An Investment With Great Returns

In the Bible school we work with, the focus is upon enabling the students to study the Bible for themselves using the inductive method of Bible Study. We teach lectures in class, but the majority of their time is spent outside of class going through each book of the Bible studying it themselves. In the process they observe, then interpret, & then apply what the text says. Here is a sampling of an application of one of our students, Jeremiah, from the Congo. We have shared about him before and the passion he has and the anointing upon him. As I was grading his work, I read some of his application points and asked him if I could share some of the revelations He was receiving while studying the book of Genesis.

After studying the book, he gave the following overall application of one point that stood out to him. These are his own words (emphasis added):

"God created both man & women in His image… I grew up in a culture where women are taught to be lower than their husband. They can't do anything except giving birth to many children and do house works. They are being beaten, sexually abused because they can't stand for themselves and talk. This truth of equality and partnership of man and woman is not being applied.

What do I need to do to live out this change?
I think God has brought me here for this reason to learn and be equipped with the truth of His word and go teach it in my culture. How God value woman.

How will I do this?
I will start by honoring the women that God will bring in my life then my people will learn from me."

To some, this revelation may seem "simple", but to Jeremiah, this is life-changing! In many places in rural Africa women are treated as property and regularly beaten & abused. They are, as Jeremiah said, for bearing children and doing house work. For a young, single African man to see the value of woman and that both man and woman are made in God's image is HUGE! This will affect his relationships with family and friends, his future wife, their children and their children's children, and all who he shares this message with. He told me, "James, I can't wait to go home and share these truths with my people!" Again, this is coming from a man who until recently believed the way he could show love to his future wife was by not beating her. God's Word has the power to transform!

Another application that really humbled me considering his background of being a refugee from a war-torn region:
After observing & interpreting God's call to Noah to be fruitful & multiply, this is his application: "God has called His people to be fruitful. Does the world today apply this truth? If it was applied, killing the innocent blood in Africa would have stopped. War in Africa makes an African man unfruitful."

There are many other points I could share from him & others, but I was just so encouraged to see how this amazingly anointed man of God has grown in studying the Word of God on his own. Before coming to do the School of Biblical Studies he could preach with passion on any subject or verse even without knowing what it meant. Now God is giving him tools to study the Bible and understand and apply it, and as he leaves this school the tools he has are going to be so powerful. I am regularly overwhelmed as I sit down and talk with him of the privilege we have of investing our lives into men and women like him.

Thank you for making this possible.

James & Sarah Lunn
www.ToMakeHimKnown.com

We're Getting Married!

Our first joint update and our last update as singles, from now on these updates will be coming from The Lunn's!

We can't believe how quickly the time has gone, but in 2 days, April 26th at noon, we will be walking down the aisle. We are obviously ecstatic as the day approaches and busy making final plans as friends and family arrive. After the wedding we will be gone for our honeymoon for a couple of weeks before returning to Seattle for our reception at the Vineyard Community Church in Shoreline on June 1st at 4pm. If you are in the Seattle area, you are more than welcome to come and we would love to see you!

We just wanted to say thank you to all of you who have been praying and supporting us. We have had such a wonderful time at home and have seen God's hand of blessing upon us as we have been raising support. While at first it seemed to be a nearly impossible feat of more than doubling our monthly support to reach our required budget, we are now down to needing just another 450 dollars of committed monthly support. God has been so gracious to us so far and we look forward to seeing how He will provide the rest.

We also just found a wonderful apartment to move into in South Africa where we will be moving on June 3rd, and are excited to begin establishing our home there soon.

Thank you again for all your prayers and support and the many ways you have invested in our lives and ministry. Our website has been updated with our current prayer requests and we'll be posting our wedding photos when we get back in a few weeks.

God bless,

James & Sarah (soon to be The Lunn's)
www.ToMakeHimKnown.com

We're Engaged!!!

Hello, Sunday, January 20th, 2008, will go down as one of the best days in my life. Last night Sarah and I got engaged!!! It was a perfect evening that I had been planning for many months and it all came together perfectly. Here is Sarah's account of the evening.

"The plan was to just go to a nice restaurant for a date . . . or so I thought. That nice restaurant turned out to be the top of the space needle where we had an amazing dinner, watching the sunset over Seattle, seeing the city turn from day to night and soaking up the view. After a phone call from James' mom saying we needed to come to the church and meet up with some of James' supporters, the date was cut short . . . so I thought, I had no idea what he had in store. We ended up at his church, walking down a candle lit walkway strewn with rose petals into the lounge where there was music, loads of candles and a table set up with lots of gifts, reminders of our time together in South Africa, some of my favorite things, and other special gifts. James started out reading a poem he'd written for me, ending up on his knee, asking me to be his wife!! The ring was hidden in a book that had special meaning to both of us. And his attention to detail and amount of thought put into this special night was astounding! Wine, chocolate and dried fruit brought all the way from South Africa, a candle holder from Uganda, my favorite cheesecake, communion, roses, and a journal from James, with an entry from him everyday while we were apart. We sat in that room a good long while soaking it all in, dancing, and enjoying just being with each other, really letting it all soak in that we get to spend the rest of our lives together. It was the perfect evening and the perfect proposal, and April 26^th will be the beginning of us spending the rest of our lives together."

So there you have it, I am getting married!!! I could not possibly be more excited and also quite relieved that all the secretive planning and little white lies (as I tried to keep the proposal a surprise) are over. Our wedding date will be April 26th, 2008 in her home town of South Bend, Indiana. After a honeymoon and a Wedding Reception in the Seattle area we will then move back to South Africa together to continue ministering there. For me this is better than a dream come true because I never dreamed of anyone as amazing as Sarah and we, along with both of our families, couldn't be happier.

You can see more pictures of the evening on my websites photo gallery, just click on this link: http://tomakehimknown.com/gallery/index.php?album=Engagement

We will both be here in the Seattle area until the middle of March and would love to get together with each of you while here.

Thank you so much for all of your prayer and support. I just can't believe that God has blessed me with a partner as amazing as Sarah to spend the rest of my life with and it is so wonderful to think I will never have to minister and travel alone again.

Sincerely,

James

There’s No Place Like Home For the Holidays

After a very long nine months of ministry that involved nine different nations, countless seminars, training hundreds of pastors, and teaching hundreds of hours as well, I have finally returned home and I could not have picked a better time. It has been such a blessing to be home for the Christmas season and be with family. The last two years I have spent the Christmas season alone in the blazing heat of Uganda, which has made this time home even more special.

Just before returning home I had an amazing finish in Uganda. I had a crazy week of preparing Romans and then one of my most memorable weeks of teaching on Bible Schools. The best quote of the week was after the second day of teaching when I overheard one of the students telling a group of people how the teaching was going and she said, "We are getting saved all over again!" God really broke through as we went through the book of Romans and dealt with justification and God's bewildering grace and sovereignty. It seemed that each of our sessions were spent with the students either amazed or in tears at the greatness of God's grace and experiencing the new-found freedom that comes from the understanding of that truth. As I was packing to leave after teaching on the final day I kept being pulled away by different students who had to come and process through with me what God was doing in them through the book. It was so difficult to walk away from those I have become so close to, especially Bosco, Valence and Nassa, the three pastors I have been able to help attend the school through the generosity of supporters and Titus Project. I am so grateful for the time I had with these men and women of faith.

One very memorable moment was the final night there when I was approached by a very tough Tongan who had attended one day of the teaching on justification. This giant of a man, covered in tattoos, wanted to talk about how far God's grace really extended. As we continued to talk, the Spirit was moving and he started to fight to hold back tears. At first it worked, but he couldn't stop the tears as God was just wrenching on his heart and he understood the truth of what God's grace and justification mean. I will never forget that night as tears were streaming down his face and he was shaking as he fought against the tears to no avail. God has just blown me away through studying this book with the truth of justification and it is such a privilege to share His truths with others and see their lives transformed as well.

So now I am back home in Seattle and am heading to Indiana in a few days to visit Sarah's family. I will be returning home in a couple weeks and Sarah will be moving here at that time as well for two months. I would love to get together with you while I am home before returning to South Africa.

Thank you so much for your prayers and support.

Sincerely,

James Lunn
www.ToMakeHimKnown.com

"Today is a new day!" What a great week!

Hello. Thank you so much for your prayers. They were definitely answered. We had such a wonderful time in the IDP camp in the North last week training the regional leadership of the churches there and I just finished up a great week teaching 1st & 2nd Timothy on the Bible school here.

Last week's seminar was a follow-up to the greatest seminar I ever had when I was with the same group last year. I had a lot of hopes and was sure it could not match the previous year's intensity and excitement, but this year was just as good, maybe even better! In returning, it was like a homecoming, everyone knows me and was so excited to be studying again. This is the only training they have ever received in their home. They usually travel very long distances to attend any kind of seminar. It amazes me that outside of a couple doctors who have gone to assess the outbreak of AIDS, I am the only westerner to ever go to this camp of 70,000 domestic refugees who have had to flee from the rebel attacks.

