I’m not sure how to prevent expectation, really, but I certainly wish I could; because it never goes as we expect.

House church is a great example of this. We spent months attending church with our neighbors, struggling to find passages in the Burmese Bible for barely literate friends to sound out and trying to keep way too many kids quiet.

So thus unfolded house church, as we tried to open our doors to hosting right here in our neighborhood. We are walking through the Storybook Bible, combined with the New Readers’ International Version, and attempting to tell the stories of the Bible and connect it all to Jesus.

We had hopes of it being mostly adults, but welcoming to kids.

Instead, it’s very, very welcoming to kids, and we have some adults that attend. We even have one adult who comes occasionally, but every week comes in afterward to read the Burmese Bible on our floor while his wife packs up the bread orders for the week.

Sometimes I wonder if it’s working or worth the effort, something I ask for nearly everything in our lives. If only a few adults are coming and sitting in the back, how do we reach them? Are the kids getting anything out of this? Do they understand why we do this week after week?

And for that matter, do they understand why we do EVERYTHING THAT WE DO week after week?

We never know. It’s never as we expect.

Enter today, as a few kids spread out on our floor to play. One of them pulls out one of the children’s Bible and asks if this is David or Moses. I explain that it’s actually Joseph, and then she begins to trace his drawing and the entire landscape.

Another child pulls out the Storybook Bible from bible study, and finds the story from last week. He tells the boy next to him about how David was chosen as king, and how he was the smallest of his brothers. He talks about how Kelvin played the oldest brother and Zwe Ne Na played the next…

Yet another child pulls out another children’s Bible. She opens to a picture and page she knows, and then tells the story in Burmese–in her best teacher voice–to the four year old boy looking on. She points to different parts of the illustration and tells the Bible story with confidence.

Her little brother is sitting next to her reading a book about how much God loves him. He loves the page that unfolds to show that God loves you taller than the tallest tree, and the foggy mirror at the end where he can see his face.

A mother was sitting in the corner, looking through yet another children’s Bible.

{You can’t say we haven’t provided opportunities!}

As the rain stops, most of the kids leave. One little girl, Neh Wey, stays behind and pulls up next to me with an illustrated Burmese children’s Bible. At first I am typing away on the computer, and she asks me who this person is. Before long, she goes back to the beginning and we go page by page through the Bible, reviewing the stories. Reviewing them because she knows them. We reach Jericho and she tells me how we just learned about that, and how they walked around the wall, shouted, and it fell down. When I point out Jonathan & David, she remembers that Jonathan is Saul’s son. Saul tries to kill David, but David & Jonathan are friends. When I can’t remember the name of the Queen that Solomon meets with, she insists that we ask Stephen, because he will certainly know.

The stories of the New Testament roll off her tongue: the man couldn’t see and then Jesus touched him and he could! There were just five loaves of bread and two fish and everyone ate and ate and were fat! Jesus walked on the water and then the man got out and walked and then he sank!

We went through all of the Old Testament and nearly all of the New Testament before her mother called her home.

It’s never as we expect. We can count how many people come to house church or quantify the number of stories we’ve told. We can tell you how many hours a week it takes to pull off a translated Bible study with snacks and we can look around the room to see if adults are hearing this.

But it’s likely not in house church where they meet Jesus. They’re not likely to find him in Scripture they can’t read. Instead, it’s likely in the day to day, over dishes and at hospital visits and in conversations in the car.

May they meet Jesus in us, where we least expect it.

Every week at House Church we ask for prayer requests before we all pray together. We often talk about who is currently sick and pray for everything from the little boy with the fever to the woman in the hospital with typhoid, the little boy who fell off the toilet & has a cut on his head to the man who survived a nearly-catastrophic roof fall at work. We pray for safe travels, mostly for Stephen & I and Kelvin & Laura—the people with passports who can travel legally—and a few neighbors’ trips to Burma to see family.  Every week they ask us to pray for “money”—which we are trying to turn into God providing for all our needs…

Last week, we asked if there was anything else we could pray for, for the kids moms & dads or in their homes. One of the little boys raised his hands and asked if we could pray for the fighting to stop, because there is lots of fighting in the homes & community.

