December is closer than you think!

The last two months have been amazing for me. With a new director at CYC and new pastor and name at Life Church, Morris I have had a lot going on. Building relationships with Jon and Caleb and hoping to help and encourage them in their new ministries has been fun. God has really been blessing my time in Illinois.

He has also allowed me to spend time with the kids at CYC. They may not always realize it but they give me joy. Some of them are going through difficult times right now but they keep coming back to us. I think that CYC's most important jobs are to be a beacon of hope when life is hard and to show the love of Jesus to people that may not often feel loved and valued. What an incredible blessing it is to be able to serve them.

In a little over two months, my focus will shift again. I will once again be leaving the people and ministries that I love here to return to my friends in Guatemala and to serve alongside my second family. While I have been enjoying my time here, I know that God is calling me back there. I am sure that I will be sad to leave but look forward to see what the next year of ministry is going to look like. 

People ask why I have not settled in one place but continue to go back and forth. Next year, I do plan on spending more time in Guatemala and it feels like home when I am there but I think God is calling me to be flexible. The world needs Christians that are available to go wherever and I want to be one of those people. I love my family and friends in both places but want to not be set on determining where I am going to be. God has called us to be mobile.

When I was diagnosed with cancer a few years ago, the doctor told me that I had maybe 5  years so I should do everything that I intended to soon because I might not have an opportunity later. I never feared that I was going to die quickly but his words did help me to realize that we don't have a lot of time so we should find what God is calling us to and then be busy doing it. I have tried to embrace that idea

I will be leaving for Guatemala in a 2 short months but do not be surprised if you hear that I am trying to get a Guatemalan, American or mixed team together to go somewhere completely different. Time is short. God is moving and desires for us to move with Him. We miss out on great blessings when we become locked into a daily routine.

If you would like to support me in prayer or finances, contact me at thegeokr@yahoo.com or call me at 815-585-2844. I love to go and serve but it is only possible with your help. Thank you for all you have done and continue to do.

People Are Asking

People have been asking me what's next. I have been back in Illinois for three weeks and everybody is asking how long I am here and what I will be doing next. I guess I wear my heart on my sleeve when it comes to traveling and missions. (Guatemala) I have thought a lot about what is next and spent time praying and discussing my future with others that understand me. I wanted to take a little time and share with you where things are as of right now.

I have been travelling to Guatemala for many years and studied Spanish a little in that time but I still have room for much improvement. Right now, I can often have some very basic conversations and am able to communicate my needs. I am not able to speak or understand well enough to have in depth conversation or to clearly convey the love of Jesus with words. Because of that, much of my ministry is limited to showing love while others have to convey what needs to be said. It is time for that to change.

After Christmas, I am planning to go to language school. I will go for the month of January and continue until just before the first teams begin to arrive. While teams are there, I will work with them and when they have left in April, I will return to school instead of coming to the States. Hopefully this will help me to get over the hump in being able to be more fluent in Spanish and help me become more confident.

I still plan on working with teams and there will be months of construction projects to be completed. I am looking forward to being able to return to the schools and work on these things. I am even more excited for that chance to speak more easily to the people there. 

I will be needing to raise funds for this endeavor. It is the longest that I will have spent at only single time and would ask that you pray for me. God always provides. He has used many of you to help. I want to say "Thank You". In the near future, I will be writing support letters and asking for people to help cover the costs as I begin to know what they will be. 

Once again, thank you all for all you done to make everything possible to this point and I pray that you will consider continuing this  for the God's glory and to make His kingdom known in Guatemala.

What Next

The kids in Membrillal saying good bye to Candace

Well, I am back in Illinois and I have to say that in some ways it feels like I was gone for years but in others, it feels like I just left yesterday. I certainly have mixed emotions about my return. I missed my family and friends here and am grateful for the opportunities to reunite that I will have in the next few days. At the same time, I am missing Guatemala and my friends there. The upside to living in two different places is that I am surrounded by friends wherever I am. The downside is that I am only surrounded by some of them and am missing the others. I guess that is why this world could never be our home. We were designed for eternal relationship not separation.

This summer, I had the chance  to spend time with the kids at the schools more than any previous trip. I got to play with them and hopefully show them the love of a Heavenly Father that enjoys them. 

 There were several times that I was able to be at the schools without a specific construction task. The kids would come and just want to play, watch a video on the tablet or have me take pictures of them. I have tried to share some of them but no picture could do justice to the fun that I was having. I believe that in the future this playful expression of the Father's love will become a bigger part of what God is calling me to. I do not know exactly how that will look but I continually see kids reaching out for loving. playful attention. I am excited to see where this leads.

Summer Crew 2014

As for the future, I am not sure what it will be. Right now, I am thinking, planning and praying about where to go next and what to do. I cannot share all of my plans at this time but feel like the next step is to go to language school in January. I have gone before but went in an area that was heavily populated by English speakers and I did not become immersed. This time, I am praying about going to Quetzaltenango in January to begin studying. If I am going to be able to minister in word as well as action, I need to speak Spanish much better than I do right now. After that I would begin working with teams again.

