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Archive for the ‘Traveling Thoughts’ Category

End of the Road!

Posted in Traveling Thoughts, tagged , , on April 28, 2011| 1 Comment »

Even the 7th day of creation came to an end! So does our road trip of April 2011. Tomorrow we start a weekend of training, Sherrylee in Malibu and I in Seattle. Then we will be at the Pepperdine Bible Lectures until Friday next week and then will start on our way home.

So far, we have driven 3332 miles–and we are not quite finished.  Let me just bring this little series to an end though with these thoughts about driving long distances!

1.     If you can set your own agenda and if you have enough time so that you don’t have to rush from one spot to another, then driving is a very relaxing way to travel!

2.    If you can travel with your wife or your best friend or your family–or all of the above–then driving is a wonderful way to travel. The time to talk, to listen to each other, to be quiet together–it’s all almost vanished with the hectic of our lives!

3.   If you like to be spontaneous–like “turn around, Mark, and let’s talk to those cowboys!!”–that’s really hard to do in an airplane.  Or “let’s eat at that old stage coach stop in Eureka!” OK, but I thought you wanted to . . . . it doesn’t matter . . . . let’s eat there!”

4.   If you like really seeing where you are going.  Walking is the best, but next to walking, driving let’s you see so much more. I’ve flown over Utah several times but had no idea of its beauty until we drove through it on this trip.

5.   It can be cheaper–a lot cheaper–to drive. Even at $4.00/gallon, we got about 400 miles for $50. That’s a lot better than two airplane tickets!!

I’ve noticed that young families rarely think road trips are even possible any more.  When I was a boy, my family went yearly to Kansas from Fort Worth to visit grandparents–that’s about all the vacation my dad got from work.

Three times, however, we did 4-5 day trips through Texas–five of us in a non-air-conditioned car–but I remember the adventure, the excitement, singing in the car–all kinds of wonderful things about each of those trips.

Think about the memories you can make on a road trip with your kids–and maybe it will be more appealing to you.  You can play the alphabet game, the license plate game, 20 questions–especially on the Bible–and you can even sing together!  On our day trips to Yosemite with Anna and Olivia and we’ve cranked up the opening song of Phantom of the Opera and   until we are almost voiceless.  They even sang Roy Orbison with me–or to humor me, I’m not really sure.

What great times in the car. Go take a test drive some Sunday afternoon. Just drive 50 miles out into the country and stop somewhere unplanned for a snack and drive a different route home.  It may change your life!

Thanks for going on this great trip with Sherrylee and me. We’ve enjoyed it a lot.

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Don’t Go To Yosemite By Yourself!

Posted in Traveling Thoughts, tagged , , , , on April 22, 2011| 1 Comment »

Sherrylee, Anna, Norah, and Olivia in Yosemite

We have always wanted to go to Yosemite, but to be able to see it for the first time with our daughter Emily and the three gkids was just more wonderfull-ness than can be described.

On Tuesday this week we all packed up and drove into the park. Only Sherrylee and little Norah got carsick on the winding, mountain roads!  But we stopped often enough to avoid in-car disasters.

Driving through Yosemite valley was breathtaking! Many of the roads in the park are not yet open, but we were able to do the entire valley loop, seeing Half Dome, Bridalveil Fall and many other lesser falls. They say the falls this year will be extraordinary because of all the snow during the winter.

Our favorite adventure was hiking up to the Lower Yosemite Fall—actually, hikingis an exaggeration. We walked a very well-paved path, the girls jumping on every boulder or trying to walk every downed log near the path.  At the bottom of the falls, the enveloping spray made the moment cold and damp—but one never to be forgotten.

On Wednesday, we decided to stay in the vacation rental in Groveland. As they drove in on Monday,  Anna (8) had seen the large Iron Door Saloon sign—the oldest saloon in California—and she declared, “Oh, I love saloons!”  She didn’t get that from her grandparents—but we had no choice but to eat there.

The girls spent most of the day collecting “jewels” which were really quartz stones in various colors. Olivia decided they were now rich—which her dad will be glad to hear!

Emily and Norah at the Lower Yosemite Falls

Sherrylee and I had rented the house through Friday, but Emily needed to get home Thursday to help Tim with the Good Friday service and preparations for Easter. We all wanted to see the giant sequoia, but they were too far away to do and return to our house in Groveland. Emily and I decided that she would  see the trees on Thursday on her way home, and we would finish our rental, then see them on Friday as we drove to her house.

Sherrylee heard the plan and thought we were crazy. She said we just needed to leave together—that being together was the most important thing—and she was right!

