This week’s featured OA from the New Life Community Church e-zine:

I volunteer at a hospital, just to try to be of help to people during difficult times. Several months ago one of the elderly ladies that volunteer at the hospital missed her shifts for a few weeks. When I inquired as to why, I found out that she had a recurrence of cancer. It has now come back in her bones and is incurable.

She has decided to not pursue any treatment. She has stopped all chemo-therapy treatment because the cost was eating into her savings. I called her to see if I could help in any way. After having a nice conversation, we decided that I could best help by taking her out every other week on a Tuesday morning, shopping for groceries. On the alternate Tuesdays we do something different. This week we are going to hunt for a store that has a good selection of rubber stamps. (She loves those things.)

I have learned that she writes poetry, and wants to illustrate the pages with birds. She is now under Hospice care for the rest of the week and they have been so very good to her. They even “hard bound” one of her books for her, and she is thrilled.

I learned so much from the Doable Evangelism Seminar. I regularly leaf through the book (Evangelism Without Additives) just to remind myself of the simple things we can do, that can really mean a lot.

This morning as I drove into work, I was listening to a podcast called “pray-as-you-go.” In the podcast, they asked the question, “What price have you paid for your discipleship?” As I was trying to wrap my brain around the question and ask it honestly of myself, I realized that I was having a hard time deciphering what they meant by the words, and that maybe I don’t always understand the Christian terminology that is often thrown my way.

I grew up in a small town in Southern Utah, and it’s likely that if I throw out the words “jockey box” most of you won’t have a clue about what I am talking about. I know that it’s a glove compartment, but you wouldn’t know that unless I had told you or you knew someone who lived in that area of the midwest. That’s sometimes the way I feel about Christian terminology.

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Austin Thomas is a 20-year old from Reno, Nevada, who is traveling and serving in India for a month with Young Life.  He’s the son of Lori Thomas, my friend and former Young Life staff partner in Reno.  
 
Life here is saturated with Religion.  Jesus stickers adorn the backs of a surprisingly large number of cars, and every store is either named after some Religious ideal/deity, or there are a bunch of scripture (Bible, MahaBarata, Q’ran, or otherwise) verses on the walls.  Temples for various deities can be found on almost every street corner, and a vast majority of the people you see on the streets don some type of Religious garb.  It’s unlike anything I’ve ever seen before, and yet, it’s just more of the same.  There’s still poor people…there’s still people who are unhappy, and need things like alcohol or drugs to numb their feelings..there’s still a middle and upper class that can’t find happiness or fulfillment in material things, and look to solve that problem by simply buying more stuff…there’s still all of the “bad” things that most Religions are geared towards wiping out.   Read the rest of this entry »