Some of our Galilea Team

I am asking all of this to keep me in prayer. I need wisdom and discernment to know God's leading in all of this. He has a plan. I have seen glimpses. I know what is in my heart and believe that it is aligned with His will.Please pray that I am in step with God and His timing. Thank You for your continued love, encouragement, prayer and support.

The World Needs Fathers

One of my favorite speakers over the years is a man name Jack Frost. He died several years ago but his ministry on discovering the Father's love has spoken to me many times over the years. I loved being where he was because of the sense of confidence that came from him as he spoke. He was so free and secure in who his Father had made him that he was unreserved. There were times that I saw him come out into a crowd and sit on another man's lap just to make his point clear. He talked a lot about being at home in love. This is a message that I think everyone needs to hear.

This summer, the words of Jack Frost have really began to take root in my life. Another man, John Washko, came to my Church just before I was preparing to come to Guatemala in the Spring. He said that he felt like God was showing him a picture of me as Papa Jorge and that kids, needing a father would begin to come to me. As with any word that people give to me, I put it on the shelf and prayed about it. Throughout the spring, as I went to the schools kids would high five me or fist bump but that was about as deep as it got. When I came home for a few weeks, I wondered if I had missed something. I was a little sad.

WOW, did God have something in store that completely caught me off guard! These last few months, kids just came to me. When I was reading, they wanted to see everything that my tablet could do. When I was sitting, they wanted to play. No matter what my reason for being at the schools, the kids just came to me. One day, I spent about two hours under a pile of kids that just swarmed around me while I was trying to read. Another day, they wanted me to slide down the wooden ramp and life them up to hang on a suspended walkway. For hours these things went on. Now I am having to be careful where I am when I go to the schools so I am not disruptive to the class.

Some of these kids have no dad in their lives and others have dads that have to be away from home for long periods of time to find work but cannot afford to take the families with them. I am seeing the need for substitute fathers to step in here just as much as I am seeing it in Illinois. If kids are ever going to have a good view of God as a heavenly Father, they are going to need people to demonstrate what that looks like to them. My role right now is to show them an adult man that just loves them and enjoys being around them, in supervised conditions of course. There are enough predators around that they need to experience this in a safe, controlled environment.

At the same time, God is showing me fears and insecurities in my own life that He needs to deal with. He has shown me areas where I have had a love deficit that will keep me from effectively loving these kids in the way that He desires to show Himself through me. Play and spending time with them is a first step. There is a need for something deeper and more substantial for them and I am just a part. I need to let the Holy Spirit deal with every area of my life where His love in me would be  blocked so I can be totally free and then, I need to let that love pour out of me so that they can know Jesus and He can be glorified in us all.

How are you doing today at being a vessel for the love of God to fill and overflow? I  need some work. 

How Do You Navigate?

This week has not been a normal team week for me. Usually when there is a team here, I am with them all of the time. I eat with them, work with them and drive them where they are going. This week started with me being separate from them for the first two days during their work time. Monday, I needed to take Patricia and her friend Joan to Zapote. they needed to visit our projects along with the Church and school and I had a couple of small projects to complete there. Tuesday, I needed to take Joan to the airport while they were out working in Membrillal.Both of these days had me driving more than working but I am here to do whatever they need.

While I was driving, I was thinking about how navigating here is different than at home. In Illinois, most of our roads and city streets are laid out on a grid.Navigation is usually pretty straightforward and does not require a lot of thought. Here, nothing is straight. I am often a landmark navigator. I turn at this building. I need to be in the right lane when I go past this spot to be prepared for the lane split ahead. Often, I determine my position by where I am in relation to a certain volcano or mountain. 

Yesterday there was a detour on the highway. The detour is actually the route that I usually take but because the main road was closed there was long delays. Because of the delays, I decided to take a route that I did not know. I knew that the Agua Volcano was south of Antigua and that I needed to go east until I was almost past it and hen go north. As we went through narrow streets in towns that I was not familiar with, I questioned my decisions several times until I started seeing familiar things. Even though I was not sure exactly where I was, I kept following the things I knew. After about 15 minutes, the same amount of time it would have taken without a detour, I would up where I thought I would.

This led me to ask: How does God lead me as I navigate through life? Is His word stored away so that I can call it up at the time I need it for a particular situation? Have I spent focused quiet time becoming familiar with the still small voice that the Holy Spirit usually uses?  Am I familiar enough with the way that I think to know the difference between my thoughts and Spirit inspired thinking? How many ways have I allowed God to develop in me so that I can discern where He is leading?

Just like I need to learn different ways of navigation that require different skills in Illinois and Guatemala, I need to allow God to develop different skills of discerning His will in me. Knowing and understanding Scripture is important. It is the basis for all discernment. Without sound Biblical understanding, we cannot trust anything else that we may here. We need to develop good Biblical knowledge just like we need to study a map before we go to a place and get lost. We also need to learn to distinguish the Holy Spirit speaking to us in thought, song, audible voice, impression or through others. If we do not learn and allow God to develop these things in us, we will frequently be wandering around trying to figure out the next step in life. If we develop these things, we can confidently take just the step that is in front of us at the moment, knowing that God will give us what we need after that when it is time. We no longer need to stress. We can rest in the leading of God and continue on until He tells us it is time to turn.

