Where Are They Now?

I wrote our November/December 2011 newsletter last week and sent it out to our many Ministry Partners and friends. Should be showing up in everyone's mail boxes today (Saturday) or early next week.

I was reading a newsletter from good friends of ours a few days before I wrote our letter. The wife, Jenni, had been a student in our ministry in Kirksville, Missouri more than 30 years earlier. It's amazing to see now decades later how the Lord has used them and where they been in the world over the years. She and her husband are some of the most effective people we know in ministry.

Reading their letter got me thinking. I pulled out from my files a newsletter that I had written when we lived in Kirksville and ministered at Northeast Missouri State University back then (now called Truman State University). Both Dianne and I were leading groups there -- I a men's group and Dianne a women's group. In that 1983 newsletter we had written about the students in our groups, including a short paragraph about each of them and including a quote from a few of them.

As I read that letter from long ago, it amazed me how those two groups with only a few students in each group have been so significantly used by the Lord around the world. The students were from different backgrounds and had very different personalities, talents and skills. Thinking about each of them, I was so encouraged by where they are today that I decided to include a section in our current newsletters throughout all of 2012 where I can highlight them and other former students like them.

It's fascinating to see where the Lord has taken students who have come through our ministries -- some were not even believers when we first met them -- and where they are today. Some from Kirksville, but many others from our other ministries around the US. What's happened in their lives and how they have touched literally tens of thousands of lives around the world -- some from 5 years ago, some 10 years, some 20, and some even more than 30 years ago.

In our newsletter back in 1983 we wrote about:

• Jenni, who with her husband have lived in east Africa for 25+ years and ministered in a number of surrounding African nations.
• Scott, who came to faith in Christ with a friend of mine shortly before I met him. He and his wife have lived in Croatia for more than 18 years and raising up many Croats for the gospel there.
• Susie, who with her husband have consistently reached out to their many friends, neighbors, and others with the gospel. Susie's husband, Mike, who she met in Kirksville, is now a medical doctor in the US Air Force and serves our Lord faithfully where've he's assigned.
• Barry, also a medical doctor in the US military, met his wife, Debbie, through our ministry in Kirksville. They've had their ups-and-downs in life over the years, but both come humbly to the Lord and seeking him for help and guidance. They're special people to us.
• Mark and Karla, also met through our ministry. Mark came to faith in Christ early during his college days with me. They now have a family (and even grandkids!) and live in southern Missouri. They live a very simple lifestyle and are 100% committed to the Lord.
• Karen met her husband, Boyd, through our ministry. Both came from families who are committed Christians. Dianne and I have the privilege of equipping them for ministry -- and they have ministered faithfully to others throughout the decades. They've moved a number of times around the midwest due to Boyd's jobs, and each time have been significantly involved in their church and reaching out to others with the gospel. They have five great kids, some who now are married.

There are others from years long ago that I could write about here in my blog and in our newsletters. I am struck with the fact that we never know what lies ahead for the students we have the privilege to meet and work with in our ministry. Sometimes we are truly amazed at how the Lord uses them and far greater ways than we ever could imagine and in far greater ways than ourselves.

Makes me look at the men and women we currently are involved with at the University of Michigan. Where will some of them be in 30 years? (I'll probably not see that time.) God uses people in great ways when they are yielded to him and have a desire to serve him in other's lives.

(PS: If you'd like to receive our bi-monthly newsletter by email, let me know. Click on the "You Contact Me" button in the "Blinking 12:00" blog header and let me know that you would like to be added to our email newsletter list. You can read ways the Lord is using our ministry in the lives of many at the University of Michigan.)

Keeping Job Current

I was doing some reading on the internet and came across an article by a career consultant in Cincinati named Andrea Kay, entitled, Evolve Your Skills to Keep Your Work Relevant. I thought she made some great observations and offered some helpful suggestions. Fits well with what I've been thinking about trying to keep current, especially regarding technology, and avoid being a "Blinking 12:00 Generation" member. She wrote:

At some point you really need to sit down and figure out how to keep yourself employable. If you don't, you will constantly be trying to figure out how to stay merely employed. Here's the difference: When you only wonder, "where are the jobs?" you've focused on merely staying employed. But when you focus on discovering new ways to apply your talents and interested to the megatrends shaping the world, that's thinking about staying employable for the future. Doing the latter will keep you relevant, which means you're less likely to be in that constant state of asking, "where's my next job?" You should be looking at trends that then leads you to, well, a way to stay employable the rest of your career.

