Unprecedented Unleavening

"It is actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you... ....Let him who has done this be removed from among you... ...you are to deliver this man to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, so that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord... ...Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump? Cleanse out the old leaven that you may be a new lump as you really are unleavened" 1 Corinthians 5

The poor woman was clearly perturbed. She did not want to be bothered with this. The church leaders, in their best efforts, were wanting to meet together with her to console her and offer their help and encouragement and also... to keep her from acting out a decision she'd made to kill. Perhaps it was the embarrassment and shame of the fact that her husband has been freely sleeping around with other women and had recently been caught again. Perhaps she didn't want to be talked down. This was the fourth or fifth time and she was fed up with it all! The group that had come to meet with her waited silently, listening as someone was in the other room trying to coax her into agreeing to talk with the others. Voices were raised. It wasn't perfect encouragement, but she did eventually decide to come in to where we were gathered and talk with us.

This is where we saw God's Spirit shine through his people! Joey and I sat back and watched as the church poured out their love and concern for this woman and her family. You see, the church has been working with this man who claims to be a follower of Jesus for years, trying to steer him away from his extra marital proclivities. It's become clear at this point that there is blatant disregard going on in this man's heart and so the church is moving forward with a decision to follow what they see clearly in God's word. It's time to recognize publicly that this man's continuing affairs, despite numerous warnings, do not fit in God's plan for his people, his church. In agreement with 1 Corinthians 5 and Matthew 18 the church leaders have decided it's time to publicly de-recognize this man as a brother; to tell the community and surrounding areas that this man's actions are unacceptable and unbecoming of someone who claims to trust that Jesus' life and death and resurrection paid the price for his sin and has given him hope for future glory. His attitude toward sin completely goes against all that this gospel message is about. He will no longer be recognized as part of the church. In moving forward with this decision the concern was for this faithful woman and the rest of her family, which brings us to the meeting at hand. They wanted to take some time to walk her through the decision they had so painfully made regarding her husband. So for a while a number of them huddled around a dimly lit bible translated into the trade language and read and talked through a number of passages. After a bit more than an hour, though she was clearly hurting, she seemed encouraged. Joey and I sat there amazed at how much love and thoughtfulness was being displayed in this very difficult meeting. The church leaders did great, though it's hard to think about how great it really was simply because of the extreme difficulty and sadness of the situation.

Would you please be in prayer for this woman and for her family and especially her husband. Please pray for the church to be able to wisely carry through this decision, difficult and painful as it is, in hopes of maybe seeing this man come around someday after being put out and in a place removed from the benefits of fellowship with God's people. And please pray similarly for the woman who was regularly involved with this man, and who also has been worked with by the church over the last few years. A similar decision will be made regarding her as well. Her family too (husband and kids) will need the same love and support from the church.

Merry Christmas From Mibu

Merry Christmas from the Husas in Mibu!

Thanks to your gracious provisions for the Mibu Ministry the light of Jesus shines in this formerly dark place, and the Mibu people too rejoice at the biggest, most fantastic edge-of-your-seat event that ever happened to this world... the birth of our savior, Jesus Christ!

May your celebration of Jesus this season be one of joy and encouragement!

Kopur Coffee Benefits Mibu Ministry

***ATTENTION COFFEE LOVERS***

Do you enjoy great coffee? Did you know there's a way for your refined taste in coffee to benefit the Mibu Ministry!

Kopur Coffee is an online reseller of high quality, great tasting coffee. The thing that's so great about Kopur Coffee isn't just it's selection of tasty coffees from around the world, but the fact that $2.50 from each bag you buy will be donated to Mibu Ministry! It's simple. After finding your coffee of choice from places such as Papua New Guinea, Ethiopia, Honduras and Mexico, just key in 'MIBU' when checking out. It's a great chance to give more purpose to your coffee drinking! Note too that there are options to buy coffee subscriptions of various lengths.

