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Hi all,

Hope you are having an awesome start to the new year.  Can you believe it’s already the 2nd week of the year?!  Here are a few prayer requests, please pray…

1.    Permanent visas – as you know we applied for our PERMANENT residency visas back in August of 2012.  I called Immigration NZ and discovered that they haven’t even assigned our paperwork to any case worker yet!  So it’s still sitting in some pile of applications on someone’s desk somewhere!  And our current TEMPORARY WORK visas expire in 21 days!  So I am in the process of filling out more applications to renew/extend our current temporary visas while they process our permanent ones.  But Immigration said that can take a month or 2 to process!  So while they are processing our temporary visas, we need an INTERIM visa just to stay in the country.  Ahhh!  Please pray that we get the INTERIM visa so we can get the TEMPORARY work visas so we can eventually get our PERMANENT residency visas!

2.    M – the recipient of my kidney has agreed to go through the Gospel of Mark with me!  He still hasn’t made a decision for Jesus yet, but he is close!  He says he wants to ‘learn more’ before he makes up his mind.  Pray that we have awesome times in God’s Word and that God will speak to him and bring him to the point of accepting Jesus.  We will start in Mark in a couple weeks and hopefully will do it weekly or every other week.

3.    Z’s friend – our 8 year old son had shared the Gospel with his classmate a couple months ago and his friend had prayed to accept the Lord!  For Christmas, Z bought his friend a bible.  And now his mom and him read it often at night.  She said it was a very special gift for them!  I talked to her about her son’s new faith and she said she thinks it’s great – she wants him to learn Christian values and morals.  She said she grew up in a nominal Christian home, but never practiced her faith.  Her husband is agnostic.  Pray that we can continue to be an influence in their lives as we seek to point them to Jesus.

4.    T’s friend – T had also prayed with her schoolmate and teammate (basketball) a few months ago to accept the Lord.  But we haven’t had a chance to talk to her parents about her faith.  Now that basketball is over, we don’t see them as much.  Pray that we can talk to them soon about faith and Jesus.

5.    School – the kids are on summer holidays at the moment (it’s summer in the southern hemisphere now) and will start school in less than 4 weeks.  T will start middle school (year 7)!  J will start his last year of middle school (year 8)!  And Z and D are still in primary/elementary school – years 4 and 2 respectively.  Wow!  Pray they start well and  that they can be light and salt for Jesus with their schoolmates.

One of the things that the Director of the Mango Tree Centre tries to do when they have outreach teams come by is to take some of the disabled people for outings in the local area.  They take them to the beach or for a drive along the coast or to a cafe for a meal out or out to a park for a picnic.  They do this with the teams because often, they need the extra hands to help with all the wheelchairs and lifting and pushing and feeding.  And they normally have to bring 2 vans – just in case one of the disabled people has a health issue, they can then get them back to the Centre or home without having to take everyone back.  On this trip, J and I got to tag along and help out as we took three people t the park for a picnic.

That might sound so basic and simple to us but that is because we often take such things for granted.  We can hop in a car or on our bikes or a bus or train or simply walk and pretty much go anywhere we want, any time we want.  But not so for them.  First, none of the families have cars or vehicles – they just simply cannot afford it.  Second they don’t have anyone who could drive them.  And third, it often takes so much work to get one of the disabled people ready for an outing that the families simply have a hard time doing it.  The 3 that we took out that day were actually relatively easy to get ready – they are all able to sit in a wheelchair.  But many of the others are bed-bound, so they would need a ‘mobile bed’ or they don’t go at all.  Can you imagine being in bed your whole life?  So for most of them, they rarely go out of their house!

So these outings are a special treat for them – just to get out of the house and experience something different.  And you could see it on their faces as we sat at the park with them – they were looking around, gazing at the kids playing on the playground, watching the people walking by, hearing the waves on the nearby beach and the cars and the birds and the conversations around them – things that we take for granted!  Makes me really think – maybe I should be more grateful for the simpler things in life!

