Enya - New Age or Christian Music?

How would you classify Enya's music New Age or Christian? Most people in the music industry would classify her music as New Age. Enya herself says that this is because most people don't understand her background and therefore do not understand what it is that inspires her music. She was born and still lives in Ireland, she was raised Catholic and has spent a large part of her life in the Catholic church. She says that she often would be the only person in her church and says it was quite therapeutic to be alone and pray. She goes on to say that instead of abandoning Catholicism which was not working for her, she had to find a way to make it work for her. This she explains is how she makes Catholicism work for her "I consider myself to be a spiritual person, not necessarily a religious one, although I have to say that one of the highlights of my career was when I performed at the Vatican for the Pope and had an audience with him. My core beliefs would revolve around the idea that we should live to the best of our abilities -- we should live and let live."

I have never met Enya and much of the above information was taken from www.Wikipedia.com. So obviously, I cannot say if her music is Christian but I would say that to me it is more New Age. What I can say, and this is the reason I am writing about Enya in the first place, is that God has used Enya to work in the life of one of my children. My wife and I have been talking about the possibility that God may be calling us to full time service with a certain mission agency (more about this once it is more concrete) and we have been including our children in the discussions. One of them from the first mention of this has told us that she will not talk about it and that she will not go with us if we go. She has been adamant that we are not to talk about it in her presence. I was amazed at the anger that showed in her face anger that was obviously coming from her heart. She was not just upset, she would get angry and would not talk to me. I was worried about this as this not healthy behavior and I didn't know what to say to her. So I turned her and her concerns over to God and let Him know that I couldn't change her heart and that He would have to do it. I tried not to talk about the trip in front of her from that point on.  This proved to be next to impossible and sure enough she would get angry with me every time I spoke about it in her presence.

Tonight however I was sitting here in my La-Z-Boy (my favorite place to sit of an evening) when she came in the living room crying. I asked her what was wrong and she said that she misses Africa. I asked her what made her think of Africa and she said she was listening to her iPod when Storms of Africa by Enya was playing and she just started missing everything about Africa. I told her that maybe God was trying to show her that she should have a different attitude about what He is doing in our lives right now. She agreed and said that she had already thought about that. We had a really great talk and I told her that God could choose to send us back to Africa but that where ever we end up that it will be the best place for our family.

God used Enya (New Age Music) to soften her heart, proof that He can use anything in our lives to bring us closer to Him.

Please pray for our family as we have been on a roller coaster ride for the past 18 months. God is opening doors and we are stepping through them one at a time. It has not always been easy as every door we step through seems to come with a new trial. Please pray that we don't look for ways around the trials but allow God to teach us what ever lesson He wants us to learn through these trials.

Photoman

Lyndsey's Big Scary Moment!

Here are the pictures that I promised you, Lyndsey would rather I didn't post them as she says her hair looks terrible but here they are anyway. As you can see her seizures have not stopped her from doing the things that she loves.


Well to be honest, she is trying to contact all of her friends that called her when they found out what had happened.  It was heartwarming to Kelly and I to see how many of her friends were concerned about her and I know it made her feel good also.



Today we spent a few hours at the hospital but we didn't have to stay the night this time.




God has kept His hand of protection on Lyndsey and so far there have been no more seizures, please pray that we will not see any more.

Photoman

Thanks for Praying!

Let me begin this post by saying thank you to everyone who has been praying for us. It has been a long weekend but it is better now. Our daughter was released Saturday afternoon from the hospital and she has now been seizure free for just over 48 hours. Our hope is that she will remain seizure free forever and that she will be able to be taken off the medication one day. We know that God is in control of her life and that He is the great physician so we are trusting her to Him. The doctors have told us that for the next 2 months we are not to let her be alone for more than a few minutes at a time, this will be an interesting 2 months! While in the hospital she was drugged pretty good so that she could sleep without having a seizure, when the drugs started wearing off she woke but was still very tired for the next few hours. Once the drug was out of her system she was back to her usual self and you wouldn't have known anything had happened. We are very glad to see her being her wonderful self. I will try to upload some photos from our very eventful weekend soon. I managed to get a few pictures with one of the kids little cameras but I have not had time to upload them to my computer. Once again thank you for your prayer during our crisis.

