Sojourning in Minnesota

Random things from school

2012-02-08T18:44:00.000-05:00

We made barometers in chemistry using instructions from Bill Nye (the Science Guy!)'s website. The girls have been checking to see if bad weather is coming (barometric pressure falling) so they can get a snow day.

Apparently there is a leak in this fish tank (which is in my storage room but looks out at the hallway). So when my students told me I should put fish in it, I put a knitted hermit crab in instead.

Science Labs

2012-02-08T18:26:00.000-05:00

In my Introductory Physical Science (IPS) class, we are currently studying energy. I hope that the students are gaining an understanding of where all of the items we use in our daily life come from and growing in love for God's amazing creation. To bring the act of mining for fossil fuels home, we did a fun lab in which we extracted "fossil fuels" from cookies using a toothpick. The raisins, nuts, and chocolate chips represented their respective fossil fuels and the students were to mine as much as they could while trying to minimally damage the "land".

Some were very careful to not damage the cookie (these are the ones I hope participate in mining fossil fuels in the future). Others were not quite so meticulous:

But everyone had fun and since we didn't do the experiment in the lab and I made them wash their hands beforehand, I let them eat the end result of their mining.

Two of my classes also had the exciting opportunity to take part in a traveling science lab. The Science Express is from Saint Cloud State University and is basically the back part of a semi filled with nice lab stations and equipment. They travel from school to school giving students opportunities to do labs they might not be able to do with their school's equipment. The different labs also help to make science fun :)

My IPS class got to investigate how thick their hair was by diffracting the light from lasers with a strand of their hair. They were intent on the experiment and no one shone their laser in their lab partner's eye. The biology class used an enzyme to break three kinds of milk down in order to discover which one had lactose in it. (They worked hard too!)

"Winter" in Minnesota

2012-02-08T18:04:00.000-05:00

It has been an unusually mild winter here in Minnesota, especially compared to the crazy amounts of snow that we had last year. Now, we are definitely not complaining, but my students are itching for a snow day right around now...

As you can see, there's almost no snow on the ground anymore, but there have been some days of fog and then beautiful frost all over everything.

Human Planet Documentary Recommendation

2012-02-08T16:40:00.004-05:00

Recently Sara and I watched the BBC series called "Human Planet." We've thoroughly enjoyed the BBC nature documentaries like "Life of Mammals" and "Planet Earth" among many others. So we thought we'd give this one a go. Instead of looking at animals, it looks at people around the world who live in very different ways than we do.

We were not disappointed. They show such interesting people all over the world in various climates traveling, hunting, fishing, building, and teaching their children amazing skills. They showed people building tree houses, women breastfeeding orphaned animals, fascinating tribal events, and in general the close connection to the natural world that many people have. And it was really funny at times.

One of the things that struck me was how many of the people lived so differently in such bizarre ways and yet they seemed to have the same family structures and same life worries. Instead of children wanting new Nintendo systems, they were asking their parents for fresh honey or bat meat. But like parents everywhere, their main concerns were teaching their children and providing for them.

In every episode I was struck by what an easy life I have, and how much I have to be thankful for. Instead of worrying about dying from hydrogen sulfide gas while mining sulfur from an active volcano, I worry about how good my sermon will be. Instead of digging food out of the landfill for my children to eat, I am constantly worried about eating too much and being unhealthy. Watching something like this once in a while is a good wake up call for our lives.

It was also a wake up call for the continued need for missionaries in many of these places. Many of the people were very isolated from the rest of the world and probably have never heard of Jesus. Watching them live and smile in the video makes them more real and draws us to want to share the love of Christ with them.

Watching this made both of us excited to live in another country again in the future. We both just seem to be drawn towards people of other cultures. We love being with them. So pray for us to have patience and to continue to enjoy our time here in the United States.

So overall, it was awesome, and you should definitely watch it. For those of you who have time in your churches, it could be interesting to watch in church or a small group setting. There could be discussion about materialism, gratitude, social justice, creation stewardship, sinful human nature, and evangelism.

You can watch the trailer for it here - Human Planet.

Prodigal God Book Recommendation

2012-01-19T21:50:00.003-05:00

We recently went through the book "Prodigal God" by Tim Keller and did the companion DVD study as a church. I've already written about it in other posts, but I want to strongly recommend that you read the book. It is really short, well written, and easy to read. And it is powerful. I confess I was naive and arrogant enough to think I already knew everything there was to know about the well known parable - The Parable of the Prodigal Son. But there were quite a few insights in the book that blew me away. The book enriched my love for God, increased my understanding of God's grace and love, enhanced the way I think about Jesus saving me, made me reevaluate the reasons I obey God's commands, stirred more compassion in my life for non-Christians, and amplified my longing for God's ultimate feast to come. Tim Keller hasn't failed me yet with any of his books.

The only real criticism I have is about the DVD and study guide that are companions to the book. The book is straightforward and builds on itself as you go along, and you learn new things with each chapter. However, the DVD presents all the information in the first session and later sessions are basically all review of that first session. It's true that each later video and study guide session take one aspect of the book and delve deeper, but ultimately it's not super effective as a small group study. I think it would be better to just read the book and discuss it, or perhaps read the book and use the study guide for discussion. It also would work to skip the book altogether and just watch the first 40 minute video on the DVD which is basically a summary of the book.

New Years Resolution and Church Events

2012-01-19T21:38:00.007-05:00

Well things have been steadily moving along at church. We're still quite a small church, but we are having fun growing in the Lord together. I am pretty much adjusted to the weekly pace of being a pastor, (but it was hard to jump back in again after Christmas vacation). I've learned to enjoy the normal routine of gearing up for Sundays throughout the week with writing my sermon and planning the service, and then speaking forth God's Word to God's people every Sunday morning. It is an awesome privilege and responsibility to be used by God in this way to speak grace to his people every week. When I stop and think about it, like right now as I write this post, it is very humbling.

I have also been regularly amazed by the service and time that most of the members of the church put in. They are committed, loving, hospitable, and quite amazing people. They are an incredible encouragement and support to us. I am so thankful for them.

Some highlights lately -

1. New Equipment - Through a memorial gift, our church was able to install a projector and roll-down screen as well as the computer equipment to go with it. We have already used it for a documentary, video clips in the service, lyrics for praise songs, and for some notes that went with my sermon. Between the projector and our website we feel like we have moved into the modern age. Sara signed up to be one of the few projector technicians and has been really helpful already. The new equipment has been well received. But we plan to only use it when necessary and we will still be using the pew Bibles and hymnbooks whenever we can.

2. Reading the Bible in 2 Years
As a church we made a New Years Resolution to get back into God's Word. We have a Bible reading schedule that goes through the Bible over 2 years with daily Bible readings that alternate each day between the Old Testament and the New Testament. Each week I preach on one of the passages that everyone read during the week. It ensures good variety in my preaching and forces me to dig in and study some difficult passages. So far it's going really well. If you want to read along with us, you can find our reading schedule on our homepage - Emden CRC.

3. Sunday Evening Events -
Here are the events we have been doing and that are coming up for January and February.

1-8-12 - Creation Stewardship Documentary
We followed the Christian Reformed Church's mandate that churches should address the topics of creation care/stewardship and climate change and take concrete actions in our lives. We watched a documentary called "Human Footprint" by National Geographic. It is a powerful video which shows in fun visible ways how much the average American uses. (Huge ridiculous piles of stuff). The video challenges our materialism and waste, and gives us ideas for how we can better care for God's world.

1-15-12 - Evening Worship Service - Abortion
For this worship service, there was a teaching about abortion. The director of a local crisis pregnancy center shared a personal testimony about her experience.

1-22-12 - Celebration of Emden's history
This will be a chance to hear about the rich history of our church. A panel will tell us some of the facts, and tell us some stories - the good, the bad, and the funny, and what we can learn from the stories. It is important for us to know where we came from and value our history even as we look to the future.

1-29-12 - Concert of Prayer
This will be a time of worship through song and prayer intermixed. There will be times of silent prayer, a leader praying, and times of small group prayer. We will pray for topics like our church, church family prayer requests, our missionaries, our schools, our leaders, our country, etc.

2-5-12 - Evening worship service - Violence in the Old Testament
In this worship service there will be a teaching about our struggle with violence in the Old Testament and how to think about it.

2-12-12 - Movie Night - The Apostle
The message in the movie is not at all straightforward and should make for interesting discussion. Description - After his happy life spins out of control, a preacher from Texas goes into a violent rage. He changes his name, goes to Louisiana and starts preaching. He calls himself "the Apostle" to God. The film poses deep questions about brokenness, grace, and pride. Starring Robert Duvall.

2-19-12 - Bible Study - How to Interpret the Bible 101
Learn how to interpret the Bible according to Reformed Hermeneutics. Ever wonder what rules or guidelines there are to interpret the Bible correctly? Now is your chance to learn just the very basics that will help you in your own Bible reading, and to understand how pastors and scholars make interpretive decisions. Will be interesting and interactive with Bibles open and giving examples.

2-26-12 - Evening worship service - Technology - Blessing or Curse?
In this worship service, there will be a teaching about the role of technology in our culture, especially focusing on email, facebook, and the internet. We will think about the pros and cons of such technology and think about how to use them in a God-glorifying way, drawing upon biblical principles and themes.

Teaching Update

2012-01-19T20:32:00.007-05:00

Last week's exams brought an end to first semester, which has gone by amazingly quickly! It is hard to believe that I have actually taught my students for over half the school year; it went by so quickly. Grading the exams was not particularly fun, but I'm not sure I know anyone who truly enjoys grading :)

So then this week, we started on second semester. For the most part, my teaching schedule is the same. However, instead of Health, I now have the Wildlife (Environmental Science) class, with most of the same students. We are starting that class out by talking about stewardship and why God wants us to take care of and appreciate creation. We're also reading "A Sand County Almanac" by Aldo Leopold, the "father of wildlife management" who had a great vocabulary and thoughtfully reflected on the natural world that he loved so much.

Personally, I love his book because it resonates with how much I love being out in creation. He notices the very smallest detail as well as delighting in the very grand.

To my students, on the other hand, it is more likely just a book they have to read for school...with a whole bunch of words in it that they don't know :) So we'll be working on that new words thing throughout the semester.

And the other change is that instead of the physical science aspect of Introductory Physical Science (IPS), we are now doing a section on energy and then ecology. This semester is a book-less semester, which meant making all of my own lesson plans and finding readings and labs in other books and online. It has been a lot of work, but I think I am in a good spot with my work right now. I'm also looking forward to a lab next week where we're using copper wire, a compass, and a magnet to see how a hydroelectric dam creates an alternating current. Yeah science!

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

2012-01-03T21:40:00.014-05:00

We hope that you had a wonderful holiday season of celebrating God's awesome generosity in sending his Son to live like us, for us. We were thankful to be able to be with our families during that time and to go to church on Christmas and participate restfully, without Anthony being in charge of planing and implementing the service!

There was a lot of snuggling on the couch and watching children.

Hours of bored-game (oops!Freudian slip...) playing.

Anthony, being a good uncle, taught our niece Maya how to make obnoxious noises by blowing on her arm.

Of course, he also walked our other niece Evie and two dogs with me to get exercise and fresh air!

We made and ate lots of tasty food.

And overall, enjoyed bonding time with our beloved family members.

May this new year be a year of listening to God and following what he says, be it easy or difficult. We also hope to see some of you on our doorstep, preferably announced, though unannounced just may be acceptable too!

Church Feast

2011-12-18T19:30:00.014-05:00

To celebrate the end of our Prodigal God Bible study, we had a feast together as a church. It was a significantly smaller group than the whole church but it was still a very good fellowship event. Some church members put in a great deal of work in making food and decorating the tables. The purpose of this event was not only for fun and fellowship, but to anticipate the ultimate feast which is to come that the parable of the prodigal son hints at. We will get to experience this feast when Jesus comes again.

We started with punch and waited for everyone to arrive before the amazing feast was revealed.

Here people are finding their assigned seats. I started the feast with a devotional about celebrating God's love together and our love together. That the feast is not just about food, but about our fellowship and love for each other in anticipation of the ultimate feast to come.

We had real wine at this feast which gave it a very celebratory mood. I didn't realize this when we planned it, but there hasn't been wine in the church in a great many years. But the passage I preached on before the feast talked about the rich wines that would be in God's ultimate feast (Isaiah 25:6).

Here we got a chance to stretch and sing a children's song together. Not the highlight for me, but fun watching others :)

Here we are playing Bible pictionary which was super fun. Don't you love my masterpiece drawing? Guess what/who it is? I'll give you a hint, he was one of the Judges. One of the best pictionary answers thrown out, "Jesus washing the feet of his, whatever they are called."

We closed by dimming the lights and spending time in prayer and singing of hymns. It was a wonderful time. Afterward, everyone even stayed to help clean up. Some people were very hesitant to come and maybe were a little suspicious about whether we should be doing such an event at church. But they left feeling very differently. I definitely recommend events like this for building the fellowship of the church.

