A Peace Child Brings Healing to the Nations

A Marind tribe sharing a southern border with the Sawi tribes of Papua, New Guinea

The Sawi, or Sawuy, are a tribal people of Western New Guinea, Indonesia. They were known to be cannibalistic headhunters as recently as the 1950s. They speak the Sawi language, which belongs to the Trans-New Guinea language family.

Sawi, or Sawuy, is a language of the Sawi people of the Trans–New Guinea phylum spoken in sago swamps in the southwestern parts of the Indonesian province of Papua. Of the neighboring languages, it is most closely related to the Awyu languages to the east.

Sawi is an inflecting language and uses both inflections of the stem and suffixes to indicate person, number, and tense.

A peace child offering among the Sawi tribe of Papua, New Guinea

Journey into the Unknown

I remember reading Don Richardson's story of Peace Child either in my late teens or early twenties and thinking how wonderful his use of the cultural elements he lived within to communicate Jesus not by his own Western standards but by the tribe's own standards whom he had befriended.

Yet in another sense I also remembered how the Sawi tribe was "fattening him and his family up" with good fellowship and tribal affection as they were preparing Don, his wife, and youngest child Steve, for a rite of death. Though Don never mentions this in his journal the tension was evidently there by his recounts of what he was witnessing. The Sawi tribe he was living amongst were a Papua, New Guinea tribe of Indonesia well know for their cannibalism.

It was through a cannibalistic incident between the Sawi tribes where Richardson first saw a glimmer of how to share the deep relevance of Jesus to his machiavellian hosts which might bring a deep spiritual meaning to upsetting both the human soul and tribal practices of a culture devoted to premeditated murder upon one another. And it was through this biblical form of typology that opened blinded tribal eyes to see the atonement of Jesus between God and man.

But rather than ruin or spoil the import of Richard's story I'll leave it to the reader to pick up an old copy and re-explore through Don Richardson's missionary eyes the perils he and his family had entered into amid the discoveries they had made having survived their first Sawi encounters. Peace Child reads simply and quickly, but within the words of the page lies a deep sublimity providing a transitional context between people and tribes of unlike cultures looking to find common ground with one another.

Context

Which brings me to my last thought of the day. Context. If, like Don Richardson, we are seeking a way to share the gospel of God's love through Jesus in a meaningful way, it is by listening and learning from within whatever cultural context (of community context) we find ourselves in. This is where an evangelist or missionary, pastor or discipler, might begin. It will never be obvious at first but with time and insight it might become obvious.

The key to Richardson's insight was that he came to live and work within the Sawi tribes. When he did, he found God's insight into a deeply formative tradition held within the very cornerstone of the Sawi tribes. An identity heightened by lies and deception before killing of another human being. It was this very cornerstone of their tribal identity the Lord reveal to Don that he might use it's same evil to share God's love.

Had Richardson brought his own culture into the tribe he might never have exposed himself to its hazards and reality. Further, Richardson could have recited the "law and order" sections of the bible's Hebraic traditions and simply forced his own Christianized Western culture upon the Sawi. But by proceeding through love and fellowship he exposed himself to the very evil lying resident among the tribes of Papua needing redemption. If he had not done this, the gospel wouldn't have been anything more than window-dressing added to craven human behavior and customs.

Context? Context is everything. Isn't it?

R.E. Slater
June 8, 2020

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

Never The Same:

Celebrating 50 Years Since Peace Child

Pioneers USA

Dec 12, 2012

The Sawi were headhunters and cannibals when a young couple named Don and Carol Richardson arrived in their village carrying their seven-month-old boy Steve—and a message that would change the tribe forever. The year was 1962, and Steve—and later, three more children—spent their youth among the Sawi, learning the language and embracing the culture in ways that would shape the rest of their lives. Their story was immortalized in the best-selling book Peace Child and a feature film of the same name, inspiring a new generation to take the gospel to the remaining isolated tribes of the earth.

Fifty years later, Steve joins his father, Don, and two brothers, Shannon and Paul, to visit the Sawi village where they grew up. What is the state of the church they planted among the Sawi? Are the friends they played with still alive? Will anyone remember the mark their family left on the tribe? Journey with Steve as he travels to the swamps of Papua, Indonesia, to introduce you to the Sawi, and explore the impact of the gospel among a previously unreached people group.

• For more information on Pioneers, visit http://pioneers.org. 

• Check out "Never the Same" on Facebook at http://facebook.com/neverthesamemovie

• To order "Never the Same" on DVD or Blu-ray Disc, visit http://pioneers.org/store.

Music Credits

• "A Beautiful Tale" and "Revival" by Ryan Taubert © 2012 SHOUT! Music Publishing Courtesy of SHOUT! Music Australia

• "O My Soul", "The Introductions" and "Moving Frames" by Adam Taylor, used with permission

• "The Father's Heart" by Tony Anderson, used with permission

• "The Ladder" by Drake Margolnick, used with permission

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

Never The Same: Celebrating 50 Years Since Peace Child

Missionary Visits Cannibal Tribe 50 Years Later

Moira Brown speaks to Don Richardson about his life's

work as a missionary and the impact it has had worldwide.

