​Dear Friends, I want to express my deep gratitude to all of you who gave generously and who prayed for me as I went to Nepal. The trip was an immense blessing to me, and I believe it equipped the students I was able to teach there. You can see them in the picture above: Bottom Row: Menuka, Promila, Dr. Abraham Saggu (Dean of Seminary), me, Arpan, Leegan, Laxmi, Kusum, Rajan. Top Row: Samuel (Dean of Students), Niroj, Daniyal, Babu, Anjan, Samuel, Sobit, Anmol.
 
As I reflect on the trip, these are some of the things which stand out for me:

• I am confident that I made a substantial contribution. In the US, it has been so hard to find work in the field for which I’ve trained that at times I’ve doubted the value of my Ph.D. But at a school striving to meet accreditation standards (which means most courses at the M.Div. level must be taught by persons with Ph.D.’s), what I bring is highly prized. I pushed the students hard in some ways. The first day, I had each student select a strip of paper with a verse on it, leave the room for five minutes, and return with a five-minute ‘micro-sermon,’ using a simple template I had provided.The third day each student retold a story from Scripture from a creative angle, through the voice of a character in it. Over the next several days, each student preached a full-length sermon (though not by Nepali standards—I visited one church where the sermon went an hour and twenty minutes!). I walked them through a thorough exegetical process to prepare for their sermons, including how to craft a set of strong questions to ask of their Scripture text.We discussed the power and the hazards of personal testimony. We tackled the structure, shape, and logical flow of effective sermons. I told the story of how rhetoric arose in the ancient world, made the argument that we should pay attention to it in preaching, and why it is not a sufficient paradigm for preaching—we need a robust theology of what God is up to when we preach, as well. I introduced them to some of my favorite saints of preaching (Chrysostom, Augustine, Hildegard of Bingen, Luther, Jarena Lee, and Francis Asbury) to begin each day, with a brief bio followed by a sample from a sermon. In short, I worked pretty hard to deliver a solid course (a neighbor said last week, “You’re back from your vacation to Nepal!” Not exactly.), teaching from 6:30am through the morning, and then grading, preparing, and being available to students in the library in the afternoons. I return with many questions about how best to deliver advanced theological education in developing countries, but feeling pretty impressed overall with what this seminary is doing toward that end.

[We worked hard together, but we laughed a lot, too.]

• Becca’s presence made a huge difference! I was definitely lonelier the second week. One of the misperceptions we can have of missionary life is that it is filled with people. The reality is that it can be quite isolating. Relationships form slowly, and in my situation, housed in a dorm filled with students who were friendly but much happier to chat with each other in Nepali, the evenings alone could feel long. So, Becca’s enthusiastic introduction to the city of Kathmandu, her pre-trip insistence that we sneak away to Pokhara for three days, and her generally cheerful presence, were real gifts. The trip also confirmed her sense of calling to invest in the people of South Asia in some way throughout her life.
• The students had amazing stories to tell! One of my students (pictured with me below) has two children, runs a center for girls rescued from human trafficking, co-pastors a church with her husband, and takes classes like mine toward an M.Div., financing all that by selling buffalo milk from the eight buffalos they own on the outskirts of Kathmandu. Another shared how her mother was beaten by her mother-in-law for ‘only’ giving birth to girls. She (the student) is pregnant now and grateful that her own mother-in-law is a Christian and has told her she will love their baby of either gender! (That’s the gospel transforming culture, right there.) Another told of being sternly kicked out of the kitchen of a higher-caste host when the host discovered what caste he was. (That’s the culture in need of the gospel, right there…)
• The church in Nepal is amazingly vibrant. I was able to attend three churches: one of the oldest in Nepal, founded by some of the first Christians in the country, a rural church outside Kathmandu, and a large urban one. This last one was pastored by a man who was initially beaten by his father for converting to Christianity. Later his father converted and was imprisoned for several months as a result. This church has 1400 members, and has planted 84 churches.

All in all, it was an amazing adventure and a great opportunity to invest in God’s church. Thanks again so, so much, for your kind support!
A blessed Easter week to you all,
Lisa (with many thanks to Rich for making the journey possible in so many ways)

Dear Friends,                                                                    
We wish you all the joys of this holiday season, and hope December brings wonderful reunions with family and friends! We’ll send a family update later this month. I’m writing today though for a different reason: I want to share how excited I am to have an opportunity to invest in the vibrant, gifted leaders emerging to lead the church of Nepal. I have been invited to teach the first homiletics course offered by Nepal Theological Academy, a newly-formed consortium of five theological colleges in Kathmandu, which offers advanced theological education to current and future pastors. The church in Nepal is both flourishing and struggling. It is growing fast but faces many challenges, as it is oppressed by government and society. Many pastors are poor, and their families make great sacrifices to fund their seminary education. One way the seminary keeps its costs down is by utilizing professors from abroad who are willing to contribute without compensation. That’s where I come in. I will raise my own travel costs, and offer my teaching as a gift.
 
