happy thanksgiving!

Happy Canadian Thanksgiving!

Brian and I enjoyed our day off by sitting at Starbucks for an hour or so just reading and taking in the last bit of sunshine until May. Brian's been reading a lot about various men in Christian history such as Steve Saint, John Newton, and Adoniram Judson. After reading about the last guy, Adoniram, Brian was convinced that we are missionaries living a "nerf" life (you know what a nerf ball is, those soft, squishy, fake footballs and such). We're comfortable in our North American cushy home with a refrigerator, a yoga ball, and a DVD player.

Adoniram Judson was one of the first missionaries into Burma. You've probably heard a lot about Burma and its political unrest lately. Well, Adoniram lived through decades of unrest and his life was spent trying to bring the Gospel to the Burmese. He pretty much lived an awful life, malnourished, in prison, or attending to dying wives (2 of his 3 wives died while they were with him in Burma and his 3rd wife died shortly after he did). And he never really saw any fruit from his labor.

We are a part of a whole new generation of missionaries. We have access to anywhere in the world from anywhere in the world via satellites, we have a medicine for pretty much any known disease, and we have batteries so we can have power wherever we go. Are we living a "nerf" life?

The more I think about it, the less I'm convinced that we do. Yes we're comfortable physically, and I'm thankful to God for that every day. But we still face battle after battle for souls. I do not get on campus and stretch out my arms and say, "Welp, everyone's already following Jesus, so I think I'll hit the gym." It is far from that.

A week or two ago my friend and I shared the gospel with a girl who decided to accept Jesus as her Lord after hearing the Good News. We soon found out that she had studied with Jehovah's Witnesses and we're still working through a lot of fundamental issues with her regarding Scripture and the person of Jesus to name a few. Almost every time I talk to a Catholic student on campus I want to beat my fists against my forehead. They have the Truth but for many of them it's buried under piles of legalistic jargon!

To say that we live a "nerf" life might be true physically (thank you, Jesus), but I know when I open the door to my "nerf" apartment in the evenings my soul is often weary and my heart torn.