Don Richardson-Author / Conference Speaker

www.DonRichardsonBooksales.com  

Books: "Peace Child" & "Eternity In their Hearts"

To Get Your Copy:

http://www.crossroads.ca/estore

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

Amazon Link

DVD Link

In 1962, Don and Carol Richardson risked their lives to share the gospel with the Sawi people of New Guinea. Peace Child tells their unforgettable story of living among these headhunters and cannibals who valued treachery through "fattening" victims with friendship before the slaughter. God gave Don and Carol the key to the Sawi hearts via a redemptive analogy from their own mythology. The [Sawi's] "peace child" became the secret to unlocking a value system that existed through generations over centuries, possibly millenniums, of time. This analogy became a stepping-stone by which the gospel came into the Sawi culture and started both a spiritual and a social revolution from within. With an epilogue updating how the gospel has impacted the Sawi people, Peace Child will inspire a new generation of readers who need to hear this unforgettable story and the lessons it teaches us about communicating Christ in a meaningful way to those around us.

Revelation: The Challenge of the Gospel to the Apostosies of the Present Time

When speed reading through the NT last fall I discovered The Book of Revelation for the first time as a letter written in encouragement by the Apostle John to the early churches he had founded. That they might greatly persevere in their Christian faith against growing Roman-Greek-Jewish oppression and persecution which was leading to the loss, displacement, even death, of early Christians for testifying to their faith founded in their Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

A faith that challenged the early belief systems and paganisms of their day even as it does now in today's post-truth world devoted to patriotic nationalism to the exclusion of the civil and human rights of a society's populations. A nationalism that has slipped into today's undiscerning religious churches and is confusing the gospel of Christ with the gospel of an ungodly Empire regressive in its religious Dominionism; repressive in its anti-intellectual reconstructions of the bible; and holding so many more ungodly teachings and behaviors as to create an ungodly heathen altar upon which another sacrifice is being made to the exclusion of Christ, the Lamb of God, slain before the foundations of the world.

Not unlike today's outbreak of post-truth Nationalism which is contending for the soul of the church, so too The Book of Revelation is a letter displaying John's great heartbreak for his churches as they slipped away into the pernicious teachings of Gnostic mysticism; worldly racisms and discriminations; and a plethora of unchristian ideas and teachings challenging the early Christians founded in Christ and His gospel through faithful Apostolic teaching.

The Apostle's churches were being continually challenged by the incursion of untruthful false teachings and by disingenuous false teachers working hard against the gospel of Christ causing the churches of Asia Minor to slip away all too quickly from the ministries of John and his disciples. These false teachers were more than oppositional to the gospel of Christ. They were highly motivated, caustic, argumentative, duplicitous, conniving, and purposeful in destroying the hard-won ministries of John across Asia Minor.

A ministry which John's churches had testified to by word and by deed, had learned, had even discussed and witnessed, in the Apostle's very presence. At the time of writing Revelation John was discovering through the many emissaries he was sending out of the grave challenges coming against the gospel of Christ he and his disciples had labored so hard to preach and teach. Deeply oppositional challenges growing across Asia Minor's enculturated societies in anger and resoluteness to deny, resist, and remove from their older Hellenistic traditions and customs the Christian gospel that was replacing those beliefs and practices.

So then, the Book of Revelation was yet another letter by the Apostle John to the Asia Minor churches to hold fast to Jesus, to endure persecution, to forsake false gospels, and to grow in the faith and hope they had first learned in Christ. The apocalyptic imagery he used drew from popular "end-time" literature and spoke to their "present time" of hardship-and-trial - that it would continue to increase proportionate to the gospel's outreach into the tribes and nations of the ancient world.

John's final letter to his churches would culminate in what he had sown, taught, and exampled through his earlier visits, letters, and gospel, as the first century quickly drew to a close and a new era commenced far removed from the Jewish-Messianic Christianity John once had transitioned under in his Lord's day in the lands of Israel, his holy ancestry.

Now, into the pagan cultures of the ancient world had come yet another challenge from a foreign religion, Christianity, dismissed and despised as unworthy and unwanted. A religion founded in a Judeo-Christian ethic with the understanding of Christ's culmination of the Old Testament, it's laws, and salvation history to the nation Israel through its cycles of faithfulness and faithlessness. This Judeo-Christian faith was unknown in Asia Minor's Greek-Persian-Roman culture; spoken by a foreign tongue and descended from a foreign culture (Jewish); and didn't make sense to the Gentile populations becoming convicted by its strange teachings of love and sacrifice. And yet, under the hand of God, it was growing in its missional outreach to fast become a fundamental religious belief - if not religious philosophy - that all the Gentile nations across the ancient world were beginning to wrestle with as to its truths, cultural demands, and personal commitments.

So that in the midst of all this the dear Apostle John was sorrowfully witnessing a fundamental falling away of the church under renewed raw persecutions aggressively challenging everything he and his apostolic disciples had learned and taught. It held a renewed energy unlike what he had ever expected and would require a new generation of Christians to uphold-and-contest in vigor, and personal commitment, against the evils of their generations.

This was the energy of the gospel of God into the dark world of mankind lost in its blindness and sins. And it was the power of God through Christ by His Spirit to release men and women from their torments and chains to find a spiritual freedom unlike what they had ever known. It was the beginning of the era of the church of God speaking truth in love, duty, honor, and commitment that would be led by men and women of God trained to go forth to plant, defend, and wisely shepherd the flocks of God.

"Even so Lord, Come in Power, in Majesty, in Reign, into our hearts!"