Since being invited by the dean during his visit to Pasadena last summer, I have grown in my interest in this beautiful country and its strong, resilient people. As you know, they suffered a terrible earthquake in April, 2015, and in fact two of the theological institutions which form part of the NTA consortium were seriously damaged. They are undaunted, but they do need partners who will come alongside them with resources. I am working with a team of South-Asian educators to create a curriculum for the course that is contextualized for the needs of Nepali pastors. As you may also know, Nepal is a country that my daughter, Becca, has come to love through her own short-term mission work there, and I am delighted that she can accompany me, though we will pay for her travel costs.
 
We are grateful to continue our membership with Paraclete Mission Associates, and for the resulting ease with which you may give to our account. Would you consider making a contribution toward the costs of my travel?  My trip is not until March, but since many of you do end-of-year giving, I would love to be included in the various ways you may be generously investing at this time of year.

My budget is simple: I am seeking to raise $3,000 to cover airfare and travel costs in country, and to be able to make a gift of books and other supplies to the seminary.

Some of you have asked if or when we might be heading out into full-time missions. We have pursued that, but for now our best sense of God’s leading is that we are to be faithful in ministry settings locally and to say yes to invitations to invest internationally as often as we can. I am so grateful for your partnership in allowing me to say yes to this investment in Nepal, and for your prayers as I go.  ​

We have been back in the US over two months now, and will, in another week or so, be moving back into our home. Just today I received reimbursement for our last trip related expenses, and as we prepare to move back home, from our missionary housing here in Pasadena, it seems as though our “One Hundred Homes” tour is finally coming to an end. We have been meeting up with friends and supporters, and have done several presentations for people recapping our trip. Of course, with any mission trip, it is difficult to answer the question, “How was your trip?” “Great!” We reply, and then try to pick one representative snapshot, or experience, or thing we learned, for our friends who ask. I have enjoyed having longer conversations with people who have asked for more details, and of course that has always led into the conversation about what is next for us.
      The short answer, is, of course, we have gone back to work: I am back at Tanner Research, working with a team of young programmers and working on nutrition-related projects, which are a real interest of my boss and have become an interest of mine. Lisa is back at Fuller Seminary in an Affiliate Faculty role, and between that and other things she stays pretty busy. But as we lift up our eyes past the immediate, we have been taken with a vision for our lives coming out of our trip that we are allowing God to confirm, to deepen, to refocus, or to put a stop to. We will be taking steps over the next two years to move back to Eastern Europe or the former Soviet Union countries, not to itinerate but to get an apartment and plant ourselves for a few years. We would intend to invest in one country’s local work, and to travel to a handful of the other countries that we visited in the last year. Probably not 25 countries, but perhaps five or six, with people in them we’d want to invest more deeply in, and places we feel we would be welcome to make a longer-term commitment to. This would happen, as well as we can see it now, starting the fall of 2017, after our daughter Becca finishes college that Spring.
      Between now and then we will continue to encourage our adult children in their pursuits. Our daughter is in her junior year in college, and is in India at the moment, studying there for her semester abroad in her international studies major. Our son, Mark, is still in London, working away at his bitcoin startup, and we are happy every time he gets his paycheck, succeeding once again to keep his company alive for another month. Next year, we expect to make a trip or two to one or more of the countries we visited last year. We ask you to join us in praying for the countries that we consider at the top of our list to return to, either to live in or to invest in long-term from a home base elsewhere in Europe:
1. Ukraine: One of the few countries we spent more than three weeks in, Ukraine was in many ways like a home base. I had spent more time in Ukraine than anywhere else we visited before our year began, and it was friends in Ukraine that encouraged us to consider the trip back when it was just a crazy idea.  The level of English ability on the parts of many students was pretty good, so we were able to have good conversations with many, as well as with most of the staff team. We spent significant time in the four main cities where student work is going on, and were present at the staff team where the leadership transition was being made between an older, beloved male GenSec and the new, energetic and poised young female GenSec. We really came to enjoy the staff in Ukraine, their vision for ministry, the role of native English-speaking workers in their teaching and evangelism ministry, and could easily envision living in Kiev, Lviv or Kharkiv, or traveling overland between cities to invest in the staff around the country.
2. Belarus: We also spent almost three weeks in Belarus, focused in Minsk but we made our way around to five or six cities and saw the spread of the work, its evangelistic nature, and its vision for leadership development as a core value to shape and grow, not just the student work, but the larger work of God and indeed a desperately needed culture of healthy leadership in Belarus as a country. We received an invitation from a church pastor couple, the founders of the IFES work in Belarus, to come and join them in their church planting ministry. The pastor was was surprisingly open to and supportive of Lisa’s teaching ministry in his church planter school, and was impressed at her theological training and pleased to welcome her to teach at his school on a regular basis if we were to move to Minsk. We saw a lot of ways we could come alongside gifted and committed men and women of faith here, and Minsk is a very attractive city. And while it would be difficult to move to Russia, if we lived in Belarus, visits to Russia to work with the IFES movement there would be easy, and some of our dearest friends from this year are in Russia.
3. Romania: We visited Romania more times than any other country, and, like Ukraine, I have friends there that go back more than a decade. We were welcomed by the IFES work and a church that has grown out of it, and there would be many ways to continue to contribute. The movement in Romania is the largest movement of all the countries we visited, with over 600 students involved, and the student conference we attended and spoke at was the most impressive event of all the student conferences, with 130 students at the conference and signs of strong, creative, servant leadership throughout the conference. It doesn’t hurt that Romanian in a romance language, and shares many cognate words with French, Spanish and Latin. We would probably have the easiest time learning the language if we were to move to Romania.
      Any place we would move would require efforts to learn the local language, Russian, Ukrainian or Romanian, though we presume our teaching and much of our mentoring and ministry would still need to be done in English. And beyond the country we might live in, there are places we’d definitely like to return to:

