Sitting and Thinking - 2024.02.27

“Sometimes I sit and think, and sometimes I just sit. — Winnie the Pooh

Since our last prayer update, Lawrence (I) got to experience a season of being isolated due to COVID-19. I was only symptomatic for a few days, yet continued to test positive for a week longer. We isolated me in our home bedroom while Sarah Leigh provided excellent care from outside. Thankfully, I am all good and she stayed healthy the whole time. During those ten days I had plenty of time to sit, think, and just sit. It turned out to be a blessing. When I wasn’t sitting or thinking I was mostly reading about sitting and thinking, haha! Here’s something I read about the spiritual practice of contemplation:

“Contemplation cleanses the mind and opens the heart to receive God’s truth, beauty, and wisdom. The illusions of life are unmasked, and true vision is possible. Darkness is dispelled, and divine light shines through. The world loses its opaqueness and becomes transparent. Nature is transformed, time is converted, and people are transfigured. God makes all things new.” — Henri J. M. Nouwen in Spiritual Formation p. 13.

As the calendar walks us closer to Spring and the renewal of the Earth in the Northern Hemisphere, we hope you will make some time to contemplate the nature and character of Jesus, to see how Jesus is making all things new.

Please pray for:

1. Our continued waiting on the Lord’s guidance and provision for our next work location. We are still hoping a job opportunity will open up in Birmingham, UK.

2. Lawrence who has been invited to teach at the Macau Bible Institute in April and May. He is preparing to teach on Spiritual Formation: one class in Cantonese, one in English. May he have wisdom and clarity of thought.

3. Our time with Macau friends and contacts. May our ears be sensitive to hear their hearts and our words be Good News to them.

Thank you for your prayerful support. May the Lord bless your days with joy and your nights with peace.

Benches around the Macau Fortress — a nice place to sit and think.

Happy Lunar New Year - Year of the Dragon

Happy Lunar New Year — Year of the Dragon — from Macau. This coming Saturday Asia will celebrate the first day of the Spring Festival. Always an exciting time, especially so this year as it is the first time in several years to have a rather normal season of celebration. The city is already decorated, special events have started, and tourists are swelling the already busy streets of Macau. From all appearances, life is back to normal and all is looking up for our city.

However, there was some disquieting and sad news published last week. All is not as good as it appears for people in our city. One day the headline reports that Macau’s suicide rate is higher than world average <https://macaonews.org/news/city/macau-suicide-rate-2023-macao/>. The next day is a report about the mental health issues facing casino workers <https://macaonews.org/news/business/macau-casino-workers-mental-health-wellbeing-macao/>.

When we look past the glitz and glamour of Macau, there are deep issues and people in great need. We “rejoice with those who rejoice, mourn with those who mourn” and pray for everyone to know renewal through relationship with Jesus. Thank you for praying with us for:

1. Friends with mental health needs. Many issues add to the stress people feel, only compounding their issues. May the peace of Jesus be their help.

2. Friends with physical health needs. We have several dear friends dealing with cancer and other issues. May the power of Jesus be their healing.

3. Friends with family needs. People here wait so long for family members to believe in Jesus. It takes years of lovingly praying for people to see change. May the grace of Jesus be their hope.

We were overjoyed this past week to see a friend’s family member join them for the worship time at church. Hearts and minds are changing, orienting ever more in Jesus’ direction. May the new year bring new life in Macau and around the world.

New Year Decorations on Macau’s Central Post Office.

Back in Macau - 2024.01.23

Hello from Macau. We’ve been back here for two weeks now. We are grateful for your prayers regarding our travel and transition back. Special thanks to Macau friends who picked us up from the Hong Kong Airport, drove us and our luggage to Macau, and helped us haul our bags up the five flights of stairs to our apartment. The welcome back has been delightful. So much love and care expressed for us. We are recovered from jet lag and finding our footing here in the city. These past two weeks have been filled with the warmth of reunion. Such a blessing to see special friends after being away for the past seven months.

