Shoes and Wheels

Many of you have asked us what we do on the field once we arrive at our Mission Corps assignment.
Assignments vary according to country and region.  In Ecuador, we were assigned to teach in and work at a K-12 Nazarene school in Riobamba, a town in the Andes Mountains.
Here, our assignment in Switzerland/Germany is associated with the needs of the Nazarene Bible college, which sits on about 30-35 acres. 

Work and Tool Shop

  The Bible college has four very large structures:

Welcome Center-dated between 600-700 years old

administrative offices with a state-of-the-art kitchen and small dining area; a library with dorms above, a fifteen-apartment complex, and a welcome center. There are also workshop buildings and garages. The Eurasian Regional Office is nearby.   A neighbor keeps the lawns cut, but volunteers do the trimming, shaping, pruning, gardening, planting, and hoeing.  We are the volunteers who attempt to fill those shoes!  If a tool has been made, it is in these two workshops.  Linda has discovered that hedge trimmers - not gas, electric or cordless - but manual ones, can be a source of measurable progress.  Everything on campus has been trimmed...radically trimmed!  Jim has been doing magic with a gas Weed Eater that does wonders on sprouted weeds between paving stones.

Rakes, hoes,shovels,brooms,trimmers, and lawn mower live here

We enjoy seeing the fruits of our labor, but we have a keen suspicion that the weeds and hedges have plans to return!

Variety is the spice of life and on
several days, when the weather whipped up drizzle and and cooler days, we worked inside the campus library processing books that will be sent to 20 Christian learning centers from Portugal to Kazakhstan.

 Like you, we have free days, and, like you, our commitments go with us.


Our campus International Church participated in the Global Day of Prayer on Saturday, May 25th.
Jim and  I committed,

Our Ford wheels!

along with many members of the church, to pray for the needs of the church worldwide. We knew, however, that we had plans to take a Saturday day trip up the Rhein in a car that a new friend had loaned us.  We had signed up to pray at 1:00.  One of the neatest pleasures of Europe is that all of its small quaint villages that line the back roads and highways have churches and cathedrals that are always open to the public.  We arrived in the town of Konstanz on Lake Konstanz in a thunderstorm! A parking area was an open invitation to an adjoining Evangelical Church and tolling church bells reminded us that it was 1:00.  The church was empty.  All ours.
At the end of the day, at 6pm, our International Church on campus gathered for a time of singing, praising the Lord and sharing prayer requests for the needs of the church worldwide.  It is spiritually captivating to think that prayer is the only international language and the power of prayer unites us internationally.  It's deeply fun, inspirational, and satisfying to live in our diverse space.  Shoes and wheels...my,my,my....

"...all over the world this gospel is bearing fruit and growing..." (Colossians 1:6)

Keep Looking Up!                 Find shoes that fit and wheels that turn!
J:m and L:nda