so getting away from my Europe travels, let's talk about something else.

In Sunday School we have using a book called "3 Colors Ministry" to help us discover our gifts. You know the deal. Anyways, I have done this book before with Pastor Nolan, but to me surprise I did not write anything in the book the first time I did it so now I cannot compare what has happened over the past 3 years in terms of my gifts. But anyways, doesn't matter in the long run, what matters is who I am now.

Accorinding to this book, my top five Manifested gifts, which in short means those that have developed are:
- Missionary
- Organization
- Wisdom
- Craftsmanship
- Apostle
So let's focus on #1 and 2. I was a bit surprised when it said I had a high degree of Missionary-like gifts. Because in reality, I have no desire to go to third world countries, help the needy, or live in poverty-stricken environments. That sounds harsh, but let's be realistic here, how many people can admit publically they want a life like that?

so then I started reading the summary of what the gift of missionary means, according to this book. The first thing that caught my eye was "enjoy leaving their own cultures in order to establish a new home and ministry in foreign culture." And I said to myself, wait a minute, this kind of does sound like me. All the time I have been confused with the connotation of "missionary=third world country", when I should be looking at a bigger picture, "missionary=other places". I have had the desire as of late to get out of Toronto. Actually, it's not as of late, it has always been on my mind. I have tried to find employment outside of Toronto for summers and internships for many years now. I think I just feel I need a new environment around me. So when it says "leaving their own culture", I can agree with that, although my focus has never really been to minister in a foreign culture. But given my religion is an integral part of my life, I would not likely go to another country and give up my relgion. So if just being a part of a ministry can be accepted to this definition, then so be it.

The second thing that caught my interest about the gift of missionary is that they say "Only 8% of all Christians whom GOd has blessed with the gift of missionary haev the gift of evangelism too." Now this totally does not make sense to me. I find it rather surprising actually. First, my first reaction when I found out the book tells me I have the gift of missionary is "This can't be true. The book does not tell me I have the gift of evangelism. Don't you HAVE to evangelize if you do missions work? I can't evangelize for beans. I break when it comes to talking about the bible to strangers." So anyways, point is I find this surprising. They have scripture references, and I read all of them. They are almost all dealing with a form of evangelism when going to different cultures. Anyways, I an not totally convinced yet I have this gift, but I can see possible areas which support it as well.

On to gift #2, organization. My initial reaction is more supportive of this gift. I have always been a freak about organization and my past hopefully supports it as well. But I find it interesting and I agree with what the book says about the "organizer is the steerer", which means they are not necessarily the leader. Although I think I do have the gift or organization, I also do strive to work on the gift of leadership, and try things to reaffirm these gifts as well.

I am not convinced whether I have the gift of leadership yet. I can see possible times when I do, but also times when I do not. More often than not I think I do not. But I also want to disprove this as well! One possible danger that comes with this gift is that we see only the practical, organizational side of ministry and this can serve as the brakes to the visionaries. And I think this is so true. I was doing devotions this week and it talks about the story where Simon the Pharisee was questioning Jesus about letting the "sinner" women wash his feet with her hair and expensive perfume. The message the devotion was making was that Simon was so focussed on the logic, how this did not make sense because it was so illogical that Jesus would let such a thing occur becuase it was not accepted at the time. So Jesus uses logic to tell Simon that those who sin more appreciate the forgiveness more, whereas Simon, who in comparison may not have sinned as much as the prostitute, he also did not appreciate his forgiveness which is a problem. And I can see myself in this danger as well, relying too much on the logical side of things rather than the spiritual side.

I am not going to get into my latent gifts, which in short means that those gifts which are still developing. But this is where I find some problems. The latent gifts tells me I may have the gift of tongues. Now I totally disagree with this and using logic, (hehehe, but this makes sense, unless I am interperting the questions incorrectly) one of the questions asks "I am willing to communicate messages from the Lord to believers, even when these messages are unpopular." Or some other questions where it talks about willingness to do. Now so I think, why wouldn't I be willing. If it's God's will, and he wants me, use me. SO I can score high on this question, and because their scoring system is weighted, my willingness scores higher on one questions than the cummulative of many other gifts. So I think parts of this test is dumb and needs to be changed, because it is not the best reflection.

That's it for now.