R.E. Slater

March 3, 2017

* * * * * * * * *

Things You (Might) Mistakenly Believe About The Book of Revelation

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/formerlyfundie/things-might-mistakenly-believe-book-revelation/

by Dr. Benjamin L. Corey

March 2, 2017

If you grew up in Evangelicalism/Fundamentalism, you probably grew up with a doom-and-gloom view of the future and “end times.”

Me? I grew up with the whole deal: raptures, tribulations, the Antichrist, and even warnings that those things we first called “barcodes” might actually be the mark of the beast.

End times belief is so much more than an area of theology. It is a complex world-view that shapes every single aspect of our faith and the way we see the world, whether we’re able to recognize it or not.

The book of Revelation– the last book in the Bible– is perhaps the most complex book in Scripture. It is also in this obscure and highly symbolic book that much of the doom-and-gloom end times world-view is planted and watered.

There’s just one problem with building an entire world-view off the book of Revelation: it is a book that is notoriously difficult to understand or interpret. While it would be impossible for anyone to truly understand the book without sitting down for an interview with the author, John, there are some things we do know about it. In light of the few things we know for certain, here are a few corrections to things we were mistakenly taught to believe about the book of Revelation:

The Book of Revelation is not about the “end times.”

John’s Revelation was not something intended to be put in a time capsule and opened 2000 years later. Instead, it was a letter written to very specific churches and was addressing imminent events that directly impacted the people it was written to. John repeatedly uses terms like “soon”, “quickly” and “shortly” in reference to his prophesy– he goes out of his way to make it clear that he is writing about soon-to-happen-events, not ones distant in the future.

Simplified version: It was a letter written by one man to a handful of churches about imminent matters that were relevant to them. For us [today], this means that Revelation is mostly a book about past events.

Revelation is not a fear-based book of doom-and-gloom.

The book of Revelation isn’t a doom-and-gloom book at all, but rather is a very specific genre of Jewish literature where the main goal is to encourage the readers. Any interpretation that falls outside of encouraging the specific recipients of the letter, is an interpretation that is inconsistent with this literary genre.

It is a letter from one person to a handful of churches, addressing imminent events, and the entire purpose is to encourage them in the midst of these events.

The book of Revelation does not teach a secret “rapture” of the Church.

If I could count the times someone has told me to go back to Revelation to read about the rapture, the number would be considerable. The reality is however, that Revelation doesn’t teach a rapture at all. It’s simply not in the book. (It’s not even in the Bible.)

Those who believe in the rapture will argue that it’s “implied”, since the Church is only discussed in the first part of the book, but that’s silly. We can’t just make stuff up, but when we say that Revelation teaches the rapture we actually *are* just making stuff up. Rapture theology wasn’t developed for another 1500 years after John wrote this letter.

(Same is true for the Anti-Christ, which is a figure from the earlier letters from John and is not in Revelation.)

No one knows exactly what all if it means, and if they claim to, they’re lying.

Since Revelation is apocalyptic literature, it is by nature massively symbolic. Throughout the book we find symbols, numbers, and all sorts of other interesting stuff. While some of it can have an obvious meaning because of themes in the rest of Scripture (such as a symbolic lamb, which is obviously Jesus), much of what is found in this book has been endlessly debated with no clear way to determine a “correct” interpretation.

The reality is that without the ability to travel back in time and talk to the author who wrote it, and the recipients of this letter, we’ll never know the full and correct meaning of everything. While this doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try, it does mean you should be ultra skeptical of end-times preachers who claim to have it down to a science.

…

The book of Revelation is certainly interesting and filled with wonderful lessons to be gleaned, but it is notoriously misunderstood. It is not a book about the “end times.” It does not hold more news than your local newspaper, and it has very little to do with the future.

Instead, it’s a letter John wrote to several churches when he was exiled on Patmos. It was a letter he wrote in the Jewish apocalyptic genre, which was intended to foretell events to immediately occur, and which was designed to encourage those churches as they experienced the turbulent times of the mid first century.

The book of Revelation is a lot of things– but it’s not what your childhood pastor told you it was.

Foundations for a Radical Christianity, Part 3 - Jesus

What is Radical Christianity?

So what is Radical Christianity? At its core, in its simplest and most sublime form, it is Jesus. One's entire theology, dogma, religion, beliefs, ethics, and morality is centered upon Jesus who becomes both the foundation stone and builder upon whom we build out God's kingdom in as many ways as there are people and talents, dreams and hopes.

It is to Jesus whom we bow and must submit the philosophy's of our day to His holy person. Whether it be our personal philosophies held in religious folklores. Our enculturated philosophies of existential dialectic (how we would interpret the world around us). Our societal philosophies of global communication, trade, and common effort. Even our ideas of our self and our identity of who we are before God. Everything, and in every way, must be submitted to Jesus as the Master Builder of our lives, our families, our businesses, our communities, our nations, and our world.

What Do You Want?

Jesus Calls the First Disciples (ESV)

35 The next day again John [the Baptizer] was standing with two of his disciples, 36 and he ([John]) looked at Jesus as he walked by and said, “Behold, the Lamb of God!” 37 The two disciples heard him say this, and they followed Jesus. 38 Jesus turned and saw them following and said to them, “What are you seeking?” And they said to him, “Rabbi” (which means Teacher), “where are you staying?” 39 He said to them, “Come and you will see.” So they came and saw where he was staying, and they stayed with him that day, for it was about the tenth hour.[h] 40 One of the two who heard John speak and followed Jesus[i] was Andrew, Simon Peter's brother. 41 He first found his own brother Simon and said to him, “We have found the Messiah” (which means Christ). 42 He brought him to Jesus. Jesus looked at him and said, “You are Simon the son of John. You shall be called Cephas” (which means Peter[j]).

