Category: Advent 2024 – Advent Adventure

Today is the last day of our “Advent Adventure.” Christmas arrives tomorrow! But remember, the adventures are not over. We will continue to learn to trust God in new ways throughout our lives.

Jungle training camp was over and at last we campers reunited at the airfield to fly out of the jungle and back to civilization. We were happy to leave behind mud and roaches. We looked forward to hot showers and flushing toilets. All of us were changed. We were stronger and more confident of the Lord’s power to protect His children.

Each of us went through an exit interview. I had to laugh when the staff informed me of their assessment of my skills: “We observed that you are lacking in the area of pioneering skills.” I thought, I could have told you that five months ago and saved all of us a lot of trouble! But their assessment did not mean that they could not use me. I was not being dismissed and sent home. I might not be a match for a jungle assignment, but there was plenty of other work for me to do.

How would they have assessed Jesus’ work here on earth? He arrived as an infant. He grew up in Nazareth and learned Torah with his friends. He taught for three years. When he died on a cross, not one of his followers understood what he had done. Had his time been wasted?

However, it didn’t matter how people on earth assessed his ministry. His heavenly Father had the final word. The resurrection was the final assessment of the Father: His approval. The journey was over. Jesus returned to heaven, victorious.

Jesus has arrived at last. A new year is beginning. You may lack some skills as I did. Computers humble me and make me feel dumb. But there is still plenty of work for each of us to do in God’s kingdom. Go and serve him! Merry Christmas!

Tomorrow will be our last day of Advent but there is one more “Advent Adventure” to share today.

Our time in the village of San Antonio del Monte passed quickly. Judy and I taught literacy classes, and we continued to learn more of the Tzeltal language and culture. But one of our other responsibilities was to meet medical needs. We had learned to give injections and kept some basic first-aid supplies on hand: aspirin, Band-Aids, and disinfectants. We even had a small vial of anesthetic for an emergency.

One afternoon, a man from a nearby town limped up to our door. He had been clearing his field with his machete when the knife slipped and gashed his right shin. A cloth tied around the wound on his leg was now saturated with blood. When he removed the homemade bandage, the depth of the wound convinced us that no Band-Aid would be sufficient. We would have to suture, using plain cotton thread and a needle.

We washed the wound of grass and dirt, and then we applied anesthetic. Neither of us had ever practiced suturing, but our medical book suggested using a granny knot “if the wound was under tension.” We decided the wound was under tension…ours! But suturing this man’s skin was like trying to puncture leather with an awl. We put in just enough stitches to pull the two edges of the wound together, said a prayer, and hoped for the best.

In John 5, Jesus met a lame man lying by the pool at Bethesda. Jesus had no first-aid kit, but he knew the man had been lying there for a long time. Perhaps Jesus had seen him there year after year when he came to Jerusalem for Passover. He asked the man, “Do you want to get well?” It seems like a strange question, but perhaps the man was so used to being lame that he no longer had hope.

As you face a new year, are you anxious about what the future holds? Jesus asks you too, “Do you want to get well?” He alone offers us hope.

Christmas is a time for gathering families and friends together. Perhaps you already have a houseful of guests. Thank you for taking time to join me for another “Advent Adventure.”

Our home in San Antonio del Monte was smack in the center of the town. We quickly learned the reason for this. We were the only ones with a Coleman lantern and when we lit it, the light shone out through the slat walls and illuminated the entire town. As I wrote home, “When we turn on the lantern at night, it is just an invitation to gather. Once, we had the entire town squeezing into our kitchen!”

One day, Judy and I packed our canteens, a picnic lunch, and a few books in our backpacks and hiked some distance to a river for some time by ourselves. We decided to cross the river at the rapids, where it was shallower in order to sit on a sunny escarpment on the other side. All went well, until we both lost our footing and ended up being pulled under by the strong current. I managed to grab a tree branch, but Judy went sailing by. I scrambled up the far embankment, and the only thing I could see was Judy’s straw hat floating downstream. She clambered out 50 yards later. We reconnoitered and discovered that all we lost was one sock, one hat, one literacy book, and all our pride! That night we were the talk of the town!