• Baltics: Latvia and Lithuania are places where the student ministry is small (but so is the population of these small countries) but we experienced a solid welcome on the parts of staff there. We taught in English, often without translation, because English language skill was high.
• Balkans: We were surprised by our fondness for Albania after our visit there, but aspects of the country broke our hearts while the people we met certainly won them. We hope to return both to work with the IFES there and with the Bible school at which we taught.
• Caucasus Region: We visited the Caucasus region a total of three times, with time in each of Armenia, Georgia and Azerbaijan. These IFES movements are also small and need leadership development investment. We enjoyed time with staff and students here and would be glad to return.
• Central Asia: With three visits to a few of the countries of Central Asia (the “stans” of the former Soviet Union) we enjoyed the chance to get to know the cultures and the IFES ministries here.
• MENA: The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, the predominantly Muslim countries that we visited of Turkey, Jordan, Lebanon, and Egypt – all are quite challenging in many ways for us. But the warmth of hospitality and the kindness of some of our strongest new friends for the year may well draw us to return.
  

We don't know what is ahead for us--of course--but our hearts are open and our ears are attentive to God's call. Our Facebook feed right now is filled with news from new friends from this year, and this keeps our prayers focused on God's work in this part of the world. But God knows how to get our attention, to continue to steer us in the directions he wants our lives to take. We are quite glad to leave, once again, our home as we say yes to his call.

We greet you from California! We are ‘home-ish,’ to use the word my sister-in-law coined to describe our perched position these days. In a game of missionary musical chairs, we are in our second temporary LA housing now, a home provided by our denomination to missionaries on home assignment. This will help us get back on our feet financially, and we plan to return to our home in November. We miss our home and dog, but we trust God has good purposes for us in extending the nomadic season just a bit more. Rich has jumped straight into work at Tanner, and I am doing course prep for a Fuller course I’ll teach this fall, getting re-certified to be a healthcare provider again for disabled adults, and pursuing other job leads. We are tired, and a bit overwhelmed by the mundane yet pressing tasks of renewing driver’s licenses, tracking down our mail, and easing our tummies back into California foods.  I may blog again, but for now, I’d like to do a summary post that will help me to crystalize my impressions of the year. A number of themes have impressed us deeply this year, many of which have been covered here, but I’ll revisit those themes in the form of a tribute to twelve of the many, many people who inspired us this year. Know that each one represents dozens more.   I’ll list them in four categories: students, local pastors, North American missionaries, and national IFES staff-workers. A few names have been changed to protect those living in countries not so welcoming of Christians. 

