Missio Community Arbors Hosts 3 Amazing Visitors

Sunday night at the Arbors Missio Community was an extra special experience. We were blessed to host three visitors from around the world: Dot from Nigeria, Albert from Jamaica and Franck, currently living in Montreal.

Laurie, whom I blogged about a few days ago, started the Bakke Graduate Institute this month. She has been in an intensive the past two weeks and has gotten to know these amazing men. She invited them to come and we are so glad that she did.

All three told their stories. Dot, from Nigeria, is a pastor who has a vision to help bring unity to the very wide division between Christians and Muslims in his country through education. His church is seeking to start a school to provide solid academic education.

Albert is well known in Jamaica. He has a booming voice that lends well to radio, so once a week his voice can be heard throughout Jamaica speaking about Jesus and his love for their country. Albert finds himself in the urban centers, where violence is strong. He told us that Jamaica has the dubious reputation for being the murder capital of the world.

Franck is originally from South Africa and France, but he now lives in Montreal where he is an entreprenerial businessman. He spoke of the church in Montreal being on lifesupport because it is predominately Catholic and people are leaving the church in droves because of the abuse issues.

Strangely, I was in Montreal two years ago and had an experience where I felt that the Lord showed me the very same thing. They have several cathedrals in Montreal so we stopped at one of them. When it went inside it was dimantled and a new evangelical church was meeting in it. I had a strong sense that God was about to do a new thing.

The new thing is that God is at work in the marketplace. He is inspiring businessmen like Franck to be the church in their community. After Franck spoke, I spoke the words of Joshua to him and said that he was one that God was raising up to "lead the new thing." The other two men with Franck said that he was in the company of witnesses and they confirmed the word.

The night wasn't finished yet. We decided to spend some of our missio community funds and ended up spending it three different ways: one to give a one time gift to help support Dot's educational work, to sponsor a child through Seeds of Hope and then to help one of our community members who is going through a hard divorce and finds herself in need of some funds.

God's timing is always so fun to observe. We had been talking about giving Susie a gift for a few weeks, but hadn't gotten it done. Well, the very day that we told her about it, she had a car accident where she got hit and her car may have been totalled. What a comfort to know that God had gone ahead of her to provide.

It's fun to be able to respond to Holy Spirit's prompting to be generous!