Update

This trip has been more than a travel experience, and experience merley of new sights and sounds, though I have seen and heard many new things. What I have truly experienced can not be photographed or ever said: it will have to bee seen in my own life. The goal of this trip is to connect the word to the world. This is truly happened. So much of God’s word has come alive to me. I am learning every day how powerful God’s truth is, how badly it is needed here, and how this reality calls my life to action. God has been very present in my time here, reinforcing lessons I need to learn. To my family, I send my love. Mom and Dad, I miss you. Friends at G.O.D., Friends at camp, and all the wonderful people who have supported me, thank you for you prayers.

(Mom, I want to say especially to you that I am doing very well. I know you are worrying about me, but God is with me. I love you so much, and I really look forward to seeing you sometime after the trip)

How is God changing me so far?

Through our daily bible studies, I am being prepared to see the theological significance to the things we will see in Africa. I feel I am being challenged both physically and emotionally to depend on God.

Initial Thoughts

My hands are cupped to receive whatever may come. I have little experience and little expectation, just eagerness to learn, eagerness to see and hear and taste and touch the world.

It’s a strange feeling knowing that I have so little control over these next few weeks. It feels like being on a little boat, and I am floating on this boat down an unknown river. I do not know the river and cannot see beyond the next bend, and yet everything depends on the swiftness and shape of the water beyond that bend. I do not know what I will see. I do not know what I will be doing or who I will be doing it with. Everything is beyond the bend. I’m just trusting God that he will be with me whatever may come, whatever direction the river wishes to take me.

Ben Reese

Name: Ben Reese
Age: 23
Hometown: Donelly, ID

Why do you want to go on Da’ Mission?
I want a faith strong enough to handle the reality of this world, not just the reality I choose to see every day. I know intellectually that the missional aspect of the gospel is central, but experientially it’s like an empty folder in my dossier.
What is your favorite Bible verse and why?
Exodus 33:13 “now therefore, I pray you, if I have found favor in your sight, let me know your ways that I may know you, so that I may find favor in your sight.” I have prayed this prayer many a time, and have hoped many a time for Moses’ persistence in seeing the prayers fulfillment.

If a movie was made about your life, what actor or actress would you choose to play you in the movie and why?
I would hope Philip Seymour Hoffman would play my part. My life-movie would certainly not be an action flick; I would need an actor who could make the sedentary life look cool. Who better? He played Capote after all.