I will again limit myself to just a couple quick highlights in order to keep this less than 10 pages:
After leaving at 4am and taking a 14 hour grueling combination of packed buses and trucks we arrived safely in the camp at night and early the next morning started teaching the book of Ephesians. Again this year their hunger was the same as last year and they start at 8 and want teaching up to 10 or 11 at night with a couple short breaks for lunch, bathing, and dinner. They rush back early from every break eager for more and there is almost no point in asking if they want breaks during the teaching, because they will just say no. I just have to take them regardless! At the end of the first day of 8 hours of teaching, I was very tired and thankful the day was over and I could rest. Just then the chairman announced to everyone, "Tonight James will be giving a teaching on leadership in the church, don't be late." This was a shock to me, because I had no idea and the previous year I had taught them all the material I have for church leadership. I had nothing to teach and only about 20 minutes to prepare. After some time in prayer I had decided to just do a short 20-30 minute discussion time with them since I was unprepared and very tired. When I told them my intentions, they responded and said, "No James, we want for you to deliver the word, it must be at least an hour and a half." I desperately prayed to God asking for words, grace, and anointing and began to share with no idea what to say. The Lord just moved and gave me a great message that was well over an hour (I wish I had taken notes on it), dealing with leading by an example of Godliness. At the end I just prayed, not sure if there would even be a response. After a minute of silence I started talking again, but there was no translation, I looked over and my translator could barely speak because of the tears and as I looked around at the faces barely lit by my head lamp, I could see that almost every pastor's head was bowed and was covering their eyes with their hands as they wiped tears away. No one spoke, so we just let God keep moving. I just can't express how cool it is to see God move so powerfully in spite of me. I often teach similar things over and over again and it is sometimes hard to avoid teaching in my own strength, but times like this when I have nothing and God just moves and does everything gives me so much joy and gratitude.

On the 3rd day we taught through Ephesians chapter 5 and dealt with the passages of husbands serving their wives and loving them like they love their own body. I had no idea how it would go, but I have never had so much fun with application or seen such powerful, practical examples of knowing that long term fruit will result from the training. Their ideas on how to apply this were great, some serious, some humorous, some sad. A few examples from some of the pastors: "I will serve her by not committing adultery!" "I will love her by buying a bag of sugar, leaving it on my bicycle rack and then telling her to go outside and see what I have brought for her." "I will stop yelling at her when she can't control the plough and lets the cows lead her, in fact I will help her." "I will stop requiring her to get on her knees and pour the water to wash my hands before meals, instead, I will wash her hands." "I will learn how to cook." In an evening meeting with just a few of the top leadership, one of the leaders said, "James, it seems that our culture here does not value women the way the Bible describes, I think our culture needs to value them as well." When one pastor, the leader of more than 50 churches, said he would wash his wife's dress (apparently that was agreed upon as the most humbling thing a man can do here), another argued with him and said he would never actually do it. The pastor responded by saying, "Let's set a time and you can come over to my house and watch me do it!" All around they were so excited by the idea of being able to apply what God had been showing them. I have never seen anything like it, they were excited to go home and love their wives and teach all those in all their churches that they need to serve their wives as well! When one of the top leaders stated he would start cooking and washing clothes, another challenged him and said, "when was the last time you cooked or cleaned?" He responded, "Never, but that was before, now I know the truth and will start today. Today is a new day!" I have a giant grin and am filled with joy just recalling that night! I praise God for letting me witness His Kingdom coming to Earth in a small way. A significant portion of the leadership in that region were present and they are going to be going back to their churches and passing it on to others. Truly a humbling thought.

I could go on and on, with so many stories. By the time we left they were begging us to return again and I know I will as soon as God opens the door to do so.

This week I will spend working with the students on the school here and preparing to teach the book of Romans the following week before flying home.
It has been such a wonderful time here and I am so grateful for your prayers and support. I can't believe my time here is almost over. Though I am quite saddened to leave here knowing I won't be back next year, I am also excited to return home after a very intense year of ministry. I will be home in just a few short weeks and look forward to getting together with those who have been praying and supporting me during this time. I am especially eager to return home to see Sarah again and for those of you who would like to meet her, I have some great news, she will be moving to Seattle in January for a couple of months! I am so grateful to God for technology which has allowed us to stay in daily communication for the last two months, even when I am out in villages and refugee camps, but am thrilled that this season of long distance is about to end.

Thank you so much for all of your prayers. God has been moving so much. Please continue to pray for the remainder of the time: For anointing in preparing and teaching in the last two weeks and also that in the last two weeks with the students I will be able to pour everything into them I can, deepen relationships, and end the time well.

