May 2007

God has answered prayer concerning an older pastor and his family who will be coming to live and serve in the college. They are godly and faithful people who will be a positive asset to the ministry in Sydney. He is gifted in building as well and will be a blessing on the campus. His wife is an excellent teacher for the ladies, so that will be another plus for the college ministry. They still have two lovely girls at home (in their twenties). This will be, however, a financial challenge for the college and we covet your continued prayers.

I have taught Systematic Theology at the college here for thirty years and will be turning that class over to the new pastor on the college team. I still teach Old Testament Bible History and New Testament Bible History, both of which I have developed (or am developing) as a DVD college extension course.

A pastor unknown to us called recently from a Middle Eastern country to ask how he could get the Old Testament course to use in his ministry there. He had heard about it from a church in the Philippines who had used it. The church in the Philippines just finished their first run of the course for 15-20 keen professional people who wanted to study God’s Word in a structured course. So it was a joy to talk to this pastor in the Middle East and encourage him in this way. We mailed him a complete set of 30 DVDs along with the four books of materials.

We find a real joy and satisfaction in being able to have a small ministry and input into the lives of people we’ve never met in a place we’ve never been! This past month we also gave sets of the Old Testament course to a missionary in Samoa and another missionary in Paraguay in South America. The missionary in Paraguay wants to take the course for his own edification and encouragement after which time he may be able to use it with students in his country in English as well as translating some of it into Spanish. The wife of a missionary in Japan requested the course for her husband who wanted it. When she surprised him with it at Christmas, he wept according to guests from Australia who were visiting at the time. He is a graduate of our Sydney college.

We are personally running three of the New Testament Bible History classes weekly. This gives us a golden opportunity to monitor and correct any mistakes in the book, materials and DVDs. The last instalment of the textbook was printed last month as well as the workbook. So now we are down to editing the remaining eight lessons from the thirty-lesson series! Believe me, that is another big answer to prayer!

We still have the final corrections to make to the textbook before printing it in its final version. Pray for God’s direction on where and how we should print it. The DVDs will need another fine-tune before printing them in their final form (and before converting them to the USA NTSC video format). After that we can go through the copyright procedures and then, finally, commit the results of what has been a long and tedious project to our Lord Who burdened us to do it and miraculously sustained us throughout the work!