That’s what we did. We packed up a day early, left together and spent a wonderful couple of hours seeing creations of God that truly deserve the word awesome!

We only saw what we could easily walk to with the children, but to think that some of these trees were seedlings about the time Israel was going into captivity. Others could have been planted by King David—that’s how old these trees are.

One cluster of sequoia is called The Bachelor and Three Graces. Nobody wants to be alone. My understanding is that the sequoia are all connected via a root network. They are really a family of trees, quite interdependent on each other.  I like that.

It's not good for man to be alone!

You know, God didn’t create Yosemite alone. He had his co-parts, the Word and the Spirit, and maybe the angels—I don’t know about that. When he wanted to bless the world, he created a whole nation of people to walk out of Egypt. Jesus didn’t walk around by Himself either. Paul took an entourage wherever he went on his missionary journeys.

Driving through Utah, Nevada, and these sparsely settled areas in Northern California, we have seen many, many houses, trailers, double-wides that were miles from the next one. Sherry and I have asked aloud a hundred times, “What kind of person lives so alone? Do they have to? What kind of life do they live?”

It wasn’t good from the beginning for Man to be alone!  We need family, we need neighbors, and we need the community of saints.  God just doesn’t do things by Himself!

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Across Utah and Nevada and Sherrylee’s Amazing Escape!

Posted in Traveling Thoughts, tagged , , , on April 20, 2011| 6 Comments »

Canyonland in Utah

We left beautiful Pagosa Springs, Colorado–in a frosty temperature of 18 degrees–and started west. I knew that we were going to spend all of one driving day crossing Utah and then all of the next day crossing Nevada, with our final destination being the Tahoe area of California—but I had no idea what to expect. We had never been in either state—except for flying through their hub airports.

I had flown once to Seattle via Salt Lake City, and I remember looking out the window of the airplane and thinking that I was looking at moonscape below—the most barren and the most unusual landscape that I had ever seen—but I wasn’t quite sure exactly where we were in the air, so I didn’t know if we were driving toward the moon or not!

Those two days of driving , however, were two of the most fascinating and interesting days of driving that I have ever done.

Millions of years ago—give or take a few days—a large body of water we now call Lake Bonneville covered much of the present state of Utah as well as parts of Nevada and Idaho. At the bottom of the lake was sand rich in iron ore, so when the lake was gone, it left a lot of red sand that then under pressure became sandstone. Over the years the wind and the rain have eroded the large sandstone rocks to carve out huge and beautiful cliffs and gorges, mesas and canyons, arches and every other imaginable shape rock—not just in one place like you might think of the Grand Canyon being, but across the whole state of Utah. We drove over 400 miles across the whole state with our mouths gaping (I know, that’s not a pleasant thought, is it!) at the beauty God created

What was God thinking as He spoke Utah into existence? Maybe, let’s just see what We can do with sand. After all, look what we did with mesquite trees in Texas and what We did ex nihilo in Kansas! We already did mountains in Colorado, so let’s try just sandstone in Utah!  Great choice!.

Nevada stop on the Loneliest Road in America

The next day we took Highway 50 across Nevada, called “The Loneliest Road in the United States!”  It was not the ugliest road, but the towns are few and far between. Across the entire state, we ascended   one beautiful mountain pass, going down the other side to enter into an even more beautiful valley with another range of snow-crested mountains right in front.

This is the route the Pony Express riders took!  No wonder that mail service only lasted about eighteen months. Those passes in the winter must have been miserable riding conditions. Add hostile cowboys and Indians, and it is amazing the mail ever arrived in Sacramento—but it almost always did—an amazing story!

It was also the route of the Wells Fargo stages, so whenever there was a town, it was typically also a stagecoach and pony express stop as well.

As we were going by one box canyon, Sherrylee saw a large herd of cows being rounded up and tended by a group of cowboys on horses about 500 yards back off the road.  We drove by—but, of course, I was persuaded to turn around, so we drove back and took this gravel road  up to a barbwire fence about 300 yards from this group of working cowboys. This was going to be a great foto op, I thought, until Sherry decided to open the gate and go up and talk to the cowboys!!

Sherrylee approaching the herd!

Well, I decided to stay and just take pictures, but she walked about 100 yards toward the herd, when suddenly a group of about fifty cows seemed to spot her impudence and started heading down toward her. I wouldn’t say it was a stampede, but they were not walking toward her either.

Well, she sees them coming her way and starts—well, I wouldn’t say it was a dead run, but it was not walking either. She gets to the fence, throws it open and gets through it about 60 seconds ahead of the cows. She can’t get the gate quite back together, what with her feet moving so fast through the gate, so I quickly put the gate up and lock it down—as we had found it!

