Aaron Mondok shot this video on location in Jacmel, Haiti. Aaron and I went through Shepherd’s Staff’s training in 2003. We learned invaluable lessons about missions and culture. We used what we learned in some form or fashion every single day.

Pastor Bill Welsh stands in this week for Pastor Jeff. Pastor Bill pastors Refuge Calvary Chapel in Huntington Beach.

This first of two podcasts is jammed full of practical wisdom for missionaries on the launch pad.

Enjoy.

Shaun is the lead pastor at Calvary Chapel Cheyenne. His parents put me up in their home while Pastor Shaun and I worked through Missions Policy and Short-term Mission Team Training for missions ministry at his church.

Wednesday nights, Shaun is leading a very cool Bible study. He calls it Bookin' Through the Bible. He teaches through and entire book in forty-five minutes. He hits the high points of the book. He includes an approximation of how long it takes to read the book as an encouragement to give it a whirl in your personal devotional time.

Shaun has a cool problem at his church. People are popping up everywhere to do ministry. So Pastor Shaun wanted to put a process in place to equip and train his folks to think through and do missions effectively. That's what we worked on while I was there for three days.

Specifically, we worked on writing missions policy. Shaun has a heart for evangelistic and ministry outreach locally, cross-culturally, and internationally. His people dream up ministry organically. They have an incredible passion for reaching the hurting. He can't hold his people back from the work. Some from his church are spending their retirement years pouring their lives out for others. That's how they want to live out the many more productive years of their lives and Shaun established a ministry mechanism to support their missionaries administratively, operationally, and prayerfully. This dude gets it.

Wow, I can hardly believe it is the middle of March. We are starting to feel like our move is coming faster and faster. 

About a week ago Pat Kenney (our Shepherd's Staff rep) approached Jonathan and asked if we would be attending F.I.T. (Field-environment Intensive Training). The two week course in Tijuana, MX is designed to equip missionaries with skills they will need on the mission field such as:

1. Relational skills

2. Administrative skills

3. Practical ministry skills

4. Family relationships

5. Leadership skills

6. Personal Health

7. Cross-cultural skills

8. Church relationships

Pat had informed us that our whole family would be able to attend at no cost since we were missionaries with Shepherd's Staff. Wow! That's huge since our family of four would have paid $2,000 for those weeks. As we looked over the time frame (May 30th-June 13th) we didn't think it would be possible to go. Vacation time at Jonathan's work had already been requested and someone else already had that time reserved. Plus, Jonathan needed a week of vacation time for Jr. high summer camp. So we said, "Well, we can't do it unless God opens the doors." I got a call from Jonathan on Wed. night and he said, "You won't believe it, the reserved time for those weeks had been canceled. Those dates are open!" Jonathan also looked over his vacation time and found that he had enough for the total three weeks we needed. What an answer to prayer! So, Jonathan put in for the time and is now waiting for approval. Please pray that if the Lord wants us to go that this next door would open up. Also, I need to request the time off from my PT job at Starbucks. May is just around the corner and we are so excited at this possibility.

Oh! And our kids say, "Happy St. Patrick's Day!"

Ferguson Four!: F.I.T.

Ferguson Missionary Page

F.I.T. Page

Believe it or not, in the early days of the  web I did some web design and was was very familiar with all things webby. Those were definitely web 1.0 days. Going to the mission field and dealing with 9.6kps (on a good day) slowed everything down. We have done our best to not allow technology to pass us by, but besides Kelli and the kids venturing into Facebook, we can just barely make out the taillights of web 2.0 far ahead on our horizon.

All of that to say a dear friend is currently reworking the CIF Website and I am slowly catching up. As I'm learning I figured out how to post our personal missionary newsletters. So below are some links to our three most recent missionary newsletters. Sorry, you'll need to print and fold them yourself.

While I'm on this issue I would like to instigate a dialogue regarding snail mail versus hardcopy missionary newsletters. Back in the day, when we first went to the mission field, and even as I taught missionary communication at FIT with Shepherd's Staff, we all held to the idea that email and Internet newsletters for missionaries were not a good idea. It was believed that very few people would read something online and even fewer would translate the computer screen to actual prayer. That was then, this is now. It is a whole new world out there now and it is certainly a whole new world wide web --thus I need someone to build a site for us...

Okay, I'm definitely going on too long, but I'm wondering if the days of the snail mail hardcopy missionary newsletter is passé. Please give me some feedback on this. We are not making any decisions in the immediate future, but with our furlough coming up in couple months it may be time to transition into more blogging, Facebooking and Youtubing to keep in touch rather than pay for printing and postage. It is my feeling that there is still a generation of people that would rather have something in hand every two months, but I want to hear.

By the way, cool missionary refrigerator magnets will ALWAYS be in style. Thank you for the feedback...

Here are some back issue of the oldschool old missionary newsletters --Just click and download...

October 08

December 08

February 09

Calvary International Fellowship: Some Communication Issues...

