Posted in General Posts
by Chad Mustain
on 11/17/2008
Yesterday Heather and I were part of "Missions Sunday" at Dunwoody Baptist Church. My dad was on staff with Dunwoody about 10 years ago and they have been partners with mine and Heather's ministry with AIM since 2007. In addition to being recognized in the service as a DBC missions partner and having our insert in the service program, I played the song "Outside of These Walls" for the offertory in both services. I hope you'll check out the video that Heather recorded in the 2nd service.
In addition to the church services yesterday Heather and I had lunch with some members of the DBC missions team, caught up with some good friends in the afternoon, and then had dinner with some friends who have a son who is interested in going on a trip with AIM this summer. In the midst of all the business God blessed us with a new supporter, a small gift, and future serving opportunities.
Heather and I look forward to upcoming serving opportunities with Dunwoody Baptist Church in the new year like leading in worship at their Sunday services, leading in worship at their Celebrate Recovery ministry, and teaching in their middle school and high school bible studies. We are also exploring the idea of partnering together in 2009 on a short term trip through Adventures in Missions.
On Saturday with had our "Fun Friends Thanksgiving" with about 15 people that we work with. Heather and I cooked our first turkey together and everyone else contributed a side dish of some sort. We had a lot of fun eating together, watching the Thanksgiving episodes of "Friends", and playing games. In the excitement of the night, we forgot to take pictures but we did manage to get a picture of the turkey.
Heather and I are pretty busy at work as we head towards the Thanksgiving holiday. We are excited to have Heather's brother Mike join us from New York for Thanksgiving.
Posted in General Posts
by Chad Mustain
on 11/13/2008
Well, fall is in full swing here in north Georgia. Actually, the best of the leaves changing colors are probably now behind us. Last Friday Heather, Maeby, and I had the opportunity to go to a few small north Georgia towns and Amicalola State Park to scout out a good location for a staff day away. Here are a few of the highlights:
Outside of the lodge at Amicalola State Park.
Heather's favorite fall colors.
Looking out from the top of Amicalola Falls.
On the "strenuous" 425 step journey down to the mid falls.
The fall is a busy time for much of the staff as they are out catching up with many of the teams throughout Latin and South America and Africa. We are all looking forward to our staff get-away to share cool stories of what God is doing and to begin our preparation for the upcoming season of ministry.
Heather has enjoyed keeping busy with her current project of finding a staff get-away location and all the details that go along with a retreat. She is also busy contacting and setting up recruiting times with universities throughout the southeast. In the first part of 2009 Heather will be visiting numerous university campus ministries and university career days to recruit both participants and leaders for our spring and summer trips with AIM.
I am currently working on the challenge and project of reworking and creating new teaching curriculum for our Real Life High School and Real Life College teams. While I've always enjoyed journaling and writing blogs, this is a new experience for me and has become quite the task but I feel I am up for the challenge.
As the holidays quickly approach we are looking forward to our "Fun Friends Thanksgiving" with some of our friends this Saturday. We are basically going to share a Thanksgiving meal with some friends at our apartment and watch the Thanksgiving episodes of the TV show "Friends" together. On Sunday we are excited to be a part of "Missions Sunday" at Dunwoody Baptist Church where my dad used to be on staff and who are a part of our support team. I am going to be playing the song "Out Side of these Walls" for the offertory. We are also excited to have Heather's brother Mike fly in from upstate New York to spend Thanksgiving with us.
We love hearing from you so please comment on our blog or send us an email (chadmustain02@yahoo.com and hmichaele15@hotmail.com).
Posted in General Posts
by Heather Mustain
on 11/3/2008
Some of you may remember this post
of mine from last year...
