Dear friends,

We buried Raymond Daniel Baer’s mortal remains two weeks, six days, and two hours ago, on a hill not two hundred yards from where I sit. Dad was 90 years old and is now safe in the embrace of Jesus.

I don’t think news get any more *unfiltered* than this, and I tear up for the three-thousandth time as I tell you so.

If you want to glimpse a bit into who Dad was for us, check out www.canterbridge.org. I haven’t been able to write anything since the day the phone call came and we gathered to accompany Dad as he made his way from one life to another in the hours that followed. So a reflection on his life as well as his obituary remain right at the top of the blog, undisturbed by any subsequent scribblings. You won’t need to fatigue your scroll muscles.

*And then*, on Thursday, I received my Colombian ‘migrant worker’ visa (You just gotta’ love that …) from the very fine people at the Colombian consulate in Newark. Karen’s visa followed by a digital path, yesterday. Approximately 1.3 zillion things had to go right before that could happen.

Yes, we are on our way.

*And then*, when I was scoping out flights to Medellín this morning, I realized that my somewhat arbitrarily chosen departure date is my son John’s 30th birthday.

Didn’t you know it would be like this?

Everything happens at the same time.

For those who like facts, here are some dandies:

√  Our path from twelve years of organizational leadership at Overseas Council into this new phase of ministry has taken just under two years. That’s not more than it’s supposed to take. Yet it makes for a bit of an adrenaline jolt to realize that our step across this threshold is, well, upon us. No more theory. We’re movin’.

√  So whenya’ movin’?, one might deign to ask. Well, my slightly arbitrary working travel date is May 20. ‘Might be slightly later, could possibly be a little earlier. But, basically, May 20 will mean USA to Colombia, Pennsylvania to Medellín, rural to metropolitan, English to Spanish, plan to reality, organizational leadership to pastor-teacher-mentor. May 20. About fifteen sleepies, as I would have counted them out for little Christopher and Johnny back in the day.

√  Down at the Biblical Seminary of Colombia, Gonzalo and his dudes have been layerin’ fresh paint on the walls of our apartment and otherwise tidying up for ‘the Baers’. Community and service——both of necessity encased in laughter and tears, though we cannot predict the moments or the causes——will be lived from that new home base.

√  We’ve been telling you a lot about the financial structure of our missionary service over these last eighteen months. We’re waiting for our third sending church to define the number of their financial commitment, but I can guess pretty reliably that we still need to raise about $800/month to make our United-World-Mission-based budget whole. We’ll plan to raise any remaining amount of that budget from down south, since these first six months in Colombia represent the less expensive half of our six-months-south, six-months-north rhythm of service. Let us know if now is your time to join us.

√  We have one-time moving and set-up costs, too. Our mission sets those at $25,600, which I believe will prove sufficient for our set-up in Colombia this month and then in Connecticut next January, as well as the travel around it. If a one-time contribution to the cause matches a nudge of your heart and mind, we’ll be grateful for every consideration.

√  The site for either kind of financial participation is: https://uwm.us14.list-manage.com/track/click?u=d51738c53f3016d069e94ccb0&id=0f1a9e4f70&e=670d06dbc3

√  We plan to travel light: eight suitcases. Not nine. Not ten. And a dog. Right at this moment, little Rhea still plans to accompany us, particularly since her assignment as Official Therapy Dog of Dad Baer and his nursing home comrades has come to its end.

√  So far, I’ve bought two used suitcases from an Amish neighbor (and given one away), one from the Salvation Army, and another forlorn little piece from the local Goodwill store. There’s no telling what people carried in’em over bygone miles. Ours will hold our ‘Medellin Gear’. Eight. Not nine (the man reminds himself…).

√  We look forward to having a bit over a month in our new place before my first semester of teaching strikes with its unforgiving deadlines and its invigorating new friendships with colleagues, students, and those unidentified passersby who weasel themselves into heart and mind. A young college woman from our first sending church will arrive about two weeks after we do to live with us and get a taste of cross-cultural service in Medellín, mentored by Karen and supervised in that remote-alpha-male way by me. Plus, we’ll just need to settle in, find the safe running routes, the sources for fruits, vegetables, and soul food. Dog food. You know the drill.

√  Are we eager to get there? You betcha’. Are we eager to leave? Not on your life. Life happens all at the same time, mixed up like peas and corn.

