Derek and Bonnie (Douglas) Burnett are C&MA International Workers in Thailand. They working in the area of training Thai leaders through locally led centers of education in remote areas of the country. I have been blessed to have heard moving stories about Bonnie’s family before, and as usual I was struck by this one as well. This comes from their most recent prayer letter; a great way to share some of those “joys” that come with “sowing in tears” (Psalm 126).

Bonnie on the far right, with her mum, and Gi Baa's family

Sawatdii Kha;

I have put off writing you about my trip to Vietnam, because I’m not sure how I can describe it to you in only three or four paragraphs. The Douglas family left Vietnam for home assignment thinking we’d be back in 6 months… we returned 37 years later!  You can imagine what a joy it was to meet dear friends we’ve not seen for almost 40 years and discover the places we loved all over again.

When my grandparents arrived in Vietnam they could count the number of believers on one hand.  Ninety nine years later, more than two million Vietnamese know Christ.  You can imagine what a joy it was to celebrate with 15,000 of them in Danang city, recalling all that our Lord has done in the last 100 years!

So where do I begin?  Maybe I’ll just give you the praise-lights.  We praise the Lord that our old house helper, who had lived with us for almost 20 years, had the strength to come to see us.  Mum and dad had met her years ago when her husband had just left her with three kids to raise.  She came to live with us and we grew up together.  Now, her son is a pastor, her daughter is married to a pastor, and one of her grandkids serves the Lord too.  We could hardly speak together over the lump in our throats!  Thanks, Lord.

We had a lovely time finding Dalat school, mum’s old house, the church, the Bible School in Nha Trang – all places we’d lived and served.  My mum and my older brother & sister are still able to speak Vietnamese well, so they interpreted for us through our visit.  In all of this, we listened to my mum’s stories of what Christ had done in and through our CMA missionaries.  It is an amazing thing to see a picture of God’s blessing from beginning to end – not that He is done in Vietnam, but how often do we get to see both the start and the finish of work He has given us?  That’s Vietnam for each of us who have prayed for our missionaries over the years!

Dalat School

Finally, to celebrate with Vietnamese brothers & sisters… amazing!  When the choir from a north Vietnamese church sang the Alleluia chorus in Vietnamese, I cried.  When all the missionaries who had spent their lives sharing the gospel there walked up to the platform, I cried.  When I watched members of the mountain tribes across Vietnam march forward, I cried.  It was a wet few days for me!    One of the most sobering moments occurred when they asked each family that had lost someone because of Christ to send a representative to the front.  They filled the platform.  This is something you and I can hardly comprehend – to die for our Lord.  Our brothers & sisters do not complain about it, but rather wear it with pride knowing that it is the strength of the church there.

100 Years of God at Work in Vietnamese hearts and livees

What a blessing.  Thank you for praying for us as we went.  My son, Carlin, seemed to drink it all in and grew up a little before our eyes.  I pray that Jesus will continue to use it in his life.  My time with my family was sweet.  We so seldom get together since we serve across the world, but this was… golden.

Thank you, Lord, for letting each of us have a part in your joyous service!  I pray that He will give you a ‘beginning and end’ glimpse of what He is doing through you, too.

love from Thailand,
bonnie for derek, carlin, jesse and jemma

Dalton

On the first weekend of August, I took some time off work, jumped into my Cavalier and made the trip from my current home in Markham to my old home in Ottawa to visit my mom. My nephew Kevin now lives with her and sleeps in my old room.  Most of my clothes have been replaced with his, but my bookshelf is still intact.  On the shelves, you’ll find old yearbooks, non-fiction novels that I have yet to read and random stuff I never fully dealt with (keychains, rulers, even an old alarm clock that’s shaped like a drum set).

I decided it was time to do some cleaning for Kevin’s sake.  As I was going through the shelves, I found a green binder.  I opened it up to find a community profile of Moose Factory, Ontario.

13 years ago, my youth group, alongside another youth group from Cobourg, Ontario went up to Moose Factory, Ontario on a missions trip for two weeks.  I skimmed through the rest of the binder, which included chapters of books we had to read pre-trip, native customs sheets and my pre high school testimony.

I spent some time sitting on Kevin’s bed just remembering those two weeks: The team who went up, the families who welcomed us into their homes, the faces of the kids who we met.  I was also reminded of a great lesson I learned while in the James Bay region that has stuck with me until this day.

It was the first day we were in Moosonee as the full team (the Cobourg group was there a few days earlier).  We were in Moosonee Baptist Church for a service.  I believe it was an evening service.  After the service, we had a debriefing.

Dave Enns, the youth pastor from Cobourg, stood up in front of the group of teens, and shared how he felt we did on our first day together: not well at all.  His grievance was with our sitting arrangements.  During the service, we all sat together in one section, while the locals sat by themselves.  Our group size did rival the overall congregation of the Baptist church, but we were not looking outward with our seating.

‘Who did you meet tonight?’  he asked.

*silence*

‘What kind of message are we sending by huddling together?’

*silence*

‘Why are you here?  To enjoy each other’s company, or to serve the people of Moosonee?’

*silence*

It might seem harsh to lay down all these thoughts on the first day, but we did prepare and pray long before we boarded the Polar Bear Express.  On that night, we failed.

Dave’s words hit me hard.  He was completely right.  We fulfilled the Great Commission by going to Moosonee, but we failed it by not being in Moosonee.

I asked Mike, my youth pastor at the time, to chat.  I remember feeling like a complete failure, forsaking everything we prepared for to find comfort with my team, turtling instead of engaging.  After that night, our team found focus.  Our basketball and VBS camps went great.  Not without hiccups of course, but had Dave not spoken up, the trip would have been much different than it turned out.

I’ve been on several missions trips since that summer of 1999.  But ever since that trip, I have a high sensitivity to those we go to serve.  I am intentional with meeting those who I don’t know, in putting myself out on a limb to show why I’m here and whom I serve.  I’ve eaten unusual foods and  butchered foreign languages all in the hope that my life in Christ would be displayed through, not only my words, but in my actions.

These short-term missions trips that are happening daily are opportunities not only to share the gospel of Jesus Christ (our primary objective), but also to engage the people who we are sharing the gospel with.  My church just sent a team to Mozambique a few months back.  One member of the team is a part of my small group.  We decided as a small group (without her knowledge) to each give her a letter, a verse or an encouragement for each day she was in Africa.  My note went something like this: Go and show Christ to them, but be open for Christ to reveal himself through them.

We bring our agenda, thoughts and hopes on these sort of trips, yet often, God flips our ideas and reveals something much deeper that we could not have anticipated

I bought a Macbook Pro last week. A very big purchase. The nice packaging and the sleek design brought me back to Christmas Days’ of my youth: giddy and excited to put my new toy to use (no bubble wrap to pop though). But this circumstance is a little different. My view of my new computer isn’t one of consumption, then forget about it in a few months. There’s an understanding that work and projects done on this machine will help enlighten, encourage and strengthen those who are disciples of Jesus.

With this understanding, I prayed ‘Lord, let me use this Mac to give you glory’. Right now, my computer is pretty bare. No new programs, a very empty hard drive. As a recording engineer, this computer will be soon filled with music software programs and hundreds of sound files, ready to be spliced up and mixed. But there will also be a number of Gigs saved for God’s Kingdom. The makeup of God’s consecrated Gigabytes is yet to be determined. But whatever it will be, I’m ready for it.–
D.H.

(Dalton is a longtime friend from East Gate Alliance in Ottawa, and a part of the next wave of young people God is using to re-shape the church.)