Oh, honey, yes. That is my prayer. Sometimes I pray it selfishly because I just don’t want to go to the hospital with a bloody patient. But, oh, yes—we will pray for peace in these homes! We will pray for an end to the fighting!

Please pray with us.

Jesus, please save {Burma}
Please bring an end to all this fighting
Jesus, please save {Burma}
In Jesus’ name, Amen

“Jesus, Please Save Kenya” (and Burma!) by Kaitlin Pflederer-Feriante in Can You Hear Us?

So we started a little home church in our community a little over a month ago. We’ve been sharing Bible stories and connecting them into the larger story of the Bible; sharing what we learn from them and different aspects of the character of God. We pray together, ask for prayer requests, and share a snack.

There are a lot of kids coming week after week, and we have some regular adults coming. We have a few new adults that come and check it out on occasion. We have some that just come for snacks.

Each week, we write out a new lesson. We write it out word for word, including passages taken from the Young Readers’ Version of the Bible. On Wednesday night we go to a local children’s home, where three high school-aged boys go over it with us, asking questions and working to understand it. They come to our house on Thursdays and take turns translating it and explaining the Scriptures and stories to our neighbors.

In some ways, it’s a dream coming true. We have gotten to know these three boys and helped them to understand their Bibles more than they have before. We get an opportunity each week to sit down with them and study each word, discussing the meaning and value of each story.

And then these boys help us to share these stories, share our hearts, and share our love to our neighbors. We are able to answer questions and share prayer requests. The neighbors can hear us pray for them each week as our prayers for them are translated.

And for us, we get to see Scripture in a new way; we get to pray for our neighbors with a new perspective.

In some ways, this is the loveliest thing we have done in the community. It embodies so much of what we love, from the discipleship opportunity with three teenage boys living in a children’s home to sharing our faith in an applicable way to our neighbors; even down to the soy milk that we buy from a local migrant school. The migrant school teaches the students to make the fresh soy milk, and it’s sold to make the programs sustainable. And it’s only $8 for 17 liters of something healthy for the community, alongside fruit from a little stand down our road.

This is so much of what I value, guys. It’s faith, walking itself out in community, in life, in stories, in sustainability, in health, in breaking fruit open together.

And yet, I find myself week after week, knowing that this is exactly where we are supposed to be, and yet knowing that it will take exactly something miraculous for anything to come of it.

We are trading off and on with Kelvin & Laura to share the load, and as each of us travel. Even when it’s one of “our” weeks, Stephen speaks more than I do; I often lead the prayer time. And while he speaks, I find myself just pulled to pray. I often just look around the room and pray for the individuals and families; I pray for their stories. I pray for the Bible stories being told to somehow relate to them. And really what I’m praying for are miracles.

These stories that I am so familiar with, that are in board books & puzzles in the community space, the verses on our walls, the books that line our shelves–they encompass our lives here. And they are…weird. They feel bizarre. They feel unbelievable. It feels almost absurd to express how much we believe this and base our lives on it; how much we love the Lord and have trekked over here just live life with them and tell them this.

Yes, this feels absolutely absurd. It might be.

We were sharing with some visiting friends about our work here last week, and someone asked about how we share our faith in the community and conversions.

I was reminded of the tents & mansions word picture that I feel like God gave me a few years ago and I wrote a little about previously. In short, while I experience the mansion of my faith–discovering Him at every turn, basking in him, experiencing the Gospels every day–I don’t want to show someone a tent. I want them to see the mansion & experience the mansion; and ultimately, I hope that they will choose it, not for a moment, but with all that they are.

And I guess this home church each week feels like we are touring the mansion we call our faith. It is exploring different aspects of who God is and what he means to us. It is telling a little story that is a part of bigger story. But it’s also personal: it’s our story as a part of this bigger story; it’s letting them into this mansion that we have given everything up for.  I think that is why I have found the feeling of vulnerability hasn’t gone away, but I still feel it week after week. Opening up the doors to the mansion that is my life and faith is turning out to be much more difficult for me than opening up the doors to my home and letting the kids wipe chicken grease on my walls or wiping up blood off the floor.

