As usual, some road pix of our trip - this time a dirt road from Windhoek to Walvis Bay

NETS Youth & Children's Ministry Workshop

On Monday, last week, we drove down to Windhoek because I had the privilege to participate in a week-long workshop at NETS, where different speakers were invited to lead various sessions on how to effectively teach the Bible to Youth and Children.

I was the speaker for children's ministry and had 9 sessions over 3 days in which to teach them. They were a great group of enthusiastic people and we all had a great time. The sessions were very practical, with everyone taking part in the different aspects. I also learnt from them.

Thank you for praying for this workshop. May God continue to raise up men and women keen to teach the children of Namibia.

Martin Luther said: “It is no more a miracle for the Holy Spirit to work in the unresisting hearts of children than it is for him to work in the self-opinionated, sin-hardened hearts of adults”.

A series of 'fortunate' events

In 2007, we drove to Victoria Falls for a holiday. Whilst there, we all chose 2 things we really wanted to do. One of my choices was a microlight flight over the Falls (can you guess what the other one was?!). After waiting my turn to go up, a group of tourists arrived, breathless, and begged to jump the queue as they were running late for their departure. I stayed on the ground and chatted to those who were not game to fly. It turned out that they were from a church in America involved with The Mailbox Club which is a correspondence Bible course for children all over the world. They went home with my email address and told their South African representative about what we were doing in the North, who then shipped me 300 sets of Bible studies. Since then I have had many, many opportunities to enrol children, teenagers and young adults in these courses. Katie also did it with some teenagers at Eluwa school for deaf children last year.

I attach a photo of those at Eluwa, and one of me with some of the neighbourhood children who have enjoyed the course this year.

One child said she understands now that trying to be 'good' won't help her get to heaven.

A boy told me he had not realised he was a sinner until he did the course.

Nothing is wasted in God's economy. How manifold and wonderful are his ways!

The heart of man plans his way, but the LORD establishes his steps. Proverbs 16.9

David & Jeke: NETS prison graduations at Rundu & Divundu

Power to the people (well, to Tuhafeni), Tuhafeni leading workshops

Sharing the Gospel at Eluwa and a pre-school

Death by Coconut - by Jack Popjes

Look 286, Apr 8, ’10, Death by Coconut

I had just explained my broken ribs (doing something stupid on a motorbike) when one of the missionaries at the table said, “That reminds me . . . “ and started his story.

“It was typhoon season and a huge storm was about to hit our area. I had been in town and was tearing along in my Volkswagen van, desperate to get home before the storm struck. As I bounced and banged along the washboard gravel road, I suddenly hit a nasty pothole. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed a hubcap fly off the front wheel and disappear in the tall grass on the side of the road. I slammed on the brakes and jumped out of the van to look for it. Hubcaps are expensive. They are also almost impossible to find in tall grass wildly waving in the increasing wind.

“As I stumbled along in the screaming wind, with head bowed searching the ground around me, I began hearing THUD! THUNK! THUMP! all around me. I stopped, looked up, and realized I was right on the edge of a coconut plantation with sixty-feet high palms and the thuds were the sound of ten-pound coconuts hitting the ground at head smashing speeds.

“I immediately imagined the first line in the next newsletter my widow would send out,Fred was killed instantly when a falling coconut struck his head as he looked for a hubcap in a ditch. That sounded like such an idiotic way to die, I abandoned the hubcap, sprinted back to the safety of my van, and raced home.”

I often think of my friend’s story in the context of what price I am willing pay, or what I am ready to risk, to gain an objective. Translating a partial Bible into the Canela language, along with preparing educational materials and literacy teachers in the community was a great goal. Jo and I have never been sorry we spent thirty years in training, research, and translation to achieve that goal.

Yet, like my coconut-dodging friend, it is so easy for any of us to get ourselves into situations where the potential cost and risk are totally out of proportion to the value of the objective we are trying to achieve. Like a few months ago, I foolishly climbed up on a snow covered, steel roof to fix something. I reached out, lost my footing and next thing I knew, I was hanging on by one hand, my legs dangling out in space over hard ice and concrete, and I was yelling for Jo to come and set up the fallen ladder. Completing my objective was certainly not worth the risk of broken bones.

Some objectives, however, are worth risking much more than broken bones.

