Another set of important dates have come and gone on my wall calendar. According to my trip schedule, I would have been away most of this week, visiting my communities and making summer arrangements. However, like a lot of us, I’m at home.

The one question I get asked a lot when people inquire about my work with LAMP is, “What are you doing?” There are some days I struggle to answer that question and other days, I find myself very busy. I have found a lot of my time is spent in front of my computer screen, mostly in meetings.

My home is like most where some of the family members are on a screen for work or school. Some evenings I have time to connect with friends playing games e.g. lots of Age of Empires, Definitive Edition. (My Steam handle is ducttape335.)

Since none of the teams for any of the LAMP communities can travel up North for the summer, we are encouraging them to connect virtually through the computer. While there are many ways to do this, we are hoping that some of the teams can still meet a few of the kids and people face-to-face online. We have also created a virtual VBS where kids can click on links to hear and see messages from the teams. While none of these methods are ideal, we are hoping it will provide some encouragement for the hope we have in Christ.

It’s weird that the Seattle Mariners baseball is not on the radio in the evening. It’s weird to look at my calendar now empty with travel dates. It’s weird to be ministering from a distance, but these are uncertain times.

Throughout the Bible, we read about people’s plans changing when Jesus is present. Read John 4:1-26 when Jesus met the woman at the well, or Matthew 4:18-22, when Jesus calls two brothers to follow Him.

“And there arose on that day a great persecution of the church in Jerusalem, and they were all scattered throughout the regions of Judea and Samaria, except the apostles.”  Acts 8:1 (ESV)

Back then, the growing church of new believers probably had a mixed bag of feelings not unlike what I or you might be feeling. But soon the believers figured things out and “went about preaching the word” (Acts 8:4). That crisis turned out to be a vehicle that God used to further His missional purposes. He used them to bring the gospel to the very ends of the earth.

Jesus is present in our lives and in the lives of the First Nations people that LAMP ministers to in the communities in northern Canada. The message of Jesus will continue to be shared this summer . . . just in an unusual way.