The herd –except for one calf—begins heading a bit more to the west and one of the cowboys follows them down and runs them back away from the fence.  All the while, Sherrylee is hollering at him, “Did I do this? Oh, I’m so sorry! Did I do this?”—thinking that she had at the best created a lot of work for these cowboys.

He came over and told her, no, no! The cows weren’t really interested in her at all! In fact, the cowboys were driving the whole herd down that way because they were finished branding and were turning them out into new grazing areas. Sherry and I had dodged a bullet!

The cowboy stopped and visited with us for a while. Turns out he is an electrical linesman and just does a little cowpunching on the side. In fact, he had brought his whole family—including children—so this 4-5 day event was their family’s spring break adventure!

He was very nice. They let Sherrylee go and promised not to warn the cowboys working other herds ahead of us!  And we had a great adventure and a story we will laugh and enjoy for the rest of our lives!

Sherrylee resting in Tahoe

We rested Sunday then in South Lake Tahoe, going to church, then sitting by the lake and enjoying the beauty of the world God created.

I thought about how much dust we had seen! Rocks are just compressed dust, the sand is big dust, now the salt in the Great Salt Basin is a different kind of dust, but smashed down, it is dust also.  Everything eventually returns to dust. Dust to dust! My dust too!

But I don’t think mountains sit around and marvel at the beauty of the alpine lakes, nor do the canyons marvel at the colorful rock with which they are created.  No, it is the imaginative, creative image of God in me that marvels—not my dust! I

It is that image of God that recognizes the Creator and praises Him for wonders of nature—all the gifts of His Hand. Thank you, Lord.

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Don’t Let Anyone Steal the Mountains!

Posted in Traveling Thoughts, tagged , , , , , on April 15, 2011| 2 Comments »

We used to sing lots of songs that drew on nature to praise God, much as David did in his psalms. I have been trying to think of modern praise songs that draw on the beauty of nature as the illustration of God’s goodness and power, but haven’t thought of many whose primary metaphor is nature! Some, like Shout to the Lord, use the psalms as a basis for their lyrics and would certainly fall into this category. You probably know many more.

Some great hymns like How Great Thou Art, This Is My Father’s World, For the Beauty of the Earth, All Creatures of Our God and King, Fairest Lord Jesus, The Spacious Firmament, The Heaven’s Declare the Glory of God, even Eternal Father, Strong to Save have been sung by Christians for decades, if not centuries, because the creation was intended to not only show us but to convince us of the divinity of the One Creator God! Science has stolen nature from Christianity in the last hundred years, as if beauty and majesty were an accident.  But you and I don’t believe that. We believe that every single wildflower, every sparrow, every grain of sand on the seashore is the expression of God’s gracious love and of his absolute and ultimate power! Perhaps Christians should reclaim nature for its own hymnody again!

San Juan Mountains

Here in Colorado, the mountains have overwhelmed us. I’ve been thinking today about the song Unto the Hills which has been a favorite of mine for almost my entire life—pretty strange, growing up in the flat plains of Texas, but it’s true!

Here are the words of the song, which, of course, is taken from Psalm 121:

Unto the hills around do I lift up
My longing eyes;
O whence for me shall my salvation come,
From whence arise?
From God the Lord doth come my certain aid,
From God the Lord, who heaven and earth hath made.

He will not suffer that thy foot be moved:
Safe shalt thou be.
No careless slumber shall His eyelids close,
Who keepeth thee.
Behold, He sleepeth not, He slumbereth ne’er,
Who keepeth Israel in His holy care.

Jehovah is Himself thy keeper true,
Thy changeless shade;
Jehovah thy defense on thy right hand
Himself hath made.
And thee no sun by day shall ever smite;
No moon shall harm thee in the silent night.

From every evil shall He keep thy soul,
From every sin;
Jehovah shall preserve thy going out,
Thy coming in.
Above thee, watching, He whom we adore
Shall keep thee henceforth, yea, for evermore.

And don’t you love the verses in The Psalms that use the mountains and rivers to express extreme praise for God—like Psalm 98!

Let the sea resound, and everything in it,
the world, and all who live in it.
8 Let the rivers clap their hands,
let the mountains sing together for joy;
9 let them sing before the LORD!

When you visit the Konigsee in Germany, a large alpine lake surrounded by huge mountains, the little electric boat stops in the middle of the lake and one of the crew pulls out a trumpet and begins to play a simple melody—pausing after every phrase for you to hear the mountains echoing every single note of the song—not just once, but several times.  The mountains multiply the music!