In heaven, Jesus was constantly surrounded by angels and archangels. When he came to earth, crowds flocked to him. In Mark 3:20-21, so many people gathered that he and the disciples did not even have time to eat. When Jesus withdrew so the disciples could rest by themselves after the death of John the Baptist, 5000 people followed them. Yet Jesus had compassion on the crowd. He who had no home became the host, welcoming each person, adult or child.

Whether you host an event this season or attend as a guest, take time today to make each person feel welcome.

This “Advent Adventure” series would not be appropriate without a few more adventures.

Soon after we moved into the Tzeltal village of San Antonio, a huge 55-gallon drum full of gasoline arrived by plane. The barrel was almost 3’ tall and 2’ in diameter. Local men helped us roll it into our house. The only place it could fit upright was at the end of our table where it also served as an extra seat.

We were busy all that day teaching classes, and by the time Judy and I had fixed dinner and washed dishes, darkness had already fallen. We lit several candles in order to see what we doing. Now it was time to refill our Coleman lantern. I tipped the drum to pour the gasoline while Judy held the lantern’s base steady.

Poof! The flames from a nearby candle set the gasoline fumes on fire and jumped to the mouth of the drum and from there to the table. In two seconds, four-foot flames leapt into the air. Above our heads was a grass roof…very dry and exceedingly flammable. By God’s grace, I grabbed one of our damp dishtowels from the shelf and smothered the opening to the barrel. Judy grabbed another towel and swatted the flames on the table. Between us, we managed to contain the fire and only lost one plastic tablecloth.

Lesson learned: Do not fill gasoline lanterns by candlelight! But we also realized that God’s angel had once again been busy guarding our lives.

Jesus faced numerous life-threatening occasions while he was here on earth. In Luke 4:29, an angry mob in Nazareth planned to throw him off a cliff. In John 7:30 and 44, Jews tried to seize him, but he escaped “because his hour had not yet come.” In John 8:59, furious Pharisees picked up stones to stone him. And in John 10:39, they once more planned to stone him, but he eluded their grasp. He asked, “For which of my good works do you want to stone me?”

Judy and I could have lost our home and possibly our lives, but it resulted from our own foolishness. Jesus almost lost his life because he spoke the truth. Later, he offered up his life for us.

At Christmas, the truth of the Incarnation is often forgotten in a pile of discarded gift wrapping and bows. Take time today to thank him for the best gifts ever: Salvation, mercy, forgiveness, and joy!

We’re coming down the home stretch. Christmas is almost here, and packages are accumulating under the tree. There are just a few more “Advent Adventures” to share.

After the survival hike, much of our training was complete but I still had plenty to learn. We were ready to move on to the last phase of our camp experience: Village Living.

Those campers who were single were assigned new partners for this final phase. My partner and I would be together for the next six weeks in the Tzeltal town of San Antonio del Monte. My new partner was Judy, the same girl who fell in the river when her canoe floated away from the bank. She was a girl who screamed with fear at each new stage of training, and I wondered how we would get along.

Our task was to teach literacy classes to the adults and children there. The population of the entire “town” totaled seventeen persons, plus cows, horses, pigs, dogs, and chickens. There were four people named Marcello, three Marias, two Betas…plus other Marcellos, Miguels, Manuels and Marias from nearby towns. They all wanted to crowd into our small slat-board house.

Judy took the beginners class out on the porch. I had the “advanced” class at our kitchen table. Only as I saw Judy teach did I realize what gifts she had in teaching. She had the ability to make every lesson on “ba, be, bi, bo, bu” sound fresh and exciting. She had the students “pick fruit” from a tree she drew, each piece of fruit labeled with these different sound combinations. She had them “fish” for paper ba-be-bi-bo-bu minnows in a little basin of water. My cautious opinion of Judy changed to admiration.

In John 2:24-25, Jesus had many followers, but he did not trust himself to them because he knew them inside and out. “He needed no evidence from others about what was in a man for he himself could tell what was in a man.”

I had misjudged my partner on appearances. Jesus saw her heart. As Christmas draws near, is there someone you have labeled unfairly? Could you remove that label as your gift to them this week?

Are you surviving the final days of last-minute trips to the mall and preparations for the holidays? Thanks for stopping long enough to read about another “Advent Adventure.”

