January 2022
I LOVE new beginnings! When I was a teacher, every new year meant new kids, new school supplies, new procedures, and a brand-new chance to get things “right.” We feel that way now as we begin the first Discipleship classes of 2022; we’ve learned a lot about the culture and the people, modifying and tweaking and adjusting how we teach…so, of course, God willing, this year will be perfect! Ha!
But we can’t move on without catching you up to date on the projects you’ve been supporting. As you know, we always look to see where the Hand of God is already moving and lend our skills and support to that. Remember too, for those who support our mission, that every cent of what you send goes to the purposes intended and not for our personal support, as our pensions are very adequate.
Over Christmas, we received many reports from our Rescue Home pastors in Myanmar and on the Thai border. There is nothing easy about what they’re doing in rescuing, sustaining, training, and teaching kids who otherwise have no future in a war-torn land. The silver lining of the persecution and war is that these homes are much more self-sustaining, growing gardens, raising chickens, fish, and pigs, and teaching the children themselves as schools are closed. Their Christmas celebrations were modest and sacred with a focus on the LORD and spreading the Good News.
On the Thai side of the border, several Discipling pastors have adapted their ministries because of COVID restrictions and are holding schools for the children of Burmese refugees who have flooded over the border to escape war and otherwise would be ineligible for schooling. Several have pooled their resources and considerable talents to support each other in this powerful ministry while they continue to make disciples among the parents.
In the Dominican, our micro-loan project to help pastors develop sustainable income sources is growing slowly but surely…with every single loan recipient to date repaying their monthly obligations on time! It’s stunning that such a seemingly small amount of capital can permanently change the direction and future of these faithful servants! We’ve also had incomparable help on the complexities of poverty from Esperanza International, an organization based on the principles outlined in “When Helping Hurts.” We’re blessed to be able to turn to them for larger community and church projects, such as drilling wells, bakeries, or water purification plants.
Another challenge we’re thrilled you’ve enabled us to meet is supplying bibles in Haitian creole, a French-based creole language, for some of our pastors. The Haitian refugees and migrant workers here in the Dominican desperately need bibles and we’ve found a source in Haiti. Several local Haitian pastors will travel back to their home country (they can travel there safely) to bring the bibles back to the Dominican in the next two weeks. What a blessing to have a source as well as a way to get the translations brought here!
And the Discipling Training continues apace! We’ve asked pastors to limit the groups to 30 for better proximity, acoustics, and room to practice, but we’ve sometimes had 50 crammed into small, badly lit places. I must remind myself sternly to be grateful for the people God has sent, not get dismayed by less-than-perfect teaching conditions, and trust that His Word will overcome all obstacles. A principle we teach is Exponential Multiplication…after all, in just a few years with just a few disciples, the early church spread the Good News to 10 million people, the entire Roman population of the time. That’s why we teach disciples to train disciples who make disciples… the multiplication effect for the Kingdom is enormous.
It may be our chickens are applying this multiplication principle themselves. When we first arrived, there was a senior rooster, a couple of young cocks (who were soon sold,) some juveniles of undetermined sex (it’s tricky to figure this out without getting up close and personal,) two outcasts of some other breed, several pre-adolescents, and two hens…13 all told. Since that time, with maturing chicks, abundant food, and increased clutch size, there has been a backyard explosion. While it’s hard to get an exact count particularly of the “littles” whose mothers won’t let them come to feed with the adolescent bullies, there is no doubt the initial population has a least quadrupled, with new hatchlings appearing daily. Mind you, we’re in the dead of the Dominican “winter;” one can only speculate about what will happen in the spring!
Over the holidays we had a wonderful but far too brief visit from our Florida son and daughter-in-law, which we spent talking, planning, talking, eating, talking, praying …and talking some more. It was a hugely refreshing, refilling, and restoring time! After four days away, we returned to an irate chicken reception committee. Apparently, those we’d left in charge of feeding either dispensed skimpier quantities or fed fewer times a day …but the net result was ugly. We could hardly get in the front gate for the disgruntled phalanx of protesting poultry all loudly expressing their disapproval.
And all is not yet “quiet on the Western Front." As our substantial number of adolescent roosters matures, they’ve begun “trash-talking” the old rooster. They’re careful, mind you, to put a good deal of physical distance between themselves and the king before tuning up, as he’s lightning fast in meting out punishment…but it’s a big property, divided by several partial walls. When you’ve a young rooster in one corner crowing challenges, answered by another in another corner, echoed by a third in another, and followed up by threats from the king perched on the air-conditioning unit outside our bedroom, it can be a VERY noisy sunrise. And, of course, they repeat…
And so, as we count our blessing in beginning yet another New Year, may 2022 be full of adventures and challenges for us all, and may we all remember He is with us every step of the way. We may not know what the future holds, but we know who holds the future! (Ralph Abernathy) Thank you for your support, your love, your prayers, and your encouragement. It would be hard to overestimate their positive effect!
“What, then, shall we say in response to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us?” Romans 8:31