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Jim

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When the Lord Keeps Us Safe…

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…we usually don’t know anything about it.

So I’d like to write about how the Lord kept me safe on the way home from … a meeting on security.  Go figure.

I went to another part of the city today for a routine meeting on our mission’s security policies.  By the way, Jim and Steve did a great job leading the meeting, and it was great to see a bunch of our missionary friends.

So I was driving back on the highway, and a tire BLEW.  That’s basically the story.

Can you see the hole? :)

Not too exciting, I know, but it did really blow (can you see the hole?) at a high speed and so let’s just say I didn’t stay entirely in my lane.  But thankfully there were no other cars anywhere near me, and I pulled over without too much trouble and changed the tire.

Now very rarely am I driving alone on the highway like that, and there’s always a chance that you can be in more danger when you’re pulled over in a relatively isolated area.  But it was still daylight (barely) and there were no problems.

So we need to reflect once in a while – how many times does God keep us safe when we don’t even know about it?  How many times has He used YOUR prayers to keep us safe from dangers that are common (accidents, for example) to spiritual (demonic activity around us, for example)?

So thank you if you have every sent a prayer to the throne of God for our safety.  And thank God for His protection.  As I was reminded once again at our meeting today – we all face dangers.  But God has been incredibly gracious.

Tweets 5-17 January 2014

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Announcing: Ontario 2014

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Mexico to Ontario!

Great news!  We’re looking forward to visiting family and friends in Ontario later this year!

It will have been almost five years since our last visit.  That’s a long time when you consider that children grow up fast and haven’t seen their Aunts and Uncles, and churches we haven’t visited in that long change leadership, and – wow – the church in Jesús María didn’t even exist yet!

Although we’re still finalizing the dates, we plan to be in Ontario from around the end of April until early to mid-June.  For the first half we’ll be in southern Ontario, and the second half in northern Ontario (when I say north, I mean anywhere between Ottawa and James Bay). 🙂

We’re hoping to see many of you while we’re there, so we’ll try to keep you up to date once we have more of a schedule of events planned.

Our goals are…

  • To share about what God has been doing in Mexico City
  • To talk about strategy for the future as we continue to work together to reach Mexico
  • To share the Word of God in services and studies
  • To visit family
  • To provide special training where it will be helpful

If there is some way we could serve your church or small group, please let us know.  If you visit this page you can see some details of what we offer.  For example, would your church benefit from some short term mission training?  Would a lesson or two about the origins of the Bible help your college students?  Would you like to start a baking ministry to serve your community?

At the moment we’re trying to find a place to rent for our time in southern Ontario – basically from late April until around the 24th of May.  So far we’ve come up empty.  If you have any ideas, please contact us.

Again, we’ll try to provide more information in our next newsletter, so stay tuned!

The Visa Saga Continues (why – and how)

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For those who haven’t been following our visa saga in detail – congratulations.  Feel free to read on.  I’ll try to summarize.

The short story is, after 676 days of hard work and expense (aka blood, sweat, and tears) we finally all had our temporary resident visas for Mexico.  The 20th of September, 2013.

Most of these are not really visa requirements. Can you guess which ones are real?

But there was a little problem.

By the time we had the real visas in our hands, due to some quirks of the system, it was actually only 5 months before they started to expire.  We had wanted to get the visas for four years, but for reasons we won’t get into we didn’t.

To add to the fun, we’re hoping to go to Canada later this year (more on that later), and so we need to get at least one visa renewed before we go, and the rest as soon as we get back.

Because not much happens over the Christmas holidays, and because you can only renew so early, as soon as the holidays ended – the next day – I got to work with our lawyer.  That would be the 7th of January (the day after Three Kings Day).

At the moment I’m finalizing another six new documents to send with some documents that we already have, and our lawyer is going to try to submit them at the earliest possible date.

We’ve just heard of another wrinkle – it’s possible that, once again, we won’t be able to get the full amount of time (now 3 years).  If I can only get one year – well – we’ll be back in the same boat in 2015.  We don’t want to be in the same boat in 2015.  We’ve had enough of this boat.

So yes, we would appreciate your prayers once again.  We would love to get all the paperwork done and have a three year visa in plenty of time for our trip.  We would like to find a way to pay for all the new fees this year.  And we would like to focus on things other than paperwork.

Thanks!

But – why?

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The other day we were talking with a friend about a Bible study she is attending in her neighbourhood.

Now this area being what it is, there is no way to know if the teacher is a Christian or not.  But looking through her notes, one interesting thing I noticed is that this teacher is not afraid to answer the question Why?

Does your church answer this question?

We do a lot of things in the Christian community.  Some things are specifically commanded by the Lord (baptism, for example).  Some things are practical in our culture (we generally sit down to listen to the preaching of the Word on a Sunday morning, as opposed to standing the whole time).  Other things are traditions – some just traditions and nothing else, but some are still there for a good purpose (maybe we sing a closing worship song as an initial community response to a message from God’s Word.  Or maybe we read a Psalm on a Sunday morning.  Or pray before we start a Bible study).

Now traditions are meant to be challenged.  Sometimes they should be thrown out like mouldy bread, or at least changed up once in a while so they’re serving us and we’re not serving them.  And God forbid that we start to think a human tradition is a divine commandment.

But whether it’s something commanded, practical habit, or a tradition – shouldn’t we once in a while explain why?

Yes, I think it’s critical.  New believers need to understand that [this thing] is not something we have to do always everywhere.  Youth need to understand that [this thing] has a practical purpose.  We all need to be reminded that [this thing] has some meaning behind it.

Otherwise, good habits are lost, and bad ones are never challenged.

And let me tell you, no matter how young the local church is, traditions have a way of taking hold!

As I prepare some sermons and studies for the next few weeks, I’m reminded once again that we need to challenge these things and think about them.  Not everything should be thrown out, but everything could use some examination under the microscope of God’s Word.

Praying for (our) Missionary Kids

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I recently came across this old brochure from OMF International entitled “How to Pray for Missionaries’ Kids (MKs)“.  I know that many of you pray for Hannah and Nathanael, so this brochure might give you some ideas about how to pray.

Once you go to the page above, just click the link to see/download the pdf (the version on the original page will be a little small for reading).

Thanks for your prayers!

Note:  We shared this brochure with Evernote.  If you’d like to try Evernote for yourself, click here!

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