Hi everybody.
This update is late and different. Debbie and I have been so busy separately that we did not communicate about getting this update written and sent until late Saturday night.
Deb remains alongside her parents in Nashville, TN, while I hold down the fort of activities in Bondoukou, Cote d'Ivoire. The week has been blessed. I put together this little bit of news to keep your prayers informed and our faithfulness encouraged.
Deb's mother shed a large amount of her water weight gained at home due to her ongoing experience with congestive heart failure (CHF). Though briefly hospitalized at the beginning of the week, she now rests in a nursing care facility where two weeks of rehab are expected to help her better manage the CHF. Debbie and her sister did much of the running, paperwork, and accompanying at the beginning, but Debbie served as the valuable assistant when her mom transferred to a nursing facility late in the week while her sister took needed time to visit with other beloved family members.
My focus in Cote d'Ivoire has remained with ministry partners in the Bondoukou area. Besides a couple of follow-up meetings on the development of lands at the nearby agricultural site, I completed mundane activities like making banking arrangements for rent, maintenance, and utilities to be paid when I next returned to the US. Debbie and I spoke with mission staff Friday to update them on our third attempt to arrange our following of coached Emotional Focused Therapy (EFT) sessions to learn and use the technique to help ourselves and others. In the meantime, reading and talking over the phone about subjects other than ministry and family will help keep us closer to one another in thought and spirit.
Personal devotions and thought have been focused on the cultural stretching happening here between the matriarchal social culture so dominant culturally, while they also seek the wealth development and maintenance benefits of patriarchal culture. It's an interesting contrast for me to hear the US election news, reminding me that the US patriarchal cultural heritage and families there remain under siege by many who believe that integrating more matriarchal ideas in marriages will lead to more blessing and peace. It reminds me of what my father once regularly expressed when seeing how people could chase futility due to discontent: "The grass always looks greener on the other side of the fence."
In fact, I wanted to share my thoughts as this update, but it took me over 1,500 words over four hours just to get some thoughts down with relevant links to help guide discussions with others. It still needs to be polished and more clearly expressive of my thoughts, but you can read them in development in this linked PDF if you're interested. There's a good story about an 8-year-old witness to Jesus in it. Keeping this share shorter, it's relevant because I actually discussed Scriptural understandings with a believer experiencing distress with his wife who believes the child of a now departed sister is the responsibility of her family even though the father seeks to care for the child and pay for the child's education while he seeks another life partner. That's different to life in the US! In the end, after nearly two hours of conversation about God's design and how to best help others choose to obey God over human traditions, we concluded two things:
A) He would redouble his efforts to teach family by reading progressively through the holy scriptures at home and not depend upon church attendance alone to teach his family God's heart and established ways.
B) We would each meet with two pastors on Sunday and set a time to get together as a group to discuss the relevant issues and seek counsel from one another.
The conversation allowed me to surprisingly rejoice about a family involved in a neighborhood Discovery Bible Study I encouraged him to start over three years ago. He did not share until today that a drunk who had been abusing his wife got saved and that he and his now-saved wife moved to another town for work. They now attend a church faithfully there. That makes the third neighbor who has professed the Lord and moved on since we've been in this house since 2016. Their meeting with God happened during our absence from here between November 2023 and April 2024. This encourages us as we map out plans to win others we speak of as 'wayward brothers' or 'wayward servants' who follow another religious tradition and cannot experience the power of the Holy Spirit in their day-to-day lives since they do not know Jesus as Lord. That planning will likely be part of the discussion with the other pastors, too.
PRAYER ITEMS:
1) Please continue praying for Debbie and me as we do the EFT together while apart and re-plan our times together. The plans we made prior to my return here in July were shifted for care and scheduling reasons.
2) Keep praying for the leprosy outreach and the locally funded Christmas Tree-operated gift witness. A couple of calls did not connect me for an update this week.
3) Thank you for your ongoing prayers and support. We have four months of back expenses to catch up on and provide an accurate reading of how our account finances are doing. Your prayers that we can concentrate and have the time to do those reports while active with everything else are appreciated.
Blessings,
Verlin & Debbie
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