Settling In, Establishing Routines

Hello and welcome to Lone Oak, where another week of study and learning with Keith and Arlie ends. Today, you will hear from all three team members explain what happened this week and some key takeaways. Without further adieu, here is the team.

Greetings y'all, Rob Townley here. My biggest takeaway from this week is the composition of man according to the Bible. Keith taught us that the Bible breaks down man into three parts: spirit, soul, and flesh/body. He explained that the spirit cannot communicate directly with the flesh and that the soul is the go-between the two. The fascinating part for me was that the Holy Spirit communicates to our spirit, thus informing us of what God wants us to do. However, the soul doesn't want to listen to the spirit; instead, it wants to give in to its desires, which are mostly non-righteous. Hearing it laid out this way helped me recognize temptation and how to avoid it. Now that I know the whole process under which it operates, spotting when and where my flesh and soul want to ignore what the spirit has for me is much more obvious daily. 


Jenifer Cortés here. This was an exciting and new week for me, experiencing my first time camping and paddling a kayak!!! The truth is that I was scared to death, I have a lot of respect (not to say fear) of the water and what hides beneath it, the good thing was that this time the water was not so intense, so I could really feel God holding my hand on this first time paddling for 5+ hrs in a kayak. Aside from the very special time we had camping, my highlight of the week was getting to know in greater detail the history of the 12 tribes and their imperfect origins. Getting to know the history of the great characters of the Bible has been highlighting in my heart the fact that I don't have to do things perfectly and "without error" to be part of God's plan, God will do what He wants to do with my life no matter if I go right or left. I long to make decisions that honor Him and His purposes on earth. I am so excited to continue seeing everything that God wants to do in my life and in the lives of my team these next few months.

Howdy y’all, this is Caleb Stratemann.  Over the past few weeks, Arlie has been teaching us hand signs and keywords that tell the complete story of the Bible.  We are not learning this important knowledge and solidifying how these stories connect linearly so that we can remember it whenever needed. We are memorizing these hand signs and keywords to teach them to the people we will be working with when we go on our mission trips. I bring this up because when we are taught these hand signs, Arlie goes in depth and tells us the necessary historical, cultural, and geographical context of these Bible stories.  On Wednesday we started memorizing the hand signs for the New Testament.  I already knew that the four gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, are four distinct and different views of the life of Jesus. I didn’t know that one reason behind this is that these books were written to different audiences. Matthew was written to the Jews, so Matthew talks a lot about the prophecies they would be familiar with.  Mark was writing to the Romans and depicts Jesus as the perfect servant, which was culturally relevant to them then. Dr. Luke wrote to the Greeks who were obsessed with physique, focusing on Jesus being the perfect man. Finally, John is written to everyone so that all can have an opportunity to understand that Jesus was truly the son of God.  It is amazing how much I thought I knew about the Bible, to learn something new daily.



We will report again next week.