As the founder of Kopur Coffee, Drew Scholl says on the website, "The math matters." Think about it. If 100 people purchase 2 bags of Kopur Coffee a month, that generates an additional $500 per month that benefits the ongoing efforts to transform lives in Mibu; developing mother-tongue literacy, translating God's word into their language, providing solid bible teaching, and leadership development.

Be sure to check it out! http://kopurcoffee.bigcartel.com/

Strengthening Literacy in Mibu

We're making some changes to the literacy program here to try to beef up the Mibu church's ability to read and write in their own language. A strong ability to read and write in one's own language is absolutely fundamental to the longevity of a sustainable indigenous church plant. Not only does it allow them to read God's word for themselves, but it also is an elemental skill on top of which other skills are developed. Lesson development, learning and even being literate in other languages, as well as ability to concentrate on communicated messages, ability to process large chunks of written and spoken communication... all these follow after and are developed only when a high level of skill and confidence are achieved in reading and writing one's mother tongue. But first and foremost, there is a direct link between literacy skill level and one's ability to read, process, and internalize God's word for themselves. Of course there are other factors, such as translation philosophy of those who are providing the translation, but as you can see, literacy is indeed a biggie! Along with all that, the passing on of the torch of literacy will never happen unless the people are convinced, excited, and confident in the purpose of literacy. Responsibility for the program will wax and wane requiring continual outside influence to keep it going. That's not what we're about. Someday we plan to be done here, leaving behind leaders who take ownership of all they have been taught.

Right now in Mibu, the literacy program has hit a bit of a wall. There are improvements being recommended by our literacy consultants to the curriculum materials, as well as how the program is managed. Once improvements and revisions have been made to the materials, they will need to be printed. Along with this, new 'literacy boxes' need to be made which safely house these new literacy materials, preserving them for long term use and avoiding the need to print new materials quite as often.

We've spent the last two weeks working through these changes and getting things ready for a new printing. We're so thankful for the huge investment made by people such as Sesi, his sister Wunjo, and Ekim, Lookas and Ti. A couple of them gave well over 60 hours of full time work looking through and helping to make improvements!

Along with some of the changes to the literacy curriculum itself, will come changes to the post-literacy program here. These changes we hope will encourage continued growth in people's ability to read and write, challenging them work on reading accuracy and comprehension. We're excited about what these changes will mean for the future of the church here in Mibu!

(in the pictures: An old literacy box and what remains of literacy materials printed years ago. Sesi, Ekim, Lookas, Wunjo, Ti working on revisions to the literacy materials.)

Medical in Mibu

The timing really stunk. The workday was over. Sunlight was quickly fading and I was winding down, working on some emails, when Skyler called from outside, "Daddy, a man is here and he needs your help! He's hurt really bad and he's bleeding all over the place!"

We aren't a medical clinic by any stretch of the imagination. Nor are we equipped or trained to be able to make regular medical work a part of our ministry strategy. However, when you live in the middle of the jungle with no doctors around, and one of your friends shows up with potentially life threatening or otherwise life altering injuries, you learn what you can and do what you can to help. In this case, my friend showed up after a battle with a piece of bamboo that had split while he was working with it. Bamboo is razor sharp when green and freshly split. The evidence of this stood before me bearing a hand which was cut wide open, all the way to the bone in places, both across his palm and on two of his fingers.

So it's the end of the day and my friend shows up needing medical help. I have to confess, my heart was not prepared for this particular moment. My first thought was something along the lines of, "Ugghh. Right now? I'm tired and spent already. I hope this isn't too bad." Yeah... fleshly. Thank God for another prompting alongside though that whispered the need for compassion and empathy, regardless of timing. I got up and went outside to meet my friend and see what the damage was. It was Yodik, and it was clear he needed help.

