2/23/08

Greetings from Germany.

The last two weeks has been packed with travel and activity. I have been in India traveling with fellow HFL staff, Dave and Chad, on a project assessment trip. We visited with two ministries in India. One pastor and a social society network in Delhi, and a ministry in Coimbatore (a town in southern India) which is providing a home and education for girl orphans who have been cast out of society, or whose parents were martyred Christians.

This trip has opened my eyes to a part of working internationally in humanitarian aid and the mission field that I hadn’t experienced yet; working in places where Christians are persecuted.

I have two stories to share with you which I hope will give you a glimpse of my experiences.

One night a watchman at a factory heard some noises from behind a warehouse. As he approached the sounds, he recognized them as cries. A crying baby. He rounded the rear of the warehouse and found a baby buried alive with only her head showing above the soil. The dirt was pushed right into her mouth, and had turned to mud. The watchman rescued the child, and the baby girl found her way into the Michael Job Center in Coimbatore, India. Her name is Amy. I met Amy this week. She is a lively young girl whose smile runs from ear to ear:

A child was found sitting in between her parents on their bed, crying. Her parents were unconsoling, unable to care for their child… they were dead. They had been martyred because of their unwavering faith as Christians. The child’s name is Lois, she is from Manipur. Lois is 7 years old and all that she remembers of this event which unalterably shaped her life is that she saw a person coming to comfort her. The man was never identified. Another man named Dr. Job took Lois into the Michael Job Center in Coimbatore, India, when she was three and gave her a new home among 300 new adopted sisters with similar backgrounds. But Lois was not happy, she did not smile. She didn’t want to do anything. One week, a lady from Norway was visiting and began reading Lois a story from a picture Bible. Lois pointed to a picture of Jesus and said, ‘I know that man, I have seen Him.’ The lady was astonished and asked for clarification. Lois was adamant… she had seen Jesus when her life had been changed irrevocably that day her parents died for what they believed in. Jesus had cared for her when there had been no one else. The lady spent time with Lois sharing with her about the Jesus she knew. Since that time, Lois has been smiling and willing to lend a hand.

These kids have similar stories. All 306 of them. They attend the Michael Job Center where they are being granted every opportunity to become all that they can be in this world. Here are some of their pictures.

We are greeted by a full school parade... complete with marching band...

Assembly in the morning...

Meal time...

In the coconut orchard which is used to fund the school... 1000+ trees...

A new friend... Deepika...

My heart breaks. It breaks for these kids whose lives have been forever changed because of perceptions of having kids with specific gender or because of people who have decided that their parents are unworthy to live because of their faith. My heart breaks for their hearts.

My heart cries out. It cries out for those people who live in areas of the world where other people have decided that they are so wrong for what they believe in that they shouldn’t live any longer. That they should die. That their difference in faith and beliefs condemns them to death. Shouldn’t that be decided by the gods… even supposing that there are more than One?

My heart aches. It aches for those people who are persecuting others. Who have decided on the value of a human life based on beliefs or religion, and have taken further matters into their own hands. My heart aches for these people… for if they could only catch a glimpse of Jesus, I am convinced that their eyes would begin to open. That the blinders would come off.

Here is a glimpse of the rest of my trip in India.

Overloaded?

Our bedroom and office away from home... 3 guys... Chad, Dave, and I... one bed...

A family travelling through the city... one of many... there are 1.3 billion people in India... of which 85% are classified as Dalits... the untouchables... there are only 6 billion people in the world... do that math.

Hanouk, a pastor in the slums of Delhi, with his family in their one room house...

The Dalit people...

A child receiving food from a social society...

The hospitality of our hosts was unparalleled... we even celebrated my birthday... flowers and cake...

A visit to the Taj Mahal... we couldn't pass it up...

1/10/08

Another new year has begun. Another milestone in the passing of life. Another milestone towards eternal life. I have found that the descriptions of the milestones of life can be categorized into two main views. A view looking back… and a view looking forward. There are some people, and perhaps you are one of these people, who haven’t yet found a way to view the future in a positive light. Perhaps this is because you have not found the hope beyond the grave… or perhaps you have found this hope, but it’s true meaning escapes you. The limitations of a view that looks backwards is that it can easily lead to a fatalistic view of the time you have left. What hopes do you have for the remaining days of your life, except to try to live them as comfortably as you can? How do you define life when there is nothing to hope for beyond the grave? How do you view each passing day?


How do you?


I’m not going to preach. I just thought I’d raise this thought.

Your view of life will define how you live it.



My year began in Hawaii, hanging with my family. We were privileged to be able to spend this time together in yet another beautiful part of this earth. The pictures will tell the story.


The boys beginning to relax...




The rental beach house... and the view...




Fellowship...


...and food...



Beach near our house...





A late night poker game... and poker faces...



A hike before sunrise one morning...

Another beautiful hike to the northwest tip of Oahu...

Washing off the mud at the end...

Mom, Nicole, and Marie... How do I ask for forgiveness if I've blatantly caused the situation:

A week of Rejuvenation

12/11/07

Life has been busy since my last trip to Haiti in October. I finally had a chance to rest last week, though I couldn't seem to shut my brain off from work. So I ended up working part time from home for most of the week. On Friday I travelled up to the Kamloops area to spend some time with friends (Calvin, Anne-Marie, Curtis, and Graham). This included getting up into the mountains (50 kilometers on logging/back roads) to Tranquille Lake. Time was spent continuing to visit with friends (Norm and Flo) and a little bit of ice fishing. Here are some pics from the drive home. It hit -26 degrees Celsius on Friday night but warmed up to -9 degrees on Saturday night.

