“I Want to Go to a Trumpet Call! Not a Siren!”

Our friend couldn’t have said it better, as we all huddled in their back room. It was after 11pm, and Noe and I were watching a movie in the living room. The girls and one of their friends were asleep upstairs (for a sleepover), when suddenly the tornado siren blared. This was the first time we’d heard it here in Missouri! 
Our friends’ apartment building (whose daughter we had at our house for the sleepover) was built into a hillside, so we grabbed the girls and ran to their apartment, watching forks of lightning strike the surrounding hillsides, and feeling the drizzle of rain and the warm air. As our next-door neighbors followed us, a staff member opened his door and shouted, “3 minutes! It’s 3 minutes away!!” So they darted across, and about 4 families were gathered together where we waited, prayed, and watched the weather radar online.
As you know (since we had no important news to send your way), there was no tornado. But we are thankful for the technology to track storms, and to warn us of potential danger! We were talking with our friends about having peace in the midst of such events, and I (Lisa) said, “I just would rather not go THAT way (through a natural disaster).” And our friend commented, as the subject says, “Yeah, I want to go to a trumpet call! Not a siren!”

All of this just is a reminder and a challenge– am I keeping my eyes fixed heavenward? On Christ? Or am I looking at the waves around me and saying, “It’s ok, come on over here and drown me!” Circumstances and pain are real, but so is Christ!!

Friends and loved ones- that is a lot of what we are studying this semester. Preparation and equipping for some of the “what-ifs”. For example, we will be starting a course on Field Health in a couple weeks. Do you suppose that it is pleasant for us to think intently about malaria and dengue fever and snake bites as we prepare to take our family into a remote location? (No way!) But like the theme of this blog- these things are real, and it is wise to be prepared for them… but who is in control? Amen, it is Christ! We are thankful for our studies at New Tribes Bible Institute, and for the missionary teaching staff there who longed for us to understand these very concepts- that God is indeed sufficient in everything.

The first step for every believer in becoming prepared for life’s trials? Spiritual prepartion. Know the character of your God! And the second step is physical preparation, which we are doing now.

Missionary Technology Lab

The classes we are taking right now:

Soldering Lab- yep, the moms need to learn too!

Student Teaching  course

• Missionary Technology – the “what”s and “how”s and “why”s of living in a remote location. How to design a solar electric system, water filtration, batteries (what kind to buy and how to charge them…), refrigerators and freezers, and the list goes on… we could devote a whole blog just to this class! Hmm, maybe we will! 🙂
• New Testament Church Principles – what does a mature church (a mature body of believers) look like? What elements of church life are important to you? And considering those- which of those are Biblical principles, and which are cultural? These are questions and thought processes we have been working through in this important course. In the not-so-distant future, when we look into teaming up with other families/individuals, these are conversations that will need to take place so that we are all on the same page. And MORE importantly, when a new church is born, what happens next? So it is important to examine what the Bible says, what was modeled, what was cultural, etc.
• Student Teaching – both men and women share testimonies, and also share from the Word. The women will likely have opportunities to speak to women in the near future, so practice speaking in front of others is important!