Paradigm shift

        Last week marked a change in my life as it shifted my thinking. I have not yet finished thinking through aspects of the foregone conclusions, and the subsequent questions raised. This shift came as a result of CFNI's Missions focus week.  I came to CFNI to train to go into the missions field, as that is the direction I have been bent towards since about age 12. I didn't realize how necessary workers were needed in " the harvest" abroad, About 41% of the worlds population belong to unreached people groups http://joshuaproject.net/global_statistics .....what about the needs at home? 90% of trained ministers live in America. As I have reflected on things like this I realized that ( Apart from at CFNI) the number of missionaries to foreign countries I have met in my life I don't even need to use both hands to count.
       So what are some of the conclusions I have drawn from this?
.1 I need to take serious this 3 years of training I have before me, A task for which College is wholly inadequate to accomplish in itself. ( I need to A. learn to minister cross culturally B. develop speech-craft ; I can't for the life of me open a conversation with someone I don't know   C.  Learn effective street evangelism; I went with a friend Saturday to do some evangelism at a local mall, and found my ability to be lacking. )    .2 get others involved; If I go to China, or India, spend the rest of my life there and see 10,000 souls saved, then there has been no distinguishable dent made in the 2.9 Billion out there without the good news. So the solution becomes, before I leave get as many people as possible into the field, or supporting the ones there.  .3 Be able to effectively argue the case for missions: In a world that claims that truth is subjective, what need is there to tell people what the truth is? There is a moral relativism that is embraced by most, and my shift in thinking this past week is when I realized I had bought into it ( More on that when I have thought more about it).....

Sorry about the unrefined format of my blog, I write straight from where I am thinking, and would probably scrap the whole thing if I started to refine it......Its a point of weakness I have.

A time of repreve, better known as spring break

 During spring break I went on a memorial trip- In remembrance of my brother Bill.
For the trip I visited his grave, and also went and did several of the things I should have done with him while he was still here.

 Mainly, I stopped my life for a day of remembrance, done by getting away from the city, and into the wilderness. So I stent the day at the Wichita Mountains wildlife refuge in Oklahoma. Seen above is Jed Johnson lake.

 This lake reminded me of a lame joke- What did the engineers say when they found a stream here, and they wanted a lake? Dammit.

 And here is the nice little lake that came about from it- Lost lake

 The town of Medicine Park- from the top of Mt. Scott

 And lake Lawtonka, also from Mt. Scott

 and to finish off my day I went to Meers Restaurant, a place Bill was always saying we needed to go to.

and a couple other pictures I took while out hiking.

I miss you Bill.

 Also, one thing I had reiterated while I had this time to think and reflect is this. We need to be taking time to spend with family, intentionally, doing something to make memories, at least once a year would be nice.  I say this because I still feel like a stranger among my cousins, it seems like we only see each other at funerals, and it would be nice to make memories with them. We had a family rafting trip annually a few years back, but it tapered off. Any ideas?