I think of this when I think of the mountains singing as the rivers clap their hands. The mountains are multiplying the music of the saints, sending it up to God from the highest places.  And the rivers are clapping their joyful accord! Now that is praise!

We leave Colorado tomorrow and are on the road for a couple of days, so it will be sketchy as to whether I can get online. If not, I will see you again Sunday or Monday and we’ll catch up!

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Airplane Films From London to Dallas

Posted in Christian Culture, Traveling Thoughts, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on November 27, 2010| Leave a Comment »

A ten-hour plane ride is ten-hour block of time—a rare opportunity!  Many people sleep it away, but from London to Dallas, you fly during the European and US daylight hours, so sleeping just doesn’t make any sense to me.  Sometimes I read, but I almost always check out the movie offerings. For me, those ten hours are an opportunity to watch movies that I probably would never pay money to see.

 I’m not necessarily looking for entertainment. As most of you know, I taught film and used popular culture extensively in my classes as a professor at Oklahoma Christian. I’ve always been interested in what popular culture tells us about the world around us.  So here is what I watched on Thursday as I was flying back home from London—with just a few review-like or random thoughts about each piece.

 Glee: The Pilot and one early episode – I had seen all kinds of headlines about this TV show since it appeared on TV screens in 2009, but I had never watched it. Glee is about a high school glee club, its members, and the faculty and students of a mid-western high school.  Much is absolutely predictable: the jocks vs. everyone, the beauties vs. the nerds, you know the groupings from your own high school days—so how could it be any other way! The show is meant to be optimistic and fun while dealing with problems of relationships, of emerging identities, and a pretty sizable dose of teen sexuality.  That sounds like high school to me also.  Here are my questions about its portrayal of high school in 2010:  are today’s highschoolers really that open and casual about sex, and are the teachers in the high schools so much like the adolescents?  It’s not a show for young children, maybe not for your teens if you like them sheltered from all of the possibilities out there, but it might be educational to you parents if you are of the protected variety yourselves.

 Vampire Diaries: Pilot  The massive interest in vampire stories is pretty interesting to me. Vampire stories have always included lots of suspense, sexual tension, questions about immortality, and, of course, the choice of life or death.  Perhaps the “hooking up” generation needs something edgy to make relationship stories interesting to them.  I did not see anything in the pilot that was the slightest bit different from the Twilight Series movies—just a TV version of the same. Maybe it has grown from the beginning, but I’m probably not going to find out—unless next year they have the second season on the airplane menu.

 Winter’s Bone (2010) This was a very raw portrayal of rural life of the poorest in almost anywhere in the deep South. The language, the morals, the requirements for staying alive –well there is very little that is civilized portrayed in this film. It has the feel, sometimes even the music, of Deliverance. Jennifer Lawrence plays Ree Dolly, a seventeen-year-old girl, trying to protect, and deliver her crazy mother and two younger siblings from losing their home because their father is running from the law for cooking meth.  The portrayal of the backwoods mafia families and codes of conduct is frightening. Ree’s determination and courage are the only redemptive values portrayed.  Not an easy film to watch, but not a bad film.

 Getting Low (2009)  I saw the trailer to this film at the theater years ago, but the trailer made it look like a goofy movie about an eccentric hermit who wants to throw his own funeral party.  The previews did this film no service; it was much better than the trailers portrayed.  Robert Duval just never stops being a great actor! And he has a special affinity for roles that are mildly moral, religious, even Christian—just think about Tender Mercies (1983) and The Apostle(1997). The story is really about a man who has jailed himself away in a cabin for forty years for a sin he committed in his youth. Now, in old age, he wants to confess his sin and be forgiven.  Sissy Spacek, Bill Murray, and Lucas Black all do outstanding jobs as well in this fine little film.

Book of Eli (2010) Much has been written about this film, so I will be brief. Denzel Washington is and has always been one of the best. Most of this film is rather bleak and often violent, but the moments when Eli has his emotions called out are just as good as the unforgettable moments in Glory when the new, young actor Washington, steals the movie.  And The Bible gets good press in this movie; even the villain knows the power of the Words, and like all Satans, wants to use them for his own power and glory.  There is no doubt about the outcome.

 Airplane movies are usually cleaned up, so I have no idea what the theater version might contain that I did not see.  That’s my disclaimer in case you rent any of these and are shocked that I would watch it. I do, however, believe there is a difference in watching to learn and watching to be entertained—but that’s a topic for later.

 Happy Thanksgiving Weekend to you!

