I have been telling people about the Ladies Retreat Weekend  from which I  just returned.  It was a weekend of Bible Study, prayer, singing, eating good food, playing games, swimming in a beautiful lake and sitting around talking and laughing about nothing.   I was using the word “retreat” frequently in my conversation,  when it suddenly hit me that the word has several other meanings.

I looked up the word “retreat” today.  The dictionary said this:

• “withdraw from enemy forces as a result of superior power or after a defeat”
• “ remove oneself from a difficult situation”
• “withdraw to a quiet or secluded place”

It made me wonder why we called our weekend away a “Retreat.”  If we were withdrawing to a quiet place, did that assume the place where we usually reside was not quiet?  Did it assume we needed to fall back from enemy forces, and remove ourselves from difficult circumstances?   The word “retreat” had always had a connotation of relaxation for me.  A time of study, fellowship and laughter.   But if we needed a retreat, we also needed to prepare ourselves for returning to our noisy, busy places and to equip ourselves to face our problems and our enemies.

I realized that our annual Mission Women’s Retreat was not just an excuse to let our husbands care for the children, fix meals and do the laundry while we sat around and sunbathed on a tropical beach.  Yes,  it was nice as a mother to retreat to a quiet place for a few days where I had no one but myself to look after.  But if that was all I wanted I could have booked a single room  at the local hotel and slept to my heart’s content.   Instead, we ladies chose to gather together and spend our time in Bible Study, devotion and prayer.  We chose to spend time preparing for our own retreat – getting deep into God’s Word and creating worship opportunities.

During our weekend in a quiet and secluded place – this year it was The Beach House on Lake Malawi – we dove into God’s amazing promises for us in the book of Romans.  We ambitiously studied Romans 1 through 8 in ten lessons.  We heard St. Paul tell us that we are all without excuse – those with the revealed Word of God and those without the revealed Word of God.  We have broken the law and therefore have no claim on heaven.  Then we heard how, while we were still sinners, God sent His Son to pay the debt for our sins by dying on the cross.  Through faith in Jesus’ sacrifice, we are restored to righteousness in God’s eyes.

This was certainly ammunition to use against our enemies.  When we returned from our retreat we could face the devil on the battle line and tell him Christ had already won the victory.  When we faced our own sinful nature we could tell it God’s Holy Spirit reigns in our hearts and the New Man is able to not sin.  When we faced the trials and temptations, the difficulties and sorrows which the world has to offer we could say with St. Paul in Romans chapter 8

31 What, then, shall we say in response to this? If God is for us, who can be against us? 32He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things? 33 Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? It is God who justifies. 34 Who is he that condemns? Christ Jesus, who died—more than that, who was raised to life—is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us. 35 Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? 36As it is written: “For your sake we face death all day long; we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.”[l] 37No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. 38 For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons,[m] neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, 39 neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Perhaps we did go on retreat in order to retreat from our problems and our enemies, but thankfully we didn’t stay there.  We returned to our families and our work with a new strength and joy that God has given us the victory in Christ Jesus.

My idea of a retreat totally changed.  It wasn’t just a break from crying kids and school runs. It was a chance to review God’s battle plan for our lives, a chance to rejoice in victory already won by Christ, and a chance to encourage one another in our lives of sanctification as God’s Holy Children. And if, while we were doing that, we managed to sunbathe on a tropical beach and eat chocolate truffles, well…. just don’t tell our families how much fun we really had.

Susan Nitz

Cynthia told me that she had just been at the hospital with her sister, who had cancer. Now, was that her sister in her family or her sister in her congregation? In this case she was referring to a fellow church member. In Hong Kong those who share your faith are called your brothers and sisters. In some cases young people have been disowned by their families when they become Christians. They become very close with their brothers and sisters in Christ.

That is what I thought of last week, as I prepared an English lesson based on the Gospel of Mark for Christians in Nepal.

It was the end of the Dashain Festival. According to an article in the Nepal Traveller magazine: “Like Christmas, it is the holiday when families unite to exchange blessings and gifts, to spread goodwill and to forget feuds and quarrels. Everyone wears new clothes, feasts are spread, and businesses and government functions come to a pleasant halt as one and all make festive visits to their relatives’ homes.” Yet ten Christian leaders spent the festival with three Americans and their fellow Nepalese Christians at the Scripture Learning Center, planning and working for their church.

During the mornings they worked with Dr. Allen Sorum from Wisconsin Lutheran Seminary to plan the next step in their ministry – a Bible Institute. The afternoons were divided between translation work and English lessons.  Three teams looked at drafts that had already been translated and made improvements. Others entered the corrections in the Nepali manuscript. Nepali word processing is much more complicated than English. On a bulletin board is a list of 18 special characters and how to make them, that’s besides the characters that the letters on the keyboard stand for. Pastor Paul Hartman, coordinator for Multi-Language Publications, and I divided the group into two classes for lessons in Biblical English, which will help them with future training and translation work.

Jesus “looked at those seated in a circle around him and said, `here are my mother and my brothers! Whoever does God’s will is my brother and sister and mother.’” (Mark 3:34) Yes, we have many brothers and sisters in Asia.

