Saturday, October 13, 2007

Officially Commissioned

Grace Bible Church of Miles City, Montana, our sending church, officially commissioned us as their first homegrown missionaries on Sunday, October 7. The board of elders prayed over us and Jerry Coon, our pastor, gave us a biblical charge from Joshua 1 to be strong and courageous, as well as to the church body to "hold the ropes" for us and send us out in a manner worthy of the Lord (3 John). GBC has been a huge blessing to us in backing us not only financially, but also prayerfully and through encouragement, as well as in many practical ways. We are thankful to you, our Grace Bible family, a you send us out to Vanuatu!

Following the commissioning service, we held a dessert presentation for those interested in learning more about Vanuatu and our ministry. Quite a few people returned for that and expressed interest in teaming up with us to reach Ni-Vanuatu for Christ!
This week we also had the privilege of participating in a friend, April's wedding. Houghton did the ceremony and Gretchen was the maid of honor. April attended high school with Gretchen so has been a long-term friend and it was fun to see her match up with a Christian guy, Caleb. My mom and I got to put out all the tasty little chocolate mini-cakes for the reception so it was hard not to sample them in advance. We did restrain ourselves for your sake though, April. :)

This weekend we present at a small country church nearby in Ismay, MT in the morning and head back to the little Coalwood church in the evening. Next week Tuesday, Lord-willing, we take off for Minnesota again. There are several churches there we will be presenting at within a week's time. When we return, we'll drive back to western Montana. I get to see my alma mater Bible school, Montana Wilderness School of the Bible. We are speaking to students there and also visiting Pastor Joe's church in Fort Benton. Joe and his wife Bev were among the staff families at Wilderness when I attended from 97-98. I'm excited to catch up with all of them again.

While we are in Montana we are definitely redeeming the time! I'm working on my next newsletter to hopefully send out the end of this month. I'm also working on my presentation to the girls at Frontier when we return for the missions conference in November. We finally got out all our August/September newsletters to our home church here and caught up on some relationships here as well as on correspondence. I am attempting to work on setting up a schedule for our time in Boise in January, Lord-willing. We celebrated my parents' 32nd wedding anniversary the 11th! Finally, I've spent days researching how to keep up my counseling license and certification current (with continuing education requirements) while in a 3rd-world country. That's one of those things that seems impossible to make a good decision about in advance, but I'm trying to be faithful to have some ideas in place at least. It's been nice to be back again for a bit before we hit the road again!

As I wrap up, I'll share a verse that impacted me this morning: "Make me know Your ways, O Lord; teach me Your paths. Lead me in your truth and teach me, for you are the God of my salvation; for You I wait all the day." Psalm 25:4-5

2 comments:

David and Kathy Washburn said...

Congratulations on your commissioning by the Church. It won't be long before your work will have moved from here, to Vanuatu.

Anonymous said...

Your Psalm quotation struck me. When I was going through very difficult times 12-16 months ago, Psalm 25 is the one Psalm I chose to memorize. It was a huge encouragement and reminder to me (and believe it or not, is still stuck in my head!). You found great encouragement there, too.

You have lots of new stuff on here for me to catch up on! Fun!

Prayers for you and your team continue here in Boise. Very exciting as all your labor comes to fruition, which is just to get started on the real work. Looking forward to touching base in Jan/Feb when you're back, Lord willing.