MISSION: Uganda Blog Update 05-15-2008

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Today's the day. This is the last day of class at Baptist Bible Translators Institute. We graduate on Saturday, and drive back to St. Louis on Sunday. We're just about packed, and once I get the moving truck tomorrow, I'll be able to clear the big pile of containers out of our living room. This afternoon, we'll be picking my Father-in-Law/Pastor and his wife up from the airport. Everybody's excited, especially the kids. They've missed their grandparents and assorted aunts and uncles on both sides very badly.

Our final meetings went well. We had a missions conference at Bible Baptist Church of Rendon in Fort Worth, TX with Pastor Clayton Suggs May 2-4. It was a tremendous meeting, but getting there was a challenge. We had put our van in the shop for a suspected oil leak (turned out to be the main seal), and they couldn't get it done in time. So, here it comes Friday and we have no way to get to our meeting. Thankfully, East Side Baptist saved the day and let us use the church van. On Saturday, I was on my way back from soulwinning, and a tire blew out. We were never late for a meeting, but the harassment from the enemy was ever present. The reason why was this: on Saturday, I got the great privilege of witnessing to and winning to the LORD two boys we met on outreach. Alex and Chandler, 11 and 12, both got saved! Pray for their growth. Sunday night, Bro. Suggs cut us loose so we could have a meeting in 1st Baptist Church of Cottondale with Pastor Charles Pugh. It was a great weekend, and we were so pleased to be used of God.

Pray for us as we get things wrapped up here, with packing and cleaning and what not, and for our travelling on Sunday. We're getting up early and driving all day to get home. Pray for both vehicles. We're coming home!!

MISSION: Uganda Blog Update 04-28-2008

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Hello again! We've just finished another round of meetings. Thankfully, we don't have any major trips from now on, which will make finishing school easier. I had wanted to be done with deputation when I came to BBTI, but it just didn't work out that way. It's all for the good, though, because we've had some excellent meetings since we came to BBTI, and it was a lot easier getting to them with the epicenter of deputation being located in West Texas for the past ten months.

Following our meeting in Baton Rouge, we drove back to Bowie to try to catch some more of Bible Translation class with Charles Turner. It's been a great class, with a lot of practical instruction on how to get the Bible from its original languages into another language using the best formal equivalents between the two. It brought up a lot of considerations. What do you do when the Bible uses idiom that has no equivalent in the native dialect? How do you describe things that are unknown to a people group, like lambs, snow, grapes, or wheat? What do you do if the Bible uses a possessive, but possessives aren't allowed in the language you're working with? It was fascinating studying the Greek and observing how the King James translators had to make these sorts of decisions when translating our own English Bible. Bible translation is a monumental task, and not for the faint of heart. It absolutely requires full partnership between the translator and the Holy Spirit, working in and through the human translator to help birth the best possible translation of God's Holy Word into the language of the people He loves and wants to reach with His Gospel.

We drove back to Alexandria, LA on Wednesday for a meeting with Pastor Jonathan Pyle and Air Base Road Baptist Church. Bro. Pyle is the son of Pastor Jerry Pyle, of Bible Baptist Church in Nevada, MO, one of our earliest meetings which we had on deputation. We had a great meeting, with some great preaching, and drove back to Bowie on Thursday. Once there, we repacked our stuff and got ready to make a trip out to Arizona for some more meetings. After class on Friday, we made our way out to Tucson, AZ for a meeting with Pastor Greg Dawson and Shining Light Baptist Church. Pastor Dawson and met a few years back at Pastor Steven Morris' church, Sun and Shield Baptist in Marana, AZ, for his missions conference. He's got a growing church full of good people, and we had some great services on their Missions Emphasis Sunday.

We spent Monday and Tuesday in Tucson, and took the opportunity to take our cowboys down to Tombstone to see the site of the infamous gun battle between Wyatt Earp, Doc Holiday, and the Clanton gang at the O.K. Corral. It was a bit of a letdown, because the whole town was a tourist trap, and you couldn't get into to any of the historic sites without paying a fortune. Oh well, we enjoyed ourselves any way, and got to see Boot Hill Cemetery on the way out of town. Now we can say we've been there.

Our next stop was a missions conference in Phoenix, AZ with Pastor Brent Loveless and North Valley Baptist Church. It was a great conference, and the people seemed to really respond to the LORD. Pastor Larry Obero of Bible Baptist Church in National City, CA was the main speaker, and did a tremendous job. The Pastor and his wife took us to see Sedona on Saturday. It was nice to get to see the Red Rocks of Sedona and Oak Creek Canyon again. The ladies got to do some shopping in downtown Sedona, and we had ourselves a good time.

At the moment, we're making our way back to Bowie, TX. We have three weeks of school to finish up. We got our finals for Bible Translation class emailed in on Friday, and managed to get our reading done while on the road. Now we will be joining the Literacy class already in progress when we get back, with courses in Teaching English as a Second Language and Field Medicine to follow. Pray for us as we finish up school, and get our stuff packed and ready to head back to St. Louis after graduation on May 17. We have a few meetings as well coming up in May locally before graduation, so be in prayer for them also.

