WOW!

A story from the viewpoint of Jing

A primary focus for me (Jing) within Agape Netherlands is help set up policies and structures in place so that our staff (new and existing) will be optimally helped in the process of them building and maintaining their ministry partners. By ministry partners, I mean enthusiastic people who love God and have decided to be involved in God’s work through investing their finances and prayers and/or time in the personal ministry of an Agape staff member. I love this job of seeing miracles happen in the lives of brothers and sisters as they take gigantic steps of faith in fully trusting God to be their sole Provider. And when it takes almost like forever before they reach 100% of their support goal, it takes a lot of patience and wisdom to help keep them focus on God and the call He has given them.

In the beginning of Feb I was in Giessen, Germany to meet with a small task force team made up of Agape colleagues from 6 other European countries. These colleagues have the same passion and responsibility as I have in their own countries. Our goal as a group is to encourage and learn from each other, discern common strengths and weaknesses and help staff members in other European countries reach their goal to be fully funded.
During one of the breaks, a Latvian colleague asked me how many of the Dutch staff members were at 100% of their support goals. I answered “33 out of 54 household units have 100% and 19 units (of which 15 are new staff) are still building up their ministry team.” This Latvian colleague responded with a big WOW. Suddenly I realized that what I had just said was indeed worthy of a WOW. I had been focusing so much more on the 19 staff and had forgotten to thank God and celebrate with the 33 (staff with or without partner).

I had forgotten to do what Psalm again and again remind us…to praise the Lord and not forget any of His benefits (Ps 103)…to look to the Lord and His strength and seek His face and remember His wonders and miracles (Ps 105)…to ponder on the great works of the Lord (Ps.111).

I had forgotten but He had reminded…”He has caused his wonders to be remembered; the Lord is gracious and compassionate.”(Ps 111:4).

And to once again realize how gracious and compassionate He is to me, to us, is really a big WOW!!!

Back from the Philippines

Jing and I just returned yesterday from Manilla. About a week ago her mother passed away and we were privileged to be present even though normally we are on the other end of the world. Jing spent 7 weeks caring for her mother and her brother (from NY) and I joined her for the last 2. During the wake we heard story after story from people that were blessed by the life of mama. Friends and relatives, co-teachers and students from several generations, schools and biblestudy groups… She left quite a legacy for which we are very thankful.

Celebrating Christmas and New Year

It’s the end of the year again and many things have happened – don’t they every year?

But after a year of many problems, flooding and fighting infections, Jing having several operations besides having to go to Manila for the burial of her brother, this end of the year seems to be the start of a better time.
This november I joined GAiN – a type of ministry that I choose for many years ago but was not able to do for a long time.
It looks like all health problems have been solved.
Jing her mother has settled in a new home and feels happy about it.

And as a surprise, a friend gave us an (almost complete) cured ham. It tastes great! Thank you  Lord, for blessings!

It's a whole leg...

A world changing testimony – part 1

Dedication and strategic working

It started with me reading the book ‘The search for the twelve apostles’  in the eighties,  when we were still in the Philippines.  W. S. McBirnie (Ph.D.) studied the documentation around the whereabouts of the twelve apostles and some other well known disciples extensively; even visiting the many key places himself to interview the leaders of the presently existing churches and other knowledgeable people.

I’ve used some of this data whenever teaching church history of leading studies on the book of Acts to make my ‘students’ aware of the incredible speed that the Christian church has spread over the ancient world, much more extensively then most of us realize, based on just the knowledge we get from the New Testament.

“Therefore go and make disciples of all nations…” and “…you will be my witnesses…”.  This is what we read in the Gospels and the book of Acts and as a result Christianity is now by far the largest religion in the world. But its growth was not due to force or favoritism, especially not in the beginning.

The rest of this story you can read in this attached pdf file

Let me hear what you think about it!

The value of the Bible

Yesterday we went to the ministry presentation of Open Doors. Exciting stories about how God has been and is using them to strengthen the believers in countries where they cannot openly be christians without consequences and persecution.
The whole day the importance of the Bible, Gods word, was being emphasized by those speaking. Several of them came from those countries and they shared how the Bible gives them strength in their daily lives.

One memorable story was the one from Bill Tinsley, the captain of a tugboat that brought secretly 1 million Bibles to China in the beginning of the eighties. A barge loaded with Bibles, waterproof packed on floating pallets was pulled to a small bay along the chinese coast in the middle of the night and there unloaded so the underground church could distribute these valuable words of God. At least two-thirds of this large number of scriptures found its way to individual believers all over the country and strengthened them in their walk with God.

Yesterday evening we relaxed as a family, watching some movies. One of them was ‘The book of Eli’ with Denzel Washington. It’s a “post-apocalyptic tale, in which a lone man fights his way across America in order to protect a sacred book that holds the secrets to saving humankind”.  Even in this secular movie the importance of the Bible stood out!
A quote, or at least as I recall it:  “I have been busy protecting the book for so long that I forgot to live according to what is written in it”.

I think that is one to remember!
The Bible as a book is important, but the book itself is nothing if the content is not being applied…

Fun and goodbyes at Agape family conference

Worship time

We just got back from a weekend conference, meeting with our fellow staff in the beginning of a new season. Andy Atkins, Agape UK director shared some great insights from Acts 20, the only message we have from Paul that was addressed to christians.

Good lessons on leadership…  Mixed with powerfull worship sessions and a lot of other fun things ; like a surprise  birthday rap for the MC. That’s what you get when you’re part of the city team of Rotterdam

Goodbye to AIA leaders

On a more official note, we said goodbye to a couple of friends who are called to a different place.  One a longtime staffmember and member of the board, the others the former teamleaders of Athletes in Action (a great young couple who had a strong positive spiritual  impact on our sportsministry).

Through it all my task was to make sure everybody was heard – operating the audio table…

Behind the audio table