Shortly after Christmas, the staff announced to six of us that it was our turn for the 3-day survival hike. We had five minutes notice and were only allowed to grab our first-aid kits, canteen and machete. (Though, one girl also stuffed a roll of toilet paper into her backpack!) The staff led us into the jungle, walked us in circles, and then told us that we would be isolated from each other for the first 24 hours. Each of us had to make a survival shelter out of vines and tree boughs, and we needed to use the daylight hours to also gather firewood and collect edible plants. The thickness of the jungle effectively hid me from other campers who were only 50’ away.

My shelter was only half complete by the time darkness fell, but I had a fire going to keep me company. It took about 5 matches before I got one to light. I sang lots of hymns to keep my spirits up, until, that is, around 11:00 pm. At that point I ran out of firewood. I couldn’t chop more wood in the dark: I could not tell if it was cheching wood without light. Thus the choice was between my bed and my flame. I chose flame over sleep, and I burned up my shelter!

Isolation ended in the morning. It was wonderful to join with others as we formulated a plan to find our way back to camp. According to the script, we were archaeology students who had gotten lost searching for Mayan ruins. My hands became blistered from hours of using my machete, but we all made it home safely two days later.

Jesus once went on a survival hike that lasted 40 days. Matthew chapter 4 tells us that Jesus entered the Judean wilderness and had nothing to eat or drink during that entire period. He was not lost. He could have returned to civilization at any time, but he chose to follow God’s Spirit into the wilderness. Unlike me, he was alone the entire period. Satan tempted him with choices, not between a shelter and a flame, but between obedience and comfort.

What choices is God calling you to make in the New Year?

Christmas is just a week away. Thanks for carving out time to join me here on this “Advent Adventure.”

We arrived in Advanced Base at the beginning of December, and Christmas was around the corner. I wanted to have some little gift ready for Linda. I found a fairly flat piece of bark, and I used some leftover twine and glue to write out in script the name of our new abode, “Lark’s Nest.” We hung our sign at the top of the path leading to our champa. For her part, Linda gave me a big chunk of pitch pine, a perfect fire-starter on damp mornings.

Other gifts came in even nicer forms. The staff finally located and butchered the runaway bull, and Linda and I spent a day processing our share of the meat, drying some and canning other pieces in Mason jars. And we ate anything leftover including two large hamburgers on fresh homemade rolls! Could anything taste better?

And one gift was not so nice. On Christmas morning, I noticed two little bumps on my right wrist. I wasn’t worried. There were plenty of bugs around and I assumed it was merely a mosquito bite. But by the next morning, I was covered with a rash. Cheching began with the sap of a plant that could be anything from a small sapling to a tree 3’ in diameter with its top hidden in the forest canopy of leaves far above our heads. The rash was similar to a case of poison ivy, only instead of staying in one place, cheching spread head to toe systemically. The itching was furious, and the deep scars I got from that episode lasted over six months.

There is so much we don’t know about Jesus. We have no record of what gifts he made for his mother or father. We don’t know if he ever got sick. We don’t even know what he looked like. Isaiah 52 tells us that “there was nothing in his appearance to attract us to him.” Yet the four gospel writers recorded all the important details: they speak of his patience, his forgiveness, his mercy.

When you give gifts this Christmas, what will people remember about you? Will they remember the gift or the giver?

Advent is a journey that takes us closer to our destination of Heaven. Thanks for staying with me on this “Advent Adventure.”

During those first weeks at Advance Base, the staff were expecting us to be able to purchase some food supplies from locals, but we were so far from the beaten path that not even the Indians knew where to find us gringos. To further complicate matters, a heavy storm, called a norte, arrived, stayed for about a week, and kept the supply planes from flying into our tiny airstrip. Then, the one bull that the staff had planned on butchering ran off into the mountains. The upshot was we had no fresh meat or eggs or vegetables. Thankfully, Linda and I had ordered a block of cheese and jars of peanut butter for our non-priority bag, so we had some protein to sustain us as we worked to build our new home.