√  We had two empowering ‘commissioning services’ at the loving hands of our first and second sending churches. We don’t go alone.

√  Over the past eighteen months, I’ve given time and energy to working with a knot of Colombian colleagues on a Biblical-Hebrew-instruction platform for Spanish speakers. My role in that project has expanded delightful and demandingly, and there are several aspects of it that I’ll want to stomp on with fast-forward intentions during our month of settling. I suppose we’ll hit the ground running, as people unaccustomed to doing so sometimes like to say.

√  Why eight?, you might ask. Eight suitcases. I don’t know. It came to me as in a dream.

√  I’m a ‘migrant worker’. How cool is that? Karen is my ‘dependent’, but they got that all backwards.

√  Some people are really good at making precise lists of ‘prayer needs’. This moment feels too fluid for that, everything happening at the same time, everything peas and corn. But if you pray, you’ll already know how to pray for us. And we breathe back at you little Baer-breaths of incalculable gratitude.

√  If we didn’t think that the Lord Jesus had taken up residence in Colombia eons ago, and that our eventual arrival in May of 2018 represents a tiny step of obedience to join in on what he’s doing there for some considerable time now, I wouldn’t be buying a single suitcase and we wouldn’t be goin’ nowheres. But I’ll soon have eight of the battered old things.

√  And we’re goin’ somewheres.

√  You with us? Game on.

√  It’s all happening. All at once.

√  Celtics over Sixers in six.

√  Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve gotta’ go snag an airline-worthy dog crate. Next time from Colombia!

With very much love and appreciation,

David (for the intrepid and slightly staggering Karen, who is in Connecticut for Quinnie’s first communion)

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You are receiving this email because we believe you may want to stand with our work in Latin America and beyond.

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Our mailing address is:
United World Mission
739 Church Street
Millersburg, PA 17061
USA

Our telephone:
317-809-0483

OK, you engineers, bean-counters, and practical folks, we know what you want.

You tolerate the fluffy stuff, but you make your hay on the facts.

So here’s a FAQ (‘Frequently Asked Questions’) list aimed at clarity for all:

√ WHO DO YOU GUYS WORK FOR?

Karen and I are employed by the United World Mission (UWM), a Christian missionary-sending agency based in Charlotte, North Carolina ( http://www.uwm.org ).

UWM was established in 1946 and currently fields more than 350 missionaries in 45 countries.

√ BUT I THOUGHT YOU WORKED FOR A SEMINARY IN COLOMBIA.

You’re right. UWM works in careful partnership with the Biblical Seminary of Colombia (BSC), to which we are seconded by the UWM.

We answer to the authority structure of this Colombian, university-accredited Christian seminary and are also accountable to the UWM.

√ I THOUGHT YOU HAD *TWO* JOBS.

You thunk right. I (David) have two responsibilities. First, I teach Old Testament and mentor younger faculty at the Biblical Seminary of Colombia. I do this full-time and in-person for half of each year and do it less-than-full-time and from a distance for the other half of each year. This is my first job, and it also entails writing Spanish-language commentaries on what I hope will reach five Old Testament books.

My second job is directing a new division of the United World Mission called the Theological Education Initiative (TEI). The UWM has tasked me to develop and deploy this initiative, which aims to identify, recruit, place, and support scholar-missionaries who teach in Majority World seminaries. Then we shepherd these highly trained scholar-missionaries as members of a Fellowship so that they can continue growing, stay strong, and labor vibrantly for a whole career in order to shape the next two generations of leadership for the global church. We’ll bring you details on this very exciting project in 2018.

√ WHAT ABOUT KAREN? DOES SHE JUST SIT AROUND AND LOOK PRETTY?

Are you kidding me?! She will do a little bit of sitting down and a lot of looking pretty alongside all kinds of loving service to the students, families, and children of the Seminary community. Plus, the UWM has identified in Karen real promise in what is often called ‘spiritual formation’. As she becomes increasingly skilled in this area, she’ll deploy this gifting and these skills in ministry to our Seminary family and to the wider United World Mission family.

√ I HEARD SOMEWHERE THAT YOU GUYS ARE SNOWBIRDS.

Not exactly.

But we *will* maintain two home bases. For the half of the year (July-December) when we concentrate on our Seminary work, we’ll live in an apartment on the campus in Medellín, Colombia. You should visit us sometime.