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November 22-24 : Last Stop!

Posted in Christian Missions, Traveling Thoughts, tagged , , , , , , on November 23, 2010| Leave a Comment »

The city of Rothenburg ob der Taube was first settled in 960 A.D.  OK, stop and think about that for a moment. That is 532 years before Columbus discovered America.  I hardly know how to relate to dates like that.  But here is the date that really caused me to pause and think:  the first Christian church was built in Rothenburg in 968. 

Now I know that the 10th century is 900 years after Paul started churches in Turkey, Greece, and other places, but what that means is that people in this valley next to the Taube River have had some exposure to the name of Jesus and the story of Jesus for over one thousand years.

One thousand years is time enough for many things to happen, for instance:

  • the simple story of Jesus can morph into a complicated, unknowable story, one that only seminary-educated people are supposed to or expected to know.
  • the community of Christ can evolve into a state-organized community listed primarily on rolls for tax collection purposes.
  • the faith of those that would leave the civilized world to build a church in the middle of paganism can evolve into a kind of Christian paganism–a phrase that to me means simple disbelief of the real story but a disbelief described  in words that were formerly Christian words.
  • the buildings constructed on the backs of and at the expense of several generations of peasants, a sacrifice made because of very simple faith but devout faith, these buildings are now museums, some museums of culture and others museums of faith–not much difference really.
  • the values preached and practiced by those earliest Christians have had time to simply be absorbed into the culture–no longer recognized as Christian values, just good values.

All of these thoughts, rather than being reason for discouragement, can also be taken as a challenge for the Christian warrior–not an image we really use very much any more.  At the Euro-American Retreat in Rothenburg, there are about 135 people from twenty different countries, many of whom qualify as Christian warriors though.

There are American missionaries from Albania, from France, from Belgium, from Austria. There are national evangelists from Romania,  from Ukraine, from Italy, from Germany. Then there are the foot soldiers, not missionaries or preachers, but Christians who live in the middle of pagan, of secular, of formerly Christian and formerly Communistic societies, who are here to be encouraged and strengthened, so that they can go back and fight some more!

That’s one of the reasons we love being on mission fields with people who live in mission fields. They know they are in a battle, they know that they are fighting against immense odds. Nothing would suggest that they will win the battle–nothing except their absolute faith in the Victory of Jesus. 

Thanks to Phil Jackson from Missions Resource Network for keeping this retreat alive. It began as an American military retreat when Europe was full of American soldiers. Phil has developed a quality program for all Christians and a growing number now recognize the benefit of spending these 4-5 days together.  Let me recommend it to you!

Tomorrow, Sherrylee, Cassie, and I leave for home via an overnight in London. We are going to take Cassie to the Tower of London and to Phantom of the Opera.  She may remember London more in the future, but I believe she will be shaped more by the conversations with Bill Wilson, with the van Erps, with the Brazles–both couples–and with the workers in Hildesheim. I’m so glad she is with us in Rothenburg; I want her to be a true believer in the Victory for the rest of her life!!

Thanks for going with us on this journey.  We will talk again next week after we recover from Thanksgiving.

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November 19-21- A Northern German Homecoming!

Posted in Christian Missions, Traveling Thoughts, tagged , , , on November 22, 2010| 3 Comments »

We left Hans and Aans van Erp on Friday to drive to Hildesheim/Hannover, Germany.  Going to these cities is like going home for Sherrylee and me.  Hannover was our home from 1973-1979 and the place where all of our children were born.  But as is often the case, going “home”  to a place you have left is never really possible.  The conflict between nostalgia and reality brings with it some pain as well as a lot of joy.

The painful part is that the church we planted in Hannover in 1973 no longer exists. It grew from nothing to perhaps 80+ in the first 25 years and was truly one of the largest and best churches of Christ in Europe, but then the devil got a foot in the door. I don’t know whether it started with jealousy in the leadership or in the failure of some key marriages, but within about five years, the church fell apart.  Most of the members are in other churches, so they did not lose faith; nevertheless, the sudden demise–even though we had not been a part of the church officially since 1979–makes me sad.

The good news is that the church of Christ in Hildesheim and the church in Peine were both daughter churches of Hannover, and the daughters live on and are doing very well.  Randy and Katie Smelser, sent by the independent Christian church,  have a wonderful group in Peine, which includes several former Hannover members.

The story of the work in Hildesheim starts many years ago when we lived in Hannover. We actually organized some attempts to make contacts in Hildesheim during the 1970s. Then in the 80s, we worked together with the Hannover church to conduct yearly LST projects in Hildesheim. No group was meeting there regularly, but several of the Hannover members began a Bible study group in Hildesheim with some of the LST readers and their friends.

