Turtle-herding mad scientist not selling anything

     Now that I'm full-time, what's my job like these days? Well, sometimes I feel like a salesman. I'm visiting lots of churches asking if they'll consider helping acquire and set up laptops. Even though I'm not selling anything or even asking for money – I just want a way to bless churches as they bless Africa – it does have the challenges of "cold calling." But when I get to meet with people who have a heart for the Lord and His kingdom, it's such a delight. I've raised about 15 laptops so far; please pray for many more. Also, please help by making this need known. I have brochures I can send you to share at your church or workplace. You can also help by sharing our Facebook link.
     Sometimes my job feels like herding turtles. That's when I'm running slow processes on several computers at once. While waiting on one, I go to another, and then turn back to the first one, exclaiming, "Wait a second—what are you doing!?"
     Lately I feel like a mad scientist. A mad scientist in the discipline of geekiness attempting to restructure the anatomy of a hard drive, accidentally killing it, and now trying to resurrect it.
     The programming course we've been working on continues to make progress, albeit with difficulties. We're mainly struggling through the technical side now, so please pray that for that as well as the discipleship within the course.
     And what is all this accomplishing? Christie got to share Mothers & Media with 700 pastors' wives recently. She has many requests to teach it to church congregations as well. Parents are starting to sense that technology is taking their children's minds and hearts from them and from the Lord, and are pleading for help to fight back. Please pray for helpers for her to spread this ministry all over Nigeria. She also told us a few weeks ago that she's had five more CTO students give their lives to Christ.
     I am so thankful for all of you who keep praying for me. In the war for the hearts and minds of the millenial generation, there's obviously a call for my work (silly analogies and all), but the vital need is for prayer warriors.

Oh, the interesting paths God weaves.

Have you ever thought that we mainly discover our paths as we walk them? That's the way my life and ministry usually seem, anyway. We've gotten connected with the man who has helped a long time with the International Conference for Computers in Missions. He's now trying to start one in Africa. We've seen here a great opportunity for us to help them get started by helping develop the pedagogy and context side of their content. And from that, we can get a lot of starter material for some new courses, like networking. Anthony was brainstorming this morning that this might get me to Kenya for a little while this April. We'll see what happens ... :)

The programming and databases course is still coming along, though somewhat slowly. It's hard to make good linear progress when it's three people working on it at once, and all of us have a lot of other things on our plates. And Anthony, the one with the best understanding of programming and what we're trying to do, is the busiest of all of us. But it is coming, and we're all enjoying it. One of the high school students I mentioned in a previous post is reviewing it for us, and his input has already been helpful.

Anthony reported a really successful first Mini Mission Trip in Houghton. They had young and old people there, veteran ministers and ADHD kids. I think ten laptops were prepared, and believers were encouraged, and newcomers to church heard the gospel in a very clear and gripping way for them. Please pray I'll be able to do the same in places near where I live.

New volunteers

TEN3 has some new recruits: high school students! Anthony got a part-time job as a network administrator at a high school, and has of course been building some good relationships there. Two students have expressed interest in helping TEN3. We will probably mainly have them review our courses. That should be good to see how these courses, designed for young adults, apply to this age group since we also want to market to them. This should be a really good learning experience for them and for us.

Please pray for us as we develop these relationships and continue to work on the programming/databases course, as well as a networking course now.

How many generations?

Anthony shared something so cool recently I thought I'd share it:
Someone once mentioned to me that "Discipling to the third generation" seems strange to them because in the Bible, third and fourth generations are used for curses and a thousand generations is for blessing. That might be true, but our tagline from TEN3 comes from 2 Tim 2:2 "and what you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses entrust to faithful men who will be able to teach others also." We are trying to live that out. Besides, TEN3 has the thousandth generation covered too. 10^3 (10 raised to the third power) equals 1,000 ;-).

Perspectives

Part of required training for all new SIM missionaries is the Perspectives in Global Missions course. I had been putting it off until I actually went active. Now that I'm taking it, I'm wishing everyone would.

The lecture last night, "The Story of His Glory," indicted those churches and Bible studies that treat the Bible as a collection of rules and moral stories. It's not that at all, but one great story of God whose glory pales all else from being considered significant, who reflects it in love among the Trinity and in love has determined to sweep mankind up in it. I love how the speaker said that any religious teaching with the punchline "We should be better" will always come up short; the all-sufficient punchline is "Jesus IS better!" So much better than all our strivings. In the midst of my own struggles with vanity (my most haunting sin), this worthlessness of our own efforts to be better, and the Worth of God's glory, reminded me painfully where my obsession belongs.

Convicting as it was, the lecture was also incredibly affirming because it has been on TEN3's hearts for years that people need the whole story of Redemption, not the piecemeal that well-meaning Christians often offer. To hear it from someone else was a deep joy, and made me long all the more for the whole world to hear this story, and see "the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ." (2 Cor 4:6).

My mission is now my "day job"!

(I kinda want to subtitle this, "I can haz paycheck?!" LOL if you get it.)

I'm so thankful I just might melt.

To explain why, let me give a bit of summary of what life has been like since I started this path:

August 2009 – I discovered TEN3, and realized this was where God meant for me to serve. I started volunteering as an editor. I also began a part-time job at South Plains College.

