hello folks! or should i say Jodi and Mom, cus it seems they're the only ones who read this thing! gotta give a shout-out to my sweetheart of a niece Maya Marie (shes 3). She is darling and oh so pretty. She called me yesterday to ask how I was doing, tell me she loves me, and that she prays for me everyday. It was a great encouragement to hear from her.

So about yesterday. In the morning we had what they call 'institute,' which basically means we were in the classroom all morning going through our Gospel Transformation book (its based on Galations, the theme of SMI this year). Bryan Stoudt, who is the new MCO director taking over for Scott Moreau, went through a few chapters with us. We started out talking about Justification (Galations 2). I had read other authors previously discuss justification, its components, and that Jesus' death wasn't enough, so I understood the ideas of expiation, propitiation, and imputation that we went over - hopefully, you caught the glaring error last sentence... just testing to see if your paying attention... i can guarantee Tom and Stacey almost had a heart attack after reading that - but, after dicussing it with the guys in my group, they really had some good things to say regarding its implications. Its true, anything less than a wholly and true understanding and view of justification leads us in to living erroneous lives. Its becoming more and more obvious to me that the more we seek Jesus the more subtle our sin patterns become, but never really disappear... pretty much the definition of sanctification. Bryan made the point, and I agree with him, that many churchs in today's era preach the forgiveness that is in the justification through Christ, but, to their detriment, leave out the righteousness that is also given us through Jesus' death and resurrection. Rather than the lie of justification vs sanctification the church struggled against with nominaism and anti-nominaism, today we are erroding the fundamental components of justification: forgiveness and imputed righteousness, one not being tantamount to the other. There is such freedom and humility in these two things.

One of the things that has been great about SMI, is that it has really helped to flush out truths of scripture. The theological points I digress herein these blogs, I have read and known previously, but SMI has been helping me understand them more fully.

After the morning institute session, we prepared to go into the surrounding community to do blood pressure and blood sugar checks, developmental screens on children, and preach the name of Jesus Christ. We were split up into groups of 4, with a translator. On this partcular day we were working with New Wine church and their community. As we were driving in the van about to get dropped off at our first house, the heavens opened and down came torrentual rain. It was a tremendous amout of rain. SMI guidelines are that we proceed in rain, but call off the cold-calling (for lack of a better word) if lightning is present. As of yet, there was no lightning, but there was a bunch of rain. We waited for a few minutes, then decided to head back to the church, which was our base of operations for the day. One team had been dropped off prior to the rain, so we spent time in prayer collectively for them and the people they were ministring to. We also grab the instriments on the stage and had a short worship time which was great fun. After about 3hrs, the rain let up and we headed back out. My team had a few houses where no one was home. One Father let us in, but said he and his family were on the way out to dinner. They said they were Jehovah's Witness', but invited us back next Tuesday to talk and to the health screenings. Most of the other people either worked at Valley Baptist or were related to people who worked there. Some of the other groups had more success getting to speak with the people.

Thats all I can write now, time for a morning session. Today is more of a laid back day with some sessions on medical missions and free time. i'll try and get some more pictures up in due time.