"From there we receive a call from
some of our students who do ministry at the health clinic in one of the
townships, Pellsrus. They ran into a woman and her two month old baby on the
street. The woman is drunk and holding her child like a sack of potatoes. Our
students pray with her, take the child and walk her home. Upon arriving at the
woman's house, they see a man rolling joints and at least 6 cats roaming the
home. The house is an absolute disaster, and talking to the neighbors we find
out they are all alcoholics and the neighbor tells us, "They need a lot of
help." Our minds and hearts go back to that child finding out it has not
eaten more than flour and water for the last four days. It weighs only 2.5
Kilos, making it about 6 pounds. It has a rash over its entire body. The mother
is too drunk to have patience to feed and hold it properly. We sat there
wondering what is going to happen to this child. We buy some formula for the
baby and try to teach the mother how to do simple things like feed it, burp it
and hold it. And then we leave, praying and hoping that God brings restoration
and life to that family."
Well it seems as if God has done
just that. This year another team has
been sent to Jeffrey's Bay. My
co-leaders and five of our students have returned for a second year and keep me
up to date on ministry and life there.
This year in Jeffrey's we started
partnering with a woman named Nelly who runs an abandoned, vulnerable
children's home. Nelly is a very godly
woman who gives her heart and life to bring children hope and restoration.
About three weeks ago, one of the
ministry teams that does house visitation ran into Gloria and Angel again only
to find Baby Angel in bad shape at seven months old. Of
course the news hit hard to past students and staff members so they visited
Gloria the next day to see for themselves the conditions. By the end of their visit they were able to
talk Gloria into letting them take her and her older sister, Blessing back to
their house for a bath. During that
time, they took her to Nelly's where at first sight of Angel Nelly knew she
needed help. Nelly agreed to take her in
and so they began the process. Later
that day, Gloria agreed to talk with Nelly about the possibility of letting her
take care of Angel indefinitely. Gloria
was thankful for that option, but wasn't sure what her family (her mother,
etc.) would think. The entire family met
with Nelly the next day and agreed that this would be best for the family. So now Angel is under the care of Nelly at
the Seventh Heaven Children's Home in Jeffrey's Bay. Our prayers when we left JBay in May were
that God would bring restoration to that family. And six months later we are starting to see
the answer to that prayer.
We are thankful that Angel is getting the care and love that
she needs, but our concerns are still with the mother Gloria. Students continue to visit with her, but
please pray that God would touch this lady. That He would touch her with the love of the Father and show her her
value on this earth, so that Gloria would be able to radically love her Angel.
This is AIM's staff member Aaryn holding and feeding Angel for the first time in days.
Posted in General Posts
by Chad Mustain
on 10/29/2008
Life continues to move right along here in Gainesville, Ga. It is hard to believe we've been here for two months already. As we are coming up on three months of marriage, Heather and I continue to learn and grow. It is awesome to see the ways God is working in our lives as a couple and how he molds us individually as well.
Upon moving here Heather and I were hoping to find serving opportunities outside of our work with Adventures in Missions. For the past 6 weeks or so we've been working with the student ministry band of a local church. The band consists of 7 students (2 girls and 5 guys) who desire to grow as musicians and singers but more importantly in their walks with the Lord. Working with these students on Sundays and Wednesdays is seriously the highlight of our week. We also meet with them once a week for a small group bible study at our apartment.
Heather and I are both passionate about investing in and discipling students. It's our desire that they would experience life change and become difference makers in our world. We spent the first couple of weeks talking about how worship and lifestyle go hand in hand. We also looked at worship as being upward, inward, and outward. On Sunday we began a study of Philippians and what it means to live as a citizen of heaven and living in a manner worthy of the Gospel. I'm really excited about this study and hopefully helping lead these students to an experience of radical life change.
Although I don't notice it, Heather says Maeby is growing every day. Maeby is kind of in "terrible two's" stage (she's two months old) and is getting very curious, independent, and at times very defiant. Basically, she's a puppy and she brings so much joy and laughter to our lives.
Maeby has also been a great as a "ministry tool" so to speak. So many of our neighbors like to stop and talk with us about her and it's given us a chance to get to know people and begin building relationships. As a result of the "Maeby affect" we are dog sitting for our next-door neighbors this weekend. This relationship we are beginning to build with our neighbors could prove to be a valuable ministry contact as well because he works for the Hall Country Boys and Girls Club of America.
