Here is our video report from the 2008 NMC in Tulsa, OK. We explain our adventures in actually getting to Tulsa, give an overview of what goes on at the convention, explore the exhibit hall, and then find some strange and interesting things around town. Check it out.

Convention Arena

We left home on November 20th, a chilly Thursday morning. Getting to the Baltimore Washington International Airport was a bit of an adventure in and of itself. After getting stuck at a railroad crossing waiting for a train, and then getting lost for a while after taking a detour, we very nearly missed our flight. We were running full speed through terminal B of BWI and made it to the gate just before they closed the door.

The National Missionary Convention has three main features: The main sessions, the workshops, and the exhibits. The theme this year was “Getting Your Hands Dirty”. The primary text was from Luke 4, especially verses 17 - 30, where Jesus reads from the scroll of Isaiah in a synagog in Nazareth. We really enjoyed hearing Mark Moore speak on this text during the main sessions Friday and Saturday. Other main session speakers included missionaries from all over the world with inspiring testimonies and stories.

We attended a number of workshops which included ideas on how to reach muslims, animists, and hindus for Christ, how one man’s water purification system is helping to bring the gospel to impoverished people groups, and how Bible translation and literacy work hand in hand to deliver God’s word to many people who are desperately in need of it.

There was a strong focus this year on reaching those who are suffering in physical poverty. One speaker pointed out that there are over 2,000 references to poverty in the Bible, and Jesus often spoke and dealt with those who were in these types of situations. Too often, we try to spiritualize these concepts, losing sight of their true meaning: We cannot truly show the compassion of Christ to people if we are not doing what we can to meet their physical needs.

The exhibit hall at the NMC is always a great place to meet up with old friends and learn about ministries that are happening all over the world. Walking through the exhibits we found many people we knew, which was both exciting and exhausting after a few hours.

Emily and the girls

A large group of students from Central Christian College of the Bible came to the convention, including my sister Sarah, Emily’s brother Daniel, and a friend of ours from Delaware, Bethany. It was great spending time with them, not having seen them for several months. We visited several great restaurants in Tulsa, and found a peculiar footbridge that the locals call the Center of the Universe. Who knew, the center of the universe was in Tulsa, Oklahoma?

Probably the most encouraging part of our trip was spending time with our PBT family. We hadn’t seen them since PMI in June, and although we are still getting to know everyone, we already feel a strong connection with them. It was great to know that so many people are praying for us and are looking forward to us selling our house and moving to Dallas for our training.

Overall, the convention was enlightening, encouraging, and exhausting. We are very glad that we were able to attend this year, and are more convinced than ever about the great need for people to go and bring the good news of the gospel of Christ to those who are in spiritual darkness, and about our decision to pursue full time ministry in his service and his kingdom!

We’ll be posting the details of our trip, along with photos and hopefully some video, after we return.

Partnership Development

Emily and I are currently in the Recruit status with PBT, which means we are doing partnership development and preparing to move to Dallas, TX for further training and preparation before moving to the East Africa Branch. This summer we completed our initial round of presentations at some of the local churches in Delaware that we had previous relationships with. We are very grateful to these churches for hosting us and for the prayer and financial support we have received from them so far.

While we have not yet presented anything at our home church, LCC, we have had several opportunities to talk with the leadership team and missions team. There is lot of interest in what we are doing and we are hoping to receive a significant portion of our financial support from them. When we are more certain about the timing of our training in Dallas we will be able to get a clearer picture of what this will include and will then determine how much (if any) additional support we need to raise.

About Our House

Our house, in the middle of our street

The main concern we have at this point (as anyone who has spoken with us knows) is the sale of our house in Milford, DE. We purchased the house in 2005. At the time, we didn’t know that we would soon have the opportunity to join PBT in full-time overseas ministry, or that the US housing market and economy was about to take a sharp turn in an unexpected direction. Fortunately buying our home was a decision that was made with much prayer and consideration, so we are confident that everything will work out in the end.

We need to spend one semester in Dallas for training. Once our house sells, we will be looking to move to Dallas for the next semester, assuming we have enough financial support in place at the time. For example, if our house were to sell this month (and we hope that it does), we would be looking to move to Dallas in January for the Spring semester.

