Today was just that…adoption day! As many of you know due to things going south in the ElSalvador program we have switched our adoption to Ethiopia. Along with that we have also moved and I started a new job at the beginning of the year with Innovative. All of this change adds up to MORE adoption paperwork, just when we thought we were done.

So today we dropped Ava of at her Babaw and Popeye’s(what she calls them), and we spent the day writing letters, calling people, and signing endless paperwork. I am glad to say we made a MAJOR dent today in bringing Jane home from Ethiopia. Just a few more small things to do and then we can mail of what we need to. The only thing after that is one or two visits with a social worker to update our homestudy. Please pray because we are trying to get all of this done before I go on the road for the summer. I am leading three trips and speaking at 3 student events this summer. So needless to say I will not be around much for June and July. The next month is the calm before the traveling storm and we are trying to be good stewards of the time we have. As many of you know much of “paperchasing” in adoptions is out of your control. So pray that everything falls into place. Thanks!

I love people who are proactive. I was recently reading an excerpt from a book by the guys who created/founded International Justice Mission. He said something that really made me think. He said that injustice continues not because a lack of good people, but because of good people that will do nothing. When it comes to the needs of others living in poverty it is not the thought that counts. We as the people of God must do something now, anything. I love this campaign that Louie Giglio and Passion has been on called Do Something Now. At a recent conferance college students raised hundreds of thousands of dollars to help Union University that was recently destroyed by a hurricane. Just normal people being used by God to do amazing things.

Well a few weeks ago my freind Bush posted a picture of a village we visited in Ethiopia that has no source of clean drinking water. When we rode into this village there was a large puddle of rain water run-off that had gathered at the bottom of a hill. Afework told us that this village only has this little water when it rains. When I looked at where the water had flowed from and through, I almost vomited. It was a mound of trash and human waste. But there were a ton of people drinking this water and even using it to cook with because it is all that they had, it is all they have ever had. As we drove into the village and I saw this I was holding a bottle of water. I thought there is something morally wrong if I do nothing…as a Christ follower I have been given knowledge of this and now I must somehow do something NOW.

Well a husband and wife ran across Bush’s blog on the village and asked what they could do. After a series of e-mails they have taken it upon themselves to go to thier church in Johnson City and see what could be done. These people that I have never met and have never been to Ethiopia are starting a campaign at thier church to raise the $5000 or so needed to dig a well for this village and hopefully others like it. i have been blown away by this, It took me going there. Not them, they heard about a need and now they are planning an all-out money raising campaign. What if more of us were like this? Normal people making a difference…I can’t wait for the day we dedicate that well and Jessica and her husband can go and rejoice with this village that they have been used by God to change. If you want to be a part of bringing clean water to this village in the Name of Jesus, through the ministry of Innovative e-mail me at matts@tamh.net and I will let you know how you can give and/or go.

Anytime I travel outside the country and come back it gets a little harder. It gets harder because I am faced with how drunk I am on materialism and the love of possessions. How I get upset over small things like not getting to eat at the restraunt of my choice or not getting a good parking spot. I hate materialism and being with people that seem to only care about earthly possessions…but what I hate more is that the very thing I hate in others I find in myself.

I am awestruck by the apathy of Americans towards what others are going through in the world. I have had many Christians tell me in the past few months that they do not really have a heart for missions or mission work. Is it possible to love God and his glory and not have a heart for missions?

I think we are all so drunk on materialism that we have become indifferent to others in the world because we are so busy keepin up with the jonses. I’m not saying having stuff is bad. I know alot of people who are monetarily blessed and use that to be a blessing to others. What I am talking about is how Americans seemed to be enamored with having stuff…and Christians many times are not much different. I wonder if the desire for churches to have multi-million dollar buildings is an adoption of materialism in the local church, that is disguised by some Bible verses that are taken way out of context? We are so drunk that we cannot care about others, all we can think about is when we can take our next drink. The following clip from Hotel Rwanda says it all. When faced with the suffering of others around the world…we simply keep eating and say, “that is too bad”.

What do you think…how can we be so indifferent?

I am in Addis Abebe, Ethiopia and we are visiting our freind and pastor Afework. Many of you may know that Afework was in a horrible wreck about a month ago and for all purposes should not have survived. The driver of the car was killed and Afework along with His two brothers ( Robel and Yehulashut) were both injured pretty badly. The first report we got was that he may not make it. After a few weeks they were all tranfered to a Korean hospital here in Addis, which is much better care.

