The Seabourns

Travel

Worldwide Day of Prayer October 2010

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Kay and I returned last night from 20 days on the road in Thailand. We thoroughly enjoyed our time, including rich time with kids and grandkids. Daughter-in-love M wrote a very sweet blog post about the Departure Gate.

Being home is good too. It was great to sleep in my own bed. It’s great to be sitting in my favorite chair, with my favorite cup of coffee, and enjoying the stillness of my house. It’s 5am and my body doesn’t know which timezone it’s in, but if I’m going to be awake at 5 am, this is the place: my chair in my house with my coffee!

Today is a special day in the life of Campus Crusade for Christ staff. Today, we join around the world in active, intentional, dedicated prayer. Running through my head this morning:

Worship in Thailand last weekFrom the rising of the sun
To the going down of the same
The Lord’s name
Is to be praised.
Praise ye the Lord
Praise Him all ye servants of the Lord
Praise the name of the Lord
Blessed be the name of the Lord
From this time forth and forever more

This is a photo from a worship time in Thailand last week with our local Thai staff leading us. Scenes like this will be happening around the world today from the rising of the sun, to going down of the same. The Lord’s name will be praised.

Kay and I spending this special day in prayer.

Travel is interesting

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Things that happened on our recent trip in Southeast Asia:

“Kay, wake up. There are ants in our bed.” At 4 am. I felt crawling and itching. I thought I must be developing a rash. No rash, just ants!

Grammy Kay bumped Abby off a baggage cart when they hit a bump exiting a moving walkway. Abby was unhurt and jumped up laughing. (Grammy says I must use bumped not dumped for her escapade!)

Grandad Keith dumped Abby and two of her friends off a baggage cart when it became unbalanced and turned over. All were unhurt and laughing. (Do you think Abby wonders about grandparents now? What do Daniel and Michelle’s new team friends think about their parents?)

8 bags of household possessions for Daniel and Michelle were heavily packed. Thai Airways only charged them $90 for 500 pounds rather than the expected $1500. Amazing answer to prayers.

Daniel and Michelle received their visa to Thailand just a few days before moving there, after weeks of trying. Amazing answer.

Life continues to be an amazing adventure walking with the Lord every day.

Distance Learning Project

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The meetings part of my Africa trip are over. I’m partway into the travel remaining. I’m returned from Nairobi, Kenya to Johannesburg, South Africa on the first leg of 33 ½ hours of travel, leaving the hotel at 4:45 am until I touch down in Orlando on Thursday. The reclining cocoons of Business Class sure look nice as I walk past them to the Economy section!

Yesterday, Chris and I met with Dr. Emmanuel Bellon, Vice Chancellor of Nairobi International School of Theology. We were joined by Nicholos Kimolo, Managing Director of Futuristics. Emmanuel’s vision of the need and urgency of distance learning in Africa is motivating. Nicholas seems a very competent consultant and advisor to come alongside and help implement the vision. Emmanuel shared the urgent need for trained leadership to guide the exploding church membership in Africa. Theological education schools in Nairobi do not graduate enough leaders to supply the new churches planted each year in just the city of Nairobi alone. It’s fairly normal for a church to see its trained pastor preach once every 3 months. The interim times are led by lay leaders and women, mostly untrained. There is an urgent need for trained leadership across the African continent.

Emmanuel sees distance education as an effective way to increase theologically-trained leadership beyond what resident schools are able to do. He began working on a plan 3 years ago, and really launched about a year ago. They have contracted Futuristics to help with the technologies needed.

As we talked, we identified several areas where my technology team in Orlando may be able to partner with this distance learning project. We have developed several systems that are needed in this project. It’s exciting to see the Lord enabling the work of our hands to be helpful to this distance learning project in Africa.

In addition to assisting with their current distance learning project, we agreed to a pilot project to test the ability to deliver distance learning in mobile phones. The current distance project seems focused on the centralized components of distance learning. I think the mobile device project can add value by addressing the end-user component of distance learning by providing a way for remote users to be trained without needing to have a computer and a high-speed internet connection.

