Move to Haiti

Charlene and I have made a commitment to move to Haiti for three years!  It was a hard choice for several reasons, number one being the children and grandchildren we will be leaving here in  Minnesota.  However, the people we will be working for have given us a travel budget that will allow us to come home four times a year.  If we time that right we can do some key birthdays and holidays here and will be able to stay up to date will our two stables of doctors.

We will be working for the elders at the Estes Church of Christ in Henderson, Tennessee.  Their job descriptions reads like this:

"Job Description:  Missonary Couple in Port-au-Prince, Haiti"

"The Estes Church of Christ is seeking a missionary couple to join our team in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, as Bible teachers and facilitators for short-term workers and mission interns.  Our work in Haiti is multi-faceted and long-term, including Sonlight Children's Home (Roberta Edwards, Administrator), a Nutrition Center, an education sponsorship program, earthquake disaster relief (Larry Waymire, Facilitator), annual medical missions, and cooperative efforts with several congregations and Christian schools in the region.  Some of the primary responsibilities of the missionary couple include:

·  serving as innkeepers for our guesthouse facility, including hosting short-term mission groups, supervising interns, and overseeing the maintenance and security of the property

·  teaching Bible classes for both Christians and non-Christians, in order to help the local churches to mature in leadership as well as grow through evangelism

·  helping with communication, transportation, coordination, and other logistical needs in support of the overall mission in Haiti

·  this missionary couple will be under the oversight of the elders of the Estes Church of Christ; their work will be in cooperation with, but separate from, the work already being done by Roberta Edwards and Larry Waymire"

It will be quite an adventure.  Charlene and I have committed to working on our Haitian Creole language course some each morning.  Bondye beni (God bless you).  More on this later.

Writing Books

Solomon said,  "Be warned: the writing of many books is endless, and excessive devotion to books is wearying to the body."  

I am a believer.  I have just finished book three and am torn between the necessary busy work of negotiating with the publisher to get it into print and writing book four.  I had much rather write book 4.  And I am convinced, without scientific sampling, that there are more people writing books these days than there are people reading them.  The print on demand industry, which claims to be on the way to running the traditional publishers out of business, has opened the door for thousands of wannabes like me to get their books into print, dependant only on the writer's own ingenuity to find readers willing to invest the time to read their books.  Part of the problem is most writers, like me, had much rather write more books than tell people about the ones they already have in print.  And the few I know of who are trying to market their books are doing so in such a persistently obnoxious manner that they have turned me off to ever investigating one of them.

Book 3, I think, is a necessary piece.  I was really excited about it when I started it, and I enjoyed writing it.  It is about the peace Jesus promised his followers.  It calls for us to be at peace in a very unpeaceful world.  It contrasts that with how unpeaceful we seem to many non-Christian observers, particularly around the leading social issues of the day.  The book puts forth the proposition that God did not call us to legislate people into righteousness, but rather called us to teach people to love God and follow His lead.  After dealing with fear and anger, the book illustrates the proposition with such topics as abortion, same sex marriages, war and immigration.  It is an exciting idea.  But now that it is written, I am ready to move on.

Book 4 is about good news.  When I think of the requirement Jesus laid on us to spread good news to all the world, I get nervous.  In this book I want to explore those feelings.  Why am I reluctant?  If it really is good news, why am I not excited about telling people.  I think I have some important answers that I want to share.  I am ready to write.

But now I have to put on my marketing hat.  I need to catch a wave on the internet and ride it to literary success.  Otherwise I will not be able to share my excitement over these books (and #s 1 & 2) with very many people.  And I did write them with the hope that folks would read them and be changed by them.  So I am off to Facebook and Twitter and my blog and my web site to spread the news that another good book will soon be in print.