The emotional ebb and flow of missions

When Annie and I left the United States to be missionaries I remember saying to her, “you know, people are going to die.” We are going to be in Chile, and people are going to die. It is just a fact of life for a missionary that while they are abroad, there are certainly going to be waves of change in the place where they are from.

I don’t want to be morbid, but I do want to share some of my raw emotion and that will require talking about an undesirable situation. A couple of weeks ago I got the message that my grandfather’s health was declining. I called him that day to talk with him and pray with him. We talked for about five minutes. I knew he wasn’t doing well when he answered the phone and said, “Kyle, how’s the war?” His mind wasn’t completely there at times, but I could tell he understood just about everything I said. By the time the phone call was ending I was really choking up as the thought occurred to me, “I’m about to say goodbye to my grandpa for the last time.” I had a difficult time holding it together. I got off the phone and just wept.

My grandpa and I bonded when I was younger as I took an interest in woodworking. He is quite the artist, and he taught me the tricks of the trade of artistic woodwork. We made some beautiful things as well as developed a close bond. We talked about his childhood, his religious background, his work, inflation (of all things), how he and grandma fell in love, war stories, and other things. I am very thankful that one day after we finished a wood project I went to lunch with him and my grandma at one of their favorite restaurants in La Habra, the Fish Company. There I explained to them the gospel and asked them if they had put their faith in Christ as their Saviour. I remember the affirmative response as clearly as if it was yesterday, “We believe in salvation by grace through faith in Christ.” I take comfort in the fact that grandpa knows Christ as his Saviour. His health has not been well at all. He was in the hospital yesterday and today and had to have a lot of tests done. I don’t know if he is going to die soon or not, but this has definitely made death of loved ones very real.

Right now Annie’s family is having basically a reunion. There are Aunts, Uncles, cousins, etc. getting together for her grandmother’s 80^th birthday. She never complains that God’s calling on our lives has taken us so far from loved ones; in fact, she never complains about anything. However, I know it is difficult for her to not be there.

As a missionary, one of the things you sacrifice, to some extent, is the relationships dearest to you. You miss pregnancies, births, deaths, marriages, birthdays, etc. And although it doesn’t make the reality of sacrifice any lesser, I know these sacrifices of pale in comparison to what Christ sacrificed for us. Looking to Jesus is always a good choice. He is worthy of my all. He is God’s only begotten Son and God made Him a missionary. He left the glories of heaven to be born as a lowly human and dwell among sinful men. The word missionary means “a sent one” and Christ, who has sent us, was Himself sent by the Father: “…as my Father hath sent me, even so send I you.” (John 20:21)

There is a wonderful promise that means a lot to me as a missionary:

Matthew 19:29

And every one that hath forsaken houses, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands, for my name's sake, shall receive an hundredfold, and shall inherit everlasting life. 

I am not discouraged at all. I don't want to quit. I'm not thinking about throwing in the towel. I am convinced that the missionary life is the best life. I just needed somewhere to express myself. I'm thankful for the assurance that any current suffering is nothing to be compared to the glory that shall come (Romans 8:18 & 2 Corinthians 4:17).

FREE MUSIC!

Annie and I did some recording a few mornings this week. The recordings are not professional quality, but I think they sound decent for being done on an ipad by two people who don't know much about recording. The tracks are simple, A Capella, Spanish, hymns. Some people dread singing hymns, and I don't blame them because I have been in many services where hymns were song and I felt like I was at a funeral. I think the first time I really liked hymns was when I was in chapel at Bible college and my sister-in-law was on the piano. I don't know if fingers are supposed to dance, but hers certainly did. There is just something special about a joyful song leader and stirring piano playing. I have grown to love hymns.

Ephesians 5:18-20
"...be filled with the Spirit; Speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord; Giving thanks always for all things unto God and the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ;"

In my opinion, one of many reasons that hymns can be dreadful is because many churches only sing 10-20 of them and just rotate them through services. The monotony of ritual breeds contempt. I experienced this while working in a church: we would sing about 5-10 songs (three per service) and rotate them. Oh man, I hated it. Most hymnals have hundreds of songs, ours has like 650, so why stick to less than a dozen?!

Psalm 33:3
"Sing unto him a new song; play skilfully with a loud noise."

A "new song" doesn't have to mean it was composed yesterday. Hundreds of hymns are "new" to me because I've never known them. When I was given the privilege to start a church I decided that we would work hard to have an expansive and growing repertoire. One of the ways I have worked at accomplishing that is that for our Sunday night service we are singing through the whole hymnal. We started at number one and usually sing 2-4 per service. We are somewhere near #170! I learned this little trick at one of our supporting churches, Mountain Avenue Baptist Church of Banning, CA. What a blessing it has been learning all of these hymns, and in Spanish too! Another thing that I thought we would do is try to do a simple recording of hymns that are lesser known in Spanish churches to give away for free. That is what led me to this post! We have 9 songs that we did this week that we would like to give away to anyone and everyone who would like them. I wanted it to be more, like 10-12, but time only allowed for 9 for now. Hopefully we can do many more in the future.

If you would like to hear them you can sample them here: http://www.purevolume.com/LaFamiliaSheridan I don't recommend the rest of the music on this website, but it was a cool way to upload our music for free. If you like what you hear and you'd like me to send you the rest of the songs let me know and I'll get them to you! They are free so please feel free to give them away as much as you'd like.