During these hard economic times, we understand the sacrifice you are making to support us. We really can't thank you enough for your commitment of prayer and financial support. We continue to trust that God will provide for us just as we trust he will provide for you as well. Our hearts and prayers really go out to our friends and supporters who find themselves in difficult times financially and who have even recently lost their jobs. We pray for financial stability, new jobs, and a deeper reliance and trust in the Lord.
Posted in General Posts
by Chad Mustain
on 10/22/2008
This past weekend Heather and I helped with AIM's very first BreakThru conference. The idea behind the conference was to help believers break free of past hurts, current hang ups, and the lies that Satan so often gets followers of Christ to believe. We had 43 teens and adults attending this conference in addition to the 50+ World Race participants and staff that are here for training. Heather and I served in a variety of capacities from making dinner, to leading worship, to helping facilitate freeing experiential activities, and serving as prayer partners. As sort of a pilot run for AIM, the BreakThru conference was a huge success.
On Monday I spent most of the day in Suwanee, GA getting some repairs done to our car. I decided to re-read Rob Bell's book "Jesus Wants to Save Christians" as I had about 6 hours of hanging out, waiting, and reflection on my hands. Towards the end of the book he talks about some of the tension that the early New Testament church lived in and sort of tied that into the tension that the American church lives in today. Rob writes:
"What do you do when your religion isn't big enough for God . . . . What do you do when your system falls apart because the new thing that God is doing is better, beyond, superior, more compelling?" (p.101)
He goes on to write that:
"This is the story of Acts, the story of the early church, the story of the Jesus way as it left Jerusalem and headed to the ends of the earth. It's the story of a thousand little everyday decisions these first Christians made to free the message from its cultural and religious trappings so that it would truly be good news for all who encountered it." (p. 106-107)
This past weekend we saw many of the BreakThru conference attendees and World Race participants discover the new things that God is doing in them and in our world as they experienced break through and freedom. May we be about helping others find freedom and discovering the Good News of Christ.
Posted in General Posts
by Chad Mustain
on 10/15/2008
Well, today for Heather's 25th birthday we purchased a little Boston terrier puppy we've named Maeby. Since returning from South Africa Heather has been researching and waiting for the "perfect" dog. We especially saved some money from our wedding fund to purchase a dog when we found the right one. We found Maeby online this past week and we both fell in love with her. So, this morning we hit the road at 6:00am to drive 4 hours to Broxton, Georgia to add Maeby to our family.
I'm sure you are wondering where we got the name Maeby from. Our good friends Don and Connie got us hooked on the show Arrested Development. While it lasted only 3 short seasons on Fox, it has developed quite the following on DVD. One of our favorite character's from the show is named Maeby and thus we found our name.
Maeby is such a wonderful little dog. She is a welcomed and greatly anticipated (Heather could not wait to get a dog) addition to our family.
Posted in General Posts
by Chad Mustain
on 10/14/2008
So as many of you know, I love to read. With the adjustment of
married life, moving, a new job, and new friends, I'm just now starting
to tackle the stack of books I've accumulated over the past few months.
This morning I finished Rob Bell's most recent book: "Jesus Wants to
Save Christians." Although this books is a bit short in length (only
215 pages including endnotes) I found it to be jam packed with valuable
content. To find out more, I encourage you to pick it up and read for
yourself.
While there were many things that I am still currently
wrestling with and processing, this morning I came across a quote and a
question that have really challenged me. Rob Bell quotes the Archbishop
William Temple saying:
"A church is an organization that exists for the benefit of its nonmembers" (p 166).
Rob Bell then follows this statement with the question: "If our church
was taken away -- from our city, our neighborhood, our region -- who
would protest?"
I've heard challenges similar to
this one in the past but this morning it has taken on a deeper meaning.
