Dear Brethren, Family and Friends
Greetings in the name of Jesus who through His blood has brought us near to the heavenly Father. Prayer continues to work!
TRAVELING On and On and On and ........
We are currently in Coker Alabama waiting for Terasa to deliver her 6th child. (We are hoping for a girl, she is just wanting it to deliver - NOW!) In the past two+ we have traveled over 5,000 miles talking with individuals and churches about the proposed Bible Training School in Fiji. We have been in Missouri, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, Texas and Oklahoma (not quite everywhere but somedays it feels like it). Gas prices have been ranged from $3.25-$4.15. Fuel prices recently went up in Fiji .26¢ a liter. So the fuel here is still cheaper!
The van (Chris and Terasa loaned us and we left our "good working" truck in Alabama with For Sale signs on it) we have been driving had water in the fuel when we first got it. We thought we had that sorted out (changed the fuel filter three times in Joplin) but when we left out of Kansas City Mo on a Monday morning we were steering a van which acted more like a broncing bronc. Everything was going fine until we hit a bump (the whole road system around KC is nothing but). It was like "Hi-O silver" until I had enough and pulled into a Chevy dealership in Boonville Mo. After 5 hours of trying to locate the reason they finally found that a wire going from the driveshaft sensor to the ignition module was shorting on the exhaust. That meant that every time the wire touched the exhaust the van died and then restarted when the wire untouched. ON-OFF-ON-OFF! YEEEE-HAWWWW! They taped the exposed wire and then used a coat hanger to hang the wire out of the way and we were back in the van and "on the road again"! After that the van drove well until . . . .when we were leaving Mississippi to drive to the Global Missions Workshop in Arlington TX the air conditioning quit blowing cold. Keep in mind if it had been 70 degrees it might not have mattered so much but the daytime temperatures were 100-103. So we stopped at an air conditioning place in Greenville MS where (after lunch) they located the cause as a blown fuse. (I had suspected a blown fuse but thought that it might just need a bit of Freon.) They replaced the blown 10 amp fuse with a new 15 amp fuse and didn't charge us anything after finding out we were travelling missionaries (so revealing in that everything we have is loaded in the van including a coffee maker and bags of cereal). So back in the van "on the road again" for about 8 miles when the a/c quit blowing cold again. It blew the fuse again. I thought, "this is not going to be so great" so I stopped in the next town for some fuses. I replaced fuses every few miles or every 5 minutes whichever came first until I had to stop in the next town for more fuses. I was putting 30 amp fuses in at the end. Finally realizing there was an electrical problem blowing the fuses we just kept the windows rolled down and endured the wind, bugs flying through the open windows and heat on into Texarkana where we spent the night with friends. Just before we got to Texarkana a young man lost control of his car and spun it off in the ditch just in front of us. We turned around and were the first on the scene. He had skid marks on the road for 190 feet and then slid into the ditch backwards for another 100 feet . He climbed out of the passenger side of the car and was unhurt. We stayed around until a guy in a truck helped pull his car out of the ditch and the boy's grandparents and a sheriff showed up. I do believe he was doing more than 55 miles per hour!
After a night in Texarkana we took the van into a dealership who diagnosed the blown fuses as a shorted a/c compressor which THEY could fix for $1,000. We said, "no can afford-thank you" and were "on the road again." We drove the next several days in the Dallas heat (102+) without air conditioning. Do you know that they have kamakazee drivers in Dallas? We were able to locate and buy a new air conditioning compressor at O'Reily's Autoparts for $249 for the van (thinking I might have to replace it myself, soon). After a speaking engagement in Dallas Sunday morning we headed back to Joplin thru Oklahoma. At Durant Okla we stopped and bought a styrofoam box and ice to cool down water we had in the van. (Amazing how it took us so many days to figure out how to have cool drinks in the van with us.) When we stopped for services in Tulsa we thought how much cooler it was there, it was ONLY 99 degrees. We did have to change clothes before services as the ones were we wearing were very, very wet and did not smell too good! We arrived back in Joplin later Sunday night, hot, sweaty and just glad to be alive! Monday morning I found that styrofoam boxes are not watertight and that the seat the box had been sitting on was now soaked with several gallons of water. Now we were glad for the hot dry weather so the seat could be taken out and dried in the sun. I was able to have someone in Joplin replace the compressor on the van on Tuesday. They charged us $149 labor. So instead of $1,000 it only cost $493. This includes the $95 diagnostic fee in Texarkana. On Wednesday Kathy went in to have her permanent crown put on only to find out she has an abscess in that tooth which will require a root canal (another $849) after the infection in cleared up. (She has problems with antibiotics and has to take an antihistamin for the allergic reaction and yogurt to keep from getting yeast infections.) So we left Joplin Thursday "on the road again" headed for Tennessee. The van worked like it was supposed to (except I have to stay awake even when I have it on cruise control). On Monday, after speaking at Lebanon on Sunday, we drove down here to Coker where we will be until Sunday Aug 10 when we leave for Columbus Mississippi for a Sunday PM presentation and then on thru Searcy Ark to see Tobey Mesa before being back in Joplin MO on Tuesday, Lord willing.
