Yesterday, I talked about how God used Ndjemane to work on my heart concerning having joy. Today, it is all about the community. Here is how God used Ndjemane to build a desire for more community in my life.

Community
A second aspect of the Senegalese culture that God moved in me was the value of community. I observed in Ndjemane a culture where relationships are highly valuable. I saw how villagers took care of each other. I saw how families lived together in small compounds relying on one another daily. I saw how four (or more) vehicles took the time to stop on the side of a highway to help an unknown driver push his bus out of a ditch after the bus had gotten stuck. Tasks and schedules did not dictate; taking care of others in relationship did.

My desire was to build on these observations and really live in an authentic Christian community whose example was set way back in the days of early Christianity:

All the believers devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching, and to fellowship, and to sharing in meals (including the Lord’s Supper), and to prayer. Acts 2:42

I would like to say that I have firmly taken a hold of both of these, but I have not. Despite that, though, exceeding joy and living in community are still desires of mine that I pray about continuing to build. They are two aspects of my life that I continue to work on and improve.

A Little Help Goes A Long Way
I am leaving for Senegal in February, 2012 to be a part of a medical team that is providing medical care to the people of Ndjemane and other adjacent villages. Please be a part of my trip and help. There are a three main ways you can help:

1. Pray for the medical team and me. As we just read, God answers prayers and I believe he will answer our prayers about this team.
2. Share these stories. I pray that as I tell stories to raise funds for the medical clinic that people will also hear the Good News about the love that God has for a small village in Africa and how He also loves each one of us. It is a powerful and showering love that every person should have the opportunity to hear.
3. Most important to me is prayer and sharing these stories. However, if you would like to donate money to assist me with serving in Senegal. Check out the sidebar to the right to see how much I still need so I can cover all of my expenses in Senegal. (Here is the link to PayPal to donate to my trip.)

However you participate, thank you for being a part of the February 2012 Medical Team!

If you have gotten this far, here is a picture of Mike and me dancing:

Namesake Ceremony & Dancing

In my last post, I talked about what God was doing in Ndjemane through our medical clinic. When serving others it is easy to think that the only people benefiting are the ones being served. Personally, nowhere has this been proven more false than when I served in Senegal.

Here is the first of the two things that I took away from my trip in 2010.

Few Possessions, Abundant Peace and Joy
What I saw in Ndjemane was quite different from what our culture and product marketers tells us is true. Most of the people in the village had an obvious joy and peace about them. The villagers had this peace despite having few possessions. They were joyful while living with few things in huts and compounds that were equivalent to what we would call “roughing it” camping.

The villagers’ peace and joy were contagious. As a result, this was one of the biggest take aways during my 2010 mission trip. Personally, I felt it was a challenge from God. It was a challenge to be more joyful and peaceful even when confronted with a lack of abundance and/or possessions. How could people who live in a 90% Muslim village and who have so few things experience more joy than I do in my life as a Christian who has so much. As Christians, we are called to be different. God calls us to have joy (“But the Holy Spirit produces this kind of fruit in our lives: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness,” – Galatians 5:22).

Tomorrow, I am going to talk about the community I observed and how that drove a change in me.

A Little Help Goes A Long Way
I am leaving for Senegal in February, 2012 to be a part of a medical team that is providing medical care to the people of Ndjemane and other adjacent villages. Please be a part of my trip and help. There are a three main ways you can help:

1. Pray for the medical team and me. As we just read, God answers prayers and I believe he will answer our prayers about this team.
2. Share these stories. I pray that as I tell stories to raise funds for the medical clinic that people will also hear the Good News about the love that God has for a small village in Africa and how He also loves each one of us. It is a powerful and showering love that every person should have the opportunity to hear.
3. Most important to me is prayer and sharing these stories. However, if you would like to donate money to assist me with serving in Senegal. Check out the sidebar to the right to see how much I still need so I can cover all of my expenses in Senegal. (Here is the link to PayPal to donate to my trip.)

However you participate, thank you for being a part of the February 2012 Medical Team!