Invite Your Neighbor to Church Day

2011-12-17T22:31:00.009-05:00

In November we had a special Sunday morning service. We called it "Invite your neighbor to Church day." The intent was to have a special service specifically geared towards visitors. Everyone in the church was encouraged to invite friends, relatives, and neighbors to visit our church, people who did not regularly attend another church. (The pictures are from other Sundays).

We geared up for the event months in advance, really all year. We have been focusing on outreach and evangelism and hospitality for the whole time I have been here. The few weeks before the service we watched funny videos about inviting people to church, showing that it is not as scary as it might look.

The service itself was focused on explaining why we do the things we do, from God's greeting, to singing, to the focus on God's Word. We tried to make it understandable and non-threatening. It was an exciting service with our excellent praise team. We also had a very powerful video shown after my sermon. For my sermon I focused on something I hoped would be understandable, the basic Gospel that we are saved not by good works but by God's grace. And he saves us in order for us to do good works. (Ephesians 2:1-10).

God used the people of my church mightily. He gave them great courage. Most everyone invited people and as you might expect, people got a lot of the answer "no." I think Sara and I invited 6 or so people and got all "nos." But the service still worked out wonderfully. I counted at least 20 new faces, just of people I noticed. We pray that God spoke to people and transformed lives through that service.

The most wonderful thing is that 5-7 of these people have continued to come just about every week since that day. They've been getting to know people from the church and I think they feel very welcome. It also has lifted the spirits of everyone in the church. They have gotten a taste of reaching out and it feels good. I think it has made everyone more comfortable in inviting people to church.

Of course the more important thing is for us to "be the church" out in the community, and not just expect everyone to come to the church building. But I don't think there is any reason not to do both, and I think the people of the church are doing both. It is an incredibly exciting time over here. God is moving among the people of Emden and using them for his work.

Being On-Call

2011-12-17T22:23:00.004-05:00

This year, being a pastor, is really the first time I've been on-call. It's been an adjustment. I have to be ready at all times to drop everything to talk to a distressed person on the phone, or answer the door to talk to somebody. I have to be ready to leave immediately to go to the hospital if I get a call about an emergency or death.

These things don't happen super often, and I assume that being on-call is much more intense for doctors and emergency response people. But I still have to be ready just in case. It can be frustrating if I am in the middle of eating, or in the middle of writing my sermon. And it seems without fail that someone calls me every time I'm about to step into the shower :)

I have learned, though, that these interruptions are my most important ministry. They are valuable wonderful times. They are part of what being a pastor is all about. It can be frustrating in the moment of interruption, but it is always fulfilling when God uses me to care for someone.

But as I was thinking about being on-call, something dawned on me. My life as a pastor is really no different from the life of any other Christian. All of us are always on-call as Christians. God can call on us to do something whenever he wants to. And we need to be ready. Recently I preached about this very thing. We looked at Joseph in the Christmas story. In Matthew 1 God calls on him in a dream and Joseph obeyed God's command to take home Mary as his wife.

When God tells Joseph to do something, Joseph doesn't hesitate. It doesn't even seem like Joseph was that surprised to hear from God. He just listens to what God calls him to do, and he does it.

We all need to be ready when God calls on us, whether he tells us to go talk to the neighbor next door, or whether that neighbor shows up at our door. We need to be ready to listen to the Holy Spirit's promptings and jump to obey when God calls.

CRWRC Rations

2011-12-03T19:16:00.000-05:00

As part of World Hunger Sunday, CRWRC sent our church a ziploc bag containing a ration for one person for a day. These rations are given out as relief to people who are starving. The bag of dried food was hard to just look at and understand how much it was. And personally, I thought it was wrong to waste food that was enough to feed a person for a day. So this is what it turned out as:

450g of whole grain flour
50g dry beans
50g oil
5g iodized salt

I ate one piece of bread, which was about the size and thickness of pita bread, and about 1/3 of the beans for lunch and that was plenty filling for me. So I can attest that this would be enough food to sustain a person for a day.

Christmas is coming!

2011-12-03T15:46:00.000-05:00

Yesterday we had a nice Thanksgiving celebration with two different neighbors. We were glad to be able to spend that time with other people like us who didn't have family nearby to celebrate with.

So in anticipation of Christmas coming in a month, we also have our Christmas decorations up. We actually did this before Thanksgiving and made an exception to play Christmas music while we decorated.

Really, there's no reason to hold back on starting Christmas season early since we can think of and celebrate Jesus' birth at any time of the year!

Church is a Fun Place to be

2011-10-13T18:39:00.000-04:00

Things have been going really well at the church. (Unfortunately I don't really have any pictures of church events). I am immensely enjoying my time here. I have been feeling better emotionally than I did a few months ago. I enjoy seeing the church grow spiritually and instead of putting the burden of the church's future on myself, I have given it over to God. Additionally, I can see wonderful things happening in the church and in individual's lives and am convinced that God has an incredible plan for Emden Christian Reformed Church here in Renville. I look forward to see how God will use these people to spread his love and good news in this city over the next 10 years!

We have been having an evening Bible study going through the study, "Prodigal God" by Tim Keller. It is a dvd/book study based on the parable of Jesus that we know as "the parable of the prodigal son." It has been awesome. We are learning that both the younger son and elder son were lost. One by his unrighteousness, and one by righteousness. They both left the Father. But the younger son came back and the elder son did not, by the end of the story at least. We are being struck by the wonderful message that our faith is about relationship with God, about joining in with the joy of the Father at the ultimate feast. It's not about trying to be good enough to get the things of the Father like the elder brother tried to do. It's not about trying to be good enough to make up for our past sins like the younger brother wanted to do. It's about accepting Jesus as our true older brother who came out to seek and save us, the lost, so that he could bring us back home to join in the joy of the Father. It's a wonderful study and God is using it to grow us in our love for him and our love for each other and our love for people in the community.

Recently we had a celebration of the Lord's Supper together with a love-feast potluck to culminate the celebration. We've also had a fun volunteer appreciation Sunday thinking about the amazing amount of things people are doing in the church and the community. When I put together the list of all the things people do, I was in shock. I get so fed up with people saying that Christians are a bunch of hypocrites who don't put into practice what they preach. Let me talk to them for 5 minutes about the things people in my church are doing. They would be amazed at all the praying, the serving, the cooking, the cleaning, the visiting the sick, the caring for the poor, the financial giving, the community service, and on and on and on that people are doing. This is a great bunch of folks. For that sermon I preached from Romans 16, where Paul greets and recognizes church workers in Rome, and I made Sara do the Scripture reading that day to read all the tricky Greek names. :)

We also had an Abuse Awareness Sunday recently which was a hard topic but received well I think. Then we had a service focused on the importance of forgiveness and I enjoyed being able to show a video about the incredible forgiveness of northern Ugandans who are forgiving the LRA which has committed atrocities against them. Here is a documentary which I showed pieces from - Uganda, Ready to Forgive. After the service, the Congregation approved a change in the number of our elders and deacons. Instead of 4 of each we will have 3 of each and will have volunteer shepherding elders who will help out with visiting those in the nursing homes.

Sunday school started recently, and I have been teaching the Heidelberg Catechism to the high schoolers. I have 5 in my class and we meet Sunday mornings. So far I think it is going great. They enjoyed this song I played for them by Curtis Allen. Listen to it here - Heidelberg Catechism Rap. My strategy in the Catechism class is to help them think about how they would describe what we believe to non-Christians as we go through what the Catechism says. It helps them to really think about what they believe personally and how they would explain it simply to others.

Last Sunday was really exciting. I didn't have to preach as we had a guest preacher come, Rev. John Schuurman, who was at Emden in the summer of 1983 as an intern. It was great - I was able to get caught up on many projects and visits during the week with no sermon to write. It was a great service and the church really loved having John back to visit. After the service we had a potluck with him and with seasonal workers from town, who are known as "pilers" since they pile beets here for a few weeks for the beet plant. They came just for the potluck.

It was an event we kind of threw together at short notice with some help from wonderful contact people in town. We did it mainly as a way to build relationships and have fellowship with these workers. These workers are mostly white men and women in their 20's who go from place to place around our country working short jobs like this. They are from places all over the US. They tend to dress very differently with lots of piercings and tatoos and they live really simply. Some of them just camp out farmer's fields, with permission, and just enjoy the simple life while they save up their money. It was great to have them come. We had about 22 of them show up, and they seemed to have a good time, and the people in our church had a great time too. It was good to get to know somebody new and hopefully the time helped these young people to see Christians in a new way. I even got to play drums with some of them after church. I was glad to see the church participate so well in this and hope that they will continue to find ways to creatively engage with the Renville community.

Coming up soon we have missions emphasis Sunday with Sara and I as the missions speakers. That will be fun and we might even wear our Ugandan clothing if its not freezing. We also have World Hunger Sunday coming up. And we have an "Invite your neighbor to church day" in November that we are really gearing up for. Please pray about that day and for the people who may come! It will be a special more understandable service that is hopefully not intimidating.

As I said this is an exciting time in the church. I very much enjoy being a pastor right now. I still look forward to going to the mission field and do what I really feel called to do in another country. But right now this is where God wants me and it's very fulfilling.

And last, we just found out that my older sister who is pregnant is having a boy, so soon we will have a nephew!

Teaching and learning

2011-10-13T18:28:00.000-04:00

Look, my door is now labeled with my name! Teaching is going better every day. It helps to know all of my students' names and to have a better idea of how the different classes interact with each other and with me. Of course, I still have plenty of work to do every day, but it is more fun now that I feel as though I kind of know what I am doing.

We have updated all kinds of technology in my classroom, which is exciting and I think the students appreciate it too. And hopefully they have had fun with such things as practicing exercises for sedentary jobs in Health, skeleton Simon Says and paper people muscle matching competitions in Physiology. Not to mention that we talked about sex in Health class and I answered any questions the students wanted to anonymously ask. Thanks to experiences in Uganda, they were unable to embarrass me, though they tried!

Last Thursday and Friday, I got to go to a teacher conference at Dordt College. Apparently I was nerdily excited, but I thought that the sessions I went to were really interesting and applicable for a science teacher.

At Dordt, they have a quite large restored prairie, which I got to visit in one session - it was about helping students to appreciate and understand the place where they live so that they want to care for it.

The prairie was beautiful and I could have stayed out there all day. It brought back good memories of plant taxonomy from college, which was probably my favorite class.

I also got to learn how to extract DNA from a strawberry! This would be an awesome experiment to do in class, but I'm not sure when exactly I would fit it in since we already learned about DNA. Maybe I'll just stick it in on a random day. Anyway, you mash up a strawberry, add some dish soap and salt to break down the cell membranes, then filter the liquid through a paper towel like so:

Next, you mix the filtrate (liquid) with some ethanol and these little not-alcohol-soluble strands of DNA start making their way from the pink juice up into the clear ethanol. How cool is that? You can even see them in this picture:

Minnesota State Fair

2011-09-13T19:30:00.017-04:00

Over Labor Day weekend, we decided to take a break from work so we could visit the Minnesota State Fair in St. Paul. We're not sure that we have ever seen so many people in one place at one time. It was a bit disconcerting after coming from a small town.

We saw giant vegetables

Unusual chickens

Prize-winning corn

Lots of corn

A Lumberjack show (note the large sharp axe flying through the air near the people)

Deep-fried twinkies being sold across from the "Health Fair" part of the Fair

And - best of all - a Dairy Princess being sculpted out of butter...in a rotating glass-wall refrigerated "room"

We had fun.

Self-serve Produce

2011-09-13T15:55:00.001-04:00

I know there are plenty of farms out there who have small stands out by the road with a few zucchini for sale that you buy on your honor. But here in town, we have a produce stand that has all kinds of stuff in it - and it's self-serve. There's a box to put money in, stacks of vegetables and a cooler with things like cucumbers in it. You just pay the amount that the signs by the road say.

It's pretty cool that something like this could work without people being dishonest.

Church happenings

2011-08-19T19:33:00.001-04:00

Things have been going well at the church. I’ll be teaching and leading a discussion about homosexuality this Sunday night. Please pray about that.
In this post there are pictures of the church taken by Heather Link from our church.

On September 11th we will starting to study together the dvd/book study called “Prodigal God” by Tim Keller. This will take place on Sunday evenings and I’m really excited for it.

Our Conversation partners (helping people practice their English) has not been going so well. I just canceled it until further notice because we have been having such low turnout. We haven’t been able to find the people that need help yet. So we are going to rethink what time to have it each week and rethink how to get the word out. Please pray about this too.

I had the privilege of planning and leading my 2nd funeral for an older lady in the church, a strong woman of God.

We just had Vacation Bible School which I didn’t really do much to help with. But it was really great because multiple churches from Renville worked together on it and there was over 80 kids there. It was a great showing of ecumenicity.

There is a Classis meeting coming up (gathering of CRC churches to discuss church issues) and this time I get to be an official pastoral delegate rather than going to it for my Classis Exam! So that’s a relief.

We have communion coming up in September and I’m excited because we are having a potluck after the service as a sort of extension of the Lord’s Supper together. It should be a special time of fellowship.

