Home: News Archive: August 2004

"Clearly Jesus is the Way to God. I want to read more."
This is the testimony of "Nipper" who has now completed 28 Bible study lessons at Al-Kitab Scripture Research Institute (http://al-kitab.org). He has completed Level One, and is now eligible to receive a free Gospel of Matthew, nicely printed with Muslim readers in mind. He also has Level Two's 28 additional lessons to work on if he so desires, by which he can learn more about how "Jesus is the way to God", and more.

"Nipper" is one of over 200 enrolled members of Al-Kitab, most of whom are Muslim from countries on every continent except Antarctica. Yesterday, we sent another Matthew Gospel to one of our 20 members from Indonesia, the world's largest Muslim country.

As we are able, we work on new course material for the website as well as enhancements to our online Bible for Muslim readers. It is difficult to find time to do as much as I would like. One of the good things that "gets in the way" is people who want to talk out of the blue using MSN, ICQ, Yahoo or AOL.

"Anwar" is a Palestinian Muslim who has nothing but hatred for Israelis, whom he blames for killing his brother in an uprising. But as we talked, I heard Anwar confess, "I do not want to live with hate my whole life." I started to share with him how Jesus taught us to "love our enemies", but Anwar already knew where I was going. He said he saw "The Passion of the Christ" movie and something in it left a permanent mark on his soul. He saw Jesus hanging on the cross, and then remarkably, he looks down on his enemies and prays "Father, forgive them!"

Pray for us and the people who contact us. We trust God and do what we can.

Comings and Goings
In July, I once again taught at ABWE's Center for Excellence in International Ministries, an in-house, in-service, training institute for ABWE missionaries. Held for 5 days at the beautiful Messiah College campus in Pennsylvania, I shared teaching responsibilities on the subject of Islam with Dr. Viggo Olsen, known to many from the book "Daktar: Diplomat in Bangladesh".

While I was busy teaching Islam to missionaries, our Lisa and Angie were serving God in Mexico among migrant families in rural areas. They haven't said much to us about the trip other than that it was GREAT! Hopefully, we can cajole them into giving a little more detail. Thank you to those of you who sent in funds for their ministry. It's a wonderful part of God's work in shaping them for future ministry.

From August 5 to 28, son Aaron and I will be away on a mission trip, primarily to Togo, but with some time spent in France, United Arab Emirates, and Ghana. Aaron will be helping out at ABWE's Togo hospital maintenance department, while I am being escorted all over the Togo countryside to visit people and places relating to a possible future ministry for the missionaries of Togo. Great wisdom and discernment is needed. May God direct in a very clear way during this time. This is a faith venture and funds are still welcomed for this project. The Togo field missionaries invited us to come, but do not have the finances to underwrite the trip. Your partnership in this and other such endeavours would be very helpful.

Another trip is coming up in October to England. You may remember that we once considered relocating for ministry in the great city of Birmingham. Although the timing was not right then, the information gathered was a great help to another ABWE missionary family that has now located there in "England's" second largest city. The new trip in October will be a planning meeting to talk about the feasibility of establishing a permanent training and resource center in Birmingham. We hope to give more information about this effort in a future communication.

All for now. We are grateful to God for your prayers and your support,

George for all
August 2004