Is Bigger Better?

PDF Version:
AWA Weekly 230527 PDF

Taste and See (Psalm 34:8)

African and American cultures where we live and minister embrace the concept that "bigger is better." While the idea rings true in certain human and plant development aspects, the mantra is regularly misapplied. For example, "bigger is better" remains typically true for a 9-month-old infant or younger that is small, lethargic, weak, and inactive. (Further detail in William Li interview at 14'41" mark.) Conversely, childhood obesity developed from insulin resistance brings many serious problems. For meals, cooks want plump chickens to serve for dinner. But we prefer not to eat such food if growth hormones and antibiotics cause the extra size without sufficient nutritious feed given to the animal to eliminate the additives' adverse effects.

Beginning small with Noni fruit
like with Moringa 18 years ago

Similarly, all believers pray for churches and communities packed with vibrant followers of Jesus. At the same time, we must reflect on whether or not the programs and strategies we use to attract and train people generate mature disciples. Is the "bigger" achieved necessarily "better?" (i.e., We are comparing the strategic 'elephant' and 'rabbit' church-planting decision.)

Putting Community Health Evangelism (CHE) into practice requires letting go of the bigger is better mentality. CHE trainers who hope to begin with huge numbers or projects regularly fail to see the practical and transformational opportunities immediately before their eyes. We think of one trainer who has awaited outside help for over twenty years to build a medical clinic in his small town. Compare that to the smaller village of Boutoubre that worked together in their community. Pooling their resources, including ferry fees, they built a small clinic, church, and school in less than two years with no outside funds! For over five years, a different CHE-trained brother has sought to develop a sizeable agricultural farm that requires significant start-up money. With numerous delays, over time, he wisely chose to focus on smaller, collaborative projects that put over 200 people around him. His friends are spiritually impacted by Discovery Bible Studies (DBS). The dream of the farm remains a motivation and will likely come to fruition one day. However, even if not, he uses the material goods and skills he currently possesses to share the Gospel and care for personal needs.

Ivory Coast Training of Trainers(TOT) sessions often include a lesson entitled Step Planning to introduce participants to using SMART goals. (Cliquer l’image du monde dans l’article pour le lire en FR.) Even in church planting, grandiose growth ideas can be detached from "specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time-conscious" (SMART) goals. We teach that Jesus encouraged prayerful planning with His disciples, including counting the costs to follow Him. In addition, we live in a world where much was turned upside down by His investing heavily in just 12 disciples. Jesus certainly did not succumb to the bigger is better mantra.

Come and See (Psalm 66:5)

Mundane duties like monthly financial reporting and editing CHE lessons filled our week. As a result, we welcomed visits and conversations that interrupted those priorities! Verlin spent a couple of hours counseling our Ivorian CHE friend who faces legal challenges to land ownership. Next week Verlin will likely attend a meeting with government and religious authorities as an encouraging witness for our brother.

Prayer & Praise

• 🙏 Pray none of us thoughtlessly fall prey to the bigger is better mentality. Zealously doing the work that the Lord has placed in our hands, whether small or great, always yields the more significant, enduring result.
  
  
• 🙏 Pray for legal and just resolution(s) to the property dispute(s) of our Ivorian brother(s).
  
  
• 🙏 Ask for Debbie to experience clear thinking in her hours editing CHE lessons for use at the university. She had made a good start this month but expects to expend more than 200 additional work hours on the task. Verlin will then check her compilation of edits from the last 9 expositions, during which we tested the adaptations of the lessons for the university context.

Your Partners in the Gospel,

Verlin and Debbie

Christian Health Service Corps (CHSC) is a mission of dedicated medical professionals who participate in the CHE Global Network. Together, in a loose affiliation of individuals, churches, denominational, and nondenominational agencies, we share God's Light and Truth through Community Health Evangelism (CHE). Verlin and Debbie accept donor partners to contribute as led to provide support as we maintain residential ministry to expand CHE ministries in Cote d'Ivoire under the auspices of CHSC & Ivorian partners. Tax-deductible contributions by check are to be made payable to the CHSC with Andersons #0118 written on the memo line. Mail to CHSC - PO Box 132 - Fruitvale, TX 75127. Give online via the CHSC @ www.che4a.org (3% fee) or TDF - specifying Verlin and Debbie Anderson in the optional Memo.