Now that we are back in Macau, we are also catching up on the situation here. Some people we care about have been diagnosed with cancer and they are really going through a difficult time. Some people have lost loved ones and are still mourning. Some of our friends have been baptized and some are preparing to be baptized. Many people are doing well and have much gratitude for their lives. It seems obvious to say: Life has gone on. It is this regular aspect of life we are reconnecting with now that we are back, even if our time is limited. So, please pray with us for the following:

1. Healing for our Friends. Pray with us for our friends with cancer. Treatments are ongoing and they are hopeful. Still, it is a tremendous burden on them and their family. May the Lord give them strength and help.

2. Help for Guest Workers. One thing we have noticed is the increase in prices for basic goods. This continues to be a source of pressure for Guest Workers. May they find help for daily living in the giver of all good gifts.

3. Hope for Tomorrow. While good things have been happening in the lives of individuals, the general vibe is not great. There is a current of deep concern for young people and the future. May the people of Macau put their hope in Jesus.

As we pray, we remember this … We are pilgrims on a journey of faith, facing so many questions. We remind ourselves that, “If knowing answers to life's questions is absolutely necessary to you, then forget the journey. You will never make it, for this is a journey of unknowables — of unanswered questions, enigmas, incomprehensibles, and most of all, things unfair.” [Jeanne Guyon (1648-1717), <https://www.catholicstoreroom.com/tag/jeanne-guyon/>]

Thanks to support from the Lord and caring/prayerful friends, we keep on the journey.

Macau preparing for the Spring Festival

Into the East - 2024.01.02

Happy New Year! and hello from Birmingham, England. We trust this message finds you doing well and feeling hopeful at the start of this new year. As the calendar has turned to 2024, we are turning our attention back to Macau. We fly out of Birmingham on 8 January, arriving in Macau on the 9th. We are full of deep gratitude, peace and joy as we come to the end of our sabbatical. We believe it has been a helpful time of preparation for the next season God has planned for us.

Since we last wrote, back in November, we have had a number of discussions with some local Baptist church leaders about the possibility of work in Birmingham. This has included discussions about their ability to sponsor work visas. One local pastor has become our advocate and is working to find a way that we can return to Birmingham to work. So, we continue to walk in faith, trusting the Lord to work out the where and when of our next ministry context.

We are very thankful for all the prayers offered up on our behalf throughout 2023. We did not come to Birmingham to find a job. We came here for sabbatical, a time of restoration and reset. Primarily, we took this time to quiet our hearts to listen to the Lord. This has been a wonderful time to process, learn, grow and prepare for what is ahead. Thanks to our work with a spiritual director we believe we are ready and better prepared to hear and understand how to follow the Lord in the next season of service.

Please pray regarding:

1. Travel to Macau. May we have safety, good health, and alertness to all we need to see along the way.

2. Good-bye. We have been deeply blessed by new friendships here in B’ham. We have been profoundly blessed by this time of living with Alice & Nathanael. They have become even more dear to us.

3. Hello. Returning to Macau still feels like going home and yet we know we can’t stay. The Lord is still calling us away. We need wisdom for the precious time we do have in Macau before we make our move to the next season of life and ministry.

This poem captures so much of our present:

I said to the man who stood at the gate of the year:  

'Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown.'  

And he replied:  

'Go out into the darkness and put your hand into the Hand of God.  

That shall be to you better than light and safer than a known way.'  

So I went forth, and finding the Hand of God, trod gladly into the night.  

And He led me towards the hills and the breaking of day in the lone East.*⁠

In faith we go forward hand-in-hand with the Lord.

Thank you again for going with us in prayer and support.

* The Gate of the Year, written in 1908 and privately published in 1912 by Minnie Louise Haskins.

Christingles at New Life Baptist Church’s Christmas Eve Service.

