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Arensman Archives July 2007
On our way to Belize!
Summer Greetings! We hope this note finds you all peacefully enjoying the warm weather and long days. This month's newsletter is below, but first we wanted to tell you all about an opportunity for you to get intimately involved in cross-cultural ministry and experience the country in which our family will live and serve over the next several years. September 29th - October 5th we are leading a short-term team to Corozal, Belize. The trip is open to anyone: individuals, couples or families with children. We will be serving in several lower schools (K-8) and one upper school (9-12) as well as working in some of the village churches in the evenings. We will take one excursion to travel by boat downriver to one of the largest Mayan ruin in Belize. The cost for the trip is approximately $950/person which includes airfare, lodging, food, ground transportation and the excursion. If you are interested in joining our team, please let us know ASAP! We will hold team meetings during the months of August and September, so we need to finalize our team list by early August. Hope you can join us!
Timeline Update! Thank you all so much for your prayers, notes, emails and calls! We are encouraged and blessed to know each of you and to have your support. To update you on our progress, we are on the 11-month countdown to our scheduled departure! Our plans are to continue raising support for the remainder of this year and into early 2008. Our hope and prayer is to have ALL our support in by the spring. In June, we will have a huge garage sale and "lighten the load" down to the minimum of what we must ship to Belize and the very few items that we will store with family while we are gone. July 1st will find us in New York City for 31 days of pre-field cross-cultural training. In early August, we will fly back to North Carolina and say our last goodbyes before boarding a plane bound for the sunny South! That said, right now our support sits at about 85% of our one-time need. Our monthly commitments are hard to judge at this time. We have signed cards for one-third of our need, and verbal commitments that would bring us up to nearly 50%. If you are one who has made a verbal pledge, would you please take a moment to fill out a card and send it in to MTW? These cards are the only way that MTW assesses our financial readiness for the field. The sooner we have a record of your commitment, the sooner we can finalize plans for our departure! Thanks so much! "Be of good cheer, Ridley, and play the man. We shall this day, by God's grace, light up such a candle in England, as I trust, will never be put out." - Bishop Hugh Latimer This summer, I have been reading through Foxe's Book of Martyrs. Originally composed in 1563, this memorial volume details the dramatic martyrdom of hundreds of Christians throughout history. As extensive as it is, it does not begin to scratch the surface of the staggering number of saints who have paid the ultimate earthly price for their faith. The account of two faithful brethren, the Bishops Nicholas Ridley and Hugh Latimer, is particularly inspiring. During the merciless reign of Queen Mary I, both men renounced their bishopric rather then confirm and adhere to the Six Articles Act which upheld the Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation, the celibacy of priests, the holding of private masses, the necessity of verbal confessions to a priest, and the withholding of communion from the laity. After several terms of incarceration in the Tower of London and other prisons, both men were condemned to be burned publicly as examples to all those who supported the Reformation. Latimer's famous quote reflects his remarkable cheerfulness in fellowshipping in the sufferings of his Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. This chronology of faithful believers has caused me to examine my own faith and ask questions about the extent of my willingness to suffer any hardship for the sake of the Gospel. We live in a country where we are shielded from the tremendous persecution of our brethren around the world. As for ourselves, any persecution we may suffer usually amounts to nothing more than an occasional heckling. There are thousands of Christians who suffer daily abuse because of their faith in our risen Lord. Yet, so many of us can't bring ourselves to speak His name to our neighbors and co-workers. Those martyred saints were so firmly rooted in the truth of the gospel that their passionate devotion to Christ won out in the face of harsh words, imprisonment, gruesome torture and painfully violent deaths. Nothing this world and Satan could bring against them could provoke them to betray their Holy Spirit fueled convictions. As Sarah and I continue to prepare for the mission field, we eagerly anticipate how the Lord might see fit to use us as His vessels. We also contemplate some of the things that we will sacrifice in order to serve Him in Belize: our comfort (110*F with no A/C!), our convenience (no malls, mini-marts or fast food), our familiar surroundings (new language, new food, new people, new way of life), our proximity to our families (years without seeing aunts, uncles, cousins and siblings). Another difficult sacrifice will be separation from our church family. Over the course of the past eight years, we have been blessed to develop intimate friendships with individuals and families in our community. These kinds of relationships do not come quickly, or easily. We will miss spending holidays and vacations with our dearest friends. It will be lonely when we cannot pick up the phone and share our hearts with one another. And our children will not have those years of continued friendship with our friend's children. If I spend too long dwelling upon these hardships, I can find myself wondering why we are going at all! I believe the key to being willing to sacrifice for the Lord is to ask Him to give us a deeper understanding of who we are, and what He has done. I believe those men and women who have died for their faith must have been blessed to comprehend what I hope to grasp: That no matter what extent of suffering or sacrifice we face in our lives, none of it can compare to the suffering of our Lord Jesus. Far greater than His bodily torture and death, He bore the unrestrained fury of God's righteous wrath so that we would not have to. If we can begin to realize how great a sacrifice was required to secure our salvation, I believe our hearts might be moved beyond our self-centeredness to serve God wholeheartedly, no matter the cost. Scott "What does it mean to be saved?" One of the most exciting events in the life of a Christian is when God opens the door of opportunity for us to boldly and directly witness to an unbeliever. Over the past year, I have become more passionate about reaching the lost around me. I have asked the Lord to make me bold and give me words to speak. This year, He has given me exactly what I have prayed for. Many of you know that I have begun to volunteer at our local Crisis Pregnancy Center leading a small group Bible study for young women and girls who have chosen to keep their precious babies. Most of the girls are high school age, some