Our kitchen counter slash dinner table is where we do most of this stuff. The conflict at this particular time was that Shannon was just starting dinner preparations. The kids are hungry and she usually depends on me to take the kids during this time. Tonight was going to have to be different. I brought my friend in. It was dusk. It was getting darker; too dark to see, and we have low quality lighting in our house. My attempts to set up enough light weren't enough and so I recruited Skyler to hold the LED flashlight on the wounded man's hand for me; a job she continued to do (as best as a 6 year old can) for the next hour and an half. (Mental note: when it's in the budget, get a couple of nice headlamps)

Now, our attempts to help with urgent medical needs rarely go without something interesting happening. From blood spraying, to patients passing out, to ME nearly passing out (yeah, some of the things I have to do, I REALLY don't like!), and to the seriousness of the situation being truly scary, we've had some interesting stuff happen. This one was no different. After our counter/table was cleared and I had the appropriate equipment out, I had him remove the vine that he'd wrapped about 10 times around his finger in an attempt to slow the bleeding. I would have preferred to keep it there, except it was too near the wound for me to be able to do anything with it. A pool of blood began to spread under his hand on tile that is our table. So I put a rubber tourniquet on after having put a thick cloth to absorb the mess. I had barely finished giving him the first shot of lidocaine to numb him up when I felt his head just kind of lean into me, nudging into my shoulder. I thought homophobically, "That's wierd! Is he snuggling me?" I'd barely had time to finish the thought before he slumped out of his chair and fell on the floor with a loud thud. He'd passed out. I wasn't ready for that! Yet somehow, while holding his hand open with one hand, a sharp biohazard needle in the other, I'd managed to grab his arm and keep him from falling too hard. Now his blood was getting all over the place. I needed to get him up again and finish closing him up. Hmmmm, how do I wake up a passed out person? (Another mental note: invest in some smelling salts) My rich movie watching heritage managed to pay dividends after all as I was reminded that maybe slapping him in the face would do the trick. What'dya know, it works! Snapped right out of it. After the confusion subsided, we managed to get him back up in the chair and continue the work. I had him lean sideways into the back of the chair in case he passed out again... which he did about 10 minutes later; this time remaining in his chair.

Shannon announced to the kids that dinner was ready. That's one thing about our kids, a guy bleeding on their dining table isn't going to stop them from eating. Both Skyler and Maddie are fascinated by this stuff and hover around watching everything. Skyler, out of her merciful little heart is always looking for ways to help the hurt person feel better, warmer, less thirsty, less hungry. She might have something going for her there! But back to the food; Somehow Shannon managed to get all the kids' food dished out, get them eating AND keep that flashlight on the wound. Skyler stayed where she was at, sitting indian style in the middle of the table (where she had been holding the flashlight) and carried on eating her dinner and watching. Mommy took over the flashlight duties. The other kids sat on the floor (Mibu style) and ate there. Yodik turned down the offer of food, his stomach probably feeling a bit off. It's funny. Any other time of such complete disorganization and lack of management in the house this time of night would result in pandemonium. Yet it seems when something like this is going on a general blanket of understanding covers everyone in the family, even the kids, and the problems are relatively few. Everyone knows we're working to see this problem fixed.

It wasn't until after the kids were in bed that I wrapped up the last of the work on Yodik's hand, putting the finishing touches on about 22 frankensteinian stitches. I gave Yodik some antiseptic ointment and some fresh bandages to change out each day. Then I saw him off, heated up my dinner, ate, and resumed a relaxing evening with Shannon. Yet another example of having to live by the rule of the unexpected here in Mibu!

Got Stuff?

Do you have stuff just sitting around waiting to find a new home? If so, maybe you'd consider donating it to benefit the Mibu Ministry.

Our core team is having a benefit garage sale in Tempe on November 16 and 17 from sun-up to 2pm both days. ALL the proceeds from the garage sale go toward ministry expenses as we live and serve full-time here in Mibu. These garage sales have been a huge benefit to the ministry here in the past. If you have stuff you're needing to get rid of, please bring it on by! Help us make this a huge sale! But please, no clothes.

Or maybe you're a hard core garage saler, always keeping an eye out for that next great deal! These garage sales are typically very big and there are lots of great deals to be had. Get 'yer cash and come on by!

For more information, please call Gary or Kris Husa at 480-839-0338. If you have a donation, please drop it off at the following address no earlier than Friday, November 9th.

245 W. LaVieve Ln., Tempe, 85284

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