Mid-October Musings

This has been a pretty calm week compared to the last several. It has been good to be back home and to get back to "normal" living. But normal does not mean dull or uninteresting.

Over the weekend our son Mark attended a retreat for the high school students at the Learning Center. The speakers for the retreat were the Learning Center chaplain and a four person team of young adults from AXIS. (You can find out more about them by going to their website http://www.axis.org. Their mantra seems to be: the issue is not unanswered questions but unquestioned answers.) The Lord has been doing some good things in the hearts of students at the school and this retreat was no exception.

Meanwhile, while Mark was at the retreat Niki and I took the weekend off to simply be together. It was fun to eat out together (twice!), play games, watch movies and just be us without anyone else around.

Sunday was the anniversary of the Linage de Dios church so we went to join in on the celebration. Lots of loud music (is my age showing?),

some special numbers

This young man, Wilson, studies at the Bolivian Evangelical University. Along with two fellow students he sang a really nice rendition of Amazing Grace/My Chains Fell Off.

and a good message about how God uses desert experiences in our lives.

The pastor from another church in the district did the preaching.

Pastor Pedro, who has been around a long time, shared some thoughts as well. Pedro and his wife have been faithful workers for the Lord throughout most of the denomination's history.

They heard every word, I'm sure.

Finally, we crossed the date of October 16 and are officially in transition. The transition people say that when you are aware of a change coming you begin to transition out of your current place about six months ahead. So, we are now transitioning for deputation. We leave Bolivia to return for our time in the States on April 16. We will soon be beginning to work on a basic schedule. We have a general outline of where we will be and when:

April - May 2013 - Indiana, Texas - bugging our children, spoiling the new grandchild and generally getting even with our children!

June - August 2013 - Summer camps and some local churches (¿Montana area?), Annual Conference in Portland, OR

September -December 2013 - local churches in the North Central, East Central Conferences

January - April 2014 - Oregon and Washington

May - June 2014 - Montana, Eastern and South Eastern conferences

I put these here now so if you want us to visit your church or to hold a home meeting please contact us now or any time in these next months. The above outline is not set in stone and I am sure there will be some adjustments depending on open doors for us to share the ministry in Bolivia. God always seems to help things to work out even if not always by our laid out plan.

So this is it for this week. Next week I will be traveling again to Riberalta to attend the laying (it is really more of a throwing or dropping) of the cornerstone for our first church in the department of the Beni. I hope to have a lot of pictures and things to report when I get back.

Recalibrate

I have been gone on a trip to the US and am finally getting caught up on Ch'airo. I am basically done traveling (I have been gone four out of the last eight weeks) and so should be able to get Ch'airo back on a steady rhythm.

I had the opportunity to fly to Chicago to attend a conference by the organization Missio-Nexus on the topic of recalibrating missionary methods for the new century. It was a good conference and I felt encouraged by the opportunity to be there. There was a lot of ideas presented and i need to still try to sort it all out. I was particularly interested in a presentation by The Publish for All Initiative. (You can see a good basic presentation at www.Publish4All.com). Briefly, the idea is to make available an abundance of printed materials to any place in the world that needs them by allowing them to be printed in country at an affordable cost. Evangelical Church Missions and our church have been involved in publishing materials for many years in different ways. My hope is that we can become involved in this new initiative. I think we could be the Bolivian representatives quite easily.

After the conference I had the opportunity to travel to Indianapolis and see my kids, Daniel and Naomi (who is looking properly plump for 5 months of pregnancy) and Dori. Since it was my birthday I was treated to a good dinner on Sunday and a second celebration at a burger shop. (My side dish was french fried sweet potatoes and marshmellow cream to dip them in.)

From Indiana I flew to Houston to visit daughter Heather for a few days. We had a good time together and I enjoyed exploring a bit more of Houston than I had done before.

From Texas it was up to Minneapolis to attend the annual meeting of the board of missions of the Evangelical Church. From there it was back home. Both going up and coming back to Bolivia took me through Panama City. It is an amazing airport with all the right comforts (Dunkin Doughnuts, Cinnabon, Subway, Chester Chicken and other good things!) I also had the chance to register to win a Masarati but at $20 a ticket I declined. Besides, it would never fit into my carry on luggage.

It is good to be home again. As I reflect on my trip I am reminded that we still have a major task to finish, getting the whole gospel to the whole world. I hope to be found faithful to my part in that task.