In my last post I talked about how a simple request from a small village in Africa became prayers from faithful Christians. God heard those prayers and began tugging on the hearts of many people in preparation for His response. I was one of those people whose heart was moved. Even though I was unaware that people were praying for Ndjemane, I was being called to serve there. It was a calling that took three years be realized.

Our medical team set ground in Senegal in May, 2010. For Senegal’s village of Ndjemane this was the first time medical care was available to everyone in their village. Prior to that, the only real option they had for medical care was to take a bus ride to Thies, which was more than an hour away.

Most of the patients we saw during the clinics did not come with strange diseases or weird diagnoses. Rather, most of them dealt with pretty standard chronic medical ailments. Medical ailments that could be easily be taken care of if they had constant access to medical care. The practitioners were able to manage most of the patients’ medical needs with the medication that was donated or purchased prior to our trip.

One typical diagnosis we saw in many of Ndjemane’s adult patients was high blood pressure. It turns out that the hypertension was caused from the water they drank. Ndjemane’s main water source contained high levels of sodium, which directly affected them. Most of the kids we saw dealt with malaria or presented with symptoms that were similar to malaria. If you look at pictures on our Charlotte To Senegal website you can see that most of the kids had constant runny noses.

This is what our team saw as we served the people of Ndjemane. Despite the village being almost all Muslim, most of the patients allowed us to pray with them. We showed the village Jesus Christ’s love for them by coming to the village. We showed Ndjemane His love by serving the people in the village in a way that cannot be repaid, but is so valuable to them.

As I reflect on the love we tried to show Ndjemane by our service in the medical clinic I am left with the following verses. We are called by Jesus to not just love each other as ourselves, but we are meant to love each other as he has loved us.

And since I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you ought to wash each other’s feet. I have given you an example to follow. Do as I have done to you.

Dear friends, since God loved us that much, we surely ought to love each other. John 13:14-15 & 1 John 4:11

A Little Help Goes A Long Way
I am leaving for Senegal in February, 2012 to be a part of a short-term medical team that is providing medical care to the people of Ndjemane and other adjacent villages. Please be a part of my trip and help. There are a three ways you can help:

1. Pray for the medical team and me. As we just read, God answers prayers and I believe he will answer our prayers about this team.
2. Share these stories. I pray that as I tell stories to raise funds for the medical clinic that people will also hear the Good News about the love that God has for a small village in Africa and how He also loves each one of us. It is a powerful and showering love that every person should have the opportunity to hear.
3. Most important to me is prayer and sharing these stories. However, if you would like to donate money to assist me with serving in Senegal. Check out the sidebar to the right to see how much I still need so I can cover all of my expenses in Senegal. (Here is the link to PayPal to donate to my trip.)

However you participate, thank you for being a part of the February 2012 Medical Team!

In 2007, God placed the people of Senegal on my heart. I was not sure why and at the time I did not even know where Senegal was on the continent of Africa. If I was unable to point out Senegal on a map, it was pretty obvious that I knew nothing about the country and its people. The only thing I definitely knew was that I was supposed to serve in Senegal.

That same year in Senegal, Forest Hill sent two church representatives to meet with the chief and elders of a village called Ndjemane. During their meeting, one of the three things Ndjemane asked from our church was for Forest Hill to pray about the medical care needs for their people.

A request from a remote, mostly-Muslim village in a little-known country in Africa transformed into prayers from faithful Christians to the Lord God. Those prayers were heard and received a response from God. Even though Ndjemane would not see a medical clinic for another three years, God was already preparing the members’ hearts (including mine) and was beginning to establish the medical team.

In 2010, the medical-care request and prayers came to fruition when Forest Hill sent a medical mission team into Ndjemane. That was also the trip that I was finally able to participate with. God’s plan had been laid out in perfect timing and was now in motion.

