What It Will Be Like

 

We have had a lot of people ask what it will be like to go to missions school in Southern Texas. What will you do? Where will you go? What will life look like for you? These are all good questions so I thought I'd post what one group of first year students are doing right now (great video at the end).

Three weeks a month are spent in the classroom learning from top-notch christian leaders and missionaries about how do do the work of proclaiming the gospel to unreached/unengaged people groups around the word. We will be trained to be biblically qualified to share the gospel, disciple new believers, start the local church, and leave a self sufficent growing national church reaching out to their community and beyond. I am SO excited to be trained in all of these things! We are also going to be trained in missional living and the way to be prepared for it. Make no mistake, there is no sugar coating or romanticising the hard work ahead for missionarey families. But the joy of sharing the good news of life with someone who would otherwise never hear it is unbelievable. To be able to share the key to peace and joy and delight forever, namely Jesus, is worth it all!

So to give you a flavor of the teachers/professors we will have the privilage to study under I have taken a sample of the teachers from the To Every Tribe website. Some names may be farmilar to you.

 

Steve Best is Director of the Center for Pioneer Church Planting. He has over 30 years of pastoral and church planting experience. Steve leads the CPCP Chapel and Prayer Ministries, oversees the mentoring of trainees and teaches Bible Exposition, Discipleship, and Chronological Bible Storying at the CPCP.

 

Chad Bresson is one of the pastors of Clearcreek Chapel near Dayton, Ohio where he also directs and teaches at the Biblical Theology Study Center. Chad teaches Bible Exposition at the CPCP.

 

Jerry Bridges is a well-known Christian writer and conference speaker. He is author of several books, including, the Pursuit of Holiness, the Gospel for Real Life, and the Discipline of Grace. He has been on the staff of The Navigators since 1955 and currently serves as a resource person to the Navigators University Students Ministry in the United States. He teaches Biblical Spirituality.

 

David Depew is a former missionary to Thailand and the current President of New Life Advance International. He teaches Ethno-theology and Team Development.

 

Paul Dreblow is a missionary with To Every Tribe to Muslims in Minneapolis, MN, and works to develop leadership and mentoring among converted Muslims in places like Azerbaijan and Indonesia. He's currently pursuing a Ph.D. in New Testament. He teaches Muslim Missions and General Epistles.

 

Dr. David Edgington is the lead Biblical Counselor at Compassionate Counselors, Phoenix, AZ and is a certified Nouthetic Counselor. He teaches Biblical Counseling and Teams.

Dr. AJ Gibson is the To Every Tribe Mexico Field Director. Before coming to To Every Tribe, he served as the Director of Theology at the Christian University of the Americas in Monterrey, Mexico, where he also church planted. He teaches Systematic Theology.

David Harrell is the former Executive Director of To Every Tribe. He teaches Spiritual Warfare in Western Context and Systematic Theology.

Dr. Eddie Johnson is a respected, gifted and wise Bible teacher. He teaches Pentatuech to Joshua and OT Poetry and Prophets.

Dr. Stephen Leston is the pastor of Kishwaukee Bible Church in DeKalb, IL and has a Doctor of Biblical Studies Degree. He teaches Bible Exposition.

David Morris is an itinerant evangelist and conference speaker who previous served as a pastor for 20 years. He teaches Judges to Nehemiah, Christ in the Old Testament and Gospels.
 

Dr. Robert Reese is the Associate Professor of Cross-Cultural Ministry at Roanoke Bible College, Elizabeth City, NC. He teaches Dependency, Indigenity and Church Planting.

 

Don Richardson is a missionary, teacher, author, and international speaker who worked among the Sawi people of Western New Guinea, Indonesia. He teaches on redemptive analogy, Islamic Issues, and the Stars & Sand Seminar.

 

Martin Rizley is an Elder at Texarkana Reformed Baptist Church and a former church planting missionary to Spain. He teaches on Roman Catholicism.

 

Ron Sanford is the Executive Director of To Every Tribe, assists in team-building and teaches Christian Liberty and Relationship Building at the CPCP.

 

Margie Sanford has served in several roles at To Every Tribe. She teaches Chronological Bible Storying and Training for Missionary Wives.