Last, our church has a new website which is still a work in progress, but you can take a look for fun. Emden Christian Reformed Church

Preparation and Vacation

2011-08-19T19:32:00.000-04:00

Sara has remained extremely busy preparing for teaching. School starts in a week and a half. She has definitely got a good chunk of lesson plans ready; most of the first semester. But it should remain a busy year for us. I’m having to step up a bit more on the chores and meals :) I used to be the busier one, but now it’s the other way around. Sara still takes some breaks from work to make cookies, work on a puzzle, take a walk, or watch a show. She also is still making time to gather many vegetables from her garden and go jogging.

This summer has been fairly laid back for me compared to how it was when I started. I have been getting good relaxing time playing computer games with friends and family. But things are now gearing up again for the fall and my schedule will be quite full.

We did get a chance to go on vacation. We drove the long drive all the way to Michigan and saw both of our entire families and a few relatives. Sorry to anybody we did not see! It was a whirlwind trip even just seeing our families. We hope to visit more of you another time.

One of my best memories of the trip is going for a walk with my entire family in St. Johns for the first time ever walking all together. Actually it was the first time just being all together (11 people and 2 dogs plus the little person in my sister not yet born). We took up the entire road walking and then played together on playground equipment. It was somewhat embarrassing but a great time. It was really nice to be able to see our nieces. They are just ridiculously cute and I’m so attached to them already. It’s hard to not live in the same city. But at least we are seeing them more often now than we will be when we are in another country.

In Midland Sara got to do some berry picking with her mom, while I went fly fishing with her dad. But unfortunately it was kind of a disaster when I fell while walking in the river and broke his fishing pole. But he was very forgiving and we had a great time with them.

We also got to see my sister Katherine’s house she just moved into in Grand Rapids and had a nice time with her making lunch for us. We saw my grandparents and my Aunt and Uncle, and then also had a nice homemade dinner with Sara’s sister Stacy and her boyfriend Ben.

Corn Capital Days

2011-08-19T19:31:00.000-04:00

One of the many amusing "Days" in the area, along with Sugar Beet Days in Renville, is Corn Capital Days in Olivia, a town about 15 minutes away. If you remember, this is the town with the giant corn statue (see this post)

My dear friend Leah came out to Renville to visit, and how could I let her leave without experiencing small town life like this?
Just one of the many corny aspects of the celebration:

It was fun to find out what exactly a "corn and bean feed" was. Basically, it involved large quantities of people coming out for free (donations accepted) corn and baked beans.

We just went for the corn, which was excellent.

Wondering about Jesus' Forgiveness

2011-08-19T19:30:00.000-04:00

So lately I’ve been thinking about what Jesus says in Luke 23:34 as he is dying on the cross. “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.” It seemed straightforward until I thought a bit more about it and got myself confused. I didn’t get a lot of help from the commentaries either.

When he prayed this, did God the Father grant his request or not? Are these people totally forgiven for their sins against Jesus even though they did not repent? Did Jesus expect the Father to forgive them by somehow bringing them to repentance and faith in Jesus in the future?

If they are truly forgiven for all of their sins and were given salvation, then why didn’t Jesus ask for that same forgiveness for others, people like Judas, or other less sinful people? Or is Jesus referring to some kind of national forgiveness, rather than personal salvific forgiveness? Was Jesus asking God to forgive the Jews or the Romans or both and not punish them directly in the present time for what they were doing? And did their ignorance somehow make them more worthy of forgiveness? It seems like that is what he is saying (for they know not what they do).

I really don’t know what to think about these questions. It is not particularly bothering me, I just find it interesting and fun to think about. Anybody have any thoughts to share about it?

Brouwer Berries

2011-07-20T23:49:00.004-04:00

Last week was the end of strawberry season here in Minnesota, so I am done working at Brouwer Berries. I really enjoyed working there (and eating lots of strawberries), but it is good to have the extra time for preparing lesson plans.

Sarah and I had fun chatting while we worked at the farm or at farmer's markets.

Church happenings and Sara's Lesson Planning

2011-07-20T11:59:00.011-04:00

We've both had pretty full schedules lately. Sara has been working like crazy to prepare her classes for the coming school year. Every day she works just about until bed time, but it is difficult for her since she has to do so much of it on the computer, and she hates being on the computer. But the more time that passes, the more she gets done, and she is starting to feel more prepared. She does take breaks to work in her gardens, go jogging, or watch something with me. Here is a picture of her enjoying being able to dry our laundry outside.

One of the pastoral concerns for my church in the past few months has been the weather. With so many farmers in my church, and the whole community being connected to farming in some way, the weather can make a big difference on the mood of everyone. And this year has been some of the worst weather in 30 years for the farmers. First, it rained too much while the farmers were trying to plant, and many had to plant very late. The crops are now growing very fast, but almost too fast so that the cornstalks are weak. And there are still struggles between it being too hot or having too much rain. Please keep praying for the farmers here.

To make matters worse we have had a couple really bad storms with extremely strong winds, which have ruined many crops and even homes and buildings as well. Here are some pictures of a destroyed grain elevator in a nearby town. I keep hearing wonderful stories of people rallying together in communities to do clean up after the storms. The storms also knocked out our power a couple times. It was actually very difficult to go without power, unlike being in Uganda where we were used to it going out every day. It's amazing how quickly you get used to living in different conditions.

At church, things have been going well. The church is overjoyed that we are staying here a little longer. It feels very good to be be affirmed in my ministry and loved by the people in the church.

This summer we've had a small crowd since many people are away on vacation or at lake homes all summer, but we've been managing. One fun thing we are doing is having interesting evening events each Sunday. So far we have had a teaching time about having children take part in the Lord's Supper, a recent discussion in the Christian Reformed Church. And we watched the movie "The Mission" together and discussed it. Among other topics coming up, Sara will be talking about why we as Christians should care about the environment. I will also be teaching about homosexuality and women in church leadership. I figure it's good to face the tough issues head on, and discuss how to think about them, even if we don't arrive at detailed opinions about them.

Another exciting thing that has begun in our church is Conversation Partners - an opportunity for Hispanic people in Renville to come to our church and practice English by talking to one of our volunteers. We've only met once so far, and only had two people there, but we expect many more people to come to our next one. Much of what we do is to look at pictures together, and use the the picture as a common frame of reference to teach English words. Please pray for us about this. We hope that it is not just a service, but something that will help to bring more fellowship and healing between the people of different ethnicity in Renville.

Sunday mornings at church are going well. I love Sundays actually even though it is obviously a bit nerve-wracking to preach and lead worship. Mondays are the most stressful when I feel the clock start ticking and know I have to figure out a sermon for the next week. Visiting people has been going well, and it is becoming one of the parts of my job I like the most.
Here is a picture of the beautiful countryside that we get to enjoy this summer.

Visit from Sara's Parents

2011-07-20T11:38:00.018-04:00

Sara's parents visited us the weekend after the 4th of July and we had a great time with them. Other than trying to keep up with our workloads while we have visitors, it is always a pleasure to have people come visit us way out here. It makes us feel special and we love sharing our Minnesotan lives with our distant family and friends.

Sara's parents were able to enjoy seeing Sara's new classroom that she will be teaching all of her classes in this coming school year. It is a pretty awesome room if I do say so myself (except the closet full of old chemicals is a little overwhelming). Take a look.

We also went to Redwood Falls with them and went to the park to hike. It was really hot, but it was a good time. We saw a lot of fallen trees and destruction after a huge storm that hit our area.

Sara's parents also got to see both of Sara's gardens which have been producing excellently. We've been eating a lot of fresh vegetables including green onions, cilantro, potatoes, kale, lettuce, beets, beet greens, snap peas, shelling peas, zucchini, spinach, and carrots so far at the very least. Sara's mom helped out a bit while she was here too :)

Introverts in the Church

2011-07-20T11:21:00.004-04:00

I just finished reading this book with a group of pastors. It was faily well written, and certainly an interesting book to read. Considering Sara is more introverted than anyone else I know of, and that I have multiple other very introverted people in my family, I think this was an important book for me to read. This book helps people to realize that generally our culture and churches strongly prefer extroverted people over introverted people. But the book makes strong arguments that these are just different and equal personalities, with unique strengths and weaknesses.

I thought what he said about being hospitable to introverts in churches was particularly helpful. Too often we gauge how spiritually mature someone is based on how much they socialize after church or how much they are involved in church activities with a lot of people. Too often we think that you can only evangelize if you are extroverted. Too often we assume that Jesus is extroverted, and that to be a good pastor you must be extroverted. This book helps to break down these false stereotypes and gives us tips on how to understand introverts and be more hospitable to them in church. Overall, I think the book has helped me to judge people less quickly and less harshly. I'm now trying to be more sensitive to the introverts in my own church, who may be very committed and spiritually mature, and serving behind the scenes, but who don't talk that much. I recommend reading this book.

July Prayer Letter

2011-06-28T21:09:00.001-04:00

Our new prayer letter for July is posted in our Prayer Letter page. You can download it from that page. Thank you for your prayers!

Rodeo

2011-06-27T15:04:00.008-04:00

We had the fun experience of going to a rodeo in Granite Falls, MN this past weekend. Neither of us had been to a rodeo before and there were a lot of entertaining events.

This is the rodeo version of a Zamboni:

One of the best parts, though, was before the rodeo even began: Mutton Busting - little kids riding sheep! Some of the little ones fell off right away, but some of them, like this one, hung on for dear life for quite some time:

This is the best picture we got of someone riding a bucking bronco. We saw this on saddled and unsaddled horses.

There was roping calves alone and with partners. We also saw guys jumping off their horse to wrestle a small steer to the ground.

And finally, we saw barrel racing and bull riding. All in all, it felt like an appropriate experience for living in rural Minnesota.

More excitement in the garden

2011-06-11T21:37:00.006-04:00

After a few days near 100 degrees, the plants in my gardens are coming along quite nicely. However, all that excessive rain we had not too long ago has turned into hot dry winds and not enough rain... Go figure.

Garden 1:

Garden 2 - check out the cool trellises that I set up:

And I love my kale!

Sugar Beet Days

2011-06-11T21:28:00.006-04:00

Seriously, can you think of something that better exemplifies a small town than some sort of random festival or celebration during the summer? I'm not sure I can. Honestly, I'm most looking forward to Corn Chaff days, in a nearby town, because I just can't wait to find out what exactly that entails!

But this weekend in Renville is Sugar Beet Days. We went to the parade today, which wasn't super long and probably involved a quarter of the town, but definitely included more candy passed out than any other parade I've ever experienced! This is but one example of the kind of candy we saw:

We also enjoyed the sugar beet plant's float and the fly swatters they passed out:

Our church even had a part in the parade - we're hosting the community church service tomorrow:

The Case for Covenantal Infant Baptism

2011-06-02T16:30:00.006-04:00

I just finished reading this book, The Case for Covenantal Infant Baptism, to brush up on my understanding of baptism since I might be doing my first baptism soon.

I highly recommend this book for anyone interested in studying baptism in general and baptism of infants in particular. The book is unapologetically written in favor of baptizing infants but is written with grace and respect for the wisdom of other positions. It is actually a compilation of essays by many different authors from all over the US, some pastors, and some professors. Some of the authors are more gracious to differing views than others.

Even though the authors are clearly trying to convince the reader to accept infant baptism, I think that this book would be helpful and interesting to read for people on any side of the debate. I've studied these issues a fair amount already, but as I read the book I learned a lot about baptism itself, and good arguments in favor of infant baptism, and good arguments against infant baptism.

I found it well-written and insightful. If you are trying to figure this issue out, this book would be a very helpful read. If you want to learn more about what baptism is all about in general, this book would be a very helpful read. And even if you are convinced we should not baptize infants, this book will really help you to become more understanding as to why some churches do baptize infants.

Sara the Kid Magnet

2011-06-02T12:40:00.008-04:00

I really love Sara. And one thing I love about her is how good she is with kids. They just seem to flock to her. Not only our neighbor kids who try to come hang out every day, but all the kids she substitute teaches for at school. For whatever reason she is a really popular substitute teacher.

It is now impossible to go for a walk around town together without kids running up to us from their houses and in the parks wanting to talk to Sara. They shout "Hello Mrs. Sytsma!" and come running wanting to hear about what we are doing and wanting to tell us about what they are doing. In a city in which there seems to be little interaction between the Hispanic community and non-Hispanic community, it always warms my heart to see Hispanic children from the Public School running up to talk to us whenever they see us. And they are just really cute.

Sytsma visitors

2011-06-02T10:09:00.010-04:00

We enjoyed spending Memorial Day weekend with Anthony's family. Despite some rain that is continuing to pester the farmers, it was very pleasant. It was a fun experience for Anthony's family to see him preach and lead the church service and to meet all of the wonderful people from our church who we have told them about. We got to celebrate Anthony's mom's birthday when they were here. Well, at least some of us celebrated, as you can see in this picture... But seriously, this was pre-celebration, before we actually lit the candles and sang.

We also got to spend lots of time walking outside together. Minnesota certainly has unusual weather, though. One day, we went walking at a county park in long sleeves and the next day it was almost 90 degrees!

We also made our first trip to Redwood Falls (a city south of Renville). We had never visited there before and it turns out that it could actually be called a city based on its population in comparison to that of Renville's. There is a lovely park there that includes lots of hiking trails, picnic and play areas, and animals in a small and rather sad zoo.

This is why they call it Redwood Falls.

It was quite a hot day, so we got pretty sweaty walking around and appreciated this nice place to stop by the river and rest in the shade for a while.

Come Visit: Stay in our Closet

2011-06-02T09:37:00.002-04:00

If you don't have enough exciting things to do with your time, come visit us in Renville and stay in our closet, like Anthony's sister did when she came with her parents and their dog.

Okay, you don't really have to stay in our closet; if you're only one person, you can sleep on the couch. Or two can stay on an air mattress on the floor. But if one of the two snores loudly and you can't sleep on the couch with that, there's always the closet...

Drumming

2011-05-30T23:21:00.006-04:00

My sister Katherine recorded me playing the drums at church. The little digital camera unfortunately adds little blips of sound, so the sound quality isn't awesome. But I thought, why not share it with you just for fun?

Spring has Come

2011-05-24T11:55:00.001-04:00

Remember when all of our pictures looked like this?

The good news is that spring is finally here and the same location in town as seen above now looks like this:

Spring has brought green and flowering plants everywhere.

And also awesome thunderstorms and the beautiful clouds that sometimes come with them.

Tourists in Renville

2011-05-24T11:49:00.001-04:00

I love this picture. I am considering making it the background on my computer desktop.

In case you are hesitant about visiting us since we live in the middle of nowhere and you think there is nothing to do in Renville, this post is a brief photo tour of what it is like to be a tourist here. As you can see above, you can visit Emden CRC and see Anthony's name on the church sign. He will also give you a personal tour of the church.

Then, for those of you who have listened to Garrison Keilor's Lake Wobegon stories, you can visit a real Chatterbox Cafe in the nearby town of Olivia.

The Chatterbox Cafe has very wonderful caramel and cinnamon rolls. I have heard that their homemade pies are great too.

You can play with the millions of dandelions that have gone to seed. Or gather huge bouquets of them, depending on when you come.

And there is even a lovely county park less than 10 miles down the road in which to go hiking.

Crossroad Bible Institute

2011-05-24T11:40:00.001-04:00

This past weekend, we had my sister come visit us! It was great to have another family member come and see what our lives are like here in Renville. Stacy works for Crossroad Bible Institute (CBI) as well and was able to do some presentations about her work while she was here. CBI is a Christian prison ministry that provides prisoners with correspondence Bible studies and also helps them prepare for re-entry into society. You can learn more about them here.

Emden had a combined evening church service at Bunde CRC in Bunde, MN, an even smaller village than Renville. Here Stacy and Pastor Anthony are preparing to speak with help from Pastor Bob.

I tried to take a picture when Anthony was introducing Stacy after his sermon, but it turned out blurry, so I needed to do one of each of them.

In addition to speaking at church, Stacy also met with a bunch of CBI instructors. These are people who receive the prisoners' Bible studies in the mail, correct them, and send them back personal letters. It was fun to hear their stories about how much of a blessing this ministry has been to them - as much as it is for the prisoners who are doing the Bible studies.

These are some of the ladies from Emden who are CBI instructors:

Wrapping up "When Helping Hurts"

2011-05-24T11:39:00.003-04:00

We have spent the past few months studying the book "When Helping Hurts" with a group of people from the church. It has been an interesting and informative time for us all. We finished off the study by watching the movie "Second Chance" together.

The movie is thought-provoking and a good reminder of the concepts taught in "When Helping Hurts" like the universality of poverty (not all poverty is material), the importance of involving people in all aspects of efforts to help them, and how we should recognize the gifts and assets of the poor rather than only looking at their needs.

Gardening

2011-05-24T08:10:00.001-04:00

Along with working at Brouwer Berries, I also have the blessing of two gardens, that some kind people from Emden are letting me use (no gardens at this apartment). I am very excited to watch my plants grow and to eat the fresh produce from them!

This is garden number 1:

And garden number 2:

Okay, perhaps this isn't all that exciting just yet, but look! some peas are sprouting:

I also have 50 tomato seedlings growing in our bedroom:

And I get to watch asparagus growing in a nearby garden:

Asparagus is so amazing. It takes three years after planting before you can harvest it and then it just pops up out of the ground like this. Later in the summer, it grows into large, pretty, feathery bushes. Imagine that.

Grandpa's Puzzle

2011-05-23T23:48:00.002-04:00

When I visited my grandma in Rapid City in February, she sent me home with one of my grandpa's many puzzles. Anthony and I had a fun weekend a couple weeks ago putting it together on our kitchen table. It was a rather addicting activity (which is why we did the whole thing in one weekend!)

Radical

2011-05-14T18:50:00.000-04:00

In keeping with my theme of reviewing books that I have recently been reading, here is one of the latest: "Radical: Taking Back Your Faith From the American Dream" by David Platt, which I would definitely recommend (especially since it is relatively short and easy to read).

The book is not about how evil the American dream is, but points out the parts of the American dream that can't go along with following Jesus. It is very easy to be a part of the church in the US when we live like everyone else. But in this book, the author talks about how Jesus calls us to follow him and suffer, to leave behind money and security, to be ready to give up everything for him and be painfully generous. And the reason we do this is because what we gain from following Jesus is far worth more than anything we can collect and is worth more even than our lives.

Honestly, I liked the book partly because living simply is one of my passions. But that wasn't the main focus in the book and there were other parts that challenged me to take a life of obedience to Jesus much more seriously. This is not a simple book to read and then go on with life. Of course, Jesus said that following him wouldn't be easy either - though he also promised to be with us, which is much better than a life of comfort.

Let me end with this not-so-well-known quote by Jim Elliot. You'll be able to tell why it isn't so popular when you read it. I put it in here because it kind of blew me away when I read it, but it made me think and I hope it does the same for you too.

"Consider the call from the Throne above, 'Go ye,' and from round about, 'Come over and help us,' and even the call from the damned souls below, 'Send Lazarus to my brothers, that they come not to this place.' Impelled, then, by these voices, I dare not stay home while Quichuas perish. So what if the well-fed church in the homeland needs stirring? They have the Scriptures, Moses, the Prophets, and a whole lot more. Their condemnation is written on their bank books and in the dust on their Bible covers. American believers have sold their lives to the service of Mammon, and God has His rightful way of dealing with those who succumb to the spirit of Laodicea."

Brouwer Berries

2011-05-14T11:01:00.000-04:00

I (Sara) am going to be working at Brouwer Berries this summer, a strawberry and raspberry family farm near Raymond, MN. You can see their website here. I think it is going to be a lot of fun and I am also looking forward to eating some fresh fruits (it has been a couple years since I've had "real" strawberries and raspberries). Thankfully, rhubarb is already in season, so I've been able to enjoy that.

A week or so ago, I got to help out with planting around 3,000 new strawberry plants that will be producing fruit in future years. It was great to be outside in the dirt on one of the first beautiful spring-like days of the year. Of course, my thighs were extremely sore the next day, but it was worth it.

Here's a picture of a bunch of baby strawberry plants:

Since this is a family farm, the whole family was involved in planting, even the kids. Look how cute and industrious they are!

Compassionate Eating as Care of Creation

2011-05-13T18:09:00.001-04:00

I just finished reading this free booklet online by Matt Halteman, professor of philosophy at Calvin College. It is only 25 pages long and I heartily recommend reading it. It is a quick read, and you can read it right now online -
"Compassionate Eating as Care of Creation"

It is a summary or introduction of issues I believe we need to think more about as Christians. It deals with how we eat, particularly the ramifications of eating animals, focusing on the current consequences of how we raise and eat animals today.

You might be surprised to see me posting something about this issue since I've been known as an excessively big meat eater. But in the past couple years Sara and I have been thinking about these issues more and more. With a sister-in-law and a sister who are both vegetarians, I knew I had to learn more about the issues. We read a book called "Eating Animals" which addressed a lot of issues and problems that I had never thought about before. We learned A LOT in this book but did find a few holes in his arguments and as an author he rambled and annoyed us at times.

I used to just shrug off any notions of problems of eating meat, or any reasons to be a vegetarian. I figured vegetarians were liberal hippies. But I confess that I thought those things out of pride and purposeful ignorance and judgementalism. Now I realize there are very important ethical and theological issues to deal with.

I am not a vegetarian, but we have been eating less meat and choosing which meat we buy much more carefully. We will continue to study these issues and read more books.

I encourage you to read this short booklet to be introduced to some of the main issues around eating animals. Even if you end up disagreeing, you will at least understand where people are coming from who are vegetarians.

Spring

2011-05-08T15:00:00.000-04:00

Finally it has started to feel like spring in Minnesota. The weather was actually warm enough yesterday to be outside in bare feet and a t-shirt! We are thankful to see the grass getting greener, tiny leaves sprouting on trees and even dandelions growing outside our window.

Of course, the trend of lots of precipitation has continued from the winter with plenty of rain. We have a perpetual small pond in part of our parking lot and this little grassy area next to it. This photo was taken on a nice day when about half the puddle had dried up:

We have frequently been having these little visitors (house finches) at the window bird feeder Anthony gave me for my birthday. I think they like the tomato jungle that they can see inside - one of them pecked the window trying to get at it.

Being a Pastor

2011-05-08T13:45:00.001-04:00

You might be wondering how I am feeling being a pastor. So I will tell you.

It is both overwhelming at times and also very fulfilling and even exciting. It's exciting to think about what God is doing in people's lives and in the community. It's exciting to see people understand something new for the first time. Exciting to see people respond to a sermon by trying a new spiritual discipline or reaching out in love to a neighbor. It's exciting to hear people's testimonies about how God has provided for them, or how God has transformed their lives freeing them from addictions and fear. And nothing is more exciting than seeing people experience God's grace and forgiveness.

I'm really enjoying my job. I enjoy being able to spend time with people and visit people in their homes. It is very rewarding to be able to pray for people, both when things are going well, or those difficult times when they are experiencing sickness or death or relationship heartache. It is a privilege to be able to walk with people through these times and have them trust you, and be willing to talk about their deepest joys and hurts. It is a privilege to worship with these people I love every week. It is amazing to be able to study God's word all week and then to proclaim it to God's people.

Being a pastor has also helped me to grow in my spiritual life, in my relationship with Jesus. I'm not sure exactly why this is. It's not just the research and study for my sermons, or time in prayer, though those certainly help. Part of it is just God helping me to desire to really practice what I preach. And much of it is how much I've had to rely on God to do what I do. It's not necessarily the most stressful or time consuming job. But it is a sobering thought to realize you are leading a church, helping them to grow closer to God, to think about their future, and walk with people through the most difficult parts of their lives. In doing all of these things, I know that I am inadequate. I know that I have to completely depend on God and rest in his hands of grace.

Being a pastor is also a humbling experience. I started out with a lot of great ideas and great fire and energy to help this church. Now I still have that passion and those ideas, but I've learned to be more patient. I am reminded continually that you cannot please everyone. I've learned that I'm not going to change the whole world, let alone this small community or everyone in this church. I'm learning to value myself less highly, and just to enjoy seeing how God will use me, in ways I don't expect or deserve, however great or little it will be.

Overall, I'm so thankful for this position and for this wonderful church. I am excited to see what God will do as we continue together this year!

Some specific highlights at the church so far from January to April:
1. Being ordained as a Minister of the Word in March and being able to give the Lord's Supper for the first time, as well as raising my hands for the Benediction.
2. Seeing people totally transformed in their hearts and understanding of how to help the poor through our book study on "When Helping Hurts."
3. Seeing people take part in the worship service for the first time reading Scripture, praying, or giving a welcome at the beginning of the service. Many are extremely nervous, but they have been doing a great job, and growing as a result of it. And the church loves having the people participating.
4. Very interesting council meetings talking about the future of the church, and about how the church can reach out to people better with God's love and good news.

If you have anything else you'd like to know, ask me some specific questions.

Consulting the Genius of the Place

2011-04-24T14:50:00.005-04:00

I just finished reading the book "Consulting the Genius of the Place" by Wes Jackson. Although the book felt kind of scattered in places, it was very interesting. The author talks about how, throughout the world, different ecosystems (areas made up of living things and their entire environment) are incredibly diverse and very unique to the location. And so his main point was that if we want our agriculture to survive, we need to fit it to different locations. Rather than planting the same crops in the same ways all over the world, we should "consult the genius of the place" to make sure that they are fitted to where we are.

Additionally, he pointed out that nature, being diverse, is more resistant to pests and disease than monocultures of crops, so we should work on having greater diversity on farms. And, most interestingly to me, he pointed out how perennial plants hold soil and soil nutrients better than annuals do. Because of this, the Land Institute (where he works) and various scientists are working on developing perennial grain crops so that farmers wouldn't need to plow their fields, so soil and its nutrients wouldn't be lost to erosion in the way they are now, and so seeds wouldn't need to be planted every year - the plants would stay in the soil year round. They've already developed some varieties that they are testing and that made me want to get some of those seeds and start planting perennial grains myself! Of course that won't work so well if I'm only going to be in Renville for one summer and am borrowing someone else's garden...