Sincerely,

James Lunn
www.ToMakeHimKnown.com

Quote of the year, "Today is the best day of my entire life!"

Well, it has been another amazing few weeks since arriving in Uganda. It is so great to see so many friends again and especially the pastors who are doing the Bible School here. It has been so wonderful to spend time with these great men and women of faith and yet so humbling to have the chance to train them in how to study the Word of God. This trip to Uganda will be the longest time I will have ever had to work with the same group of people and it has been so wonderful to spend time with these friends of mine and work with them on a day to day basis.

A couple highlights of the last few weeks:

A couple weeks ago I was doing a workshop on interpreting the book of Luke and I had randomly chosen about 8 different passages to look at. After going through one of the passages, the parable of the tax collector and the Pharisee (Luke 18:9-14), I quickly went through a few possible applications. One that I mentioned was that Jesus looked past the tax collector’s sinful past and so too Christ has justified us and no longer looks at our past, etc. It was one of many applications we spoke of during the day. However, after lunch I was at the office and one of the students, an African missionary who has been ministering for a few years and plans to spend the rest of his life as a missionary in Africa, came up to me and wanted to talk. He sat down and asked, “James, is it really true what you shared today? Does Christ really look past our past? And if so, then why can’t other Christians look past mine?” We spent the next 45 minutes talking about justification, grace, and his past and the more we talked, the more his tears flowed. It broke my heart to find that he was still living under condemnation from other pastors and Christians who could not forgive him for his past sins and as a result he doubted Christ’s own ability to truly forgive him. By the end of our talk after we had prayed, he looked at me with tears flowing down his face and said, “James, today is the best day of my entire life!” I can not describe how humbled and grateful I was to God for allowing me the privilege of having a front-row seat in seeing such a great man of God set free by God’s grace.

Last week I had another great opportunity to teach the book of Acts on the Bible school and there are so many stories of what God did in me while studying it and in the lives of the students through sharing it. One that stands out was just this past Monday morning at the all-base worship meeting where the whole ministry here of about 75 people gathers together. The person leading the session decided to do a group discussion and had chosen Acts 1:8 as the passage for the discussion. I had just spent a couple hours the past week teaching on this very passage and was hopeful that one of the students would at least share something. Well, half of the students ended up sharing and completely dominated the discussion. Especially one student who gave a five minute sermonette explaining the passage within its context, looking at its contrast to the previous verse, and showing how it applied to all who were seated there. I was fighting to hold back tears of joy. I could not have said it any better myself and what he shared was not even what I had taught, but what he had understood from his own studying of the text. Again it was such a great gift to be able to see immediate fruit from the ministry here and it reminded me again of how blessed I am to be here and to get to work with such amazing people.

I could go on and on with the praise reports of what God has been doing. It has just been so exciting for me to come back and work with some of the same people for the 3rd year in a row. 3 of the pastors on the school I have seen trained up over the last 3 years and it is so wonderful to see the fruit of what God has been doing through this ministry. Especially because on a regular basis they come to me and share how grateful they are for this ministry and what God has been doing in and through them as a result of the work I have been able to do here. They send greetings to all those who have been praying and supporting me.

So thank you for all your prayers and support and I hope you are encouraged by all that God is doing through you here in Uganda. Please continue to be praying as this weekend I will be leaving for an IDP camp in the north of the country for a follow up seminar to a seminar I did last year in Aromo. For those of you who remember it is the one where there were about 150 pastors who went from morning until night, where I was teaching 10-12 hours a day and literally collapsed by the time I returned. They were desperate for another one and say they have gathered everyone together again. The only sad thing is my translator at the time, Bosco, can not come because he is a student on the school here now.

So please pray for God to move powerfully for that week and for Nico’s and my health and safety in travel and while staying in the camp, also please continue to pray for wisdom and anointing as I continue to prepare and teach on the school here. Things start getting even busier when I return and I won’t be able to do it on my own. Please also be praying for these students, some of them are starting to get a bit overwhelmed by the work load and by the applications that have been transforming their hearts.

Thank you so much!

