With Cara’s trip to Cameroon coming so quickly, it’s hard to post about other things here. Even the music stuff that we’re working on all has a deadline of “before” or “after” Cameroon. So if the posts are slightly skewed toward Africa and missions, that is the reason why.

Tonight we were at dinner and were talking about how Cara’s a little bit scared about the trip that’s coming up, and how people don’t like to talk about that aspect of missions trips. But the fear is very real. It’s not fear that will keep her from going, but it makes it nerve-wracking in the weeks that lead up to such a big trip. (So please pray!)

We were also talking about how each person that’s going on the trip has to prepare one day’s talk to give to the rest of the group. Instead of doing a traditional “lesson,” Cara decided to gather a bunch of quotes from missionaries. The sheet that she compiled has 24 quotes, and she is planning to ask the people on the trip to pick 1) their favorite, 2) their least favorite 3) the one that they disagree with and 4) the one that they most aspire to be like, but aren’t yet.

Here are a few of the quotes…what do you think about the four questions?

“God uses men who are weak and feeble enough to lean on him.” – Hudson Taylor

“Never pity missionaries; envy them. They are where the real action is — where life and death, sin and grace, Heaven and Hell converge.” – Robert C. Shannon

” Nothing so clears the vision and lifts up the life, as a decision to move forward in what you know to be entirely the will of the Lord.” – John Patton

“He is no fool who gives up what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose.” -Jim Elliot, missionary martyr who lost his life in the late 1950’s trying ro each the Auca Indians of Ecuador

“If you found a cure for cancer, wouldn’t it be inconceivable to hide it from the rest of mankind? How much more inconceivable to keep silent the cure from the eternal wages of death?” -Dave Davidson