Myself and Jerry visited him today and he is much better than we could have ever hoped for. He had pretty major surgery placing rods in both his legs and has some nasty battle scars from the whoe ordeal. His brother Yehualshet is set to have another surgery today. Afework’s spirits were amazing… we looked at pics Steven Bush had taken from our last trip in January and those seem to even brighten his day more! Afework is ready to get back at ministry and chrch planting here in Ethiopia, but he has a long road opf recovery as he will undergo rehabilitation to walk properly again. Afework’s medical bills are between $7000-$8000. If you would like to help with his medical costs you can e-mail me at matts@tamh.net and I will let you know how you can donate to this cause. Otherwise continue to pray for Afework and the continued ministry here in Ethiopia. We have many things in the works that include starting a school in the fall and digging wells in villages that have no clean drinking water. I will be here the rest of the week and we will be meeting with other leaders who will fill in the gaps while Afework is recovering…pray for wisdom in these meetings as we plan for at least 4-5 more teams that will come to Ethiopia this year! If you would like to be a part of one of these teams let me know as well.

(note: sorry for no pic of Afework, this Ethiopian internet could not handle that)

I am currently reading a book that was given to me by my good freind Rusty. The book is entitled “Jim and Casper go to Church”….basically the premise of the book is that this former pastor named Jim pays Matt Casper (an atheist) to visit multiple churches with him. They then wrote a book about thier experiences and more specifically what Casper thought about each church, since he has not been exposed as much to our little subculture. They go to everything from megachurch Willow, emerging church Imago, and a house church of 15 folks. So right now I am in the middle and it may be unfair to make a call now but here we go…

 First of all I think the concept is brilliant, I love that throughout the book these visits seem to be serving as the context by which Jim and Casper can get into some honest conversation. I also find the book very funny because of many of Casper’s thoughts on church, things like why there are so many “overly happy” people in vests wanting to talk to him and hand him stuff when he walks in., are simply hilarious. I have often wondered what it would be like to go to church, ecspecially a big megachurch, as someone with no prior church history?? I think sometimes in church we have our own language that no one coming in would understand. I am not talking about biblical words like atonement and justification. There are some that in order to be more relevant want to discard these words….stupid. We should explain the richness of these words, but not discard them. I am talking about churchy words such as “Blended service”…in fact one church I know of has a service called “the blend”. As a non-church person I have no clue  what a blended service is. I probably do not even understand why you would need to have one or the ridiculous debate over music in the church. So I see blended and think…’are we all getting frappucinos or something?” So that part of the book is entertaining!

One reoccuring them that I seem to have some trouble with is that both Jim and Casper seem to have swung the pendulum and are putting alot of focus on actions over belief. The critique in the book is that churches talk alot about belief but do nothing, which I agree with to an extent. Jim (the Christian) talks about how the church is steeped in beliefism and the worship of beliefs. At one point in the book he says that belief should come after action. He literally says that we should major on the majors (action) and minor on the minors (belief). I could not disagree more on this point. I belief action is vital to a strong believer and community of faith, but I believe action must always be driven by belief.  I recall A.W. Tozer saying in his book called Knowledge of the Holy that, ” the most important thing about us is what we think about God.” He goes on to say that it will shape all that we do in life, money, relationships, and social action. He is basically saying your theology or thoughts of God matter. This is why the role of teaching is so important in the church, theology and doctrine matter alot. But doctrine and action are not mutually exclusive, you need both and a good church needs a healthy balance of both. As our buddy James would say we need faith with works!!!

One thing that did bother me a whole lot is when Jim makes a comment that sounds as though he is saying Mark Driscoll has a sexual promiscuity problem, based on the fact he talks about sex alot in sermons. Low blow guys…could it be that he ministers in one of the most sexually promiscuous cities in America and that is where people are living??

So overall the book is entertaining and the idea is great…I will let you know what I think as it wraps up. Have you read this….what are your thoughts???

So I have in the works a new site coming soon. It will be my blog/website for my ministry that includes speaking and missions/humanitarian work. Check it out and let me know what you think:

www.homeshade.com/matt

My pal Bush took the pics and Micheal Pool is designing the lay-out…mattsetliffe.com should be up and going soon. In the mean time feel free to check out the progress!

Peace!

I am writing this post from a cramped ER room in Brandon Regional Hospital. We had an awesome weekend up until now…we spent it in H-town. We went there for a freinds wedding, as we got up early this morning to catch our flight back Rach informed me that she had been up all night sick. I soon realized it was pretty bad and she was in alot of pain. So bad that we almost did not get on the flight, but I thought it would be better to get home. Rachel is pretty stubborn when it comes to going to the doc, and she was telling me she thought she needed to go to the hospital. So I arranged for her dad to pick her up at the airport and take her straight to the hospital, while I got the bags and our car. So now we are here at 5pm, and still not sure what is wrong. Rach is having really bad stomach pain, nausua, and some other not fun things like being super dehydrated. The doc seems to think it is either a really bad case of stomach flu or some type of food poisoning. So pray she gets to felling better and we can go home soon.

