Dear Praying Friends,
Thank you for praying for our ministry. I have indicated in a couple of recent letters that there were some big projects that I needed to take care of for the BIO office. Along with being the Director of Deaf Ministries, I am also the computer department. One of the recent projects was upgrading all of our computers to Windows 10.
I am pleased to say that all went well. Knowing you were praying for me was a big encouragement for the task. Though we don’t have many computers that needed the upgrade, the whole process can be stressful in making sure everything is in place for recovery in the event that something goes wrong.
SMART Classes
We have a ministry through BIO called SMART (Specialized Missionary and Resource Training) where we seek to train missionaries in practical ways. A couple of weeks ago I helped teach a group of missionaries during one of our SMART sessions.
Three of the four families represented in the training are, or will be, working in restricted access nations. We chose our classes based on what we thought might be most helpful to that particular group. In this case we taught portions of three of our specialty classes.
Terry Childers and I taught about staying safe during domestic and international travel, preparing for emergencies at home and on the field, and various topics from our leadership development course. We create new training modules on a regular basis. These classes are open to any missionary even if they are not with BIO.
Our recent class was taught during a church’s missions conference. During a conference a church can provide training to missionaries who are already at the church. The missionaries don’t have to tie up more time and money traveling to us for training. Contact Bro. Terry Childers about having one of our trainers come to your church’s missions conference to teach your guest missionaries. More information can be found at biomissions.org/smart.
BRBI
The week I taught in our SMART ministry, I also taught a class for the Bill Rice Bible Institute. I am teaching the practical side of missionary ministry. In the class I talked with them about the application process for becoming a missionary. We talked about how to choose a board—with the guidance of your pastor—that is a good fit for your ministry. Then we went through the questions that are asked in the missionary application and interview process. The goal with that class is to help young people prepare for ministry and know what pitfalls commonly make it difficult for someone to take the next step in missionary service.
I enjoy reading about the history of missions and the inspirational philosophy of missions, but I also enjoy teaching the practical side of the missionary’s ministry. Through our SMART ministry and teaching young people in programs like BRBI, I trust that the Lord will allow me to help build durable missionaries who continue to serve the Lord for many years to come.
Thank you for your continued support in the work that the Lord allows us to do through BIO by training missionaries—hearing or Deaf—to continue to serve the Lord faithfully.
There is a PDF version of this letter available for download and printing.
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