More old friends

We're in Hermiston this afternoon: we had a missions service at Irrigon Assembly of God this morning and tonight we'll be going to Umatilla Assembly. This is our old stompin' grounds.



We were excited to hear about Sarah Palin's selection as the Republican vice-presidential candidate. Chuck grew up in Alaska and he still has family there. We were aware of the birth of her Down's Syndrome baby and of much she has done in Alaska. MacCain has taken a big political risk choosing her.

I'm now on Facebook

I spent the evening signing up for Facebook and trying to figure it out. I'm not sure I understand how it's better than e-mails, or even how it serves a different purpose than e-mails. But we'll see.

Old Friends

Chuck performed a wedding this morning for a friend of ours that we've known for years and years. We only met the bride yesterday, but the groom was a teenager in our youth group when Chuck was youth pastor in Hermiston, Oregon. Children of both the bride and the groom participated in the wedding, making it a family affair and a happy and touching ceremony. It was held in Columbia Park along the Columbia River in Washington, just over the state line from Hermiston.

Last night we spent the night with other friends who were in the church in Hermiston and who now live in Kennewick, Washington. We really enjoy spending time with old friends. On Monday we will drive through the Dalles and visit with other old friends from Hermiston; it'll be lovely. God is good.

Email from Botswana

Last year, just before we left Botswana, I developed three courses for the first-year classes: the first is called "Methods in Home Evangelism" the second is "Home Evangelism Practicum 1" and the third is called "Home Evangelism Practicum 2." (We have 3 terms of school in Botswana, so each course runs for one 10-week term.) The purpose of the practicum is two-fold; the first goal is to familiarize students with an unfamiliar method of ministry. The second purpose is to make disciples.

During the first term, the teacher introduces the concept and explains just what it is the students are expected to do. At the same time, the teacher is responsible for contacting local pastors to arrange for students to have ministry in the homes of some of the members. The point is to connect students with church families that speak the same local language; this explains the "home" part of Home Evangelism Practicum.

During the second and third terms, students begin meeting with the assigned families and with a few neighbors of the same language group that the church family may invite. We encourage the church families to invite either other believers or unbelievers. Thus the "evangelism" part of Home Evangelism Practicum.

I hesitated to introduce this new series of classes because Chuck and I would not be there to help, encourage, and monitor. But I did all that I could and left in in God's hands--and I also left it in the hands of one of our Batswana teachers, Pastor Phodiso Ntwaetsile. I was extremely encouraged to receive this e-mail from Pastor Ntwaetsile just a few days ago.

Phodiso wrote:

Hi the Wilsons.

It's a long time without hearing from each other. However God is still sustaning us and keeping us in his love. We are still praying for you and believing that soon you will be joining us here in Botswana.

Well, regarding the Home Evangelism, everything is in place. We managed to complete Practicum 1, and now looking forward to do the last Practicum, thus Practicum 2. However, I want to admit that I still have some problems with making the pastors get motivated to influence their church members to give us opportunities to use their homes. For example, pastors around Gaborone are happy about the program, but they are failing to influence their members. This forced me to look for opportunities at the Botswana Prison to run the program with them. Of course it was a good thing to penetrate the prison apartments, but the problem is some prisoners who participated in the program are executed before the end of the program. And this will mean that at the end of the program we will be left with few persons who completed the program and can therefore remain doing it with other prisoners.

Apart from the prison, we are running the program with at least one family, and some of my students are compiling their lessons in Sekhalahari language since we failed to find a family that speaks Sekhalahari. I have a strong hope that their material will aid the next year students during their preparations for the same program.After all, I want to tell you that the goals and objectives of the program are being met. I believe next year we will have many families involved in the program as I am still discussing the program with pastors around. Some pastors from Apostolic Faith Mission are showing interest on the program, of which I still want to ask you if you are comfortable with running the program with them?After all, everything is in place. You will hear good reports when you return.

Lastly, pray for me and my wife, we are opening a church branch in Kopong. The village has got 5571 people. We have started the cell-group and people a responding to the gospel.

Yours in Christ.

