I hope to continue posting some Catalyst thoughts over the next few days. Things have been insane upon my return to the cold, winter-y Midwest from the warm, summer-y ATL.
While I am playing catch-up and working on some more Catalyst thoughts, allow me to direct your attention to a post that I just wrote for a new campus ministry blog called, “The Heart of Campus Ministry.”
My post is entitled “Reverse Missionary Work” and I have been meaning to share some of those thoughts here.
In about 5 hours, I will be leaving with 12 others from the Christian Campus House and heading to Tulsa, OK for the annual National Missionary Convention. Never heard of it? I’m not surprised. It’s pretty huge in the Independent Christian Churches/Churches of Christ circles. Been goin’ on something like 60 years.
No mega-church speakers. No famous authors. Just ordinary folks who have labored, some of them for decades, in remote areas of the world sharing the Gospel of Christ. Last year, I met one guy who had been a missionary for 40+ years and was excited because he was consistently seeing 6 people interested in a “house church.” Amazing.
I hope to blog through the convention a bit, but I can’t promise anything. Not sure what internet connections will be available. However, I definitely will be Twitter-ing throughout the entire weekend. You can follow me on Twitter here.
Tomorrow, at the early hour of 5am, I roll out of Maryville for a week long mission trip to Mexico. Originally I was supposed to be leading a group of students to Haiti this week, but there had been much civil unrest over there and I decided against taking students in to such a dangerous situation.
And so…Mexico. 5 students and myself. And we will be meeting up with several other students from Campus Christian Fellowship from Iowa State. Eric is a campus minister there.
I hope to keep people updated throughout our trip via Twitter. Sign-up and follow me and you will be on top of all the excitement. You can find me on Twitter here.
See you when we get back!
Here is the short version of a long story:
I was scheduled to take 6 students with me to Haiti in a little more than 3 weeks. If you haven’t been paying attention to the news, Haiti is experiencing a bit of civil unrest. The State Department has encouraged all Americans not to travel INTO Haiti and for Americans already there to get OUT of Haiti. The Embassy is not fully functional. After much prayer and wisdom-seeking, I have decided not to lead our group into Haiti.
Here is the thing: I have 6 willing students (and myself) who have a week off and non-refundable plane tickets. But, we have nowhere to go! It’s an awesome problem to have!
And here is where you come in:
Do you have recommendations for us of people or organizations who could use our help on such short notice? I will consider all suggestions.
The dates of our trip would be May 9-16/17. Please, post a comment or email me at: mynameisbrandon [at] gmail.com
Thanks!
The nursing home we helped gut.
One of the ceiling fans in the house we gutted. If you look closely at the crown of the room, you can see where the water settled. And the mold.
Caitie and I removed this wall panel.
This is me pretending to be Jack Bauer with some flashlights that I found.
Our great group!
On the road.
Smile.
Baby Gator. He tried to eat me, but I just held on tighter.
Mmmm…raw oyster.
Not so much.
Throw up on Heather.
Me on Bourbon Street.
Not much writing happening here lately.
A few weeks ago, I had the privilege of leading 10 of our students to New Orleans, LA for our annual Spring Break Mission Trip. What an amazing time. I feel like a schlub, because these trips are great chances to blog and share insights. However, I am simply too busy to blog whilst preparing for and executing these kinds of trips.
All in all…it was amazing. The devastation in NOLA is still massive. People there are hopeless and lost and frustrated. I talked to several folks who confessed that they just about jumped into the floodwaters in order to take their own lives. One guy didn’t do it because the water was too cold. There are great needs…and will be, for at least the next decade.
We spent much of our time in the Lower 9th Ward, made famous by Katrina. It’s still a ghost-town, but businesses are starting to pop up. We got to help gut an old nursing home that had been destroyed. In one of the most eerie moments on the trip, someone from our crew uncovered an old whiteboard. Written on that whiteboard were evacuation plans for the residents and staff of the nursing home. Perfectly preserved. It was haunting.
We also gutted an old house down in the “toe” of the state. What a cool place. We could see the Mississippi River 150 yards to our right and the Gulf of Mexico 150 yards to our left. Where we were working was under 30′ of water for a few days and all the houses were underwater for several months. The residents of the area finally got to go back to their destroyed homes about 3-4 months after the storm.
We spent one day working with The Green Project, a local recycling organization dedicated to preserving and re-selling old construction materials, primarily. Different work, but very cool.
The last day was spent going from devastated house to devastated house doing odd jobs. We stained a deck for one lady. Cleaned some debris for another.
And we saw all the sights…Bourbon Street and the entire French Quarter is a spectacle. We took a tour of the bayou and fed some alligators. We ate oysters and crawfish and alligator.
Pictures and another NOLA post to come.
Over the last weekend, I had the pleasure of going to Cincinnati, OH with several of our students to the National Missionary Convention.
There were a few things about the conference that I loved:
First of all, at most conferences, the people you see and hear from are the mega-guys. If you aren’t leading a church of 1,000+, or if you haven’t written a book in the last year, or if you aren’t the expert in some field, then you don’t get to share. With this conference, it’s not all that uncommon to hear from somebody who has spent the last 10 years living in a grass hut in a village, trying to share the gospel with 10 people. That’s cool.
Another thing I love is seeing what God is doing all over the world. There were 650+ booths with missionaries sharing what God is doing in their neck of the woods. I got to meet the missionaries that we will be working with when we go to Haiti in May. I got to meet the missionaries that we sent $1,000+ to for the constructing of a clean water well in Central India. I met a missionary who is mobilizing college students to serve in the closed area of Northern Africa. Also cool.
Along with all of these people, I love seeing friends I have made all over the country. Got to visit with some of my favorite campus ministers, missionaries, and others serving in the trenches.
The one other thing I loved about the trip was the trip itself. 12+ hours to and from Cincinnati, trapped in the van with our students, provides for some great conversations and memories.
The conference, in and of itself, was fair…the speakers were fine and the sessions were just OK (I think I picked a few lemons). But all of these other things made the trip worth it…and I am sure we will do it again next year.
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