The title of this post is also the title of one of my favorite books by one John Piper. I re-read this book on my trip to Uganda, and was once again impacted and convicted about how I often view my life incorrectly, and because of that how ineffective I am most of the time. One of the really cool things about the Uganda trip was that we got to meet a lot of people who aren’t “wasting their lives”, but are sold out for God’s glory in a real and tangible way every day.

A missionary we met named Dick fell into this category, and some of what he said related really well to the book. We only got to spend a few hours with Dick, but the wisdom he passed on to us in that short time was invaluable. Just a side note on Dick before I get to the main point of this post – he was Jacques Masiko’s youth leader years ago. It must be crazy to look back over your life and see someone you discipled go on to reach 40,000 young people. I hope some day I can look back at my group of Jr highers and see men that have influenced their world for Christ in such an amazing way. Anyway, on to the point…

On our drive up to Gulu, we asked Dick a lot of questions about life as a missionary and about living in Uganda. We asked him what the advantages were to living life on the mission field versus back here in the States. Here’s my best attempt at paraphrasing what he said: by living life on the mission field you are saved from three things.

1. You are saved from yourself. When you’re living life as a missionary it is nearly impossible to be focused on yourself. When you are living in a culture full of need, and filling your time ministering to people in need, you don’t spend your time thinking about what YOU want and how to get it. You don’t think about your comfort and you don’t think about how people have wronged you. You don’t think about how you deserve this or that.

2 You are saved from your culture. There are mountains of books written on this, but in short, I don’t think anyone would disagree that we as Americans are extremely materialistic. You can try really hard to resist this, but in a culture as ingrained as ours it is nearly impossible to escape. Dick will be retiring soon after over 30 years of service in Uganda, and he told us that no matter how hard he and his wife try, after six months back in the American culture they’ll be assimilated again. He said it’s happened to them every time they’ve come back for furlough, and as hard as they fight, the culture eventually wins. I don’t think he’s really talking about the big time materialism of the world here, as in the “I need the biggest house on the block and I need a Hummer in my garage” type mentality. Instead it’s the “I like to be comfortable, and I like to have nice things” type of subtle materialism that is so hard to confront even for those in the church.

3. You are saved from a life of insignificance. Life lived on the mission field is a life of significance, or as Piper would say, a life not wasted. When on a day-by-day basis you are bringing glory to God by meeting peoples’ needs, both spiritually and physically, you will have a life that matters. You will one day be able to look back and see a life of impact, lived by the power of the Spirit, and have full confidence that you will hear the phrase “well done” when you see the face of your Father. Just one simple illustration of this is Dick’s ministry to Jacques that I mentioned above. This is not to say that one cannot have a life of significance living here in the States, but for the most part it’s much more acceptable to be insignificant. Just think of the “American Dream” – to work your way up in your career, then retire early to enjoy relaxing vacations and nice hobbies.

So what do you all think? Is life lived in another country in service to the Lord superior to a life here in the U.S.?

For those following the situation in Northern Uganda, big news continues to unfold. According to a senior officer, Kony has accepted an amnesty offer by the government of Uganda, and is looking forward to the peace talks starting this Wednesday. There is still the matter of the International Criminal Court indictment to be resolved, but I think we all need to pray for peace and for the salvation of Kony. This next week is now said to be the greatest chance for peace for the Acholi people since the war began 20 years ago.

For those still checking this blog, we as a team are now back at our respective homes safe and sound. The rest of our time in England was fantastic, thanks for asking. After some pondering, I have decided to keep writing here for the foreseeable future. I think this will help serve several purposes for me personally, and for those who care about the goings on of my small life – so feel free to tune in whenever you like. Life has been crazy busy since we landed Saturday, and today is the first opportunity I’ve had to post. This one isn’t going to be super in depth, but on the encouragement of EWZ, I want to write down and plan out my next few topics before they escape my head forever. So if you’re interested, here’s what I’m hoping to write about over the next few weeks:

Three Benefits of Life Lived on the Mission Field – I’ll attempt to communicate some of the wisdom we learned from our friend Dick, a career missionary who is retiring this year after over 30 years of service in Uganda

Success and Failure on a Short Term Trip – I’ll share about some of the things our host Jacques taught us about his view of what a successful short term trip looks like, and some other really impactful things we took away from this great man of God. His prayers for us as we left are words I hope to never forget

Jesus the Same – This is the title of a song we sang in church last Sunday, and I heard from the guy that makes the PowerPoint that we’re doing it again this week. It’s one of my new favorites, and I think it describes some of the lessons we learned in Uganda. Namely, how the Jesus we serve is the same Jesus of Uganda and in the same way much of ministry we do here is, or should be, the same as the ministry in Africa and all over the world.

There are several more, but this post is already getting too long. Really quickly I wanted to mention a few things if you have some time to do a little “web surfing” as the cool kids say these days. One of our friends from Invisible Children in Gulu, James Pearson, has a great blog about his thoughts and experiences while living in Northern Uganda. I highly recommend it, James is a great writer and really gets to see a lot first hand. He wrote a heart-wrenching account about a girl he met who was attacked by the LRA here.

Speaking of the LRA, there has been some big news in the last week. Joseph Kony gave his first ever interview to the media, here’s the BBC article where you can read what he said. You can read some of the reaction to the interview here, and read the story of one of the victim’s response to Kony’s claims here.

Hey everyone, we've made it safely to London.  Our last two days that were supposed to be spent on safari in Uganda ended up differently than expected, after we found out the amount of travel involved.  We were going to tag along with another team, but after finding out the trip would have been an eight hour bus ride each direction, we decided to spend the last two days in Uganda resting and spending time with the Masiko family.  Our goodbyes were sad this morning, only because the relationships we built were so sweet.  Hopefully I'll be able to post some more reflections on the trip in the coming days and weeks for those interested.

We are now in London until Saturday morning, and we're thouroughly enjoying the hot showers and soft mattresses.  We were able to meet up with our friends Kathy, Jackie, and Siona tonight, and we're looking forward to a couple days of fellowship and exchanging stories of what the Lord has done in all of our travels.  I'll say it once more for good measure, thank you all so much for your prayers – the ministry portion of our trip was a resounding success.