BIRTH PAINS

Sarah and I were flying over the city of Yogyakarta located in central Java on our way to the island of Bali when the massive earthquake hit the city killing over 5,000 people and subsequently showing up in world news headlines. Some of you might remember in our last newsletter I mentioned a vision the Lord had given me. The vision occurred during prayer on May 7th as we were praying for the nation, one day after we landed in Jakarta. The following is an excerpt from my journal dated May 8th:

“I saw a large eagle soaring high over a city in Indonesia. As it was flying it was looking intently at the city, as if it was searching for something. The vision focused in for a brief second on the eye of the eagle. It was sharp and piercing. The eagle commanded respect as a great authority exuded from it. The vision never showed the eagle finding what it was looking for (I am not sure if this is significant or not). All of sudden a massive wind powerfully swept through the city blowing at an extremely high velocity and before the wind had finished blowing a great earthquake rumbled from the depths of the earth and began to shake the city. At that moment I sensed a great shifting in the earth under the city and I was not sure if it was good or bad.”

Twenty days later the city of Yogyakarta was devastated. I am not sure if this vision was concerning this exact earthquake but what I am sure of is the increase of natural disasters in Indonesia and around the world.

One day when Jesus was relaxing on the Mount of Olives his disciples came to him and asked when the end of the current age would come. Jesus proceeded to talk about many signs and events that would take place before he was to return, one of the many included earthquakes occurring in various locations. He said these would be the beginning of birth pains throughout the earth.

In Jesus’ list of signs and events he makes a statement that has served as the driving passion of my life and one of the primary missions of the church, “And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come” (Matthew 24:14). Look at a global map and pick out a country where the gospel has not been preached. For the last two thousand years the gospel has been disseminating into the earth as faithful men and women have given their lives to the sharing of its message. Missiologists are now down to isolating specific language groups and various ethnos who have not yet heard. The earthquake killing 40,000 in Iran at the end of 2003, the great tsunami in southeast Asia killing over 200,000 in 2004, the earthquake leveling the city in Pakistan killing thousands in 2005, and now Yogyakarta with 5,000 dead in 2006. The labor pains Jesus spoke of in Matthew 24:7 have begun.

BASED IN BALI

Sarah and I have been in Bali for the last two weeks and have been in constant motion organizing all of the last minute logistics of relocating to the world’s largest Muslim country. The good news is we have leased a place for the next year which is going to serve as our operating base, locked down our visas, rented a Feroza (a blue monster representing a hardtop jeep on four somewhat off-road tires) ordered a bed for us to sleep on and connected with the church which we will be working with to advance the message in Indonesia. We are hoping to have pictures in our next update but as of now we do not own a camera. Please keep us in prayer as we serve the church in Indonesia and know that we