Captain's Log #39
April, 2004

DOUBLE EDGED SWORDS
I understand computers are inanimate objects but I love them, they help so much. Also I really hate computers, they can trash a person's life so quick. It's a love/hate thing, currently leaning heavily towards the latter in the wake of a massive computer crash with death and destruction all around! Of course we've always backed-up everything important? dream on? that's somebody else with some other type of life-style where very important things are never overridden by very urgent things. Anyway we're gradually pulling the pieces back together - for those of you that have been caught in the shuffle, thanks for your patience.

RUGGED
Rugged - remote - harsh - rigorous? Obviously the words might seem a little extreme but they are the right words I think. In front of me again was the climb that would take us up to the pastors hut, a primitive structure on the side of this mountain, then beyond that and higher, the temporary shed that's up on top where we would be sleeping, or at least trying to.

DEEP MUD
In daylight, with the sun shining the climb up can be ok for an empty handed healthy person, with parts of it quite steep by most standards. It's more tuff at night in the pitch black. It can get really tuff if you've got a good load to carry, like tools, generator or maybe a box of food. It's almost impossible when you add to these variables the monsoon rains that transform the surface of the earth here into the worst mess of slick, running orange mud.

BRUISED
I see the footing go out from under the Doctor who is in front and above me. On his shoulder he's been carrying a fair size gunny sack of potatoes from way down below where the small fiberglass boat is that we've used to navigate through the mangroves and get in from the motor vessel Galilean 2, to the Southern shores of this tropical island. Everything seems to go into slow motion as the potatoes launch themselves outward from his arms. I get up to where he is and the doctor's face actually has a smile on it? he seems oblivious to his fall as he looks at me? "we're really here! this is great!". This weary journey for him and the others started 36 hours ago and a long, long ways away somewhere in Kansas.

SIGNIFICANCE?
There is no way this team of American Kingdom servant workers can have any idea how significant their involvement is at this point. God is actually using them to establish the very first permanent building in this work out here, work that has been years in the making - this is finally going to be a solid 'beach-head' for the Church of the Nazarene on the island of Kadavu! A foot-hold of monumental importance? something with years and thousands of nautical miles of ocean travel and untold lives behind and under it!! There's no doubt in my mind we're in for a tough time - this is no casual battlefield, but God chooses His warriors with care.

HOW MUCH?
By about day 4 the wet sleeping bags, blowing winds, torrential rains, deep mud, strange foods eaten by hand while sitting on the floor, mosquitoes, diarrhea, lack of electricity, lack of good water, lack of privacy, 'unique' bathing conditions, aching muscles, impressive rashes, tends to cause the romance to be lost and some people stop having fun somewhere along the line! 10 days later? much has happened! None of us have been unaffected. Cindy and the kids are now also sick. Somehow in the midst of it all, amazingly the pastor's new home is almost completed and over 200 patients are treated by the doctor who's still smiling even when sick himself!

ROYALTY
On the last night out there for this 'Ends of the Earth' Work and Witness trip, the people come from up and down the coast and try to show these 'Kaivalangi' from far away across the ocean, what they feel? they've been watching and taking note, as they always are. They have some idea of the personal cost being high, especially in discomfort, for these white people. Many of the Fijians have been up all night now diving for fish on the outer reef or cooking and preparing. A feast is laid out, representing the very best they have to give. I count at least seven different types of meat. This is something for royalty. The pastor has killed a prized pig and a chicken, others have brought fish hanging from poles between their shoulders and they try to say what they feel in their hearts. I watch the people from America listening and looking and I pray that beyond what is outwardly happening, God would be at work? and He is. It becomes obvious that these foreigners are actually not strangers at all here and they really are royalty, though a different color they are members of the exact same family - with non less than a direct common lineage to non less than the KING of KINGS Himself.

GOD'S ECONOMY
Finally we sit a long ways away in a room on a different island at a hotel by the airport where "what seems like a lifetime ago" this Work and Witness Team flew in (2 weeks ago) and quietly we talk about what's been going on throughout these days. One member of the group shakes his head, it's difficult for me to hear what he's saying? it's not easy for him to talk? seems that he's saying that he would let his retirement account go if that was the choice, for what's been going on from his perspective, during these days? good - that's good - that's great! - God has been allowed to be at work. There's actually, it seems, no exception among all eight of these great people! God has really been at work. It's really a strange thing, isn't it? That in God's economy He MOSTLY cares so very, very much about? none other than - US - and that somehow as we allow Him to be about His work in us - as we trust Him and go and do whatever, wherever, however He leads? well He builds His Kingdom.

LOVE!
It really makes no sense to this world you know? it never has nor will? unless they get to know Him . What a strange and awesome thing, this that transcends all the boundaries that separate man, this that draws us so inexorably to be and do what makes no sense whatsoever to this world, this that calls us each one so very far beyond ourselves and anything we could ever be or do, this that grabs hold of our hearts and holds on with tenacity, this that so long ago at a very real time and place paid a very real price on a Roman cross one day! This incredible Love of our Abba Father!!!

HAMMERHEADS AND STINGRAYS
"Ken, Dr. Bennett, the other Ken, Bob, Adam, Heather, Don, the other Adam? to all of you? thanks! Anyone can be 'christian' when things are going ok? but to you, thanks for the testimony of your lives when tested (ref. Is. 43:1-3) during this 'Ends of the Earth' Work and Witness trip to the Southern shores of the Fijian island of Kadavu. My prayer is that your memories will not only recall eating the huge stingray, hammerhead shark, lobsters, prawns and turtles, the myriad colors of animated tropical fish and reefs, finding the Southern Cross, the pod of whales and fantastic swelling seas of the open South Pacific Ocean, the fresh coconut milk pulled down for you from 60 feet high, the breath taking waterfalls cut out of shear rock and the show put on for you of Kadavu boys racing across the cliff face and all the other great things, my prayer is also that you will no less remember the tuff parts and in it all? remember that it is in it all that God keeps doing His work in us? and as He works in us somehow with us, He is building His eternal Kingdom - thanks again - you are family."

Harmon, Cindy, Danielle and Quinton

p.s. late breaking... Nazarene Maritime Ministries lost some survival gear that I'm sure I'll never see again as we were involved today (Thurs., 15th April 2004) with search, rescue and evacuation work in the midst of massive flooding of low lying areas here on the southern shores of the Fijian island of Viti Levu. God decided to position us close by as the Navua river which lies 10 kilometers to the East of us burst it's banks by 11am this morning under unprecedented torrential monsoon rains both in the interior of the island and to the coast as well as rising tides. By the time I got there the combined waters from the river, rains and sea had already flooded over 6 kilometers outward from its banks West in my direction and the town of Navua was suddenly 8 feet under water. As far out as I could see, countless families were trapped inside their houses with the rising water turning everything for miles in all directions into a raging, muddy ocean. Many people refused to leave, as they refused to believe the water could possibly continue to rise and they could not force themselves to abandon their meager homes, many of which by now had water a foot or more above floor level. Animals were frantically trying to escape in front of the rising flood waters. We worked with 2 local policeman and others this afternoon to try to get people that were trapped back to higher ground and into places that would take them. Obviously many were in shock in the midst of such a disaster. In an area like this river delta where thousands and thousands of people live, the infrastructure during good times is very thin; when something like this happens there simply is no way to begin to deal with it. Right now it's dark outside and the local news on the radio says the rains will continue for at least two more days - pray for the people here in Fiji who's lives were struck hard today, the families of the very many who are missing and for us as we try to help respond.

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