In John chapter 1 Jesus asks John the Baptizer's disciples a question, "What are you seeking"? Or, asked another way, "What do you want?" This is the sublime question of any man or woman. "What do we want?" At once Jesus shows a rude insightfulness into the lives of His new adopted followers that borders on a personal invasiveness to all that they believe they are in their identity and commitments of themselves to the gospel of God. And rightly so. Especially for the servant of the Lord. And so Jesus asks, "What do you want!?"

So too with us when we come to Jesus in God's Word: "What do I want!? What do I wish to get out of this Jesus-thing?" Or, thought of in another way, we might diagram Jesus' statement in three different ways:

1. You are what you love.
2. You might not love what you think you love.
3. You make what you think you love into what you think you want.

Each of these statements are a truth to themselves. The first asks us "What is our core identity?" Not what do you know, nor what do you believe, but what do you most want our of life.

Statement 1 - "You are what you love."

God has made us as lovers and so it is natural to ask "What do you love?" as Jesus does here in John 1. What is your deepest longings? Your greatest desires? What drives you when you get up in the morning?

We're not talking about agape love (selfless love) but eros love (fleshly, guttural love). This is how God made us. Desire is not a bad thing though it can become a bad thing when used in a wrong way. Hence the question, "What do you most desire, crave, yearn for? What makes you get up in the morning?"

Statement 2 - "You are what you love but you might not love what you think."

What if there is a gap between the answers to the questions we have versus the deepest part of our being which unconsciously hungers for the things we don't know or don't realize we carry within us?

For example, imagine if there was a magical room that you could enter that could  give you not what you thought you wanted but what you really wanted. Would you enter it? Would you take the risk to enter this magical, all-knowing room?

Or, like many, would you hesitate? Would you reconsider your first impulsive to go into this room for fear of discovering something you really hadn't thought about before. Because, quite naturally, what we thought we wanted is not actually what we really wanted all along. Just some facsimile of what we thought we wanted all along. And if what we really wanted turns out quite differently from what we thought we wanted we could be in for quite a little disappointment, or shock, or even dismay!

So what does this mean? Simply, Jesus is "the room." Jesus is the one who will transfer your desires from what you think you want to what you truly want in a process known as "conformity." A process that teaches us to unlearn our first desires of ourselves so that we might discover our heart's greatest desires. It's deepest cravings. It's most powerful longings.

It is the process of discerning who we are and not what we think we are.

Statement 3 - "You make what you think you love into what you think you want."

This latter idea is known as our "rival story of ourselves." That is, it is the lies and delusions we tell ourselves all the time - and then re-inforce them in some narcisstic or harmful way. And let us not count out all the legalisms and self-righteous works we use to tell God just how good-and-valuable we are to Him! Sure, we can blame our actions on the devil or on others or evil but in truth, it is us. It is us telling ourselves a rival story to the real story that lingers in our heart but cannot get out.

What is the solution? To discover ourselves and our rival stories so that they might be re-framed into a truer story of ourselves within the story of Jesus. The better, more conflicted story in which He asks us the dreaded question, "What do you really want from Me?"

It is here where the work of the Holy Spirit comes to us through the story of Jesus and into the stories of ourselves to help us begin to chisel away all the false images of our delusions down into the bedrock of our deepest desires we keep hidden far, far away from ourselves.

Neither the "Christian faith" per se, nor "a belief in God," is the answer here. In point of fact there are many Christian men and women who have hidden from themselves - and Jesus' studied question - by taking on the false imagery of conformity which is more me-lead than Spirit-lead. A false image where we hide ourselves even deeper from the God by telling ourselves we are closer to God because we are doing all the right things, thinking all the right thoughts, believing all the right messages. To this Jesus asks, "What do you want!?" 

This is the Jesus who loves us through our "good" works, penance, and absolutions. Who sees us beyond the fig leaves we have stitched for ourselves. Who walks with us in patience and faithfulness as we wander and bobble about in our lives like toy boats on the waves of life as we try to figure out who we are and what we really want.

The Truer Story of Us

Nay, our story isn't so much about what we are doing but what God is doing in our lives. He, who is the shaper and molder of our lives-and-dreams-and hopes into the identity of ourselves freed from the former self to the transformed self. What Paul calls the "new man" that casts away the "old man."

Yes, even in this new spiritual version of ourselves we can "make what we think we want" from it. But the real trick is to learn to listen to the Spirit and to be willing to move through the process of self-discovery at His pace and not our own. To relax in the providence of God and let life happen as we steer our course through its turbulences.

The image of God within our breast is a deep thing. Far deeper than we know. Not only has God made us to be lovers but He has made us to be makers. We are natural born creators as God's image bearers. Ultimately we are in the process of being re-created by the Holy Spirit as God's image bearers. To be involved in this task and confident that with humility and grace we might survive its chaffings and tortured route.