Here are a few photos of the day at the park – click on the photos to enlarge.

We had a great time at the park with the whole gang.

One of the staff member brought his brand new guitar and sang a few worship songs – in Tongan!

One of the special treats is to have a special meal with them. Often they are malnourished and so any extra food is a blessing for them!  J also got to help feed this man.

Often, it’s just the little things that mean so much. Here we just go for a stroll around the park.

J said this was one of his favorite days – just to see the people so happy!

One of the main reasons for this outreach to Tonga was to build a small house (more like a shed from our western perspective) for a family who has a blind child.  The Mango Tree Centre for Disabled People ministers to about 80 families who have severely disabled family members.  And this is one of those families.  Not only do they have a blind daughter, but this family lives in a tiny, run-down ‘house’ that is literally just a few boards and pieces of wood nailed together (see photos at bottom of post/article).  And there is no floor – the ‘house’ sits directly on dirt and is situated next to a small community rubbish dump/tip!  When it rains (and boy does it really rain in Tonga!) the house gets flooded and literally sits in 20-30 cm (8-10 inches) of water constantly.  Imagine what that dirt floor would be like with 20 cm of water sitting on it for days!  So you can see the need for this family to have a house that is out of the flood-waters and can stay dry!

So that is what part of the team did during the two weeks they were there – build a small, simple one room house that is on a 60 cm (24 inch) high concrete foundation that will definitely provide a dry home for this family.  Our church, Calvary Wellington and another church in northern NZ, Calvary Whangarei provided the funds for the building materials and the building team (all from CC Whangarei) devoted many loving hours into this house. During the days of building, we all had lots of opportunities to share the truth and love of Jesus with this family (we think they are Catholic or come from a Catholic background).  When the guys were painting the new house, I got a chance to share the gospel with the father.  I told him I love to see new houses being painted (his was painted white) because it reminds me of what Jesus does for us.

I told him – ‘The new house with the new white paint job is clean – there are no dirt, stains or markings on the brand new paint.  It’s super white and clean!‘  Then I pointed to his old house and said – ‘that house has lots of stains and dirt on it, doesn’t it?  Can you see the difference?  That is what Jesus does with our sins (which are like dirty stains)!  The Bible says Jesus cleanses us white as snow, like your new house!  So every time you look at the new, clean, white walls of your new house, remember that Jesus died on the Cross to bring us forgiveness from our sins (the stains and dirt) and gives us a brand new life – clean and white!‘  He was silent – I don’t know if he could really understand that or accept that, but I know a seed has been planted.

And to top it all off, on our last day there, the family cooked a wonderful meal for us all as we celebrated not their new house, but their new HOME!

Here are a few photos so you can get an idea of what the old and new house is like…

This is what they live next to – a rubbish dump / tip

Old house – just a few boards and pieces of wood and tin nailed together.

This is their kitchen – they cook over an old tire and some wire mesh

New house – dry and solid!

New paint job – white as snow!

Interior of the new house – 27 sq.m. (290 sq. ft.). It will be divided into 4 ‘rooms’ with curtains to house 6-8 people.

Proud owners of a new home – father and daughter

Well, we’ve been back for a week and a half now from Tonga and are getting settled back into life in New Zealand.  But there are so many memories and experiences that are engrained in our minds and hearts.  Our main purpose for the trip was to build the house for the family with the blind daughter and also to participate in the home visits and pastoral care of the disabled.  We stayed at the Mango Tree Centre for Disabled People which ministers to 80 families with disabled family members who live in the community around the Centre

Over the next couple of weeks, I will share some of the experiences so that you can get a taste of what life was like in Tonga for us during the week-long outreach.  In this post, I will start with what J experienced.  Actually I will let you just read what he wrote about the time in Tonga and what God was showing him.