Perhaps because I’m afraid all of the chicken grease and blood {and the long list that includes being away from family} wasn’t worth it? What if they accept the open door but reject the mansion?

And on some level, I also feel helpless. I feel like I can plant & water–day after day, year after year; another hospital visit after another memory game after another bible study after another community meal; and prayer upon prayer upon prayer–but only God can make it grow.

Is He making it grow?

I think of all of our supporters who give to us month after month. It is a lot of money. After five years, it is starting to add up to thousands of dollars from friends of ours, planting and watering with us. “…Neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth. He who plants and he who waters are one…” (1 Corinthians 3:6-8)

Oh, Lord, please give growth.

“Imagine yourself as being deeply convinced that your love…
your kindness to your friends, and your generosity to the poor
are little mustard seeds that will become strong trees in which many birds can build their nests!”
Henri Nouwen in Life of the Beloved

I was sitting in our community home church last Thursday evening, watching a group of twenty or so children on one side and ten adults on the other; we were listening to Stephen share the story of Noah.

Like everything else we do and encounter here, it’s a different experience. He is telling the story of Noah as if they’ve never heard it before, because most haven’t. So we discuss the details: how many people went into the boat? How many days did it rain? Did you know it hadn’t rained before this? We remembered the flooding in our neighborhood and what that might have been like if it had lasted 150 days instead of two. Or we imagined water rising up over the mountains in Burma just beyond our backyard.

In that sense, it is childlike, as we share a Bible story in all its detail.

But then Stephen talks about what we learn from Noah: we see God’s justice in a world that isn’t just. We talked about the injustice we see around us every day, as we are all treated differently because of our skin color, our ethnicity, or our economic status. We talked about how real these injustices are, and when God flooded the earth, he showed us that he is a God of justice.

But also, he is a God of mercy & forgiveness. Stephen talked about how Noah was a friend of God, and that is why God saved his family. That is how Noah heard God’s instructions for building a boat that seemed crazy to everyone else. But he was God’s friend and God saved him; and we want to know God and be his friend, so that he will save us.

Suddenly, it isn’t a children’s story and it doesn’t feel childlike; it feels shockingly paralleled to the story of the cross and the story of the coming Kingdom.

In the middle of these stories each week I see the stories I have grown up listening to, reading, and believing from a new perspective. They feel a little absurd. They feel far-fetched.

They feel miraculous. Miraculous that this is the God we serve and have given our lives for. This is the story that has sent me around the world. This is the story of the grace that changes us every day.

And while I see the miracle of the story, I am praying for a miracle in the story. As I look at the adults, raised in a different cultural religion, living in poverty, growing up in suffering: I am praying for them to see the miracle of these stories. The miracle of our God. I am praying that God will show himself.

Each week they ask us to pray for health & money. And, oh, are we praying. We are praying for God to answer; for God to show himself in little prayers and little blessings and little tastes of his miracles.

And while I pray for miracles, I see the miracles. Our lives here are a miracle, and nothing less. I don’t know how we got here. I don’t know how we came to love these families in this way. I don’t know why it’s these families and this neighborhood.

I do know that we are always praying for miracles: in communication, in friendships, over meals, in hospital visits, in sitting on someone’s floor, over a puzzle, and in the middle of a Bingo game. We are praying that they know the love of Christ in a miraculous way. We are praying that we know what to do in a miraculous way. We are praying that God creates opportunities in a miraculous way.

He is and He does.

So while we sit among miracles, we pray for more, and we trust that we will experience more, I’m never sure how to share them all. I wish I could. I wish I could capture how encouraging our tea shop visit was yesterday. I wish I could tell you how connected we felt with the people with us.

