Happy Fall Everyone! (Sorry there are no pictures now. Flickr is acting funny. Next time.)

Well, I should say happy fall Canada. It is more like a happy ‘cooling down’ here. It is only low 30s for a high ths coming week! We still need to hide out with the AC on for another few weeks or so. I am priming you for a long read, but first reports can get like that. Please have patience and enjoy!

Although we were on vacation in Canada only August 14th, it feels like a long time ago already. So much has happened here, so many people met, so much reading done and lots of new people have been met. It’s been exciting, stressful, challenging and fulfilling – sometimes too much of that at the same time! Here are some highlights of the past little while.

After travelling for two days, we finally arrived at a LaQuinta hotel and lived there for a week. Our apartment was ‘not ready’. What we found out was that it was empty, they just hadn’t cleaned it up and inspected it yet. A necessary technicality that caused us to live in a hotel for a week, but we had a fun time finding new little restaurants for dinner that we won’t be eating in again for a while! Now we finally live in Swiss Tower which the school owns and is right across from the class buildings on campus. We did not want to use the car so this is a blessing.

God is really taking care of our material needs. International students were allowed into the ‘back room’ of Luke’s Closet, the on-campus charity clothing and goods store to get first picks. We picked up the following for free thanks to the DTS support community (all new): kettle, toaster, two sets of dishes for 4, cups, a queen sheet set, a new Cuisinart coffee pot, and a 32inch TV with a Sony receiver, among some other small things. We rented a U-haul and drove around to pick up some stuff we bought: a couch ($100 new), mattress, table and chairs, and the free TV all in one go. We receive free food from Luke’s pantry every Wednesday and I must say that we’re impressed with all you can get. And someone donates so much bread to the school we will not buy bread, bagels, hot dog or hamburger buns until we graduate. Karin found a cheap Mexican grocery store nearby. The meat is quite cheap and barbecuing is free here downstairs so it’s cheaper to barbecue meat than to run our appliances and pay for them. We have access to Baylor Hospital’s Fitness Center for $55/year, which is around 5% of full price. There are two pools, indoor and outdoor tracks, hot tubs, steam room, saunas, weights, running, cycling, step machines, wooden lockers, etc. Doctors, nurses and professionals work out there so conversations in the steam room have been quite interesting. The campus is beautiful also. In many respects, we are well taken care of for less money than we thought.

The hard stuff that I signed up for has not been slow in coming. I have three short papers to write as we speak. This is on top of regular homework for classes: Greek grammar, pastoral ministries, systematic theology, bible study methods and hermeneutics, world missions, and spiritual formation – a not for credit two year program to insure Christian character development throughout seminary. Quickly, I find greek: challenging review (I’ve taken some years ago), pastoral ministries: a challenging reflection of the attributes of God. Systematic theology: an interesting overview of the school’s mission statement. Bible study methods: taught by an 84 year old man of God who wants nothing more than for us to dig deep into and love God’s Word and is one of the foremost educators in the country on how to get there (he’s a 25 year old trapped in an old man’s body). In Spiritual Formation: I learned that not only am I not crazy for having the ministry dreams and desires I have, but they’ve seen 50 of me before and they’ve got internships and full guidance and prayer support for all of it.

The highlight of my weekend academically was in World Missions. In World Missions we are not only learning about missions being at the center of God displaying His glory to the nations, but we had the option of turning the World mission course we are taking ourselves into an on-line course for Internet Biblical Seminary, a divsion of BEE World. BEE world specializes in pastoral training for Christians all over the world, especially in closed countries, with contacts on the ground in a lot of dangerous places.

The BEE guy who trained us started out in Eastern Europe in 1979, behind the Iron Curtain. He said that he saw God do amazing things there and they developed this vision to educate pastors and lay leaders on a wider scale – thus Internet Bible Seminary (among a number of other things). We received 5 hours of training on how to get started and the 7 of us formed a team. Two team leaders, Daniel Roeber and myself are heading it up and by the end we’ll have a course ready to go on World Missions that will be used by students through Internet Biblical Seminary (IBS) from free as well as closed countries such as China and Muslim countries in the Middle East. Website work, translation, and oversight come from the BEE world staff in Colorado Springs as well as foreign nationals – ‘guys on the ground’ in target countries getting the material working in languages we don’t even understand.

Just to let you know how dangerous studying can be, some of the students making use of IBS could be jailed or even killed for being students, or just owning a Bible. The technical priority of IBS is to be able to go on-line for only 30 seconds or less at a time if need be, to download class material, upload discussion threads, etc. This keeps the student off the internet so the communist or Islamic net police don’t arrest them. Think it’s an exaggeration? An IBS facilitator from China has to leave there because he was busted for helping people study God’s Word through IBS. In a number of the countries we’re targeting, this is the ONLY seminary they have, and some have more to fear for their survival than their graduation. Our team stepped up to help.

Due to our IBS involvement we are exempt from final exams in World Missions but I don’t care – what we are doing will equip pastors and layleaders around the world be able to teach God’s word effectively where they are. There are 1000 new pastors a day, every day in the world. Less than 1% of them get training even close to mine. BEE world is going to use IBS, and ‘insignificant’ us, to train 1,000,000 pastors by 2020. Our team is going to put a dent in that number for them, by God’s guidance and grace.

I must now wrap this up before it gets even longer. We are very pleased to keep our support community posted and in the loop and please send questions if you want more info on something I did not cover.

Please pray for us in our continuing needs:

Karin to receive work at the Canadian Embassy or somewhere God provides.

Me to stay focused.

For us to find a faithful, vital, mission minded church.

Money for the long haul (this year is okay).

Strengthened marriage through the changes.

We love all you guys from near and far.

With Love,

Dan and Karin