I am amazed that summer is almost over! This year wasn’t quite as hot as last year in Austin, but I’m afraid my friends in Ukraine have been melting in the heat wave over there.
We are thankful to have a full schedule for August. We are always open for any opportunity to talk about our ministry to Ukraine, so please contact us if you have any interest in that.
August 8 – Christ the King Presbyterian in Austin
August 13-14 – South Texas Presbytery meeting in Austin (this is a gathering of pastors and elders from the South Texas presbyterian churches)
August 22 – Steve preaches at Christ Presbyterian Church in Georgetown, Texas. He’ll be speaking about some of the ways God has been challenging him and growing his faith over the last couple of months.
August 27-28 – North Texas presbytery meeting in Gordonville, Texas. (same as above, but for the North Texas and Oklahoma churches)
August 29 – We’ll be giving a presentation during the Sunday School hour at Westminster Presbyterian Church in Gainesville, Texas, and speaking for a few minutes in the service.
If you are at any of these meetings, please let us know that you read the blog. We’d love to meet you!
We just returned from a week in North Carolina at Ridgehaven camp. It was a lovely break from the Texas weather that is hovering around 100 degrees these days! We were there for one of the pre-field training requirements of Mission to the World (MTW). All missionaries are required to go through this training before they leave for the field. We were there with folks going to various countries in Asia, Latin America, and Western Europe. It is so exciting to hear their stories and learn about what God is doing all over the world!
Another treat was to have my (Dawn’s) parents there for the week to watch Stevie during our sessions. One of the more difficult aspects of moving overseas is taking Stevie far away from all of his grandparents. This week gave them a great chance to spend time with him and help him get to know them better. His other grandparents live in Austin, so he gets to see them fairly often. What a blessing to have grandparents!
In addition to the encouragement we get by talking to others who are doing the same thing we are and who are experiencing many of the same struggles, we heard some great teaching. We were reminded again that our salvation is by grace and so is our sanctification. Our growth in Christ is also dependent on Him. It is not dependent on how disciplined we are or how hard we work. The beauty of Christianity is that from start to finish, we can rest on the work of Christ to know that we have pleased God. When our identity is secure in that, we are freed to take risks and reach out to others.
One of the hardest things about moving to another culture is that you often lose much, if not all, of what you take pride in about yourself. You may not know how to pay your bills, you are incapable of having the normal, adult level conversations that you are used to, and you often need help to do even the simplest things in the new place. As you can imagine, this can lead quickly to discouragement! The message of Living in Grace is that God does not love you less even when you feel like you are not “performing” at the level you should be. In fact, being secure in God’s love ought to release us to have the humility we need to be learners in our new culture. It ought to release us from feeling we need to know everything or have it all together in order to minister to others. The beauty of this is that when we come to others with this kind of humility and weakness, we are much more able to show God’s love to them.
Of course, this is all much easier to say than it is to do! We will try to remind one another of these lessons when we get into those hard situations – I know we won’t have to wait until Ukraine before we’ll need the reminder!
We leave in a few hours for Living in Grace, a conference that our Mission requires us to attend as part of our training. (They also do an abbreviated version for churches that Steve and I attended in Austin about a year ago.) This time, it’s a week long and it’s in the North Carolina mountains! In Austin this weekend we are forecasted to hit 100 degrees so we’re getting away just in time 
.
Stevie will experience his first plane ride and we have high hopes it will go well!
Thanks for your prayers and for your giving. We are grateful that the funds were available to go now and not have to wait until September.
Thanks for praying for Steve’s sermon last weekend! If you want to hear it, you can hear the podcast here.
This weekend we will be at Bethel Presbyterian Church in Dallas. We will be presenting during their Sunday School hour and then having a few minutes in the worship service. Come say hi if you’re there so we know some people read this blog!
Last weekend we spent time visiting with the South Texas Presbytery at the Southside Community Church in Corpus Christi. If you are ever in Corpus we would highly encourage you to visit this church and if you live in Corpus or close and are looking for a church home, the ministry here is Gospel centered, they are mission focused and very friendly.
During the visit they had a fellowship meal and the BBQ/Smoked Pork was amazing. I can’t say that should be the reason to become a member, but maybe if you were on the edge..
We wanted to thank Ben Wheeler for having us on Sunday. You have been a great encouragement.
During the trip, we had the opportunity to visit the USS Lexington that is parked in Corpus Christi Bay. The Lexington is an inspirational part of US history. Here are a few photos from out visit.
Stevie is such a blessing! He continues to amaze us and has been bringing us many opportunities to visit with lots of people who we would have never met. You can see him looking back, busy charming all the others who are visiting the ship.
Our first travel series for 2010 has finished with great results! We are tired, but enjoyed renewing old acquaintances and making new ones.
We kicked things off in Tyler, Texas, at Fifth Street Presbyterian Church.
Many of the folks at 5th Street have been following my ministry in Ukraine since the beginning in 1998 and were delighted to hear about our plans to return and, of course, to meet baby Steven!
