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By Jeremy, March 25, 2010

Jeremy and Caitlin

God has captured our hearts with His love and compelled us to go love the nations!  The current stage of this journey for our family is attending the Iris Harvest School of Missions, led by Heidi Baker.  You can be assured that we are having the time of our lives!

Please pray for us!  We will update requests on the prayer page and thank you so much for your support!

You may also join our e-mail update list on the right column to stay up to date with us!

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By Jeremy, August 30, 2010

Hi everyone!  Well, we made it home!  We’re still jet lagged and re-adjusting here, but it is wonderful to sleep in such a nice bed, have such good food, and smell the clean Lansing air!  There’s truly no place like home. 

Our summer was absolutely incredible and we look forward to sharing more stories and pictures with you.  We’re working on sorting through our pictures right now and then we’ll post some here to share with you.  Check back in a few days for those.

There will be several formats in which we will be able to share our experiences with you.  Upcoming we invite you to:
>>Wed.  Sep. 1 at Cross Culture (NCCC) – 7 pm; we’ll have a chance to share with the youth ministry (everyone invited)
>>Sun. Sep. 19 at NCCC Sunday service

More to come!

Jeremy

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By Jeremy, August 12, 2010

(this was sent by e-mail to our mailing list)

Greetings from Madagascar!

No, we haven’t seen any lemurs, but we have been getting to know some
street kids!

Last year when we were clear that God was speaking to us to come to
Madagascar we thought that we might be coming on our own.  It turned
out that the pioneering director–Caroline–of the new Iris base here
was finally able to get in country the last week in July with her
partner–Rachel– and we were able to spend some time with them in
Pemba before they came.  So, we had the great privilege of arriving
here just two weeks after the founding directors!  In fact, we will
probably be here to celebrate the completed NGO (non-governmental
organization) paperwork and take in the first kids!

At the end of the street we live on there are 9 children who sleep on
the street outside the fence of Shop-Rite (yes, Shop-Rite–we’re
eating better here than we have for th last 2 months).  These are
children aboug 10-13 years old who have no other place to go–not gang
kids looking for a fight.  Since last Thursday these and some other
kids are coming here everyday for lunch.  We get the chance to feed
them, teach Bible lessons, play with them, wash their hair, clip their
nails, give them warmer clothes, etc.  Unfortunately we can’t let them
sleep indoors until the NGO government paperwork is all through, or
else we may be thrown either in jail or out of the country; neither of
which are preferable.

Being a brand new base (well, not even legal yet!) there isn’t a rigid
schedule or set programs that we’re helping with.  We’re doing all
sorts of things.  Here are a few:
–varnishing furniture
–buying lumber
–buying a Land Rover
–being the main driver for the Land Rover
–swapping worship songs with our Malagasy friends
–language learning
–shopping for a house big enough to rent as a temporary children’s home
–viewing potential land to purchase for building a permanent
children’s home with a school, clinic, etc.
–spending time with street kids
–meeting with indigenious and foreign ministers to learn about what
they’re doing here
–odd jobs and maintenance on the house
–leading a day camp at a nearby orphanage
–and plenty more!

We’re staying in a really cool house that God provided for Caroline to
rent at an amazing price.  We’re thankful to get on the internet right
now (finally!) but unfortunately we still can’t send any pics because
it doesn’t have a card reader.  BUT, you can see pictures of the house
we’re staying in if you go to Facebook and lookup “Iris Madagascar”.
Here’s the link, but you probably need to be logged in to Facebook
first:

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100000180750921&ref=search

In case you’re wondering, it is winter here.  Everyone is wearing
thick winter coats and hats.  Highs are in the 60s and lows close to
40 degrees.  Actually it feels pretty cool most of the time, but jeans
and a jacket do well, with wool blankets at night.

For those of you interested in trying to find it on google maps or
something, our full address here is: Lot 133 Ter, Amboinambo,
Talatamaty, Antananarivo 105.  You might be able to find the
community, but finding the actual lot will probably be difficult.