I don’t know which year it was that Don Roehrkasse and Randy Smelser  both left their work in Hannover to begin the works in Peine and Hildesheim, but it has been probably about 15 years ago–maybe twenty.  A great spirit of cooperation existed then between the three churches and continues today between Peine and Hildesheim who have quarterly combined services to support each other.

Sherrylee and worshipped in Hildesheim on Sunday, Sherry teaching the children’s class and I preached. I used the story of the possessed man in Mark 5 and set it parallel to our own story described in Ephesians 2.  One German man was telling me afterwards that the healed man in Mark 5 was the first missionary sent by Jesus. I had never thought of that, but Jesus did send him to his home to tell his family and friends what Jesus had done for him.  Check that thought out and see what you think.

The Hildesheim church is full of young people, has several complete young families, and there were at least two different sets of seekers that had begun attending recently.  I had the feeling that the group was alive and reaching out–that’s probably redundant, isn’t it!  Alive churches are always reaching out. 

Just as we were ready to leave a German couple who are dear friends of ours wanted to talk with us unter vier Augen (under four eyes= privately).  I thought to myself, “Oh no, what is going wrong in their life?? Please, Lord, not them!”  I gladly repented of my Euro-pessimism as they talked to us about wanting to use their retirement years for God and what opportunities did we know of and what would we recommend.  I loved that conversation because it represents a boldness and maturity of faith in these German Christians that we don’t often see in Christians anywhere.

God is working in Germany and in Europe. He is working slowly and patiently, but if we abandon His work here, then we will miss out on the opportunity to be His servants, His vessels here. I’m glad that we have been a part of the European work for forty years now. In spite of the heartache and the wish that the harvest would come sooner, I’m glad that we and the Roehrkasses and the Smelsers and the Brazles and the Sullivans and the Wilsons, and the many others of our time, and those who came to Europe before us–and especially for those who are coming now after us, I am thrilled to have been used by God in Europe.

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November 15-18: Great People and Great Stories!

Posted in Traveling Thoughts, tagged , , , , on November 19, 2010| Leave a Comment »

I am always hesitant to tell other people’s stories because I believe it is really their story to tell, but in this post, I want to introduce you to some great people and at least hint at their stories enough that you might want to find out more about them. You will be blessed if you do–as we have been.

After leaving Chemnitz and Leipzig, Sherrylee and I drove to Mainz, home of Johann Gutenberg who invented the printing press and very near Worms, where Luther was accused and tried for his reformation heresies. (Remember that the Diet of Worms was the event, not the punishment!)

But our reason for going to Mainz was to visit with Alex and Cass Huffman. We saw them last almost two years ago just after Alex had accepted a research fellow-type position at the Max Planck Institute, one of the most prestigious research institutes in Germany. They were looking forward to exploring Europe, to an adventure for a couple of years–which is what they have had, but not the one they anticipated.

Not long after we saw them, they became pregnant, and about five months into the pregnancy they found out that their baby’s heart had not developed; in fact, only one side of it was fully formed.  That began for them a journey that has taken them through difficult medical choices, difficult ethical choices, through mountaintop moments of faith as well as valleys of angst and despair. 

Little baby Noah Autumn Huffman was born seven months ago, has already had two major surgeries to re-construct her heart so that it could function adequately for several years. She has at least one more major surgery looming–but having held her myself and watched her play in the Huffman’s small German apartment last Tuesday, I just want to say, she is a happy, precious little person–and Alex and Cass are people of great faith.

Alex and Cass have lived each day of Noah’s life, knowing that she could die at any minute, yet they see the hand of God in everything. Their move to Germany brought them into a medical system where their insurance completely covers the huge bills they have incurred. The procedure for treating little Noah is called the Giessen Procedure–because it was perfected at the Giessen Medical University, just one hour away from Mainz by some of the world’s leading children’s cardiologists, all of which they have had access to because God led them to Germany–not for the adventure they imagined, but for a faith journey that has transformed the rest of their lives.  If you want to read the details of their story, you can find Alex and Cass on Facebook and read their blogs.

We picked up Cassie, our granddaughter,  in Frankfurt on Wednesday, thrilled that she is joining us for the last week of our travels.  Our first stop with her was lunch in Cologne, Germany, with Bill Wilson and the Uli Steiniger family.  Bill has served as a missionary in Cologne since 1969. His wife Deanna died five years ago, so Bill is retiring and moving back to the States sometime this year.  He has been–and will continue to be–one of God’s great and faithful servants.  The church in Cologne has elders, so he is leaving behind a mature group of Christians.