Our Commission and Mission

And what is this image-bearing-thing that we possess? To re-create God's world in all the vocational, recreational, and personal things that we do in this life now by His love. Whether we can ever discover our deeper selves truly, or not, the simplest thing we can do is to bear God's image of love to the loveless, the forlorn, the unempowered, the overlooked, the condemned, and despised.

By this activity we discover ourselves by discovering the image of Jesus indwelling our hearts. We come to the identity of ourselves by unlocking all the potentiality of God's creation to become what it can become by God's Spirit. To translate the story of us into the story of the world. And by that translation release the rival story of ourselves from our hearts into the truer story of ourselves in Jesus.

This is our narrative ultimately. Not of us - but of losing ourselves into God's greater story which frees us from ourselves to release the burden of our creative, loving being upon a world locked in sin and woe.

Ultimately the Christian story is the Jesus story of unleashing God's image through us as His image bearers. And to not worry about all the psychological mumble-jumble of "desires, and cravings, and guilts, and penances." But to love as Jesus loved. This is our commission and mission.

Go Unpack All that I have Made for you

We are the recipients then of a Jesus message that is both a blessing and a necessity. Jesus' story doesn't end in His resurrection but begins with His ascension to become what He truly was on earth. To unpack all that He had created in His lifetime even as we are to enact it by unpacking His truths of love and witness, fellowship and forgiveness.

Like the centripetal force of the centrifuge which gathers in the liquid solvents of the science lab Jesus becomes the gathering force which spins us into Himself as the real center of the world against all the lies and delusions it tells us. So that in the process we might be separated from our former selves into the purer form of our new selves in Christ by His Spirit.

This is the process of transformation by conformity and when done spins us outwards into the world when released from the grip of the devices holding us from breaking out. It is through the process of worshipping together each week that the church is called out to break out during its weekday lives as a commissioned body propelled to missionize our communities by the simple acts of repentance, conformity, and transformation.

There is no real mystery to Jesus. There is no deeper philosophy than God's Spirit. It is the language of love that is the greatest reformer to the world's deepest needs and darkest delusions. And it is the language of conformity to Jesus who spoke in the simplest, but most sublime terms, when saying, "Learn to love. And when loving then do what you will." 

If you love rightly you will do precisely what God's will is by being in His will. This is the radicalness of a Radical Christianity. It begins with Jesus and is sewn through-and-through by Jesus even unto its ends. A Radical Christianity takes its postmodern faith and hermeneutic and re-captivates its message with the person and work and love of Jesus.

Whether we understand ourselves or not. Or this world or not, in all its "velocities of self-implosion" and "accelerations away from itself," to the lies and delusions it holds in front of us as the truer false-paths of self-discovery. No, the power, the source, the engine to all of this is Jesus. Without Jesus there can be no discovery. No release. No truth or fulfillment. Just endless, empty strivings after the winds of our own demise and misplaced stories that we tell ourselves.

The Little Prince

There is a story out there that says "If you want to build a ship than teach people to long for the sea." Not how to build a ship, or to go through the mechanics of building a ship, or even attend apprenticeship classes around the marine industry. No, the truer story is to long for the immensity of the sea. To long for its endless bounty recreated upon every new sunrise as it embeds itself into all that it is from day after day after day until the last dawn of all new mornings.

It is in the story of longing that we may act out the story of us that we don't even realize we are acting out. For it is not a story that we may simply read of - we must become active participants in it. Mark Twain, the great American literarist once said, "He who carries a cat by the tail learns something that can in no other way be taught." So too with Christianity.

It is not enough to read of it, to study and dissect it theologically. It must be lived. Experienced. Used and witnessed to by our very selves as the actors upon God's lively stage.

We attend the communal practice of Christian worship with the mindset that we are to burst from this Sunday assemblies into the worlds we live to really want what God wanted us to want and not the unleafed pages of unlived lives unsullied from trying, failing, or attempting to live life by God's grace and Spirit.

This is the truer story of us. It is the story of Jesus within the greater story of God. It is the truer narrative of who we are in Jesus. We have become the "little prince of our story' who sails around the world dauntless of its fears, ceaselessly yearning for adventure and discovery. To become one with the horizons of our lives lived too meanly upon the leaden pages of our rival stories of ourselves. Lost on the wings of the wind until Jesus came into our lives to become the captain of our ships and the Lover of our souls. He, who is the Lord of creation and the God of our imaginations. Praise ye the Lord.

Peace,

R.E. Slater

May 13, 2015

Foundations for a Radical Christianity, Part 1 - Change

Foundations for a Radical Christianity, Part 2 - Thriving

Foundations for a Radical Christianity, Part 3 - Jesus





Index to past articles on "Phase III"

YWAM's Witness from the Fields of Cambodia 2014

SBS UofN Battambang 2013-2014

2014 YWAM School of Bible Studies, Battambang, Cambodia

Hey friends!

I finished my School of Biblical Studies! The nine-month school has walked me through the Bible five times, and has really challenged me in applying what God’s word says. This training has affected my approach to cross cultural ministry, and given me a foundation I feel much more confident leading people from.

The outreach locations for teaching the Bible study method are still undetermined because the communication trails are tricky to navigate over here with which churches can host us for a certain amount of time doing a specific ministry. I will keep you all in the loop as soon as I hear more of what the outreach will look like.

Street Musicians, Battambang, Cambodia

Here are two stories that happened the other day when I was studying my last book, Matthew:

Fruit!

