God's protection

just got this from my dad in swaziland. something he wrote after a harrowing experince yesterday. if you ever wondered if your prayers for missionaries make a difference, you really need to read this.



A highway intersection.

Two cars totaled in the crash.

Four lives at risk. God intervened and nobody was seriously hurt. Our awesome God protected Jean and me and the other young couple.

Every time a sore muscle makes us wince we are vividly reminded how quickly lives can change and how fragile life is—and how awesome our God is.

We were returning up the mountain to our home in Mbabane after Jean had spoken at a staff meeting of the ladies that help us feed the children at the Children’s Cup Care Points. It had been a great meeting as Jean and the staff discussed the challenges and opportunities of caring for some of the neediest children in the world. Jean told me later that in spite of the spiritual “high” all morning she had a deep urging in her spirit to be in prayer against an accident.

I’m so glad she obeyed.

When we got home one of our Swazi employees told us he had felt the need to pray for us this morning, too.

And because I know how God does things, I’m sure some of you had been praying, too.

It happened at noon Swazi time, which is 5AM Louisiana time—6 hours ago as I write this.

I don’t pretend to understand why the accident was allowed, but I’m sure God will be glorified because of it. It really is true that God will take the worst thing that can happen to you and make it the best thing for you. Right now our sore muscles and the need to replace our vehicle try to challenge this belief in me—but I know it’s true.

I’m writing this to thank you and to encourage you to pray for us and every missionary you know. It truly is a violent warfare when you invade the devil’s strongholds to rescue souls from his clutches.

You may remember that just a few weeks ago a lady helping us clear the brush at our Mozambique Mercy Center site was bitten by a black mamba—one of the deadliest snakes in the world. The doctors said she could not live but she survived and will have total recovery!

I’m believing that in answer to the reserves of your prayers and ours God will guide us through the legal and insurance aftermath of this incident. With our confidence in our prayer-answering Jesus, Jean and I and the ‘Cup Team will press forward into the fray—not with a cavalier or giddy disregard for the enemy, but in the sure knowledge that “Greater is He that is in us than he that is in the world.”

The eternal souls of hurting little ones are worth the investment and the risk!

lifechurch.tv - way to go! (more)

i talked with bobby gruenewald from life church in oklahoma on the phone last night about some stuff, part of it being their new open source for messages on their website. you can read my first post about it here.

i'm obviously a big fan of what they did with it. but here's the real reason for for this second post about it: bobby told me the reason they're doing it is because they want to do whatever they can to help get the message out. it isn't about their name or their money. whatever they have to invest to make it work, that's what they want to do - as long as it is helping churches, they want to invest in making it work for those churches.

that's such a right way to think. it just reminded me again why i think God is blessing their church so much. their focus is spreading the Gospel. they've kept the main thing the main thing.

so again, i say - way to go, bobby and the rest of you pseudo-yankees up in oklahoma.

this makes me sick (but thankful for the team i'm a part of)

there's a post on aley and elizabeth demarest's blog from the donaldsonville campus about a lady they've been helping. those of you that know me know that i don't throw around the "mission field in our own back yard" term lightly. a large portion of my family risks their lives daily to work in southern africa with aids orphans - i've been there and i've seen how bad it is there. there's nothing like it here in the US.

that was what i thought until i read this story. if you want to know why hpc does things the way we do, caring for the poor and hurting, this will make it really clear.


the young lady who used to call this shed "home" matters to God and so do her babies. it will be well worth the couple minutes it will take you to read the story.

click here to read the story.

ever wonder why you should send your kid to stuff at the church?

okay, so this is probably at least as much an unabashed boasting on my part about what is going on in my own daughter's life, but i think there is a decent encouragement in this whole deal for other parents out there.

check out tori's post on her blog about amplified (a weekend in-town retreat that refuge and pathfinders - the student ministries at hpc hosted recently).

lifechurch.tv - way to go!

life church in oklahoma (and probably someplace near you) is one of the coolest churches around - and they've got so much going right in how they see church. they have just launched an area on their website where you can find just about everything they've ever done as far as message series go - free for the taking. rather than charging for what they've invested to create, they are making it all free aparently because they are more concerned with building the Kingdom than they are with the cost.

we've been doing this for quite a while at hpc but nothing of this scale. all our sermons (podcasts, streaming audio, streaming video and even some transcripts) from weekends and wednesdays are on our website free for the taking, but what these guys have done is so much more than just making it available - they've got a search engine on it that is amazingly helpful, among other things.

now, i know this represents quite a huge investment of their time and resources to make this available - and to ask for nothing in return other than the hope that it will help build the Kingdom - that's cool of them.

way to go, bobby greunewald and all of y'all up there where the "NOK Hornets" are hanging out this year.

brian burnham

a friend of mine from highschool is a missionary in papua new guinea with new tribes mission. he is the brother of martin burnham who was killed by terrorists after being held hostage with his wife gracia in the southern part of the philippines. brian and i graduated from faith academy near manila back in 1984. when i met brian back in first grade, he was the "bully" i went home and told my mom i was afraid of. i still don't know to this day whether that was a deserved accusation or not. but i do know now that he is one of the hardest-working missionaries i know. he is giving all he has to his family (which as you'll see below is no small task - 9 kids) and he's giving it all to the calling of God on his life to reach people in papua new guinea.

i'm posting this because i feel really strongly that some of you ought to consider adding brian and his family to your missions giving. if you want the real-deal, front-line, no messing around, all-about-God type of missionary to get behind, here you go. and even if you can't afford to add them to your giving, at least shoot them an email (click here) and let them know you'll begin helping to hold the line for them in prayer.