While I was in Tonga I experienced the LORD working through me and the others around me, helping me and encouraging through the whole trip.  I felt like I had a real purpose, to serve the LORD.  The only things I gained while I was in Tonga were wisdom, friendship, and faithfulness.  I met some great people who showed love and affection to me.  The girl and her family who we built the house for were a great family, the girl we built the house for was blind, (but you wouldn’t know it) she was at a real disadvantage because of all the rocks and junk where she lived.  So when we built the house for her family, we built a ramp so that she could get into the house without hurting herself.  One of the most rewarding things while we were there was the looks on the family’s faces and their joy when we finished the house.  All in all I think the best thing while we were there was the feeling of serving.  – J -

A young man learning servanthood.   He helped do a little painting on the new house and digging the pit for the sandbox and building the shelves.  And he went with us on all the home visits – he bought little balls and toys for the kids and helped to keep them entertained while the adults visited with the parents and the disabled family members.  Almost every home that we visited had kids so he was pretty busy!  He also played a lot with the director’s 5-year-old son – who was only lonely because he is the only kid at the Centre for Disabled People.  Overall, it was a an experience he will never forget!

And it came to pass when all the kings who were on this side of the Jordan, in the hills and in the lowland and in all the coasts of the Great Sea toward Lebanon–the Hittite, the Amorite, the Canaanite, the Perizzite, the Hivite, and the Jebusite–heard about it, that they gathered together to fight with Joshua and Israel with one accord. But when the inhabitants of Gibeon heard what Joshua had done to Jericho and Ai, they worked craftily, and went and pretended to be ambassadors. And they took old sacks on their donkeys, old wineskins torn and mended, old and patched sandals on their feet, and old garments on themselves; and all the bread of their provision was dry and moldy.  And they went to Joshua, to the camp at Gilgal, and said to him and to the men of Israel, “We have come from a far country; now therefore, make a covenant with us.”

Joshua 9.1-6

Have you ever made a mistake?  In Joshua 9, we saw that the Jews made a huge mistake in their dealings with the Gibeonites!  Remember, the Gibeonites had tricked the Jews by dressing up in old clothes and sandals and bringing old dry, moldy bread and worn-out wineskins.  They used all this as ‘evidence’ that they came from a far country, and thus the Israelites should make a peace treaty with them because they were not the enemy from the Promised Land.  What a bunch of lies!

And the Israelites fell for this trick because they ‘took some of their provisions; but they did not ask counsel of the LORD’ (Josh 9.14)!  And imagine how foolish the Israelites must have felt afterwards, when they found out they had been duped by the Gibeonites into making a monumental error!

Yet, the story doesn’t end here.  Even though they made a mistake, they didn’t allow that mistake to stop them.  Read the last verse of the chapter – ‘And that day Joshua made them woodcutters and water carriers for the congregation and for the altar of the LORD, in the place which He would choose, even to this day’ (Josh 9.27).  See what they did!?!  They made their ‘mistakes’ work for them!  The Gibeonites became woodcutters and water-carriers for the Jews!  They learned from their mistakes and turned it into something useful.

Perhaps that speaks to you – you’ve been taken off guard by the enemy.  He has tricked you into making a mistake and now you don’t know what to do.  Or perhaps the mistake was of your own doing – simply bad decision making.  Ask God to use your mistakes for your good.   For ‘we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose’ (Rom 8.28).  Our mistakes are not mistakes in God’s plan – they are opportunities to see God’s sovereignty and power at work!

Alexander Whyte writes – ‘No matter what mistakes we may make, the worst mistake of all is not to try again; for the victorious Christian life is a series of new beginnings’.

So don’t make the mistake of not trying again.  That’s what the enemy wants – for you to give up, to walk away in defeat.  Instead, learn from the mistake and put it to work for you!  And continue walking in faith with God!

