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.

Saturday, July 12, 2014

One book, three stories.


The Great Controversy should be very widely circulated. It contains the story of the past, the present, and the future. In its outline of the closing scenes of this earth's history, it bears a powerful testimony in behalf of the truth.”[i]

As if Scripted! 7-9-2014
           I have been so grateful to have a part-time job this summer with Jim and Barbara, a very nice couple who moved here from New York. This morning Grandma prayed that God would turn my new job into a missionary endeavor. I prayed that I would not miss any opportunities to illustrate the goodness of my God, and for special wisdom to include some words about spiritual realities in today's conversation with my employers. These are prayers I should pray every day, for too often I am like Hezekiah and talk about myself when I should be talking of my Savior![ii]
            So at work today, I met Scotty, a real estate agent and private contractor who is building an addition on Jim’s garage. We introduced ourselves briefly and then went about our business. Around noon I was on my way inside for lunch, when Scotty called to me from his truck where he was taking his meal. The conversation that followed couldn’t have gone better had it been scripted![iii]
            “Hey Kody, where are you from?”
            “I’ve been living in Bolivia the last several years.”                       
            “Really? What do you do in Bolivia?”
            “I teach high school.”
            “What classes do you teach?”
            "Let’s see, language, philosophy, government, geography, history...”
            “Wow! So you must be fluent in Spanish then! What kind of history do you teach? I bet it’s not U.S. history!” he laughed.
            “No!” I laughed with him.
            “Do you teach Bolivian history?”
            “Well, not too much, it’s more like world history...”
            And this is where I usually would have stopped my description of my senior history class and the conversation would have moved on to other things. But today it was as if God gave me my next words as clear as a teleprompter, and for a few priceless moments turned our simple chitchat into a conversation of things eternal.
            “…I actually have a really cool textbook that I use, it’s one of my favorite books called The Great Controversy” the words came naturally.
            The Great Controversy?” Scotty repeated, intrigued.
            “It covers the history of the Christian church from the time of the Roman emperors all the way down to the late 1800’s when the book was written. The last section of the book covers major prophecies from the scripture, and talks about the role of the U.S. in prophecy.”
            “Wow, that sounds really interesting!” Scotty enthused.
            “It is! It’s a great read. I’m sure I have an extra copy I’d be happy to lend you if you’d like.”
            “Yeah! That’d be great!”[iv]
            We chatted a few more minutes about where we have lived and where we went to school. Scotty grew up in Orofino (as did I), then went away to college in another state and got through debt-free by fishing in Alaska every summer. Now he works multiple jobs, owns his own business, and saves money so he will be able to help his three little kids get through college debt-free someday too!
            After my conversation with Scotty I joined Jim and Barb upstairs for lunch. And wouldn’t you know it, right on cue, we had our first discussion on religious things. I don’t even remember how it started, but Barb mentioned that she and Jim are not religious people (I had already picked that up) and began to share her experience of going to different religious private schools as a kid and how she was always shunned, or treated differently because she wasn’t a member of the group. So that left a bad taste in her mouth. Then Jim commented with a touch of bitterness that most of the wars throughout the ages have been religious ones.
            “You are right, and that is unfortunate, but it is only what we can expect, considering the origin of war.” I said.  
            “What is the origin of war?” Barb asked with interest.
            “The Bible tells us that the first war ever happened in heaven! Kind of sounds like an oxymoron right, war in heaven?”
            “Yeah!”
            “But that’s what happened. The Bible says that Lucifer, the created being with the highest position who was closest to God, began to be proud of his beauty and power and began to covet the place of God himself! Eventually he rebelled and then blamed the war on God. Now he has brought that war here and he still uses the same tactics! What better strategy than to get professed Christians to fight and kill each other! A lot of honest people look at that and say ‘if your God is like that I want nothing to do with him!’ So Satan, the adversary, is still causing all sorts of carnage and blaming it on God!”
            Several more times throughout the conversation God gave me opportunity to drop little seeds that I pray will germinate and grow. Please keep me in your prayers as I continue to work here for the next few months, that I will honor God consistently in my work and conversation.

