New look for spring! Actually I'm starting to train my face for Haiti.

I just got back from a quick trip out to Rochester. The Haiti team met together for the first time as a complete team and started to get to know each other a little and spend some time in prayer. It will be a fun trip as we have the full spectrum of ages from Grandpa Jenner to Walter who is a senior in High School.
Then we had a Climbing for Christ "Take a Kid climbing" event at a local rock gym. We had between 50-55 people in attendance. After climbing I was able to present the reason why we do what we do. The Gospel!

"The difference between Uncle Sam and Jesus Christ is that U.S. won't enlist you in his service unless you are healthy and Jesus won't enlist you unless you are sick."

"Oh, how we need to wake up to how much "nothing" we spend our time doing. Apart from our prayer, all of our scurrying about, all our talking, all our study amounts to "nothing". For most of us the voice of self-reliance is 10x's louder than the bell that tolls for the hours of prayer.
It is un-American to be so impractical as to devote oneself to prayer and meditation for two hours a day."

John Piper from the book "Brothers We Are Not Professionals"

Thanks for praying for Chris. I got word that his parole board hearing on friday went well and they decided to give him 16 hours of community service instead of sending back to prison for at least five more months. He is praising the Lord I'm sure.

Its official. I'm not going to Egypt. Its for the better as I would have returned from Haiti and turned around a couple of days later left for Egypt. Maybe Kris was praying? I will have to ask her.

I love the Holy Spirit. If we are willing searchers/learners, He will use a variety of avenues to teach us.
Recently a friend of mine moved out to Roch. to join with other christians in a local fellowship of believers. They happen to meet in a house every week. They spend the whole day together and share a meal of real food and also spiritual food. They spend time sharing what God has done the past week and what He has been teaching them. Each man shares what he has been teaching his own family that week.
Sunday morning my pastor spoke on the body of christ and the unity in spite of the diversity. Interesting.
All of this has raised lots questions in me. How can our local body incorporate the positive aspects that I see in their body. I like the accountablity aspect of knowing that you will have an opportunity to share what you are learning from the Word each week as opposed to just showing up and expecting to be spoon fed someone elses thoughts.(although that has merit too) I like the concept of community, of spending time together for more than a couple hours at a time. It is difficult to accomplish the one anothers when you are segmented into pews for an hour with only a 1minute greeting time for interaction.
So does this mean that I am ready to leave my current church to join theirs? No. I just want to be more mindful of opportunities for community -chances to spend time with other members outside of corporate worship, to get to know them (epignosis/koinania) with experiential knowledge/real fellowship, to be able to recognize their needs and take/make the time to meet them. I love being self-emloyed because it makes it easier to accomplish that, if I maintain a proper perspective. Also I need to find some type of accountability to maintain my study in the Word.

Those are some thoughts that I have. Comments?

If you would like to receive periodic email prayer updates from Climbing for Christ then you can! Send an email to gfallesen@climbingforchrist.org and request to be added to our prayer team.

It is with mixed emotions that sit at the keyboard this morning to update our blog. Since my last post it has been a rollercoaster ride from summit to valleys to summit to valleys to summit. Alot is going on and I will try and hit on most of it if I can.

Deep sorrow filled my heart as I learned last night that a good friend and fellow servant in the ministry took his own life. He left a legacy of many years of faithful service to His Lord. My brothers have kinda been chatting on one of their blogs about having a Biblical world view. I think what is happening is Christians are being bombarded with so much worldly thought and have less and less time to spend in the Word that their world view has shifted without their knowing it. My friend at some point stopped listening and believing the voice of Truth and started believing the lies of the world and satan. Pray for me that I would be committed to spending time in the word of God faithfully!

We had a great time Sunday hearing reports from some friends who having been serving in Nigeria. Praise the Lord for what he is doing there, especially among the fulani peoples. Peter challenged me Sunday night in his message that the good works that God forordained for us to walk in are for His glory and not my own. Pray that I will keep that at the forefront and keep a humble heart about what God is doing.

The Egypt trips dates have changed. They now overlap with another of my trips so I may not be able to go. Pray for the Lords will in that. If He wants me to go He will work it out.

I'm sure that I missed some stuff but, thats all that I can think of for now.

A couple of our children appear to be headed into full-time vocational ministry(see previous post). Melissa and Gideon both have display a rather large...uhm..."heart" for ministry. Seriously though, Rachel is going to get her first taste of ministry this coming summer. She plans to go to the Left coast with some friends of ours to help with West Coast Camp. I will try to get her to take some time out of her busy schedule to enter more info for you all.

Wanted: FAT people for ministry. F-faithful, A-available, T-teachable

I worked with grace this past week. No, one of the guys on the crew was not named Grace. His name was Chris actually, but, his story was a picture of Gods grace. Raised in a christian home Chris had accepted Christ at an early age but, like the prodigal son he had gone to see what the world had to offer. Dealing and using crystal Meth, Chris' life was in turmoil. Shortly before his last arrest his best friend was beaten, thrown on the train tracks and killed by a train. Then the day of his arrest he had 6 cars chasing him and was told that he would live to see the end of the day then he blacked out and the next thing he knew he was in a cell charged with aussault with a deadly weapon. He was sent into a christian rehab program. After five months in the program the fog began to clear and he remembered the things that he had learned as a child and returned to the waiting open arms of his Father.
Chris is covered by prison tattoos (applied with a staple) which are a constant visual reminder of his previous life. On one forearm is a picture of a machine gun above it is one word- death, below it is the reference Galatians 5:16-21 a picture of what his life was. On the other forearm is a picture of the cross and one word-life, below it is a refernce that I don't remember but it talks of passing from death to life. Please if you think of him pray for Chris this week as he has a parole board meeting and is facing going back to prison for 5 months for a parole violation due to a technicality.

Another near death experience for me this week. I was working on a climbing tower build outside of Nashville Tenn. this past week. My guardian angel almost got fired, or he's about ready to quit, I'm not sure which. We were hauling up a 600' zipline cable and I was at the top of the tower pole in a basket lift. I was clipped in to the basket and the tower. I placed a pulley at the top with a web sling around the pole. We ran the cable down to a pulley at the base of the pole and out to a big lowell fork machine. We almost had a 200lb guy off the ground in the middle of the cable when the web sling that my pulley was on busted. My mistake was that I had clipped in to the belay cable on the other side of the pulley instead of behind it. So when the cable came loose it pulled me into the system. All I remember is a loud pop and then I was pinned against the side of the cage with a cable running across my body near my collarbone. God allowed the cable to somehow unscrew the carabiner at my waist and clip itself into it (keeping it down off of my neck), I was clipped into the cage which kept me from being flipped out of the cage, and I am a pretty thick guy(no comments needed here), those were the things I had going for me. I have been hit by alot of things and have smacked into alot of things but I have never been smacked like that. I came away with only a seriously bruised collarbone area and some cuts/bruise on my left hand. Praise the Lord for His protection!

We had a great meeting yesterday with Steve Hill from Lesotho! I think that God has led us to the right guy! They are the only missionaries in the mountains of Lesotho. We have a plan to go over with Steve in October 2006 to survey the ministry and decide on how we can be of help to his ministry with a short-term trip in 2007.

I have been asked to go to Egypt in May to help with a challenge course build with Signature Research Inc. An Evangelical church there wants to use corporate team-building for outreach to muslims. The problem is the muslims won't come to their facility, so they are building another course on a nuetral site.

-Todd