For the other half of the year (January-June), we’ll work out of Connecticut so that I can move around the US and internationally in connection with my TEI leadership role. We hope to buy a home in 2019 near Wethersfield, Connecticut, where one of our two sending churches and a small heap of family are located.

√ WHAT’S A SENDING CHURCH?

We are paid a salary by the UWM based on funding provided by a team of financial supporters that Karen and I recruit, develop, and support. Many of these financial supporters are individuals and families. Six of them are churches. Two of these churches have taken support. Many of these financial supporters are individuals and families. Six of them are churches. Two of these churches have taken a disproportionate responsibility for partnering with us. We represent them in Colombia and the world. Both of them will ‘commission’ us in separate services and send us out on their behalf. The first is David’s Community Bible Church, Millersburg, Pennsylvania. The other is Wethersfield Evangelical Free Church, Wethersfield, Connecticut.

√ WHY AREN’T THE PACKERS IN THE PLAYOFFS THIS YEAR?

We forgot to put Rhea’s game-day Green Bay Packers collar on her until the Sunday when the Pack was eliminated from playoff contention. We feel terrible about this. We’re really sorry.

√ WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS?

We grow pastors (and other Christian leaders of character, biblical understanding, humility, and cultural savvy). It’s what Karen and I are called to do. We can’t help ourselves.

√ IS THIS DANGEROUS?

A little.

We have a team of people who support us vigorously in prayer. We call them THE GUARDIANS. Maybe you’ve heard someone say that ‘the safest place in the world is right in the center of God’s will’. Sounds a little sappy, I know. But we believe it.

Besides, life’s dangerous everywhere. Every day counts.

√ DO YOU HAVE TO BEG FOR MONEY TO MAKE THIS WORK?

No.

But we do ask people like you to consider partnering with us by committing financially to this work and we could never do this if people said ‘no’.

We believe this work has all the dignity of any paid employment (even though the mechanics of it are different). But we’re not on charity and, thankfully, have never had to beg.

This way of cooperating in God’s work beyond familiar frontiers goes way back into history, though it’s a new thing to many of our friends.

You wanna’ join up? ( https://uwm.us14.list-manage.com/track/click?u=d51738c53f3016d069e94ccb0&id=e9f48c5292&e=ac68b46058)

√ EVERYBODY SPEAKS ENGLISH THESE DAYS, RIGHT?

Nope.

I’m fortunate that life has taught me to speak Spanish comfortably. Karen is working her butt off (figuratively speaking) to learn Spanish. It’s really hard. Learning someone’s language is one of the first ways we love them.

√ WHAT ABOUT YOUR FAMILIES?

We’ll miss them. It bites.

But there’s Skype, FaceTime, email, and half of each year in Connecticut.

Plus, here’s a nasty little secret: family happens in far-away places. It doesn’t take the place of family back home, but it widens the tent pegs and includes people with different last names.

√ DID YOU JUST DRAG POOR KAREN INTO THIS?

You should ask her: Karen.Baer@uwm.org

√ HOW’S YOUR FINANCIAL SUPPORT RIGHT NOW?

Thank you for asking. We’re doing pretty well, but we’re not yet there.

We need one person, family, business, or church to commit $500/month, two to commit $250/month, five to commit $100/month, and ten people to commit $50/month.

Then we’ll be there.

√ WHY COLOMBIA?

Vigorous churches have been growing in Colombia at a bodacious pace for thirty years. They’re impacting Colombia, Latin America, and the world.

Their greatest need?: leaders of vision, integrity, and competence. The Biblical Seminary of Colombia shapes that kind of leader. You should see’em.

Some are laboring away at building a new Colombia that’s more attuned to the purposes of its Maker after fifty years of civil war. Some are going to the ends of the earth in Jesus’ name.

Here’s a little video that features Andrés, one of my favorite recent grads: https://uwm.us14.list-manage.com/track/click?

u=d51738c53f3016d069e94ccb0&id=bb5498d1b3&e=ac68b46058

√ YOU MUST REALLY LOVE COLOMBIANS. I BET THEY’RE SPECIAL.

We love some. We’re going to learn to love more.

Mostly, we just jump down into the trenches and get sweaty and dirty with’em.

They’re basically a lot like us, only different.

√ CAN I COME SEE?

Yes. Stay tuned.

√ HOW LONG ARE YOU GUYS GONNA’ DO THIS THANG?

Maybe ten, twelve years.

√ WHERE ARE YOU NOW?