Happy Easter!

2011-04-24T14:42:00.004-04:00

Today we rejoiced with the Church in celebration of the day when Jesus rose from the dead, giving us hope and purpose for life and the life to come.

This Easter Lily is in memory and honor of our grandparents:
Eugene and Shirley Ladenburger
Lynden and Carolyn Levitt
Richard and Dorothy Sytsma
William and Helen Stob

April Prayer Letter

2011-04-08T23:11:00.000-04:00

Our April Prayer Letter is available. You can go to the Prayer Letter page to download it. Thank you for your prayers!

Unpoverty

2011-03-23T22:55:00.007-04:00

I just finished reading the book "Unpoverty: Rich Lessons From the Working Poor" by Mark Lutz and I want to share about it with you. This time, I thought it might be nice to have a picture of the book, especially since it has a great picture on the front - it looks like a scene we saw in Uganda all the time.

This is a great book to help give us a picture of what life is like for extremely poor people in the world and to help us learn to look at them as individual people of worth, no different from ourselves in many cases - except for where we were born. Mark Lutz works for Opportunity International, a non-profit microfinance organization and throughout the book, he shares what amazing things poor people have done with micro-loans and what we can learn from them.

Lutz shares many stories about specific people around the world who are working hard to survive and the lessons that they can teach us about family, community, gratitude, persistence, self-reliance, faith, and ingenuity. He also reminds us about the importance of working for justice in this world for all people - to give everyone a realistic opportunity to meet basic needs. And he points out that, thanks to technology, not are we aware of the poor worldwide, but they are aware of how wealthy people like us are living.

But after many moving stories, I especially appreciated how Lutz leaves us with an encouraging word. He knows that we can all become discouraged and overwhelmed by the massive amount of poverty in this world (as I have) and so he gives specific ideas of things we can do to help. He also emphasizes that our God has the power to do anything, even use us to eradicate extreme poverty.

Anthony's ordination

2011-03-15T09:13:00.009-04:00

On Sunday afternoon, Anthony was officially ordained as a pastor in the Christian Reformed Church. The service was really special. Lots of people in the congregation and a few area pastors participated and, along with the things required for ordination, they said very kind and encouraging words to Anthony. His uncle also made the trip out here from Michigan and preached a meaningful sermon to encourage Anthony specifically, and the rest of us as well, in faith.

We are thankful that God has brought Anthony to this place, after all the work that he did to prepare for his ordination.
Here we are with Anthony's uncle and my parents:

Classical Exam

2011-03-08T20:47:00.002-05:00

I'm really excited to announce I passed my Classical Exam today!

I was quite nervous, but the questions were reasonable and the pastors were gracious. I also had a big cheering section with Sara and eight people from my church attending as guests.

This Sunday we will proceed with the Ordination Service. I'm so grateful that God has brought me to this point. It has been a long journey, but it is good to be here, and I'm excited to serve Emden church as their ordained pastor this year!

Thank you all for your prayers and support!

Anthony's ordination

2011-02-27T00:28:00.004-05:00

We would like to ask you to please pray for Anthony because in a little over a week, he will be doing the last step in becoming an ordained Minister of the Word: taking an oral exam. This will involve sitting down for hours with a bunch of Christian Reformed pastors who will get to ask him questions about the Bible, life, and ministry.

If Anthony passes this exam, there will be an ordination service at Emden CRC on March 13th. Anthony will be preaching in the morning service (10am) and then the ordination service will be in the afternoon, at 2:30. If you're in the area and want to come, you are most welcome. Even if you can't/don't want to come visit us that weekend, you're always welcome to visit us at other times!

Sara's job

2011-02-27T00:25:00.006-05:00

You may know I was working as a one-on-one paraprofessional at the public school, but the girl I worked with has moved out of the state, so that particular job is over. I have taken on an after-school tutoring job and am also going to be substituting at the same school in town. It is disappointing, but in my joblessness, I was able to take a trip to South Dakota to stay with my Grandma and visit a bunch of relatives.

This is one of the fun things I saw along the way: a giant prairie dog:

I've never lived so close to these relatives, so it was rather exciting to be able to drive there in only one day.

It was also fun to see the beauty of South Dakota covered with snow.

"Do Not Wear Yourself Out to Get Rich..." Proverbs 23:4

2011-02-13T11:00:00.000-05:00

I just finished reading the book "Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger" by Ronald Sider. If you are interested in topics like giving, justice, and poverty, I strongly recommend that you read this book. But in case you don't have the time, let me give you an overview of what it is about and how you can change your lifestyle to help the poor. I can't give all the details, so if you want to know more, I'd suggest reading the book so you can understand Sider's arguments better.

This book was a good balance to "When Charity Destroys Dignity." That book left me thinking about how important it is to give wisely, but at the same time, wondering how I could practically do that. "Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger" gives those practical applications for giving. It explains why Christians should care for the poor far more than they already do, yet without causing dependency in the process.

The book begins by explaining, convincingly, why there is a problem in the world. We all know that there is a lot of poverty out there, but do we realize what a problem it is - or how very rich we really are? At least 1.2 billion people live without furniture, extra clothes, food in the cupboards, electricity, running water (or clean water for that matter), books, literacy, hospitals, or monetary savings. Another 1.6 billion aren't much better off. In fact, the richest 5% of the world's people earn 114 times as much income as the poorest 5%. Sider gives far more statistics and information to convince the reader that we are very affluent. And he goes on to describe some rationalizations we might make to give less to the poor.

We may think there are good reasons to keep as much as we can for ourselves, but as Christians, we need to realize that God cares very much about the poor. Sider gives a lot of evidence from the Bible about God's concern for justice and for the rich to help the poor.

So if we are convinced that God wants us to give to the poor so they can live and have justice, what do we do? Sider goes into the many complex causes of poverty. I can't describe them all, but he talks about sinful personal choices, unbiblical worldviews, disasters, inequalities of power, colonial injustice, and structural injustice in economics. He explains how market economies are pretty good, but need changes in the way they operate in order to promote greater justice in the world. Left to itself, a market economy is mindless and will supply what the wealthy can pay for even if that means millions of poor people starve. He describes the problems this causes with the poor and the environment we live in and gives ideas about how things could be improved.

And how do we respond? Well, first Sider says, once we care, we need to examine ourselves. We, the affluent, have, more often than not, made our affluence and possessions our god. Here is one particularly striking quote:
"...we are caught in an absurd, materialistic spiral. The more we make, the more we think we need in order to live decently and respectably. Somehow we have to break this cycle because it makes us sin against our needy brothers and sisters and, therefore, against our Lord. And it also destroys us. Sharing with others is the way to real joy."

Do you know how much the average person in the US gives to charity - all charity? In 1998, it was 2.1% of their income. Church members gave to churches, on average, 2.66% of their income and 0.4% to other benevolences.

If we want to be more generous, Sider gives many ideas about how to do this. Here are just a few of them:
1. Graduated Tithe - give 10% on what you calculate to be the amount you need to live on, then give an extra 5% on each $1,000 you make above that base amount (15% on the first 1,000, 20% on the second, etc.).
2. Live in community so you can share belongings with others instead of owning it all yourself.
3. Balance your giving between emergency relief, development, and broad structural change, but don't neglect other areas of Christian work like evangelism.
4. Question your own lifestyle and work to reduce your budget by spending less on food (like eating less meat, growing food in a garden, etc.), lowering your energy consumption, resisting the appeal of advertising, resisting obsolescence (buy quality products when you buy and keep them a long time), refuse to keep up with clothing fashions, etc.
5. Make sure you evaluate the work of the organizations you give to. Among other questions to ask: is justice rather than continual charity (dependence) the result of their work? And do they use their funds efficiently and wisely?
6. Practice the Sabbath. Rest one day out of seven and do your best to limit the hours you work - turn away from the mad consumerism of our culture.

Sider also talks about working for social change. Encourage our country to have a more caring foreign policy and correct the weaknesses of our market economy. Make international trade more fair, reduce unmanageable debt among very poor countries, protect the earth and empower the poor.

These political things seem impossible to change and you may wonder how you can possibly impact these societal causes of poverty. Well the book does mention some organizations you can support that effectively promote such structural changes. A few of those are: Bread for the World, Debt AIDS Trade Africa, and The Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility

Also, as a woman, I want to mention that emphasizing better education and health care for women is a very effective way to combat poverty. A majority of the very poor people in the world are women. And for every additional year of schooling for women in poor countries, infant mortality rates decline by 5-10% and the fertility rate decreases too.

And now you know some specific ways you can be more generous toward the poor in a wise way. Let's go out and give with joy!

If you want to visit

2011-02-06T14:49:00.004-05:00

If you're traveling through Minnesota and want to visit us, but don't want to sleep on our floor or couch, you can always stay at the Sheep Shedde Inn in Olivia. It is quite nice and has such an amusing name.

Also, some tips about visiting:
1. Bring your warmest clothes
2. Bring good boots because we like to walk places
3. Be prepared to play either:
a) Bible trivia
b) Speed scrabble
c) Boggle

First Visitors

2011-02-06T10:20:00.016-05:00

We were very pleased to have my parents come visit recently, as they made their way to Rapid City, SD for my grandma's birthday.

They came on Friday afternoon, so they were able to see me at work, for the last few minutes of the school day.

Every day at work is a challenge, but I am slowly discovering all the things my student knows and seeing her pick up new things, like the spelling of "run", "go", "stop", and her name.

So we had a fun weekend with them, taking a walking tour the town in the much colder weather of Saturday, eating good food, and going to church together on Sunday. Anthony is doing a great job pushing himself to be outgoing to get to know people and to preach relevant, expressive sermons. I'm probably biased, but still...

We also visited the church on Saturday and Anthony demonstrated how he preaches (of course, he is more dressed up on Sundays...)

They did have to leave early, on Sunday afternoon, in order to get out of Minnesota before a winter storm blew in, but we had a good time together anyway.

This storm actually brought me two snow days in a row, though it was mainly because of wind blowing the snow over the roads, rather than due to heavy snowfall.

And as an end note, I would again like to add how much I love living in a small town. Not only are the people friendly and kind, the town walkable and quiet, but there are also so many great quirky things that you don't find in many cities:
A giant ear of corn in the neighboring town of Olivia

And a fun sign on the grocery store

January Prayer Letter

2011-01-15T23:34:00.002-05:00

I just uploaded our January Prayer Letter to "Our Prayer Letters" Page. So you can go to the link there to download it if you would like to take a look. Thank you for your prayers!

Our apartment and the church

2011-01-09T16:49:00.008-05:00

Living room:

Kitchen:

Bedroom:

Bathroom:

This is the church from outside:

And the inside of the sanctuary:

A Glimpse of Renville

2011-01-09T14:42:00.013-05:00

First, here is the sign you see driving into town so you can see the population (add 2 to the number there for us)

And then, guess what? A sign for Wall Drug, all the way out here!

And this is the kind of wildlife we see out our apartment window, walking past our car:

Here is Renville's downtown:

One of the streets in town:

How about this street in the country?

These are the snow drifts that sent kids home from school early on Friday:

And just for fun, here is Anthony holding a chunk of snow in the air by using the force :)

Safe in Renville

2011-01-05T18:36:00.005-05:00

We arrived safely at our apartment in Renville, MN yesterday (January 4th) and spent the evening unpacking. By the time we went to bed, we had moved in completely and today we were able to do a little exploring in town. Further information about our experiences here is upcoming.
In case you were wanting to compare the weather here to weather in Uganda, here is a picture of me outside our apartment building:

Freedom in choice?

2011-01-05T10:20:00.000-05:00

Since being back from Uganda, I'm finding that more choice doesn't necessarily equal more freedom, at least for me.

I do love to be able to get whatever movie or book I want from amazon or the library here in the US. But it was actually overwhelming coming back to the US with having access to whatever books or products I want. It is a freeing thing to have less things to choose from. It makes life much easier and takes a lot of unimportant decisions (and purchases) out of your life. You are forced to be content and enjoy what you have. It can be hard to learn contentment if you always get everything you want.

If you are like me, and you have 100 books to read, you probably just skim through them or maybe feel overwhelmed and read none of them. But if you have 1 book to read, you'll read it carefully, ponder it, and really get a lot out of it.

In Uganda, because of our limited choices, we borrowed movies from people and watched things we might never have watched before. And we read books from their small library that we probably never would have read, but turned out to be really interesting and helpful.

I have often pondered this limitation of choice in connection to people in prison. Perhaps, some prisoners grow really close to God and learn God's word well, because they are limited in their choices and options, and therefore spend a lot of time reading the Bible.

Sometimes less is more.

Merry Christmas!

2010-12-20T10:18:00.004-05:00

We are very thankful to be home with our families for this Christmas. Last year in Uganda it was difficult to be away from family at Christmas time in the hot Ugandan sun. But, this was a good reminder to us to not find our central meaning at Christmas in the cultural trappings.

