Dear Cherished Interested’s,                                                                                         May 28th, 2023

Safety-belt..

I understand where the perspective comes from.  Christianity to most of the non-Christian developed world-mind is at best a crutch.  It can also be seen as only a means of control employed by Christians who are mentally defective or evil. 

I blew it again today.  I was unable to prevent a developed world white person coming into the children’s worship time on Sunday and take one of the children out so that white person could do the job they get paid to do.  A job they have 167 other hours a week to do, other than that hour.

The free work we do in this world is seen as valueless.   This is part of our challenge with regards the message of Jesus Christ.  None of us can do anything to earn what Jesus does.  Jesus simply loves enough to do it for us.  None of us could do anything to have life and be part of creation, God simply loves enough to do it for us. 

By teaching that money and control is all there is to spend time on, we teach so much antithetical to the message of sun and rain and soil and growing things.  Things that we can manipulate some now but, still we cannot create.

Being unpaid and unwilling to live divorced from the local community and the local community of faith around a precious group of children, we are ostracized.  Any and all mistakes, real or imagined, are tabulated and memorialized for use later.  Manipulation for control is good, apparently.  Manipulation for money even better.  Those who complain about feeling manipulated by folks from economically dependent cultures need only look at what we can so sadly teach. 

That is precisely what we face in North America too.  Our culture exported faith to much of the world.  Now our culture exports the shunning of faith as irrelevant mental illness in the way of finding money, money, money.  Faith need not be spoken.

Covid shut down the economy here.  Covid killed many as the disease.  Covid may have killed more in the economic devastation wrought by the global fear that shut down this economy based on tourism.  This is part of what happened at Josephine Sunset Home, an eldercare facility in Stanwood Washington during Covid times too.  The disease took our elders.  The disease took our elders community away and gave them only isolation.  That isolation brought death too.

With people who look like me teaching that money, their paid position to raise money from those who only need to be motivated to give money, and the children learning to be part of that motivating for money, and their worship time together is to be abrogated to that..??

I know.  Vern, stop being a jerk. “I’m only doing my job.  And I get paid to do my job.”  This is only part of the spiritual pressure to extract us from trying to teach that when the money stops, when the buildings collapse, when there is no food to share, when our last breath is taken, there is still a place called home for all of us.  

That is what lets us take our next breath.  That is what lets us teach Jesus’s self-sacrifice by striving to live self-sacrificially.

I can be so furious but, only Jesus has the authority to overturn the money changers tables.  I do not.  I can be so deeply troubled and hurt but, only Jesus has the authority to judge, I do not.  Respect is no longer a part of our world-leading-culture-through-economic-means.  Respect is now a means to an end, a manipulation.  That is poison shared by too many of us too.  Still, I am not qualified to judge.  Pray for me.  Please.

Being a plow-point, the forward most tip of a tool that breaks open the ground and turns it over as part of preparing that ground to become soil, something good for roots and growing, is brutal.  We are not wealthy people because that is often where I found myself in North America. 

That is still where I find myself with North Americans, Europeans, most folks who can afford to travel because they want to.  I know it makes no sense.  We got rid of the house and nearly everything and travelled because we had to.  I pray some day our children will all come to understand that.  It may help them too.

How do we keep going?  You!!, If only one of the readers of this get this far and can know that your inability to articulate words in prayer for us is beautiful beyond expression.  The Holy Spirit wordlessly groans for us.  If you take the time for that groaning to go up to God, because of God, because of you.  You keep us going.

Faces keep us going.  Our sick little non-four-wheel drive forces us to be on foot a lot.  We get to see and be seen.  Just two days ago a young one, who had never seen me before, was dumb-struck watching me climb into the truck at the edge of the road.  I spoke in the language of this mountain.  The eyes got bigger and that little one ran back the way they came to chatter emphatically with other little ones.  Probably something like, “you won’t believe what I just saw!..  and..  and.. it spoke to me!!”

Faces keep us going.  We are known some and the greetings almost always come with deep sincere smiles and waves.  Often a group of two or more women will respond to my greeting now while walking with howls of laughter as they greet me, someone they have seen in their churches, in return as Kisali. 

Here is the joke they all share with such joy.  Kisali means big-brother.  Those who know what I look like understand that I am fairly tall at 190 centimeters, about 6’ 3”.  I have to order shirts and shoes in order to get them the right size.  I am still about 300 lbs and look ridiculous, especially here among the majority genetically predisposed to be beardless head to toe.  I am not.  It is a wonderful joke that means they are too busy laughing to ask for money or even be afraid.

Faces keep us going.  Local pastors, living and serving hand to mouth multiple parishes, who don’t just smile but beam at us.  Local pastors who come quietly to visit us with problems they cannot fix themselves as they live hand to mouth.  We do what we can, which isn’t much.  But we do have the freedom not afforded much of the North American church anymore.  We have no insurance policy.  We have no lawyers, and as unaccompanied missionaries we have no national church telling us what we can and cannot try as ministry and service.  So we try.  Sometimes what we have to try is, “no.”

If we fail.  By Gods grace and help we may come to find forgiveness and energy to try again.     

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From last time…

I cannot describe the spiritual attacks we have been facing as the time hopefully approaches (June 1^st?) when we will engage with the University again.  Relationships here on the ground in addition to my imperfections and mistakes are being used to try to drive us away from our striving.  Each day is a sincere struggle.  Hopefully that means we’re on the right track.  Please pray for those around us.  Please pray for the local faces which fearlessly now smile and greet us as we walk.  

Please keep crumpling us up and throwing us at God.  That is where we need to be.  God will sort us out.

One day at a time.  Just like how you each live.  Just one day at a time. 

Thank you, each of you.

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What to Pray for:

Our armed forces families, our leadership, our people, whole world round, all of Gods kids -

All the tough and blessing expressed above –

The love of folks –

Whatever is on your hearts and minds for us –

For our children and grand-children who miss us.. 

For Makumira Secondary School looking to share stories and partner in some way with a foreign school, Great leaders, teachers, students, programs, strong backs, minds, and hearts –

For our health to stay ahead of whatever is before us –

For those who have braved the donate button to discover Kajun Crofton, our daughter who helps getting each one of your donations to us and every blogpost to where you can read it -

For each and every one of you –

Each and every one of your prayers, your precious conversations with God –

Prayers, Your Prayer, Even your groaning prayers makes all the difference..

Vern W

May life be as Music to your Heart – May Music be as Heart to your Life – May Heart be as Life to your Music