Our house has been on the market since December 2007. As expected, we saw very little interest throughout the winter. This summer we’ve had a number of people come and look at the house (two people just this last weekend), but we have not had any offers yet.

Waiting…

Overall we are remaining optimistic, seeing this waiting period as an opportunity to exercise patience, build relationships, and to prepare spiritually for the journey ahead. Admittedly, It is easy to become discouraged. Every time we turn on the radio or see another foreclosure notice stapled to someone’s front door (such as our neighbor’s!) we are reminded of the reality of the situation.

Fortunately, we can live above the “reality of the situation”. We believe that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love him, as Paul puts it in Romans 8 and as we heard preached this Sunday. We know that “all things” includes the economy, and our mortgage, and our house, and any number of factors that we are unaware of.

So we remain confident that God’s timing is perfect, that our house will sell when it’s supposed to sell, and that the support we need will come in. Even if it doesn’t, we are thankful to God for all that we do have, which, in the scope of everything really is a lot.

Also, if you know anyone who would like to buy a 3,000 square foot 4 bedroom house in Milford, you let me know.

Lake House Geocaching

This year was an original play called RSVP that takes place the day before a young couple’s wedding and uses the setting to compare the marriage relationship to our relationship with Jesus. Emily was helping with music and I was in charge of all things tech (mostly lights and sound). It was a great week and we are very grateful to everyone who donated to PBT in support of our ministry!

Looking for an opportunity to recover from MMAD week, we headed down to North Carolina last weekend with my sisters Sarah and Loree, and Emily’s brother Daniel. Emily’s grandparents have a house on Lake Gaston and we had a wonderful and relaxing weekend with them. Between tubing, fishing, playing music, and geocaching, we still found time to get plenty of much needed rest. Check out the photos from the trip in our photo gallery.

From there we drove up to Indian Lake Christian Service Camp where we have to opportunity to be the mission for a Sr. High week that our good friend Charles is leading. Emily is staying all week and helping out as a dorm mom and team leader. Unfortunately I am out of vacation days, so Monday night I had to head back home to work for the rest of this week. I’ll be going back on Friday to stay for the final night and to pick up Emily.

So that’s what we’ve been up to lately. Still no bids on our house, but we did have two people look at it last week. Our friend Billy says that the housing market is picking up and that we could have a sale soon. We’re praying that he’s right.

Take a look at this video that Adam Shreve (from the PBT media team) put together to be played at this year’s CIY events. Good stuff!

We used the small screen plea at Countryside to try to convince them to move forward in the auditorim, and just as it did at Ocean View it worked perfectly here also, so we will definitely be using that trick from now on. Having everyone together and close to us really helps us to communicate effectively.

We are the mission this year for the Seaford Christian Church VBS program. Tomorrow night we are going to be speaking briefly for the opening program. Seaford was where we did our first presentation back in May and we are looking forward to catching up with everyone there again.

During the beginning of the service (songs, communion, etc…) everyone was sitting all the way in the back, which is apparently the normal custom there. The first 10 or so rows on both sides of the auditorium were completely empty! I was just going to take my microphone and head towards the back of the auditorium when it was time for me to speak, but thankfully, just before that time the song leader explained to everyone that we inteded to use our own projection screen, which is small, and that they would need to move up so that they could see it.

Apparently this was a good motivation, because the entire group moved all the way to the front and completely filled those 10 empy rows! This lent itself to the intimate and personal atmospere that I feel more comfortable with, so I definitely appreaciated it. I later found out that this was a very special treat, and that they never are able to get everyone to come the front.

Thank you OVCC for giving us the opportunity to express to you our passion for the bibleless people of the world, and thank you for moving to the front of the auditorium!

The graphic here is a preview of the inside of the brochure. It folds in half from top to bottom and has a picture of us on the outside cover. It was designed in Pages and printed by U Printing. I’m definitely happy with the result and hopefully will be using this workflow for several more flyers and brochures.

We spoke at DCSC Monday for campfire. The campfire was rained out so we had to make do with candles. It’s Senior High week this week, and although attendance is down this year, they are a great group. Rather than our normal PD presentation, I took the opportunity to challenge them to give up everything to Christ, who will use it all in a much bigger way than we could ever imagine.