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.

MISSIONS: Uganda Blog Update 03-05-2008

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Howdy folks! Much has transpired since the last epistle. James was the first plague victim, and disease soon conquered the rest of our household. At first, I was the only healthy one in the house, and had to go to most of our next conference alone. Anna was too sick to get out of bed, so I handled domestic affairs during the day, and went to church at night. The conference at 1st Baptist of Haltom City (Pastor Mosley) went very well. God met with us and gave the church a tremendous bunch of services. Each of the missionaries, myself included, preached, and God blessed. I managed to stay well the whole time until Saturday night, when I first began running a fever. We drugged ourselves and then drug into church Sunday morning so the folks there could at least meet all of us, and then we went home to crash. Then came my time in the crucible. I can't remember the last time I was so sick. The virus lays you low with high fever, weakness, aches, and robs you of sleep by filling your head with snot so you can't breathe. Anna and I both developed sinus infections as a lovely parting gift of the flu, and today is the first day either of us has felt really well since we got sick. Today was the first day I have not had a fever in over a week! What a mess. The past three weeks are a blur to me. It's good to be healthy again, however.

We're finishing up our conference at Eagle Drive Baptist Church in Decatur, TX tonight (Pastor David Isbell). Then, tomorrow, I fly up to Spokane, WA for a conference in Foundation Baptist Church in C'ouer d'Alene, ID (Pastor Bobby Stanchfield), and a Sunday night meeting at Faith Baptist Church in Spokane, WA (Pastor Greg Boyle).

Also, we've finished our class in Culture Learning (getting that done while stricken with the flu was no fun at all, I can tell you). Now we're doing New Testament Greek, which is review for us, since we've both studied it in the past.

Pray for us as we continue to heal from our sickness. Pray for our busy schedule in the weeks ahead, and for our travels.

MISSION: Uganda Blog Update 02-18-2008

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Greetings, everyone! It's been a busy week since we got back to Texas. We have both managed to get all our classwork caught up, and are now busily preparing culture data to turn in at the completion of the class in a few weeks. It's a tremendous course. The basic gist of it is this: as you are learning the language, you must also learn the culture of a people. Your goal is to stop being a foreign outsider, and become a native insider. This requires spending much time with the people, observing how they live, and asking lots of questions. The key is to learn to differentiate between God's culture, which you want them to learn, and American culture, which they don't really need. The difficulty is that American missionaries all too often wind up imposing American culture on a native population, giving it the same weight and confusing it with the Bible, and create ministries that are alien to the people and won't endure well after the missionary is gone. The truth is, 95% of what foreign cultures do in no way conflicts with the Bible, but are just different from "how we do it". Different isn't necessarily bad, you see, although our Baptist culture conditions us to think this to some degree I'm afraid. The Gospel not only must be communicated in the language of the people, but in cultural terms that make sense to them. In doing so, we are imitating the very method used by God to communicate with humanity down through the ages.

Our two meetings yesterday in Central Baptist Church in Center, TX (Pastor Danny Dodson) and Lighthouse Baptist Church in Wiley, TX (Pastor James Rasbeary) respectively, went very well. We drove to Center, TX, about four hours away, on Saturday which was an adventure in itself. A nasty storm system developed, and followed us the whole drive down there. Not only was it quite dark, but it created blinding torrential rain that slowed our travel considerably and increased our four hour drive to six. It began, after a bit, to feel more like steering a boat than driving because of the hydroplaning. As if this didn't create enough stress, every so often, you'd hit this deep pool of water, which sent waves of liquid cascading over your windshield, blinding you totally for about 5 seconds or so. At one point, flash flooding had covered the road we needed to follow. I noticed that the water was getting deep fast, and that it appeared to be swift moving from what I could barely see in my headlights. So, I backed us up very carefully, turned around, and went another way. I've been in some nasty storms before, but you normally drive out of them. I have never been in a situation as severe or as long-lasting as this (two hours of hard rain). Needless to say, we were very grateful to finally reach the hotel in Center, TX. And we wanted adventure…

We had great services the next day (the weather was pristine, of course). God worked and it was a great blessing.

On Wednesday, we begin a missions conference in Haltom City, TX    at 1st Baptist Church of Haltom City, Pastor M Mosley. Pray for us, as James has contracted one of the flu bugs we've been exposed to lately. It doesn't affect the stomach (Thank God!), but it does create weakness, cough, aches, and high-fever that can last a few days. Pray the rest of us will remain healthy, and that he will get well in time for us to go to the conference.

MISSION: Uganda Blog Update 02-12-2008

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Greetings! We are back in St. Louis, MO, but not for much longer. The conference at Northwest Bible Baptist Church went great! It was an outstanding meeting. God met with us indeed. On Tuesday, Bro. Anglea preached a message that really began the process of healing for the church. It will be a long road, because such things always are, but their attitude was truly God glorifying. It was an honor to be a visiting missionary in their conference, considering that they would have been well within their rights to call off the whole thing. Yet, despite their overwhelming grief, they chose to have a missions conference, and keep missions the center of their ministry. Continue to pray for NBBC, and for Pastor Keith Gomez as they continue grieving for their lost loved ones.

On Wednesday night, a winter storm moved into the area and dumped 8 inches of snow and general winter nastiness on the region. Did we drive home anyway? You bet! Our plane to San Francisco was leaving at 0930 the next day, so we had to get home to St. Louis, leave the kids with their grandparents, and make our way to our next meeting quickly. We pulled into town early in the morning, and Anna and I got to bed around 0430 that morning. We were up in two hours, and had to reconfigure our packing for air travel, and made our flight in time. We went from 19 degree weather in St. Louis, to 65 degree weather in San Francisco, CA.

Thursday, we did a bit of sight seeing in the city. We have always wanted to see the Golden Gate Bridge, which we did, and snapped some great photos. We got to drive down Lombard Street (think Steve McQueen). We swung by Ghiradelli Square, mecca of women everywhere. We wandered around the Wharf and got souvenirs for the kids, and finally got dinner at a local seafood joint (mmmm… fresh seafood…). 

The conference in Lighthouse Baptist Church in Pleasanton, CA (Pastor Bill Bryson, about an hour East of San Francisco) went great. Dr. John Halsey preached, and gave clear Biblical teaching on Grace Giving. They are a small church, by worldly standards, and were the product of the joining of two other churches in the area. As such, their missions giving had suffered in recent years. This was the first missions conference they had had in a while, and God just worked. The short of it is they nearly doubled the amount of missions giving required to support the missionaries they already had! What a blessing! They're a great bunch of people, serving the LORD in an area of the country that is resistant to the Gospel, but they just keep at it, and have such a spiritual attitude about the whole thing. It was a privilege to get to minister there this weekend. Pray for them as they hold forth the Gospel in California, that will continue to grow and see souls saved and added to the church in the greater Bay Area of California.

Today, as soon as we get our stuff pulled together, we will be driving back to Bowie, Texas for the many meetings yet scheduled down that way, and to finish up the stellar BBTI language school already in progress. They have been taping the classes for us, and we have been listening to them while we were away. Pray that we'll be able to get back into the swing of things smoothly, and that we'll be able to stay caught up with our coursework.