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News, Autumn 2004Dear friends, Greetings once again from Switzerland. Yes, life seems to be busy, but that is the lot of one who invents work when there's not so much to do... and somehow survives when there is! Meanwhile, Hilde doesn't need to invent work. She's stressed to the limit in her new job in a local regional hospital. More below! Summer tripsAt the end of May, the largest number of staff men ever met for the OAC International 4-yearly conference in the States. It was a great time to meet chaps from all over the world who are doing a similar job to achieve the same objective, proclaim Christ to a needy world. Several new 'Nations' were officially added to the number of our branches, notably in Europe and a new president, Robert Siakimotu, was elected. As the in-coming European chairman, that means my work could be more than ever. Just as well it's not too onerous a job description. That said, the phone bill is definitely showing that I've been doing something. My term is for two years, which means I have to chair two meetings and coordinate the agenda and so on for them. There is some more to the job, but in theory, if all goes well, not much. It's more a role of encouragement and support. That said, there have already been a number of issues calling for help. In early July we were both off to Vienna for the Reach The City week. Some 80 participants joined together for a week of training and outreach, with sketchboard, puppets, gospel magic, mime, etc.. as the practical workshops. Austria's Stefan Höfler did a brilliant job in coordinating it all. There are piles of pictures on the web site and some more about the week and the outreach in Romania. Why not take a moment to drop in on the site, not forgetting to come back and read on! I should have travelled straight from Vienna to Extremadura, but a cancellation gave me a bit more time to get there. But after a few days I was on my way to ]Coria] for a week of evangelism with a team of Hispanics from Miami with our old OM colleagues the Molina family. It was a great time and we all enjoyed it. The team brought a lot of mime, which combined very well with sketchboard. And they trained the church kids to do it, too. As a result of the week, several decisions were recorded and, more to the point, a number of people visited the church for the final Sunday meeting and a football game. We trust that they have been back and that they are finding those decisions were the start of a real walk with Christ. Other ministry and activitiesThere have been several other trips to Spain, Britain and France over the past months, more administrative and web related, or for short holidays, than for outreach ministry. And all the while, the web sites continue to grow, providing Chris with little time to wonder what to do next. OACI now has three language sections plus two national and one campaign sub-sections. PrayforSpain provides news updates as regularly as possible, together with prayer suggestions and letters. If you haven't looked into them at depth, take the time to do so now! Meanwhile, Hilde has started and come to the end of a new job. She started September 1st in Burgdorf, just 20 minutes down the rail line towards Berne. It's a job which has taken her to several of the regional hospital's wards and given her loads of experience in 'normal' nursing, after the rather special experience in the psychosomatic hospital. She is enjoying many aspects of it and finds even more of the old skills are coming back, but there are a lot of new things to learn, too. In particular, the lack of trust in modern society means there is a pile of paperwork to fill in all the time, allowing no time to be with patients. Some tasks which used to be high priority are now virtually overlooked in the general rush, while team spirit has been replaced, apparently, by general grumbling and looking for scapegoats. The 'pool team' that she's part of is inevitably dumped with the jobs that the ward full timers can't cope with. Hilde has decided that, while there are aspects of the job which are most enjoyable, she is not getting up to speed fast enough and therefore should leave at the end of her probationary period, end November. In due course she will look for a long-term or non-hospital job to add to the experience and hopefully allow the stability to allow us to get through 2005. She has signed up for a day release training course next year on 'Health Promotion'. In the course she will learn much about where the current emphasis is in health care and prevention. But one thing she is now sure of and would recommend to you: do everything you can to avoid ending up in hospital! Our flat on the Costa Brava should have been handed over in September, but they made the mistake of installing the wrong windows! Finally we got it early November. We are praying about what role it will play in our life/ ministry in the future. ProjectsThe Spanish Evangelists' Conference is coming up, 6th to 9th January, '05. It should gather many key people in Spain to talk about reach the country for Christ. In the run up to this event I have been appointed webmaster of the Conference'ss site, which has been offline since the free server ran out of funds! This will be a Spanish language counterpart to Pray4Spain. I have also been invited to lead a seminar on Internet Evangelism. Again, my specific sites are not directly evangelistic, but I am gradually getting to know the medium and to what is out there. In particular, I already have the support of Spain's principal evangelistic Bible course team as they use the Internet and email for their courses, including our Carrelet content management system on one of their sites. I am wondering if I can put the seminar on without nor an internet access. I just managed to get a data projector for 500GBP! (Of course, the equipment will also go on to be most useful after the conference.) Prayer points
Many thanks again for your standing with us. We really appreciate it. Much love from us both, Chris and Hilde |