIONEERS, I had to take the blog down for a few days. Kari and I had a great trip to Orlando, and we’re excited about joining the organization. I will be sure to share more information as it becomes available.
A busy first day
Our first day for Candidate Orientation Program (COP hereafter) was great! We started bright and early at 7:15 for breakfast and concluded at 9:30 this evening after a counseling session! Needless to say, it was a busy day! There were two specific highlights of the day that are worth noting:
- “Uncle Jack” Frizen – Uncle Jack (as they refer to him here) shared this morning about his life in ministry – he’s a “retired” missionary. I put retired in quotation marks because he is about the most unretired person I’ve ever met! He still travels around the world on a regular basis and comes to work every day that he is in town. I hope I am as passionate about the Lord as he is when/if I get to be his age.
- Personal testimonies – we got to hear each candidate and candidate couple share testimonies this morning. It was really neat to hear how the Lord has worked in each person’s life.
Everybody here seems like family – which is a good thing. Tomorrow starts bright and early again!
A great start
We just finished lunch with a group of other candidates here at PIONEERS for the orientation program, and we had breakfast with a missionary from Poland. It is so much fun hearing the stories of various people who are either on the mission field or moving to the mission field. Though every story is unique, each one includes a step of faith in response to a call by the Lord. I’m looking forward to the rest of our week!
ADVENTURE Update: On the way to Orlando
I haven’t had much time to blog during the holidays due to spending time with family and preparing for the big Orlando trip. Kari and I are participating in the Candidate Orientation Program with PIONEERS. Hopefully I will be reporting back all week about our experience… this is just one more part of the ADVENTURE!
Chase after me
Seth and Kari at NewSpring
Yesterday Kari and I went to a Christmas Eve Eve service at NewSpring Church in Anderson, South Carolina with my brother and his wife. Perry Noble is the senior pastor there, and he gave a message last night on the Prodigal Son from Luke 15. And though the message was good, I couldn’t help but think about something that wasn’t brought up in the message. As the Prodigal Son is returning home, his father sees him from a long way off and begins running toward him. The question that came up in my mind was: why did the father run? Perry mentioned that the father was probably trying to protect his son because the townspeople might try to stone him to death for disrespecting his dad. That could be true, but my mind went somewhere else in the sermon. Is it possible that the father ran to the son because he was afraid the son might change his mind and not come home after all? Let’s face it: it’s tough for a person to swallow his pride. Perhaps the father was afraid that the son would have second thoughts about his homecoming and turn around before he ever made it to the front door. Perhaps the father was chasing after the son so the son knew how much he was loved.
As I think about the Christmas story this year, I see a God who is chasing after me. He sent his Son into the world because, in my own limitations, I wasn’t able to make myself presentable for God. And just when I’m ready to turn toward home, when I realize my helpless estate, He comes chasing after me. The beauty of the Christmas story is that He comes chasing after every one of us. That is the Christmas story. God came chasing after us with His Son – providing a way for us to be made right with Him. Merry Christmas!
Cultural Christmas
Christmas is very cultural in the United States. By that I mean the way we celebrate Christmas has more to do with the way we were raised in our culture than it does with the Biblical meaning of the holiday. Whereas it is important not to lose the Scriptural value of celebrating Christ’s birth and the unveiling of God’s plan to redeem humanity, I don’t think it’s necessarily bad to include our cultural nuances into the celebration as long as they don’t take center stage. Here are few things from my cultural Christmas that I have come to love each year in addition to the celebration of Christ’s birth:
- Movies – National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, Elf, Holiday Inn, How the Grinch Stole Christmas, A Christmas Story, etc.
- Food – Wassail, sugar cookies, fudge, roasts, red and green M&M’s, etc.
- Gifts – I love giving gifts to people that I think they will really like but would never buy for themselves
- Music – I think I have over 20 hours of Christmas music on my iPod ranging from Nat King Cole and Bing Crosby to Jars of Clay and Michael Bublé
- Friends – I enjoy spending time with people, and I really like Christmas parties
- Christmas lights – It’s fun seeing houses that are tastefully decorated
Those are my favorite things about Christmas. What are yours?
The busyness is over…
Tonight finished up the end of my Christmas busyness!! It was a crazy week, but I’m glad that’s it’s all over now and I can enjoy the rest of the season. It’s so ironic that we spend so much time doing “Christmas” things and yet we sometimes forget why we’re even doing them. The same can be true with the Christian life in general. If we’re not careful, we can end up becoming religious like the Pharisees and missing out on what God wanted to do in their midst. Take some time to remind yourself when you’re out running around, shopping, and fighting for a parking spot that we’re celebrating the unveiling of God’s unique plan to redeem the world. Christmas is more than gifts and stress; it’s a celebration of the hope we have in Christ for all eternity.
The risk of ADVENTURE
I remember in college I used to think a lot about how Jesus said that the call of following Him meant persecution. Last week I mentioned a book called The Heavenly Man in a post about hope. The book is the autobiography of a man named Brother Yun – a Chinese Christian who faces intense persecution. It’s possible that this idea of suffering is on my mind because of what I’ve been reading, but I also ran across a line by J. Oswald Sanders in Spiritual Leadership as I was skimming through some stuff today. Sanders said, “Serving and suffering are paired in the teaching and life of our Lord. One does not come without the other. And what servant is greater than the Lord?” The one who chooses to follow the Lord opens himself up to becoming a servant and to dealing with suffering. Joining the Lord on an ADVENTURE isn’t safe. There is a risk, and it’s because of the risk that many people avoid the invitation. Unfortunately, those people also miss out on the immense blessing that comes with it. Following God is not safe. It has never been safe. It was never meant to be safe. But it is good.
ADVENTURE Update: Heading to Orlando
Kari and I were invited yesterday to head to Orlando in January for the Candidate Orientation Program with PIONEERS. Please pray for us as we go through the interview process. We are really excited about the potential of working with them as our sending agency. If all goes well, they will invite us to join their organization when we’re there in January. We’ll keep you posted!
