We've Arrived!

30 January 2009

Praise God! We arrived back in Botswana nearly a week ago now, and the work wouldn’t wait! We’re living in temporary housing for a couple of weeks till we can change the flooring in our hallway and do a bit of painting and some other maintenance and updates that are easier to do when nobody’s living in the house.

It was kind of nice to leave the US late in the day: both our kids and both our grandkids were able to come to the airport with us at about 4:30 in the afternoon. Ian got absorbed in his Nintendo DS, but Iona was literally bouncing off the walls! We hugged and kissed a lot, but finally had to let them go so they could eat dinner and we could go through security to our gate.

One of the big projects last term was the registration of our school with the government of Botswana. We assumed that government registration was equivalent to what we call accreditation in the US, but we found out differently since we got here. When our colleague, Pat Mahar, picked us up from the airport last Saturday, he told Chuck there was a seminar on accreditation sponsored by the government and 2 people from Assembly Bible College were required to attend on Tuesday and Wednesday. So Chuck and Pastor Ntwaetsile attended, and they discovered that registration only makes us eligible to apply for accreditation; well, that and it gives us permission to keep the school open. Other schools have been shut down by the government, if their application for registration was not approved. ABC is the only theological school whose registration application was approved—the other 3 Bible Schools have been closed.

We thank the Lord for bringing us here (in 2005) in time to apply for registration and for helping with all the paperwork (reams and reams of paperwork!), so that Assembly Bible College is operating, still training pastors for local churches. God is good.

Love in Christ, Chuck and Janet

More of Romans 3

The main theme of Romans 3 is righteousness. We tend to think of righteousness as a description of a person’s behavior or character; if you read this chapter carefully, though, you will notice that Paul does not speak of righteousness as if it is behavior, but more as if it is a status. He says that a righteousness from God, apart from law, has been made known. Later he says that “we maintain that a man is justified [made righteous] by faith apart from observing the law;” in other words a person’s righteousness does not depend on what he does—not on his observance of the law.

I can remember Sunday School teachers defining “righteousness” as a right relationship with God. I like that idea; and the relationship with God that it best describes is a relationship of approval: your status is “righteous” when God approves of you. Mankind has always assumed that we had to earn God’s approval by keeping the law, but Paul explains that we can never earn God’s approval no matter how hard we try. Instead God bestows His approval graciously on anybody who trusts in the sacrifice of Jesus.

Romans 3 again

Another thing about Romans 3 is that it keeps emphasizing that we're all the same, especially equating the Gentiles and the Jews. Verse 9 says that Jews and Gentiles are all under sin; verse 22 says there is no difference, meaning there's no difference between Jews and Gentiles, that we all sin and fall short of God's glory and we're all justified by His grace. Paul does say, though, that the Jews have an advantage: they KNOW what God demands, because He told them; verse 1 says they've been entrusted with the very words of God. Having an advantage doesn't mean you win. . .it just means you get a head start.

Romans 3

I started memorizing Romans 3 a month or so ago, because I love its message so much. As far as I'm concerned, the essence of the gospel is explained so well in this one little chapter.

Basically, Paul starts out by saying that God didn't give us His Law so that we could perfect ourselves by keeping the law: He gave it so that we could see how far short of perfection we fall. That's what verse 20 means, ". . .rather, through the law we become conscious of sin." I think of it like this: what we were doing was wrong all along, but it was not formally wrong till there was a law against it. You know, they can't charge you with a crime if there's no law against it yet. There was a time when baby car seats were not the law--that meant you could carry your baby in your arms in the car and the police wouldn't stop you and write you a ticket. But it was still dangerous: if you'd crashed your car, the baby still would have been hurt or even killed. The pre-1970's world went along totally oblivious to the danger of babies riding in cars; but the law made us conscious of the danger by holding the threat of a ticket over our heads. The law made of conscious of the sin of carrying a baby loose in a car that's speeding down the highway.

Still becoming

We recently read a great book by a guy named J.A.C. Redford; it's called "Welcome All Wonders: A Composer's Journey." You know, people usually think of "finding themselves" during their youth--as a teenager, human beings take a journey that brings them to that place where they become sure of their identity.

But I feel like I'm still becoming who I am. I don't have to stop learning and changing simply because I'm. . .mature! I don't change my mind as easily as I used to, but I still read and listen and consider new information and change old habits.

How does this work?

Fund-raising is NEVER fun and it's getting harder as wall street tanks. We're trying to be creative about finding a way to get back to Botswana in time for the school term that begins in January. We wrote to AGWM (Assemblies of God World Missions, our sending organization) about taking steps to reduce our budget, so that we could return to Africa with less support than they've told us we need. We even suggested that we might take money out of our personal income and pledge it towards our own Mission account. Chuck got an e-mail back from AGWM and they said we can't do that, the IRS doesn't allow it.

So I thought a little while about it and then I suggested to Chuck, "Well, we could take money out of our personal income, though, and pledge it to some OTHER missionary family." You may be wondering, "But how does that help the WILSONS raise the support they need?" It doesn't. But I know that all our missionary friends and colleagues are struggling, too, and none of us is finding it easy to raise our support.

The next day I got a call first thing in the morning from a cousin of mine; she wants to know how she and her husband can support us on a regular basis. You see, they've retired now, sold their house, bought an RV, and they're traveling around the country. Since they're not going to church at the same place every week, they're not putting their tithe toward the support of a local church. I was amazed when I got off the phone.

I told Chuck the good news and he looked up from his e-mails and said, "I have a message from AGWM that we got four new pledges yesterday." We were ecstatic! We haven't received a new pledge in nearly four weeks, and in one day we had reports of four new pledges and a promise of one that'll be coming in soon.

Chuck commented, "I think it's significant that the day after we made pledges to two of our missionary colleagues is the day we got five new pledges." I asked him, "Do you think they're really connected?" Does God really work like that? If somebody wrote a novel and put in a sequence like that, you would probably ditch the novel and say, "It's just not realistic." But this IS realistic, you know, because it's REAL. God really did this for us: He knows we needed the encouragement, no matter what the timing of it, and it takes my breath away that God's abundant blessings came right on the heals of our own gift to others.

But, even if it DOESN'T work that way, it did this time. God is good.

Pay-Pal Church?

I just got an idea yesterday. This idea is a potential solution to a problem facing today's churches: younger worshippers don't carry cash, nor do they carry checkbooks. A lot of churches are trying creative ways to give these young people the opportunity to give, but it continues to be a problem. Here's my solution:

Why not make the sanctuary a free wi-fi zone and set up a pay-pal account for the church? Then, instead of insisting that everyone turn OFF their cell phones in church, you could encourage them to leave on their phones, blackberries, i-phones, or even their laptop computers. At offering time, tech-savvy worshippers could log on and put their offering into the church's pay-pal account, and some of us more techno-challenged could drop a check or currency into the plat as it goes by.

A side benefit might also be sending out announcements and even the sermon power-point via internet right during the service. Hey, it might not solve ALL our problems, but it could be worth a try!