Wednesday, April 29, 2009

Partnership


I got this picture from a workbook called "Pathlight" which is designed as s seminar/ss curriculum text for missions. When I saw it our partnership--God, you and us--refocused for me. Don't worry about all the terms in the fire but I want to focus on what is the fuel. Prayer. To have a fire you need 3 things. You need fuel, you need oxygen, and you need a spark. I would say God provides the spark and the oxygen with his Holy Spirit and the fuel that burns to produce the flame of missions is prayer. With prayer every part of the flame is on fire and show's its light. With that in mind I want to copy an exert from that same book about petitionary prayer. These comments were written by David Wells.

"What then is the nature of petitionary prayer? It is, in essence, rebellion --rebellion against the world in its falleness, the absolute and undying refusal to accept as normal what is pervasively abnormal. It is the refusal of every agenda, every scheme, every interpretation that is at odds with the norm as orginally established by God."

Ann and I know that many of you have joined with us in rebelling against the abnomality in the world and we would like to reciprocate. We would like to pray for you. We would like to pray for you that God's will be done in your life and in your situation. Leave a comment on our blog or send me an email at swegn001@gmail.com.

Thanks again for praying and do continue to do so for us.

Friday, April 17, 2009

Where we are going

The final installment of our summary series.

Where we are going

Our immediate future is clear, the not so distant future is fuzzy, and the distant future is murky, the ultimate destination (praise the Lord) is very very clear.

After our tests this week we will begin a conversation course in french. This will mean less written homework and a lot more talking. this is good but will be hard for us.

The conversation course will last until June 23rd. After the course we will travel to eastern Ky where we will be camp missionaries at Camp Nathanaael This is a camp that I attended as a youth and that helped me develop my relationship with Christ.

After that in July we hope to a) see our families ( I have at least one, maybe two family reunions) and speak in some churches in the Kentucky, TN area as well. If your church wants to learn more about missions let us know as swegn001@gmail.com.

After July it gets really murky. We essentially don't know where we will be.

Option 1: We get the financial support we need and we go to Impfondo. This is our preferred plan. To execute this we need at least 3k in promised support (that plus our savings and our checking will sustain us for 3 years and then we could garner more financial support later), but ideally we will need the 4-5k per month.

Option 2: We do not get the financial support and we stay back east, I do locum tenems work to earn cash and not burn through gifts that people have given for us to go Africa.

Option 3: Same as option 3 except we go back to Montana and raise money from there, and work there.

Wednesday, April 15, 2009

Where we are

The second of the posts


Where we are

Well that's the easiest answer.

We are in Sherbrooke still.

This week we take our oral and written exams for our second level and we prepare for our next course which is a grammar-lite-conversation-heavy-let's-put-all-we-know-together-and-see-if-we-can-actually-talk-in-french course.

We are helping out our upstairs neighbors who are korean and finished their french courses. They are waiting for God's direction of where they should go and while they are waiting they began a Korean/french church in their house. We are teaching a sunday school class in english. We have a 10 yo girl who is korean, a 14 yo boy who is japaneese, and ian. So we are teaching a class in english to three different ethnic groups in a francophone area.

We are also in the middle of trying to organize our immediate future plans (more on that in the next post).

I am in talks with a locums company to get other short term work

We are on facebook and twitter

Where we are with our financial support is different. We have about 1200/mo committed of our need 4-5k per month. All the money we are receiving now is going in to a savings account and we are paying for our tuition for school and living expenses out of our checking account.

We are reveling in God's love for us.

Monday, April 13, 2009

Where we've been

This week I am going to do a summary for you on where we've been, what we are doing now and where we are going. The last one will probably be the one of most interest but I hope to get them all published this week.

Where we've been

I guess the answer to this one is studying in French. In the past several months we've almost soley concentrated on that. Ian and I have been going once a month to an outreach french youth club that is put on by a brethern church. Their goal with that is to reach some unchurched kids for Jesus and our goals are that plus picking up some French along the way. He and I have mostly enjoyed it but my deficits in language hamper my ability to do as much as I would like.

Anna and I also have been developing some really neat friendships with other missionaries here and with some of the quebecquois as well.

We are almost finished with our second trimester of language learning as well.

We've slowly been garnering some financial support. We've been living off our checking account so as to not diminish any gifts getting us to Africa.

We've been enjoying the prayer support

I have not been able to find a job in VT that will work with our school schedule.