We’re in Millersburg, Pennsylvania, living in the Haven House, the missions home of David’s Community Bible Church. The Haven House exist for this very reason.

In January-February, we’ll be at the Center for Intercultural Training in North Carolina for seven weeks of pre-field training.

We’ll return to Millersburg in March-April.

We plan to move to Colombia the first week of May.

√ WHAT IS IT YOU PEOPLE WANT FROM ME?

Do justice, love mercy, walk humbly with your God.

In our particular case, be bold to ask yourself whether investing yourself and your resources in what the Lord has asked us to do is the next step in your own calling.

That’s all.

√ YOU GUYS ARE STRONG.

No, we’re not.

But we’re caught up in something much bigger than our measly little selves, and it’s become our life and our song.

Someday, all the nations will rejoice. We’re somewhere on the map just short of that, and pretty much lovin’ it.

√ THEN YOU MUST BE DARING.

See previous item.

√ HOW CAN I KEEP UP WITH YOU ON MY TIME, NOT YOURS?

Here: http://www.baerlythere.org

Or, if you have a strong stomach, here: http://www.canterbridge.org

√ I GET TOO MANY EMAILS ALREADY. IF I STAY ON THIS LIST, HOW OFTEN AM I GOING TO HEAR FROM YOU.

9-12 times per year with an ‘unsubscribe’ button at the end of each.

√ THIS IS CREEPY. CAN WE STOP NOW?

Yes.