 

Dr. David Sills is the Professor of Missions and Cultural Anthropology at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, KY. He teaches Cross-Cultural Church Planting.

 

David Sitton is the President of To Every Tribe and teaches several classes at the CPCP, including Theology of Suffering and Martyrdom, Spiritual Warfare in Animistic Cultures, Contextualization, Principles of Pioneer Church Planting and Cross-Cultural Mission.

 

Vernon and Carla Sterk served as missionaries in Chiapas, Mexico for over 40 years. There they did work in pioneer church planting and missions. Vernon holds a Ph.D. from Fuller Theological Seminary School of World Mission. The Sterks teach Mission Across Cultures at the CPCP.  

Harry Stoliker is the pastor of Emmanuel Bible Church in Schooley's Mountain, NJ. He teaches on the book of Hebrews.

 

Curtis Thomas is a former pastor, co-leader of Little Door International in Myanmar, co-owner of several land development communities, and has authored several books. He teaches on Paul’s Letter to the Romans.

Greg Van Court is the pastor of Dayspring Fellowship in Austin, Texas and a Ph.D candidate in New Testament at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. He teaches Reformed Theology.

Steve Weaver is pastor of Farmdale Baptist Church in Frankfort, KY and Research Assistant to the Director of the Andrew Fuller Center for Baptist Studies at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.  He is pursuing a Ph.D. in Church History from SBTS and is Managing Editor of the semi-annual Eusebeia: The Bulletin of the Andrew Fuller Center for Baptist Studies. He teaches History of Missions.

Blake White is pursuing a Ph.D at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary and is the author of five books including The Law of Christ: A Theological Proposal and The Newness of the New Covenant. Blake teaches New Covenant Theology and Paul's Epistles.

 

Dr. Hershael York is the pastor of Buck Run Baptist Church, Lexington, KY, and a Professor of Preaching at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, KY. He teaches on The Book of Acts.

 

 

One week out of every month students from Center for Pioneer Church Planting(CPCP) go across the border into Mexico to bring the gospel to villages where there is little or no access to the gospel. This is where they apply what they've been learning about cross-culture missions in a real ongoing church plant setting.  I'll post more about that later.

I really wanted to post what a group of first year students are doing right now.  Along with the one week every month, students go on a 3-4 week trip every spring.  Five students are in India right now.  We have had the priviledge to meet these students in January and we are excited to see what they are doing and what we may be doing in the future.  This is a great video Jarod complated and put together from other video of India.  Please take 3 minutes to watch it.

 

                                                         CLICK TO PLAY VIDEO

Finally, here is a schedule of what this team will be doing in India for their 3-4 weeks.  Pretty amazing!

 

Quick Trip To Texas

A couple weekends ago, just in time for a big storm and a cold spell to hit Montana, Josh and I flew to Texas.  The Center for Pioneer Church Planting (CPCP) was having their annual open house and we were so excited to attend!   

 

The day before we left.

Our trip south included waking up at 3:30 am, driving to the airport on icy roads in 9 degree weather, a four hour delay at Salt Lake, the discovery of a lost drivers licence in Houston, difficulty picking up our rental car because of said lost drivers licence (thank you Jill for mailing Josh's licence to us!), and then a six hour drive south to Los Fresnos where it was 75 degrees and humid at 11:30 at night, and finally our arrival at our destination at 1:15 am.  It was a long day full of twists and turns! 

On the plane (Felt like we were on our honeymoon!) 

We were blessed to stay at the Chachalaca property, which has recently been purchased and will most likely be the ministry headquarters and the CPCP campus in the future.  The Chachalaca Inn is wonderful and we were so blessed to be able to stay in such nice room for free!

 Where we stayed



  

 

    

 



The sessions for the open house were great.  There were thirty prospective students, supporters of the ministry, and some people who came just to encourage the missionaries they support.  It was insightful to see where To Every Tribe has been and where they are headed.  There was also a lot of information about what the school's aim is- namely to launch gospel centered, biblically qualified, vocationally trained, unreached peoples focused, missionaries who treasure Jesus.
      

