The Website of Miah and Michelle Collins

Time. The continuum between reality and unconsciousness.
Isolation. This realization of inner grace that cannot be squelched by the reality of my flesh.
Yet my heart is still burning, on fire with this yearning for more. More power in the desolation of the sabotage of our minds as we’re forced to live in this media driven generation, distorting God’s creation and turning to intellectual misinterpretations of the actuality that cannot be sufficed with a secular explanation. Meandering through the streets wet with the molecules of elements that sustain life, numb to the divinely abnormal beauty of this circular rock that orbits so my feet are drawn to the blackness of the concrete underneath them. Torn between two realms of reality and questioning the integration between them. This inner drive won’t stop beating, beating, beating at my heart and propelling me with forces of passion (a concept of this integration of my realms of humanity and spirituality). Yet the whispers of conformity surround me, beckoning me to the norms of this social depravity. Inhaling......exhaling...it concentrates and simplifies. I think..... therefore I am? Or are these revelations a call to the only non-refutable truth that is experience. I will think it, I will interpret it, I will live it.

Take me as far as I can go before encompassing the knowledge that is only attainable with the departure from this finite mind. I am trapped in the theological web of humanity when my faith is screaming for spirituality. This word that connotates the reality that we are created to live in. The reaction of intense feeling, touch, sight, taste, hear, smell and the connection of our hearts and minds in a space that is an incomprehensible dimension. The tension. It rages within us while simultaneously stifling the actuality that is planted as a fountain of passion and bliss in our hearts. We cultivate our words, our intellect, our interpretation, our presentation. What are we striving for? There is a power that surges in our veins, synapses, and every cell.... this electric voltage that is so much more than the weakness of lightning that jolts like a source of energy illuminating the darkness. WHAT IS THIS POWER? This power that has been hidden from you America. America, the land of the free as your wealth stifles you so you cannot see. Blind to all that burns within your 50 states. Burns with apathy, burns with confusion, burns with a blanket thrown over it to suffocate the flames. Be careful with fire..... or the flame inside of you just might catch! Time is the only thing standing between you and the eternal flames. Yet time is elapsing and even retrograde motion cannot stop the heat of the minute hand. Tick. Tick. Tick.... a notion. Life is our dictionary. Live it before the ashes are blown away!

***I should probably write a little bit about this poetry before I scare some of you. I wrote this after coming back to the US from Zambia in 2005. I wrote this when I was overwhelmed with the wealth and the lifestyles of Americans, me being the prototype. I was writing about my experience with the Holy Spirit in Zambia, and how I wanted to see the US changed by that same Spirit. I had felt and seen the reality of the spiritual realm coming into the physical, and I had noticed that in Africa, the spiritual realm is very seen and is a part of mundane life. I longed for Americans to live in light of this reality as well. Since then, God has matured a lot of my views and has shown me many different truths in light of this struggle. As I continue to experience God’s love and heart for each culture in a unique way, I am following Him and His word throughout all of these challenges.***

So, I am here in the US of A and I am really learning a lot from this experience. As some of you know, I came home to be with my family as my last grandma passed away. I had known before I left to go to South Africa about her condition with pancreatic cancer, and none of this was too much of a surprise. Nevertheless, anytime that you lose someone you love, it’s a shock and it is difficult. I knew coming here that it would be a little harder to be without Miah on this first trip back to my own country, to go through this loss, and this culture shock, and the change alone. But as always, God has been my rock and my refuge, and He has provided all the embraces and emotional sustenance that I ever needed or wanted. He is such a faithful God! 

One of the things that has sustained me in this time is knowing that Jesus has been through what I am going through, and wants to go through it with me all over again, because His love is that incredible. I have been reading the story of Lazarus and Jesus has been speaking to me through this story of what He is doing in my life today. If you read the story, in John 11, you will notice how much the disciples were confused about Jesus wanting to go back to a town where people tried to kill him, to help his friend who was “sleeping”. This is one of those times when Jesus stops trying to let them understand on their own and He just tells them plainly that He is about to do a miracle, for their sake, so that they would believe him. Jesus knew going into the situation what He was going to do. He knew he was about to blow their minds and change their absolute sorrow to absolute joy, but he was not hasty.... he did a few intentional things before he displayed his power and authority. What a beautiful part Martha played in this story as she was able to declare her theology out loud to the disciples. And Jesus must have set that up, because before he raised his friend from the dead, he got to say, in spoken and written word, that He is the resurrection and the life, and what he said following this was the ultimate declaration of authority over life and death. And when He says things like this throughout scripture, He incites a response from each of our hearts.

Immediately after he gets his response, he does something that hits me so hard. He weeps. He weeps....... Jesus, the Son of the living God, knowing He has the power over death and that he was about to bring his friend back to life, wept. I think the shortest verse in the bible has a profound message to all of us on this side of eternity. Jesus does not just show us how to solve all issues of pain and suffering, or even just how to bring life into a situation filled with death, but Jesus shows us how to go through life experiencing the depth of each feeling with each other. He stops to weep with the people, overcome with the emotion that the people around him were feeling. He took the time to drink in the uniqueness of the emotions we feel on this earth. And because of this, I know he understands me, he feels with me, and he hurts with me in this time over my loss.

