Time has come!

I leave for Bangladesh tomorrow afternoon. By Sunday I will be there.

I have gotten over my sickness. I felt bad for Monday and Tuesday but I feel much better now.

I said goodbye to many good friends these past two weeks. I said goodbye to some new good friends today.

I lamented over the fact that I didn't have any salty snack foods for my plane flight a couple of days ago. This morning I received a package from my mother with Chex Mix in it.

"But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own."

"Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name,
your kingdom come,
your will be done
on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us today our daily bread.
Forgive us our debts,
as we also have forgiven our debtors.
And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from the evil one."

I'm not sure what else to write at this point. I have many thoughts. I have few fears. I am ready for this as far as I can tell. Look forward to an interesting post about life early next week sometime!

God Bless,
Phil

In sickness and in health...

This past weekend I had several visitors on Saturday. Two friends from Bluffton came by and made my day a good one. On top of that Rachel Miller and her roommate came from Delaware to hang out. I only mention Rachel's name for those from Howard-Miami who might read this. It should also be noted that they were already planning on coming to this general area and it just kind of worked out for them to drop in for a few hours. Everyone seemed to be doing fairly good in life. Sunday I spent the entire day hanging out with my new friends here. Many of us went for a walk in the park. Overall we were pretty much in a mood to be lazy though.


Today I am now getting a bug of some sorts. It started off with a sore throat last night and progressed into a runny nose this morning. Now I feel the beginnings of a fever setting in. Hopefully it isn't anything a little Nyquil can't fix.

God Bless,
Phil

The adventure thus far...

This past Monday my family dropped me off here in Akron, PA for 10 days of orientation before I head to Bangladesh. They had time to look around the facilities here before they had to continue on. Before they left, we all gathered in a circle and grandma Birkey prayed for me. It was a short and sweet but much to my surprise emotional prayer. I almost couldn't handle it.

This past week has been an interesting one. We did all did all sorts of introductions and trainings. I met two people whom I will be working with in Bangladesh for the next 3 years. They are really cool people and we all get along pretty well. At times in this whole process I have felt under qualified for the position I am heading into. I have had to keep remembering that God has placed me where I am and that I am capable of learning whatever I need to.

In my time here I've also made many other friends. Not the least of which is Mark and Janice who are a young Canadian couple heading to China. We've already decided we are all going to meet up in Nepal sometime. We've also already decided that I'll come up to Canada after we all get back to learn how to do Curling and Ice fishing local style.

Other than that, this week has mostly been filled with sessions over various things pertaining to MCC the organization and our relation to it.

Don't worry, the posts should liven up soon. I leave one week from this evening.

God Bless,
Phil

The journey begins...

Tomorrow morning I begin the prelude to the real journey.

Today I have been working on finishing up packing. Have you ever had to pack your entire life up? It is definitely an interesting experience. Unfortunately for me I am too much of a procrastinator and I'm doing most of my packing at the last minute. I'm tired, fairly grouchy, and feel sorry for my family who has to deal with me right now. It'll all get better tomorrow though. A full day in a car with them will go a long way towards fixing all the problems. :-)

Seriously though, go through your stuff and see what you would keep or get rid of.

God Bless,
Phil

Mother Teresa

I am currently reading "The Joy In Loving" which is a compilation of comments by Mother Teresa. I don't remember who suggested I give this a read but I would like to thank them. It is an amazing read that I would suggest everyone give a try. These are a few excerpts.

"It is very important for us to realize that love, to be true, hast to hurt. I must be willing to give whatever it takes not to harm other people and, in fact, to do good to them. This requires that I be willing to give until it hurts. Otherwise there is no true love in me and I bring injustice, not peace, to those around me."

"When we have nothing to give, let us give Him that nothingness. Let us all remain as empty as possible, so that God can fill us. Even God cannot fill what is already full. God won't force Himself on us. You are filling the world with the love God has given you."

"The very fact that God has placed a certain soul in our way is a sign that God wants us to do something for him or her. It is not a chance; it has been planned by God. We are bound by conscience to help him or her."

"I do not think I have any special qualities. I don't claim anything for the work. It is His work. I am like a little pencil in His hand, that is all. He does the thinking. He does the writing. The pencil has nothing to do with it. The pencil has only to be allowed to be used."

"Prayer: Lord, grant that I may seek rather to comfort than to be comforted; to understand rather than be understood; to love rather than be loved, for it is by forgetting self that one finds. It is by forgiving that one is forgiven. It is by dying that one awakens to eternal life. Amen."

"The fruit of silence is prayer;
The fruit of prayer is faith;
The fruit of faith is love;
The fruit of love is service;
The fruit of service is peace.
This is very good business!"

God Bless,
Phil

Expectations and realizations...

The other day I ended up taking a 9 hour car ride to pick up an important part for work. I took this ride with my boss' daughter who also happens to be a friend of mine. During this trip we were talking and she helped me come to a realization.

In my recollection, the only times I ever get annoyed or upset are when I have expectations. Expectations of myself. Expectations of my friends. Expectations of my family. Expectations of life.

• Up until recently I have expected myself to be perfect. I control myself do I not?

• I rarely expect anything more of my friends than that they don't take advantage of me in any mean way. Their quirks are what make them different and why I love them.

• I for some reason keep expecting that my family will understand me even though I'm quite sure that's fairly impossible. I find it amusing right now that I expect my parents to understand me despite the fact that I rarely open up to them because I understand that they might not keep it to themselves.

• What do I expect of life? I've probably spent the better part of the last 7 or so years with only one defined goal in life. I wanted to eventually get married and have kids. It's amazing how a call from God to go to Bangladesh for three years can wipe out an expectation and I'm quite ok with that at this point.
  

