Greetings, Dear Friends,
“Hello friends, welcome to the Premature Bible Institute. My name is Doug Schaible and I am your free-range podcaster with Ethnos360.”
Preparing students to share God’s Word cross-culturally
Nearly a year and a half ago, at the recommendation of some college students, I started on this adventure of teaching college students the way that we taught in the tribe. I was going to revise my old English lessons which I sent out by email nearly 15 years ago and make them available to college students as a way of preparing them for cross-cultural ministry should they decide to go in that direction with their careers. It wasn’t going to be fancy or professional, it was just going to give them good information that they could one day pass on to others the way it was passed on to me. Originally, I was going to email them but they suggested that I start podcasting them, which I did and now, the quote at the top of the page is how I begin all of my podcasts. As of now, there are over 2,000 people listening to the podcasts which is encouraging.
Disclaimer
While I say that I am a podcaster for Ethnos360, it must be understood that Ethnos360 did not task me to do this. I am just a representative for Ethnos360 developing these podcasts for people who are interested in being taught the way we teach in the tribe. Any content is reflective of what I believe, not everyone who knows me. If you wish to listen to these podcasts, you can find them on your favorite podcast app by typing my name, Doug Schaible, and subscribing. You can do the same on YouTube should you decide to watch them in video format.
What a semester
It has been an extremely busy semester. (The numbers in each state signify the number of times we had meetings in those states this semester) In order, we have been to Missouri, Wisconsin, Nebraska, Missouri, Arkansas, Kansas, Missouri, Texas, Kansas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Missouri, Arkansas, Louisiana, Texas, Wisconsin, Kansas, Oklahoma and I will finish out this semester with one more trip to Oklahoma. The ones in Kansas are not counting the times we returned home but actual meetings in Kansas. Eight states were visited 20 times and we had about 35 meetings. It has been good. Several families have expressed a desire to start the training and at least four college students that I know of for sure are starting Bible school in the Fall. Thanks for your prayers and the Lord is raising up new laborers.
This summer and the next semester appear to be filling up and I think that what we would like to ask all of you to do is start praying for people who are committed to Jesus Christ to give their lives to reach those who have never heard. I know that our organization is just one avenue in which to accomplish this but we do need laborers. We especially are needing support personnel who can keep the church-planters out in the tribe doing the work that God has entrusted to us. We have people coming out of the bush in order to fill support roles so that others can stay out in the tribe. This needs to level out. Please pray.
We do have one other request
As you can imagine, representatives, mobilizers, recruiters or whatever you want to call us have three basic needs. We need to travel, we need to entertain and we need to live. While our support has never been above 65%, we have been content with what we have. We have a home we are very content with and are able to pay our bills just fine and have no debt apart from our house. The other two, travel and entertaining can get a bit expensive at times, especially when we have to purchase a vehicle for ministry. My little Kia Sorento has been a workhorse for me. I have had no problems with it but it is getting close to 200,000 miles on it and the one thing a rep needs in a vehicle is dependability. We are going to start looking for another vehicle and would like to ask you to pray about this with us. If you think that you would like to contribute to this need, you can send me an email at doug_schaible@ntm.org and I can help you with how to designate the funds toward that need. Your help is greatly appreciated.
The other need that I mentioned is just entertaining people. By that I mean that when I meet up with college students or prospective missionaries, I usually meet them while I am on the road so I usually go out to coffee or a meal and visit with them for a couple of hours. I was just with some college students at a meeting where I spoke and invited whoever wanted to come to breakfast the next morning to talk about missions and 20 young folks came out at 7:00 am just to pick my brain on what it takes to be a missionary and so I usually like to pick up the tab for their meal. Or, just recently, I took a group of college students to our Bible school so that they could see the first step of training. I didn’t want them to have to pay for the trip. I just wanted them to concentrate on what they learned while visiting the Bible school. See what I mean? Investing in others yields great benefits. In our ministry, transportation and entertaining are essential and the main expense. I just wanted you all to know that so you could be informed as to what we do. To help with that, we need to raise our support a bit also.
Thank you all so much
I don’t know how we can ever thank all of you enough. You all have been a blessing to us and have given us the opportunity to be involved in the lives of many folks. Some of the people we have been involved with are overseas reaching tribal people, some are in support ministries, many are in the training and more are coming in. Thank you, thank you, thank you for being a part of their lives in the capacities the Lord has entrusted you with. We love you all.
Your friends and co-laborers in the Lord,
Doug & Cheryl Schaible
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