YOU LIKE, YOU BUY!

Yesterday afternoon I had an "Open Market" activity for our Emanate families.  In most of the countries that we work, our missionaries will be buying a lot of things at an open market.  It can be quite a culture shock to try to buy things in an "Open Market".  There will be all sorts of sights, sounds, and even smells that hit us.  There might be dogs, chickens, or even pigs, running around.  Many times there is raw meat or fish being sold and in the heat it can intensify those smells. There might be loud music blaring and vendors yellings things out to you to try to entice you to buy some of their goods. And then doing it in another language can be hard and intimidating. Therefore with this activity we try introduce our families to an open market, buying something from someone who is speaking another language, with loud music blaring, with a pungent smell in the air.

Fasten Your Seatbelts. There Could Be Turbulence

There is a lot of evidence of the tremedous benefits there are in making role-play a part of training.  This is not just for children but for adults as well.  Branches of the military, emergency response groups and companies do all sorts of role play in their training.  It builds confidence and helps to have a better outcome. (Even for experienced missionaries, traveling through airports can increase a persons stress level.) And that is why I added this airport event to help prepare our families for the many hours of traveling that is ahead of them.  This year we only have two student families with children that would benefit from our Ethnos Airlines Event.  Therefore, I invited two more families who have not flown as a family before , so they could experience some of what it would be like to go through an airport with their children.  Our flight attendant, immigration officer, and custom's official were all bilingual.  So our children were also hearing other languages spoken through their journey.  I am thankful for my team of volunteers who dressed and acted very professional to make this airport event as realistic as possible.  I also want to acknowledge  my hubby for all he does to support this important ministry.  He puts in countless hours setting up and tearing down and I could not do my events without his help.  

 Ready for Check-In

 Nothing is going to Get Past these TSA Offiers

 Our Ethnos Airline Flight Crew

Our Gate Agent will Only Let Ticketed Passengers  Board The Aircraft

 Our Immigartions and Customs Officers 

Arriving in PNG 

 Our Wonderful Team of Volunteers

A Cultural Event

Here at Emanate our student families are very important to us.  We know that there will be many adjustments for our families moving overseas.  I have invested a lot of time and energy  in coming up with different activites to help prepare them to enter a new culture.  Since children can't sit too long without being bored, I try to make the activites I do fun and interactive. Today we celebrated Chinese New Years.  Through the celebration we start to introduce the children to a different culture and way of doing things.  Through sight, sound, and taste we explore some of the Chinese culture.  We found China on the globe, and tried to read signs in Chinese.  Then we heard Chinese music, songs, practiced a Chinese greeting, and read a story about Chinese New Years.  We learned some culture as we watched a lion and then dragon dance.  To see how good everyone could use chop sticks, we had a race of the parents against the children.  They tried to see who could fill their jars with marshmallows first.  (The race might have been rigged as the children had bigger marshmallows and a smaller jar to fill.  But the parents were good sports about the competition.)  We finished off our Chinese cultural event by eating some Chinese food with chicken fried rice, egg rolls, fortune cookies, and rice krispy suchi.  (Thanks Joan, Charis, and Vern for helping me with the food prep as all of the food was home made. It was great team work!) I was surprised how well everyone did using chop sticks.  Our Chinese New Year event was a fun way to start to explore a new culture.  

This Day Goes Down in History

32 years ago today will forever be cemented in our hearts and lives as Vern, Caleb, Seth, and I got on an Eastern airlines flight and left the comforts of North America as we headed to Venezuela for the first time.  Vern and I were both 24 years old.  Vern had been to Brazil on two different missions trips.  I however, was in no way a world traveler as I had never even been outside of North America.  As a matter of fact, as we took off from Miami there was all this steam coming out of the air conditioning vents and I actually turned to Vern and said I thought the plane might be on fire.  There of course were all sorts of emotions going on inside of me of what life would be like for us.  Would we be able to handle the heat, bugs, tropical diseases that might plague us?  How would we handle the years of separation from family? (This was before the internet and when phoning overseas was VERY expensive.) How would our boys adjust to this new life ahead?  Did we have what it takes for this new missionary life ahead of us? And the list goes on.  Was life overseas an adjustment? YES!  Was it heat intense, and living with HUGE cockroaches GROSS?  YES!  Was it hard to live so far away from family?  Yes!  We missed so many special family events like missing four of my brothers weddings, which was so very hard.  Did we have what is takes to make it in Venezuela? There is a big NO on that one.  But you know what? GOD DID!  God has a perfect record of faithfulness and he wasn't about to blow his record on us.  How I thank the Lord for how he took us through every deep valley and also gave us some mountain top views as well.  So as I reflect on this anniversary date it is another reminder of God's loving kindness and his faithfulness to us.  I don't know the path ahead.  Am I equipped for the next twists and turns in life?  NO!  BUT GOD IS!!!!!  This sunrise picture is something Elisha sent me this morning.  It brought tears to my eyes and it was yet another reminder that "His mercies are new every morning". We need to  be sharing our stories with each other and reminding each other that we are not alone on this jounrey in life.  

 Our Family 32 years Ago

"HIS MERCIES ARE NEW EVERY MORNING!"

A Bit of Heaven

This morning Vern headed out at the crack of dawn to bring his mom, Merrill, and Teresa to the airport.  It was such a cool gift from God to have them here especially Vern's mom.  It was so awesome for our kids & grandkids to be able to connect with their grandma/great grandma again.  And Merrill and Teresa haven't been out here for five years so that was also wonderful for us to have them here.  With the Dyck family so spread out we have to seize these special moments in time together.  Here is a snap shot of our days together.

Bringing in the Big Guns

Most of the classes Vern teaches are on cross cultural church planting.  For the past six days it has been a special joy for Vern to have his brother Merrill, who also was our coworker, take the class time to share with our students.  Merrill has over 40 years of experience in cross cultural church planting, has translated the New Testament, has discipled and mentored the people group we worked with.  He has a love for the Lord and for people.  It was so great to have him here passionately sharing with our students.  As I sat in class this morning I was in awe once again of how God changes lives. We listened to testimony after testimony of how God has changed people's thinking and  brought them from darkness to light, from living in fear to living with peace.  We serve the God of miracles. The job of cross cultural church planting is not easy, and almost impossible, BUT GOD! We are just ordinary people but we serve an extra ordinary God.  As I think of our students heading overseas the task of what is ahead is HUGE.  But God is just looking for ordinary people who will faithfully walk with him, rely on Him, an serve him to see the Impossible Possible! 

 

The Lord of the Harvest

Every Fall we hold a three day "Global Perspectives" conference for our Emanate students where we look at the different countries that Ethnos works in or desires to work in.  This year the theme was: "The Lord of the Harvest".    As we look at Matt 9:37-38 - "He said to his disciples, The Harvest is great, but the workers are few.  So PRAY to the Lord who is in charge of the workers of the harvest; ask him to send more workers into his fields."   We rejoice as we see all that God is doing around the world.  Although it leaves us very challenged as to the great needs there still are.   There are people groups asking to hear "God's talk" and yet there is no one to go.   What part do we have in this?  Well, the Lord does tell us to pray.  Would you pray with us that God would bring more laborers.  Have you ever thought of going to serve overseas?  There are so many needs not only for church planters and Bible translators, but for pilots, accountants, nurses, teachers, IT support, maintenance workers, home school helpers and the list goes on.   Do you want to make a real difference in the world? One way to do that, is to consider doing it overseas and being part of the Ethnos Team.