That's not only true for your next job, but true to stay relevant in your current position or with your current employer. Throughout her article she encourages the reader to start asking three main questions, sooner rather than later, and often. According to Kay, we should keep asking,

How can I:

• Retrofit my skills to remain relevant?
• How do technological trends and social changes apply to my career?
• What new skills and knowledge can I add to my line of work to support those?
• Can I incorporate new trends into my current work, and if so, how?
• Blend two careers to make a new specialty?
• What skills, interests and talents do I have that I can blend into a new speciality that fits a growing need?
• Create a job that solves a growing problem?
• What problems are people facing and how can I come up with new roles and functions to help solve them?

I've got some thinking to do....

Christmas Party for International Students

We host a Christmas party for International students every December. Yes, its early December, but with the end of classes in mid-December and then exams before the semester break, the only time is early December. We celebrate Thanksgiving and the next Monday we are planning the Christmas party.

We open the party to anyone and do some publicity to see who might be interested to come, but most often those who come are friends and acquaintances of the Christian students involved with us. They bring International students they meet in their classes, or those who are in their labs and Advisee groups, or even friends of friends.

About 27 came Saturday night, which makes for a nice size party. I hadn't met about 17 of them before, so it was fun to meet new students, many of whom were from China. They said they only had been in the US about 3 or 4 months and this will be their first Christmas -- ever!  They were curious about American traditions and understanding what Christmas is about.

What a privilege to be the first people to tell them about the birth of Jesus Christ and the true meaning of Christmas, God's gift to us.

The Americans who came shared family traditions from their childhood. Many were common among us, but some were very unique and interesting to hear about. We sang a couple Christmas songs (Silent Night, Walking in a Winter Wonderland), and then one of the men took seven minutes to tell about Christ's birth and why he came to earth. He did a great job!

I think for many people, though, one of the most interesting times of the evening was when one of the women graduate students shared her personal story about how she came to faith in Christ in the midst of life-threatening tragedy while in college. She was open and warm and honest and tied the entire evening together. Everyone clapped when she finished. I'm not sure, but I think this was the first time ever that she had told her story in a group like this.

The party had lots of food, a Christmas present game and hours of good conversation. And two graduate student friends of ours from China came later on in the evening. It was especially fun to see them again.

Dianne had the opportunity to talk with two students about Christmas and their understanding of the gospel message. Everyone stayed late -- we left about 11:40 pm before most people.

A fun game that had everyone laughing. A gift was wrapped multiple times (11, I think) and someone had to put on a Christmas stocking cap, a frog blow-up swim toy around their waist and thick, heavy snow gloves to open it. They could unwrap as fast as they could while the circle around them tossed dice. Whenever anyone rolled a six or nine, they then put on the cap, frog and gloves and the unwrapping continued. After many stops and starts and switching of cap, frog and gloves, someone finally managed to unwrap the gift all the way -- which was theirs to keep. Everyone laughed a lot!

Fun conversation. The woman in green was the one who shared her personal story of how she came to faith in Christ.

This is 18 of about 27 who came. Wonder where Dianne was?

Flying Racoons: Something You Don't See Everyday

In my previous post I cut/pasted a few sentences from my Facebook wall a year ago. That stared my remembering that weird week back then. Everyday something very singularly odd happened, like the extremely different assortment of people I encountered in every aisle at the Meijer's supermarket.

One day that week I was driving from home to campus. It's a route I've taken hundreds of times on a two lane, sorta country road. This time there was a car ahead of me and nothing seemed unusual. But then the car slowed down and stopped in the middle of the road. As I slowed and pulled up behind it, the driver turned on the car's flashers and then got out of the car. I really was curious to see what the driver, a woman, was going to do as I sat there.

She walks around to the front of her car and bends over. I couldn't see to the front of her car, but suddenly she stands upright and steps into view holding two, large, dead, smushed, road kill racoons, one in each hand by the tails. These were not little ones as they dangled on either side of her. She takes a big 360 degree spin so the raccoons are flying high above her and she lets go of them, flinging the now soaring raccoons into the roadside ditch.

Without looking at me, she walks back to her car, gets in, turns off the flashers and starts to drive ahead again, resuming her trip. I sit there a moment stunned and then start laughing. And I start driving again to campus.

I appreciate her removing the two nasty, dead raccoons from the road. I'm sure I would have had to drive around them if she hadn't taken care of the road kill. But it sure was funny. And makes for an interesting blog post, don't you think. (At least I do!)

Ann Arbor is a crazy place to live. All sorts of people from everywhere in the world come here. Always interesting, some days, like this day, especially so.