In Phil 3.20, Paul tells us that we are citizens of Heaven.  And that is a glorious thought to meditate on!  But in 2Cor 5.20 Paul tells us that we are also ambassadors of Christ on earth!  See, not only are we citizens of heaven and foreigners on earth, but we are also ambassadors of Jesus while on earth.  Citizenship in heaven describes who we are and where we’re really from (I can hear some of you slapping your foreheads and exclaiming – ‘I knew he was from the heavens, from outer space!’).  But ambassadorship describes our duty while living here on earth.  It is what we are called to do while living here.  Look at some of the characteristics of ambassadorship…

Ambassadors must live in a foreign country, even though they are citizens of a home country.  That’s what they are called to do – live in the foreign country. They must also remember that it is a temporary home.  For the Christian, we are called to live on earth although it isn’t really home.  Our true home is heaven, we are in fact citizens of heaven.  But we live temporarily in a foreign land called earth (and yes, it does seem foreign at times!).

Ambassadors represent their homeland and its leader to others.  As Americans, we represent the USA the President.  As Kiwis, you represent NZ and the Prime Minister wherever you live.  And as citizens of heaven and ambassadors of Christ, we are to represent heaven and Jesus to others.

Ambassadors are under the authority of their home government, even though they temporarily live in foreign land.  For instance, a US ambassador must obey the US President – if he says leave, come home, then the ambassador must submit and obey.  Are we as Christians, submitted to our ultimate Authority, the Lord Jesus Christ?

Ambassadors are ultimately under the laws and customs of their home country.  We as citizens of heaven are not under laws and customs of earth – yes, we must respect and abide by them.  But ultimately, we are under the spiritual laws and principles of God’s Word.

Ambassadors should have a true love for and a loyalty to their homeland, its citizens, and what it represents.  In fact, they must defend it and them!  As citizens of heaven and ambassadors of Christ, do we have a true loyalty to heaven, its citizens (our brethren) and it’s Leader – the Lord?  Are we willing to defend heaven – to even die for it?  Are we willing to die for its King of kings and Lord of lords?

So remember, we are citizens of heaven!  But while we live on earth, we are also ambassadors of Jesus Christ! So let’s live out our identity and fulfill our duties!

If then you were raised with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ is, sitting at the right hand of God. Set your mind on things above, not on things on the earth.  For you died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. — Colossians 3.1-3 –

Over the last few days, I have been studying this biblical concept of sowing and reaping, and have been very challenged (and scared – see last point below) by what I have learned about this principle.  I have never really stopped to think about all the different aspects of this principle, but am glad I did!  As I said before, it’s a very challenging principle to live out daily!  Anyways, below are some highlights I have gathered during the study…

You reap WHAT you sow.  Apple seeds produce apples (not oranges).  Corn seeds produce corn (not kiwi-fruits).  Tomato seeds produce what?  Tomatoes, obviously!  At the creation of the world, God said let the grass, herb and tree reproduce ‘according to its kind’ (Gen 1.11).  And so it has been ever since (sorry evolutionists, that’s just the way it is)!

So if a person sows evil constantly, then eventually he/she will reap evil back, in the form of consequences, even direct judgment.  Yet, so many people (even Christians) sow in one field but want to reap in another!  They want to sow in the field of worldliness and sin, but they want to reap from the field of righteousness!

Take for example Princess Di and Mother Teresa – remember back in 1997, both ladies passed away in the same week in August?  Remember all the media Lady Di got – front page on every newspaper and magazine for weeks!  And Mother Teresa got perhaps a couple paragraphs in a few newspapers.  The first lady lived a life of often sowing to the flesh and the world.  (Yes, she did a lot for charities, but her personal life was pretty worldly, with her marital affair and divorce).  The second lady lived her life for others, sacrificing all.  She truly sowed love and compassion. 

And see, most people want to live like Princess Di in luxury and style, but die like Mother Teresa in sacrificial giving!  They want to sow to the world and the flesh but reap the blessings of sacrifice, compassion and love.  It don’t work that way – your reap what you sow!  The Bible says ‘For he who sows to his flesh will of the flesh reap corruption, but he who sows to the Spirit will of the Spirit reap everlasting life’ (Gal 6.6-10).

You reap AFTER you sow.  Harvest comes after the plowing and sowing.  You never reap before you sow, do you?!   No, you must plow the field, sow next and then you will reap in time, when the harvest is ready.  Not right away.