Photoman

If You Read this, PLEASE PRAY for Us!

We got a call from our youngest daughters school today, one that no parent wants to get. She has had a history of Absence Epilepsy, which manifests itself in the form of staring spells, where she just blanks out for a few seconds and doesn't remember anything that happened in those few seconds. Today however, while at school, she had what is known as a Grand Mal seizure which is usually associated with full blown Epilepsy. She was taken by ambulance to Children's Hospital and looked at by the ER doctor. All seemed fine and she was released with a prescription for a new medicine. Wore out from the experience she fell asleep in my recliner and while asleep she had another seizure. Again, she was taken by ambulance to Children's Hospital but this time she was to be admitted for observation. Before they could get her into a room, she had a third seizure which lasted longer than the two prior. At the present time she is resting comfortably in the hospital and we pray that this is the end of her Grand Mal seizures. Please pray for her and for us, she has to be scarred though she is a trooper and you wouldn't know she was. I know that her mother and I are very scarred for her, because we cannot control this.

Sincerely,

Photoman

First Impressions!

This is the scene that we saw over and over on our first day in Togo! I have mentioned in a couple of other posts already that we left Ghana and went into Togo on the weekend of Easter. As a result we were met by large groups of Catholic Togolese people who were remembering Christ's death. I got a photo of this group as we drove past them on the way to Kpalime, Togo.
Before we made it to Kpalime we had to stop in this village to get our temporary visas. While we were waiting for them to be processed and approved we saw this scene. It is another group of Catholic Togolese, they are reenacting Christ's day of crucifixion. This was by far the most elaborate of all the groups that we saw.



As you can see by the above photo, they had a very large group of people who was following them through the village. This group is no different than any of the other that we passed that day, they would just stop and pray or sing praise when and where they felt like it and the vehicles had to just sit and wait until they were finished. We were not exempt from this practice and had to sit through some as well.



The men with the gold helmets were the guards that carried out the crucifixion, they seem to be carrying some kind of weapons that they were using to beat the man carrying the cross. I don't think they were actually hitting the man but they were going to town on the cross if not but they were beating the dickens out of something.



The Togolese and the Ghanaian people are very deeply religious people. Unfortunately they are not necessarily all following a living God. There are many people who follow false and dead god's who need to know about the One True Living God. I hope that the time and the work that we did while in these countries will be beneficial to the missionaries there as they try to share Jesus Christ with them.

Photoman

Is God at Work in Africa? part 4

Our first Sunday in Togo was Easter Sunday, it was a treat to visit this Church on top of the mountain that stands behind our house here in Tsiko, Togo. The ride up the mountain though rough at times was beautiful we had great views of Togo and saw beautiful waterfalls. As you can see from the structure that we are climbing up to it is not much of a building. The main structure of the building is a pole building made of teak poles with a steel roof. The walls are merely stalks of bamboo that are split tied to more pieces and assembled into panels. The panels are then tied to the pole structure to keep out most of the weather. Not a very secure building but it serves its purpose.

The banner at the front of the church reads ...Prepare to meet your God! Amos 4:12. It is the Church verse and the church goal, to be prepared to meet the God if Israel! It is written in French so if you can read French you may be able to make it out. In the image below you see the churches pastor leading a Sunday School class.

The worship team leading us in a few praise choruses, in French so I was lost but still a great time of prayer and praise. Though the music is very basic, I miss it!

Here are the children having an Easter Sunday in the beauty of God's creation. One of my favorite parts of being here is that I felt close to nature and not confined in some concrete or steel box.

It was a special service and the church was celebrating the scriptures and songs that the children had memorized. All of the kids that you see in the below image were reciting scriptures that they had memorized. The pastor asked our girls to participate so they were able to recite some of their favorite scriptures. All of the children were rewarded for their participation with candy.

I couldn't resist this photo!

God is at work in Africa this is just one of many churches that we attended where we saw the African people singing, praying, reading the scriptures and praising God.

Photoman