Georgia and Team Vanuatu

Georgia was the location for this year's 2 week training with Biblical Ministries Worldwide (located in Atlanta) called Field Preparation Seminar. It was 2 weeks of non-stop learning. We had classes Monday through the next week Wednesday from 8-5 and because we were so blessed to have the entire Team Vanuatu (see all of us plus kids to the left here) all there together, we had team meetings every day at lunch and after supper. That left no free time so we were running, but it was time very well spent! BMW feeds and houses us very well and with very little expense on our part, which is nice! The above picture is all those who came through Field Prep this year. This was their largest class ever but what was really crazy is the number of people here for Candidate Orientation (which is what we went through last summer there). There were 27 adults in attendance and all were accepted by BMW's board so the Lord is growing this organization by a lot. This year's attendance is at least double that of last year's so our prayers are being answered for workers to go out into the harvest fields, praise the Lord!

Here are the classes we took at Field Prep, each of which were 1-2 hours:

A Passion for Missions, Avoiding Spiritual Burnout, BMW Update, Discipleship - Insights and Errors, Evangelism - the Heart of my Work, Family in Ministry, Life Long Learning, Church Planting Models, Church Planting Stepping Stones, Motivation for Church Planting, NEEDIA (a practical application of setting up vision and purpose and goals for an imaginary country), Theology of Hell - A Motivator for Missions, Training National Leaders, Your Exit Strategy, Brain Dominance Inventory, Elements of Cultural Resilience from Ruth, Guess who is Coming to Our House, Cultural Adaptability, Response to Culture, Strategies for Lifelong Language Learning, Language and Culture Evaluation, Building Spiritual Hedges (for men), Conflict Resolution, Maintaining and Growing Relationships with Supporters, Teamwork on the Field, An Introduction to Local Church Finances, Financial Matters on the Field, Emergency Management, Hospitality on the Field (for women), Conducting a Ministry Survey, Working from Home, Writing your Ministry Plan

Many of these classes were immediately applicable for our team meetings, which was an awesome blessing!

It was very beneficial to have all of our team present as we were able to work out our team structure and start hammering out purpose and vision statements, timelines, key performance areas, and job descriptions for the ministry in Vanuatu. We still have a long way to go in getting strategy and goals in written form, but the foundation was laid. As of now, the field of Vanuatu consists of two teams. One team is now just the Gibb family (with other potential team members they are recruiting from their church in Australia). They are planning to have their ministry be one of doing leadership training with existing native pastors in Vanuatu (or with those interested in becoming pastors) to plant churches that way. They would be primarily based out of the town of Luganville on the island of Santo. Here is the Gibb family (minus Matt, who will be attending boarding school in the US to finish out his high school career). Please pray for the Gibbs as they raise the last bit of their support that the Lord would give them wisdom and direction as they prepare to head over to Vanuatu this January, Lord willing. The other team is the bush team, consisting of Brad and Amber Jones, Houghton and Gretchen Richards, myself, and a new family who just joined BMW - the Kenners. Jim and Tania heard about the ministry in Vanuatu from the Richards and within the day were already praying about and pursuing the ministry themselves! Our team will seek to do evangelism, discipleship, and leadership training with an influential tribal people group in Vanuatu and empower the nationals to plant their own reproducing churches. I'll type up our vision and purpose, as well as some estimated timelines in a future post. Please pray for the Kenners as they spend the next year or so wrapping up work and ministry commitments and preparing for deputation. Also, pray for the rest of us who are in the middle of deputation that the Lord would lead us to those who He is preparing to team with us financially and prayerfully to reach Ni-Vanuatu people!

In our travels to and from Georgia, we were so blessed to be housed a huge chunk of the time at my aunt Betty and uncle Fred's home in Minneapolis. We stayed there almost a full week just before flying out to Georgia and for a few days immediately after Field Prep before heading back on our way to Montana. My grandma lives in Minneapolis as well so we enjoyed visiting and eating with her as well. She got together a group of women in her retirement complex that Gretchen and I were able to present our ministry to. They are already fervent prayer warriors for our team so it was awesome to meet them and share about the Ni-Vanuatu that they will be reaching through us!

We also stayed one night with our friends Ralph and Shari Solberg in North Dakota. They have been very encouraging in our ministry sharing (deputation) time. The Lord has given friends and family along the way already who have been so gracious and hospitable to provide us a home away from home and a chance to reconnect. Although we are tired and have been sick most of the traveling time, God's grace is sufficient and the prayers and encouragement of the saints (that's you) sustain us, thank you!

If you're wondering what is happening from here, this is the known (written with a smile and a prayer...) schedule for the next month below. We are working on newsletters this week to send out to all of you! Look for it in the mail hopefully in the next week or two.

August 5 Fallon, MT (about 45 minutes from home base in Miles City here)

August 12 Ronan, MT (around 9-10 hours away in western MT)

- Midweek sometime in Kalispell

August 19 Frenchtown, MT (an hour or 2 from Ronan)

August 26 Coalwood, MT (about an hour from Miles City)

Life in Montana

Well, friends, I thought I'd update you on what I've been up to the last few weeks and give you a really tentative schedule for what is coming down the pike. If you are interested in seeing the plethora of activities my home town of Miles City has to offer, here's a great website about it: www.city-data.com/city/Miles-City-Montana.html It is really a bit of a culture shock just coming from Boise to here. :)
One of the main things I've been enjoying doing here has been hanging out with my family a lot. I'm working on ministry stuff with Gretchen and Houghton every day so it's inevitable that I see them and my nephew and niece too. My nephew can't say Laura so he calls me "Wara" and he's super fun to play with. My niece, Gwenny (Gwenyth) is a lot bigger and a lot happier than when I saw her last in Vanuatu in March and any day now she'll be walking.
She stands and balances beautifully but hasn't figured out the stepping out part quite yet. This picture is of Jesiah and I after he'd been "fixing" my hair for me and we were wrestling around. They are both very fun and I'm thankful to get to be involved in their lives.