Prior: Third Son
        - 230520 PDF
Prior Videos: Reflect and Rejoice
        - The Great Story

2023 Q1 Report: Go, Stay, Give
  -  1st 2023 Report 230513 PDF

2022 Budget Info:
CHSC-0118_ANDERSON-2022-Budget.pdf
 
  Something to ask? Write updates@verlindeb.org

AWA represents
Andersons Witness in Africa.
It is also a brand of bottled water in Cote d'Ivoire where we serve.

GIVEONLINE to support these ministries
                                   www.che4a.org

Debbie's Facebook Page

Verlin's Facebook Page

Third Son

PDF Version:
AWA Weekly 230520 PDF

Taste and See (Psalm 34:8)

Brice came to visit!

One delight of ministering in Africa for a long time is the family that you accumulate. Last week, a "third son" visited us. He is one of the Ivorian young men who played hundreds of hours with Corbin. Brice hailed from a nominally religious family and had no personal experience of following Jesus in the years he came to our place to play. That experience began later while he attended college in Abidjan. Still, when sharing with us his current walk with the Lord, he mentioned how our household's conversations, habits, and ambiance piqued his curiosity and brought the fragrance of Christ into his life early on.

During college, and after receiving Jesus as his Savior, he considered becoming a veterinarian. However, the expense seemed too great. Next, he pursued an agricultural degree but did not pass a final exam. This shocked him and his classmates because he was a leading student! Then, an older Christian man counseled him that God does not make mistakes. He instructed Brice to thank the Lord even for that failed exam because other doors would open to him. Although it was hard, he did that with tearful prayers in his room. Sometime while trying to figure out what to do, he sensed the Lord telling him that a job would not find him sitting in his room; he should get out and look for the next opportunity! Then Brice felt led to develop an orientation class to help new students at a particular school. Starting with his own money and administrative skills, he did that. Over 500 students participated. It was considered a great success. A Tunisian woman who wanted to start a school in Abidjan saw what he did in organizing the orientation and asked him to become her assistant. He explained that he had no business degree, but she said that was irrelevant. The work ethic and skills she saw him use to assemble the orientation class were enough. He worked with the Tunisian for two more years. His talents became so appreciated that she wanted Brice to study further in Tunisia. His father nixed that idea, fearing for his safety, though he thanked the lady who had done so much for his son.

At some point, Brice made his boss aware that he wanted to continue his education, but this time in the medical field. She helped arrange for him to take the entrance exam for a nursing school. Also, she has paid all his tuition, books, and supplies since then. He currently gets his clinical experience at the Bondoukou Regional Hospital and will finish exams by the end of the year. He gives the Lord credit for changing his behavior and habits in tangible ways, making his boss willing to invest in him. Once, he was sent to buy a glass costing 1,000 francs (about $1.80). He negotiated to get it for 800 francs and gave his boss the change. She was amazed at his honesty since most people here would pocket the savings. His boss trusted him even more!

Come and See (Psalm 66:5)

Another third son for whom we pray does not fair so well. Because of consistently poor lifestyle choices, he cannot keep a job and needs the Lord's help to break the destructive cycle in his life.

This week Verlin traveled to Abengourou and picked up our repaired truck. While there, he coordinated with Community Health Evangelism (CHE) trainers and visited new missionaries to Cote d'Ivoire. He also began corresponding with and calling trainers to confirm university training teams.

Prayer & Praise

• 🙏 Pray for Brice to finish nursing school well and for another "third son," K., to experience healing.
  
  
• 🙏 Pray we adequately prepare and coordinate our part in arranging for and prepping trainers for the 10th annual CHE strategy expositions at the university in September, which follow the third scientific congress.
  
  
• 🙏 Pray for the Ivorian brother struggling to rectify a property attribution, where an official removed his name as the property owner and introduced his own. The property was formerly dedicated in perpetuity for pastoral formation (shepherding) to be funded by the CHE agricultural projects on that and other lands.