One of the students from my Bible class that I’d been teaching accepted the Lord last week! I have six students now as a few of them have invited their friends to come. Two of them are not Christian so you can be praying their curiosity continues to develop!

In teaching 'Christian Values' they all love the person of Jesus, but still have a difficult time getting past their worldview of not needing a Savior. They believe the level of heaven they are assigned is based off of how good of a person they are in this life (merit-based salvation).

I believe the power of prayer, and the conviction of the Spirit is at work with what I’m seeing, so please continue to partner with me in this! There were five other students from the Youth Center that had accepted the Lord the same night my student had so it’s been encouraging to see some fruit. A great reminder of why I’m here!

2014 YWAM Students, Battambang, Cambodia

Seeds!

A small coffee shop that I’ve been going to for work always gives me plenty of opportunities to build relationships with the beggars that make their routes everyday. This past week a drunk man walked in with his hands in the pleading clasped position, so I asked the owner to cook up some chicken fried rice for him. They politely asked him to wait outside so I stopped studying the Beatitudes in Matthew 5, and took the God given opportunity to apply it.

He wreaked of beer so I told him the reason I was happy to buy him food but not give money was because I didn’t want him to buy more beer with it. Praise God my Khmer language is well enough for conversation, and I got to hear about this man’s life.

He had arthritis in both knees, and he actually lived in a village pretty far from the city where he took care of his grand kids with his wife who was sick because their parents had passed away. The man was in the city begging for money so he could bring back the money for his family. The fried rice took a long time to cook, thank the Lord, and I found out he had heard the gospel before, but hadn’t believed in Jesus. I relayed the Beatitudes to him, and shared how there are difficulties in this life that Jesus will one day take away. I shared how alcohol had affected my family and I, and he started crying!

I’ve never seen anybody from the older generation cry. He didn’t accept the Lord into his life, but he was ready for a change. After he got his rice we talked a little longer, then I asked if I could pray with him, and he consented. In saying goodbye I gave him a few dollars, and said, “I hope you spend this on your family, and not on beer. God bless you”. I plan on seeing this man again, and believe this next time I won’t smell beer on his breath.

Not ten minutes later a couple walked in that I had met before who were making their begging route. The couple is in their fifties, and the husband is blind. I had told them the gospel four months ago, and asked if the wife remembered my face. She said, “Yes”, and the blind husband remembered my voice! I repeated the fried rice process sitting with them outside, and kept going with the Beatitudes. Telling the blind man that he would see one day made him sit on the edge of his seat, and seeing how the wife was much warmer to hearing the hope of Christ was really encouraging for me.

Streets of  Battambang, Cambodia

There’s something God’s doing in my heart with the poor in this city, and I’m excited to see how God will continue to develop it. When hearing a podcast back home the question was thrown out, “When do you feel like your closest to the Lord?”

I found my answer! There’s a sense of joy that I can’t express after having conversations like these that is undoubtedly from the Lord. It’s a great question to ask yourself as well. I think it reveals a bite size piece of purpose and duty that we were created for, and the congruency when we do it is very fulfilling. I was planting seeds of the gospel, but at the same time I feel something growing in my own heart.

I hope and pray you’re all being encouraged with seeing fruit where you’re investing your energy as well! “Let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up” (Gal 6:9).

Ben

June 17, 2014

2014 YWAM Students, Battambang, Cambodia

For more information on YWAM - 

Youth with a Mission

YWAM: "To Make Jesus Known in all the world"

The God of Miracles: Stepping Out On Faith: A Minnesota Missionary's Disappearance in Mali, West Africa

 

FIND JERRY: Minnesota pilot missing

off West Africa coast

http://www.myfoxtwincities.com/story/22003019/find-jerry-krause-pilot-missing-off-west-africa-coast

 

Updated: Apr 17, 2013 12:48 PM EDT

 

facebook.com/HelpFindJerry

 

By MICHELLE FAUL

Associated Press

 

JOHANNESBURG (AP) - A small plane carrying only its American pilot disappeared 10 days ago just miles from a refueling stop at a West African island in the middle of a tropical storm of thunder and lightning.

 

Since then, searches with a plane and boats have found no trace of the pilot, 54-year-old missionary Jerry Krause, or the twin-engine Beechcraft 1900C that he was flying from South Africa to Mali.

 

Krause's family in Mali, where he has lived for 16 years, and in Waseca, Minnesota, believes he is alive and could have landed in hostile territory.

 

"After much research and digging, there is a 50% chance that Jerry's plane crashed," says a message posted Wednesday to their website www.findjerry.com

 

"That other 50% is the probability that he was captured and forced to fly for some drug lords or guerrilla members. There is evidence now to support both scenarios."

 

Family members reached by email would not elaborate on any possible evidence, and the suggestion could not be immediately backed.

 

The posting said that a missing person's report has been filed in the United States so that the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board can start an investigation into Krause's disappearance.

 

The Krauses have launched a multifaceted campaign to "find Jerry." Family members are lobbying officials, posting messages on social media and using the Internet to encourage a relay of prayers for his safe return.

 

Krause's last contact was apparently with the control tower at Sao Tome island, a couple of kilometers north of the equator and 150 miles (240 kilometers) from the coast of Gabon.

 

"We have no idea what happened to him," Januario Barreto, the control tower chief, told The Associated Press by telephone Wednesday.

