A Journey and a Homecoming

Dear Friends,
As many of you know, this was a challenging month for me (Rich) and for Lisa, in very different ways. We had agreed several months ago that we would release each other to do more missional travel, one at a time, in 2025. Lisa had a good week in Albania, which she reflects on in a paragraph below. I had a sweet week caring for Lisa’s mom, Nancy, with several meaningful conversations. The next day, I set out on a 3.5-week trip to India and Bangladesh. Yet the day after I left for India, the nurse said she thought Nancy was likely to be in her final week. Lisa managed that valiantly, with attentive help from our daughter and son-in-law and two church communities. Nancy died March 17, for the most part peacefully. I was very sorry not to be able to help Lisa with the many tasks and emotions involved in that season, but we both felt good about my continuing the trip, especially because she had such a great support group around her. I’m so proud of her and grateful for all that she handled in my absence. She’ll offer reflections on that below as well, but I would love to share here what I’m most grateful for about this trip.

Two weeks ago, I (Rich) returned from my 16 days in India and another six days in Bangladesh. In the map above, the straight segments are flights, and the squiggly segments are a crude approximation of the driving we did. The black segments indicate week 1, flying into Delhi and having a few days in North India and then a few days in Northern Orissa (segment 5). In Northern India I was in two places I’ve not been before, meeting up with pastors and lay leaders and connecting with two capable translators who are helping me to begin new Zoom classes with pastors in Himachal Pradesh and Punjab states.  It was a very encouraging time with new networks of pastors. In Northern Orissa I was with the partner and translator with whom I have had the longest collaboration. We held a graduation ceremony for the 18 pastors who have gone through my Sketches of Leadership course, as they were awarded a “Certificate of Completion” from Church of the Rock Theological College. My translator is educated and has a MDiv from a theological seminary in India, but many of these pastors do not have any diploma beyond high school; for some of them this certificate may be the one they display on their wall indicating their Biblical training. I was deeply moved as they testified to how their own teaching has deepened and changed to become more inductive and interactive, and how that has strengthened the growth of their churches and their church members.

The second week of my trip took me to Dhaka, Bangladesh (marked by the orange line  on the map). There I taught 20 organizational leaders in a MA program about fundraising, emphasizing that it is Biblical and in fact is honorable ministry, to the people we are asking to join our team who make our ministry possible. Training developing world leaders in fundraising is very satisfying for me, as it is an important skill for them, especially as the focus is sustainable fund development, helping them to build up a culture of local giving for local ministry, not just relying on big granting institutions or generous churches from the West. These students lead organizations serving the poor, children and others rescued from trafficking, and other vulnerable populations throughout Bangladesh.

The final 9 days of time in India was spent visiting 19 villages and medium-sized towns, teaching church members and training pastors in inductive teaching, mostly using the first five chapters of Mark. This was a tiring but rewarding and gratifying itinerant mission. We were several times in strikingly remote locations, including where every family had a big pile of wood in front of their house, collected from the surrounding scrub land and small trees and used in cooking their daily meals. At the same time, I noticed no small amount of cell phones, and several times when the electricity in the building shut off, cell phone flashlights popped on and we were able to continue the teaching with their light until the power resumed a few minutes later. An odd mix of premodern technologies (cooking meals over a wood fire) and ultramodern smartphones!

During the first week, I taught on Elijah on Mt. Carmel, describing the showdown between Baal and Yahweh and Elijah’s boldness in defeating the vast number of prophets of Baal. One 16-year-old girl, “Ranjita” responded to this teaching by returning to the home village she had been chased out of a few months before. She is a new believer, and  both her Hindu parents and occult-supporting people in her home village had expelled her. Upon returning to her village, she found a young man who was sick and being prayed for by his Hindu family. She told him that the Lord was God and more powerful than the Hindu gods to which his family were praying. She prayed to God in Jesus’ name, and he was healed. The man’s family was glad for the healing but not happy about her preaching about Jesus. Then a second person, whose family practiced occult rituals, was sick. She again spoke powerfully about Jesus and prayed for complete healing, and the boy was healed. The family and the occult leaders were so angry that they prayed to their demons to kill Ranjita. The demon’s response surprised them all! “We cannot touch Ranjita, because her God is the Most High God.” Now Ranjita leads a small group with seven families who have turned to her God! All this happened in the last month.