The Bible states ‘And let us not grow weary while doing good, for in DUE SEASON we shall reap if we do not lose heart’ (Gal 6.9 – my emphasis). There is an appointed time for harvest.  So when a person sows evil now, they might not reap judgment immediately because God is longsuffering and is waiting for people to repent.  But there is a future time when they will reap what they sow!

Yet, people mistake God’s longsuffering for acceptance.  They think that if God hasn’t done anything yet, then it must be ok; He must accept it!  No, nothing happens immediately because God is longsuffering and patient.  But in due season, when sin is ripe, God will judge and people will reap.

You reap MORE than you sow.  When you plant one apple or corn seed, do you simply reap one apple or one corn cob?  No, normally you reap more!  Likewise, when we sow evilness, in time, we will reap – and more!  The judgment and consequences can often be more than what was sown!

You might say – unfair!  But God is just; He will mete out discipline justly.  Think of it this way – if you sow tiny evils over a lifetime, it adds up.  So don’t be surprised when judgment comes, that it is intense.  It might seem like more than the sin, but actually, sin has been adding up for years.  This is what is implied when Hosea declares ‘They sow the wind and reap the whirlwind’ (Hosea 8.7).  For years Israel sowed sin and evil and soon they will reap the consequences of those years!  They sowed the wind, but soon will reap the whirlwind!

What are we sowing in our lives, marriages and families?  Are we sowing to the flesh or the Spirit?  This principle applies in the positive also – we can sow good things and reap blessings!  Maybe not immediately, but we will reap one day.  And more than we have sown!

So let us sow to the Spirit, let us sow goodness, kindness and compassion.  Let us sow truth, mercy and life!  Let us sow into the lives of our spouses, children, co-workers, neighbors, friends and acquaintances.  Let us not grow weary in doing good, for in due season we will reap the fruit of our faithful labors!

Well, to update you all on the whole visa application process – we have been officially invited to apply for our residents’ visas (got the invite while we were in the USA).  So we have been in the process of gathering all the documentation – medical exams, blood tests (so sick of blood tests and needles!), x-rays, police reports, employment history, finance, bank statements, birth certificates, high school and university diplomas and transcripts, etc. Lots of paperwork and things to do!

We even have to prove that we have been married AND living together for at least the last 2 years or so.  They want photographs of the two of us together at various functions, events, in public, etc.  Also bank statements showing we have a joint banking account and any other proof of our ‘commitment’ to each other over the length of our marriage.

So that’s where you can help us – if you by any chance have any photos of the two of us (Becky and me) together, could you email it to me?  And can you tell me where (occasion, event, location) and when (month and year).  And also pray that we can get all the paperwork turned in on time – we have until the beginning of Sept to get things turned in, but we would like to turn it in early, perhaps in mid-August.  Thanks for your help!

For all those who wanted the mp3 of the teaching that I did at our home church (CC Murrieta) while we were in the USA, here it is.  It was recorded during the 2nd service – and i think it was also live on the radio in SoCal on that day.  For those in Europe, this is a longer, more in-depth version of what I shared at CC Freiburg. Hope you enjoy it – it spoke to me!

David Pham – Isa 40.31 – 10.June.2012

For those of you who follow us on this blog and not on Facebook, here is the article that I mentioned last month (in case you are reading this on FB, don’t be confused – posts from our www.phamilynews.net blog automatically appear on FB also).

A Christian newspaper here in New Zealand interviewed me about the whole kidney donation process and how it all worked out.  It is similar to the article that came out in the Dom Post last month (click here).  But obviously, being a Christian newspaper, the Challenge Weekly article had more of a Christian perspective.

But in any case, here’s the article (click here).  Enjoy!  And yes, that IS Jello that I am eating in the photo from the article – one of my favorite foods!  Yum!

PS – here is a photo of the recipient and his wife and me that didn’t make it into the Challenge Weekly article.  Maybe they were afraid my mug might break the printing press?