Meijer's: A Cultural Experience

Last week I was in our local supermarket, Meijer's, buying groceries for our Thanksgiving Day dinner. We had eight graduate students with us for Thanksgiving: two from Austria, two from Taiwan, one from Singapore, and three Americans (California, Idaho, and Montana). For some, this was their first American Thanksgiving -- they had only seen it in movies or heard about it from friends. After our meal, we talked about how the Lord has blessed us throughout the past year, including during difficult times in our lives.

Often when I'm in Meijer's, I see many people from around the world. Because of the University, there are people from more than 110 nations and many of them shop Meijers. Last week was no different. Every aisle can be a "cultural experience" with people speaking different languages and wearing unusual clothing. My trip to Meijer's this week reminded of a posting I wrote a year ago in my Facebook page. I went back and cut/paste it here.

Recently I was at the supermarket. I passed two Asian women jabbering in Chinese. Around the corner were two Arab women in full burkas. Next aisle were two biker-babes with full sleeve tattoos and lots of fringe on their leather bustiers. Next were two Amish women dressed in flower print pastel dresses with poofy sleeves wearing bonnets and Adidas tennis shoes. Made me marvel. Where do I live? Ann Arbor, of course!

This is true! I know it sounds implausible, but it all happened the way I wrote. At times I marvel when people ask Dianne and me if we've ever thought about being "foreign missionaries." We always say, "we are, we moved to Ann Arbor!" Hope you had a great Thanksgiving and reflected on the many blessings in your life!

Ik spreek heel weinig Nederlands

"I speak very little Dutch." That's the title of this post. I knew some Dutch words growing up, like broek (pants), op Zontag (on Sunday) and preutse (prude). They were words I heard family members and neighbors use. My grandparents emigrated to west-Michigan from the Netherlands in the early 1900s. I heard them speak Dutch when we would visit them, especially at Christmas when they would read about the birth of Christ from a large Dutch Bible.

I wish I would have learned Dutch growing up. Being bi-lingual would be so cool. I had the opportunity to be in The Netherlands for a couple days in 2011 -- and hope to be there again in 2012 for a longer time. Maybe for five weeks in mid-May to early-June for a mission trip? My PhD work in worldview theory can help Dutch and American Christian students better understand post-modernism and becoming equipped with effective ministry philosophy and skills.

I bought the first Dutch Rosetta Stone language software and have been spending 30 minutes most days. I think I know 300+ Dutch words and can form simple sentences. I'm amazed how many words are the same in English or sound so similar. Makes it so much easier to learn and speak. (Same word in Dutch and English: park, restaurant, computer, plastic, kat (cat), is, man, vingers (fingers), and many more.)

I can hardly imagine what it takes for International graduate students to come to the University of Michigan and do Master and PhD work not in their native language. I've got a long way to go even to speak Dutch at a kindergarten level, let alone do graduate work.

I've decided to try blogging

Supposedly I'm a member of the "Blinking 12:00 Generation". The online Urban Dictionary defines them as those "typically 50+ year old individuals who have a blinking '12:00' on their VCR (Video Cassette Recorder). These people frequently have difficulty understanding and using anything electronic or computer related." (Now you already know that I'm over 50.)

Years ago whenever I'd travel home to visit my parents, the digital clock on their VCR would perpetually blink "12:00". I'd set it to the correct time, but it wouldn't be very long till a power outage would wipe out the settings and "12:00" would annoyingly blink every second for weeks (or months!) till I returned to reset it again. It was years ago, back then, that I vowed I would keep current with technology and life -- even if it meant spending money for the latest and time to learn how to use it. For example, I'm into all things Apple (I'm typing this on my iPad2) and today I'm venturing into blogging!

So what will I blog about two or three times each week? I'm going to keep it to three areas: (1) Blinking 12:00, (2) Encounters and (3) On the Inside.

"Blinking 12:00" (which I'm using for my blog title, too) is where I'll talk about my attempts to learn new things to keep current with technology and life. I'm sure my next post will be about my attempts to learn to read and speak Dutch. Understanding Dutch has been on my Bucket List for decades -- I started a few weeks ago (Rosetta Stone) and think I'm doing quite well.

"Encounters" will be about people and experiences I have. Ministering as I do on a large university campus, every week I meet new people from across the US and around the world. And I travel, too. It's fascinating to be exposed to new cultures and worldviews (and new foods).

And "On the Inside" will be things I've been thinking about; thoughts and ideas I've been considering and maybe some off-the-wall ideas and what-ifs? I often reflect on Scripture, so maybe some thoughts about that? Or something from the news? I might write something profound (people with PhD's are supposed to say profound things, right) or something silly? We'll see what pops up in my thinking. (And you also now know that I have a PhD.)

Will others be interested in my postings? We'll see. At least, though, I'm learning something new and engaged in life. Enuff for now. I'm excited to see how it looks.

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