Let me share with you one precious memory from my young days in the "boot camp" of New Tribes Mission in PA. The name with its military ring is now history.  Part of the training schedule was so and so many days living and fellowshipping together in a primitive "jungle camp" set-up in a suitable e forest at the beautiful Susquehanna River.

A strange fatigue tormented me at that time the cause of which may have been depressive assaults on my young soul apparently coming from nowhere.  Anyway, to this jungle camp came on a visit a leader of NTM, Ken Finney, who had days of very good teaching with us where his message was the cross and our relationship to the cross.

Ken Finney had been a missionary in Venezuela and was also an educated pilot and he was  easy to get along with.  I remember how he mingled with us in the "boys´ dorm" and showed us how to wrap up the meat of a killed racoon in clay and put it on an open fire for so and so many hours.  We had with him a nice tasty racoon feast.

Back to his teaching.  His emphasis was how the cross keeps us low before God and makes us stay before Him as "Just as I am without one plea..."  (That he  would often quote).  His teaching was balm to my soul.  I confided in him how clumsy I felt when thinking of a foreign field. "Dont worry, you´ll be surprised how helpful the natives are", he said.

I never came to the real jungle.  I later told another good leader, Mel Wyma, in 1971, how my failure preyed on my mind.  But he said cheeringly, "But you are part of us!"  He certainly ministered grace to me and it again dawned on me how that the humiliating experience of the cross  keeps me low and may not take me where my heart directed me.
 
But some day "the purposes of the heart" will be disclosed  - "then each one will receive his recommendation from God"  (1. Cor. 4:5). By the way, these  words were said when Paul was belittled by judgmental critics.

God moves in a mysterious way His wonders to perform. Sing it with me!

July 5, 2019 - jn