Colombian Christian Mission

This past week my wife donated her sewing machine to the widow of one of our preachers. The lady wept for joy as she said she had dreamed her whole life of owning her own sewing machine. I had driven to a funeral in a nearby village and we dropped off the sewing machine because we know about her “dream” and my wife very generously told me to donate her machine.
(http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=606123819405328&set=a.56151736386...)
But in spite of her joy, she needs something more. Let me share her story with you.

This week I had originally planned on traveling to Thailand to teach a seminar to the deaf church there. But the rising price of tickets kept pushing the price of travel beyond the amount of funds that we had raised for this teaching ministry. With some regret, Dewayne and I canceled the trip and made alternative plans. We set up a schedule for doing the conferences via video over the internet. I was not sure if the internet here in Villavo could handle a two way video conference and so I considered traveling to Bogota to do the conferences there.

Saturday, April 27, I spent all day in Puerto Lopez, a river port village about an hour’s drive from Villavicencio. The town is famous for the fresh fish that are caught in the river and for the cargo barges that haul cattle up river the the markets of Bogotá and the center of the country and the construction materials and supplies they haul down the river on their trip back. But I did not go to the port for any of these reasons. I was there because the church in Villavo had organized a work crew to help the new church there as they try to get a building constructed in which to meet.

Each year Paul Odham, a recognized specialist in Learning Difficulties gives up his spring vacation and travels to Colombia to help us in our school in training our teachers and in working with at risk children. He has generously offered to teach not only our own teachers but to offer that help to teachers in the public schools as well as a service of our church to the educational community. I contribute from my knowledge of Colombian cultural and the educational system here and serve as his translator.

It has been more than 15 years, since I first began to ask Dewayne Liebrandt to come to Colombia and help us start a deaf ministry. It has been nearly seven years since he made his first trip. For six years now we have been working closely together to get deaf churches started here in Colombia. This morning we will attend the deaf church here in Bogota and I will worship in a language that I am not proficient in. It has been a great time of working together and God has blessed our partnership and the work.

After a long week of frenetic activity, the last two members of the work crew took off this morning and are now flying back home to their families. Now, I can sit back, sip a cup of coffee, and do all of the bookkeeping that is needed to make sure we can report accurately on all that we did and how the money was invested in the Lord’s work back here. You can check out the photo albums on facebook and in flickr to see all that they got done.

With the holiday season over I am now making my plans to return to Colombia in about ten days. It has been a great fall and winter as I have had the opportunity to visit many of our supporting churches and thank a good number of you in person. We appreciate so much the fact that you have partnered with us in the Lord’s work in Colombia. We are truly blessed.

My semester at KCU is now over. I am back at home in Rittman where Jeanie and I are planning a Christmas trip to visit Susy and Brian at their new home in Maine. I have about three more weeks before I head back to Colombia to resume my work in the Lord’s Kingdom there. So this is a bit of time for my “honey do” list, and for just relaxing a bit before heading back to the heavy work load I carry while in Colombia. It is a time to enjoy friends and family and be appreciative for all the blessings the Lord has poured out upon me over this past year.

As I finished up here at KCU and we move into the Christmas season, I have reflected back on this fall. Today I taught my very last class here this fall semester. This is my third time teaching here as the Missionary-in-Residence has been a great experience. KCU is a great place where there is a solid commitment to Christ and His kingdom and yet rock solid scholarship as well. My colleagues in the school of ministry are the greatest bunch of guys and it has been an honor to serve with them for this fall semester. I have enjoyed this time very much.

The fall is passing quickly and my semester of teaching as Missionary-in-Residence here at KCU is rapidly drawing to a close. I am making sure I can cover all of my material in the time and have left and beginning to work on writing up the final exams for the classes I am teaching. It has certainly been fun and I can only hope my students have benefited as much as I have. It has been good to get back into the intellectually stimulating environment of the university.