July 2010 – I went to Africa with the team for the first time, and fell in love with it. At the end of this trip, I was asked to become TEN3's curriculum department head.

August 2010 – discontinued the job at SPC. I realized I wanted to pursue TEN3 wholeheartedly, and my boss needed someone who could give more than I could.

October 2010 – At SIM's candidate orientation, I was accepted as a long-term appointee. I then began the process of support-raising.

November 2010 – June 2013: continually juggling four jobs: TEN3, support-raising, substitute teaching, and working "rush" periods at the SPC bookstore.

...

I've been content to have multiple "jobs to pay for my job"*. Content, but not satisfied**. I've been wanting for so long to get my full support so that I could serve with focus, hopefully go to Africa long-term, and no longer be living pieces of a life.

I've been raising support for nearly three years. I'm still at just 43% of what I need monthly pledged to come in. However, there have been precious people who have been giving faithfully, and that money, besides providing for my three short trips to Africa, has built up enough that I could be fully funded for a year. SIM has approved my going active for a year on these funds, starting September 1.

This means that instead of working four jobs and only getting paid for two, I now have just two jobs (TEN3 and Relationship Development Ministry) and can draw a salary for them. Oh, and those benefit things which are supposedly good for me ;)

This has been approved with the goal of reaching 100% support by the time the 12 months are over. With my time and energy less divided, I will be able to focus on visiting people about supporting my ministry, and also running mini mission trips as part of our goal to raise 2000 laptops. That, and the programming/database course we're working on will keep me plenty busy!

And after that? Well, if we get those 2000 laptops, TEN3 will be generating income. With that income, we hope to be able to look into hiring African writers to help us develop curriculum in the other areas that are needed. And if I have full long-term support then, I'll be able to go to Africa long-term to work with them on education that combines technology, the African context, a biblical worldview, and purposeful discipleship to be something truly transformational.

I hope you'll rejoice with me, that at long last I can "go active" as a missionary. Please pray that the Lord make this year fruitful in every way for His long-term plans, for me and TEN3 and Africa.

*An expression I got from the movie of The Freedom Writers Diary

**A lesson Anthony likes to teach from George MacDonald's Thomas Wingfold, Curate

Mini-Mission Trips and a free Puppy!

My priority job over the summer is RDM, which is called Resource Development Ministry or Relationship Development Ministry, depending on in which decade you started missions. ;) What that means in plain speech is connecting with people, sharing with them about my ministry, hopefully bringing them closer to God in the process, and hopefully raising funds and laptops thereby.

I've been trying to raise my support to make TEN3 my full-time job for over 2 1/2 years now. I guess my chief difficulty has been that I consider money to be such a personal thing, it's hard to bring it up with people. Oh, I can bring it up with churches, yes, but except for the few with which I have a really close connection, the response has always been, "You're doing a great thing, but we're already supporting all the missionaries we can afford."

I'm still very much working on RDM with individuals, and don't see that changing, but my visionary leaders have come up with a much better approach for RDM with churches. It weighs heavily on both Anthony (Operations head) and Claude (CEO) that the church in North America is dying. The stats we've read are that only 1% of churches in the USA are growing by baptizing new believers. So while our work is in Africa, we don't want to neglect the Body of Christ in America, either. Thus, we are making RDM with churches truly a ministry. The idea is that the church take on laptop raising as a mission project. (To learn why we're after laptops, see 2000 Laptops.) The people ask neighbors, friends, post it on Facebook that they're collecting used laptops for Africa. They then come to a "4-hour mission trip" in which they set up the computers to send to Africa with Puppy Linux, a free operating system designed to run on old computers. (We have to assure people strongly that they do not have to be experts to do this. If they can read and make a cup of tea, that's enough skill level to set them up with the group!) Cool, right? But how does that help the church?

• Involvement in foreign missions brings people to know God in new ways. (To read about my experience, see the newsletter dated October 24, 2011 in Newsletter Archives).
• One of the strongest undermining forces against the Church in North America has been use of technology without discernment. We generally realize that the immoral things propagated with technology are harmful. But even in recognizing this, western Christians have fallen into a trap. We tend to put technology in a tier separate from our spiritual lives and assume that as long as we don't do anything overtly sinful with it, it doesn't affect us. Those who participate in a mini-mission trip will get introduced to the idea of godly use of technology as the first step out of this trap and into a wiser and more effective walk with the Lord.
• Another serious detriment to Christianity throughout cultures and history has been not knowing the whole of God's story. God gave us the Bible with a variety of literary genres included, but as a whole it tells one great story, of which all the parts are needed to understand Him and His work in the world. Research has shown that we do indeed base our understanding of the world on stories, and that if our minds have only part of a story, they fabricate the missing parts. That has led to great deceptions time and time again. And yet today so many Christians in the US only know the Bible in disconnected fragments. They don't know whether Abraham or Moses came first, much less what Solomon or the priestly rituals have to do with the coming of Jesus. And thus they are spiritually weak, easily led away from the Truth. I can't tell them the whole story in four hours, but I hope to make them want to find it out for themselves.

As always, I'm grateful for your reading and prayers. May this blog make you hungry for the whole story, too.