So what have I been doing? Well, it would seem that life here has been crazier than I even expected it to be. We've been running from the time we wake up until when we head to bed. We have about 7 books we are to have read by our training July 16-26 in Georgia so we started a "book club" and have been reading either during afternoon kids' nap time or after they go to bed around 9PM or both. We've finished 1 1/2 assignments so far so have a long way to go, but we're trying to get through them. If you are bookworms, I'd highly recommend 2 of them so far anyway. One is "Passing the Baton" by Tom Steffen about doing ministry in a way that raises up leaders rather than making dependants. It is specifically for church planting so making sure church leadership is native driven rather than missionary driven but wow - if we only did discipleship and ministry like this in the States! There would be a lot more dynamic leaders here passing the baton on to those they've shared Christ with and we'd have really amazingly well trained "laypeople" out there spreading the gospel with confidence. It is a must-read for any Christian, I think. The other that I've only just started but is very good so far too is an old school book by Roland Allen called "The spontaneous expansion of the church" and so far seems to be similar in topic to the first book. The others on our list are:

"Missionary Methods - St Paul's or ours?" by Roland Allen

"Planting churches cross-culturally" by David Hesselgrave

"Mission Deputation: A Biblical Ministry and a classroom of learning" by Harold Loucks"

"Cross Cultural Connections" by Duane Elmer (we are most of the way through this but it is a bit more elementary so hasn't been as helpful)

"Let the Nations be Glad" by John Piper (I have read this one too actually and it is a must-read for every Christian too - very convicting and a great discussion about what missions really is about theologically.)

Aside from reading, we've been helping a lot with some huge fundraisers put on by my mom for one and another by some people in my sending church here. There is a family outside of Miles City about 11 miles that is moving to Lewistown, MT who decided to sell all their old farm tools and equipment and donate them completely to the Vanuatu fund. The money raised by that covers a lot of our outgoing expenses for a shipping container to send over to Vanuatu when we are moving so that was an awesome provision! The other big one was the one organized by my mom that pulled in around 25-30 families from our church here. It was like the mother of all garage sales. We had it in my parents' yard and had 15 tables piled with all the donations to sell. That was quite an ordeal to clean, price, set out and sell everything and God brought a huge amount of people to buy stuff! The picture to the right is my sister, mom and Gwenny, Houghton, and my dad when we were working on setting everything out. Jesiah was helping me take the picture. :) The Lord raised enough money from that one to fully cover our plane tickets to Georgia for our training as well as the majority of the cost of the training and board to be there. Wow! The Lord has been so good to provide all along the way for each step and each expense. Praise Him!

Another activity is that I got to go visit my grandpa and grandma in the teeny tiny town of Newell, South Dakota. It was nice to see them, even if it was only for a day. My grandma's sister, Aunt Ann, who is the one I inherited my car from lives there too so I saw her as well. Another surprise is that my grandma's brother and his wife (Bob and Virginia) drove through that day and visited a bit too so I saw them again after many years.

We have also been working on having things together to present to churches as well as packets to send out to individuals and churches interested in being part of the ministry. I've been brushing up on my piano and we've practiced some songs together. We met with and updated my pastor here, Jerry Coon (www. gbc-milescity.org) and the elder in charge of missions, Shawn Kelly. Grace is supporting us now as we are in this time of sharing the ministry so when our savings run out in the next month or so, we'll be living on and traveling on that.

Here is the schedule for what is upcoming, Lord-willing:

July 5 (this Thursday) - leave for Minnesota

July 8 (Sunday) - present at a church in Deluth, MN

July 9 (Monday) - drive to Minneapolis to hang out with my mom's side of the family and share with them the ministry in Vanuatu

July 14 (Saturday) - fly out to Georgia for training called "Pre-Field" with our organization, Biblical Ministries Worldwide (http://www.biblicalministries.org/)

July 16-25 (Monday -Wednesday) - training in Georgia on team-building, finances, church planting, and being effective cross-culturally

July 26-28 (Thurs. - Sat.) - meeting with our team, hopefully welcoming in a new family to our team!

July 28 (Sat) - fly back to MN

July/Aug? - possibly present in another church in MN, then drive back to Montana

August - spend most of the month in Western Montana at churches there, possibly into September as well

September/October - Wyoming, Colorado, Nebraska churches

* salad/dessert dinner at home church here in Miles to fill in on our schedule, training, and more about the ministry in Vanuatu

*Sept 15-21 training in CO Springs on cross-cultural church planting with our whole team and another chance for further team-building

Fall - California?

Winter - Boise area

That's what we have so far and time is flying so it is crunch time to get meetings set up. If you think your church would be interested or if you have a group of friends or home group you'd like to have us present to, that would be awesome! Just let me know and we'll get it in our tentative schedule. Please pray for us as we travel this week that the Lord would ordain meetings with people he'd have be part of the ministry to Vanuatu and that we would be prepared for the training. Also, as always in traveling with young children, please pray that they would be able to endure all the driving and flying! I'll try to update while on the road from Minnesota and Georgia to let you know what we are learning and doing. Thanks so much for your prayers and support up to this point!