I wish I could tell you how sweet it was to run into the elderly couple in our community at the market; the leaders, if you will. They invited us to have mohingya (a fish & noodle soup) at a little stall and bought our dinner.

I wish I could capture what it meant to pick up a little family of four at the clinic today after a five-day stay with dengue fever. One of the little girls has a difficult story, and she’s often mistreated and made fun of; she climbed into the backseat with me and cuddled up next to me for the ride home. To hold her, to love her, to stroke her hand and pray for her: this is a miracle. This is an answered prayer, on an average Monday morning.

Our lives are full of prayer after prayer, answered prayer after answered prayer, and miracle after miracle. Sometimes it feels like we are walking through the Gospels day after day, just watching the stories of Jesus unfold right in front of us.

Sometimes it also feels like we are walking through hell, too. Sometimes the tangibility of evil is terrifyingly present. But my hope is that we don’t forget the goodness, the beauty, and the miracles.

A few weeks ago we spent a couple weeks in a nearby village for a training. Before each meal, the staff & students would sing this prayer–

Oh, the Lord is good to me
And so I thank the Lord
For giving me the things I need
The sun & the rain & the mango seed
The Lord is good to me

Stephen & I have been humming it on the motorbike ever since. The Lord is good to us!

There is so much to be said and so often I don’t know where to start.

This is a crazy road we are walking. It is really odd to have your life and work and home be rolled into one, in another country. And then throw more people into it to work with you.

We are always learning, always being stretched, always asking questions, and always risking. Flexibility isn’t even a word we use any more; it just is. It is simply a requirement; it’s our current glasses that just aren’t so rose-colored.

That brings us to yesterday, which was just a rough day in many ways. It was full and chaotic, with some kids acting up horribly and some women pushing some boundaries. It is complicated.

It involved tears and prayers and questions. I was being stretched and learning and risking. I was flexing.

See? It was just a Thursday.

In the early evening we gathered the kids together for a few Bingo games and then sent them off to gather parents and friends and families for the bible story.

The good news? People came! We had sixteen adults, nearly all women; and we had thirty-two kids! It was a pretty full little community space.

More good news? It worked! The kids were exceptionally good; the adults listened; our translators were amazing; the adults knew the answers to the questions; they participated! We asked for prayer requests, and they gave them!

It was good.

We sent them off with a snack of warm, fresh soy milk that we will be purchasing each week from a local migrant school. It’s reasonably priced and full of protein & nutrients, but also liked! We also gave out fruit and encouraged everyone to tell their friends to come next week.

It just worked. We put out a sign and reminded everyone through the day, and they came. They listened! I just keep rejoicing.

And, as we keep praying, hopefully it will happen next week and many weeks following!

Afterward, a man in the community asked for a ride to the hospital to visit his sister. It was a complicated situation, but in the end, Stephen headed off with him on the motorbike.

And yet again, we watched God simply orchestrate things. They ended up seeing the woman’s husband, so all three got Gatorade at 7/11 and sat around chatting and conversing (in Burmese! Yay, Stephen!). Meanwhile, he caught sight of another friend from the community–a young teenage girl that works in Bangkok and is part of a whole different, complicated story. She was on her way back to Bangkok and happened to run into this 7/11 right then for a water before getting on the bus. Stephen was able to get her & her sister’s phone number, and we hope to try to catch up with them on an upcoming quick trip to Bangkok.

I don’t know how to explain the details, except to say this: it was orchestrated. Last night answered so many prayers, not only for the bible study, but in the conversations with the two men and in seeing this young teenage girl before she left town.

In all the complications and all the personal stories, I don’t know how to explain them on the blog. I don’t know how to tell the stories of pain and heartache and loss, or the times we just don’t know what to do. But for every time we just don’t know, or every time we take a risk, or every time we just hurt for a situation: God shows up. He orchestrates our lives and intertwines us into this community. He allows His name to be praised. He shows us the perfect space to ask if we have been brought here for such a time as this! (Esther 4:13-14)

In all the complications, chaos, learning, risking, and stretching–he is so good, friends. He is so good.