Well, as of today, Naomi & I are officially UNOH Apprentices!!!!
It has been a long time in coming, but finally it is here. For me, it has been a ten year (or probably more) journey since I first got my love for missions & wanted to enter the mission field. Back then , I was introduced to missions more or less accidentally, I was forced to choose an elective at bible college, the choice was between Missions & Creative Ministry, and as I am not really into drama or messianic dance or anything I chose Missions as the better of 2 evils. My perspective of Christianity and Theology was turned up-side-down during that course. So much so that I changed my course to be a missions based course. The following years saw my passion for mission grow and mature from a purely Evangelistic view to a more holistic view seeing the importance and value in social action.
During that time, Jesus was also working on Naomi. I had expected to go to the mission field straight after Bible College, but God had other plans, Naomi was not ready, and I had learnt through my experiences at BC the importance of a married couple being a team on the mission field. Too many men have dragged their wives onto the mission field, where their wives have learnt to resent them, and this often harms the work & ministry of the mission. I did not want this, so I had to wait.
I would like to say that I did not put any pressure on Naomi over this time, but I did put out my feelers every now and then. I guess Naomi was aware of this and felt that I was putting pressure on her, so much so that she would explode in anger towards me. Little did I know that this was because God was working on her and she was resisting it out of the fear of putting her trust completely in Him.
Finally the crunch came for Naomi at the Surrender conference in 05, and since then Naomi has been running towards missions and I have been holding on tight in an attempt to keep up. The last 7 months have been about us getting used to life in Noble Park, settling ourselves and our kids in here, getting to know the people in the community and Rainbow Church, but now the aim of all that waiting is here and we begin the apprenticeship...
Please continue to pray for us as we begin this time, that God will be with us, that we learn to balance our commitments of study and practice, and that we will get a lot out of this time and grow in the Lord & what he has in store for our lives
5 comments:
Hi Guys,
congrats on your apprenticeship!!
Pete, i can't help wondering if we all missed out because of your choice to pursue Missions rather than creative ministy - I'm wondering the impact you could have had with a well choreographed liturgical dance.
Looking forward to seeing you guys nnext weekend,
Andy!!
Becca's just started crawling, and has been pulling herself up to a standing position for about 2 weeks.
liturgical dance is a sacred practice shared between a husband and wife in the bedroom only, thank-you very much andy!!!
Well at least it is for me!
looking forward to catching up with you guys too!!!
Now I know why we don't do the "dance" thing at Foothills worship...
Congrats guys on the next step of many more to come, lookin forward to seein you all next week and lookin forward to having you in my clasees Naomi, You gotta make sure your sitting up the front of the class like a good girl.
If i sit up the front you will be able to wack me with a ruler when I fall asleep (not that your lessons will be boring) - so I think I will be sitting in the back somewhere...lol
Naomi
It doesn't get much more exciting than a whole family being called to further adventures with the King. Fun and fruitfulness to you all!
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