Then we drove to a little Belgian town south of Eindhoven, Netherlands, to visit with Hans and Aans van Erp, two of our dearest friends in Europe. Thirty-five years ago, Hans visited the church in Hannover that we had planted, which started them on a faith journey. They were baptized by Tom and Dottie Schulz not long thereafter. In 1988, they invited Let’s Start Talking to help them plant a new church in Eindhoven, a church which has thrived and continues to thrive until today. The church has 50-60 members, lots of young families, and great diversity which reflects the general population in the Netherlands.

For the first twenty-five years, Hans and Aans carried the burden of leadership in this new church alone, but in the last ten years or so, other Dutch Christians have stepped forward to share the responsibilities.  We have shared the joys and struggles of three sons, one of which is part of a mission team in Ghent, Belgium. We have shared their hospitality many, many times and each time seems a little sweeter. That is just the way it should be with Christians, isn’t it!

Yesterday, we drove to Antwerp and had lunch with lifetime friends and long-time missionaries Paul and Carol Brazle. They have been faithful in Antwerp for almost 30 years–maybe longer–and I was impressed in our conversation about how they continue to find new ways to reach out to their community. As with many places in Europe, a large group of African Christians now meets in their building and they are exploring ways to nurture and grow the relationship between these two churches, spiritually of one spirit, but culturally vastly different.

And, finally, then last night we had supper with Luk and Holly Brazle–yes, related. Luk is Paul’s nephew and the son of Mark and Jill Brazle who worked in Belgium as missionaries for over 15 years.  Luk is one of the very special breed of second generation missionaries.  They are four years into a new church plant in Ghent and doing a great job.  I was impressed to find that Luk had just sent out a fairly lengthy assessment questionnaire to many people who are connected to his work, trying to help him know what his own strengths and weaknesses were.  What maturity it takes to be willing to ask others to evaluate your work.

Nothing is more refreshing than to be in the presence of people of great faith! We all still live within a great cloud of witnesses and can be encouraged by them in our own daily struggles. Maybe you want to just go see one of your faith friends–or call one up today–just for the joy it brings.

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November 14-16: Can A Church Be Exemplary in Germany??

Posted in Other, Traveling Thoughts, tagged , , , , , , on November 18, 2010| Leave a Comment »

I’ve been computer-less for the last three days, so I know I’m a little behind, but you are going to forgive me when you read about the great church, I want to tell you about today.

On Sunday the 14th, while all of America was asleep, Sherrylee and I worshipped with the church of Christ in Chemnitz, Germany–a vibrant, thriving, encouraging family of God that I can’t wait to tell you about.

But the story begins in 1990 with our first visit to the same city. We traveled with Daryl and Gail Nash into what just a few months before had been Karl-Marx-Stadt. As we drove into the city, the big communist sign had butcher paper across it with the name CHEMNITZ in magic marker.

Daryl and Gail and their daughter Morgan moved to Chemnitz in1991 and began a wonderful experiment in tentmaking missions. We opened a private language school in Chemnitz named ABC English Language School which Daryl and Gail operated for almost a decade.  The idea was to provide them financial support AND to grow so that the school could hire more Christian teachers to come and support them as well, creating a self-funded mission team.

At its zenith, the school supported about eight people and opened a second branch in Zwickau, Germany. Of course, Gail and Daryl began worshipping in Chemnitz with one other person who had been baptized by Reiner Kallus in Oelsnitz–a small group of Christians who had migrated from the Lutheran church almost immediately after the collapse of the wall through Reiner’s efforts.

Mostly because of the potential and because of the Nashes in Chemnitz, it wasn’t long until Larry and Pam Sullivan decided to move to Chemnitz and focus their full-time efforts with the newly-formed church. Then just a few years later, Jack and JoAnn McKinney, former missionaries in Switzerland and retired from Harding University, moved to Chemnitz for about five years to help the new congregation mature.

Somewhere in all of this Clyde and Gwen Antwine, former missionaries in Germany and then teaching missions at Oklahoma Christian, befriended the Sullivans and began coming each year to help them and encourage them. Clyde became the head of the Helpers In Missions internship program at Memorial Road Church of Christ, so he began sending interns to Chemnitz regularly.

And, of course, Let’s Start Talking had been sending teams each year from the beginning. The LST teams worked mostly with students at the ABC English school who wanted the extra experience in English.