Students:  

• Nurhan, from Uzbekistan. I met this smart, funny, friendly young woman in Kyrgyzstan at a student leadership conference we taught. She and nine others had traveled for two days by bus to be there, and they would return home with no printed materials, to avoid detection as Christians. Her Muslim family has accepted her conversion but has forbidden her to tell the extended family or anyone else. She is able to attend a Bible Study in the city where she attends college, studying international relations. The challenges she faces in living out her faith are immense, but she handles them all with humor, wisdom, and grace. She is a phenomenally gifted leader and I pray she will impact her nation powerfully someday.
• Tony, from Nigeria, studying medicine in Ukraine. Tony represents the many international students we met. We had not anticipated how many students come to Eurasia from Africa and from some countries to which traditional Christian missionaries have no access, such as Turkmenistan. We met Indian students in Armenia, Turkmen in Belarus, and Kenyans and Nigerians in Ukraine. Tony was in my daily track, “Skills for Everyone,” at the English Camp outside Lviv, Ukraine three weeks ago. He impressed me right away with his insightful reflections as we discussed skills like conflict resolution, decision making, and time management. His story represents the many facets of corruption in many aspects of Eurasian/Eastern European society, including education. At one point we had a lively discussion in which I tried to convince the mostly non-Christian students why they ought to choose not to cheat. The students were quite adamant that due to the poor post-Soviet education system, the low quality of the instruction, etc., it was basically the morally appropriate response to such a broken system, to cheat on exams. One student said, “I would never cheat a friend, but this has nothing to do with doing harm to another person.” Tony alone pointed out, “If I as a pre-med student choose to regularly cheat on exams and therefore don’t learn the material, I could kill a patient!” Score one for long-term thinking and for connecting individual ethical behavior to its relational effects. I wish Tony many years of serving patients with skillful care.
  
• Tanya, Ukrainian studying in Kiev:  Tanya represents the many, many students IFES is reaching who have not yet committed to faith. She is an enthusiastic participant, a leader even, in the English Club ministry of IFES in Kiev. She is a talented poet who writes poetry beseeching her beloved nation to continue to strive for freedom. (You just don’t hear poetry like that recited at the typical talent night in the US!) Like almost everyone in Ukraine, she was baptized Orthodox but does not follow the Orthodox faith actively. She has been drawn to what she’s seen of the Protestant student group, but has not yet chosen to fully align herself with them. It would be costly to family relationships. I pray for her heart to fully turn toward God soon.  
  

Local Pastors:

• Pavel and Katya, in Belarus. We loved so many things about the leadership of this couple. Though serving in a denomination and country that does not do a lot to empower women in leadership, Pavel honors his wife’s many ministry gifts at every turn, and endorsed me to speak and teach in several settings during our time in Minsk. (Women in ministry was an unexpected theme of our year—I had not anticipated how hungry students and churches would be for input on this topic, and due to different cultural contexts had to scramble to create three or four distinct seminars, which I taught in Lebanon, Armenia, Romania, Moldova, etc.)  Pavel also represents a refreshing exception to a sad theme we saw throughout the region, the difficulty sharing power and handing off leadership. The reasons for this are complex; I blogged about them a bit HERE. Pavel is a networker who from all reports shares power well. He is a sponsor and a coach by nature, and has a cadre of young church planters he is training and sending out around the country. He and his wife began the IFES movement in Belarus several years ago and are loyal partners today. It was an honor to work with them in Minsk.
  
• Alex and Nati, in Romania. We enjoyed these two so much! Rich had built a friendship with Alex over several visits to Eastern Europe IFES events in the last ten years, and he welcomed us to be speakers at his church’s fall retreat in September, to do leadership training for them in December, and to join the merry madness that is the English-Adventure Camp his church cohosts (along with the IFES student group) for high-schoolers, our final stop before returning to LA. One of our favorite parts of our journey was the chance to simply ‘do life’ with some of the people who hosted us. We had extra days around each teaching gig in Romania, and we enjoyed just going with Alex to the mechanic or the grocery store, staying up late laughing and telling stories, or thinking through a parenting or ministry challenge together. Alex and Nati represent the many faithful Christians we saw adopting orphans around Eastern Europe and Eurasia. Alex is taking a national leadership role with an agency seeking to build a culture of adoption in Romania, a country with very low rates of adoption and very high rates of abuse in orphanages.
• Nabil and Sarah in Lebanon: I’m fudging a little here because Sarah is Swiss-British and Nabil lived in London several years, but I can’t resist a hat tip to these two, who welcomed us so warmly to Lebanon. Nabil and Sarah led All Saints International Church in Beirut with enormous creativity and generosity for several years. (International churches were another learning theme of our year—I confess to a certain ignorant dismissal of them as a way for expats to avoid getting to know their new community. But I have more sympathy for expats and their needs, and more respect for the many ways international churches serve communities, after visiting and preaching at several, and getting to know some brave and weary expats this year. In Beirut the church served as a much-needed place of restoration for people doing hugely challenging work among refugees, for one thing.) Nabil and Sarah saw the Alpha Course prove to be so effective at their church that they have taken a role as directors of advancement of Alpha ministries throughout the Middle East.