So today at 5:12pm I, Matt Setliffe turned 28 years old. I don’t know why but that feels older than any of the other twenty-something ages, probably bc/ it is. 28 is like I am on the downhill slope to 30…wow. Anyway, enough lamenting, today was a great day! This morning I was awakened to Ava dumping balloons on me in the bed, just like I did on her B-day. Then we all loaded up and headed to Cracker barrel for B-day breakfast, YUM!!! After that we drove up to Orlando to hang for the the day. We got to spend some time with our good freinds Brannan and Christie Duncan. Brannan is one of the missions pastors from the church I most recently worked at in Houston. I love being around him because he has search a heart for missions and people in general, and he is not all churchy. They were vacationing in Orlando, so we hooked up for lunch. It was great to see them again.

After that we headed to the Mall of Millenia in Orlando. What a name, well it lives up to it! This mall is freakin’ huge and had everything you could imagine. If materialism was an official religion, this place would be Mecca. If anyone knows me they know I love Urban Outfitters. If you know me, you also know I don’t make the kinda money to be droppin’ in that place alot, so when a b-day, Christmas, MLK Day, Presidents day, or arbor day roll around I usually ask for an Urban outfitters gift card. In fact for all you who were wondering what to get me for my b-day, there you have it. So my parents graced me with one and it was burning a hole in my pocket. So we shopped for new threads with our b-day money, ate good food, and had a relaxing day as a family. So tomorrow, back to reality, but with cool new threads!!!

Well some of you may or may not know, but we are in the process of switching our adoption from El Salvador to Ethiopia (for more details on why check out my wife’s blog at www.lifeunabridged.wordpress.com). Basically, the El Salvadorian government is not adopting out and our agency did not know when it would pick back up. They gave evryone in the El Salvador program the chance to switch to another program for free if that is what they wanted to do. Rachel and I were torn, but after much prayer we felt like God was leading us to Ethiopia. We were going to adopt from there eventually, so it seemed like an obvious choice. We are confident and at peace with this decision. If you have helped us in someway on the El Salvador adoption financially or bought one of our t-shirts, don’t worry we will not lose any of that money and it all goes to our Ethiopian adoption! The crazy thing is that if we hurry in getting our new paperwork done we could have a little girl as soon as November or December from Ethiopia. One of the things I am most excited about in all of this is I will be doing alot of ministry in Ethiopia in the coming years in Ethiopia. I can’t wait to take her back to her home country and let her have a chance to love on and minister to her people!

So the past few days we have been struggling with a name. Even though we have not met her and she is probably being born as we speak, it helps us to give her a name now. We did not feel like keeping the name “Bella” was what we should do. So we have been throwing names around alot and we have landed on one. So drumroll please………her name shall be JANE! It took a while to grow on me, but I love it now. It may not seem like the kind of name you would give an Ethiopian girl, but for some reason it seems to fit. We plan on keeping her birth name as a middle name, so that she stays connected to that in some way. So please join us in praying that we can bring Jane home soon. I am going to Ethiopia March 30th-April 5th. I may try and go to the orphanage that she will be and visit with some of the workers while I am there…who knows! Keep posted for more on Jane!

I was thinking today about how recently it seems God had put some key men in my life who are a little farther down the road of faith, life, and ministry. Most of these that I am thinking about are in thier 50’s or 60’s and seem to be extremely on the cutting edge and out of the box. These men have decided that retirement is not an option for them and so they push on for the Glory of God, with the energy of a twenty year old. I am honored that I have people like this to look up to and do ministry with. Some of us young guys in church and ministry are way to emergent and hip for our own good. If we are not careful we can become arrogant and think we are the first to feel passionatly about those who need Christ, about injustice, about poverty, and about God. There are those who are a little futher down the road than us, and they have paved the road for our passion, ideas, and creativity. We would do good to stop and listen everyonce and a while. It does not mean that our generations will always agree or see eye to eye about how things should be done, but we can learn from one another! I am grateful for guys like Jerry and Kelly who have taken me under thier wing, given advise, and been a freind! Who is it in your life that is a little older that God has used in your life to shape you? It could be a family member, co-worker, pastor, mentor….whoever it is how have they made a lasting mark on you? I pray that someday I can be what these men have been to me….