I wanted to share a couple blogs from the team down here in Manila - we are digging deep, finding God in whole new ways and getting our hearts ready to serve a hungry world! This is Melissa Gibson and below is one of my favorite guys on the race, Ian... he has resisted a bit, but is catching my heart... you can read all their blogs here 

Fear and Loathing . . . and progress

Posted in General by Ian Schumann on 10/1/2008

In February 2007, I knew I was going to be a Christian several months before it happened. This was weird because it was at a time when I still didn't fully want it or understand it; and actually, I feared it. I had a lot of prejudice and misconception about what it would mean and who I would become. I had loathed Christians for a long time . . . and then I was just reading the writing on the wall--and it said I was going to become one! Eesh.

I present this backstory here because since training camp in August I've been saying I'm in the second phase of my conversion. That line is turning out to be more prophetic than I would have guessed. See there's this guy, Gary Black, or just Black. He's a friend of AIM, and he's been teaching and challenging us in these last few days. Initial reaction: the guy's nuts. He's seen things that are nuts. He's done things that are nuts. His claims are absurd. Just the initial feeling.

And yet, the guy is undeniably anointed. On fire like few people I've ever seen. He helped start up a thriving ministry in Swazi. He ran Rock the Nations for a few years. He's pastoring an incredible, exuberant church in Colorado. So yeah, his deeds speak louder to me than his words, and they sound like the marks of a man devoted to the pursuit of God. I can't write him off.

Though the guy makes me nervous, I'm again reading the writing on the wall, and I know that God's calling me soon to a deeper faith like this guy. Crap! Again, like before, I'm facing my own prejudice. Am I going to become the insane tuned-out Jesus freak that I've despised for so long? What about the connection I've maintained with non-believers and the way they think? Will my witness to them be completely destroyed as I sink ever further into some cultish indoctrination? Will those that I used to connect with now discard me as a mindless Bible-robot?

*sigh*

Clearly, beyond any shadow of a doubt . . . this is not the case with Black. And neither will it be with me.

So, just a warning, innocent readers, that my writing might be getting weirder. Just don't panic.