SETTING PRIORITIES – July, 2011

As a missionary, I’m often faced with tough decisions, how to be the best steward of the limited resources at my disposal.  Materially speaking, I have much more than anyone who is living around me, especially the people who come to my door asking for help with their children’s school fees, onion seeds (the favorite cash crop this time of year), travel to a family funeral, kerosene for their lamps, a young diabetic whose meds cost over $100 a month, and any number of very real needs.  This has consistently been the hardest part of my missionary vocation: deciding when it is best to give money, as a loan or a gift, and when it is best to say “no, it’s time you start standing on your own two feet.”

The question came up again at the Bible Institute at the end of the school year when none of our 16 students had paid their full tuition, which ranges from $90 for a single student to $110 for one who is married.  Nor had any of them had paid the $1 per month requested for a health cooperative to cover visits to the dispensary.  Their churches are responsible for paying the fees, and some ask for help from students’ families, but no one has come through.

Gifts that I receive from you in the form of “specifics” are used to supplement the meager premium that we give local pastors, teachers and lay people who teach for us part time, less than $1 per hour for their valuable services!  But this income from outside isn’t meant to take the place of what the students are required to pay.

So, when it came time for exams, Pastor Mumpasi, Bible Institute director, and I, decided to postpone them for a week in the hope that students could come up with the money.  The week went by and none of them did.  With other professors, it was decided to let them take their exams, but not announce the results until September, when they must come with the full amount of their fees from the past year, plus the first trimester of the next year.  And the fees have been raised to cover increased costs of quality care for their preschool children, to enable their wives to study in the Women’s School.

I would appreciate your prayers for our students as they travel to their villages during the vacation time, to meet with their churches and do internships.  The churches are extremely poor; but if the Bible Institute is to continue after next year, when I retire and my “specifics” will no longer be available to supplement the fees, the churches have got to accept the responsibility to pay for their students.  This brings up the larger question of theological education at all levels:  even seminary students don’t receive adequate support from their churches.

Pray also for other activities this season:  I’ll be participating in several True Love Waits seminars, and also in a church retreat, showing biblical films and films from the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association in the evenings.  This will be our first united church retreat since the settling of the church conflict earlier this year!

Thanks for struggling with me in prayer over my own priorities, which I must set each day.  And thanks for making it possible for me to serve here in Congo!

Shalom ~

Wendy

Our Baptist student pastors met with our general secretary on a recent visit.  Top row: Pastor Mumpasi, Bible Institute director; Dr. Vanga, CBCO lay leader;
Pastor Titio, Kikongo Bible translator and B.I. professor; Pastor Ngutu,
general secretary of the Congo Baptist Community (CBCO); Pastor Mona, high school chaplain and B.I. professor.  You’ll find me in the next row down, with our student pastors.  Pray for them, as they do internships in their home churches this summer,
and try to find funds for the next school year!

Clavien Manianga is a 20-year-old diabetic, but the many complications of the disease have stunted his growth and development.  The cost of his care is way beyond the means of his widowed mother, who has several other children, including a son who is deaf-mute.

The nursery allows the wives of our students to attend classes in the Women’s School.

The preschool provides quality education for kids from 3-5 years old,
including children of student pastors.  Mona Bertschinger, a Swiss volunteer, and my sister, Jo, visited us in January.