Teaching my son the seven

Micah is starting to imitate everything! It is very helpful for teaching him. It also serves as a great illustration to what we have been teaching our teens on Friday nights, “Let no man despise thy youth; but be thou an example of the believers, in word, in conversation, in charity, in spirit, in faith, in purity.” (1 Timothy 4:12).  My grandparents bought Micah a drawing board where you can draw and erase an unlimited amount. On it I’ve been drawing numbers, letters, and the Do-Re-Mi scale. He does a very good job of matching the notes with me and going up the scale. He says several letters pretty well, and he says some numbers well too. The ipad also really helps a lot too. He is so good at maneuvering it!

While I was teaching Micah some numbers, I was taught a lesson in missiology/cultural adaptation. One of the things that I try to do is make Chile my home while not losing my American identity. I will always be a fair-skinned, freckly, hazel-eyed, American born man. However, as a missionary I want to become Chilean in order to win Chileans for Christ. My cell phone is in Spanish, I use military time, I serve a hot drink after meals when guests are over, I drink mate till it comes out of my ears, AND I write my sevens like Chileans.

In the United States you write your seven like this:

In Chile, if you write your seven like that, then it will be taken as a one. In Chile, your sevens have to have the little vertical line going through the middle like this:

Yesterday I was drawing the number seven for Micah and I said, “We put this little line on it because we live in Chile.” It has taken me about a year and a half, but I have finally rewired myself to write the seven with the vertical line. When you have been doing something the same way your whole life, it can be difficult to completely change it! These are the little things that might not mean much to some people, but to me, as a missionary, it is a major detail!

A cool new look

We have had several things designed lately by our friend Monique, I think they look great!

This is our new letterhead for prayer letters.

Our new prayer card

A new invitation that we are handing out to every home with a copy of the gospel of John

One year anniversary

A little over a month ago we celebrated our first year of ministry in Central Baptist Church of Coyhaique. It was a wonderful day with a total of 41 in attendance. Here are several pictures from the day.

Beef, it's what's for dinner

Leviticus 3:10
And the two kidneys, and the fat that is upon them, which is by the flanks, and the caul above the liver, with the kidneys, it shall he take away.

I was reading this verse today and had a better understanding than if I had read it before living in Chile. When I lived in the United States I had this dream world that when a cow was butchered, his meat just sort of magically was cut into perfect pieces of edible beef. In fact, I'd never really even imagined an actual cow dying, being cut up into pieces, and wrapped up to be placed in the meat department and wait for me. You see, my American friends, when a cow gets butchered, his meat does not look like this:

In fact, when a cow gets butchered, it's meat looks like this:

The former is something you walk into your Albertsons, Ralphs, Stater Brothers, etc to purchase. It does not exist here. The latter is what you purchase in Chile. You just go to the butcher and you say, "I'll take a half," or, "give me one and a quarter," referring to how many kilos you want. And then undoubtedly he'll give you much more than you asked for because it means more money in the till for him. The number of "cuts" is much fewer here. Forget T-bone, Porterhouse, Strip, New York, Top Sirloin, Filet Mignon, Round, London Broil, Flank, or Skirt steak. There are three steaks in Chile: loin with fat, loin without fat, and fillet. They all come riddled with sinew, nerves, and about 10% inedible parts. So yes, your average Chilean housewife knows how to clean meat better than your average American man.

So that takes me full circle back to the verse. It says that when the priest was going to sacrifice a steer (bullock), that he had to take away the fat that covered the bowels. I've never done that, but now that I've got some experience under my belt of cleaning meat up, I think I have a little more respect for the Jewish priests who must have been pretty expert butchers.

On another note, did you know that milk actually comes from cows? It does! I saw it happen the other day and we bought some. We have a farm about 5 minutes from our house where you can get fresh milk.

Patrick Thomas

Patrick is our little miracle baby. He has had more blood tests done in his short 3 months of life than I remember having in all of my life. I think we're up to 12 now. He had a common problem among babies, jaundice. This problem is common on the 3rd and 4th days of the life of a baby, but most babies recover without a problem. Patrick was treated in the hospital multiple times, but just couldn't seem to kick it. We took him in to a good pediatric when he was like 7 weeks old. She said if he was still yellow at 8 weeks then he needed to get blood work done again. The results came back poor and she said it was probably because he had a liver disease. With some more testings done she sent us to a specialist in Santiago, a children's gastroenterologist. We had to fly to Santiago to see this dr. and so we were able to accomplish a lot of north during our visit. We met with a U.S. embassy officer, and were approved for Patrick's birth certificate and passport. The hospital where we took him might be the nicest hospital in Chile. It was impressive; by far the nicest hospital I've ever been in. The doctor looked at Patrick and said that he was a very healthy baby (by this time the yellow had dissipated), and said that he believed that blood tests were adulterated. He sent for us to get more blood work done. Once the test results were in, and he was able to check them online we communicated through email and he said, "Don't worry, your baby is 100% healthy."

As I look back I can see God's hand at work in so many ways. The biggest and most obvious is the miracle of Patrick being healed. There is no way that it was an error in the exams because he was as yellow as a "zapallo" as they say here in Chile (a zapallo is like a monstrous pumpkin that's very yellow on the inside). Praise be to God for his healing. Another little detail that was special was that the hospital was costly; we had to pay to see the doctor and pay to get blood work done. Two churches invited me to preach for them during our stay in Santiago. One of them gave us a love offering and it was about the same as the cost of seeing the specialist. Also at the blood work counter the lady told me the price and when I asked for a discount she took $60 off the price! Ye have not, because ye ask not!

A few of my favorite pictures of Patrick