Carol Hartman

The WELS Mission in Mobile first kicked off as Living Word Lutheran Church in 1971 at the request of several households which had withdrawn from some other “too liberal” Lutheran churches.  Though the congregation eventually became self-supporting, we never experienced the growth we hoped for.  In 2000, with the support of the Board for Home Missions we jump-started ourselves, changed our name to Saving Grace, sold the old property and bought elsewhere, and generally started anew.

So began our “wandering in the wilderness.”  We had problems with architects and engineers, problems with the permitting and licensing processes, problems with multiple contractors, and of course, ever-increasing construction costs.  It seemed that for several years, everything that could go wrong, did.  Also, while the Masonic Lodge that leased us our temporary worship space was an excellent landlord, that building and its stigma didn’t rate very high as an evangelism tool.

Our feeling of relief was immense when we finally saw a slab poured and framing going up…our first real church building in the congregation’s 30+ year history was taking shape!  The building was far enough along to make it easy for even the most skeptical of us to imagine its eventual beauty one day before Hurricane Katrina.  The day after the storm, the lumber that had formed the skeleton of our long-awaited church, was scattered like matchsticks across our 8 acres.  Apparently we still needed to learn a little more about persistence.

With God’s blessing our building was finished over the following year.  In a way we felt as if the Lord had led us to a promised land of sorts.  Our new building even had windows in which natural light shone in!  The smell of new paint was a welcome alternative to the Fish fry smell that permeated our rental facility.  It was clear that God had blessed us greatly with our new church.

God is continuing to bless Saving Grace and persistence is still a lesson we are being taught.  Our new member classes are typically between 2 and 10 people but they are continually being taught.  We have grown over the last three years to over 100 members.  Our worship services that once averaged in the 30s is now averaging in the mid 70s.  Our children’s programs have expanded to include a pioneer program, youth group, and a healthy Sunday school program.  The growth here would not be described by most as explosive but it is persistent.

By God’s grace we will continue to be persistent as we feed and nurture the faith of our members and seek out the lost with the message of salvation by grace alone. God will work when and where he pleases.  He is the one who calls, gathers, and enlightens.  He has taught us our job is to be persistent.

Pastor Harmon Lewis
Saving Grace  Lutheran Church
Mobile, AL

Another workshop to train Christian leaders was held last month in Nepal. This was the seventh trip to Nepal for my husband, Paul Hartman, who coordinates Multi-Language Publications and directs theological education for the Confessional Evangelical Lutheran Church in Nepal. But it was a new experience for both Prof. Allen Sorum from Wisconsin Lutheran Seminary and me.

During the first eight days 140 people studied the Gospel of John, using a simplified version of the People’s Bible commentary in Nepali. Prof. Sorum and Pastor Hartman introduced each section of the Gospel. Then everyone divided into small groups to read that segment from the Gospel and the commentary and to answer fact questions. Finally we met together for discussion questions, review activities and English word study. I enjoyed working with the 45 women, who went upstairs for their own breakout groups. We answered the questions in both Nepali and English.

Everyone was eager to learn. One afternoon the students hadn’t quite finished a review by tea time. Most worked right through tea break! The study center was so crowded that the students sat (on the floor) in the side rooms, on the front porch and on the back stairs as well as in the main room. Lunch was cooked in big pots over fires in the back yard, always rice with seasoned sauce, and vegetables, chicken or fish. The singing was great, accompanied by clapping, drums, a tambourine and flute. One of the girls wrote out the words to two Nepali worship songs in English letters, so I could sing with them.

The participants who came from a distance slept at the center, men downstairs and women upstairs. Twenty people slept under a tarp on the roof. Thankfully, the seasonal rains held off until the last night.

We walked about a kilometer from our cottage-motel to the scripture learning center – with many other people, dogs, cows, ox carts, bicycles, bicycle-pulled rickshaws, motorcycles and a few larger vehicles. You avoid the animal droppings and move slightly to the side when honking vehicles come up behind you. The first day a long, black snake slithered across the road in front of Paul and me. But everything in Nepal seemed so different that I didn’t think much of it. Later we learned the snake was a venomous black king cobra!

I taught elementary school for many years and often sat on the floor with my young students. But I think this was my first experience teaching barefoot.

Carol Hartman

Hope Lutheran Church is located in Toronto but more accurately Scarborough which was swallowed up by Toronto about 10 years ago.

Scarborough unfortunately has also been called “Scarlem” because of the high crime rates.  Someone once said to me, “Why would you guys pick that location?  It’s so rough…”  To which I answered, “Where better for a church to be than amongst those who need us most.”

An example of why we are here comes from a young Philippino man.  He is from our neighborhood.  A young guy probably 23 years old.  He has church doorbeen to our church a few times.  About 4 months ago he came to me with joy written all over him.  “Pastor my girlfriend and I are having a baby” he exclaimed “and we want our baby to be baptized at your church.”  I was hopeful but did not hear from him for quite some time and had no contact information.   But last week he showed up again.  He knocked on the church door and handed me a white envelope.  He said, “This is for the church.  It’s not much but it’s my first fruits.”  I thanked him and told him I would put it in the offering plate on Sunday. Read more ›