All around the world, Christians are about to celebrate Christmas. Some of them will have Christmas trees, some of them won't. Some of them will have snow, some of them won't. Some will be with family, some of them won't. Some will give gifts to each other, some of them won't. But all of them will be celebrating the birth of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ in their various and beautiful different ways.

This Christmas remember that you are celebrating and praising our Lord Jesus with your brothers and sisters in Christ all over the world!

Rejoice! Our Savior has been born!

Bead For Life

2010-12-16T21:48:00.000-05:00

While Anthony and I were last in Midland, I helped my mom and another woman from my church with a Bead for Life party. This is sort of like a tupperware party, in which one person (in this case, my mom) orders a bunch of the product and then sells it at a party in her house.

Bead for Life is special, though, because it is a non-profit organization which works to create sustainable opportunities for women in Uganda to lift themselves out of poverty through business opportunities. One of the main things the women do, is to make beautiful beads out of recycled paper, then sell it at a fair price to be made into jewelry like in the picture below.

Supporting an organization like this is a good example of helping the poor without creating dependency. You can read more about what they do on their website (http://www.beadforlife.org/), but here is an important quote:

"Our goal is for our members to be independent of BeadforLife within 18 months by being able to support themselves within the Ugandan economy. To assist members in launching their own small businesses or in creating new revenue streams, we provide entrepreneurial training, facilitate savings accounts, and make business funds available. In the rural areas our program focuses on agricultural development."

So if you haven't finished your Christmas shopping yet, you can always order some Bead for Life jewelry online :)

Also Knitting

2010-12-16T21:46:00.000-05:00

Oh, and I also found the time to knit a sweater during the many hours of traveling from place to place in the car these past months.

This is in preparation for the long, cold winter in Minnesota (note how there is even some snow on the ground in Michigan right now!)

Sara's Further Education

2010-12-16T21:45:00.000-05:00

No, I am not actually taking classes or doing anything formal, but I've decided that this is a good time to fill in the cracks of free time with whatever I can do to educate myself. The library has continued to be a great blessing (I love books!) and I have not only been able to find good books about dependency and giving, but also about farming. So I read about composting, how to make handy farm implements, soil management, growing grains, Norman Borlaug, small farms around the world, plant propagation, etc.

What have I been learning? Here are a few small tidbits:

1. You can make a pedal-powered washing machine with the back half of an old bike - take the tire off, wrap the rim with twine, turn the seat so it faces backward, and hook a rubber belt around the wheel and to a small wheel on a big washing barrel.

2. Compost is especially good for your soil if the soil has lead in it. This is important because leafy greens and root vegetables absorb lead from the soil. The humus from compost, however, bonds with lead, reducing the amount of it that vegetables can take in.

3. You can control erosion by being careful about your planting habits. How? By keeping wild plants growing along the edges of bodies of water, making terraces (on up to 12% slopes), making ditches or furrows that move water across the slope rather than down it, and by planting windbreaks and cover crops.

4. Popcorn is a kind of flint corn (very hard corn that can be ground into cornmeal) so you could grind it into flour.

5. Of reliable cultivated food plants available in 1900, 97% of them are no longer used. In fact, the world relies on 150 food plants (out of the earth's 30,000-80,000 edible plants) and only 20 of them make up 90% of our diet.

6. In the early 1900s, chestnut blight killed most of the American Chestnut Trees in the United States - three to five BILLION trees.

Moving to Minnesota!

2010-11-29T10:18:00.008-05:00

Here is a recent picture of us before going to a friend's wedding.

It's time to bring you all up to date. If you remember, Sara did not make it into the ECHO program that starts in January 2010. She will be applying to get in again, and if she did get accepted it would start in October 2011 or January 2012. We hope she can go to ECHO before we go overseas again.

Because of this, I started looking about a month ago for a short term pastoral position at a Christian Reformed Church in North America, to serve from January through September. Sometimes this is called an "interim" pastor position, when someone will pastor a church temporarily to give them more time to look for a long-term pastor.

God has answered your prayers for us! Emden Christian Reformed Church in Renville, MN, is calling me to be their short term pastor. They are very excited for us to come and I am also very excited to gain some pastoral experience. I'm going in ready to serve and lead, but also ready to learn and grow.

It is a very rural area, and Sara has been talking to some of the farmers around looking for some kind of work on a small farm to gain some agricultural experience. So far nothing is set is stone, but there are some good possibilities. Please keep praying about this.

The church is a smaller church, a bit more than 30 families in the church. But they are passionate in the Lord and wanting to reach out and grow. I am very excited to be coming to them at this time. I am excited to see what God will do for this 9 months.

Emden is planning on ordaining me as well. We don't have all the details worked out yet, and I'll still have to pass a classical exam, but the hope is that a few months into the new year, I will be serving them as an ordained Minister of the Word in the CRC.

We are also excited to be able to be in one place for 9 months and sleep in the same bed that whole time. We are also excited to have the money to buy good healthy well-raised food.

Here is a picture of us playing games with my brother and sister-in-law on one of our travels. And a picture of us with my older sister's daughter.

We will leave on January 3rd, and hopefully arrive there on the 4th. We will be living in an apartment and we will share our address when we know it. Please keep us in your prayers. Thank you!

Thank you!

"When Helping Hurts"

2010-11-20T08:04:00.001-05:00

The next book in the list of "books for Sara and Anthony to read" is entitled "When Helping Hurts" and is by Steve Corbett and Brian Fikkert.

When you see this picture, what do you see? Do you see poverty?

How about this one?

After our experience in Uganda and after reading books like this, we are realizing that just because peoples' homes and churches don't look like ours in the US, that doesn't necessarily mean they are poor.

And so, this was another very beneficial book for us. The authors began by outlining how Jesus was born to bring the Kingdom of God to earth and to heal all of creation, not just our souls. As a result, mission work and ministry needs to be directed toward the whole person. Good news for the work that Anthony and I feel called to do together!

I especially appreciated the chapters about poverty; how poverty is not just a lack of material resources, but also a brokenness of relationships: with God, with oneself, with others, and with the rest of creation. It is a feeling of shame and helplessness that isn't alleviated when poor people are simply given material things. And so when we work with poor people, we need to recognize our own poverty. We also need to begin by bringing out their strengths rather than focusing on their needs - then we can use all of our gifts to meet everyone's needs.

This would be a great book to use in a Sunday School class because it has good questions at the beginning and end of each chapter and it seems especially directed toward the work of the local church. So for me, although it did help me to think more about what I should or should not do as a missionary, I actually learned more about the work that should be done in American churches. The book focused on how to appropriately work with the poor in the USA and how to help American short-term mission teams "help without hurting". For example, make sure people know that a mission trip isn't a vacation, nor is it possible for "you" to make a huge difference helping "the poor people" you meet on your trip. Although a short-term mission trip can be a good thing, we need to realize that the long-term development that is needed cannot be accomplished in a few weeks.

So I think that for those of you who are planning on living in the US and possibly doing short-term mission trips, it would be a particularly helpful book from which to get direction in work to alleviate poverty - without hurting the people who you (out of the goodness of your heart, of course) want to help.

Zoe the goat says, "Help people without hurting them!"

Grand Rapids Presentation December 9th

2010-11-20T07:47:00.003-05:00

We are having an informal presentation on December 9th at a private residence in Grand Rapids, MI from 7-8pm. (Don't worry, even though it is informal, we will still be wearing our Ugandan clothes :)
If you are interested in coming, let us know and we can give you more details. We would also like to have a general idea of how many people are coming since we are going to be making a Ugandan snack. Of course, it is just a snack, so make sure you eat dinner before coming!

In our presentations, we will show pictures and some videos and will spend time answering your questions and talking about the things you are most curious about. We plan to give you a general overview of our work in Uganda and what we learned and then to do question and answer time.

Chicago area presentation November 21st

2010-11-12T16:15:00.002-05:00

We will be at Family of Faith Church on November 21st.
Church is at 9:30am and the church is located at: 6645 West Steger Road, Monee, IL 60449
Anthony will be preaching and we will also give a short presentation during the church service
The church's website is: http://www.fofc.org/

During our presentation, we will show pictures and some videos and tell stories. We plan to give you a general overview of our work in Uganda and what we learned.

Online Sermon and Presentation

2010-11-12T16:11:00.003-05:00

Recently, I preached at Midland Reformed Church and we presented about our time in Uganda. Both the sermon and the presentation are on their website in video format. If you would like to take a look go to:

http://www.midlandreformed.org/video.htm

It is the one from October 31st. Enjoy!

Since October 31st was also Reformation Day, Sara carved this John Calvin pumpkin:

"When Charity Destroys Dignity"

2010-11-10T10:34:00.012-05:00

After a very eye-opening time in Uganda, we are trying to read many books about giving and dependency issues in missions.

One book I just finished reading is:
"When Charity Destroys Dignity: Overcoming Unhealthy Dependency in the Christian Movement" by Glenn J. Schwartz.

This book takes a serious look at mission practices and charitable giving practices. For the most part, I agree with his assessments. I think that everyone else who is a missionary, does short term missions, supports missions, or gives to any charitable organization, should read this book. I find what he talks about to be extremely important for all of us, not just for missionaries.

Much of the very common long term and short term mission practices of our day do much harm, even though they are done out of good motivations. Likewise, much charitable giving done today, especially to Africa, is prolonging many major problems.

In brief, here are just a few of the very many things I found so helpful in this book.

1. If all African Christians tithed 2% of their income, they could build their own church buildings, buy their own Bibles, support all their ministries, support their pastors fully, support their pastors' training fully, and even buy computers or support other organizations with the leftover money.
2. If we give too much and unwisely to churches and Christians in Africa, we are not allowing them to experience the joy and responsibility of giving and supporting themselves that God calls them to do.
3. Giving should happen in a chain of proximity. First the family should help, and if they cannot, the church, then the whole community, then the region, then the country, then the continent, and finally those in the rest of the Earth. When there is a problem and we immediately send money to Africa from way accross the ocean, we are jumping over all of those other steps of people who can, should, and want to be the ones helping in order to build up their communities.
4. We should be careful about how our giving might impact local economies or local ways of reaching out to those in need. For example, giving food might demolish food prices in local areas destroying the business of the local people. Or sponsoring a child may completely sidestep an extended family's or church's felt responsibility to care for a child.
5. Giving Bibles for free or even at lower cost makes the Bible look like something of less value. People usually do have money for Bibles, but they won't pay for them if they feel entitled to get it for free.
6. The chapters about short-term missions are must reads! Many current short-term mission trip practices are actually causing more damage than help. Please read these chapters before going on a short-term trip!

It is a huge joy to give, and it is very easy to give money rather than our time. It is hard for us in the West to stop giving, because we enjoy doing it so much. But we can't keep on giving unwisely just because it makes us feel good. We need to take the time to be creative, to do research, to do follow-up to make sure that when we give, it is actually helping rather than hurting.

He gives helpful insight in this book about how to give wisely so I recommend reading it.

Travels

2010-11-01T12:19:00.001-04:00

As we travel from place to place to visit churches, it has been great to be able to visit our families. Most recently, we appreciated the chance to visit my grandma and many other relatives (aunts, uncles, cousins, great-aunts and uncles) in South Dakota, thanks to the church presentation in Iowa. Austinville, IA is halfway between Michigan and Rapid City, South Dakota, so what's an extra 9 hours of driving? I know, a lot, but it was well worth the trip.

Here we are with my grandma in the beautiful Black Hills:

We were also able to visit the cemetery where my grandfathers are buried. It was hard to go there, but it helped make it more real that they are gone.

By the way, we are still working on our plans for January, but as of now, nothing solid has come up. We will certainly let you know when we have a plan.

Midland, MI Presentation October 31st

2010-10-22T16:16:00.001-04:00

We will be at Midland Reformed Church on October 31st
Church is at 10am and the church is located at: 1100 N. Saginaw Rd.
Anthony will be preaching and we will also give a short presentation during the church service
The church's website is: http://www.midlandreformed.org/

During our presentation, we will show pictures and some videos and will spend time answering your questions and talking about the things you are most curious about. We plan to give you a general overview of our work in Uganda and what we learned and then to do question and answer time.

Future Plans

2010-10-15T18:12:00.002-04:00

We wanted to let you know that Sara was not accepted to the agricultural internship program at ECHO in Florida for this coming year. So we are planning to look for a church where Anthony can be the interim pastor and in the meantime, Sara will re-apply for a later internship at ECHO.

We are also in the process of looking for a future position overseas, but we aren't planning on going right now.

St Johns and Lansing Presentations

2010-10-15T18:11:00.003-04:00

Coming up on October 24th, we will be presenting at River Terrace Christian Reformed Church in Lansing, MI
We are presenting in adult Sunday School (though children are welcome) from 10:15-11am in the gym
The church services are at 9am and 11:15am
The church's address is: 1509 River Terrace Dr, Lansing, MI 48823 and the website is: http://www.riverterrace.org/

There will also be a similar presentation on October 26th at a private residence in St Johns, MI from 7-8pm
If you are interested in coming, let us know and we can give you more details and then please let us know if you plan on coming to this because we are going to be making a Ugandan snack
It will be basically the same information as at River Terrace, but in a more informal setting

In our presentations, we will show pictures and some videos and will spend time answering your questions and talking about the things you are most curious about. We plan to give you a general overview of our work in Uganda and what we learned and then to do question and answer time.