If our truck doesn't sell this weekend we will be taking our truck back on the road with us. If it sells we will continue using the van and figure out how to get it back to Chris and Terasa in Alabama when we leave. With all the talk of airline ticket prices rising we have booked our flight to LA on Sept 10th to join up with our already booked flight back to Fiji late Sept 10th. Tulsa to LA on Southwest is still only $150 and no charges on bags.
We had a great time at the Global Missions Conference in Arlington catching up with people we have known for over 30 years. I did get to speak on one panel featuring the South Pacific. We used to go to those events and see the long serving older missionaries. We found out that WE ARE THEM NOW!
Before we started working in Papua New Guinea 1975 we had been taught that the church is not truly indigenous (existing or growing naturally in a region or country: native) until it can function on its own to carry out Christ's commission without outside input.
Evangelizing the world is like a relay race. In areas where there is no church, missionaries run the first lap. Then they should hand off to the local believers to finish the race.
The purpose of missions is to plant indigenous (native) churches that are self-propagating, self-governing and self-supporting. What happens with frequent regularity is that instead of planting an indigenous church we end up transplanting our own church to a new setting where it doesn't fit and then wonder why the church ceases to exist after a very short period of time after the missionary returns to their home in distant lands.
So throughout our missionary work over the past thirty years we have made an effort to not only establish congregations with the help of local brethren but to train them in Leadership, Bible and Church Planting. When we moved to New Zealand in 1986 from Papua New Guinea it was with this need in mind we did so.
The Bible school which we worked with in New Zealand during our sojourn there did a good job of training men and women from PNG, Fiji, Tonga and Vanuatu but in recent years due to NZ government regulations it has become more difficult to bring married students from the islands for training into New Zealand.
It has thus been shown that the training that will be needed for the Oceania region will be needed in a more central locale which will fit the Melanesian culture, lifestyle and climate the students are more used to. This was why plans were made in 2000 while we were still in Vanuatu to start a Bible Training school in Fiji. However in 2001 when we made the move to shift to Fiji to live and work it was shown that they were not ready for such a school and it took several more years of plans and preparing before Kathy and I moved to Fiji in 2007 to help facilitate to establishment of the Christian Institute of Biblical Studies.
We spent 2007 spying out the land and getting to know people. We made some great contacts with government people who are prepared to help us build the school and many, many people from every walk of life have asked to be notified when we start the school. We are also being encouraged by brethren in the many island nations around Fiji to get started so they can send English speaking students for training and then back to their nations to help the congregations there mature and to strengthen the Christians to plant new churches.
We still have a few open dates in August and early September if you and anyone would like to see and hear our presentation. We even talked to some elders here in Alabama on a Tuesday night. How refreshing!
WE NEED YOUR HELP TO MAKE THIS SCHOOL A REALITY.
Please, first pray and then sit down and email (or call) your contacts and ask
for their help for this need. I have attached a flyer for our personal needs
and a flyer for the school needs. They are in PDF form and thus are printable
as well as transferable. Any contact for us to come and present our needs personally
for one-time or monthly support can be directed to my email or my cell phone.
Please, please don't think that someone else will contact us we need YOU to help us with this.
Your prayers are appreciated and we look forward to talking with and seeing many of you before we deport these shores in September.
Please pray about this and contact any and all you can on our behalf. We have no doubt that the Lord wants this school in Fiji for the training of island men and women who will then teach their own people. We know the Lord has blessed His people for this need and are asking at this time for your help in meeting this need now so we can get this school started in February 2009. Can you help - will you help? Again I have attached our personal flyer and the flyer for the school explaining what we are trying to accomplish.
God bless your work in the Kingdom and your personal life as you live as the
"salt" and the "light" on a daily basis.
Thank you to all the people who have provided shelter, food, support and gas
money on this our recent travels.
Your servants because of the cross of Jesus
Tobey & Kathy