Home Again!

Edie and I are now home and trying hard to get through jet lag. It seems it is much harder to do this once we are at home, than it is to do in Asia at the beginning of our trips. We consider our latest trip to be a wonderful success. Two groups were graduated with outstanding final sermons in some cases and fully adequate ones for all. The last three years with these men has made an amazing difference in their lives and is producing significant changes and growth in their congregations. 

Our time at the Asia conference was a pleasant end to our trip allowing us to rest up some but also giving us a chance to make great contacts with some of our Asian ReachGlobal staff. Next June we will be traveling with Daniel Holmquist to India and Nepal, after our training in Thailand, to explore new training opportunities for the coming years. Daniel helped me in Thailand this time and did an outstanding job. He will be overseeing South Asia so I will be working closely with him for training in that area. 

My priorities now are to update all of our curriculum with what we have learned in the past year and then to produce a good lay version for roll out in June at the national conference. Please be in prayer for me on this regard as it is a large project with much to accomplish between now and then. I really believe this lay project will have significant impact in US churches as well as some of our overseas contacts as well. 

Al

Thailand Training Update

The training for the men in Chiang Mai went very well, despite the usual problems with translation but we were able to navigate that okay. The men have shown such great improvement over the past two years. It really is remarkable. Daniel, a ReachGlobal cohort, trained with me. It was his first time working in a training with nationals and he did well. He commented, “If this is the hardest group you have then this material works really well.” He was quite impressed with the sermons the men presented.

I continue to learn with each training trip. On this trip, I saw that some of the tools we teach early on get lost as we add new tools later. In addition, the men can preach on each section quite well but have trouble seeing the flow of the message through the whole passage. I think that the Lord has given me clarity on how to address both of those issues as we go forward. I also have been struggling to determine how to write our workshop on the Redemptive Story well. I have not been satisfied with what we have. I think I finally have some direction on that as well. 

We are now at the ReachGlobal Asia conference in Southern Thailand. It is beautiful here and the hotel is really nice. It is a good break for us after three hard weeks of training and travel. My back is finally clearing up and I have little more than a bit of stiffness, especially if I stand a long time but I can live with that. The massage I got in Chiang Mai was torturous. I had never had a massage before and everyone advised me that a deep tissue massage would help loosen my back. It did but the price was high. Wow! A rather large Thai woman gave me a real workout and it was quite painful. After an hour of working on me, she took me downstairs and asked a muscular Thai man to finish because she didn’t think she was strong enough. I had thought she was too strong! He gave me another half hour of torture, and lo and behold, I was quite loosened up, limp perhaps from all the pain. Anyway, my back has been improving ever since. I went to the only chiropractor in Chiang Mai and I don’t think he helped me at all. All in all, I am thankful to be mostly pain free and able to get around well now.

Our time here at the conference has been wonderful with good opportunities to connect with people interested in our Pathways program. We had good discussions with some Hmong leaders and we are making plans to begin something with them in a year or so. There are approximately one million Hmong Christians in Asia, 400,000 in Vietnam alone, and almost none of them have formal training. Pray with us that we can get all of the issues resolved to begin training trainers for them by 2016.

In our main session, a missionary give a testimony of discipling an Indonesian man. It was an amazing story of humble and effective influence in this man’s life. Then the missionary said he had learned about Pathways and had begun using it with the men in his area and that it was so wonderful. He gave us a great endorsement. I had never met this man and had no idea he was using our material. I was amazed and delighted that the Lord was spreading our training far beyond us. All glory to Him.

Al

Thailand Training

This week I am enjoying the luxury of joining the teaching time of the training here in Thailand. I am gaining new information on some of the tools that will be helpful to me personally, and in leading studies for women. Beginning Sunday, we will be at the Asia Conference. There Al hopes to firm up where the next trainings will be in Asia. I ask you pray with me that God would open a door for me to do a regular training with women in one of the places.

As an update on Al, he is doing better with his back especially since he got a “torturous” massage last night. It loosened up the muscles but now he says his skin hurts! He is supposed to get a chiropractic adjustment on Friday so please pray that goes well and will provide him some relief for the travel and busy week at the conference.

Grateful for your prayers,

Edie

Good Training Days

Our last days up north went well. The men presented really good sermons and we were very pleased. We passed out certificates and celebrated their achievements. It was a special time as this was the first group that has fully completed our training. I have been going there for almost 5 years so it will be difficult not to return on a regular basis. They are making plans to start a new training effort using their own trainers this time, just what we had hoped for and worked hard to achieve.  

Our trip to the south should have been rather routine except that the airline chose to cancel our last flight without telling us. We spent so much time at the check in counter trying to find out how to get on to our destination that we almost were late for our first flight and still had no resolution. In Mumbai, our transfer airport, we again spent about an hour on the issue and it was finally decided that we could not get all the way until the next day. The airline chose to pay half our hotel costs for our overnight in Chennai. So we arrived to our destination town a day late. (I deliberately am not giving the names of the places that we train because opposition in the government is growing and we do not want to cause anyone unnecessary trouble.)

We have now trained for 4 days here and it has been awesome. The sermons the first day were a bit shaky but since then it has been wonderful. We are really seeing the fruit of our training program with the men preaching the text very well. We have worked hard to keep improving our training over the past 4 years but what we have had has worked well. We are still learning even on this trip how to train and teach the material better. I am certain that the future result for new groups will be even better. 

One story may help you see the joy we have in these men. Peter, an older man with poor English skills, is so dedicated. He rides a bus to and from the training for hours each day. He has been hard to understand in earlier workshops. He did a great job this time and I could actually understand almost everything he said. I really praised him for both his sermon and his English. Later we found out that he had written his whole sermon out twice in English and had practiced it over and over, staying up most of the night before he preached. He continued going over it in his mind on the bus until he fell asleep. I do not know how he made his stops. Mike later told me that what I said to him had not only made his day but also his whole month. He was so happy he nearly glowed. He showed us a large beautiful brochure he had made showing the various training he had done and how some of his students are passing on the training to several new groups of pastors. He is an amazing man.  

One unpleasant issue came up today. My back for some reason has chosen to seize up, so much so that I could not go back to the training this afternoon. I think it is the bed. It is not uncomfortable, but is evidently not the best for my back. Pray with me that this will clear up as we travel on to Thailand tomorrow night. I do most of the training there on my own so I need to be able to stand most of the day.

Edie has had a great time with the Ladies and she will write a blog on that later. Thanks for praying for us.

Al