A couple of weeks later we had a chance to speak to Faith Presbyterian Church in San Antonio.
They had recently sent some boxes of clothing to a Ukrainian orphanage, so it was a nice connection for them to hear about our plans.
A fun benefit of this trip was getting to stay with a good friend of mine and meet her family. Dawn and I were camp counselors and lifeguards together at Pine Cove and it was great to catch up with her and enjoy her hospitality.
We were glad to have a couple of weekends without travel and look forward to talking about our ministry to a sister church plant in Georgetown, Texas, this Sunday.
Thanks for your prayers for health and safety. Other than colds, we’ve all stayed fairly healthy. The baby has done very well with all the travel so far and we are very thankful for that!
Now that our little guy is the ripe old age of 2 months, we are beginning to travel to share our ministry plans with churches, individuals, and basically anyone who will listen!
Our travel this year kicks off this weekend (January 17) in Tyler, TX, at Dawn’s home church – Fifth Street Presbyterian. We’ll be speaking during the Sunday School hour at 9:30 am and then for a few minutes in the service.
Our next trip will be during the weekend of January 29-31. We’ll be at the South Texas Presbytery meeting in San Antonio. On Sunday, we’ll be speaking at Faith Presbyterian Church. Again, we’ll have time in the Sunday School hour and a few minutes during the worship service.
The following weekend, February 5-7, we’ll be at the North Texas Presbytery meeting in Dallas. We’re still looking for a speaking opportunity in the Dallas/Fort Worth area, so let us know if you’re interested!
We would appreciate your prayers for safety and energy as we travel. Steve is still working his full-time job during the week. This will also be little Stevie’s first traveling, so we hope he’ll do well.
Please email us if you’d like to get together while we’re in your area. We love talking about our Ukraine plans or just visiting with friends!
Here is a long overdue recap of the wonderful weekend we had at First Reformed PCA in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, 
at their missions conference at the end of March. Steve and I were very encouraged by the other missionaries at the conference, as well as by the members of the church. It is always so humbling and encouraging when you meet people who have been faithfully praying for you!
At this conference, I had the opportunity to talk to the children’s class. I taught them some Russian words and they seemed to enjoy it . One of the favorite phrases they learned was “Do Svidanya”. It was the favorite because of the way I showed them to remember it – “dog spit on ya”. I don’t normally go that route when teaching Russian phrases, but I knew it would be a crowd pleaser .
We would like to especially thank the Turners and others on the missions committee for their hard work both during the weekend and throughout the year as they help spread interest in and passion for foreign missions to their congregation.
As we left the airport in Pittsburgh, we couldn’t resist posing with this guy:
Go Steelers!
The next missions conference on our schedule is in Pittsburgh, PA, at First Reformed Presbyterian Church. Steve and I will be there March 27-29 participating in the conference and getting the chance to catch up with one of my college roommates. You can find more information about the conference schedule from the church’s website.
Steve and I had a good time in Tulsa. It is always interesting to see how different churches structure their missions conferences. At Christ Presbyterian in Tulsa, they do their conference over the course of 3-4 Sundays rather than one intense long weekend of activities. The nice part about this approach is that it tends to give individual missionaries more time to talk about their particular ministry. Also, it probably has less risk of burning out the congregation on missions activities!
One interesting thing – besides my presentation – was that we heard from an MTW missionary in Chile who is working on a Ph.D. involving personality types and missiology. Most of us have had some exposure to some kind of personality test and seeing how that helps (or hurts!) us as we interact with people with different personality types. It was intriguing to me to think of that on a more global level. Cultures have their own personalities and when we minister in a culture, we minister through our individual type and through our home culture type. The challenge is to recognize the aspects of both our own personality and that of the other person or culture which reflect Christ and learn from and use them. On the flip side, the effects of the fall are also seen both in our individual personalities and in the “personality” of any culture and we need to recognize that as well.
That explanation may be confusing, but here is one simple example. I am very task oriented. That helps me fit well with an American culture because here in the U.S., task orientation is valued. In Ukraine, relationship orientation has a higher value than task orientation. Completion (or not!) of a task is usually not the most important thing, but rather it is the time spent getting to know someone. So, the question is which of these is more Biblical? Which is a better reflection of Christ? After living and working in Ukraine for a few years, I have learned to slow down and enjoy the chance to stop and have a cup of tea with someone, even if the “work” isn’t done. Now that I’m in the U.S., I find myself out of step with things here because it seems like everyone is in a rush and no one has time to sit and chat.
The extension of that example relates to how a ministry plan would be designed for Ukraine. As task-oriented Americans, the entire structure and way that we plan can be affected by this emphasis to the point that we bring a structure that isn’t really helpful in Ukrainian culture. We may plan for results and timetables while they may prefer to build more relational structures that aren’t as measureable.
It’s a very interesting idea and I’ll be thinking about it more. Another good reason to participate in your church’s missions conferences – you just never know what you might hear that will challenge you!