Your Partners in the Gospel,

Verlin and Debbie

Christian Health Service Corps (CHSC) is a mission of dedicated medical professionals who participate in the CHE Global Network. Together, in a loose affiliation of individuals, churches, denominational and nondenominational agencies, we share God's Light and Truth through Community Health Evangelism (CHE). Verlin and Debbie accept donor partners to contribute as led to provide support as we maintain residential ministry to expand CHE ministries in Cote d'Ivoire under the auspices of CHSC & Ivorian partners. Tax-deductible contributions by check are to be made payable to the CHSC with Andersons #0118 written on the memo line. Mail to CHSC - PO Box 132 - Fruitvale, TX 75127. Give online via the CHSC @ www.che4a.org (3% fee) or TDF - specifying Verlin and Debbie Anderson in the optional Memo.

Prior: Dynamic Duo
        - 230506 PDF
Prior Videos: Reflect and Rejoice
        - The Great Story

2023 Q1 Report: Go, Stay, Give
  -  2023 Q1 Report 230513 PDF

2022 Budget Info:
CHSC-0118_ANDERSON-2022-Budget.pdf
 
  Something to ask? Write updates@verlindeb.org

AWA represents
Andersons Witness in Africa.
It is also a brand of bottled water in Cote d'Ivoire where we serve.

GIVEONLINE to support these ministries
                                   www.che4a.org

Debbie's Facebook Page

Verlin's Facebook Page

Go, Stay, Give

Blogsite: Go, Stay, Give

PDF Version:

Anderson Report 230513

Go, Stay, Give

So, you GO where you're sent,
And you STAY where you're put,
And you GIVE what you've got
— Until you're done.

— Jill Briscoe (our word emphases)

It is easy to make the Christian life seem complicated, especially to unbelievers, when we use jargon that people do not understand. For that reason, we want to use simple language to describe an obedient life in Christ, as Jill Briscoe used in the quote above. She and her husband, Pastor Stuart Briscoe, globe-trotted the world for decades, preaching and teaching even into their 80s while pastoring the Elmbrook Church in Brookfield, Wisconsin. He died last year, but their legacy of faithful teaching continues through the ministry of Telling the Truth (see https://www.tellingthetruth.org). The site reflects their writing of numerous books filled with good humor and keen Biblical insight.

We can distract ourselves and others when we do not stick to such basics while pursuing lives obedient to God: "Go where we're sent; stay where we're put; give what we've got—until we're done." We found the phrase so helpful as a reminder that we used it to outline this report which chronicles ministry and personal events from January into April. Thank you for your praying and partnering with us through it all!

GO with GUIDED GRACE
    (see Goodbye Grief and She Could)

Our last report shared that Debbie traveled to the United States to get her new CPAP machine while Verlin nursed an injured knee and ankle in Cote d'Ivoire. Since then, we have experienced quite a ride with our Lord who pilots us!

While developing activity patterns to overcome the last few years of physical weakness, Verlin assisted a pastor whose wife abandoned him. He traveled with the brother to begin a discourse with the wife's parents, a manner Ivorians use to save marriages. After that, he hosted visitors over a weekend to facilitate their contributions during a seminar to encourage aviculture (chicken farming) and develop ties for guineafowl production or distribution in the greater Abidjan area. On a personal note, sadly, after the New Year, all seven of our puppies died from parvovirus. Despite Verlin's 24/7 efforts during that week with IVs and oral treatments, his time, help, and solutions available during the holidays fell short of saving their lives while juggling other responsibilities.

Verlin's most extended ministry opportunity during our time apart was the month he spent in Ghana. There he assisted Dayo Obaweya at the yearly Community Health Evangelism (CHE) Internship and renewed connections in the neighboring nation.

Three Francophones who traveled w/
Verlin; two of four Ivorian trainers
attending the 2023 Ghana Internship.