have recently graduated or are pursuing their G.E.D. All are in a difficult place in their life and most express being rejected by their families, friends and even their churches. In the past, I have led studies for small groups, CBS, and other church-related groups; but I have never had an opportunity like this. I have a captive audience of predominately non-Christians with a platform to teach and discuss anything I want! Taking advantage of this open door, I have been teaching on the theme of grace. I began with the grace of salvation, discussing our utter reliance upon the grace of God, which is extended to us because of what Christ accomplished on the cross. I walked them through Scriptures that declare the deity of Christ, His perfect life of obedience, His atoning sacrifice, and His resurrection. We went through the concepts of man's depravity, the free offer of salvation and the imputation of Christ's righteousness to us. I reiterated the fact that the grace of salvation is NOT based on anything we have done or could ever do, but solely on the merit of Jesus Christ. (The challenge for me has been that terms like "atonement, justification, sanctification, and imputation" are outside the vocabulary of my group! So I am having to come up with commonplace analogies and more simple terms while still remaining true to the fundamental doctrines of our faith.) Last month, I discovered that one of my most faithful attendees is a Jehovah's Witness. I will call her K. She is young, but married, and has a two-month old baby girl. K does every part of the program to the fullest. She attends every meeting and does all her homework. K is friendly but does not usually speak up during study time. She cannot drive a car or work due to infrequent seizures, and many times she walks the few blocks from her apartment to the center. Our conversations at the center have always been about newborn care, mothering, and how to fold a stroller. Not being overly familiar with Jehovah's Witness beliefs, I called a friend who was raised in the J.W. church, but is now a Christian. He graciously took the time to walk me through the basics and gave me advice on what topics to tackle. So prayerfully, I prepared for the next lesson. Our next lesson was on the grace of sanctification. We discussed the fact that after our salvation, we continue to walk in that same grace that saved us. I explained that being a Christian does not mean that you are perfect and will never sin again, but that you do not have to carry the guilt of sinning, because you have been forgiven in Christ and can go boldly and confidently to God to confess and be reconciled. To illustrate this truth, I asked the girls to recall some "famous" characters in the Bible and tell me what they knew about them. Their answers were varied: Noah, Abraham, Jacob, David, Matthew, Paul and others. With each one, someone was able to recount a story from Scripture. All the stories were about their marvelous deeds or character. I took each one and went on to tell them about all the faults of each character: Noah, who got drunk and shamefully lay naked in his tent; Abraham, who lied about the identity of his wife to save himself; David, an adulterer, murderer, liar and coward. With each character they grew more and more astonished. I wish you could have seen their faces! They were asking, "Is that really in the Bible?" After their initial shock, I read to them portions of Scripture where these people are commended for their faith and called righteous. And I asked them, "How can these people, with all these sins, be called righteous?" You could have heard a pin drop…I answered, "Grace. The same grace that is offered to you today – for salvation and for every day afterwards." At that moment, my J.W. friend, K, piped up and said, "I don't understand these things you are saying. I am a Jehovah's Witness and I have never heard this before. What does all this mean?" I looked at her and she asked, "What does it mean to be saved?" I could have fallen out of my chair! If I had written a script for the night, I could not have planned it better. The Holy Spirit was at work! I told her she must trust in Christ alone as her only hope of being forgiven of her sins and reconciled with God. She must not think that she can go to heaven because she thinks she is less sinful than someone else. She was quiet and thoughtful and responded only with "O.K." The remainder of our study time brought discussions about why "bad" things happen to Christians, why some of them have been betrayed by people who confess to be Christians, and other issues. K chimed in and told us that her husband says he is a Christian, but that he smokes marijuana. She bluntly asked me, "Is he saved?" This led to a discussion about a changed life being the evidence of our faith and how a heart transformed by grace desires to serve the Lord in everything. We talked, again, about Christians not being perfect; about the fact that we struggle with our flesh and can even have besetting sins. After the closing prayer, K came to me and asked hesitantly, "You gonna be here next time?" "Yes," I said, "I'll be here." "Good," she replied. Since then I have regretted not going one step further and asking her if she wanted to be saved. I feel inept at this! Thankfully, her salvation does not depend on my ability to be an expert witness. The seed has been thrown, and I will continue to cast it out generously. Perhaps God will allow me the privilege of watering it and seeing it grow. Regardless, I hope that I will always remember the joy and thankfulness that overwhelmed me on my drive home that night. I pray that I will have many more nights like it in the future! Sarah Prayers and Praises Praise! We were able to sell our Excursion and purchase an old Ford van that is perfect to take with us to Belize! Our support has increased more than our goal this past month! We have been able to travel a good bit and spend time together as a family, enjoying our summer! God is continuing to open doors for us to meet new people, network and share about our call to ministry and the work in Belize. Prayers! Please pray that the Lord would give us wisdom and creativity as we try to do a full-time job (raising support) in our "spare" time! Please be praying for our short-term team that will be in Belize this fall, September 29th-October 5th. Pray that God will use us in a mighty way to share the gospel and demonstrate God's grace to the people. If you have not yet taken the time to send in your commitment card to MTW, would you please take a moment and fill it out to send in? You can use the form below! THANKS! I would like to record my commitment to Scott and Sarah Arensman (#010181) by my intent to contribute: $_______________ ___monthly ___quarterly ___annually ___one-time ___Enclosed is my first check - OR - ___I will begin my support _________ (date) Name:__________________________________________ Address: _______________________________________ ________________________________________ Phone: ___________________ Email ________________ Church: ________________________________________ Please make checks payable and mail to: Mission to the World P.O. Box 116284 Atlanta GA 30368-6284 (donations address) Scott and Sarah Arensman - July 20, 2007 |