Remembering my ability in carpentry class, I wondered how our 12’x13’ champa would turn out. Thankfully, Linda did much better than I with manual skills. We soon had the four corner posts set in the ground, built rough pole frames for our beds and a table. We dug a latrine and made a mud stove. The only mishap was when Linda managed to machete her finger. With a large sheet of vinyl for a roof, we were soon comfortable. It’s hard to believe the entire area was dense jungle just two weeks earlier!

For three years, Jesus had no place to call home as he travelled with his disciples. I’m certain the carpenter’s son would have done a far better job than Linda and I in constructing a place, but Jesus never settled in one spot long enough. In Matthew 8:20, he said, “The foxes have holes to live in. The birds have nests to live in. But the Son of Man has no place where he can rest his head.”

Yet this same Jesus has promised to go ahead of us and prepare a home for us in heaven. It won’t be made of flimsy poles and vinyl but will last forever.

Look around your home today. Take a few moments to thank God for solid walls, for a leak-proof roof, and a soft bed to lie on.

Are you exhausted as Christmas draws nearer? Thank you for pausing to join us on this “Advent Adventure.”

At last, at sundown, we arrived at Lake Ocotal. Filthy and footsore, we found our director waiting for us on the shoreline…with bad news. There were not enough trees to hang our hammocks on this side of the lake. We still needed to hack our way through overgrowth for an additional hour and half around the lake to our campsite. The thought of doing that in the dark by flashlight, avoiding snakes, and then still needing to set up those awful hammocks left me exhausted. But the hardest part was yet to come.

The family members of our campers had flown in ahead of us, and upon our arrival, the wives ran out to greet their spouses. Children hugged their fathers. The wives had already hung the hammocks for their men. They had prepared a meal. Knowing no one was waiting to greet me undid my last bit of grit and self-control. I dissolved in tears.

Ten hours of sleep put me in a better frame of mind. The next day, Linda and I picked out our site for building a champa. We began clearing the area, built a fire and cooked our first meal. Using a combination of our last names (Lauck and Parke), we christened our new home “The Lark’s Nest.”

That very first Christmas, Joseph and Mary (nine months pregnant) arrived in Bethlehem exhausted after a 70-mile walk from Nazareth. Around them, families were reuniting, sisters and brothers, aunts and uncles were celebrating, but there was no room for them to stay with relatives. Luke 2 tells us that at night, they trudged through the town looking for a place to stay. Mary already had birth pangs. Did Joseph feel anxious because he couldn’t find a place for Mary to have their child?

How different things looked the next day! Jesus was born. Angels had sung. Shepherds had worshiped.

Are you exhausted with holiday shopping, baking, guests, and preparations? My prayer for you today is that you would find rest and renewal in our Savior. And joy comes in the morning!

Christmas is advancing upon us, and we are advancing to the second phase of jungle training in our “Advent Adventure.”

Hiking to Advance Base took us on foot another 35 miles farther away from civilization. Campers each had a turn riding one of the mules for an hour. Our mules were slow but sure-footed as they crossed rivers and climbed muddy mountain trails.

Knowing I had ridden horses as a child, the staff asked if I would ride the single horse in our pack. As I forded a river, the horse sank into a deep hole. Frantic, desperate, and struggling with mud up to his shoulders, the animal had to lighten his load, and the easiest way was to get rid of his rider. I flew over his head, completed a summersault, and landed shaken on the muddy riverbank. With my weight gone, the horse freed himself and dashed up the same riverbank, his hooves flying within inches of my head. And once again, I thanked God for that angel watching over me. I hope he got paid overtime that day!

Jesus walked everywhere. We only have record of one occasion when Jesus rode. During Holy Week, his disciples brought him a colt that had never been ridden. What a recipe for disaster…an inexperienced rider and an unbroken colt! Add in a crowd that was shouting and waving palm branches. Unlike my frantic horse at the riverbank, this colt calmly carried his rider through a mob. As Isaiah and Zechariah predicted, “Behold your King is coming to you, gentle and mounted upon a donkey, even upon a colt, the foal of a beast of burden.” (Mt. 21:5)

Jesus could have walked into Jerusalem. There was no obvious need to borrow a colt. But a donkey was a symbol of royalty and servitude…and peace.

Are you stuck in a muddy rut, frantic to find a way out of your circumstances? Ask the Lord to touch your day with His serenity and peace.