North American Missionaries:

• Blair and Elizabeth, in Kiev.  One of the humbling features of our year was being hosted by complete strangers several times. None of the IFES staff were able to host us, but they knew they could confidently ask Blair and Elizabeth. Though they were only in Kiev for one year, and though their formal ministry assignment was not with IFES, they had opened their home for games and movie nights to students all year. Blair and Elizabeth, roughly our age and with kids at similar ages, helped us to picture what it might be like to return to Ukraine for longer than just a week or two, since they were able to thrive there.
  
• Steve and Cinda, in Egypt. One of the regrets of our year was that we were rarely able to connect with ministers from our denomination, the PC(USA). We simply weren’t in charge of our own time in many of the cities we visited, having essentially written a blank check to the IFES staff to book up our days. The Protestant church in Eurasia/Eastern Europe tends more towards Baptist and Pentecostal than Reformed of any stripe. Egypt is very different. The Synod of the Nile is huge, and we were so impressed with the good work it is doing, which we blogged about HERE.  We stayed at the Presbyterian seminary and were warmly hosted by Steve and Cinda, who after decades of service stateside threw themselves into a three-year assignment in Cairo with gusto and good humor.
  
• Liz , in Bulgaria: Liz represents the many InterVarsity Link staff we met, serving faithfully in Bosnia, Azerbaijan, Turkey, Romania, etc. Liz knows how to have a good time. She ran an English club for Bulgarian and international students in Sofia and at its Halloween party she gave pairs rolls of toilet paper to make costumes for each other. One made a partner into the Statue of Liberty and pulled out a cigarette lighter to set his torch aflame!  I chose Liz because she is gifted and fun and welcomed us well, but also because she is young, unlike the other two couples, and frankly we would love to see many more young people graduate and choose to invest in a challenging setting the way Liz did. Going as a single person takes an extra dose of bravery and sacrifice; I had in Rich a companion, a luggage porter for the many elevator-less buildings we encountered, etc.   My hat is off to all who head out in mission as single people, younger or older.
  

National IFES Staff:

• Hussam in Jordan. Hussam impressed us in many ways. He is a smart and capable leader, and the student conference we attended outside Amman was a joyful gathering. His church is doing amazing work to serve the many Iraqi refugees entering Jordan each week. We were struck by the suffering of refugees in Jordan and Lebanon (and to some extent in Ukraine as well), but also struck by the ways God has blessed those churches and individuals who have opened their hearts to them.
  
• Javid and Esmira, in Azerbaijan. This couple didn’t have quite enough challenge reaching out to college students in this 99% Muslim country in a city that already had a small but solid group of Christians, so they are heading this fall to a city near the border of Iran which has only 6 or 7 known believers. Ministers becoming missionaries was another theme of our year, as we watched Romanians sense God calling them to India, or others simply sense God calling them to the hardest and least-reached regions of their own countries.
• Marina, Dasha and Polina in Kiev, and while we’re at it, the whole Ukraine team. I know, this post is already ridiculously long and I said 12 people, but I couldn’t pick between these three amazing women who serve in such different ways in Kiev, Ukraine.  Marina is a super-talented violinist who likes to take her violin with her to bring encouragement to soldiers, people delayed in train stations, and the likes of me and Rich on a few occasions this past year. Dasha lives life with a lot of style, while coordinating the details of events like a Lamb visit to Kiev or an English Camp with meticulous attention. Polina jumps into ministry with energy and a smile. The Ukrainian team in general inspired us again and again, as several of them found themselves uprooted by violence and kept serving faithfully in the new cities in which they found themselves, and as they persevered through a strategic leadership planning process we facilitated in June, boldly dreaming big for their movement, even though their nation’s future is unstable.
  

That’s it. Twelve people, or pairs or teams of people, who inspired us, taught us, and made our year an amazing adventure. I’m missing them all as I write this, and profoundly grateful to God for their faithful witness.  