Verlin carried two longtime friends among the four Ivorian trainees as he went. One of the pastors who rode with him continues recovering from cardiovascular complications likely due to a COVID infection in early 2021. In addition to interacting individually with most of the 20+ Internship trainers and trainees for hours, he helped a 5th Ivorian to travel and develop connections to improve mushroom production around Bondoukou. He also assisted some Americans who invested for their future in West Africa. Verlin facilitated more than thirteen training sessions, not including those in which he helped an Ivorian CHE training champion share. Ivorian team trainers' extra time to speak of experience was granted because of what the Lord develops through CHE in Cote d'Ivoire. We were also accorded more than the "two trainees per nation" allowance to come for the same reason. The growth indicates a need to integrate the African Internship Center (AIC) into more Ivorian efforts. (Francophone participants equaled or surpassed Anglophone participants for the first time since the AIC began the regional internship training in 2013.)

After the Internship, Verlin traveled to rural northern Ghana to visit other Christian Health Service Corps (CHSC) missionaries who have served in Africa even longer than we have. In addition, he called on an Ivorian pastoring in Ghana and renewed other contacts for anticipated CHE partnerships.

Intro to CHE at the CHSC HQ

In a 100-day American context, Debbie stayed very busy, too! After recovering from a second bout with COVID, she traveled to Texas and Michigan and visited numerous ministry partners in Tennessee. She joyfully helped to introduce some new Christian Health Service Corps' (CHSC) missionaries to CHE during their orientation, babysat a precious missionary kid, served in logistical ways, and interacted with co-workers who have embarked on new adventures with the Lord. They had many questions for her, as someone who grew up a Third Culture Kid (TCK) and raised three TCKs while gaining life experience married to a U.S. culture kid for the past 36 years.

Her Michigan visits included lovely times with Verlin's family, meals with ministry partners, sharing in ladies' groups, and participating in services with partnering churches. Some sweet days were spent alongside her parents in Franklin, Tennessee, interspersed with more meetings. She helped them and her sister by handling errands, getting them to appointments, researching, and fielding tech questions. But, she mostly enjoyed the precious hours of sharing that continue to enrich and bless our time in Africa.

STAY with SOBER STEADINESS
    (see Wheel Watcher)

Some of the most challenging times to obey the Lord arise when He asks us to "stay," that is, to still ourselves from our preferred ministry activities and persevere quietly to overcome a difficulty. Thank you for praying with us through Verlin's weeks with a seriously infected knee that inhibited travel. He was delighted to achieve healing without any oral antibiotics. Likewise, your prayers helped Debbie overcome when she was delayed a week from returning to Cote d'Ivoire because an airline did not accept her residence papers.

One precious example of tenacity through trials is our Ivorian pastor's wife in Bondoukou. Many of you have prayed for her to heal from severe ulcers that did not respond to antibiotic treatments for two years. Several times it seemed she might die. However, she has seen remarkable progress over the past few months by continuing treatment with olive oil and other nutritional supports we recommended early on. In recent weeks, she's begun taking long walks and attending church, giving glory to God for His healing! Pray that she continues the dietary and hygiene changes needed to prevent ulcers in the future, adding to her knowledge in order to assist others.

The better house we hoped might become available to rent and use for training in Bondoukou seems a closed door now. The family patriarch does not want to rent the ancestral home. However, the children hate to see it deteriorate from disuse. So, we "stay" and wait for the Lord to clarify what we are to do about our housing needs in the future.

GIVE with GENEROUS GIFTING
    (see In & Out and Under the Wire)

At times, people consider giving only in the monetary sense. Although that aspect is important, the Lord often wants us to give using other gifts that He provides daily: time, knowledge, skills, belongings, and encouragement. As mentioned above, while in Ghana, Verlin encouraged an Ivorian brother who labors to establish an NGO producing mushrooms by making time for him. More than 200 persons are involved. M. greatly profited from connecting with producers who also master the art of growing mushrooms, including exposure to producing mycelium. At other times during the CHE Internship, our Toyota blessed participants during trips to the airport and Cape Coast when needed.

Sometimes an overheard lesson or word gives encourage-ment that changes the trajectory of a ministry. William, a brother in Ghana whose primary calling is to educate disadvantaged children and orphans, provided such testimony at the AIC. In 2019, he overheard Verlin illustrate how the kingdom(s) of our world and the Kingdom of Heaven differ. That explanation reinvigorated his CHE efforts and added more than a dozen CHE ministries functioning under Dayo's mentorship with others in Ghana.