John G. Paton, 150 years ago, was one of the first missionaries to the New Hebrides islands in the Pacific where only nineteen years earlier, cannibals had killed and eaten two missionaries. One of the respected elders of his church advised Paton not to go, saying, “You’ll be eaten by cannibals!” But Paton pointed out that the elder was old, would soon die, and be laid in his grave, there to be eaten by worms. “In the resurrection it will make no difference to me whether I am eaten by cannibals or by worms,” Paton said, adding he would rather die attempting to do a great thing for God and risk being eaten by cannibals, than to stay home and live a normal life and in the end be eaten by worms.

Young people talking with me often hesitate about committing themselves to a lifetime career in Bible translation, wondering if they should put off the decision for five or ten years. I usually say, “No matter what you decide to do now, you will continue to age at the same rate. Imagine two ten-years-from-now scenarios: one in which you are living a normal life at home, the other in which you are fully trained, and working towards providing the Word of God in the language of a people group that has never before understood the Good News.”

It costs to commit our lives to do great things for God, and there are unknown risks. It may not be cannibals or even coconuts, but the possibility of failure. American president Theodore Roosevelt referred to the cost in a speech he made one-hundred years ago. “The person who is in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again . . . who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst knows failure, at least fails while daring greatly . . .“

The apostle Paul described the attitude we should have about serving God, “I beg you to offer your bodies to God as a living sacrifice, pure and pleasing. That's the most sensible way to serve God” Romans 12:1 (CEV).

A ship captain tried to dissuade James Calvert, another early missionary to the New Hebrides, from going ashore by saying, “You will lose your life and the lives of those with you if you go among the cannibals of these islands.” Calvert, expressing Paul’s attitude, replied “We died before we came here.”

If we do not commit to spend our lives attempting something great for God, either at home or abroad, are we not just as foolish as my missionary friend?

We might as well risk death by coconut while looking for a hubcap in a ditch.

To Bring Him Glory, Jack Popjes (Wycliffe)

www.popjes.blogspot.com

(reproduced with permission)

Easter weekend

How was your Easter weekend?
‘And how was ours?’ you may ask!

David, getting over a chesty cough, set out on Easter Friday to Ondangwa, 30 minutes’ away, for a church service followed by a workshop. He came home 10,5 hours’ later … after dropping people off all over the place!
In a land where all are blind, the one-eyed man is king.
In a land where most people have to walk everywhere, the man with a car is a taxi!

Talking of taxis, last week there was a terrible head-on collision down towards Windhoek. A ute/bakkie carrying 5 people in the back overtook into the path of a minibus taxi. A number of people were killed instantly. Willem and Ditteke, David’s boss and his wife, had decided to drive through Botswana to Vic Falls for the Easter weekend. However, on the first evening their car hit a cow and had to be towed away. They were unscathed. However, these incidents remind us of how David has traveled literally 1000s of kms in the North, on dirt roads with cattle, kudu, goats and people prone to cross at unexpected times. And with local taxis stopping in front of you or overtaking with no warning. Yet he has only had one accident and even then God preserved his life in a miraculous way. We do not take your prayers for his safety lightly!

We had a full house over the weekend. Caris and Étienne both had a friend to sleep over, plus Nicky and Aune, plus a ‘single’ guy we know who would have been on his own over the weekend came over in the evenings for a meal and some fellowship.

Nicky was able to go to church with Justina (see previous prayer points) on Sunday. However, the cow stomach meal served up afterwards rather threw her!

I had a chance on Good Friday and Easter Sunday to share with a few children the glorious news of why Jesus chose to go to the cross and the implications of his resurrection! After scouring shops in vain for Easter eggs, Nicky happened across a bag of little ones in the corner of a shop. So the children enjoyed that treat, too. (Actually, when in a supermarket a couple of weeks’ ago Caris pointed to a promotional picture and asked what the ‘clay rabbit’ was for. I explained to her it was meant to be a chocolate Easter bunny!)

Sunday was bucketing down. Late – but welcome – rain for the crops. David, with Aune as interpreter, was to preach at a church north of Oshakati. A little place called Omugwelume where the church is falling down. But first he had to drive down to Ondangwa to pick up the Onamambili choir and take all 15 of them with him back up to Omugwelume. David preached, Aune interpreted and the choir sang. Then they had to take the choir back down to Ondangwa, before heading back home! (See photos)

Because of the cross, we are in Namibia. Thank you for supporting us so that we can be here.