 It was similar to drinking out of a fire hose! The school's focus on training in the classroom with professors and missionaries from all over the world is exciting.  To be trained by former missionaries that have countless years of practical experience and can help students avoid common pitfalls is great.  
 

The In-field training was great to review again.  The CPCP is not simulating cross-cultural, unreached missions and church planting.  They are actually doing the real work through the students!  There are four villages that CPCP has been working with in Tamaulipas Mexico, all within 70 miles of the US border and another 15 minutes from Los Fresnos.



The emphasis on team missions was also great.  I can not verify these statistics but we were told the  average missionary lasts 2.4 years.  And the number one reason they leave is due to conflict within their team.  We need teams to do this work but no matter how focused on a unified goal people are, people are people.  They are all different and this two year training helps teams learn how to work through these differences and still keep the main goal in front of them.

The greatest part of the open house was to talk with the current fist and second year students and look at how community life works.  How do the families interact? What kind of support is in place for the families while the students are in Mexico or Paupa New Guinea?  How can you live in a two bedroom apartment with five kids!  It was great to ask some of these students and families what life looks like on campus.

The apartments where we will live



We were able to make a quick trip to South Padre Island.  It was cool and windy but still a treat to go to the beach! 

 



We were glad it wasn't a blue flag: presence of venemous marine life!

 

It's amazing how God graciously gives us something that seems so hard looking ahead at it, but with His help we get through it and that very same event seems easy compared to the next storm in life. The best illustration for me (Josh) is kids. When Brita and I were first married and going to college we truly felt like we had no time. Ha! We were going here and there; school, work, youth group, tennis, fishing, and the mandatory Saturday sleep in were taking all our time. Then we had Dan and life was crazy! It was so good but we looked back at life before kids and couldn't believe all the time we had. Then when we had two kids and thought we were spoiled with two parents to one kid with just Dan. Now we had man-on-man defense and again, this stage was more challenging than the last. But with the challenge came the greater reward. We now have been rewarded with four awesome kids and can't imagine life without them! But if you asked me if I could handle four kids one month after Dan was born, I would have looked at you with my sleep deprived eyes and said emphatically no! 

So it has been with our life.  Selling our house and moving into a two bedroom apartment was hard, but as we look to living so close to so many people in a smaller apartment in Los Fresnos, away from family and friends, this first step seems easy in comparison.  And what was really exciting was that when we got home to our apartment in Bozeman, it felt like home.  I was glad to be there.  And the joy for taking these baby steps in faith have already deepened our relationship with each other, with our kids, and most importantly it has made our relationship with Christ sweeter!  We are so excited we get to do this!

In short, it was a great trip and we continue to ask for your prayers as we move forward with partnering with others to reach the nations with Jesus!



The Blessings of 2012

Well 2012 has been an unbelievable year for us as a family.  As such we thought it would be good to recount the way God has provided for us in 2012.  What He did was awesome and we want to share it!

At the beginning of 2012 we had a lofty goal to sell our house.  We knew if we were going to be able to do long term missions work, we need to be free from our mortgage.  Needless to say this economy isn't the greatest one to sell a house.  We didn't know where to start.  Do we get a realtor, do we try to sell ourselves?  We have never tried to sell a house before and it seemed like an enormous, outrageous idea. 

But as God would have it, I was doing some training for a short term mission group heading to the Philippines and one of the members was a realtor we had know years ago.  It really felt like God was putting the people in our lives that could help us move forward with our plans.  So with an answered prayer in the most unlikely of places we had our house up for sale a month later.

This was a big decision for us.  We both were certain that we couldn't sell our house without selling our lot near Harrison, MT (see link Hollowtop Lot).  But it could take up to a year or better to sell the house and maybe we could sell the lot in the meantime.   We were going to see what God would do.  I knew He probably wasn't going to have someone drive up, love the house, and offer $250,000 for it.  Funny how things work.  We bought our house in 2006 for $205,000.  Six months later the exact same house up the street from us, same builder, same layout, same color, sold for $250,000.  Then the same house was up for sale again, and sold a year or so before we put ours on the market for around $155,000-$160,000.  Incredible what the economy does to a house value.  Now I felt pretty confident that God was going to work on our faith, character, perseverance, pride and so many other things through this process and it would be worth much more than a big sale. 