Another example of words stimulating God's gifts to good use was from a women's group using CHE. Their village lacked a good road from the civic center to the new dispensary, school, and church sites. So, using their African hoes (called a dabba) and hundreds of hours of elbow grease, they widened a frequently flooded path about 200 meters long into a road! Each week they check it, making repairs. Because it is maintained, the road is now a thoroughfare for other locals needing to board ferries. Hoes and hard work can be incredible witnesses and gifts to a community! They did it because their pastor heard the story of a market road repair at Bebou from Verlin, confirmed by others who participated.

REPORT with REGULAR RIGOR

The CHSC received an unusually high volume of donations on our behalf in the 1Q of 2023! Often that period and the coming summer months are the most difficult for us to maintain sufficient income. Despite hard times economically and other uncertainties, we thank you for an amazingly faithful partnership! Please find our first quarter giving listed at the end of this report, as we remain committed to transparent financial disclosure.

PRAYER AND PRAISE

• 🙏 Praise the Lord for watching over our comings and goings on two continents! Thank Him for healing Verlin's knee and our recent bouts with malaria

• 🙏 Rejoice with us that the AIC CHE Internship ended well. Pray the participants find fruitful means to apply what they learned, and our lives continue to encourage others.

• 🙏 Our Ivorian pastor's wife, who had ulcers, is experiencing better health now than she has in the past two years! She can take long walks and attend church, where she gives testimonies of praise. Thank you for battling in prayer on her behalf for such a long time. Pray that she maintains a diet that keeps the ulcers away

• 🙏 Thank the Lord for giving our son, Corbin, an engineering job within an hour's drive of his brother and sister! However, he still needs housing closer to work. Please ask our Father to provide that.

• 🙏 Pray for a long-delayed CHE editing project that needs to be completed before July. Several times we thought an Ivorian CHE trainer would come to assist with the effort, but work or communication errors delayed him.

 

Your Partners in the Gospel,

Verlin and Debbie

Check out the 1Q 2023 JPG or the 1Q 2023 PDF of the Anderson Report 230513 if you wish to review contributions and the ministry's expense summary.

Christian Health Service Corps (CHSC) is a mission of dedicated medical professionals who participate in the CHE Global Network. Together, in a loose affiliation of individuals, churches, denominational, and nondenominational agencies, we share God's Light and Truth through Community Health Evangelism (CHE). Verlin and Debbie accept donor partners to contribute as led to provide support as we maintain residential ministry to expand CHE ministries in Cote d'Ivoire under the auspices of CHSC & Ivorian partners. Tax-deductible contributions by check are to be made payable to the CHSC with Andersons #0118 written on the memo line. Mail to CHSC - PO Box 132 - Fruitvale, TX 75127. Give online via the CHSC @ www.che4a.org (3% fee) or TDF - specifying Verlin and Debbie Anderson in the optional Memo.

 

Prior Weekly: Dynamic Duo - 230506 PDF
Prior Videos: Rejoice and Reflect
        - The Great Story

 

2022 Q3&4 Report: Reckon
  -  2022 3&4Q Anderson Report 230121 PDF

2022 Budget Info:
CHSC-0118_ANDERSON-2022-Budget.pdf

Something to ask? Write updates@verlindeb.org

AWA represents
Andersons Witness in Africa.
It is also a brand of bottled water in Cote d'Ivoire where we serve.

GIVEONLINE to support these ministries
                                   www.che4a.org

 

Debbie's Facebook Page

Verlin's Facebook Page

Family pics taken since choosing to serve as missionaries.

Dynamic Duo

PDF Version:
AWA Weekly 230506 PDF

Taste and See (Psalm 34:8)

Let not mercy and truth [or steadfast love and faithfulness] forsake thee: bind them about thy neck; write them upon the tablet of thine heart: so shalt thou find favor and good understanding in the sight of God and man.

— Proverbs 3:3-4

God describes His character in the Old Testament (OT) using the dynamic duo of “steadfast love” (hesed or chesed in Hebrew) and “faithfulness.” He used the flexibly rich word hesed or chesed around 250 times in the OT, over half the time in the Psalms.

An excellent standard from which to
explain the Biblical, non-hierarchical
governance encouraged by CHE.
Permission to translate and provide
 this linked PDF in French provided by
CAPE de Jerusalem.)

