African Summer

April 18, 2009
Dear Friends, and Family,

Some of you know that I’ll be heading to Africa on May 25th for about two months. What many of you don’t know is why I am doing this. Please, allow me to enlighten you.

I will be accompanying a woman named Robbie Harrington under the spiritual covering of Christ and the physical banner of Ancient Promise, which is an organization she founded over the last few years. Ancient Promise’s soul-shaking work has been impacting Christian’s at a level long hoped for and often not found in conventional church-going methodology. This organization has been shaking my life awake to the love of God my Father and to the passionate persistence of Jesus over this past year, and is now affording me the opportunity to further its purpose in Africa. Well, affording is actually where you come in. Let me tell about our plans for Africa then you can decide if you want to help me out.

The purpose of this trip is to work together with the church leaders in Nyamusi Kenya and in Tengeru Tanzania to develop a culturally relevant way of discipleship that will be impacting to the people. We will be working and living in a village called Nyamusi in upcountry Kenya with the purpose of understanding their way of life and needs better. In Tengeru Tanzania we will be staying at a Bible College working with pastoral leadership. We will also be looking to spend as much time as possible in the surrounding villages.

Our overall purpose is to find a way of helping leaders understand how to feed their people truth that will stand the test of suffering, cult distortion, cultural traditions and lack of education.

I anticipate this trip to be incredibly wearing on all levels; physically, spiritually, and emotionally. However, I trust that God has called me into this mission. With this trust comes the faith that He will be a shield before me in the face of all trials both now and in those to come while in Africa.

Please pray specifically for the hearts of the men and women we will encounter during our trip. Pray that we can be instruments of God and rightly display the love of Christ. Pray for our health and that God will bless me with an iron stomach and the good sense to keep well clear of the tap water, amen. Most importantly, pray that the spiritual forces working against us will be bound so that God’s Word can be proclaimed in power and with great efficacy.

If you can’t pay for me that doesn’t mean you can’t pray for me, so keep me in your prayers this summer. I will be in Africa for 63 days. The following may help you know how you can help.

It will cost me $90 per day to be there. This amount includes airfare and travel expenses.

Prayerfully consider giving of your support by sponsoring me through:
___ Daily prayer
___ @ $90 per day
___ @ $630 per week
___ @ other

If you would like to receive email updates while I’m gone please respond with your email address, or email me at: danishgeneral@hotmail.com

Make checks payable to: “Ancient Promise”
MEMO: Dane, Africa

Mail to: Ancient Promise
11850 Enterprise Drive
Auburn, CA 95603


I know this is close to the worst time in history to be asking anyone for money, but perhaps you could follow in the footsteps of our current administration and help bail me out in time for this trip.

Peace and Good,


Dane Johnson

A Walk in the Woods by: Murray Bodo

A Walk in the Woods by: Murray Bodo in Song of the Sparrow
What is this prayer of fall? Mostly it rises from an emptiness caused by nature’s dying into winter. And in a sense this emptiness, this longing to live, is the beginning of all prayer. I walk into the bleak November woods and I want to believe that I am not alone, that this loneliness is illusion only. And so I reach out and call upon God and I am no longer alone. For there behind the wet, behind the black trees, behind my own feelings, is He who walked the same earth and entered into its dark soil only to rise again opening forever the dark recesses of the earth and of the heart of man. And I thank him and this too is prayer.

A Life Beyond Myself

It’s not for me, not to self-improve, or to appear valuable in the world.
It’s not for the pursuit of superficial peace of mind to soothe an ache I’ve given my own head.
It’s not to beat the guy next door and climb climb up that endless ladder.
It’s only for the in and out breath of life received and exhaled in praise of the Creator.
It’s only for the moves made by the stirrings of Spirit and eternity.
Life is not what we’ve made it, it is much bigger than we can attain, or understand.
Life is the expression of the divine manifesting itself in earthly flesh and blood.
It’s not for me, but through me to you, not to possess, but to express.
It’s not mine to hold, keep and guard.
It loses its liveliness cooped up within the limitations of man.
Life is in me, but beyond me connecting to God.
Apart from Christ there is no such thing as life.
Apart from Christ one’s life is only an accumulation of lessons learned and personal aspirations within the structures of a fallen world.
Life as I have known it pales in comparison to the life I’m being shown through the redemption of Christ.
It is no longer I who live, but simply Christ in me.
The only hope for glory.

Shower Thought

God, in His mercy, allows us to go through shit in life so that we do not mistake it for brownies later on. 

Shower Thought

"I'll get to the bottom of this!" cried Sherlock whilst gulping down his beer. 

Sections of Rumi's "Feeling the Shoulder of the Lion"

"The Lion's Shoulder" by Rumi the Sufi Poet
Don't worry so much about livelihood.
Your livelihood will turn out as it should.
Be constantly occupied instead
with listening to God.

How is it that you ask for physical comfort,
and not for true existence?

Why are you so blind to what the soul needs?
Weep for yourself as when a cloud weeps,
and then the branch freshens. As when a candle
releases tears and gets brighter.

You have been imitating spirituality.

Imitation is a lock on your chest.
Dissolve it with tears.

Imitation is a blind man describing a landscape
with beautiful words. There's no heart knowledge.

The blind man gets excited with the words,
but you feel the distance between him and the beauty.
The words burn but there's no warmth, and no broken-open-ness.

Had those words been written inside him,
his body would have shivered into particles.

You have been doing such things with the name of
GOD.
So the imitator doesn't know what he's fooling with. God thinks,
"You fake. Sinai crumbled and split with jets of blood streaming from it
for the sake of the name that you say so thoughtlessly.

You learned it from your mother and father,
not from your own experience."

"The LORD says, 'These people come near to me with their mouth and honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. Their worship of me is made up only of rules taught by men."
Isaiah 29:13