December 2007

We would like to take this opportunity to wish all of you a blessed Christmas and a fruitful New Year! The weeks and months and years click off so quickly. Truly life is but a vapor as James tells us.

The 2007 Bible college year is now complete. We also completed the pilot program for the year of New Testament Bible History in the six extension locations, three of which we personally ran weekly. Graduation Fellowship Week was a great blessing and well attended. One hundred certificates were given out for the college extension classes and four students graduated from the college.

The guest speaker for the Graduation Week was Pastor Ron Jones from Temple Baptist Church in El Dorado, Kansas. This is the first church I planted as a young man back in 1954. Pastor Jones was the first pastor from this our sending church to visit us either in Lebanon or Australia, so we were really excited about this “first-in-fifty-years” occasion! He and his wife were such a blessing to us, and it was a big highlight of 2007. Several people were saved in the meetings he preached as well as a good response from Christians. A combined youth rally was held with about 300 youth in attendance. The Lord touched the heart of a young man to whose family we had ministered in the past and he accepted Christ. Pastor Jones really relates to youth and God blessed his ministry here.

We took Pastor and Mrs. Jones to meet with two of the New Testament Bible History extension classes where we heard the testimonies of the students. One couple from Cambodia and Hong Kong, relatively new Christians from a Buddhist background, took the course. Both are accountants and have to drive 45 minutes plus each way from home to the church. So every Monday night they would come for the class, sometimes in separate cars when they didn’t finish work together so that both would not be late. They gave glowing testimonies of how they had learned so much and grown so much in the Lord through the year of study. The wife thanked me for the quizzes and exams saying that they helped her to really absorb what she had studied!

Thankfully, we have completed proofreading and corrections on the New Testament Bible History Handbook and will soon be sending it for printing. Hopefully it will be available in April of 2008.

In the next letter we will send some testimonies of the students which will be of interest to you who pray and are concerned with what God is doing in lives here. Again, we pray you will enjoy a spiritual Christmas and concluding yet another year of life’s short pilgrimage.