Walking in Darkness - 2023.11.02

Hello from Birmingham, England where we continue to Sabbatical and “Coddiwomple”. This is an old English term that basically means “to travel in a purposeful manner towards a vague destination.” In the weeks since we last wrote, we have filled our time with study, exploration, networking, quiet, reflection, and prayer. We came here not sure where the Lord was leading us. We have been purposefully using our time to listen and seek guidance. In time, the question bubbled up, “Lord, do you want us to stay and represent you in Birmingham?” This led to the question we are currently asking, “How can we serve the Lord in Birmingham?”

There are many ministry opportunities. However, there is a major hurdle to us remaining here if we are to live into those opportunities: to remain and work here, we need an organization to sponsor us for a work visa. Essentially, we need to find an organization willing to employ us and thus grant us a visa to remain. In a way, this is a good problem in that we can’t solve it ourselves. We need the Lord to open the door, provide the way, make the connections. We invite you to pray with us about this matter.

1. Wisdom for finding the right sponsor, one able and willing to hire us and provide the visa we need.

2. Timing for all the pieces to come together. We are still planning on a return to Macau in January. It would be great to have clarity about Birmingham before then.

3. Faith to rest in the Lord. Some days the desire to resolve the tension of our walk through the liminal space of this season is almost overwhelming.

Who among you fears the Lord and obeys his servant? If you are walking in darkness, without a ray of light, trust in the Lord and rely on your God. Isaiah 50:10 (NLT)

We are relying on the Lord, trusting in His timing and grace. Thank you for prayerfully supporting our journey.

If you are interested in knowing more, please contact us. If you want to be blessed by a photo journal of our lives, be friends with Sarah Leigh. She is at Sarah Byrd Ballew on Facebook.

Narrowboat named Coddiwomple - Seen while walking along the Worcester-Birmingham Canal Trail.

Welcome to Kings Heath - 2023.08.15

A sabbatical (from the Hebrew: שַׁבָּת Šabat (i.e., Sabbath); in Latin sabbaticus; Greek: sabbatikos σαββατικός) is a rest or break from work; “an extended period of time intentionally spent on something that’s not your routine job.”⁠1

Hello from Birmingham, England where we are in the first weeks of our sabbatical. We share this because we need your prayer support during this time as much as ever. We are not on vacation, nor on holiday. We are definitely not retired from work nor are we leaving the ministry task of representing Jesus away from our birth culture. We are on sabbatical and seeking to use this time to intentionally prepare for continued service in the Kingdom of Jesus. We are working with a Spiritual Director/Coach who is helping us learn more about ourselves and about the Lord. Being away from Macau means being away from our comfort zone. It means being in a new environment, a different context. We have stepped off the merry-go-round of our work life to catch our breath, regain our balance, and reorient ourselves. We hope this translates into a new perspective and improved awareness of our location in the Kingdom. We want to hear from the Lord and discern more clearly His will for our lives. Here are a few ways you can support us in prayer:

1. Wisdom for ordering our time. It would be easy for the days to slip away since our calendar is intentionally full of unstructured time.

2. Courage to say no. Already opportunities for serving, for working, for getting back on the merry-go-round have come knocking on our door.

3. Eyes to See and Ears to Hear. This time comes to us as an invitation from the Lord, to know Him better. We must slow down if we are to see and hear Him.

In the introduction to her book “Invitation to Solitude and Silence” this quote by Ruth Haley Barton helps us understand what sabbatical can be: [sabbatical] “is an invitation to a journey, a quest really, for something we have been longing for all our lives. Unlike a trip designed to get us somewhere as efficiently as possible, a quest requires us to leave familiar dwelling places for strange lands we cannot yet envision, without knowing when we will return. This journey requires a willingness to say goodbye to life as we know it because our heart is longing for something more.”

We long for more of Jesus. Thank you for praying with us as we seek more of Jesus.

1 Schabram, Kira; Bloom, Matt; Didonna, Dj (4 November 2022). "Recover, Explore, Practice: The Transformative Potential of Sabbaticals". Academy of Management Discoveries: amd.2021.0100. doi:10.5465/amd.2021.0100. ISSN 2168-1007. S2CID 253358782.

Local street art in our area of Birmingham