If any of you have sold your house you know what a weird and stressful adventure it is.  We cleaned, cleaned, touched up the walls (they looked like we played tackle football every night) cleaned some more, reorganized closets, fixed gate in our fence, and a whole host of other things that you never get to until it's time to sell your house!  It would have been nice to fix the fence gate so it would swing with ease three years ago.  But that's the way it goes. 

And then the waiting began.  Right away we had two or three showings, with a spotless house (a miracle of sorts with 4 kids) and to top it all off, Brita made chocolate chip cookies just before we left so the house smelled delicious.  I did argue once that no one would buy a house just because there was a plate of homemade cookies there, but I quickly changed my mind when I realized I got the leftover cookies :)

Every showing was mixed emotions of hoping they loved the house and make an offer, but secretly not knowing if we wanted to move..... just yet.  Then when we heard they weren't interested we were bummed and wondered why.  Trusting God in such little things seems silly but is vital.  My happiness can't be in the ups and downs of circumstances, it has to be in the joy giver and sustainer of true peace, namely Jesus.  Ok, help me Lord trust you through this and may You get the glory!

Finally through a mis-communication a realtor and prospective home buyers knocked unexpectedly on our door one morning.  Brita opened the door and was shocked!  Apparently we didn't get the message yesterday that a showing was scheduled right then.  So they came in and looked at the house- dishes in the sink, kids with Legos everywhere, laundry to be folded and a one-year-old in pj's.  This was Brita's worst nightmare! I remember her calling me and recounting her horror and we chalked that one up to "Things you never want to happen again...ever" and went on with life.

But this couple, who saw not the perfect pristine house, but the everyday house made an offer!  It was our first one and we were excited... until we were told what the offer was.  It was $160,000 AND we had to pay their closing costs!  We had set the price at $174,000 because that would be the bare bone lowest price we could sell the house for.  Not to make money, but to pay out of our savings to be free from our house.

We counter offered ABOVE our asking price by $3,000 to cover most of their closing costs.  Nobody counters higher than their original asking price, seriously.  We couldn't go lower so we assumed this was the end.  But they accepted our offer!  It was unbelievable! We are still shocked when we think about it.

Of course we needed inspections done and an appraisal before all was said and done.  What a whirlwind month that was!  The inspection was great except they found radon in the crawl space and we needed to put in a radon elimination system, $900 we didn't think we had room for.  And to top it all off, our realtor said the appraisal would have to come in really close for this to go through.  He also told us that if it sold over $170,000, it would be one of the highest selling houses in RiverRock in the last few years.  So here comes worry and doubt.  But the appraisal came in at $172,000 and the icing on the cake was that the sellers were willing to split the difference with us.  Truly incredible!

So here is the summary of what God did through this process:

• Brought us wisdom in a realtor
• Sold our house to the unscheduled showing with a less than perfect house
• Buyers offered a total of $19,000 less than we were asking and we countered $3,000 higher than our asking price.
• The appraisal was one of the highest in recent years in RiverRock.
• We sold our house without selling our lot in Harrison, which seemed impossible.
• We sold our house in less than 60 days, which allowed us to move into our apartment and save money for school much sooner than we thought.

And there was no pride in this for us, we still had to pay $15,000 out of pocket to sell our house.  I see this as a way we can boast in God.  He did it, there were so many reasons this shouldn't have happened. 

We feel so thankful as we look to this August.  We are currently at 7% of our monthly support and pray that others who want to see the unreached and unengaged people groups around the world reached with the Gospel of Jesus would join with us in prayer and financial support.  You can give online through To Every Tribe here and select our name from the drop down box.  Thank you for reading the praises we have had in 2012!  We so want to hear your prayer requests or just a quick note to say hi.  Please email us at joshandbrita@gmail.com

 Happy New Year!

Note-Please see Brit's older post entitled "Letting Go" for a great perspective and summary of what God has been doing in our lives to bring us to the point we are now.

Letting Go...

 I was recently able to share at our homeschool co-op about our plans.  Here is what I said with some pictures added in.