Presentations

2010-10-10T18:04:00.002-04:00

In case you were wondering what our presentations are like and haven't had the chance to go to one, here are a couple pictures of one!

Austinville, IA Presentation

2010-10-10T17:56:00.003-04:00

In case you are passing through Iowa or happen to live there...
We will be presenting at Austinville Christian Reformed Church on October 17th for Mission Fest

Anthony is preaching at the service at 9:30am and we will also teach the congregation one Ugandan song
After the service there is a potluck and we will do a presentation about our time in Uganda
We will show pictures and videos and give a general overview of our work in Uganda and what we learned. We will also take time to answer your questions!

The church's address is: 31871 2nd St., Austinville, IA 50608
Their website is: http://austinvillecrc.com/Austinville_CRC/Home.html

Apparently, if you find Austinville, you are basically at the church.
Please let us know if you have any questions about this presentation.

Grand Rapids Presentation October 10th

2010-09-29T16:58:00.000-04:00

We will be presenting in Grand Rapids, MI on Sunday, October 10th at Calvin Christian Reformed Church's adult Sunday School.
Though it is adult Sunday School, it is fine with us if you bring your kids with you - we think it's important for kids to hear about missions too!

The church service is at: 10am and Sunday School is from 11:30am-12:15pm and will be downstairs in the church

Calvin Christian Reformed Church is located at: 700 Ethel St. SE, Grand Rapids, MI 49506
Its website is: http://www.calvincrc.org/frameIndex.html

We will show pictures and some videos and will spend time answering your questions and talking about the things you are most curious about. We plan to give you a general overview of our work in Uganda and what we learned and then to do question and answer time.

Please let us know if you have any questions about this presentation.

What do missionaries do in the US?

2010-09-23T14:38:00.008-04:00

Maybe at this point you are wondering if Anthony and I have dropped off the face of the earth since we haven't been inundating your inboxes with emails about blog updates. But no, we are still around and staying quite busy.

As you may imagine from our schedule which we have shared with you, being in the US involves lots of traveling and visiting churches to let all of you know what our experience was like in Uganda and to give thanks and praise to God for what he has done due to your prayers and support. Of course, this also involves much time of meeting with people like you outside of these presentation times.

But we have managed to squeeze in time to be with our families and do some more recreational travel.
We went camping at Pictured Rocks with Anthony's parents. See that tiny little tent? That's the one Anthony and I stayed in!

We also spent some quality time with our siblings. My sister, Stacy, and I traveled to Providence, RI and Washington DC together.

At the same time Anthony went to visit his brother Lee and sister-in-law Meg in Milwaukee, WI. Here is Anthony and his friend Joel playing games with Lee and Meg.

So there you are. Lots of visits and presenting. Also catching up on reading after a year without very many books to choose from. We are even reviewing Greek together and Anthony is working on his Hebrew skills.

Still no update on our future future plans, but we will keep you updated. Now, if we haven't seen you yet, we just might be heading your way sometime soon. And if you really want to see us, let us know and we can try to work a time out!

Midland Presentations

2010-09-20T14:33:00.003-04:00

Here is some more detailed information regarding the presentations that Sara and I will be doing in Midland in the next couple weeks:

First, on Sunday September 26th, we will be at Midland Evangelical Free Church
This will be a presentation at the Faithbuilders Sunday School Class which
meets at 9:30am in room 308

Then, on Tuesday September 28th, we will have our informal gathering, again at Midland Evangelical Free Church
This will take place from 7:00-8:30 pm in room 304
If you enter the building from the parking lot on the south side, you
will turn left and follow the hallway to the adult wing.

Both of these presentations will be fairly similar. We will show pictures and some videos and will spend time answering your questions or talking about the things you are most curious about. We plan to give you a general overview of our work in Uganda and what we learned and then to do question and answer time.

Here is the address and website for Midland Evangelical Free Church:
www.mefchurch.org
7221 North Jefferson Ave. Midland, MI 48642

Updated Schedule

2010-08-27T08:59:00.001-04:00

We want to inform all of you when we will be making presentations in various places around the country after we return to the US.

We will be in:
Midland, MI:
-----Midland Evangelical Free Church: September 26th, we will be presenting at Faithbuilders Small Church
-----Informal gathering: September 28th at a to-be-determined location (a chance to visit and talk more about what we have been doing)
-----Midland Reformed Church: October 31st, at the church service, Anthony will preach

St Johns, MI:
-----River Terrace Christian Reformed Church: October 24th, presenting in Sunday School
-----Informal gathering at Anthony’s parents’ house on October 26th (a chance to visit and talk more about what we have been doing)

Grand Rapids, MI:
-----Calvin Christian Reformed Church: October 10th
-----Informal gathering sometime in early December (a chance to visit and talk more about what we have been doing)

Chicago, IL:
-----Family of Faith Church: November 21st

Austinville, IA:
-----Austinville CRC: October 17th for MissionFest Sunday and a potluck afterward

We will share more details on the times and places of these various presentations as we get closer to the dates. Additionally, if you cannot go to one of our presentations or would like to get together with us sometime, let us know and we can work a time out.

Food posts still

2010-08-12T17:10:00.003-04:00

I am still cooking, but with different ingredients which are suddenly available to me, so if you want to see some new food posts, they are here: http://sarasglobalcooking.blogspot.com
I'm not going to keep putting posts on this blog when I update the cooking one, so even if you're not getting notices that I have updated it, I still will be doing so.

Farewell Uganda

2010-08-12T16:46:00.005-04:00

So last Thursday, we hired a driver to take us from Mbale to Entebbe, which is 5 hours away and is the location of the airport. We enjoyed watching the sights out the window and were sad that it was our last day to enjoy Uganda. Now, Anthony has spent the past year amusing himself and others by sharing with them a picture he found online of a guy carrying a goat on his back. And then on this drive, we did see a guy carrying a goat on his back while riding a bike! Crazy. Sadly we have no picture.
We do have pictures, however, of Lake Victoria. We spent the night at a guest house in Entebbe right next to Lake Victoria, so we walked down to the lake to get dinner at a restaurant on the beach.

The next morning, we got up early to go to the airport. It should have been easy, since we were there two hours before our flight, but there was no fuel at the airport! So our plane had to go to Nairobi (40 minutes in the wrong direction)to get fuel before we could go on to London. As a result, we missed our flight from London to Amsterdam. The new flight they put us on left 40 minutes after we arrived in London! So we had to rush around the airport, but thankfully made that flight. We made it to Amsterdam and Brenda, with whom we were staying, waited even though we were two hours late. Unfortunately, our luggage did not make it (it came the next day). We were just happy to be there, though, and you can read about our experience in the next post.

Amsterdam

2010-08-12T16:27:00.012-04:00

We visited Amsterdam for two days, as a way to transition from Uganda to the USA less abruptly than just going straight to Michigan. We stayed with Brenda, who lives in a Christian community in the Red Light District. In short, their purpose is to be a witness of Christian living to those around them, which we thought was very wonderful. During our two days, we walked around the city a lot, saw beautiful old buildings, and spent time with two of our friends, Brenda and Ben. We also went to church and visited the Van Gogh museum and the Dutch Resistance museum, which is about the Netherlands during WWII.

Here are Brenda and Anthony outside the flower market:

Ben and Anthony in the English Reformed Church we went to on Sunday (because the service was in English, so we could understand it):

This is the kind of staircase we had to go up and down to get to our room - there were 5 flights!

The Moses and Aaron church:

And then this next one is Brenda's church. We went to the evening service there on Sunday (this one was in Dutch, so less understandable than the morning one). It was built 700 years ago and was an amazing feat of architecture.

We took this picture to try to give you a feel for the immensity of the church:

After Amsterdam, we headed back to Michigan and traveled through excessive amounts of customs and security. But as you all know, we arrived in Michigan, so we have been able to get a bit of rest before we start all of our presenting at churches and visiting people.

We are home!

2010-08-10T10:54:00.001-04:00

We made it home safely and are enjoying time with family. We will post some updates soon. Thank you for your prayers!

Rats, I hate rats

2010-08-02T04:28:00.001-04:00

Three nights ago, Anthony and I woke up to what sounded like a herd of rats running around and wildly squeaking in the ceiling right above our heads. That was a little disconcerting, especially there is some sort of hole in our bedroom ceiling. And it got even worse the next night – the power was out, so our fan wasn’t working and we could hear every noise that the rats made. All night long. Pitter patter back and forth, chasing each other for who knows what reason, jumping up and down, doing something that sounded like dropping and scattering marbles onto the ceiling… Needless to say, we didn’t sleep much (if at all) and spent the night wondering if – this time – they had actually fallen through the ceiling into our house, like in the movie Ratatouille. Thankfully, this did not happen and we survived until Sunday when we bought rat poison, put it into the ceiling, then spent a gratefully restful night sleeping.

Public Schools

2010-08-02T02:29:00.001-04:00

So, today, Brandon and I went to visit the public primary school where Phoebe is a teacher. There are only 157 students in her class, ranging from age 6 to age 11. Yes, I said 157 students. She said that some of her colleagues actually have more. Can you imagine? So the number of students in classes is normal, but the unusual thing about the school is that it is made up of mostly Jewish students – black, Ugandan, Jewish students. Anyone can start a public school in Uganda, then the government provides the teachers, which is how Phoebe, a Christian, can teach at this Jewish school.
Here is a wall of coloring pages, which graphically depict how cholera can be spread. I've never seen coloring pages quite like this in the US:

I met Phoebe and Brandon at PTC and was really amused when we went out to the street to get motorcycles to take us there and Phoebe collected six of them before choosing the three she liked best to take us to her school. We rode up a narrow, bumpy dirt road to somewhere in the middle of nowhere in the hills. There, we had a tour of the school compound before class started at 8:30. They have a synagogue, where people were praying, a guest house that was decorated with the Star of David and tiny scrolls on the doorposts, and then the school itself. Each class of students also has a little garden plot where they grow a few vegetables together. Phoebe showed us the tree under which she used to teach classes 14 years ago. Now, however, she has a classroom.

We first had to walk around and greet the other classes, so we probably made 500 little kids’ day. When I said “good morning” they all chanted “GOOD MORNING MADAM!” back to me.
On this day in Phoebe’s class, there were only 103 of the 157 students present, which Phoebe said is normal since many of them don’t get anything to eat for a day or two and when they’re hungry, they don’t go to school. (The students who do go don't even get a break for lunch - they are at school from 8:30am-1pm)
The students were very excited to have visitors, though. Here they are greeting us and you:

After the initial greeting, they got to work with some basic math. Here is a video of one of the kids in the class doing one of the addition problems, using bottle caps as counting tools:

These are videos of the kids saying the rhyme "One, two, buckle my shoe..." (the first one they are getting ready to start)

I hope that after seeing this, you, too, have a better appreciation for the public schools in the US, even the not-so-good ones.

The REAL Last Time Preaching

2010-08-02T02:29:00.000-04:00

No, we didn’t go on another visit; that would have been too much for the weekend before we leave. But Anthony was invited to preach at the PAG town church that we attend in Mbale and why would he turn that down? He preached from a passage in Amos about how, as God’s chosen people, Israel (now the Church) is supposed to care for the poor and live righteous lives as a light to the nations.

The church appreciated the sermon and a hen even came inside the church to watch for a few minutes.
Interestingly, due to the bombs that went off in Kampala recently, churches are now going to have people standing at the doors and checking to make sure people aren't terrorists. They hadn't started this week, but warned the church to look forward to it and not bring large bags with them.

Calves

2010-08-02T02:27:00.000-04:00

For those of you who are interested in the cows at the PTC farm, I finally made it out there one last time and took some photos of the two calves.
This one is Patrick (named after the principal) who seemed to think that motorcycles might taste good:

And this is Ketty (pronounced Katie), named after the PTC registrar:

This is the place where they stay:

Goodbye PTC

2010-08-02T02:26:00.000-04:00

Yes, I know, we haven’t left quite yet. But we had to say goodbye to our friends at PTC last week. We went to the school and they prepared a nice dinner to say goodbye to us and Brandon. Since it was rainy, we arrived half an hour late…but we were still the first people there. Mary and the other cooks made some wonderful food. Mary is the one on the right in this picture:

The children of the PTC staff sang us a song, which was very cute, especially since they were all giggly and nervous to come into the room at first. However, since it was dark, taking a video didn’t really work out. We did take this picture, though:

We, along with Brandon, also were invited to have dinner with Michael, the Dean of Students, and his family later in the week. Here they all are:

It was a nice time, though we were very amused that they had written down a program for the evening. This included things like singing one worship song, introductions, and the guests cutting the cake – together, at the same time, with one knife… Needless to say, it was pretty unique. But they were very kind to us and made us an assortment of all kinds of wonderful Ugandan food so we can go home recalling the taste. In the process of this dinner, Phoebe, Michael’s wife, invited us to visit the public school where she teaches. This, you will hear more about in another post. She was also the one who cut the cake into real pieces:

They have three children of their own and then three other children who stay with them and as they looked at the photos on our camera, the older ones were telling the youngest that we were going to sell him because of these pictures we had:

Poor guy, he was pretty upset about that. But he recovered rather quickly, once he realized that we weren’t really going to sell him.