This draws me to some other thoughts that relate. I think my relaxed and laid back style are a result of this regardless of whether I knew it at the time or not. I think over the years I've realized that it's easier to just go with the flow than it is to expect something and get bent out of shape.

I'm not wishing to change that. I'm just calling it how it is.

This then pertains to my approach to Bangladesh. I haven't done a ton of reading and research to try and understand everything about Bangladesh. I would rather learn about who people are by experiencing and building my own opinions rather than risk being lead astray by other people's opinions. This is not to say I'm trying to be totally ignorant, just very cautious about what I let myself "know" before going.

I will likely still do the reading but it will probably be in reflection afterwards to see if the writers were right.

So yeah....
That's all I've got for now.
Sorry there isn't any funny stories yet.
God Bless,
Phil

Fear

It seems to me like I've been asked a lot over the past month what scares me the most about my upcoming adventure. The best I can ever come up with is that I'm afraid I'll miss my friends and family too much. When I really think about it though I realize that I don't even fear that.

Have you ever experienced the joy of the Lord? Whenever I think about going to Bangladesh I'm forced to realize that God is in this. That realization alone is enough to fill me with a joy that supersedes any fear I could possibly have.

This has lead me to another thought. For all of you out there who will pray for me at anytime I would like to ask you a favor. Don't pray for my safety. It seems to me that doing so would be like trying to restrain God to our wishes. Instead pray that God use me as is God's will. If God chooses to keep my safe, I'll be happy. If God chooses otherwise, I'll be happy. The joy of the Lord is our strength!

Besides, if Paul can take a few hard knocks for Jesus why can't I? (Que mental image of Paul as a rapper. lol)

God Bless,
Phil

Welcome!

This blog will be something that I use to strive to keep people informed about what's happening with my journey. I should be updating at least by every weekend from here on out. I hope you enjoy my writings!

God Bless,
Phil

The Decision to go...

Many of you may be asking how I have arrived at this decision in my life. The following is an attempt at explaining just that…

To start off with I’ve always thought that a service term abroad might be interesting. As a result of this type of thinking I decided to go to Botswana last summer for my cross-cultural experience at Bluffton University. My intent in going was partially to see how I would react and hold up in a third-world environment. I absolutely loved my time there.

When I came back I set my adventurous thoughts aside because I had a girlfriend at the time. Pretty soon though the girl dumped me hard and who showed up in the worst of times but God who I had only half-heartedly followed to this point. This lead me to be baptized into my home church. I had always put this off because in my opinion baptism is a serious act that shouldn’t be followed with the half-hearted Christianity that I had. It was about the time of my baptism that I really started questioning myself what my new found serious faith meant for my life.

One of the first things I did was to get in contact with MCC because while I was at Bluffton I had become familiar with their style of doing things and really appreciated how they approached helping people. I was looking for an opportunity to go back to Africa but they didn’t have any openings for my skillset there. Then I noticed an opening in Bangladesh that seemed like it would be awesome for someone like me. I talked to MCC and received an application. I half-filled it out and then left it sit for 4 months.

It was about this time God started showing up and pushing buttons. One day I was contemplating the fact that I should be filling out that application when I received a phone call out of the blue from an MCC employee who was going to be on campus the next day. She had heard I was considering applying and wanted to meet with me. I thought that timing was impecable (I also feel like God’s always is).

Well the previous event pushed me to get everything but the 5 or so open questions done on the application. I got to those and was stuck as to how to answer them, so I gave up. Well, later on in more corrispondence with MCC I found out that they had several people interested in the Bangladesh position I had thought was interesting and that I had better get my application in if I was going to be even interested. I then got serious about getting those questions answered. You want to know what happened next? That was on a Friday and I spent my entire weekend sick enough to be stuck in bed. That was followed by my Uncle dieing suddenly. On the way up to his funeral in Michigan we were encountering some really nasty roads (it was winter afterall). As we were driving up those roads a thought came over me to just trust God and suddenly the scary part melted away into an odd sense of joy. In this whole situation I see proof that Satan will try to distract you when you get serious about living out faith but the joy of the Lord is strong indeed.

So I got my application in. Then time rolled around for an interview with MCC. It was about this time that I really started doubting whether God was really calling me to do this or if I was just making up this fantasy because I didn’t know what else to do after graduation. Well it turned out that the interview was on the same day as two exams in my two hardest classes. So I was up at 2 a.m. studying for these exams and worried that about the interview when I heard my next door neighbor (who happened to be one of my better friends) sobbing loudly in his room. I went over to see what was up of course and found out that he and his fiance had broken up. We ended up talking for the next 4 hours. The odd thing about this whole situation was that over the past year before this night I had prayed that I would get an opportunity to talk to him about God in my better moments. I had actually been very mad at myself because I had missed a good opportunity about a month before this. On this particular night he was the one to bring it up. It was a good talk. When our conversation was over he went to bed and went back to studying with a sense of excitement like I’d never had before. I no longer had any fears of the interview. I just trusted that if God was leading me to go then things would just work regardless of my intentions. On a side note I got a 52% on my Calculus test at 8 that morning which is pretty bad. I knew I failed it, I was so tired I couldn’t think straight, and I couldn’t have cared less. My interview on the other hand went amazingly well.

After this interview two more interviews followed. These two were with people actually in the country of Bangladesh. In my first interview it turns out that the couple that will be my bosses started out their MCC careers in the small village of Pitseng which just happens to be the exact same village I went to the summer before in Botswana. These interviews went well too.

After all this I received a phone call offering me the position. I accepted on the spot and have never looked back yet.