Self portrait on spillway at Trudeau Lake:



Yes that is the lake that is covered with ice and snow (Ice on Tranquille was 10" solid clear ice).


I feel rejuvenated, though it is mostly from being continually re-inspired in my tasks with Hungry For Life from visiting with friends and sharing about what I'm involved in. I feel as though I'm at a point in my life where the lines between work and play have blurred to just be life. I enjoy what I do both in my tasks of life and in recreation... I find my life to be a pretty healthy balance, and though it is good to have periods of time where the daily tasks of life are put on the backburner for a little while, I do not need to create a fully defined line between these tasks and recreational parts of life in order to rest.

I'm a blessed man!

And so it begins again...

11/26/07

I have come to realize that using a blog to communicate with friends and family -my supporters and partners in ministry- is very efficient. This begins a new commitment on my part to use this blog to keep you updated on where I am and what I am doing. I’ll begin by giving you an update of the last four months since my last post.

After arriving back in Canada in mid-June, I spent a couple days at home, washing clothes, before heading to Northern California. I have had a passion throughout my life for spending time outdoors, playing in the beautiful creation that surrounds us. This has culminated in a passion to use the opportunities in activities and teaching that creation gives us to point to God. I have been involved at times in my past in ‘outdoor ministry’, and continue to identify in myself a desire to explore this area. At present there are a few like-minded individuals in my life who share the same desire. In exploration of where this might lead, I traveled to Northern California to observe a group of youth who participated in a leadership program which has been developed by JH Ranch, an outdoor-based ministry organization. JH Ranch has been running programs for over 25 years, with a focus on relationship building in families and youth leadership training. I would highly recommend that you check out what JH Ranch is about on their website listed in the links area of this blog and consider participating in one of their programs. I’ll continue to keep you posted on what develops in this area.

Following this, I jumped right into my new position at Hungry For Life International (HFL), which I wrote about earlier in the spring. I spent most of July and half of August getting up to speed on how HFL operates as facilitators of ‘opportunities for groups and individuals to experience the power and presence of Jesus Christ through worship and worldwide compassion.‘ This included a ton of time spent reading and working through paperwork. (I should add that I spent some of this time getting rid of a bacteria colony which was resident on my body somewhere that was causing me serious skin infections –read: ‘staph infections’.)

From mid August to the beginning of September I was privileged to lead an HFL team from Surrey Alliance Church (SAC) down to Haiti. SAC is partnering with Mountain Top Ministries (MTM) in the village of Dumay. This was the first team trip to Haiti for SAC, and the time was spent playing soccer, aided in the continued construction of a school and feeding center, participating in a food distribution and a school supply distribution, and, most importantly, building relationships with the Haitians. Check out the blog of our trip in the Hungry For Life Links titled ‘Short Term Team –Haiti 0708 SAC’.

September was spent continuing to jive into my position at HFL. There are so many tasks and so many opportunities to get involved in projects in developing countries that the ‘to do’ list just never seems to end. I continue to struggle with when to say, ‘no, I can’t take that on’, because of the unhealthiness of unbalancing my life. It continues to be a work in progress for me to create a new pattern of living around my new tasks at HFL and deal with the limitations of my physical body. I took the opportunity in September to attend two conferences, both of which have continued to equip me with tools and resources to learn about how to walk through my work and play in health of mind, body, and spirit. The first was an executive leadership conference put on by Arrow Leadership, which focused on aiding leaders in ‘cutting through the fog’ of their lives. The second was a conference put on by a man named Gordon T. Smith, who spoke on how to discern and hear the ‘Voice of Jesus’. I should qualify a sentence which I wrote earlier in this paragraph that began with ‘it continues to be a work in progress’… all of life continues to be a work in progress, and I hope and pray that I never become anything less than moldable clay.

In October I traveled to Haiti once more to lead a team from Cranbrook, BC, through a series of medical clinics with MTM and HAM. Check out the blog of our trip in the Hungry For Life Links titled ‘Short Term Team –Haiti 0710 CCT’. I stayed on in Haiti for a couple weeks to assess and work on some projects with MTM and HaitiARISE Ministries.

Shortly after returning to BC in mid November, I sent off another team to work in Haiti alongside MTM. Check out the blog of their trip in the Hungry For Life Links titled ‘Short Term Team –Haiti 0711 EST’.

Well… that finishes my update on the last four months. I will be striving to update this blog at a minimum of once every couple weeks. Check back for more and please email me at anytime!

May you be blessed!

Paul DenHaan

Under Construction

10/28/07

There is a problem with blogging... and that is that the blogger will never have an accurate read on the amount of people who have passed by and read some or all of it. In my case this includes finding it difficult to figure out how many lives have been touched by this blog… and if the effort that goes into blogging is warranted. I have realized over the last month that there are a great many people and supporters who have been affected by this blog and my writings on it, and have continued to check back to see what is happening in my life even after I returned from Haiti in June. It is for these people that this blog is currently under construction. I’ll be changing it into a tool that you can use to keep abreast of what I am involved in and where I am.

Blessings from a blessed man!

Paul DenHaan