Turkey: Day #5 – Healing

Today was a fantastic day!  We had our business meetings all day where we heard from different committees like the committee on committees, the committee on general legislation, the committee on strategic planning and the committee on finance.  It was awesome.  We even have a committee on the agenda!  Pretty cool stuff huh?!  Well, that’s not the half of it!  You see, business at this assembly went really, really fast!  We managed to get through everything we possibly could today and we were done with business by 2pm in the afternoon.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t early enough to catch a bus into Antalya but we’ve decided to do that tomorrow instead.  So, a few of us decided that there was nothing more pressing or more important than a sauna and a jump into the mediterranean.

Today, I was a bit more cautious, especially after twisting my ankle a few days ago, it is still a little weak but thank you for your prayers, they seem to have worked!  God is good!  We spent a lot of time in the sauna and a lot of time in the cold mediterranean.  I am looking forward to the warmer waters of Guinea next week.  I got a little bit of sun today and that meant a little redness but not enough to be considered sunburn.  That will come in Guinea I am sure.

Anyway, I had a chance at breakfast to connect with Guinea team and meet them all, they seemed pretty cool.  We didn’t have much time because instead of setting my alarm for 6:50am I set it for pm and that meant I was about 50 minutes late to our meeting.  Ugh!  I hate being late!

At lunch I hung out with Doug Doyle, my former boss and current mentor and it was great to just connect about life and ministry.  He always manages to encourage me and help me see the big picture of what I am doing and how it fits in with the greater alliance vision and that was very cool.  By the way, I was late to this one too, I was waiting at one door and he was waiting at another…for  a while.  Man.

At dinner I hung out with a wonderful Palestinian man named Samer who is an MBB (muslim background believer) and who now lives passionately for Jesus.  He told me about growing up, how he first encountered the message and life of Jesus and how it’s changed his life.  There is so much to his story that is heartbreaking and I can’t wait to share it when I get home, for now know that a friendship begun that brought tears to both of us as we prayed for each other and blessed each other.

Tonight, in good alliance fashion, we talked about healing.  It was a good talk on healing.  A reminder that healing is not just something we say but it needs to be something we actively do.  I was very challenged on it and I look forward to processing it more over the course of the next few weeks and its implications for Cedarview and theadvance.

Tonight, they asked anyone who wanted healing for anything to stand up and to have the people around them pray with them and anoint them with oil.  I have to be honest, I never like being ‘that guy’ that stands up.  Tonight I really wanted to but probably like many people, I didn’t think my issues were big enough to stand up for, big enough to get prayed for.  I’m starting to regret that decision.  I’m not really sure why but I think there’s something in me that doesn’t think I need or want help.  I don’t really ‘need’ healing but are there things in my life, friendships, emotional issues, physical issues that I could have received prayer for?  Probably.  Maybe it’s a deep rooted pride thing.  I don’t know.  It sounds like pride but it doesn’t feel like pride so I need to figure that one out a bit.  I know for a fact I don’t like asking for help, it’s an area I definitely need to grow in a lot but where to begin?

Well, those are my musings for today.  We’ll see where it takes me tomorrow.  Speaking of tomorrow, more Roman ruins!  I’m looking forward to it!