Compean Missionary Page

During our first week here, we began praying that the Lord would give us opportunities to minister to people here while we are in language school.  He has blessed us already in this area by allowing Daniel to lead worship at chapel, to speak at chapel (very soon) and to teach this Saturday evening at the International Youth Group here in San Jose.  He has also given us a huge opportunity to minister to a lady named Concepcion.  Concepcion is a "Tica" in her late 50's who is our empleada--basically she helps us around the house a few times a week.  The school provides help for the students for a VERY minimal (too minimal) cost with things such as housework, cooking and helping with children at times so that we are really able to focus on studying the language in addition to caring for a family and all of the other responsibilities we have here.  This also provides work for extremely poor single women who are desperate to have a job to provide for their families.  Concepcion has been such a blessing to our family and in return we are able to bless her!  She has been helping us for 2 weeks so far and she is already a part of the family.  Thomas and Jacob love her and when she is here she teaches them Spanish.  She is also like a personal tutor for us as she helps us with homework and teaches us new words all the time.  She also constantly corrects everything we say which is a big help!  She is a Christian (which is rare for older "Ticas") and she truly is a treasure!  

As I said before we have been praying that the Lord would use us to minister to people while we are in school.  Well, last week Concepcion was at our home when we got home from school.  I asked her how she was and she began crying as she told me about her mother in Guatemala who is dying of mouth cancer.  She has not seen her in many years and she got a call the day before from a friend of the family that her mom is about to die.  She wanted so badly to be able to go and visit her mother one last time before she dies but she can't afford to go and she is worried that if she goes she won't have any work when she returns.  Immediately I felt like the Lord told me that we were to send her to Guatemala to visit her mom.  I can't imagine not being able to visit my mom as she is dying...it tore me up inside.  Daniel and I prayed about it and checked bus and air fares and flying was going to be a lot cheaper and quicker.  We told her that the Lord told us to send her to visit her mother (such a minimal expense for us and so worth the sacrifice!!) and she was overwhelmed to the point that she kept trying to get on her knees to thank us.  She didn't know what to say.  She didn't understand how people she had only known for 2 weeks would help her with something that, to her, was such a HUGE and IMPOSSIBLE endeavor.  I was able to share with her how we are all part of the body of Christ and we are called to provide for one another in need.  I think we were more blessed to be able to help her than she was.  She was just praising the Lord in our kitchen and we had the privilege of praying over her before she left.  She is now there with her mother and will be for 2 weeks.  Please join us in praying for Concepcion as she is with her mother during her last days. What a small part we were able to play yet it meant the world to her.  Jesus said, "Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this:  to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world." James 1:27  We are so thankful for the honor of being able to serve "the least of these" who are so special to our Lord! He loves us all just the same!!!   Below are a few pictures of Concepcion with the boys...

The Barretts in Costa Rica: A Special Gift For Our Family

Barrett Missionary Page

I was glad to see that our little advertisement hit Brigada Today's Blog.

Thanks, Doug.

1) Get Fit: Get Field-Intensive Training

Now you can get Field-environment Intensive Training (FIT) for entering the foreign mission field. This 21-day intensive cross-cultural ministry training school is designed to equip missionaries and their families for success in the following areas:

* Relational skills
* Leadership skills
* Administrative skills
* Personal Health
* Practical Ministry skills
* Cross-cultural skills
* Family relationships
* Church relationships

Experienced, field-tested missionaries will give instruction. The course will be offered in Spring, 2009, and is held at the Calvary Training Center in the cross-cultural, developing nation environment of Tijuana, Mexico. Phone +1(505) 248-9849 or Fax +1(505) 293-5197 or visit http://shepsstaff.org/

or email ssmfi@shepsstaff.org.

 

 

Tags: conference, training

 

Brigada Today

Vision is the result of God leading you to dissatisfaction with the way things are to the degree that you:

• Desire God-glorifying change
• Believe that change is necessary and possible through the power of the Holy Spirit
• Recognize/see in the current situation an opportunity that He has revealed to you which can bring the desired change into existence in a God-glorifying and man-satisfying way even though it isn't a reality right now.

Dissatisfaction gets a bad rap when I react to it the wrong way. The typical reaction to dissatisfaction is playing the blame game. The first thing I want to do is find out who's at fault for my feelings of dissatisfaction. The mature person pauses in prayer and looks for God in the situation.

"God?" you ask. "Present in my dissatisfaction?"

Yes.

"I thought God only wanted me to live in a continuous state of blissful self-satisfaction."

You thought wrong. That doesn't even happen on vacation. Usually the opposite happens.

Many times in biblical narrative God brings dissatisfaction with a particular situation to an uncomfortable climax to create a space for God to act. Everyone knows the story of Israel's dissatisfaction in Egypt. It was unbearable. But God allowed the situation to fester and irritate and continue until people were moved from a passive posture to a willingness to act. God stirred in Moses a vision to deliver Israel from Egypt. Moses became a part of God-glorifying change. Several thousand years later, God still receives glory for the way He brought Israel into the Promised Land. Moses played a key role in Israel's deliverance as God worked in and through him and the vision He gave.

Moses couldn't get away from God given vision. To Moses, the vision seemed bigger than life; it was beyond him. But that didn't let him off the hook. All Moses could do to fulfill the vision God had given him was to totally rely on God as the Source of everything Moses needed.

So, Ask the Lord what the solution is rather than sniffing out somebody else's sins. Don't look for a reason to criticize. Look for how God may be using you to do something new.

Share this post :