I am on a bus to Bulgaria, where Lisa and I will be leading the staff and board of the IFES movement there through a strategic planning process. This process involves bringing the team together to consider the challenges and opportunities, the needs and the assets of the movement and to consider how best to prepare and plan for growth in the coming few years.
     When we did this in Ukraine, we began with a few touchstone Bible studies. First, we looked at the passage in 2 Kings 4:1-7 where Elisha solves a widow’s problem of poverty by asking her to gather as many jars as she can from her neighbors, and then to take the jar of oil she has in her house and begin pouring oil into the many empty jars. The oil kept pouring while there were empty containers, and it stopped when they were all full. We looked at this story as a parable, as a model of how God often works, rather than as some sort of promise, but we did notice that God multiplied her oil in proportion to the number of jars she had faith and resources to borrow. If she had only borrowed a few jars, she would only have seen a small miracle.
     The jars are simply containers, much like the structures and plans we make in student ministry. We don’t, at the end of the year, care about the number of Bible studies we led or conferences we planned and executed, but we care deeply about the number of students who entered the Kingdom or the measure of their growth in faith as disciples. But we know in Jesus’ stories about how the kingdom of God works, that growth is something given by God, and the farmer who sows the seed “knows not how”. So the best we can do, to prosper the ministry God has entrusted to us, is to set out jars, opportunities for God to pour out the oil of his Spirit, the work of his Spirit in the lives of students, who will find these “jars”, these Bible studies, conferences, student leaders who serve, invite, welcome and encourage, so that God can bring about miraculous growth, both in individual students and in the size and strength of the fellowships themselves.
     A second passage we looked at is Mark 2:18-22, another relatively obscure little parable about containers. Jesus is asked a question about the practices of his disciples: It seems religious people in Jesus’ day fasted a lot, but Jesus’ disciples didn’t. He certainly seemed like a religious person, but why didn’t his group fast? Jesus explains that it is foolish to try to patch old practices on new movements of God’s Spirit—the new will destroy the old, whether with new patches on old cloth, or new wine in old wineskins. The Pharisees were once a reform movement within Judaism, calling people not to turn away from God, the scriptures, and the temple. But 150 years later, they were a part of the religious establishment. What had once been fresh wine of renewal put in new wineskins of faithful zeal became over time the old and crusty wineskins, empty of the Spirit of God and devoid of real faith. These, in turn, needed to be replaced by new wine of the Kingdom poured into fresh wineskins.
     Unfortunately, this pattern has repeated itself many times in the history of the people of God, right up until the present. What begins as a renewal ministry, a fresh outpouring of God's spirit, becomes rigid and stale as it is multiplied through succeeding generations. This process, which might take decades in the church, can take just months or a couple years in student ministry—what was once an innovative risk into which God was pleased to pour out his Holy Spirit and work through his people becomes an old encrusted wineskin that no longer has the impact in student ministry it once did. The call of this passage is to be seeking a fresh outpouring of God’s Spirit, and to be creative enough to prepare new skins for God’s purposes with students. This passage calls us to look at the structures and strategies of the past and to honestly evaluate them based on the growth we see them bringing about through the outpouring of God's Spirit. Structures that served well in the past may no longer be fruitful, and it is then time to prepare new structures better fit for today's challenges and the work of God we desperately need.
       These two passages are not so much about the goals of student ministry but the process, which involves preparing structures into which God will be pleased to bring about growth, and to trust, not in those structures or time-tested strategies, but in the God who is always eager to work in new ways to draw people to himself.

Today we left one of our “homes” to move on to another, the 88th time we have done so. As with most of those homes, the departure meant boarding public transportation, often a plane though in this case it was a bus.  And, at most of these departure points, I notice something. Specifically, I notice the couples who are saying goodbye. One member of the couple is about to board a bus, a train or a plane, while the other is staying behind. Often these are young couples, but not always. I do not know the story behind each of these sweet partings, but we have heard many stories.

We have heard from people of their family members leaving their homes in Eastern Europe or the former Soviet Union for economic reasons. We have heard from people whose fathers moved to Russia, usually Moscow, staying away sometimes for years in order to make enough money to support the family. We have even heard of a couple who left their young children in the care of a brother and his wife so they could get jobs in Russia to support their family. As we hear these stories, it is difficult to judge and easy to have compassion on the people who have made this most painful of decisions in order to pursue economic support for their loved ones at great personal cost.