How are you navigating life today?

The Lost World

Lately, I have been asking why there is so much work going into the proclamation of the Gospel and yet there is often little fruit. The Good News of the Kingdom of God should transform everything that it touches. There is no better word than that Jesus came to seek and to save that which is lost. Not only that but He came bringing a Spirit of adoption so we could be restored to our rightful place as children of God. It seems like our societies are not only not being transformed but they are becoming more openly hostile to this Good News. Are we doing something wrong?

The first thing that came to me is that we are not pursuing unity. I am often comfortable with Christians that agree with me but have little fellowship with those who come from a different tradition or understanding than me. I tend to hold to what I have been taught and cling to the limited revelation that I have without allowing myself to see that others may have a different understanding of something than me and they may be the one that is right. I am not advocating abandoning truth but rather being open to the idea that God may not reveal all truth to any one person or group. Someone else may be given a revelation of something that I may not have received. If I don't acknowledge, honor and learn from them, I will have a more limited view of the truth of God. He created us to need one another.

You might ask how this hinders our proclamation of the Gospel. First,they see us as hypocrites and phonies. Because we do not work together in spite of our differences, They believe we are not following the one true God. The rift that exists because of our different understandings keeps the world from seeing past us to the see the God we serve. When the disciples approached Jesus about those who were speaking about Him but were not with them, Jesus said that whoever was not against Him was for Him. How could they speak against Him if they were doing miracles in His name. We need to adopt this attitude in the body. Even if someone is not in our fellowship or tradition, we need to publicly bless them because there is One Lord over all of us.

Secondly, they do not see love from us toward our brothers and sisters when we do not get past our differences to proclaim His truth corporately. When we look for reasons to be divided, the lost world will pick up on  that. They already experience enough separation and rejection. Why would they want to be part of a body that claims to love Jesus yet cannot get along with one another. The world has enough strife without the Church adding to it. This theme is repeated in almost every chapter of 1 John. We need to take it to heart.

The other thing that has really struck me is how devoid of emotion much of my Christian walk is. I know the truth of God on an intellectual level. I study His word and know that it is true but I am unwilling to let my senses be overwhelmed by His majesty, glory, might, beauty or even terror. God is so much more than my finite mind can comprehend but yet He wants me to experience Him fully. Emotions and senses are to be as much a part of our Christian walk as intellect. His Spirit in me wants to work through all of these areas. How can God possess all of me if I do not allow these things to be involved in my walk with Him. The world needs to hear truth but they also need to see people overwhelmed by the bigness of God and not ashamed to let it be seen. Surrendering all of me means that God gets to reveal Himself to the world through every aspect of the life He has given me. 


We are between teams this week and this is what I have been thinking about the last few days. I have started to write this a few times but have to start over because I realized that my tone was one of accusation and that is the exact opposite of my desire. If you read this and you feel accused, I pray that you will know it is not my intention. What I am writing is born out of a conviction that God has placed in me over the last few days and months. If this causes you to question, I hope you do not feel condemned but rather, you come away with a feeling of hope for where God is leading.

Together as one in the proclamation of the Gospel.

Hard Work

There are many things that people think of when they think of missions. Often you have an image of sharing the Gospel through a translator, doing music and skits, preaching, and other similar things. These are part of missions, a very important part. What is overlooked though is that there are a lot of other things that go into missions that are just hard work or maybe a lot of down time.

Over the course of the last week, I have spend several days working in a town where the temperature flirts with the 100 degree mark daily, torn down a roach infested house, built two new houses, made 3 trips to the airport and one to the emergency room with a sick team member and spent a day in Antigua waiting while team members shopped in a market that I have been to countless times. These are all part of an ordinary week. sometimes, the only time that I share the Gospel is in conversations that I have with team members.

You might ask why those things are important or why am I wasting so much time with such little impact. The answer is because a lot goes into to preparing the way for the Gospel to be shared. Sometimes you have to build trust with people so that they will listen to what you have to say. Other times, people want to know that you love them before you can have any influence in their lives. You always have to help the people look after the people that come to help you out. None of these things is what you typically think of when the word missions is said.

Just like everything in life, missions is suppose to be about bringing glory to God above all and secondarily about helping Him bring people into His kingdom. If my goal is to accomplish a certain task, I will be frustrated often. My goal has become to ask God to show me how to do everything for His glory and to do it in a way that allows people to see Him in me. I am sometimes tired, sore, or bored but I have learned that I can have joy in the midst of it all. My job is to position myself in a place that Jesus can work through me. Do the things He gives me to do without complaining and do it to the best of my ability. If I can keep my eyes focused on Jesus, anything I do will build His kingdom.