Project Description

MOVE, (Missionary Outreach Volunteer Evangelism) is a volunteer-staffed, faith-based missionary training school located near Orange Walk, Belize. MOVE exists to inspire, equip and mobilize missionaries to meet practical needs and give the three angels' messages of hope and warning to all the world in these end times. The mission reports posted here are stories of MOVE missionaries from all around the world, as well as updates from our campus.

Tuesday, September 24, 2013

How God used an unskilled pathfinder club to convert 25 soldiers...



Mr. Warren McDaniels, director of Familia Feliz boarding school visited us about a week ago and shared this exciting story. God is working in powerful ways to take the last message of warning to a world facing it's last moments. He can use anyone, even a newly-formed pathfinder club that doesn't know how to march! As soldiers of the cross, too many of us find ourselves as ignorant of the appropriate maneuvers for these last days as the children in Mr. Warren's story. But God in His mercy will still use us, if we are willing to get out there and work and depend on Him. May God give us wisdom to plan and boldness to do! Maranatha!

Pathfinders with soldiers

Independence day parade

Marching between the soldiers



Warren with the colonel

Recruits respond to a call during evangelistic meetings in the army base


Tuesday, September 03, 2013

A Short Illustration

On the bus today, I observe a flamboyant moneybag, spun with the bright woolen yarns of the highlands, hanging from the rear-view mirror. From the mouth of the bag cascades a collage of colorful bills from the strongest international currencies interspersed with the best of the local cash. Five hundred Euros, $1000, 200 bolivianos: such a wistful display of would-be wealth. I am struck by the fact that the greatest argument against the veracity of those monies is their blatant exhibition. Even from afar, before the boldfaced print “This note is not legal tender” becomes visible, everyone knows it’s fake. What fool would believe that that moneybag was for real? I laugh as I picture a thief greedily swiping the bag on his way out. Yet suddenly it strikes me that someone actually exchanged real money for that beautiful sham!
We all know intuitively that real treasures are hidden. So what can we say for the dazzling displays of entertainment, wealth, riches, and power and position that we find sprawled all around us? Why do we fall for it? Does not common sense alone dictate that this tantalizing smorgasbord of pleasure, fame, and fortune that the world proffers us is nothing but a cheap, hollow, rip-off? Yet we give our time, energy and health for it. We exchange our souls for it. Don’t you think its time we started pursuing the true riches?

Monday, September 02, 2013

When it all seems worth it


“Therefore, my beloved brethren, be ye stedfast, unmoveable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as ye know that your labour is not in vain in the Lord.” 1 Cor 15:58
“And let us not be weary in well doing; for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not.” Gal 6:9

Often there are moments in this work when I wonder if I am not really just wasting my efforts. In vain the classes, in vain the personal counseling, in vain the sweat, the prayers, the long hours. There is nothing romantic about being a volunteer missionary teacher at a boarding school like this one. It is hard, often thankless work, and at times there seems to be little progress to speak of. In such moments God’s promises like 1 Corinthians 15:58, and Galations 6:9 comfort and reanimate my spirit.
And then every so often God lets me see or hear a little something that gives me motive to keep pressing on. Like what Henri told Cornelio. Henri is a freshman this year, a clear-eyed country lad from a village about 12 kilometers distant.
“Teacher, this place is different!” He enthused after seeing God provide food for us yet again. “God actually answers prayer here, you can see it!”

“Why don’t you kids just listen to the voice of experience!”
“But he forsook the counsel which the old men gave him, and took counsel with the young men that were brought up with him, that stood before him.” 2 Chronicles 10:8
 
Riiiing! My wife and I both woke up to the sound of her cellphone. I wasn’t sure how long I had been sleeping, or what time it was.
“You answer” Lyli handed me the phone. I didn’t recognize the number.
“Hola?” Nothing but silence. “Hola?” I tried again. “I can’t hear anything.” Finally I hung up. The wrong number? A bad connection? Or just a prank call perhaps? The hour read 12:32 a.m.: way too early for these kind of shenanigans. I handed the phone back to my wife and rolled over to go back to sleep. It seemed a matter of mere minutes when the phone rang again but when I looked at the time it was five minutes after one. Again I was the designated answering service.
“Is teacher Ruan there?” a young female voice asked.
“Teacher Ruan?” who on earth could be calling I wondered. “Teacher Ruan hasn’t been here for almost two years now.” I found myself thinking out loud. “He is working at another mission project now. Is there something I can help you with? Who is this?”
“That doesn’t matter. Sorry to bother you.” Was all she said, followed by a click and the buzz of the dial tone.
Puzzled, I asked my wife who it could be, but neither of us recognized the voice. I was too tired to spend much time thinking about it, and I gave the phone back to my wife, quite sure that whoever it was wouldn’t call back again. Wrong. A few minutes later the phone rang again.
“Teacher Kody, don’t be angry.” I must have been still waking up, because I missed her next words: “I’m about to do something bad." Fortunately Lyli was listening too. Nothing escapes her and she clued me in afterward. 
"I wanted to talk to teacher Ruan, but since he’s not there I can talk to you?” I was almost wide-awake by now and her plea melted my heart.
“Of course, I am happy to listen” I assured her.
“I remember everything about the internado from the four years I spent there, I remember everyone, all my friends and classmates, Damaris, Joel, Alcides, the teachers, teacher Helen, Clint, Mindy, Ruan, Monica, teacher Keila. So many things I learned there, I should have paid attention, oh how I wish I could be there again, some day I will come visit!” By this time I had narrowed down to a couple of possibilities who this was, but the voice was still elusive. I sensed I shouldn’t try to press her too much for information, so I simply assured her of the love and mercy of Jesus, that he still has plans for her and to not give up to discouragement and temptation for we have a mighty redeemer, and I could hear her crying softly. When I offered to have prayer with her, she accepted, and I know God gave me the words.
“Thank you teacher Kody,” she said.
“It’s nothing. If there’s anything else we can do, please don’t hesitate to call.”
Based on everything she told us, my wife and I decided it must have been Albricia, a student who spent her four years here but never graduated because of problems she got into during her senior year. She left the school and continued down the same road until reality slapped her in the face. Like so many girls here, she is now a single mom, facing the daunting task of raising a child alone. We continue to pray for her.
A few weeks after vacation, two former students, Max and Juan Carlos, came to pay us a visit. Neither of them could stop smiling and they ended up staying for almost two weeks, helping out in the chaco, and even teaching a few classes. They both took me up on the opportunity to share with the kids for worship, and Max accepted the invitation to preach on Sabbath. Their message in a nutshell was, “take advantage of your time here, learn all you can from your teachers, don’t think that life is better out there in the world. We’ve tried it, and we wish we would have listened.”

            What Max and Juan Carlos said sounds similar to a few speeches I’ve made in class this year.  The message resonates with me especially as I reflect on how God must look at me. I honestly don't know how He is so patient. When will I learn to take advantage of God’s daily instruction? When will I learn to render a complete obedience and to take His Word for everything it offers? "Oh Kody, Kody, Kody! Hear the WORD of the Lord"* Jeremiah 22:29. That verse packs an especially powerful punch for me as I meditate on the almost exasperated urgency in that three-fold appeal. It reminds me of those powerful messages in Revelation chapter 14, messages that we can't afford to spurn. Oh that God will cure us, that we be not among the willful deaf! That we may claim his promise to give us the ear of the learned! (Isaiah 50:4)

 *I have personalized the original verse which says "Oh earth, earth, earth." So you can put your name in there too! That's God's plea to all of us right now. That's what the flying, shouting angels with their solemn warnings  in Revelation 14 are all about.