We’ll be here another two weeks before heading home.  We hope to send
another update or two before then, and we look forward to seeing you
all soon!

A note on the boys:  They love it here and have a whole new set of
friends, though Caleb has been missing Josiah from Mozambique and they
have both specifically been talking about wanting to see Chase (our
dog).  The last few days Caleb keeps saying “I need Grandpa and
Jonathan, and I want to play ball with Grandpa!” Both the boys (and
their parents) are missing their families a lot!

Please keep praying for us!  Diarrhoea is basically gone (yay!)  We’re
continually hungering for more of God’s presence in our lives, and we
are asking him for clarity on future direction.

We love you all!

Lantz Family

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By Jeremy, July 31, 2010

Here are some long awaited pictures!  We’ll have plenty of more to share later.

Worship in our school hut:

Joshua with Maresli on the flatbed driving to weekend outreach:

Some women in a village during our outreach:

Dedicating a new church in the village!

A woman with hearing problems healed after Heidi praying for her:

Caitlin setting up duck-duck-goose during a visit to a village:

\

Beach day with our new friends:

Our boys, literally minutes after our initial arrival to Iris:

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By Jeremy, July 31, 2010

This is the upate that went out to our mailing list. Enjoy!

(this ended up kind of long, but enjoy the stories!)

Dear family,

One week from today we will be leaving Pemba. It will be with sadness
and joy that we depart. We are realizing that the boys will be
particularly saddened to leave their new friends—particularly as Caleb
leaves Josiah, who lives in our house. He (literally) shares
everything with him!

Last week we had the opportunity to go on a second weekend outreach.
Thank you to all of you who prayed for us while we were gone! We were
so glad for that opportunity. The travel this time was MUCH easier.
Last time it was 6 hours drive, with half of that on dirt roads that
left both Americans and Mozambicans sitting at the back of the truck
much like one another—orange. This time it was only 1 1/2 hours and
the entire trip was paved! Anyway, I’ll give you a few highlights.

We often play duck duck goose in the villages. It crosses language
barriers, provides plenty of fun, and is something new to them. Our
boys are getting more used to the villages now with the kids crowding
around, but this time Joshua knew the fun that was coming. As long as
we were there he was asking us to come help him start the game with
his friends. So, we played a lot and had plenty of laughs!

Thursday evening we had our first chance to see Heidi Baker on
outreach. It was quite similar to things we’ve done—dramas, songs,
prayer, altar call, salvations… The main difference was the quantity
and ease of healing. Friday returned to Pemba with some of the
visitors and the rest of us stayed to lead an outreach in a
neighboring village. Now, over the past several weeks I’ve been
realizing ever more the level of authority that I carry as a son of
God and the level of anointing I am under through the covering of
Iris. I was ready to pray for the deaf. When we arrived I spotted
Osomolia, deaf since birth and wearing the typical Muslim skull cap.
After we got the truck unstuck from the sand, I went straight over to
join my friends praying for him. We prayed for several minutes and
then tried to share Jesus with him. He stepped back, made noises and
motioned strongly that he did NOT want Jesus. Nevertheless he wanted
our love, so we continued praying. This story doesn’t end in his
healing, but here is the point: I found myself praying with rest in
God for this man, with compassion for him rather than desire for
power. I truly was in a place of faith, not striving, and I thank God
for that.

But the story continues. As we began the outreach I told my friend
Francis (who’s been raised from the dead) that I wanted to make sure
to pray for the deaf and hard of hearing. As he had the mike and was
closing the service that evening I went up to him to ask him to call
for them before we left—I hoped Osomolia would come back after seeing
the Jesus film and want more. That night there were more miracles and
healings than I’ve ever seen in one place—and that with a
predominately Muslim congregation. To get to the end, I didn’t see
Osomolia but a young girl came forward to us (me, another student, and
translator). Not knowing the language I didn’t catch her name and I
can’t be sure about her level of deafness, although she was clearly at
least partially deaf. And this too is clear: we loved her and she
left hearing perfectly.

