Kurdish cookies ...

Sharing about our trip is something that I am hoping to do many times!  Tonight, a group of ladies is coming over for a Kurdish meal and to hear about our adventures.  I found a recipe for Kurdish cookies on the internet, and it seems close to what we had during our visit ... so with a little help from the fam, I attempted making them last night.  They turned out just a little different, but are still good.  I think we all finally got to bed around midnight, but it was fun doing it together.  I told Stephen that we might need to go visit soon so I can learn to make them from the local ladies!

ps, Rachel wanted to help, but had a prior commitment ... but she promised to help eat the results!

Me, Seth and Madison - posing for the photo

This is all of us ... but more delirious as the time grows later ... haha

.

Back from afar ...

Well, the trip was ... amazing.  The people, the places, the scenery, the food, the sweet fellowship with others of like mind.  I miss it already.  Rachel and I have been home for a week now, but it has taken me until today to feel ready to type this post.  A dark cloud has been looming over me lately.  I can't explain this feeling, except to say that it is possibly a combination of jetlag, and a carry over of the darkness I felt over there.  Reading has helped to dispel this feeling, along with worship yesterday with dear ones.  There will be more posts to come on my experiences in Central Asia, but for now, I want to share some wisdom from our friend and teacher, John Piper, which greatly encouraged me in the past few days.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Victory Even from Inside the Tomb

It will often look as though Christ is defeated.  That's the way it looked on Good Friday.  He let himself be libeled and harassed and scorned and shoved around and killed.  But in it all he was in control.  "No one takes [my life] from me" (John 10:18).  So it will always be.  If China was closed for forty years to the Western missionaries, it was not as though Jesus accidentally slipped and fell into the tomb.  He stepped in.  And when it was sealed over, he saved fifty million Chinese from inside -- without Western missionaries.  And when it was time, he pushed the stone away so we could see what he had done.

When it looks as though he is buried for good, Jesus is doing something awesome in the dark.  "The kingdom of God is as if a man should scatter seed on the ground. He sleeps and rises night and day, and the seed sprouts and grows; he knows not how" (Mark 4:26-27).  The world thinks Jesus is done for -- out of the way.  They think his Word is buried and his plans have failed.

But Jesus is at work in dark places: "Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit" (John 12:24).  He lets himself be buried, and he comes out in power when and where he pleases.  And his hands are full of fruit made in the dark. "God raised him up, loosing the pangs of death, because it was not possible for him to be held by it" (Acts 2:24). 

For twenty centuries, the world has given it their best shot to hold him in. They can't bury him.  They can't hold him in.  They can't silence or limit him.  Jesus is alive and utterly free to go and come wherever he pleases.  All authority in heaven is his. All things were made through him and for him, and he is absolutely supreme over all other powers (Col. 1:16-17) ... the preaching of his Word is the work ... that cannot fail.

-- From "Let The Nations Be Glad"; John Piper.  Copyright 1993 - published by Baker Academic, Grand Rapids, Michigan.