When the Lord explained Himself to Moses at the golden calf incident (Exodus 34:6-7), it was a self-description He used. Though only demonstrated perfectly in God’s person, the standard applies for guiding human behavior in governance, too. The above cited Proverb expresses advice from King Solomon to his sons. God’s ‘Wordly’ dynamic duo would have well served Rehoboam, his son and the next king, if he had demonstrated their meaning in response to a demand for tax relief from Israel’s tribal leaders! If the late Queen Elizabeth of England could refresh her son Charles’ memory at today’s coronation of a ruler legally owning a sixth of the earth's surface, her counsel might be similar. She exercised her powers of influence to serve people with felt love and faithfulness. May God’s exemplary steadfast love and faithfulness be what others perceive from us.

Come and See (Psalm 66:5)

A troubling reality while living in cultures where bribery abounds stems from the lack of steadfast love and faithfulness by the actors who govern. In the absence of God’s Law given to Moses as the bedrock of justice, there is no considered need. Bribes recognize persons of prominence being honored for their power to act.

As a result, injustice foments because the dynamic duo lacks. This again became obvious after our Tuesday return to Bondoukou. We received a visit from our Ivorian brother, who has worked for years to finalize the legal paperwork on one property his family has owned for generations. As those papers now appear settled, a second landholding enters into question. A greater than $30,000 project in the 1990s developed that area which is the principal funding goal of the agricultural project. He learned in the last month that local paperwork submitted (to answer a national government claim on the land for creating a military facility) was falsified. His name and the tribal designation of the land into perpetuity for community development projects were not noted. In addition, gatekeepers for the 5th appointed political leader within the last eight years did not grant him an appointment with the magistrate. He asked Verlin to go with him to try again for an appointment, hoping the presence and testimony of an outsider would help.

The strategy seems to have worked, but what a frustration that the step was needed to re-initiate a program known to help herders and shepherds! Sadly, due to the continued recognition of bribes as a signal of ordained authority, the success of citizens proceeding through legal means is often limited except a greater power gets invoked in a classic missionary use of encounters.

Prayer & Praise

Our preferred antimalarial over CDC
recommendations for US travelers.

• 🙏 Thankful, we arrived safely in Bondoukou on Tuesday. We both took anti-malarial drugs this week, letting us recover quickly by treating our symptoms early. Fatigue dissipates; the joys of exercise resume!
  
  
• 🙏 Pray for a resolution to the land issue mentioned and others soon to impact church properties. Pray that government officials respond quickly and resist bribes while determining rightful land owners.
  
  
• 🙏 Pray that the Ivorian CHE trainer will free himself to edit the UFHB CHE lessons. He changed plans and did not come this week as anticipated. His assistance will likely speed up the process.

Your Partners in the Gospel,

Verlin and Debbie

Christian Health Service Corps (CHSC) is a mission of dedicated medical professionals who participate in the CHE Global Network. Together, in a loose affiliation of individuals, churches, denominational, and nondenominational agencies, we share God's Light and Truth through Community Health Evangelism (CHE). Verlin and Debbie accept donor partners to contribute as led to provide support as we maintain residential ministry to expand CHE ministries in Cote d'Ivoire under the auspices of CHSC & Ivorian partners. Tax-deductible contributions by check are to be made payable to the CHSC with Andersons #0118 written on the memo line. Mail to CHSC - PO Box 132 - Fruitvale, TX 75127. Give online via the CHSC @ www.che4a.org (3% fee) or TDF - specifying Verlin and Debbie Anderson in the optional Memo.

Prior: Engaged
        - 230429 PDF
Prior Videos: Reflect and Rejoice
        - The Great Story

2022 Q3 & Q4 Reports: Reckon
  -  3Q|4Q 2022 Report 230121 PDF

2022 Budget Info:
CHSC-0118_ANDERSON-2022-Budget.pdf
 
  Something to ask? Write updates@verlindeb.org

AWA represents
Andersons Witness in Africa.
It is also a brand of bottled water in Cote d'Ivoire where we serve.

GIVEONLINE to support these ministries
                                   www.che4a.org

Debbie's Facebook Page

Verlin's Facebook Page