MISSION: Uganda Blog Update 04-14-2008

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Greetings! Boy, you blink, and next thing you know, four weeks have flown by. We've had a few meetings, and managed to have a Spring Break from school as well. We went to Pastor Garry Way's church in Gainesville, TX (Fair Ave.Baptist Church) on March 30, Pastor David Grice's church in Grand Prairie, TX (Lighthouse Baptist Church) on April 6, and we just had a meeting in Central Baptist Church in Baton Rouge, LA with Pastor Bob Buchanan last night. I'm writing this in haste at the hotel because we need to get going, and I want to send this thing while I still have access to hotel broadband (as opposed to the dismal fixed wireless we have in Bowie, TX which makes things take ten times as long to accomplish). Our meetings have gone very well. God has blessed us. He keeps sending us to great churches, and I am confident that He will raise our support dramatically in the months ahead.

School is nearly done. It seems like we just got here at Baptist Bible Translators Institute, but in a few weeks, we will be graduating. Then, we sprint for the finish line at the end of the year. Be in prayer that we will finish well, with the school, and with deputation, and be prepared to head to Africa in early 2009. Pray for the heavy travelling we will be doing in order to wrap things up this year. It's a blessing to think about being done, and being on the field sooner than it was when we began.

 

MISSION: Uganda Blog Update 03-18-2008

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Hello, again! We've just had a meeting in a missions conference in Bossier City, LA at Shady Grove Baptist Church. Their new pastor is Steven Sorrell. He and his family were missionaries to Sri Lanka. The former Pastor, Dennis Blankenship, was called to be a missionary to Sudan, and is now on deputation to that end. It is a very missions oriented church. Several of their folks are are either currently missionaries, or are called to be missionaries. It was a great missions conference.

Shady Grove is just around the corner from Barksdale Air Force Base. Our friends Tim and Julie Tuttle are stationed there along with their kids. We had a great time touring the base and the Air Museum, and the gang had a lot of fun ripping around with their three boys. The boys enjoyed all the cool old planes they had on display. It's not every day you get to touch a B-17 or an SR-71 Blackbird. Barksdale is home to the B-52G bomber. Every so often, one of these huge planes would come swooping in for a landing. I marvel that something so huge could possibly get off the ground, and yet it does. It was great to get to fellowship with them and catch up on their lives in person.

Our next meeting is on the 30th in Gainesville, TX about an hour away with Pastor Garry Way and Fair Avenue Baptist Church. Pray for us as we go to this meeting, and as we finish up Greek at BBTI.

MISSION: Uganda Blog Update 03-10-2008

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Greetings! I am writing this while sitting on the plane en route from Spokane, WA to Salt Lake City, UT. We finished up our conference with Pastor David Isbell of Eagle Drive Baptist Church in Decatur, TX last Wednesday. It was a great meeting. I and several others from BBTI were there. It was an interesting week for me, though. I was still getting over the flu and the sinus infection that resulted, so I still wasn't feeling 100%. I survived, however, and we had a good conference anyway.

We wrapped up that conference on Wednesday, and then on Thursday, I had to catch a flight out of Dallas to Spokane, WA for a missions conference, and a Sunday night meeting in the beautiful Pacific Northwest. It was a great conference. I was in Foundation Baptist Church in Coeur d'Alene, ID with Pastor Bobby Stanchfield. We met at a missions conference in Faith Baptist Church in Salt Lake City, UT last October, and he graciously invited me out for their missions conference in March. Bro. Chuck Beickel from Faith Baptist was the speaker. It was good to get to see Pastor Beickel again.

Pastor Stanchfield has been Pastor here for six months. This was their first missions conference since he became Pastor. He had taken over for the former Pastor, Kenneth Cox, who had retired. They are a growing church, in a growing town, way up north in the panhandle of Idaho. It was a tremendous conference, and I'm so glad I got to be involved. Pray for them as they continue to grow, and as they seek to raise the funds to purchase their own land and build their own permanent church building.

Friday, Pastor Stanchfield, Pastor Beickel, myself and some others took a trip to Montana to a piece of property belonging to Faith Baptist Church in Spokane, WA. It's a beautiful place, and they are planning on starting a Christian camp there. Adjoining the property lives a woman who shall hereafter be known as the Crazy Tiger Lady. You know how you always hear about old ladies, living in a house full of cats, who die there and are eaten by their cats before the authorities find out about it? I think the Crazy Tiger Lady stands a very good chance of attaining this urban legendary status. You see, here, in Montana, in a hand-crafted chain link cage, live two full-grown Bengal tigers. Yes. BENGAL TIGERS. They have access to her house. She raised them from cubs, and she sleeps with them at night. Hence the term, "Crazy Tiger Lady." I literally stood about two feet from this enormous jungle killer, who would charge the chain link fence, throw his full weight into it and HUFF!!, just to let me know he's there and absolutely in charge, and I'm thinking to myself, "If this fence gives, one of us is going to die today, and it won't do any good running, because you'll just die tired." In addition to the tigers, the Crazy Tiger Lady also has a full-grown mountain lion, a bear cub which is currently hibernating in her home, and some skunks. Only in Montana.

Sunday night, I drove back to Spokane for a meeting in Faith Baptist Church with Pastor Greg Boyle (he's the fellow who has the camp, Camp LottaWatta in Montana, right next to the Crazy Tiger Lady's place).  I had a great service, and showed our presentation, shared our burden for Uganda, and preached. God moved in the service, and it was a real blessing.

It was a very profitable trip, and I’m glad I got the opportunity to come up here. I very likely have two supporting churches in the Pacific Northwest now, which is a very cool thing.

On Friday, we will be in Bossier City, LA for a missions conference with Pastor Dennis Blankenship in Shady Grove Baptist Church. Pray for us as we make the drive. Pray for the meeting, that God will bless, and that we will be an encouragement to the Pastor and the church.
Pray for us as we continue our studies at BBTI that we will finish well in the months ahead.