Travels with Dick and Brenda

Santiago, Chile

Fri, 19 Dec 2008 01:43:08 -0800

Each year Maranatha Volunteers plans a Christmas Family Project somewhere in the world. This year nearly 70 volunteers are coming to Freire, Chile to build a church, hold medical/dental clinics and lead activities for the community’s kids. It will be a busy morning at the Santiago airport as everyone arrives - bleary-eyed and jet-lagged - and eager for a four-hour bus ride for supper at the Adventist University in Chillan, and then four more hours south to our lodgings at a boarding school in Freire.

We arrived a day early, to kill the bleary eyes and begin to adapt to a 5-hour time difference, and spent much of the day wandering through Santiago and watching the eternal chess games in the Plaza de Armas downtown. Moises is one of the chess masters who spends his days capturing kings with friends.

Chile is a land of snow-capped mountains, deep-blue lakes, kisses in the park, houses painted incredible colors, and smiles. We’re here to add to the smiles...and the kisses!

Watch this space for a project update each day - or at least as often as we can access the Internet!

Dick and Brenda Duerksen
Storytellers
Maranatha Volunteers International

Snow Reflections

Sun, 14 Dec 2008 04:04:36 -0800

Isaiah 1:18 quotes God as saying: “Come now and let us reason together. Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red as crimson, they shall be like wool.”

Forgiveness is God’s specialty, and one of his greatest pleasures. All he asks is a conversation, an opportunity to discuss what’s working and what’s not working in life, a few moments of evaluating hopes, dreams, and detours. His use of the word “reason” says that he’s not going to gloss over anything, but it also promises he’ll be “reasonable” about everything. That’s far better than most of us are willing to give each other. Usually we come to the conversation with pretty strong personal biases born from memories we’ve stewed on so long that the simple truth has become a monster accusation. God’s not that way.

God comes to the conversation armed with love, and an eagerness to guide us toward becoming the very best we can become. He also comes with a backpack loaded with SUPPORT: encouragement, wisdom, creativity, patience, gentleness, hope, and some other large pouches that he’s willing to open if our need justifies their use!

His goal is simple: For our lives to perfectly reflect his.

“Let’s talk about life,” he says. “Even though yours is MUD, I’ll make it snowy pure like mine. Where your choices have strewn blood and gristle across the landscape of your relationships, I’ll treat you as my very special friend. When you’re impatient I’ll grant you patience. When you’re angry I’ll share my peace. When you’re greedy I’ll give you the strength to serve. When you’re certain that everyone in the world is out to get you...and you know you deserve it...I’ll protect you as my own special child...even to the point of making a place for you on my throne.”

God’s love isn’t like anything you’d expect from the world. It’s the way the world was supposed to be. And the way it will be again.

In the meantime, he offers the impossible to you today: to be like him. All he asks is a conversation.

Dick and Brenda Duerksen
Storytellers
Maranatha Volunteers International

Photo of Colorado’s Summit Lake and Mt. Evans © 2008, Dick Duerksen

Rejoice in The Lord ... ALWAYS!

Thu, 11 Dec 2008 22:16:19 -0800

There are probably miserable people somewhere in Mozambique, but in our travels we’ve found a lot more happy folks than sad ones. The wars are over and the people are focusing on the good in their neighbors, the good in the weather, the good in the crops, the good in the government, the good in mealie-pop, and even the good in the red sand beneath their feet...and in their porridge.

When a team of Maranatha medical volunteers set up shop in one tiny bush community they found a crowd of somber folks, each certain that the doctor would cause pain but equally certain that the results would be worth the sacrifice. “Stoic” would be a good word to describe the mood.

Then Graeme brought out the puppets. In moments the crowd had regressed 30-40 years in age and dissolved into rolling laughter. Everyone had to sing duets with “Orange Crush” and try on the “red-nose-reindeer-specs.” When Uncle Alex put on the specs and slouch hat the entire crowd roared approval and in the hilarity most of them forgot why they were trying to be stoic. Instead, they were just happy!