I went on several mission trips as a teenager and one with my husband, Josh, right after we got married.  We had a heart for missions, but we were very caught up in the American dream: college, then we had kids, and then we bought a house… In 2009 we spent six months in the Philippines doing construction on an orphanage expansion.  
 

It was hard and wonderful. When we came home from those six months, we felt for a time as though we didn’t fit into our old life here anymore. As time passed we were able to slip back into all the old routines though. We had another baby… :)

...but still there was an underlying discontentment.  We tried to figure out what it was that was making us feel this way.  We considered the orphanage in the Philippines, and Josh did go back twice after our six months there; once for five weeks, and once for just a week.  But that did not change our restlessness.  Then in February 2011 we found a lot in a subdivision just ten minutes from Josh’s office. 

It was our dream spot with room for the kids to roam, beautiful, unobstructed views of the mountains, no commute for Josh to work, and I was going to get to have chickens and maybe even a dog!  We were so excited and yet did not have peace. 

In September 2011 we went to a missions conference in Minneapolis.  It was like a switch was flipped.  There was suddenly no more discontentment and the reality of what we now knew we wanted to do overwhelmed us!  It felt like a heavy joy.  We were excited about what we saw before us and also felt the weight of everything that tied us to our life in Montana.

On the way home from the conference I began thinking about what happens the days after a conference.  You come home on a high, and then you are slammed with real life and so much of what you learned goes by the wayside, as you jump back in exactly where you left.  We came home on Sunday and on Monday morning I prayed that God would make it clear to us whether we were just swept up in a wave of excitement or whether this was the real deal.  After all, it would be pretty easy to come home from a missions conference feeling like you should become a missionary!  After my prayer time I opened my Bible to read from the portion of scripture my reading plan had marked.  It was Romans chapter 10.  When I got to verses 14 and 15 I was completely amazed.  God’s word is living and active.  This is what I read:

How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed?   And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard?  And how are they to hear without someone preaching?  And how are they to preach unless they are sent?  As it is written, ‘How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news!’ 

Two of the things we learned while we were in the Philippines were that we wanted to be a part of a team if we were to go overseas again and that we wanted more training.  We had met with representatives from a ministry called To Every Tribe while at the missions conference.  In January 2012, Josh went to an open house at their Missions School called the Center for Pioneer Church Planting.  The school is two years long and aims to equip missionaries to share the gospel with unreached peoples by first earning the right to be heard through medical and dental care.  Then missionaries are trained to biblically share the gospel of Jesus, making disciples, and cultivate self sustaining churches.  This happens through intensive theological training, coupled with hands-on field training from missionaries in Mexico and New Guinea.  

Lord willing, we will be moving our family to Los Fresnos, Texas for two years to attend this school next August. 

We are now in a season of letting go of so many things that we love.  Josh loves his job and has had to tell his boss that he will be leaving next summer.  It is hard to give up a career and the means to support your family and it’s hard to raise financial support.

God sold our house this last spring so much faster than we thought possible!  We all loved that house and it was, and still is hard to let go of it.

 We live within a few minutes of both sets of Grandparents.  It was hard to tell them that we were moving so far away and potentially across oceans someday.  It’s hard to let go of friends that are as close as family.  Our whole family was born and raised in Montana- five of us in the Gallatin Valley.  It will be hard to leave our valley and our mountains. 

We are currently living in a two bedroom 714 square foot apartment over an office, surrounded by asphalt and gravel. 

 We are saving money and knew it would be hard, but it’s harder than I first imagined it would be!   I am making changes all the time to make it feel like we have more space.  The first to go was Josh’s old blue recliner.   More recently we sold one of our bunk bed sets.  The kids are now sleeping in hammocks and they love it!  The best part about hammocks is that they can lay flat against the wall during the day!  Next I plan to get rid of the two dressers the kids share. 

My kitchen at our house.

The kitchen in the apartment.

 

Our living and dining room in the house.

 

Our new living and dining area

 

Every time something about this seems hard we remind ourselves that Jesus is worth it!  And all of this is about him and not about us!  And it’s about the people who he has chosen and have not yet had a chance to even hear his name!    

Brita

Coming Soon!!

We will be starting our blogging soon for updates on our progress as we train to reach the unreached people groups of the world with the gospel of Jesus!