One week from today (Aug. 7) we fly to South Africa. The next day
(Aug we fly to Madagascar. We hope to update you again from there.
Please pray for safety and favor with governments as we travel and
for a fruitful time in Madagascar. We will be staying in a house just
rented by Caroline in Rachel, the Iris missionaries there, and helping
to start the base in any way we can. Pray for fruitfulness with our
time and for clarity from God about our ongoing involvement Aug. 25 we
will start our journey home.

We love you all!

Jeremy, Caitlin, Joshua, and Caleb

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By Jeremy, July 14, 2010

So just a few of the miracles that have happened while we’re here at Iris:
–Hundreds of salvations
–Totally transformed hearts, minds, spirits
–Bread multiplied at a huge bush conference
–Birthday cake multiplied at a small party for one of the students here
–Blind can see
–Deaf can hear
–Colds are gone
–Fevers gone
–Bed-ridden girl up and about

We haven’t personally seen all of these or been able to be part of
them, but praise God for them! Please pray for God’s continuing works
of power to be demonstrating his love to the poor in spirit. Thank
you God!

Comments (1)

By Jeremy, July 14, 2010

This update went out to our e-mail list. To get longer updates like
this (longer than most blog posts) subscribe to our e-mail list in the
right hand column!

Friends and family,

We’re online again! It’s always an exciting day when we get that
opportunity. 

For today’s update I asked Joshua if he wanted to say anything:
“Hello! Good morning. I like the beach. Um… I like Africa. I like
numbers. I play with my friends and I say, ‘I give you my food’ when
I see my friends. I play with them soccer if they have a soccer… ah…
that’s all. I didn’t know where my backpack is, but it was under
Daddy’s bed. ….[I see] lizards and frogs. I catch the lizards and
frogs but with the snakes I take a stick and whack the head off like
that [We haven’t seen any snakes but he paid close attention to
Heidi’s story about whacking a snake’s head off.] And I want to say
that we went to town and got some stuff like gum. …That’s enough.
Oh, my owie is gone and my owie on my head is gone, so you can be
proud of me. And I want to say that I love you. And I played a game
behind the back porch. ”

And Caleb mimicked Joshua’s words then added:
“My scratch.”

They do have plenty of scrapes from running around. And Joshua is
getting plenty of splinters. He’s not a fan of those.

So this past Friday they were short people for bagging and weighing
beans and rice to give to the widows so we helped out. I was slightly
itchy during the project and by Saturday morning I had itchy red dots
from my elbows to my knees. Turns out there was an unusually large
number of these tiny bugs in the beans; I was the guy opening the
large bags and carrying them to the baggers so I got it the worst.
Mostly I’m thankful that Caitlin and the boys were spared. They are
still there but subsiding now. One of the joys of the work. 

And this past Thursday after I preached to the village teenagers about
storing their treasure in heaven one of them approached me with a
question. He wanted to understand how Jesus could get angry. He was
a Christian but he was witnessing to his friend at school who was a
Muslim. The point: these are village teens who are now saved and
receive daily physical food from Iris but also are becoming
distributors of the Bread of Life! I love to see young people
discover their identity and purpose.

PLEASE PRAY! We appreciate and need your prayers SO SO SO much! Pray
1) that we will continue to be transformed, 2) that God’s will for
long term connections and placement will become evermore clear, 3)
that we will love to abide more and more in Christ, and 4) the love
and power of God will be demonstrated through us to others in many
ways, including miracles, signs, and wonders. This last one may have
some extra opportunity to grow as we expect to go on one more weekend
outreach in two or three weeks.