Sincerely,
James Lunn
www.ToMakeHimKnown.com

A Great Finish & Some Wonderful News

Well, I am now sitting back in Capetown, South Africa after returning with my team from Zambia a few days ago. We had such a great time the last few weeks since my last update as our team got back together and had another three weeks of ministry in Zambia. During that time we held five different seminars in five different locations including training the staff of a newly opened Bible school and finished up with a few days of debriefing before the team flew home. There are endless stories of what God did during these last few weeks that I would love to share, but it would make this update far too long. You can see many photos on my website's photo gallery under "Zambia." So just a couple of the highlights from the last few weeks:

- In one seminar out in the village we were working with a church that belonged to a denomination that did not allow women to preach or lead in any capacity even though the leaders of that church felt their woman could do it. While there, the two women on my team taught each day and on the final day I gave a one and a half hour teaching on women in ministry. During the teaching, the pastors were writing notes as fast as they could and afterwards a few of them came up to me and said, "James, we are taking this to our denomination's regional board meeting this weekend, this is the ammunition we need to finally see the women in this region released to minister." I learned that one of the pastors was the secretary on the board that makes the denominational decisions and said that this coming month the board will be reworking their constitution and now after this week he is confident the women will have the same rights as men!" I couldn't believe it! I had no idea there could be such an impact from a simple sharing of God's Word!

- The following Sunday I was not scheduled to preach when at the last moment I got dropped off at a church of more than 400 people and asked to preach. As I went in and prayed about what to share, I had no idea what to speak on. Finally I was impressed so strongly that I needed to speak on marriage. I tried to ignore this thought for obvious reasons, but it became very clear that it was indeed God leading me to do so. So with great trepidation I stood up to give a 30 minute sermon on marriage from Ephesians chapter 5. As soon as I was up, I felt the Spirit's anointing and proceeded to have the most fun preaching I have ever had that lasted over an hour. The church was divided down the middle between men and women, they even had to tithe in separate baskets to see who gave more. As I shared I would have half the room jumping out of their seats and then the other half as I again shared on the need to prefer one another in marriage and what it means to "love your wife as Christ loved the Church." Afterwards I gave an application for the men to go home and ask their wives what they can do to show them more love. On the way home the pastor we were staying with who had attended told me he was so excited to ask his wife that question and did so as soon as we got home. Later he came to me and told me he was shocked by his wife's response. He said, "I thought she would tell me she wants nicer clothes or better food, but she said, 'just hug me more, kiss me more, and hold me like a baby!'" He responded, "I can do that!" You know, out of all the amazing miracles I get to see God do and all the powerful testimonies I get to see, this is one of the more simple, yet one of my favorites. I love to see God working in people's lives in practical ways that will bring about life change, especially when it is countercultural and empowering the women.

- Overall, one of the things that made this outreach so amazing was the privilege of working with the director of "Every Home For Christ," an international ministry that has a focus on evangelism and mercy ministries. A couple days before we arrived in Zambia they had been praying and asking God how they can do disciple the leaders throughout the country. The next day they heard we were coming and after they saw our first seminar, they were hooked and dropped everything on their plate to travel with us, set up seminars and continually asking us to come back for even longer. This is the group that set up our training seminar a few weeks ago and as we left they even committed to try and raise funds to bring us back and take the training all over the nation. In all the places I have been I have never felt so welcomed and seen people on the ground so aware of the need for Bible Training and willing to do something about it. It is our hope and prayer that we will be able to send more teams back and continue to train up those on the ground to do what we are doing.

As for the best news of all (at least from my perspective), after 10 years of ministry as a single man, God has completely rocked my world and brought the most amazing woman into my life. I actually first met Sarah Avery almost three years ago when I was in Northern Uganda as she was traveling through to Sudan and God recently reunited us as she was one of my team members with me in Zambia. She is from Indiana, has been in missions for the last seven years, and desires to continue in missions for the rest of her life. This season of the life is the happiest I have ever been and it is so wonderful to minister alongside someone I care so much about! More details will be coming.

So that is where things are at over here. I am heading to Uganda on Friday and it is great because another one of my teammates, Nico, will be going with me to Uganda for two and a half months. We will be working with the Bible School there and doing pastor seminars as well. The ministry I am a part of, Titus Project, has helped to sponsor some of the students on the Bible School again this year and I am excited to go back and work more with these amazing men of God. I will be coming home for Christmas and look forward to seeing many of you then. Next year I will be returning with Sarah to Capetown to work with the Bible School here in Capetown.

Thank you so much for your prayers and support (especially for those who have been praying for God to bring a partner in ministry into my life) I can't thank you enough.
Please also continue to pray for wisdom and anointing in the upcoming two months in Uganda, I have a great amount of preparation that needs to be done to teach multiple books on the Bible School there as well as need wisdom in how much external teaching to do in other seminars. Please also continue to pray for health and safety in travel and while living there. I have been amazingly healthy so far and I am so grateful for your prayers in this area.

Thank you again for all your support,

Sincerely,

James Lunn
www.ToMakeHimKnown.com