 

He said Krause called in to say he was 9 miles (14 kilometers) from the island when lightning struck the tower and knocked out the power. That was just before 4 p.m. local time (1600 GMT), still in daylight, on Sunday, April 7. When generators kicked in, soon afterward, Krause could no longer be reached, Barreto said.

 

He said air traffic controllers immediately contacted the nearest control towers on the African mainland at Libreville, Gabon and Brazzaville, Republic of Congo, to see whether they had heard from Krause. They had not.

 

Navy and Coast Guard vessels are still looking for any trace of Krause's plane, Barreto said.

 

The family's website said they have sent a Portuguese-speaking envoy to Sao Tome, at the family's expense, to "get the official documentation as to what actually took place there from Jerry radioing in to land to their responses and follow-up.

 

"Their stories haven't been confirmed and haven't been consistent," the message complained.

 

Krause's employer, Eric van der Gragt, said the control tower did not inform others that there was a missing pilot and plane until almost 24 hours after the disappearance.

 

"The tower just didn't inform people that he had disappeared," van der Gragt, owner of Bamako, Mali-based Sahel Aviation Service, said in a telephone interview.

 

He said he sent a plane to search for Krause for two days that week, after the Sao Tome Coast Guard had found nothing on the Monday and Tuesday following his disappearance. The Sahel plane searched around the twin-island nation of Sao Tome and Principe, he said.

 

Van der Gragt said the turboprop Beechcraft that Krause was flying did not belong to his company but, he believed, to a company based in Senegal.

 

Krause's family is heartened that searchers have found nothing in the Gulf of Guinea, saying that an absence of wreckage or emergency locator transmitter signals are hopeful signs.

 

The oil-rich Gulf of Guinea, where Krause disappeared, has been increasingly targeted by armed pirates who hijack ships' cargoes, including a British ship in February.

 

At their Web site and on Facebook, the Krause family details how they lobbied officials of the French cellular service Orange, to which the pilot was subscribed, in an effort to get them to try to track his iPhone and discover his last position. At first the company resisted, then said it was unable to help because his subscription was based in Mali, according to the Web site. Orange was able to turn off the iPhone from afar, to conserve its battery.

 

Krause's family last heard from him when he called his wife Gina from South Africa to let her know he was on his way home to Bamako. The two have lived as missionaries in Africa for 25 years, the last 16 of them in Mali, a mainly Muslim country. Krause had served as a missionary pilot for the Nampa, Idaho-based Mission Aviation Fellowship until 2009 when the air service pulled out of Mali.

Jerry and Gina Krause stayed on. Many foreign companies and charities have left Mali since jihadist fighters swarmed over the north last year. France and several African nations sent troops this year when the Islamic fighters, allied with al-Qaeda, started to advance on Bamako, the capital.

 

"God knows where Jerry is," Gina Krause says, expressing certainty and her faith in a posting at the findjerry Web site. "I know I serve a God who can do the IMPOSSIBLE."

 

AP writer Barry Hatton in Lisbon, Portugal contributed to this report.

https://www.facebook.com/HelpFindJerry

 

Read more: FIND JERRY KRAUSE: Pilot missing off West Africa coast - KMSP-TV http://www.myfoxtwincities.com/story/22003019/find-jerry-krause-pilot-missing-off-west-africa-coast#ixzz2TAxm6uRC

 

 

 

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

 

YouTube.com Link -

 

Interview with Wife and Family

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=5OknZSZiTNY

 

 

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

 

 

Missionary Pilot Goes Missing En Route to Mali; May Have Been Captured

http://www.christianpost.com/news/missionary-pilot-goes-missing-en-route-to-mali-may-have-been-captured-94262/

 

(Photo: Facebook/Find Jerry)

 

The Krause family is raising awareness for Jerry Krause, a 54-year-old missionary pilot who went missing on April 7 when his plane hit a tropical storm while en route from South Africa to Mali.

 

 

By Katherine Weber , Christian Post Reporter

April 18, 2013|6:32 pm

 

A family is searching for answers after a pilot, who has served as a missionary in Africa for the past 25 years, went missing 10 days ago when his plane was hit by a tropical storm on his way to Mali.

 

The family worries that the pilot may have been captured by guerilla forces or drug lords.

 

Jerry Krause, 54, went missing on April 7 while flying a twin-engine Beechcraft 1900C near the island of São Tomé, where he was due for a refill of fuel, en route to Mali from South Africa.

 

About nine miles away from the island, an intense tropical storm reportedly hit and the missionary pilot lost contact with the local control tower at São Tomé; he has not been heard from since.

 

"We have no idea what happened to him," Januario Barreto, the control tower chief, told The Associated Press by telephone Wednesday.

 

Barreto claims that the tropical storm caused lightning to hit the São Tomé control tower, causing it to temporarily lose power shortly after it had its last verbal communication with Krause.

 

When the generator at the control tower restored power, Jerry could not be contacted.

 

Jerry's family, which includes his wife, Gina, his brother, Jeremy, and three children, Alyssa, Nathan, and Jessica, has set up a website, www.findjerry.com, to provide updates about their search for their loved one, implore government officials to help with the search, and encourage followers to pray for Jerry's safe return.

 

The family has also set up a social media campaign, starting the Twitter trend "FindJerry" and setting up a Facebook page to spread awareness about their missing loved one.