Of course, I do not know the story of everyone I see saying their farewells at the platform or as we enter passport control or the security line. Long distance relationships for young people can be character building and can build the basis for a stable marriage relationship long term. (Both of our children are in such long-distance relationships now and experience the heartache of having to say goodbye at the airport when one returns to their home.) And during my career with IVCF, I was often the one leaving my wife and family to board a plane for some days of separation in order to pursue my ministry calling. But this year, I remain grateful that, at each point of departure, I am not saying goodbye to my sweetie, my best friend, but I am traveling with her, leaving one “home”, one set of friends, with my partner in this ministry in order to embrace the next step in the adventure, a new “home” and a new set of friends and experiences. I am grateful for this treasured companionate faith journey with Lisa.
* No, we are not in our own home and will not be until November... We are now in Bulgaria... :)

Good question! It was a surprise to us, too. Our schedule took an unexpected turn last week. We were in Vilnius, Lithuania, scheduled to fly to Norway to see friends we’d made along the way. But the travel times of our trip made our meeting our friends impossible, and we found ourselves staring at expensive hostel housing, and expensive airfare to our next ministry commitment in Sofia, Bulgaria, all for the one two-hour meeting that remained in our schedule there. Rich said aloud, the night before our flight, “I wish we weren’t going to Norway. It’s going to be so expensive.” I said, “Shall we cancel?” He mused, “What if we bussed down to Bulgaria, and just overshot it by a few hours. We’d be in Greece!” So, after a flurry of internet research and e-mails cancelling flights, at 10pm the next night we boarded a bus, and after 36 rather longish hours on buses and trains, we arrived in Northern Greece, at a savings of hundreds of dollars.  We’re in a budget hotel in a budget town, surrounded by happy Russians and Serbians on holiday.  We’re enjoying the beach, but also getting in some prep for the final three events in our schedule, which are as follows:

• June 25 we head to Bulgaria, where we (mostly Rich) will facilitate a strategic planning process for the board and staff of the IFES work there. We loved being with them for their fall retreat in October, and sense a lot of strength in their movement. Rich has led processes like this for teams in the US on numerous occasions, and it draws on many of his talents as a thinker and a collaborative leader. It was fun for him to be back in the mix when he did this in Ukraine, and the feedback was that his leadership was very helpful. It’s not my favorite thing, but I work hard to listen and participate.
• June 29 we fly to Lviv, Ukraine, where we will help to staff an evangelistic English Camp. In several countries we have met staff and highly committed adults in churches who have testified that they became Christians at an English Camp. These were a hugely effective tool when the Soviet Union first collapsed and there was an intense eagerness to learn English and a great curiosity about the gospel as well. Both those hungers have subsided some, but English camps continue to be an effective strategy, as well as great leadership setting for the Christian students who come to lead small conversation groups, games, talent nights, and in other ways serve those who come without a faith background.  I will give the opening talk and will lead a track called “Skills for Everyone,” with interactive sessions on effective communication for starting a friendship, conflict resolution, goal setting, decision making, and time management. Rich will lead a track on leadership of individuals, teams, and oneself. We enjoy the Ukrainian staff who will be at the camp, and look forward to the time there very much.
• July 12 we will staff an English Camp in Romania. The Romanian IFES movement is also dear to us, and we especially enjoy our friendship with AlexIlie, the pastor and former IFES staff who will direct this camp. We have stayed in his home with his delightful family three times on this journey, so we are happy to end our year with a last visit to his city, Pitesti, and to the beautiful mountains where the camp will be.

Prayer Requests:

Please pray that our stamina and motivation to serve students and staff would remain strong for this final stretch. We feel so grateful for this few days in a restful town here in Greece; after recovering from the crazy bus ride we feel rested and energized for these last three stops. Pray that we would connect well with the non-Christian students at the English camps, and that they would take steps toward following Jesus.

Please pray for our transition to Southern California. We return with no cars, and you who live in LA know that it is sadly not an easy city to navigate without a car. We are grateful for the loaners that are beginning to come into place and the possibility of one longer-term. Anyone looking to sell a used car at a good price is encouraged to contact us! Our housing is another challenge, but we see God’s provision there as well. We will stay in the missionary housing of the Presbyterian Church, House of Rest, in Pasadena for our first three months back, and look forward very much to returning to our home in November.