Praise God that it’s okay to feel. Praise God that it’s okay to be overwhelmed. But praise Him that Jesus did not let His emotions change the reality of who He was or what He came to do. He gets up from mourning and raises Lazarus from the dead. Because of Jesus, death is not where my grandmother is resting right now, but she is resting in LIFE. Turns out, Jesus’ words are true! And I believe them with everything that I am...... read the story.

I have lost an incredible role model in my life. You don’t get people like my grandma too often in this world anymore, and she is definitely a soul that will have infinite impact on this earth. But she also will live on in my actions and in my life and in our family for generations to come. She was a woman who loved hard, who judged not, who was a determined lover of Jesus until her very last days. I think she would want me to leave this entry with this quote from my continuous role model:

Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?”

Do you believe this?

It has been a long time since we have updated, and there has been so many life changing moments in this gap of time, that it is really difficult to know where to start.  As many of you know, we had the incredible privilege of visiting Israel with 25 African leaders who have an inspiring vision for the future of Africa and for the Church in Africa. Here is a list of the leaders of J-life Africa that came with us on this vision trip:

Shelly- Capetown, South Africa
Dan- Jo-burg, South Africa
Olefile- Soweto, South Africa
Steve- Jo-burg, South Africa
John & Lorna- Camp Eden, SA
Piet & Linda- Kimead, SA
Warren & Lynette- Heidelburg,South Africa
Bhuti & Jann- Camp Eden, South Africa
Tara- Camp Eden, South Africa
Kenneth- Swaziland
Amos- Ghana
Kevin- USA
Connix- Malawi
David- Zambia
Gary & Sharon- Congo
Sabin- Congo
Florence- Cameroon
Pete- Burkina Faso
Francois- Burkina Faso
Teresai- Zimbabwe
Yallo- Kenya

Each of these leaders were incredible men and women of God with such amazing insight to the problems and spiritual issues in their own countries. So, as you can see, God is doing something huge here and we are very excited to watch Him move in these next years.

The trip to Israel itself was the trip of a lifetime. I learned so much and there’s absolutely no way to summarize such a spiritual, historical, emotional trip. If you want to know, I would love to explain some of the places we went and sermons we heard and things we learned, so e-mail me if you are interested.

After Israel, we came home only to leave the next day to live in a township for the next few days with the J-lifers who are training at the camp this year. It was an amazing experience, with 17 of us sleeping in a 2 bedroom house with one faucet that was outside the house along with the toilet. We took bucket baths and enjoyed brushing our teeth out in the open. It was a great experience! I know that it might sound miserable for some of you, but when you are with the people, there is nothing else that can compare to the joy and community you experience. We led a bible club for all the kids, and just after going around the township and inviting people, we ended up having around 150 kids. I fell in love with a little girl who was tiny and just so shy. The cutest thing that I’ve noticed about kids here is when you try and make them smile , they usually get all shy and immediately cover their mouths to hide their laughing. It’s adorable! But we also worked with the youth there, and it was amazing to watch the J-life guys who could speak Zulu just connect with them, and really have impact in ministry right away. It’s the type of impact that I couldn’t have achieved unless I was able to be a part of that community for a couple of years. There is an understanding between them and when you watch that interaction, you get the visual image of the definition of culture. And this is the beauty of this organization, because J-life understands that connection and empowers these guys to be all that they can be as ministers of the gospel in their cultures.

We have put the J-life guys into teams for the year, and we are so stoked about the ministry these young men and women are going to start in the six churches around South Africa. Most of the teams consist of 3-4 of the J-life guys that have been training on the farm for the past 4 months. We had the pastors from the churches that they will be working with over to the farm last week for a time to get to know each other and share their vision and goals for the year.  We also had training sessions with topics like personality tendencies and conflict management, generational themes in the secular world and in ministry, post- modernism psychology, and visions in leadership. It was an amazing week, and we all learned so much from each other.

As far as transitioning into the culture is going, for me it has been an interesting process. South Africa is not a very hard culture to transition into as an American, and it is very similar to the States in many ways. But I think the difficulty in my transition has come in the little things. For example, there are many differences in accents and when you are really trying to understand someone, or just having a simple conversation, you have to stop to figure out a word they said. Or they might have a completely different word for something and this causes confusion a lot. You wouldn’t think that this is a big deal, but after it happens about 20 times in one day, I get a little exhausted. I’m also realizing how much my mind is analyzing and interpreting things all the time, so at the end of the day, I’m a little bit more tired than I should be. There is also so much humility that comes with being a foreigner. Even if something originated from my culture, I have to accept the way this culture thinks about it, or interprets it or says it. Telling people the way we say things or do things in the States will not get me anywhere, and many times I just have to let go of my way of doing things and accept how they do things here. Other times, it’s very beneficial to talk about these cultural differences and to explain to people why certain things offend me, just to get the open discussion of these things. There are really SO many things that I can do that would not be problem in the U.S., but that really offend people here. So, it is a long process of learning and discovering and although it is very tiring and frustrating at times, it is also liberating and exciting other times.  And the main point of it all is that I am learning and being challenged, which are two things I always want to have in my life. I am very grateful for this stage of life and I am also so grateful for Miah, who is helping me in this transition everyday.

-Michelle-