Flea Market Colporteur 6-15-2014

            Last June while I was home I decided I needed to get rid of some of my stuff and free up more storage space for my parents.  A cousin referred me to a flea market about 30 minutes from home where you can rent two tables for $20 and sell to your heart’s content! So Lyli and I drove down one Sunday with all our wares: some kettles, old SCUBA gear, a few items of furniture from my college apartment, and several boxes of books. Amid the books I noticed I had an extra copy of The Great Controversy, and I sent up a quick prayer that that book would not come home with me.
            God, please send a buyer for that book who will actually read it!
            Lyli and I both prayed that God would bless our market venture not only financially, but spiritually. The venue proved to be well worth the $20 on both accounts! In a couple of hours we had sold over half of our stuff, and every buyer took a free GLOW tract along with their purchase. The sun was quite hot by this time, however, and the stream of shoppers began to diminish in both quantity and zeal, and there were still three items I really wanted to sell before we had to leave at noon: my desk, a small table and The Great Controversy. So we bowed our heads again and asked God to send buyers for the furniture and the book.
            About this time a young Hispanic fellow began searching through my books, picking up first one, and then another.
            “How much are your books?” he asked.
            “Well, it depends! I have books from $1 all the way up to $15” I responded. “Do you read much?”
            “Oh yeah, I love to read!” He continued browsing, and suddenly I noticed that he was looking at The Great Controversy! I thought this must be my cue. Lyli thought so too, and while I talked, she prayed. 
            “That is an excellent book!” I encouraged. “It’s one of my all-time favorites! I would never sell it except I have more than one copy!”
            “Really? What’s it about?” With that invitation, I launched into a sales pitch for the book that I learned years ago while working the streets of the greater Fresno area. Yet for all my eloquence, the young man put down the book and continued to look at some others. Lyli kept praying, and I kept talking. After a gander at a few other titles, the man made his decision. Seizing The Great Controversy he said, “I’ll take this one. How much?”
            “Good choice!” I affirmed, and offered him a price he couldn’t refuse.
            “I look forward to reading it!” he said. 
            Someday I expect I will hear the rest of that story: hopefully when he drops by to visit me in the hanging gardens around my tree-house cottage outside the New Jerusalem! 

How Igor the Engineer came to visit

“God gave me the light contained in The Great Controversy and Patriarchs and Prophets and this light was needed to arouse the people to prepare for the great day of God, which is just before us. These books contain God's direct appeal to the people. Thus He is speaking to the people in stirring words, urging them to make ready for His coming. The light God has given in these books should not be concealed.”--CM 128, 129.  {PM 357.1} 

            This story happened in 2011 at the school in Bolivia. I always wanted to share it, but finally finished writing it to complete this trilogy.
            Igor is an engineer crew chief from the road construction company that built the highway in front of our school. Rumor has it that Route 8 is part of a transcontinental thoroughfare that will connect Brazilian ports on the Atlantic with their Peruvian counterparts on the west coast. Igor began to visit our school occasionally after he met Ruan, our director at that time. Several times he showed up during the lunch hour because he wanted to experience the vegetarian cuisine, quite a novelty for the average Bolivian!  
            One day when we were expecting him to visit, we had the kitchen crew make something special, but he never showed up. The next morning I was at work and I thought about Igor and prayed for him. At lunchtime I saw his truck pull up! I hadn’t planed on eating in the cafeteria, but I felt impressed to go sit at his table and make conversation. That was not difficult, as Igor had plenty of interesting things to say. He was educated, amiable, and well mannered, and he spoke with ease about his varied experiences in many circles amid the wealthy and the powerful. I quickly realized that as a highway builder, he was well informed with the political, social and economic structures of his country, and necessarily of the world abroad as well.
            “The Chinese are crazy man. They offered me work but they said, if you come to work for us you won’t ever leave, and I thought, man, I’d rather work for the Bolivians. They pay less, but at least I’ll be at peace!” he laughed.      
            “Bolivia is changing,” he continued. “It’s not the country that it used to be.”
            He asked about what things are like in the U.S. We explained how the U.S. is changing a lot too. Ever since 9/11, it has been one thing after another. Recently, the economy is in dire straights. In general, society walks on its head and we seem to be headed toward some inevitable crisis.
            “What do you guys believe about the end of the world?” The candidness of his question caught me by surprise, and I breathed a quick prayer for assistance. After he heard an abbreviated version of Adventist eschatology, he said:
            “It’s like Ellen White says…”
            What? Like Ellen White says? I barely refrained from bursting out loud. I was so surprised to hear him mention her name that the last half of what he said didn’t even register! As it turned out, Igor has read The Great Controversy, the book that tells the history of God’s people in the dark ages, the story of the birth of the Adventist Movement during the Great Religious Awakening of the 1840’s, the role of the United States in bible prophecy, the mark of the beast, and the second coming of Christ! He had bought the book from a colporteur.
Igor has been back to eat vegetarian several times this year. He is always so friendly, and he wants to finish the runway for us.
            “You should call my boss in Cochabamba” he would say every time he talked to Ruan. When Ruan called and mentioned Igor’s name he was given immediate recognition. An arrangement for the donated time of company machinery for the runway, however, has never materialized.
            “I love how this place is like one big happy family” Igor exclaimed during one visit. I can only thank God for anything positive he has seen, and for hiding from him our many imperfections, at least for now!
Igor was here again last Friday (June 3) and brought his mom with him. When I went to say hi, he introduced me.
            “I brought my mom here to see the happy people!” he grinned.
            As it turned out, his mom had much more pressing business.
            After hearing from her son about our school, she wanted to donate the huge family plantation as a location for another similar school on the other side of the country. It is an enormous track of land that takes a week on horseback to ride across and includes an entire tribe of indigenous people. Before liberation back in 1825, multiple indigenous groups lived and worked on the land.
            “I’m not just talking, I want to see this happen” Igor’s mom explained, as she elbowed her son every time he got off topic.[v]
            A few weeks ago it was Sabbath afternoon and I had a few hours of precious downtime to just relax and have some peace and quiet. I had just settled comfortably on my bed to watch a sermon from a Professor Veith series called “Rekindling the Reformation” when I heard a truck drive in. I had the distinct impression that I should get up and go see who it was, but I dismissed it lethargically with the excuse that someone else would surely attend whoever it was. I promptly forgot about it and continued to watch the sermon until what must have been three or four minutes later when I heard the truck leaving and again felt impelled to get up. I responded this time, and surprised myself with how quickly at that! As I opened the front door of my house, the pick-up with two men inside was just passing by. The driver spotted me immediately and stopped the truck, and motioned me to come. Approaching the vehicle I suddenly recognized the driver as Igor. We exchanged greetings and Igor explained that he had brought his friend to show him the school.
            “I wanted to see if you had any copies of that book, The Great Controversy. My friend wants his own copy.” He explained.
            It took a split second for me wipe the shock off my face and invite the two men inside. “That’s the one” Igor exclaimed eagerly when I presented them the copy of the book. He grasped it eagerly and scanned the cover. “How to face the new world order successfully!” he read the subtitle aloud. “Is that really possible? They are so powerful and they are everywhere! I used to think that Bolivia was not in cahoots with the new-world-order movement, but I have discovered that Evo Morales (the current president) is deeply involved.”  
We spent the next the next forty-five minutes conversing about end-time events before the two men continued on their way. This is another story that needs your prayers to be concluded for the glory of God! I take courage from the following passage:

            The results of the circulation of this book [The Great Controversy] are not to be judged by what now appears. By reading it, some souls will be aroused, and will have courage to unite themselves at once with those who keep the commandments of God. But a much larger number who read it will not take their position until they see the very events taking place that are foretold in it. The fulfillment of some of the predictions will inspire faith that others also will come to pass, and when the earth is lightened with the glory of the Lord, in the closing work, many souls will take their position on the commandments of God as the result of this agency..." {The Publishing Ministry 356.4}           


[i] The quote continues saying “I am more anxious to see a wide circulation for this book than for any others I have written; for in The Great Controversy, the last message of warning to the world is given more distinctly than in any of my other books.” –(Colporteur Ministry).
[ii] Jesus says in John 7:18 “He that speaks of himself seeks his own glory, but he who speaks of Him who sent him, the same is true, and no unrighteousness is in him.”The story of Hezekiah can be found in Isaiah chapter 38.
[iii] As I think about it, that is surely because it was “scripted” by divine influences that orchestrated the entire scene and dialogue in answer to our morning prayers!
[iv] I have a copy of The Great Controversy in my car already to give to Scotty on Monday. Please pray for that!
[v] Ruan had plans to go look the land over with Igor and David Gates. Unfortunately (or so it seems to us, but God knows why) the donation fell through, as others in Igor’s family were not favorable to the idea. Not long afterward, Igor was transferred to work at another location, and we haven’t seen him since. 

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