The Murmurings of a Wandering Prophet

My family and I are currently driving through the United States on a 10,000 km missionary journey. These trips can be very challenging; and yet I have seen some of the wildest miracles. I say it’s challenging, because travelling with five small children for 5-6 hours a day is difficult. They don’t like being inside all that time. It is hard to find good food on the road, and it is hard to find decent accommodation without spending a lot of money. Because of the size of our family we have to get bigger rooms which adds to the cost. Although there are challenges God has always provided. If I didn’t take the children with me, then I wouldn’t spend a lot of time with them and they deserve to be with their father. Moreover, they are learning things about the world that I never had the opportunity to learn. They have so far, been on three major trips to Texas from our home in Canada. They have seen Florida and Australia. My sons have seen miracles that most people have not seen. Miracles are common for them. My boys spend a lot of time drawing maps and flags of other nations. It amazes me to watch them. One of my sons goes on Google Earth and studies the streets of cities in different places in the world. He knows things that I would have never known at his age. I often find myself thinking about what they might become when they reach my age. It is the Lord that leads and guides us. The things that we experience in our early lives help shape the persons we become in our later lives. My parents often traveled across Canada when I was a young boy. I drove across country a number of times. I don’t remember the first time that I was on a plane. I do remember that I loved being on planes from a young age. What I did when I was young, I now do at 44. I am not really trying to teach you anything in this post. I am just philosophizing about how we become who we are. It would be hard for me to sit still in one place. I have never done that. I have always imagined far off places that I wanted to go see. This must have been placed inside of me by the Lord. It is a part of my spiritual DNA. When I was young, I loved studying maps of the world. I also liked movies and TV shows about countries I had never been to, especially Middle Eastern nations. I loved the culture of the Middle East even though I don’t share its religion. I loved the desert of Arabia and the thought of drifting by camel across the Sahara in search of an oasis to drink from. I loved adventure. Books that carried me off to far-away places, and to exotic cities always drew me in. I read many books about the cold war and Eastern Europe and Russia. I loved reading about the Coptic and Eastern Orthodox churches. Stories of saints that lived in the deserts fascinated me. Reading about the Saints of the Catholic Church who lived all over Europe always had a way of stirring me to pilgrimage. When I was in my teens, I would look at the maps of Paul’s missionary journeys. He very rarely stayed in one place for long. I remember studying the maps of his three missionary journeys as they are outlined in the Book of Acts. I was with him on the ships, and on the highways and byways. I was with him in Macedonia and Corinth. I preached with him in Athens, and I suffered with him in Jerusalem and on his journey to Rome. I wondered if he had ever made it as far as Spain as it seemed that was what he wished to do. He was driven to go. I also am driven to go. I would like this sentence to read that it is easy to do what I do, but it isn’t. The truth is I know what it is like to be dreadfully alone. I know what is like to miss my family and wish I was home. I know what it is like to see miracles burst before people’s eyes, and see Christ birthed inside of people because of the wonder of divine moments. I keep going because they keep getting touched. There are times I need to slow down. There are times I need to rest, but I continue on. In the next season, I may start an apostolic base back in Canada, but I think I will continue to press into the earth. This year Asia is calling me. Next year, I want to go to China and South America. Eventually I will have to get to Africa. The world is out there, and I know I will see it. Pray for me that I will be strengthened to accomplish the task that the Lord has called me to do.