NEGST Team Meeting features Dr. Chet Wood

Dear NEGST team,

We were blessed to be able to hear Chet Wood continue his conversation on Jesus and Justice. He used the "Sermon on the Mount" Matthew 5:1-16 to illustrate their condition and their character and how the arrival of the Kingdom of Heaven brings the blessing on the righteous. He also illustrated how the arrival of the kingdom of heaven calls for a new righteousness set in the contrast to the prevailing understanding of the righteousness Matthew 5:17-7:12. He made all of this relevant in the context of the Kenyans who are struggling with ethnic differences which have been influenced by migration patters, and unequal distribution of capital-land.

Being the optimist that I am, it seems that there is hope that the work Oscar and his team is doing to provide reconciliation, spiritual healing, and providing for the basic needs of the displaced are bringing righteousness and healing to the Kenyan people. It is hopeful that this current ethnic tension can be replaced with an attitude of cooperation as the leaders set aside their tribal differences and work together to resolve this current crisis.

The time went very fast, but is was very refreshing to hear Chet expound on Jesus and Justice and how it relates to the current situation there and was very helpful in preparing us to ask the right questions to better understand their culture, and their view of Christianity in the context of African realities.

We spend some time presenting the team covenant which we will forward to each of you next week. This will be explored in more detail at our next team meeting which will be held at the North Fork Mountain Inn, in Cabins, WV. This will be held the weekend of June 22nd. I would encourage you to see if you can take a vacation day on Friday, and perhaps travel as a group, leaving Indianapolis around noon and arriving at the Inn by 8:30 that evening. As I mentioned before, you stay at the Inn is our gift to you our team members and we look forward to team building exercises as part of this weekend retreat. We would invite you to attend our Mennonite Church before returning home to Indianapolis around noon on Sunday. Please RSVP your attendance within the next week so we can block off the rooms for your stay. You are welcome to include your spouse even if they are not planning to go to Kenya with the team.

We are also open to adding new team members, so if you know of any others that may be interested in joining us, please let Phil or I know. We would be glad to interview them and even include them on this weekend retreat. I would also like to extend a special invitation for Jeff Unruh and Barry Rodriguez to consider joining our team and participating with us as we plan to return to NEGST and Kenya in January 2009.

I plan to attend Grace on Sunday and will be helping with the prayer services being held in the choir room and would invite any of you attending Grace to join us.

Ed Fischer
Qwest Communications
Global Account Manager
Government and Education Solutions
410-694-4745 Office
410-299-1947 Cellular
edwin.fischer@qwest.com


March 12

Identify With Your Target

Pleasant words are as a honeycomb, sweet to the soul, and health to the bones.
Proverbs 16:24

There’s a saying that goes something like this, don’t judge another man until you have walked in his moccasins. We must learn to identify with a person, before we try to speak to him about needs in his life.

About a month before turkey season was to open in Pennsylvania, I started noticing billboards along the road. Each bore a picture of a turkey and said, “Identify your target before you shoot.”

Often we judge people, or say things to them without knowing all the details of a situation. Our words, like arrows, go down into the innermost parts, wounding the victims, even possibly killing them spiritually.

Several years ago our Eastern Youth Fellowship Meeting’s theme was “Don’t Shoot the Wounded.” How sad it is when there are people who have been already wounded by hardship, personal failure, or loss, yet Christians come along and throw additional barbs at them, driving the wounds deeper and deeper until they become so painful that the victim succumbs. If we learn to identify with the hurting or wounded, we will be more careful about what we say. We won’t be guilty of shooting the wounded.

I asked an elderly lady why she had so many friends. She replied, “I taste my words before I let them pass through my lips.” Let our speech be seasoned with the salt that preserves others, and not with the poison that wounds them.

Joe Miller, Belleville, PA

~The kindly word that falls today may bear its fruit tomorrow.~