Pray as well for our return to work: Rich will begin work right away at Tanner, and I will have one course to teach at Fuller each quarter. I will be recertified to host a person with disabilities again in our home and to tutor. I continue to hope to be in pastoral ministry, and applied to another church this morning, but search processes are slow and jobs scarce, so I will do the work that I can do in the meantime.  We also are quite excited to have both our children in Pasadena with us for ten days (Mark) and three weeks (Becca) before Becca heads off for a semester abroad in Pune, India and Mark returns to London. Pray that in the midst of all the details of renewing expired driver’s licenses, renegotiating our insurance, and remembering how to cook food, we would have time to process all that we have learned and experienced this year. We continue to be so, so grateful for the gift and opportunity it has been, and so thankful to you who have given and prayed along the way!

How important is food autonomy to you? How important is it that you can eat what you want when you want it? How much does having choice about what you eat, its variety and/or consistency and quantity, matter to you?      Well, until this year, I (Rich) would have said that it matters to me a lot. I like food, but I am not an omnivore—I would have said that I am a bit of a picky eater. Of course, that has mellowed over the course of my life, but I am still not a huge salad fan, for example, and I avoid salad dressings and most sauces if I can help it.
     When you become a missionary, especially one that is traveling to one hundred or so homes over the course of a year, you end up letting go of food autonomy. We have been served hundreds of meals over the last 11 months, many of them in small conference facilities, but also in homes where we were being served as guests. Over the last year, we have been on our own and not serving a local student movement for just a few weeks. Other than that, we have eaten out at restaurants rarely, and then mostly local places offering local food choices.
     I am not complaining about the food we have enjoyed on this trip—far from it. Actually, if anything, it has surprised me how much I have enjoyed the food and really not missed being able to make or select my own meals. We have eaten what is set before us, usually pretty happily, and really only a few times has the meal been difficult to consume.
     But I notice what I think now of as my Americanness by how I notice the much reduced set of choices we have, in part because we are enjoying the hospitality of others and in part because of the post-soviet mindset of the people here.
     In the US, even at relatively simple conference facilities, usually there would be some choice of food:

• salads are often served at salad bars, or with a variety of dressings and other toppings;
• conference meals might offer a choice of main courses, including some kind of vegetarian options, and these might be offered such that limited seconds were available;
• even bread might be offered so that it could be toasted (or not), and with multiple flavors of jam, honey, butter and margarine all available to dress your bread/toast.

     In the places we’ve visited, time after time the meals are plated, with everyone receiving the same quantity of vegetables, salad, starch and meat. Where they were served family style, you were expected at the table to do the math. If there were eight people at the table, eight pieces of meat were served to the table, with a heaping supply of potatoes and predressed salad. Choice consisted of how many helpings of potatoes or salad you took. Even when people are offered choices (jam or no jam, for example) everyone seems to take their bread (with jam) or their soup (with a dollop of sour cream) the same way.
     Again, my intent here is not to complain about the lack of variety in the food here, but simply to marvel at what people expect even nearly 25 years after the fall of the Soviet-imposed uniformity. Today, I was at a restaurant with a group of people from the church Lisa preached at this morning. One American couple was sitting across from me. They had both ordered salads for lunch, and the wife had ordered a side of French fries. Her 10-year-old son had ordered a soup, but after he finished his soup, he reached for his mom’s fries. She gently swatted his hand away, saying, “You could have ordered anything.” She was defending her (still nearly full) plate of French fries from her son. In my experience this is not a very typical mom’s response to a son’s request to share his mom’s fries. She then relented and let her son have a single French fry off her plate. I am sure she is a wonderful and loving mom, but my theory is that she had simply been craving French fries, and she was seeing that plate of fries as the pathway to satisfy her food craving. Even her love for her son was not going to get in the way of the satisfaction she sought. So perhaps this is a common occurrence when one lives as a missionary in a foreign land. I have compassion on her—I myself become territorial about food, and even about French fries specifically, especially if I am seeking to restore some lost food autonomy.
     I have found a very important coping strategy. I travel, as I have for many years, with dark chocolate, and I usually eat about one ounce of dark chocolate, in small pieces, per day. It helps me not to complain about the lack of chocolate in my host-provided diet, and in general helps me to be content, as the Apostle Paul says, whether I am experiencing plenty or want. I wish I weren’t dependent on dark chocolate in this way, but as a coping strategy, it is better than taking up smoking!
     So the next time you open your refrigerator and see dozens of choices of food you can happily prepare and consume, or go to a buffet at a restaurant or even a weekend church retreat, stand back, be amazed and grateful, and recognize that most of the people on the planet wouldn’t dream of the choices you have. (And, if you travel, figure out what is your affordable coping strategy that allows you to be content in all circumstances.)