A week in Indy

The week of the 4th was our week off in Allendale (i.e. we didn't have a team down), and Laura Brummer and I were blessed to be able to visit our fellow missionaries in Indianapolis (Indy). There are 12 People of Praise missionaries living in Indy this summer. This past school year they were preaching and talking to as many college students at IUPUI as they could (check out jesusatiupui.com) and this summer they have been preaching in a neighborhood called the South Side. Though the houses are not falling down as much as they are in Allendale, the neighborhood has many of the same problems. Basic poverty, drugs, crime, broken families, and lonely people who are afraid to step out of their houses. The missionaries spend about four hours each day in this neighborhood, knocking on doors, preaching, offering people a new way to live, baptizing them in the Holy Spirit, teaching them how to pray or how to ask forgiveness, healing people, and visiting the lonely. They get weird looks, polite no thankyous, hostile rejections and have to eat plenty of doorknobs to find the people who are hungry to the know the Lord, and want to join us in building Christian community in this broken neighborhood. It was a real gift to be able to join them in their work for a week. I got to preach to several people in Spanish and witness first hand that being a missionary is not about knowing the right thing to say, its about having no clue but opening your mouth anyway and trusting in God to act, and then seeing Him do it!!

It was also wonderful to be able to join the household in their everyday life. The Indy missionaries are living by faith, thus all the food that they eat and all the furniture in their house is what the Lord has provided. I never knew that rice and beans came in so many varieties. They also spend large parts of their day devoted to prayer, study of scripture and the lives of holy men and women, and missionary training. I'm learning that to be a missionary it's necessary to really know scripture, to be able to quote it chapter and verse in a language that everyone will understand.

Another definite highlight was getting to spend time with so many of my brothers and sisters. I got to spend time with Naomi Caneff, my former roommate and housemate at the University of Portland, and had the unexpected delight of seeing the 1:10 household at our joint 4th of July celebration half way between Indy and South Bend. It was a beautiful day and not lacking in joyous and competitive volleyball games.

Thankyou Father for all you are doing in Indianapolis, continue to build your kingdom there, in Allendale, and in all the places that you send us!