The writer of the Bible book of Philippians put it this way, “Rejoice in the Lord always. Again I say to you, Rejoice! The Lord is near.”

It’s that way around God. The closer you get, the more of His joy rubs into your life!

Dick and Brenda Duerksen
Storytellers
Maranatha Volunteers International

Great Grandpa Ever Christensen

Wed, 10 Dec 2008 18:34:50 -0800

He worked here at the Nygard farm near Sarpsborg, Norway, toiling as a farmhand in a three-story red-and-black barn that housed cattle, chickens, and horses along with their winter feed. And that’s about all we know about his years in Norway. We also know that he left after awhile and worked his way to America on a steam ship, married Nella Olsdatter Brekka, ended up in Wisconsin, fathered nine children, and died a happy man in American farmland that looked a lot like what he remembered from Norway.

We visited the farm and barn last month, just to get a sense of roots and heritage, and of the hard hard lives our ancestors lived. “Honor your parents,” the commandment says, and we guess that includes learning as much about them and their folks as is possible.

“Honor.” It also means to live as Great Grand Dad would have wanted you to live - in ways that would make him proud for you to carry his name.

Most of what we know about Great Grandpa Ever we’ve learned from his kids, people who were known for their honesty and hard work, and for the way they cared for their own children. It’s a legacy that challenges children, grandchildren, great grandchildren and beyond to be the same, to live up to the high standard his family has followed, to be an “ambassador” for the “Christensen” name he left in the world.

Though it was good to walk in the mud where Great Grandpa Ever walked, it’s even better to live in the way he lived.

Dick and Brenda Duerksen
Storytellers
Maranatha Volunteers International

Colorado State Cyclocross Championship

Tue, 9 Dec 2008 19:51:06 -0800

It snowed Thursday, but Sunday was a hot day that should have been part of a cold December in Colorado. A perfect day for the State Cyclocross (cross) Championships.

Cross is a chaotic mix of bike racing, running, fashion design, and sand surfing. Pack 50 - 90 determined competitors in each class, blow the whistle and stand aside as they fly over the obstacles, crash in the sand, take headers into the brush, bust their bikes on the curves, and otherwise attempt to defy gravity and orthopedics.

Success on the course demands power: your quads gotta drive the wheels up and over whatever obstacles the evil race designers have created - and do it faster and cleaner than everybody behind you.

Success on the course demands concentration: see only the ground about 20’ ahead of you and avoid anything that might be in the way of you riding freely on that ground.

Success on the course demands experience: 180-degree turns while sledging through a sand-pit don’t work unless you’ve learned to carry your bike over your shoulder in ways that make everyone else on the course slip and slide to avoid you.

Success on the course demands stamina: especially when you’ve dressed for snow and the temp is inching above 60 degrees and you’ve still got three more circuits to go and there’s no chance to strip off the woolies.

Success on the course requires teamwork: like when your front tire curls right off the wheel and you’re trying to run fast enough (with your bike on your back) to keep up for half a mile till you can get to the MAVIC PIT and swap your bike for another that still has two complete wheels and a buddy comes by and swaps his whole bike for your broken one and says “good luck!”

Success on the course requires focus: especially when you’re ahead and want to stay there so you do a power leap through thin air hoping to stay balanced and land on solid ground just in front of the sand pit where you almost lost it the last time around.

Cross is a lot like life. You cannot do it alone or of you’re weak or distracted. It’s also a lot NOT like life. In cross you’re the only one who fits on your bike. In life God says, “How about if I ride with you?” His power. His concentration. His experience. His stamina. His focus. His teamwork.

Success in life requires dependence on the one who’s already won.

Dick and Brenda Duerksen
Storytellers
Maranatha Volunteers International

For more photos form the race, please visit:
http://www.blueskyvelo.blogspot.com/