Dear friends,
The arrival of this letter coincides with the advent season in which Christians celebrate the birth of Emmanuel, God with us. This simple stable birth is the middle of a larger story that began with “In the beginning was the Word . . . “ from John 1, and in which the final chapter is yet to be written. But I know that in the end, “every knee will bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the father.” (Philippians 2: 10,11) This story is the context for my vocation, and when I think about doing God’s will, a quote from Eugene Peterson comes to mind. “Praying ‘your will be done’ cannot be pulled out of the Jesus context, his stories and prayers, and then used however we want.”
You likely know I no longer work for Bellevue Christian. After thirty years working in schools with young people in grades seven through twelve, I received a clear call to pause, like a rest in a musical phrase, wait and remain open to God’s direction. As I keep an ear attuned to silence and the still small voice of God, I have agreed to work half time for Alta Vista, a Christian service organization dedicated to helping Christian teachers bring a distinctively Christian perspective to their work with students. This work is the second context from which I write this letter.
The third element to this musing catches me slightly off balance. The picture is murky, and most of the time I find myself in a state of wonder and imagination. I’m unsettled and restless because the future picture is small and blurry in the center of a very large canvas. If you remember C.S. Lewis and The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, like Lucy I am poised to walk into the painting just as Lucy walked through the wardrobe the first time, having no idea what lay on the other side. However I know without a doubt, as the canvas sits on the easel, the brush gently held in the Painter’s hand strokes the image of a masterpiece.
This new work of art with the Alta Vista team is to assist teachers and leaders of schools in the developing world as they create and sustain schools that clearly operate from a distinctively Christian perspective. Assisting schools in the developing world fits Alta Vista’s vision which is “to participate in God’s kingdom agenda by helping to equip people for faithful, visionary, competent, and compassionate discipleship in whatever circumstances they may find themselves.” To some extent one of our team members, John Van Dyk, has already been cultivating the ground for international work. With his help, Alta Vista is beginning to collaborate with organizations in Nicaragua, Haiti, and Mexico with the hope of fostering sustainable Christian schools and indigenous leadership.
I’m writing to let you in on what God is teaching me and to make these two requests. Would you pray with me in this effort? The idea is in its infancy. How might Alta Vista join what God is already doing around the globe? Secondly, a goal of $10,000 has been set to provide seed money for this new project. The funds would provide resources for two to three visits by Alta Vista team members to schools in the developing world. Two of our team have already worked in schools in Haiti, Mexico, and Central America. We would like to continue and possibly extend that work. For example, the Lord is opening an opportunity for me to join a colleague who left Bellevue Christian a year and a half ago to start a school in the Sudan, Africa. There she has helped start a secondary school, the only one with one hundred miles, in the village of Yabus in the Blue Nile region three miles from the Ethiopian border. The school serves adult men who have had some elementary education in refugee camps in Kenya, Ethiopia or Khartoum. If the Lord allows, I would plan to visit in February for two to three weeks to help enhance science curriculum and to assist in training teachers to teach from a Christian perspective. Your prayers for me personally and for the larger work of Alta Vista would be greatly appreciated.
Should you wish to give monetarily, your tax-deductible gift may be sent to
Alta Vista
P.O. Box 55535
Seattle, WA
98155-0535
Please mark it “Global Project” so it goes into the correct fund. It would be our hope that after the initial financial goal is reached, we would be able to approach Christian foundation with a more detailed proposal after having visited schools in other cultures and thereby multiply the initial investment.
I leave you with the hope that this advent season of anticipation will draw you even closer to Christ and the will of the Father for your life and with another quote from Peterson’s Tell It Slant. “The mature, sane enduing counsel of our best pastors and theologians is this; keep Jesus’ prayer, ‘Your will be done,’ in the storied and praying context of the Holy Scriptures. Quit speculating about the ‘will of God’ and simply do it – as [the virgin] Mary did, as Jesus did. ‘Will of God’ is never a matter of conjecture. It directs a spotlight on believing obedience.”
Grace and peace,
I've included this picture from our deck to prove it snowed big, fluffy, white flakes on Christmas day. It even snowed a little amongst the rain yesterday afternoon. Now the snow is receding quickly. For today I've included a slide show of the ice festival in Harbin, Manchuria, China. The temperature in this northern China village stays below freezing for half the year. Makes our short week of low temperatures seem very insignificant. Here's slide show: 