Visiting relatively remote villages, I taught two or three times per day. Everywhere in India it is hard to miss the gender imbalance in the church. The pastors are (mostly) men, but the church members seem to be 75% women. The young women and teenage girls come to church with their notebooks, in which they write the words to new songs and take notes on the Bible teaching. It was much rarer to see teen boys with notebooks. So, it was encouraging to hear that, as a result of the teaching, 3 young men have come forward to receive a six-month training internship with my translator and partner in Southern Orissa. They will stay in his little guest room for a few months and will travel with him to remote villages.  They will go through both the Sketches of Leadership classes I am teaching as well as additional training done by my partner. He was very encouraged by this development, and is well poised to see these young men grow up to be rural church-planting pastor-evangelists.

Since getting back, 3 new zoom classes are starting, the early fruit of the trip, and the existing groups in the locations I visited have added new members. I get lots of feedback that people enjoy the training, but the feedback that is the most gratifying is when I hear stories of people who hear the word, accept it, and act on it in ways that produce a harvest, some thirtyfold, some sixtyfold, and some hundredfold. It is a privilege to be able to teach people who are so consistently good soil!

I have been teaching Mark 15 for many of my Zoom classes this week, in light of Holy Week and Good Friday. If you would like to read my Good Friday reflection (about 5 minutes reading), visit my blog post here.

Lisa Reflects on the past month:
What a momentous five weeks it has been! On March 2, I flew to Albania, where I joined 160 theological educators from around the world, gathered to consider the challenges and the opportunities ahead for the church. Every meal was a chance to meet with faithful faculty, deans, and doctoral students from Egypt, Brazil, Ethiopia, and everywhere in between. The conference featured Impact Teams, like daily tracks, and mine, Women Thriving, considered the challenges of female students, faculty, and leaders and how they are courageously and creatively facing them. I was able to pull together a wonderful team of presenters from around the globe, and was so pleased with the conversations at each session. I'm so grateful to have been able to attend this gathering.

I returned very late Saturday, sent Rich off to India Sunday, and on Monday, my mom's visiting nurse team declared her to be within a week of her death, due to her congestive heart failure. This began a whirlwind of details, getting her oxygen, a hospital bed, and palliative medicines. While I missed Rich immensely over the next three weeks, I can truly say that I experienced God's care, provision, and even a minor miracle or two! Both Becca and Avery's church and our church mobilized to bring me meals, and various friends and pastors came to pray and say final goodbyes. It was truly remarkable that a woman who moved here during a pandemic, at age 91, became so dear to many people here. She rallied to thank them, tell a joke or two, and receive their prayers for the first half of the week, but by Thursday she was too weak for that.

One of her final conversations was with a dear friend here whose child was in need of an organ transplant. My mom told her that her first words to God upon entering heaven would be about that! On Sunday, March 16, she began to be in real pain, which we met with medication, and she died that night. The following day, these friends received news that a matching organ had become available, and she had a successful surgery the next day.  Now, we don't know exactly how that all worked in the divine plan; we will simply say that we are so grateful!

Lesser miracles in terms of provision included that a dear friend from CA had already planned to come for much of the next week, which was a huge help to me, and the kind friends I've made here who are nurses or doctors who were able to pop in with helpful advice and encouragement throughout the final week of my mom's life. Thanks as well to all of you who sent notes and messages of care as well. If you have interest in reading my sharing about my mother at the memorial service, visit my blog post here.
 
We both very much appreciate your prayers as we continue to serve both in Durham and in Asia, and as we seek God’s guidance regarding our next steps in the coming months.