Two thoughts for the day

We’re in Gold Beach, Oregon, and I’m sitting at a coffee shop/ book shop that has wireless internet access—not for free, but for a reasonable price. Chuck went fishing today, but I was not interested.

I mentioned something about romance novels last time. The thing that bugs me about romance novels is that there’s always a bad boy who falls for a nice girl and she finally overcomes her aversion to his bad habits and falls head over heals for him. I first noticed this story line some years ago when I watched “Carousel” (Rodgers & Hammerstein?). What really stopped me in my tracks is when the girl (I can’t remember if it’s the young wife or later the teen-aged daughter) says, “When somebody who loves you slaps you, it doesn’t really hurt.” Oh, right! That gives permission for men everywhere to continue beating their wives, as long as they really love them.

Danielle Steele (sp?) and Victoria Holt are not much better. There’s always a pirate or a gambler or a womanizer who is drop-dead gorgeous and the heroine always chooses him over the reliable, respectful—albeit slightly boring—lord or earl or businessman. I thank my God I chose the reliable, respectful, and never boring Chuck Wilson; yesterday we celebrated our 35th wedding anniversary and I have not regretted even one day of our life together.

My second thought for the day is a bit more religious in nature, because after all this is a missionary blog, so you do expect it to be religious, don’t you? We have majored for about 5 years now on God’s blessing to Abraham in Genesis chapter 12. God promises Abraham to bless him and make his name great and to bless the whole earth through him etc. etc. In our presentations at churches, we have tended to stress the fact that when God blesses, He intends the blessed person to be a blessing: “We are blessed to be a blessing” is the jist of it.

Recently, though, my attention was drawn to God’s promise to “make his name great.” I began to contrast that promise with the efforts of many a man to “make a name for himself.” For several days I couldn’t track down a verse in the Bible that refers to a person “making a name for him/herself” and then I finally remembered the Tower of Babel story. Those people wanted to build a great tower, using brick and mortar, to make a name for themselves (and to keep from being scattered througout the earth). It’s no coincidence that most of the people who have impressed me recently as trying to make a name for themselves have done it with brick and mortar.

I have often regretted the fact that Chuck and I are not in-demand conference speakers. You won’t find our name on brochures for camp meeting speakers, church-growth seminars or big revivals. We have not risen to leadership in our mission organization either. Nobody knows our names.

Except for the God of heaven. I will leave it to Him to make our names great.

Waiting room

Aug 22, 2008

I am sitting in the waiting room at the Salem Edoscopy Center, waiting for Chuck to be scoped. He has suffered indigestion and heartburn for years and we knew that he would eventually have to be scoped, so today that day has finally arrived. It’s not that the problems have gotten worse, really, so much as they’ve just hung on for so long that our doctor didn’t think we ought to ignore it longer. Well, we hadn’t really been ignoring it, but, you know, zantac and prilosec will only take you so far!

We’re sending out a paper newsletter this week, and I’ve spent the last hour or so updating our mailing list. If you are not on our mailing list but you’d like to be, just post a comment to this blog and let me know your address. If you are on our mailing list and you don’t want to be, please don’t write an irate letter, but do let us know.

We spend so much time in the car these days, traveling from church to church, that I’ve done a lot of reading. I know that makes some people carsick, but I usually do ok if I take short breaks frequently. I read a lot of romance novels, but they are not very satisfying.

But I’ll have to save that for tomorrow, Chuck’s scheduled to be done pretty soon here.

Children in Africa

I got an e-mail today from somebody who attended the worship service Sunday in Klamath Falls. Her heart was especially touched by something Chuck said: we don't see much (if anything) going on in Botswana in the way of children's ministry. We would like to see that changed, and we have been recruiting people who hear God's call in that direction.

For those readers who have gifts in various areas of service and who feel that God is calling them to serve His people in Africa, we recommend a couple of excellent books:

Ministering Cross-Culturally by Sherwood Lingenfelter and Marvin Mayers

and

Teaching Cross-Culturally by Judith and Sherwood Lingenfelter.

God bless you and make you more like Christ.

from Janet