This has been a very productive time. I am very aware of your faithful giving and praying. Kay and I are privileged to partner with you. We get to be your hands and feet, your personal representatives working with Dr. Bellon and others to develop new ways to help others grow and develop as Christ’s ambassadors.

More photos from Nairobi are online here.

Our September prayer calendar is online here.

On the journey together with you,
Keith & Kay

Springbok and TOM

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Springbok

“We’re having Springbok pie with Chutney for dinner,” said our hostess Marie Dell. Springbok is a South African antelope. It tasted like venison (meat from deer) which I enjoy. But I’d never had it in a pie. A “pie” means a crust, something like a chicken pot pie. Chutney is a spicy relish made from vegetables or fruit. Good dinner!!!

I asked where the Springbok had come from. Marie’s husband Stefan had taken his discipleship group hunting. They had licenses for 5 springbok. We were eating from one of them.

Sounds like my kind of discipleship group! Maybe a transfer to South Africa will be in our future!

South African group

Nicholas and Pravani wanted to learn about TOM and other tools to build movements on their campuses. TOM is our nickname for a Facebook application called Together on Mission. TOM helps build movements through several momentum-building activities like

  • encouraging praying for one another
  • encouraging students to identify their “sphere of influence” whom they hope to influence for Christ
  • sharing stories contributed by students of evangelistic opportunities
  • helping students find a Bible study group and join it
  • reporting statistics of God’s activities on the campus

We recently released TOM version 1. Nicholas and Pravani quickly grasped how TOM could help them with their students. They saw how TOM could be used to launch ministries on campuses where they are not able to go.

More photos are available on our photo site.

Aborted take-off

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Thai Air
Thai Air

Thai Airways flight TG325 was roaring down the runway in Bangkok, Thailand. It was after 1 am and I was sleepily waiting for takeoff of our flight from Thailand to Bangalore, India. I remember thinking, “We’re taking longer than usual to take-off. It seems like we should have rotated nose up by now. Maybe the engines on this Airbus A300 are not as powerful as other planes and the take-off run is longer.”

About that time, the pilot slammed on the brakes. Hard. The seat belt tugged. Kay and I were both wide awake now.

It takes a while to get 19 tons traveling at 170 miles per hour slowed down. Three hundred people on flight TG325 were  hoping there was enough runway left.

There was. The Thai pilot was a professional. He did all the right things and we were always safe.

As we turned around to taxi back towards the terminal, Kay commented that she had prayed twice during the evening for our flight to India. She had felt an unusual prompting to pray. The Lord was preparing the pilot, the flight crew, and us for an aborted take-off experience. Kay’s prayers were a part of that preparation.

That is why your prayers are important. Air travel is pretty routine. Except when it isn’t! We do it all the time. It’s amazing how regularly flights take off and land safely. Baggage arrives as expected most of the time.

God allows things to happen “normally” most of the time. Most things are so “normal” that we forget to “pray without ceasing.” But sometimes, he has special opportunities to trust him built into our daily schedule. I don’t know whether it’s special faith-building opportunities, or whether the always-present-but-rarely-seen spiritual warfare breaks out in a skirmish in our part of reality.

But prayer is a very important part of both faith-building and war-fighting. I wrote a few months ago about an amazing thought from John Piper (click here to view Piper video clip):

God, the sovereign ruler of the universe, has ordained that prayers cause things to happen that would not happen if we do not pray. When James 4:2 says ‘you do not have because you do not ask’, it doesn’t mean ‘you would have anyway even if you did not ask because I’ve got a plan’.

This was a difficult trip from the perspective of airlines and travel. Long flights. Missed connections. Delays. Missing bags.

But in the end, we had one of the most profitable meetings of our global technology leadership that we’ve had. Ever. And we trained 30 leaders in India how to use our measurement system to capture statistics and stories of the amazing things God is doing in India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, and Nepal. They will soon train their hundreds of staff. We will soon be even better able to publish abroad the amazing things God is doing throughout that entire region of the world.

And prayer is a major a part. Prayers were part of getting us to Thailand and to India. Prayers were part of the effectiveness of the training. And prayers will help Sam and Robin and Bibisho and others as they lead in helping everyone know someone who truly follows Jesus.

“Prayers cause things to happen that would not happen if we do not pray.”