Burnham Bulletin
The Newsletter of Brian and Arlita Burnham
Ministering with New Tribes Mission Aviation in Papua New Guinea
March 2006


Joel Daniel and Nicole Courtney Burnham, 3 days old

ADDITIONS!!! On January 31, 2006, we welcomed Joel and Nicole as the newest members of our family. Joel Daniel was born at 12:01 a.m., weighing 6 lbs. 1 oz. and was 18 ≤ inches. Nicole Courtney was born at 12:27 a.m., weighing 7 lbs. 7 oz. and was 19 inches.


New House: Lord willing, we will be buying the house pictured above from New Tribes Mission Aviation when we return to Papua New Guinea. This will allow our family to have more space to live and it will allow us to have a place to store our household furnishings when we come to the States for “home assignment”’ in four years. NTMA is asking $25,000. We currently have $12,000 towards the purchase of the house.

We hope to return to PNG on June 2nd, arriving in Goroka on June 4th. Here are some of the things that we have planned for the next couple months: speak in our home church in Rose Hill, a visit from Arlita’s folks, finish up the school year, pack, a trip to Mississippi to speak in a supporting church, pack, a trip to Florida for Jeff Burnham’s wedding (Gracia’s oldest son), finish packing and fly back to Papua New Guinea.

Prayer and Praise:
1. PRAISE: We have half of the money needed to buy the house in PNG. PRAY that God will provide the other half.
2. PRAISE: Joshua’s eyes have improved and no surgery is necessary!
3. PRAY: We need to pay for tickets to return to PNG in June. The cost is around $11,000 (the same price we flew home for last year, which is amazing with the rise in fuel costs).
4. PRAISE: God gave us another set of twins. We are grateful that they arrived safely and are healthy.

Thanks once again for supporting us and praying for us. HAPPY EASTER! He is risen!

Forever in His care,
Brian and Arlita Burnham
Melissa, Nate, Megan, Micah, Caleb, Joshua, Jonathan, Joel & Nicole

Gifts: New Tribes Mission
1000 E. First Street
Sanford, FL 32771-1487

Mail: Burnhams, PO Box 38, Whitewater, KS 67154
Email: Brian_Burnham@ntm.org
Phone: 316-799-1263

bad idea... bad idea.... (i find this hilarious)

from our recent amplified weekend - j high and high schoolers at the end of a service gathering around the front for some slammin' worship.

and then......

eddie geurra stage dive video clip

tyler is on the mic - if you know tyler, you know how "tyler" that whole thing is - "wow.... that was amazing. wow."

thanks eddie. i hope you're okay.

(also, for what it's worth, i just found out that my daughter was one of the kids that cleared out of the way. she told me that some of the kids actually did catch eddie's arms, but it was too late for his back side.)

west palm beach (day 1)

well, we did the first round of talks today at the multi-site gathering with leadership network. it is being facilitated by none other than geoff surratt and greg ligon.

mark batterson - a punk kid?

mark batterson and a couple guys from his staff up at ncc in washington d.c. are here (joel schmidgall and dave clark) and they brought with them a lot of - well i see it as "cool factor," but another guy in the gathering put it this way:

"i look at you (mark) and i see some punk kid who just went out there and started doing something...."

now, mark has gotten his fair share of not-so-nice commentary lately - i think largely for being so successful in thinking of ways to reach people (they just don't like how he's doing it). but this comment (i don't think) was meant in a negative way at all. i think it was actually meant as a compliment. whatever the intent, i think mark and joel and dave all were sharp enough to take it as such, knowing that "just getting out there and doing something" is probably what many churches would love to be able to do. it certainly gave them a chance to live up to the statement on the back of dave's theaterchurch t-shirt:



mark batterson - a punk kid.

and they're mine

drives me crazy they're so cute.

thoughts on amplified this past weekend

and a couple pics....

my daughter tori and my oldest son jd went to amplified this past weekend (an in-town retreat put on by hpc's student ministries. christine caine from hillsong was the speaker and they had a bunch of cool stuff for everybody to be involved in - like an outreach at a st. patrick's day parade for the high schoolers.


tori getting checked in at amplified (ok you probably can't tell which on is her - c'mon, it's just a cell phone camera


jd waiting for his friend joe david wilkerson to get checked in (the pic is upside-down because i wanted you to see what i had to go through to even get a picture of him - sneaky dad.


jp giving the high schoolers instructions before the parade outreach - "if it starts raining, DON'T RUN." sounded really funny to hear it, but actually, it was a very smart thing to tell them. jp gained a bunch of my trust with that one line.

i got to sit in on some of the closing night's wrap-up altar service. kids giving testimonies like we used to see at youth camps back in the eighties. it was really cool to see that it got beyond the cool stage (which was VERY cool) and the lights and smoke and fun and all that - those things created an environment (as they should) for people to encounter God - and they did. kids met God this weekend.

tyler (pathfinders), dr. tweeze (refuge), and all your teams - thanks for doing what you do. thanks for going the third, fourth, eighteenth and fiftieth miles for the sake of our kids.


dr. tweeze with a dude named brance who got caught up in the moment and tried to mosh his way through the sanctuary wall. the wall won, but it did take a good beating. i know we don't need to go tearing up the sanctuary, but i'm definitely glad we've got enough excitement going on here that a teenager would be dancing that hard.

i also heard a story - rumor has it that there's a video of it - about eddie guerra taking a try at stage diving that didn't work out so well.... (with tyler's voice in the background saying, "no! bad idea, bad idea.... oh man.... wow."

i guess you'll have to bug lance to get him to upload the video on his blog.