Now almost twenty years later, the church is 50-60 people, mostly Germans (which is sometimes unusual), lots of young people, young families with young children, and with German leadership–in other words, a very healthy, growing, and encouraging congregation. 

The Nashes left twelve years ago, ABC English closed, and the Sullivans have done such a good job that they are preparing to move to Leipzig in the next year to help with a new church plant there.  Karen Neel, who came as an ABC English teacher originally, is teaching at a private school and continues to provide an evangelistic spirit to the church, the Antwines continue to send HIM workers as the church requests, and LST is still a regular part of the church’s plan for reaching new people.

I couldn’t help but asking myself why Chemnitz has continued to grow and has become such a strong church while so many other efforts in Europe are either stagnant or have failed completely, and I keep coming back to one major difference. Of course the only real answer is that God has acted mightily here, but from a purely practical side, I think that the difference has been the fact that Chemnitz has been a large team effort–not just a team effort, but a large team effort, which is so rare in Europe.

I’ve written about this once earlier this year in the series on Great Churches, so you might look back and see a more exhaustive look at the idea, but I think Chemnitz is another example of what could be done in Europe with lots of people over a longer period of time with sustained efforts–and much prayer!

We left Chemnitz on Sunday and visited with Karen Abercrombie, who with her husband Mark and the Sullivans, are starting the new work in Leipzig. I hope many of you will find ways to join them in this work and that God will bless this new work.  Perhaps He looks down and says, “Well, they do care after all. Lots of my people care about Leipzig!”‘

We left Leipzig and drove toward Mainz where we visited with Alex and Cass Huffman and their baby girl Noah.  You won’t believe the story they have . . . .

PS. Don’t forget that I’m posting pictures as we go on my Facebook page. Sorry, I can’t get them off my phone to add to the blog directly.

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November 12 – The Train and A Blessing

Posted in Other, Traveling Thoughts on November 15, 2010| 2 Comments »

I love riding the trains in Europe. We needed to get from Budapest, Hungary, to Dresden, Germany which is only about 500 miles, but it is through Hungary, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, and then barely into Germany. Although there is a system of highways somewhat equivalent to the US Interstate system, the tell-tale sign is when I looked it up on Mapquest, the response was, “You can’t get there from here!”

I also looked at flying, but that would have meant about a $400 ticket and flying through Frankfurt, which would have taken us almost the same length of time it took to get to Dresden on the train for less than half the price. Plus the advantages of train travel in Europe, for instance:

  • You can look out the windows and see beautiful landscape, villages, cities, and people!  Much of our route from Budapest to Dresden was along the Danube River and was just breathtakingly beautiful.
  • You have lots of leg room, so you sit so much more comfortably. We actually had not only our seats, but the seats turned toward us in front of us, so Sherrylee propped her feet up on that seat–with plastic underneath, of course, and I could cross my legs without banging the seat in front and getting dirty looks from the passenger in front of me.
  • Just before we got on the train, I went to the kiosk in Budapest and spent my last Hungarian florints on a “feast.” It was only bottled water and snacks for the trip. We call it a feast because one summer in Europe when Philip and Ben were much younger–maybe 10 and 8, we took a train trip together. We bought a feast as we called it of all the snack food that we probably shouldn’t have because Mom wasn’t around to make us eat yoghurt or something else healthy–you know, kinda playing the man card!  Back then, you rode in compartments with closed doors, so we started the trip with one all to ourselves. At each stop, the boys would start playing or being loud Americans and, as we anticipated, nobody ever joined us in our compartment. I’m not sure I’m proud of that, but it makes a fun memory for all of us.
  • It was a 9 hour trip from Budapest to Dresden, but I read almost a whole book–it just feels like quiet, comfortable stolen time while you travel by train, and I highly recommend it!

When we arrived in Dresden, we expected one blessing and received another. Randy Carroll, missionary in Dresden for over nine years now, was going to meet us at the train station and take us over to the airport where we would pick up a rental car for the rest of our travels. Randy, however, was sick, so his sweet wife Brianna came and met us and got us to the airport.  Then she rode with us to Chemnitz, about an hour away, where we were to have supper with all of the workers there.

The Carrolls have been faithful servants in Dresden for a long time. For a variety of reasons, they will be returning to the States next year, so we were able to have a long talk as we drove about re-entry, about third culture children, and just about how they feel about their work.  It is not perhaps our main reason for coming to Europe, but we always are blessed ourselves with the chance to meet these heroes of faith, and if we can share from our own life experiences a little, then perhaps we are a blessing to them as well.

I can’t wait to tell you about Chemnitz and Leipzig.  Look for the report on that visit tomorrow.

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