“Some people want to live this life within the sound of the church bells. I want to camp out a yard from the gates of hell.”

Somebody famous said this. Maybe it was C.T. Studd. Maybe it was Hudson Taylor. I cannot remember. But I do remember us Bible School students, in Dallas, Texas, saying “me too.”

I remember the discontent of warming a church chair every Sunday. Surely there were other people who could do this. Did God not have another job for me? Even when I was teaching the rowdiest class in the church Sunday School I wanted to do more.

This reminds of when I was a teen-ager, looking for adventure. I ended up climbing mountains and canoeing whitewater in the Northern Yukon, and seeing wild polar bears from my bunkhouse window in the Northwest Territories. But after a few years as a missionary in the Xingu, I remember telling the Lord, “Enough already. Please. Just some boring, routine days.” This was after three of our boats sunk in a wild tropical storm.

Now, I remember my bragging in Bible School, more than 20 years ago, “I want to live within a yard from the gates of hell.” Is this why the Lord saved a place for us to work in the most dangerous neighbourhood in Marabá?

Here is quote from Deanna’s Facebook a few days ago: