I wasn’t standing in a stadium with my hands held up high and tears rolling down my eyes. I wasn’t at a Lecrae concert shouting “Send me, I’ll go.” I wasn’t kneeling in the front of a small church with deacons praying over me. I wasn’t taking a walk in a thunderstorm when a bright light shone down on me from the heavens. I wasn’t even surfing the web when an infomercial about the suffering in Africa started playing. No, God’s call for Heather and me in Africa began in a circle of chairs with young Christians like me just reading the Bible… and discussing what we were reading. We weren’t talking about missions, we weren’t discussing the great commission, to be honest I can’t even remember exactly what passage we were on (though I know it was in Luke), when a sudden thought struck me… a Holy Spirit Zap if you will.

What would an American Christian look like who lived in a way that DRAMATICLY adhered to the teachings of Christ? A Christian where co-workers and friends just knew there was something different, maybe even a bit odd about that guy, and the reason was because of Jesus. In the early Church, Christians were weirdos. Why? Because they didn’t go to the pagan religious gatherings, they didn’t worship any other gods, they treated people from differing social statuses as equals and MOST of all they loved EVERYONE. What would a Christian like THAT look like in America? An Amish person? One of those people who has no life outside of Church events? I just didn’t know, but the best I could figure there would be three things that would distinguish that Christian from the American population, much like not worshiping pagan gods and not treating slaves like lesser beings distinguished the early church.

1. Love EVERYONE. I mean really heartily invest in all people that God put in your path; not just the easy ones, not just the ones that work a similar job, or talk like you or grew up on a similar socio-economic level. As Christians we get so focused on “saving” people that sometimes I think we forget that long before that we should probably just blindly love them. Leave the saving for Jesus.

2. Live in community. Jesus hung out with 12 other guys ALL the time, and the early church wasn’t a once a week event, it was a lifestyle! But it wasn’t a closed door either, in fact I’m pretty sure there were many more outside of the core 12 that followed Jesus around most of his ministry and the early Church welcomed anyone who would walk in. The community was fluid but it was also very deep, and how Jesus was affecting lives wasn’t “a topic” around the table, it was in the DNA of EVERY topic that came up.

3. Live without Materialism. I’m going to go out on a limb here and say the “pagan god” of America is stuff. We as Americans LOVE STUFF! Listen, I’ve worked in retail for nearly a decade, I know. In fact, sometimes the MORE expensive you make something the easier it is to sell. Not only that, but *I* love stuff! I have a PS3 and Xbox 360, a Smart Phone, boxes of comic books, a turntable with dozens of vinyl, trading cards, an ipod with hundreds of cds, over a thousand plays and books on playwrites, 3 physical bibles, multiple digital bibles and box after box of stuff in my parents attic and my parents-in-law basement that I can’t even recount to you right now. STUFF!!! I LOVE IT! My friends love it, my family loves it, my employees love it, we ALL LOVE IT! I even make myself feel better about having so much stuff by buying used stuff at Goodwill or Value Village. People say that Money is the American God, and maybe that’s true, but it’s not just the money, it’s all the stuff we can buy with the money. What if Christians lived without stuff? What would that look like? What if we were marked by a lack of stuff, if people thought we were weird because we only owned one TV and it wasn’t even high-def? As much as I tried to get my brain around this idea, I couldn’t fully grasp it. Why? Because I had grown up in the context of being an American and no matter how hard I tried I couldn’t get outside of my own head.

That was when the Holy Spirit Zap happened. Meanwhile Heather was processing all these same ideas, and the Holy Spirit zapped her as well! All of this was going on silently while we sat in a circle in our small group.

As we drove home from Church that night I was thinking about all the times I had heard American preachers rant about how materialism was America’s sin… and then do nothing about it.

“Heather?”

It was common for us to talk about the bible study on our drive home but this night we were quieter than usual, each processing our individual zaps.

“Do you think Maggie would have any use for us in Uganda?” I asked timidly.

The Holy Spirit Zap was this: If I couldn’t figure this materialism thing in an American context maybe I needed to get OUT of an American context and see what it looked like to not have this thing be a part of my cultural DNA. Maggie was a friend of ours who ran a vocational school in Uganda. Now, I don’t know much about Africa, I’ve never been there (Heather has), and I went to public school, but one thing that did seem clear to me was that people in Africa didn’t have an abundance of stuff. Maybe I could learn from the Christians there what that looked like.

“That’s funny, I was thinking the same thing” Heather said.

So we e-mailed Maggie. Because of where she is we normally don’t get a quick reply from Maggie via e-mail (internet is intermittent there at best), but the very next day we did and Maggie’s answer was powerful, and early proof that the Holy Spirit was working.

“This is so interesting - This last year has been one of the hardest, mainly due to staffing issues and just

not having enough people with the skills to really help me. Some one just wrote me and said I needed to find others from USA to come help. My thought was,'yeah right - who is going to come over with the skills I need, someone I know so I can trust and would be fun enough to have here'. God knew!”

God did know, and our adventure to Africa had begun!

I’ll continue telling the story of how God got us to Uganda over the next two months as we prepare for our trip. So far we have raised an amazing $15,000, God is so gracious – we’re more than halfway to our goal! I’m totally in awe and humbled by so many people being so generous for the glory of Jesus! We are having a prayer night this Thursday night at the Rivard’s house and I hope to see many of you there!

--Patrick