 

The Krause family wrote on the FindJerry.com webpage that they believe the São Tomé control tower did not follow protocol when Jerry's plane went missing, and could possibly now be trying to cover their tracks to avoid reprimand.

 

"Sao Tome air traffic control DID NOT contact mainland airports to check on Jerry's status as they should have," the family says on the website.

 

Additionally, the family refuted the claims of the control tower that lightning from the tropical storm knocked out the power of the control tower for a temporary time when Jerry went missing.

 

"[The control tower officials] are either stating this now to cover their tracks since they didn't follow protocol when a plane went missing or they are involved somehow with the disappearance," the family argued.

 

"It would have made sense had they come out and said that from the beginning, but such thing was said last week about electricity going out," the family noted.

 

The family also believes that because no plane wreckage has been found, it's possible that Jerry is alive and surviving.

 

Unfortunately, there is a 50 percent chance Jerry could have landed his plane in enemy territory and could now possibly be used as a pilot for drug traffickers against his will.

 

"After much research and digging, there is a 50% chance that Jerry's plane crashed. That other 50% is the probability that he was captured and forced to fly for some drug lords or guerillas members. There is evidence now to support both scenarios," the family stated.

 

In an earlier blog post, the family wrote that Jerry's plane would have crashed into "a million pieces," which surely would have been washed ashore by the changing tide or scooped up by fishing nets, and therefore, because no plane fragments have been found, "there is more potential that he was potentially ambushed or kidnapped."

 

"Again, there is no proof of kidnapping, but it's becoming more of a reality. Please pray for the US Embassy officials to get answers and for other countries to cooperate as we continue to search," the family wrote.

 

The family has also been making progress in spreading awareness of Jerry's absence to the authorities in both the U.S. and South Africa, successfully filing a missing person's report in the U.S. to enable the National Transportation Safety Board and the South African Civil Aviation Authority to begin their investigation into the pilot's whereabouts.

 

Additionally, the Krause family offered a $5,000 reward for information on Jerry's whereabouts, including providing fragments of his plane, but no one has come forward with any evidence.

 

The family continues to remain hopeful and faithful during this time of uncertainty, writing on their Find Jerry website that they are grateful for the prayers given to their family and to Jerry.

 

"We serve a God who can move mountains and whose mighty hand is over this entire situation," the Krause family wrote.

 

Jerry Krause has worked as a missionary in Africa for the past 25 years, spending the past 16 years in Mali with his wife, Gina. He most recently worked for the Sahel Aviation Service, a commercial company which provides air transportation in the areas around Mali.

 

Prior to that, Jerry also worked as a pilot for the Mission Aviation Fellowship for 22 years, which works to help over 1,000 Christian and humanitarian organizations with air transportation and delivery.

 

Jerry worked for the MAF until 2009, when the air service ended its work in Mali.

 

Read more at http://global.christianpost.com/news/missionary-pilot-goes-missing-en-route-to-mali-may-have-been-captured-94262/#xzU8j2BwErEDAUR0.99

 

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

 

Update: May 30, 2013

From Huntington, IN

 

Follow on Facebook 

 

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

To those who we will be forever grateful to...

 

Just so you can plan ahead in great anticipation for the next update :), I plan on updating once a week, updating on Monday or Tuesday (even though today is Wed) unless something urgent comes up.

 

My intention for this update is to explain why we believe my dad to still be alive. We are almost at two months since he disappeared. And looking at the evidence, as I've mentioned previously, the most logical perspective would determine my dad to be dead. As time progresses, the easiest solution would be to count my dad dead. That final verdict would end the waiting, the effort of searching, and the perseverance of continuing to pray. I would be relieved to have the test God placed in the lives of my family to have ended many weeks ago, to be in a place where we could just move on. But, God's timing is beyond my understanding and the test has not ended.

 

As I've thought through the reasons as to why we believe my dad is still alive, I've reread report after report of the investigations done searching for my dad in order to come up with the most logical reasons. But even after making a list of those reasons, I don't think they are the main reasons we still believe my dad is alive. Briefly, the logical reasons to believe my dad to still be alive include (in no specific order): 1. Not finding any piece of the plane, 2. The lack of effort on searching for a crashed plane by Sao Tome, 3. The negligence of the refuelers in Sao Tome in providing documentation of planes refueled on April 7th and 8th, 4. The discrepancy of the facts regarding the last conversation my dad had with the tower, 5. The corruption in the area and the benefit of having my dad (pilot, mechanic, and free plane).

 

And the list could go on. If you want more specific logical reasons, feel free to email me (Jessica)...

 

But, the real reason we believe my dad to be alive:

 

Because God is not allowing us to believe anything else. When we reach a point of starting to believe my dad to be dead, God keeps placing people in our lives and providing us with Scripture that does not give evidence to him being dead (including around 15 dreams). God keeps telling us: Pray, Persevere, and Trust Me. And so we have to keep doing that.

 

Please continue to partake in this journey through prayer. I know that is an area that God is testing me. And at the end of this, I don't want to be someone who stopped having faith or someone who believed in the logical and not the miraculous. This situation is one where God wants and is going to get all of the glory. And I have to keep asking, seeking, and knocking till God says I can stop.

 

May God be glorified in me and in you. May we each be able to stand before God and have Him say, well done my good and faithful servant, no matter what situation we each face. For God is good. His Love endures. And He will be victorious.

 

 

Continue to follow on Facebook

https://www.facebook.com/HelpFindJerry