Light of Togo

It thrills me to be writing this, and any parent will understand why.  You see, Joshua decided a couple weeks ago without any suggestion or coercion from us to spend his own money and buy Christmas presents for everyone in our family and extended family.  That’s 11 people in all.  We made sure that he understood that he would be spending his money and that once it’s spent it can’t be used for something else.  He acted like he already knew this, but it wasn’t a big deal.  What’s even more surprising is that he hasn’t been asking incessantly about gifts that he will be receiving.

So, last night Joshua and I took a trip to the dollar store, where every kid’s Christmas dreams can come true!  With just a little help from me he picked out each gift very thoughtfully.  It was adorable to see him walking up and down each isle with his finger on his chin as if pondering a difficult math equation.  This morning Tiffany snapped a shot of him under my parent’s dining room table, wrapping all the presents.

We’re so thankful for a kid who thinks of other people before himself.  It reminds me that I could definitely use more of that kind of attitude!

Have a very merry Christmas!

One week ago I had a great opportunity to preach at the Portland Rescue Mission, which provides overnight stays to the homeless in downtown Portland. It was an exceptionally busy night because of the unusually cold temperature. As I began to preach, the crowd was slightly hostile and I found myself having to talk over them because of the constant comments and noise. However, when I got to the heart of the message, which was the gospel plain and simple, they seemed to significantly quiet down and listen intently. I explained the gospel as it is presented in Romans chapter 3, where Paul explains the sinfulness of man and his inability to save himself. We have absolutely no righteousness, which is what God requires for man to be reconciled to Him, but God gives the perfect righteousness of Christ to those who believe on Him by faith. I am humbled and amazed that God would use me to glorify Himself by giving the gospel of Christ to those men.

Well, my original intention was to write a blog post about packing our first box and about the big task we had ahead of us, but because we got so busy completing this big task I never had time to do it.  So now instead of writing about what lies ahead of us, I’ll tell you about what is now behind us: specifically, 57 very heavy boxes.  More than that, however, is a very heavy load off our shoulders!  At times, it felt like we’d never get everything packed, but we just used every bit of spare time to pack, even if it was just one or two boxes at a time.  It was an extremely slow process because every item in every box must be accounted for on spreadsheets that will be given to the port agents in Togo.

Other than packing up the remaining last-minute boxes, we still have quite a bit to do.  I’m in the process of ironing out the details for trucking all our stuff to Missouri where it will be packed into the shipping container.  We also are working on getting our visas for both Ghana and Togo, our immunization shots, and tying up all the loose ends Stateside.  Once all this is done, we should finally be able to take a short breather in January before heading to Togo.

Click here to download a printable PDF copy of this letter: Dec ‘08

Fifty-three days and counting!  Over the past few weeks since you last heard from us, we have been incredibly busy in our preparation for heading to Togo on February 3rd.  God is providing in so many unexpected ways, and we give Him all the glory for it.  We discovered shortly after getting to Oregon that our home church, Greater Portland Baptist Church, was going to give their Thanksgiving offering in order to help out with some of the costs involved with the shipping and set-up in Togo.  We just found out the other day that over $7,000 was given!  We can do nothing but give God all the praise for moving the hearts of His people to do this.

Even though we are extremely busy right now with all the packing and logistics involved in our move, God is giving us some great opportunities to serve Him at the same time.  Last night Tiffany and I were able to go with a group from our church into a maximum security juvenile detention center where we had a special Christmas party for the men there and gave them Christmas stockings filled with gifts, including a Bible.  At the end of the party, the gospel was presented and several people believed on Christ and were saved.  It was a great privilege to be a part of what God did there.  Please continue to pray for these guys as they will be discipled in the coming months.  Also, please pray for me as I will be preaching at the Portland Rescue Mission on the 15th of this month.  My desire is to present the gospel as clearly as possible straight from the Bible.  I’ll be speaking from Romans chapter three.

We are working on finalizing all of the details with our shipping company, so pray for wisdom in that as well.  We have a LOT of packing to do in the next 10 days or so, so if you don’t hear from us for a while it’s probably because we have collapsed from exhaustion!

Thank you again for praying for our big move, and for supporting us through it!  You are such a blessing to us.