I’ll leave you with this parting story. Every day is full of fresh
encounters with God. Today for our first session Rolland Baker was
unable to come to class for some reason at the last minute. This is
the first time anything like that has happened, but God had something
in mind. I put on “Good Medicine” from my Ipod, a track full of
laughter that Ron Burns shared with me, as we also started a joy fire
tunnel. And so erupted an almost two hour Jesus party. Maybe we
should get together and do THAT on a Friday night at home.

Blessings on you all!

Jeremy & Fam

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By Jeremy, July 10, 2010

This past week was a Global leader’s meeting for Iris.  Spiritual generals from around the world were here and amazing key note speakers (like Bill Johnson) came to share revelation with them.  We got a chance to hear from MANY of these people in our school and it has been AMAZING.  God knew what He was doing by sending us to THIS school session.  They say no other class has had this many incredible people come.  We are SO thankful.

As all the base leaders were here, Caroline (director of Iris Madagascar) was here as well.  We have had some wonderful time with her and her partner, Rachel, and we are planning to spend 17 days in Madagascar with them in August.  We are praying for God’s continuing direction but are excited about a possible longer term service there in the future.

Our interet access has been very limited.  Every time we have it, you hear from us.  If you don’t hear from us, it’s only because we don’t have access!  Please continue to pray for us.  We need it!

We love you and are excited to share with you in person out of the overflow of the Spirit in our lives.

Lantz Family

Comments (1)

By Jeremy, June 12, 2010

After 9 years (Jeremy) and 5 years (Caitlin) we are officially students again!  But this isn’t school as we’ve done before…

Yes, we are here safe and sound, and loving it!  We’re kind of glad it’s winter here, so that it’s only in the upper 80s most of the time and not too humid since it doesn’t rain much… 

School is really incredible and includes intimate worship, prayer and impartation, and classes taught by Rolland and Heidi Baker and many many others.  Upcoming we will have Jackie Pullinger (missionary to Walled City, Hong Kong), Bill Johnson, Mel Tari, and more.  Randy Clark will also be here for a huge Iris global conference that we will be privilaged to be around for.  In the moments we have here in the cybercafe it’s near impossible to try to summarize what has already taken place, but we can say that we are receving both deep biblical teaching and deep personal encounter with the living God.

One of the most exciting things is the community we live in.  Missionaries don’t get a lot of privacy, and that goes for us too, but if we have to be communal this is a great place to do it.  We live in a house with one other family and two single women and our house is in a student compound protected from the hectic coming and going of the rest of the base.  Every morning the boys wake up, get dressed and head straight outside.  Back in Lansing they roam New Covenant after church each Sunday, always safe with family.  Here they roam around several houses with half a dozen other children having the time of their lives.  And when we head out of the compound during our free time, we are surrounded by lovely Mozambican children.

Our boys demonstrate that language need not separate us from other people.  They have never once hesitated or slowed interaction because of a language barrier.  In fact, they have become so comortable that we are finding ourselves pulling them off of beach vendors and shoppers in the city.  To them everyone is a friend to love and trust.  Well, not everyone, but a lot more people than we naturally treat that way.

So, look through the eyes of a child.  Love has no language barrier.  Who does God want you to love today?

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By Jeremy, May 26, 2010

Recently when I put the boys to bed and pray for the Caleb has been stopping me and saying “I do it!  I do it!”  He then proceeds to pray.  A couple nights ago he prayed, “Tank you for stwabewies, tank you for clothes, tank you for going to afwica…”  He prayed the same thing all of his own accord again the next night.  God really is doing something great in our boys through this process and I’m SO excited to see it!

Joshua has been telling people he gets to go on THREE airplanes on the way to Africa.  Hopefully he doesn’t mind how long he is on those airplanes….  Not too much more time will tell.

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By Jeremy, May 26, 2010

Just one more day until we leave!  You can be sure that we are feeling just a bit pressed.  Pray for us to be relaxed in God and to increase in health.  Caleb’s cough has been getting much better but we want to board that plane tomorrow in full health!  Please also continue to believe with us for freedom from migraines for Caitlin.

We are excited to be soon updating you from Africa!