What this deeper meaning is, I don't know. I don't have it figured out
and I don't have a nice way to wrap up this blog. I believe this is the
tension that we all live in. If your church was taken away, who would
notice? Only the church members? The community? Those in need? If
Adventures in Missions was taken away, who would notice? Only those
over seas? Would anyone in Gainesville, GA notice other than those of
us that work here?
And this is the tension that I am living in. I guess the challenge for me this morning is will this tension lead to action?
Posted in General Posts
by Chad Mustain
on 10/6/2008
Hello All-
I'm sorry it's been almost 2 weeks since we have updated our blog. Life just has a way of getting away from you at times. As we have mentioned before, Adventures in Missions has been doing a lot of reorganization within the NextStep program that Heather and I work with. In addition to the job responsibilities being reorganized, AIM has nearly completed their building remodel and our department will soon be moving upstairs. With job responsibilities now clarified and roles defined, we are all excited to move into our new offices and work space.
Heather and I are excited about our new roles, one being that of Europe Region Coordinators. We will be researching, planning, coordinating, and in some instances leading Adventures in Missions one and two month trips to Europe. There are currently trips that will definitely be going to Ireland in the summer and fall of 2009. Heather and I are in the process of finalizing trips to both England and Romania in the spring and summer that we will more than likely be leading together. In addition, I will be the Curriculum Coordinator for the NextStep program and Heather will be the Trip Setup Coordinator. We are looking forward to how this unfolds and develops over the coming weeks and months.
As kind of a side project or responsibility, Heather and I are supporting and praying for the AIM staff in Kenya. Connie Donlon, who is on staff with AIM in Kenya, put together two great videos that highlights some of the ministry that AIM is a part of and what we are trying to build into people . . . . hope. Please enjoy these videos as you get a small picture of one of the many places that your support and prayers are making a difference. If after watching these videos you are interested in financially supporting the AIM House in Kenya, please contact us and we will get you the information that you need.
Posted in General Posts
by Chad Mustain
on 9/24/2008
One of my favorite aspects of our job with AIM is hearing all of the neat stories of what God is doing all over the world. I just wanted to pass along some stories and photos of the way God is moving in the lives of students, leaders, community members, and even supporters who play such a valuable part in God's work as well. One of the team's Heather and I are praying for and supporting from afar is the Real Life Kenya team. Here are some of their stories:
"The team has had some sweet times with kids. They are all just kid-crazy which fits in so well here. On Saturday we had the orphans from the AIM house over to teach the team one of the Drimes they know and then to just hang out and play with the kids. It was so sweet. Shaun and I were making pizza for the team's dinner but I kept wandering out back to check on things and I came around the corner to find Joel sitting in the grass with 7 of my girls huddled around him and Amanda and they were pulling his leg hair and touching his facial hair. He was having them teach him . . . . Swahili. And then they taught them some Swahili songs.
He and I had talked while walking through the slums the day before about how the girls here don't believe that a husband is ever faithful to their wife and that they girls just don't have Christian guys loving on them without wanting something back. So he really took it to heart and was so just Jesus in the flesh to them."
"James was playing soccer with the boys and Safia (one of the AIM House girls who'd rather play soccer than anything else). Well, I guess, Safia tripped or something and James rushes over to help her but. Kim said the look on Safia's face was priceless...a mix of shock and being totally tickled. The girls need to see how men should behave and James was a great example of that. And Safia had clearly not experienced that before."
James Safia
Heather has 5 students from here team last year in Jeffrey's Bay, South Africa. One of her students named Melissa had just about the worst travel scenario possible happen to her last Monday while traveling. To make a long story short Melissa's passport was lost/stolen on her flight from Washington D.C. to Jo-Berg, South Africa. Ultimately she was deported back to the U.S. and finally after 4 days in airports made it back to her home outside of Calgary, Alberta Canada. Melissa's heart is to be with the children of Jeffrey's Bay and she found herself in need of a plane ticket back to South Africa after her travel nightmare.
