Well, that sounds exciting doesn’t it? Nicole and I truly hate missing any service at our home church in PA and we love having meals with our family. In order to accommodate both of these, the result is leave after midnight and drive through the night in order to avoid “rush hour” in every major cities between PA and MO. It was the last night to enjoy my (Seth’s) family, and so we ate with them, talked with them, and waited till my nephews were put to bed. After that we took a brief nap so that we could be rested and miss the traffic. God blessed us in that; we had no car problems, no accidents, we don’t think we forgot anything, no traffic, and the worst thing that happened was we had a nut wear out on the back of our toilet (in MO) filling the bathroom floor with water. It was an easy, yet uncomfortable (it is a toilet after all) fix. Thank You God! If that was the worst thing to happen on our trip, then we are blessed. Nicole was extra blessed! She slept most of the ride and did not have to hug the toilet.
After unpacking, grocery shopping for the week, and a quick bite to eat, it was time for bed. We started right back into the swing of things and began classes at 8am the next day. The first block of classes includes ‘Missionary Technology’. In this class we are taught the “basics” for living in a remote indigenous area, how to build your house, minor electrical work, plumbing, how to use solar power (photovoltaic-PV) systems, the difference between AC and DC electricity, among many other things. As many of you know, most of this unique work requires specific knowledge. We are also going through Romans as a class. This is very practical as well, for in this class, we go through certain “positional truth’s” (i.e. justified, reconciled to God, seated in the heavenlies, etc.) and explain them to the rest of the class in a sixth grade terminology who have never been to church, while the class is allowed to interject questions that are at the seminary level in regards to theological comprehension. So we are having fun! Explaining deep truths in a simplistic way that applies to you directly is an awesome challenge each believer should go through. This directly applies to foreign missions in that, when we translate the Word of God into a tribal language, they will not have a one-to-one ratio for words in their vocabulary for such words as “justification”, and so forth.
Stoking The Fires 