A Little Help Goes A Long Way
I am leaving for Senegal in February, 2012 to be a part of a medical team that is providing medical care to the people of Ndjemane and other adjacent villages. Please be a part of my trip and help. There are a three main ways you can help:

1. Pray for the medical team and me. As we just read, God answers prayers and I believe he will answer our prayers about this team.
2. Share these stories. I pray that as I tell stories to raise funds for the medical clinic that people will also hear the Good News about the love that God has for a small village in Africa and how He also loves each one of us. It is a powerful and showering love that every person should have the opportunity to hear.
3. Most important to me is prayer and sharing these stories. However, if you would like to donate money to assist me with serving in Senegal. Check out the sidebar to the right to see how much I still need so I can cover all of my expenses in Senegal. (Here is the link to PayPal to donate to my trip.)

However you participate, thank you for being a part of the February 2012 Medical Team!

I have had quite a few hits on my website from people searching for what happened to the lights show on Mammoth Oaks Ln in Charlotte, NC. Since so many people are coming to my website to find out what happened, I wanted to provide an update here.

Unfortunately, Mike is retiring the lights show at his house. A number of, what I can only imagine are, inconsiderate people caused quite a few problems last year and he was forced to make some difficult decisions. According to the letter Mike wrote on his website, he felt that it was best to shut the light show down over safety concerns and to reduce the amount of stress the unruly visitors were causing the neighborhood.

Our family will definitely miss seeing it every Christmas! Our little ones (and Chele and I) enjoyed seeing them every year.

If you want to read Mike’s letter, you can read it here: Mammoth Christmas

Here are a few links if you want to see some videos of his light show from years’ past:
December, 2009 from my blog
Mammoth Christmas Videos

When traveling to school, some kids walk; some students ride the bus; and some of them ride to school in their parents’ car. And some children get to ride with their dad in a giant flatbed tow truck.

About once a week, the tow-truck driver takes his son to school and parks on the street in front of the school along with a lot of other parents. When Asher first saw the truck a couple of weeks ago he was incredibly excited and talked about it during the rest of our walk to school.

Asher thought he was a cool dad because he has just taken his son to school in a flatbed truck. I guess I am going to have to convince my captain to have our engine company come and take Asher to school in the fire truck. Now that would be a lot of fun.

Today, our engine company is one of the companies assigned with providing medical care and initial firefighting coverage for areas around Bank of America stadium. We are here before, during, and a little after the Panthers-Vikings game today.

Due to the large crowds we cannot easily drive our large fire truck around. Therefore, we are downsizing.

Here is one of our station’s normal fire trucks.

Here is our temporary downsized models.

If you are around the game today hit me up and say hi.

Eight years ago I covenanted in front of God, family, and friends to be a loving, faithful husband to my beautiful wife, Michele. I promised this to Michele regardless of whether we were in plenty, want, joy, sorrow, sickness, or health… and for as long as we are both alive. That still stands as one of the best decisions I have made in my life… and definitely one of the best promises I have made.

I am blessed to have her as part of my life and I am happy to celebrate eight years of sharing our lives together.

Here are snapshots of the past eight years together.

2011 Bechan’s Dedication

Thanks, JP, for an awesome photo of our family.

2010 Nick and Heather’s Wedding

2009 Mountain Trip With Our LifeGroup

2008 Charleston/Isle of Palms Vacation

2007 Kannapolis Knights Game

2006 Christmas In New York

2005 San Francisco

2004 Folly Beach Vacation

2003 – After Our Wedding

I think this should be our next training video at the station. Sure it is made for three- to six-year-olds, but it might prove to be very beneficial to sharpening our firefighting and rescue skills.

In this video I went from watching the driver to watching the people standing so close to the road as the car drove by. I then watched the driver again as he drove on the dirt road and I finally watched the sky and scenery as the driver drove higher up the mountain.

A few things to Where’s Waldo when you watch the video. Check out the guy I believe is acting like he is hitch-hiking. Check out the guy kneeling (in what I believe is) less than a foot away from the car as it enters a right turn. If you watch the video long enough, check out how the scenery changes around the six-minute mark. After that, there are parts of the road where all you see is blue sky and very little road.

Pikes Peak 2010 – Jeff Zwart In Car from Will Roegge on Vimeo.