This past Saturday night I was having a sleepless night. My mind kept finding it's way to Melissa and her situation. What was strange is God kept bringing to mind one of mine and Heather's supporters as well. I felt God leading me to share Melissa's story with this supporter to see if they might be a part of God's plan to get Melissa back to South Africa. The body of Christ is such a cool thing. Never having met Melissa and feeling they could help her in her need, Melissa will now soon be on a plane back to South Africa.
These are just a few of the many stories of the way God is restoring, transforming, and moving in our world. We encourage you to continue praying for our teams all over the world. In Rob Bell's new book "Jesus Wants to Save Christians: A Manifesto for the Church in Exile" he writes:
". . . . it is when we are fully present in our pain, when we are willing to sit in our tears, that we are ready to imagine a different kind of tomorrow."
The world is a messy and hurting place. Thank you for your prayers and support that help bring "a different kind of tomorrow."
Posted in General Posts
by Chad Mustain
on 9/22/2008
No, Monday's are not my favorite day of the month. I am a morning person and love the mornings but seriously, who really likes returning to work on a Monday? As many of you know my favorite number is 2 and I always say that 22 is even better (because it's two 2's). So today, the 22nd, is my favorite day of the month. Yeah yeah, I know I'm an odd guy.
Heather and I overall are doing well. Last week was a little tough on us (Doctor's visits, diet changes, first month financial expenses, budgeting together etc.) but we weathered the storms. I believe we learned a lot and that we continue to grow in our love. In addition to your prayers for our work with AIM we welcome your prayers for our marriage and our spiritual development as well.
We had a great meeting with the NextStep department on Thursday. As AIM continues to restructure and prepare for the upcoming ministry year, we have a much better picture of our role in the office. In addition to being support staff for the NextStep department, we've been presented with some neat opportunities that we are praying thru.
The biggest option we've been presented with is to be the team leader/director for all of AIM's Real Life high school and Real Life college trips to Europe. Because of the current state of the U.S. economy and the weakness of the U.S. dollar in the British and European economies, AIM has had to drastically limit their involvement in Europe because of cost. Currently there are high school trips to Ireland and potential trips to England and Romania in the spring and/or summer of 2009. The trip to England would be targeted towards home schooled high school students and would focus on both missions work and educational experiences. The trip to Romania would have a strong sports emphasis partnering with local Christian sports ministries. We invite you to pray with us as we try to discern if this is a role God would have us serve in for this next ministry season.
As the team leader/director Heather and I would be responsible for most aspects of the trips including:
Trip Development
Marketing
Leader Development
Trip setup and logistics
Training camp
Leading trips
Debrief and follow up
Again, we welcome your prayers for this exciting opportunity we are praying through. As a side note, we also hope to visit Jeffrey's Bay, South Africa (where Heather was last year) later this fall to give some of the staff some time off and for Heather to reconnect with friends and ministry partners.
Heather and I also have had a neat opportunity outside of AIM to work with students in a youth band from a local church. A family that we work with at AIM has a son in the band and they asked us over the summer if we would be interested in working with the band's musical but more importantly, spiritual development.
For the past few weeks we've been attending rehearsals and the youth activities when the band has lead worship. It's been a lot of fun to see the improvement in the band musically but also helping them better understand what worship is and the privilege it is to lead their peers to a place where they can encounter and worship God.
Last night we had the band over to our apartment for a small group bible study. We looked at the passage Romans 12:1-5 and talked about what worship is and how each of us bring something unique to the body of Christ. It was cool to help the students see what they bring to the band (deeper than the instrument they play) but also to see them encourage each other and value each other's gifts and abilities. Working with and hanging out with these students 2-3 times a week has become one of my favorite parts of my week so expect to hear more about the cool things God is doing through this ministry opportunity.
A random note as I close . . . . Heather and I have tried to pick up tennis as a hobby and form of exercise to do together. Neither one of us have ever really played before so it's been a interesting experience. We get a little better each day and welcome any tips that you might have.