As we think of leaving, we also want to share some entertaining quotes with you from some of our students’ exams:
“I woke up with the aim of going and buy some sweet bananas for my little sister, it was by good luck that as I was about to start of my journey, I saw a very short fat lady carrying a basketful of sweet bananas for sale…This was the moment that I took interest in this short fat lady as one who is very kind and very wonderful lady…This is now how I met my wife in a simple way which I could not have thought of.” –William
“In most cases this is not good for people to commit adultery because it is not even recommended in the Bible.” “It mostly happens during holidays whereby all the school girls are released out of school when they are beautiful and healthy.” –Absolom
“Sex in marriage is a very good and a nice practice to be done in marriage.” - James

But in case you were worried, they did learn some good, serious things:
“So if God and Jesus does good things to these groups of people [outcasts] likewise we should also illuminate the example of our Lord Jesus to love others as we love ourself. We must not show the spirit of tribalism to anyone that God has created. Instead, let us live with them in accordance to God’s plan of saving us from all what we did in the past.” – Daniel

A Food Post!

2010-08-02T02:25:00.000-04:00

FINALLY! We have some new food posts here: http://sarasglobalcooking.blogspot.com
They are:
Irish Soda Bread
Not my samosas/sambusa

I know I have not been posting much on there lately. I have been baking and cooking, just nothing new...

Sixth and Last Prayer Letter

2010-07-30T10:37:00.003-04:00

We just uploaded our sixth prayer letter to the blog. Feel free to download it and share with others. Thank you

Also, if you look at the comment on this post, you can see that there is another family with CRWM coming to Mbale to teach at the school for a little while. Their blog address is posted in the comment if you want to see the great things they will be doing.

The end of teaching

2010-07-26T10:39:00.010-04:00

Last week, we gave our final exams at PTC. We are very amused at how the students always whip our rulers as soon as they get their exams and draw lines around the edges of the paper they write on (like setting up one inch margins, except that many of them draw fancy double lines, as if to make it look pretty). After their grades on the midterm exam, we were worried about some of the students, but we did get some very encouraging results where students did better than we would have expected. Here are some pictures of students’ handwriting:

And a picture from the English Composition exam to show you what their signatures look like:

After the exams were over, we gathered all the students together to say goodbye to them. It was hard to look at all of them and say goodbye. We prayed for them and told them how much we have enjoyed teaching them and getting to know them. Anthony also beat out some drum music on a desk while the students tapped along on their desks. Afterward, one student, Julius, came to us privately and sang us a song about how we have to say goodbye now. He and many of the other students told us how hard it is for them to say goodbye too and how much they want us to come back.

Brandon made no-bake cookies for the students before they left. Here he is cooking them:

Some of the students and staff found the tiny bites they tasted to be way too sweet. But these little kids loved it!

Returning to the US

2010-07-26T10:29:00.004-04:00

We want to inform all of you when we will be making presentations in various places around the country after we return to the US.

We will be in:
Midland, MI:
-----Midland Evangelical Free Church: September 26th, we will be presenting at Faithbuilders Small Church
-----Informal gathering: September 28th at a to-be-determined location (a chance to visit and talk more about what we have been doing)
-----Midland Reformed Church: October 31st, at the church service, Anthony will preach

St Johns, MI:
-----River Terrace Christian Reformed Church: October 24th, presenting in Sunday School
-----Informal gathering at Anthony’s parents’ house on October 26th (a chance to visit and talk more about what we have been doing)

Grand Rapids, MI:
-----Calvin Christian Reformed Church: October 10th
-----Informal gathering sometime in early December (a chance to visit and talk more about what we have been doing)

Chicago, IL:
-----Family of Faith Church: October 3rd we will present and then stay for the potluck and hymnsing

Austinville, IA:
-----Austinville CRC: October 17th for MissionFest Sunday and a potluck afterward

We will share more details on the times and places of these various presentations as we get closer to the dates. Additionally, if you cannot go to one of our presentations or would like to get together with us sometime, let us know and we can work a time out.

Anyara PAG Church

2010-07-26T04:49:00.014-04:00

We went on one last visit to a church that was about a third of the way from Soroti to Lira called Anyara PAG. One of the second year students, Emmanuel, is a pastor and choir leader there.
The first excitement of the day was when Emmanuel called us at 5:45am to tell us that they were looking forward to our coming (we were planning on getting up at 6:15). Then, we got on a taxi which had a crazy driver who ran over a pig that was in the middle of the road – he didn’t even slow down when he saw it or even after he hit it. Thankfully, we didn’t hit any people and we eventually arrived safely at Emmanuel’s church.
The first thing we did was to have tea with Emmanuel and another pastor. Little kids delighted in looking at us.

They served us these little fried roll things (they’re like a roll on the inside, but the outer layer is fried), which you can see in this picture:

They told us that the literal translation of the word for these is something along the lines of “things that make the women fat.”
After tea, we headed in to church. We had forgotten how much we love to worship in these village churches on visits. The church service was such a joy, watching everyone dance and jump and clap and sing. Here are two of their great choirs:

We also love how they talk about Christians as “savedees.” They had this great some sort of animal horn instrument, which you can hear in this video:

In this picture, the guy on the left is playing it:

We also loved this joyful jumping song:

Anthony preached about suffering and how it is a part of our Christian life, not necessarily a punishment for sin. This was very meaningful for the church because it is located in an area that was a camp, where people gathered to be safe from Joseph Kony and the LRA. Emmanuel told us that people couldn’t leave the area of the camp during that time because if they did, they would be killed, so people were very fearful and many lost family members. After Anthony preached, the pastor summarized his message and some people shared what they had learned. One person said: “I used to think that my suffering was just a result of sin, but now I have been helped in knowing that is not true.”

I taught about how Christians are called to take care of the environment, how we are stewards who take care of something that belongs to God. Anthony thought you needed to see a video of me speaking even though I don't like hearing myself.

Again, the pastor summarized what I said and some people said some good things about it: “I never knew that wasting the environment was a sin to God – now I know.” and “You may think these words are too carnal, but one day, God will ask you to answer for how you cared for creation.”

Just as the service was about to end, a group of people from the president’s political party the NRM (National Resistance Movement) came into the church. The lady with them is running for parliament and had come to try to get the people in the church to vote for her. It was very strange for us, since we are used to the separation of church and state and this was a political aspirant just inviting herself to a church to campaign there. It was funny, though, because they were introducing her in the local language and the translator translated one of the things they said as: “She has come to take away our minds.”
Charles, a student who was in Emmanuel’s class, but who couldn’t come back this term due to a lack of money, lives near Anyara and came to see us at church. We ate lunch with him and Emmanuel and he told us that churches are not required to let political candidates speak in their churches and that they usually wait until after the service and go outside so only people who are interested can listen to the person.
Charles is also a youth leader at his church and we thought it was very interesting to hear what he did with the youth from his church. He told us that they meet at least once a month to do things like prayer and fasting, door-to-door evangelism, Bible studies, and choir practice. They also are doing some fundraising activities, like planting citrus trees to sell and making bricks. There was no mention of getting together to play games or have what we call “fun.”
We had a very nice lunch, though Anthony spied a cooked earwig in the rice (we figured it was just some extra protein)! Charles and Emmanuel’s mother each sent us home with a chicken. Emmanuel and his family gave us this container full of honey that they harvested themselves.

Here is a picture of the people we were with (Charles is sitting in the chair on the far right and Emmanuel is standing behind him and to the right):

As we traveled home, we saw some very needy beggars. We see beggars every day, but we keep thinking about how we can help. Just handing out money doesn’t seem like the answer. But is it the church’s job to help instead? If so, how can we join with the church in helping other people?

Around Mbale

2010-07-18T09:08:00.009-04:00

Here are some pictures from our daily life here in Mbale. The first one is of the road we live on, so we bike down this road every day to get to and from school (I’m the one on the bike there):

This next picture is of part of the inside of one of the supermarkets that we shop at for non-market products. It actually has quite a lot of variety, as you can see:

After that, we have a picture of one of the many shops in downtown Mbale. Note the little food stand on the far right and the lady carrying a box on her head. I just don’t know how people can do that!

And here is a butcher shop that is just next to the things in the above picture:

Finally, a guy making chapatti and selling it next to the road. Mine just doesn’t taste quite as good, but then again, I use a lot less oil and I can’t make it into as nice of a circle:

Church in Mbale

2010-07-18T09:01:00.005-04:00

For those of you who did not hear, there were some bombs that went off in Kampala (the capital of Uganda – 4 hours from Mbale) on the last night of the World Cup, killing around 75 people who were gathered in some restaurants to watch the game. Somali terrorists did this because they are angry that Uganda has soldiers in their country. We assure you that we are safe, but ask that you would continue to pray for the people who were injured or who lost family members. Additionally, there is always the chance that there will be more attacks, so please pray that this will not happen. There are actually people who fear even going to church because in Kampala, they are advising people to avoid congregating in large groups. The pastor today at church said some comforting things about how we do not need to be afraid because of our relationship with God. Although we don’t seek out danger, God does tell us that we will be persecuted and suffer for our faith and if that means being in possible danger by going to church, then that is okay. He mentioned how, during the time of Idi Amin, all of the Pentecostal churches in the country were forced to close. His parents and grandfather were arrested because they were found praying in a church. Amazingly, they went free after the trial, even though people who were arrested for that were often executed.
Here are a couple of pictures of our church:

On a lighter note, the pastor also told a funny story about fear. He went outside one night and saw a huge snake right outside his door. He leapt over it in surprise, but then realized that it was blocking the only way back into the house. So he ran off and found a big long stick and beat it until he was sure it was good and dead. Then he went to take a look at it…and found that it was a really nice new sweater of his that he had accidentally left outside.

This is the road we take to get to and from church. People here use bikes for so many things - look at how one of the guys in this first picture is carrying a huge bag of cassava (probably 100lbs) on his bike!

School comes to a close

2010-07-16T08:13:00.003-04:00

On Monday, we unexpectedly found out that the school year was to be cut short by a week. This meant that next week is now exam week. We had to suddenly cram two weeks worth of material into one week of class and quickly complete our exams. All this occurred because the school ran out of money. At first, the students were excited to be able to go home early, but then they realized that they only had one week to study for exams and then they weren’t so excited.

I did speak in this last week of chapel services as well, on the topic of lament and how we are allowed to and invited to lament when we suffer. As part of this, I taught the students the song “Precious Lord, Take My Hand” which involved my singing the first verse all by myself before others tried to join in. Needless to say, that was kind of nerve-wracking since I think the last time I sang alone in front of people like that was when I was maybe eight years old. Anthony claims that I sang really well. Later, we practiced that song and “In Christ Alone” with the students so they can remember it well and hopefully teach it to their churches someday. It was truly wonderful to sing with all of them and to see how excited they are about learning new songs.

It will be very difficult to say goodbye to our students, who we have grown to love. We will miss hearing them singing in chapel, their good questions in class, and simply seeing them wandering around the PTC campus. They have already been telling us how much they will miss us too and how they have appreciated our teaching.

Here is a picture of some of the cute kids that live on the school's compound:

On another random note, one of the lecturers killed a (small) poisonous snake on the school's compound the other night, which is never a cool thing. We think maybe it was a Black Mamba because it was black and not a cobra.

John Calvin

2010-07-16T08:06:00.005-04:00

Well, being at a non-reformed school, people did not know that July 12th was John Calvin’s birthday (who is John Calvin anyway?). But being goofy graduates of Calvin College and Calvin Theological Seminary, we felt that we needed to introduce our brothers and sisters to this important figure from church history. Of course, it was also Brandon/David/Wilson’s birthday too, so that gave us a good excuse to celebrate.
For our celebration, I baked three cakes and decorated them in ways that commemorated the event: one for Brandon (but everyone at school calls him David or Wilson, hence B. David Wilson):

One for John Calvin:

And then a third one with the word “Grace” on it since Calvin emphasized God’s grace – grace in a) giving us what we don’t deserve: salvation, and b) grace in not giving us what we do deserve: punishment for our sin.

After giving a brief explanation of who John Calvin was and why he is important in the history of the church, we sang to Brandon, then ate cake and watched an episode of the famous new nature documentary “Planet Earth.” The students loved seeing what changing seasons look like, with spring, summer, fall, and winter. It is almost inconceivable for them to imagine the landscape changing so much within a year. They also thought it was great when the baby wood ducks jumped out of their hole way up in a tree and then bounced when they hit the ground.

Food posts

2010-07-08T07:28:00.002-04:00

We have some new food posts here: http://sarasglobalcooking.blogspot.com
Banoffee
Endless maize (maize and beans)