The Lindsey Visit

We could never fail to mention our overwhelming fun we had with Lindsey over the past seventeen days. We had goals to do a lot of things with her, and accomplished most of them! The first big thing we did was go to a pumpkin patch and pick a few of those. We all had a blast! Earlier that same day, we ate at Chick-Fil-A (one of our new favorites–delicious food, very clean, born-again Christian owned, and closed on Sunday) in Shrewsberry because we had a couple coupons for free sandwiches. It just happened to be their fifth anniversary week, so they had a few fun things that afternoon. Lindsey was able to see a couple of “cows” in the restaurant.

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Just look at that smile on her face!
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Andrea and Lindsey also had a few baking days...

Lindsey also met some new friends…

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Visiting a farm with Hannah, Catherine, and Olivia Turner
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An evening with Jenna and Alyssa Starr
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Raking leaves with Kate McCleary

Sunday night was our “last hurrah” before she left.  The Mullers, missionaries to Mongolia, came and reported to our church just before they head back to the field early next month.  They are from Fairhaven, so they were able to take Lindsey back with them.  We had a lot of fun and fellowship with the Mullers and Eebee (a college friend from Mongolia) Sunday afternoon and evening.  We invited them to our home for lunch, and had pizza with them after the evening service.  This morning, on their way back to Chesterton, they picked up Lindsey, and we all said our goodbyes.  What a great last couple of weeks we had!  Maybe Andrea can tell a few more interesting stories in the near future…

Missions Conference 2009

Well, things have swirled around quite a bit over the last few weeks, and I haven’t posted much. I think having Lindsey here threw our schedule out of whack a bit, and I never really got to posting anything interesting.  Our Annual Missions Conference went extremely well. That was near two and a half weeks ago now! We had missionaries from Arctic Canada, South Africa, and Mexico. Each had exciting testimonies of how God had worked in their ministries. One message that much of our church remembers was on how to pray for your missionaries. After the message, Pastor Starr typed out the outline and gave it to the church as a guide. We were challenged to pray for five missionaries a week–specifically. The unofficial last night of the conference was on Sunday night, after all of the guest missionaries had left. First, we were challenged with a testimony from our teens highlighting their missions trip to Mexico back in August, then one of our own single young men shared with us his burden for working alongside of a church-planting missionary in Portugal. He will be taking a trip there later this month and a few days into next month.  Praise the Lord for a powerful and Holy Spirit-filled conference!

Upcoming Events This Fall

This is not necessarily a post about current things going on in our lives, or recent newlywed experiences–but of what you will be hearing about over the next several weeks. This week kind of starts a busy season off…
First off, everyone knows that Lindsey, Andrea’s sister, is coming out here to visit for two weeks. I can imagine you (or “yous” as they say in York County) will here a good deal about fun things that happen while she is with us. We will be seeing Lindsey in just an hour or so…believe me, Andrea is counting down the milliseconds!
This week also begins Mt. Zion’s missions conference. We will have at our church missionaries from the Arctic, Mexico, and South Africa. I want to write about that a few times also. We will be on our way to a staff luncheon with them in just an hour too. We pray that God will speak to our church as we seek God’s will about giving and service this week.

Around Thanksgiving time, my family will be here to visit for a few days. Black Friday is just after that, of course, too…

Then we are in the Christmas season all of the sudden. I guess my poor wife is the Grinch now, according to my sister-in-law and her blog post!  The Leslie side of the family will be making there way out to Pennsylvania to celebrate Christ’s birth with us.  May the time fly!

A Book Highly Recommended

I am a big fan of adventurous biographies: especially those of past missionaries.  I am also unashamedly a Baptist.  Therefore, Baptist missionary biographies are a real treat for me; mainly because good ones are few and far between.  Of course, the most famous modern-day Baptist missionary is probably Adoniram Judson.  I recommend reading a biography of his that I read in college called To the Golden Shore.  The stories of other missionaries are great–especially John Patton, Hudson Taylor, Henry Martyn, and David Livingstone.  However, each one of those men had something that kind of tainted my perspective on them when it came to church polity, the local church, soulwinning, and some doctrinal issues.  They still are all great heroes in my mind, nonetheless.

On the other hand, I had very little to disagree with in a book that was recommended to me about a year ago.  It truly changed my outlook on prayer, faith, and church-planting.  Daktar: Diplomat in Bangledesh is an autobiography by Dr. Viggo Olsen about his conversion, call, and mission in East Pakistan (now called Bangledesh). Dr. Olsen grew up with a very intellectual education that denied the very existence of God.  You may have even called he and his wife agnostic apologists.  However, through the prayers of his wife’s parents, they were led to Christ under many miraculous circumstances.  Viggo Olsen was trained to be an M.D. specialist in internal medicine.  He was definitely on the high road to wealth in 1950’s America.  God, however, had a different plan for his family.  They surrendered to be medical missionaries to the poorest country on earth: East Pakistan.  For the next few years of Bible and tropical disease training, his family served faithfully in their local church as teachers and soulwinners: never ceasing to bring people to hear their pastor preach the gospel.

They were sent by their church after deputation, and arrived on their field in the early 1960’s.  He was not just the “typical” medical missionary.  He believed whole-heartedly that the true way to heal men was to heal their soul: that was their first mission.  Then they knew God did not want them to build some “rinky-dink” medical mission in the bush–they wanted to do it right!  They built a modern hospital with dozens of beds for the people: rich or poor.  The hospital was funded by churches all across the U.S.  The best part: all under a some sense of a local church!

Over their years in the country, God led them through countless trials, physical persecutions by the Muslim majority, and tropical sickness.  I would definitely say their ministry was a true success for God.  I don’t want to re-write the whole book, but please consider reading it–not for college credit, education, or entertainment; but for you.