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View this email in your browser I drove the long way home after breakfast up the Valley this morning. My path across our gorgeous Valley often finds me taking the indirect route these days. I all but groan in awe as the car or the bike carries me across the sinuous lines and rolling fields that are bordered on one side by blue-green Berry’s Mountain and on the other by Mahantonga Mountain. Even in early winter, the rectangled fields that are laid across these hills like a green-gold quilt over a sleeping body make driving straight through, from A to Z, a sad idea.  Glory like this requires gentle inspection and a curiosity that turns onto country lanes not yet explored. Just after first light, I meandered up the Valley towards Wednesday breakfast with Pastor Allan on Matterstown Road, the little-used string of asphalt that bisects the Valley, a mere mile and a near universe away from the highway that would have made quicker work of the journey from Millersburg to E’ville. (If you call it ‘Elizabethville’, you’re not from around here. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.) I choose the hour in order to appreciate the Amish children heading to one of the two Amish schools that I pass along the way. The children of neighbors closest to the school walk along the road in little family clusters. Those a little farther off travel in fleets of made-to-size Amish scooters. The children of one pair of families from just beyond scooter range crowds aboard a cart pulled by an eager little pony, who delivers his human cargo and then spends the day munching hay on the edge of the schoolyard. These are frequent fellow travelers of mine, responsive to a friendly wave, stewarding with their parents the same rich soil my ancestors farmed on these green, golden hills in this wide, windy, aromatic valley. One of our two ‘sending churches’, the Wethersfield (Connecticut) Evangelical Free Church, is learning to live sent in New England, a region of this country that for many decades has been resistant to vibrant Christian faith in spite of a history that saw some of its earliest European settlers aspiring to introduce heaven to earth. Karen and I are learning, too, to live sent. In our particular case, living sent means learning to love, live in, and give ourselves to multiple homes. It means living both here and there, as though each of these precious places in which our roots so naturally seek deepest penetration were the only place. The only home. Our only peeps. The only ‘ours’. It means belonging to more than one place that our Maker has given to us, hoping against all our frailty and self-centeredness that He has also given us to those same people and places. It is an intricate dance. I never know whether it can be understood apart from living it, so I seldom speak of it, rarely attempt to write it down, as now. I wouldn’t wish it casually on anyone, nor trade it for the world. Great-grandpa John Moses Bear and Grandpa James Baer In two weeks, Karen and I will make our next move toward one of those other places. As the next leg of our circuitous journey to Colombia, we’ll drive from Pennsylvania to North Carolina for two months of pre-field training at the Center for Intercultural Training. In the company of others who have been called to live across boundaries, we’ll learn skills as a couple that will help us navigate the cross-currents and surf the waves of our kind of living sent. Our United World Mission reckons soberly with the fact that cross-cultural ministry is a difficult thing, with challenges that put a megaphone to the garden-variety stresses of everyday life. People in this work are not infrequently chewed up and spat out. They go rogue and damage other human beings. So the policies of UWM wisely require of us this kind of rigorous training before we take our next steps towards Colombia. We’ll be trained via coursework in Equipping for Cross-Cultural Life and Ministry. Karen will do a segment on Second Language Acquisition. We hope to emerge with a toolbox for cross-cultural adaptation, prepared to thrive as a couple as we live sent in Colombia, Connecticut, and elsewhere. I also plan to become less pig-headed. Do the rhythms and demands of life make two months in western North Carolina feel like something we have time for? No. But this is risky business we’re putting our hand to. If this helps, bring it on. Just after family celebrations of Christmas and the New Year, we’ll leave for North Carolina from this magnificent, temporary respite-and-preparation haven barely 2.2 miles from the Pennsylvania home in which I grew up, two doors down from the church where the clarity and community of Jesus swept me into his embrace nearly five decades ago, a short walk from old farm houses whose addresses read ‘Hoy Road’, the name I first knew as my Grandma Baer’s maiden name. Our roots over these months have sunk with uninterrupted satisfaction into this rich, Pennsylvania German soil.  It has become, in the way that belies the old adage that you can’t go home again, well, home again. Better put in the light of our particular way of living sent, it’s one of the handful of places we call home. But we do not own it, cannot grasp it, must in the course of living sent hold such gifts lightly in our hands, must move suitcases and hearts to another place. Three places fill our hearts and minds at this stage of living sent. These images capture some aspect of each. Millersburg, Pennsylvania, our current transitional haven, from which our first sending church (David’s Community Bible Church) will send us to Colombia the first week of May. Wethersfield, Connecticut, home of our second sending church (Wethersfield Evangelical Free Church) and our home base for half of each year beginning in 2019. Medellín, Colombia, our home and place of service for half of each year, home of the magnificent ministry known as the Biblical Seminary of Colombia. We have reached 86% of our financial support goal! We’d love to reach 100% by December 31. Will you consider joining our team over these next few days? Click here to join our support team. This one thing I know (Well, two really …). When our Lord calls us to service in a particular place, he knits our hearts to it and to its people. Loving people and their place is not a zero-sum game. It is not necessary to love the people and place we have left any less in order to love the people and place to which we are going more. God’s love is expansive, not restrictive. So here’s how things roll in 2018-2019 (according to our plans, anyway): January-February 2018: We travel to North Carolina for pre-field training at the Center for Intercultural Training. March-April 2018: We return to Millersburg, Pennsylvania to conclude our support raising, to pack and prepare for the move to Colombia, and to be commissioned in separate services by David’s Community Bible Church (Millersburg, Pennsylvania) and Wethersfield Evangelical Free Church (Wethersfield, Connecticut). May 2018: We move to our new digs and work at the Biblical Seminary of Medellín (Colombia) during the first week of May. May-December 2018: We learn the ropes and make our first in-the-flesh contribution to the work of the Biblical Seminary of Colombia. January-June 2019: We give priority to developing the Theological Education Initiative from a home base (and, we hope, a purchased home) near Wethersfield, Connecticut. July-December 2019: We return to our apartment on the seminary campus in Colombia to dig in for our second annual round at the Biblical Seminary of Colombia. 2018 will be slightly irregular, with the bulk of our time spent in Colombia. 2019 will represent the first regular version of the six-months-in-Colombia, six-months-in-Connecticut rhythm of work that we hope to maintain for the next ten or a dozen years. ¡Baers in Colombia, May 2018! Andrés Alemán is a graduate of the Biblical Seminary of Colombia. He and his marvelous wife Johana are planting and tending to a young church in a distressed community called Carambolas, high above the city center of Medellín on the Andean slopes that border Medellín proper on both sides. Don’t miss this excellent video glimpse of how the Presbyterian Church of Carambolas is serving its community! These are the kinds of people Karen and get to shape and serve. A forthcoming edition of Unfiltered will provide more concrete details about our work and calendar. Copyright © 2017 United World Mission, All rights reserved. You are receiving this email because we believe you may want to stand with our work in Latin America and beyond. Our mailing address is: 739 Church Street, Millersburg, PA 17061 United World Mission is located at:  205 Regency Executive Park Dr Suite 430, Charlotte, NC 28217 800-825-5896 uwm.org Want to change how you receive these emails? You can update your preferences or unsubscribe from this list.

Dear friends and family, It’s a brisk and beautiful Autumn day in central Pennsylvania. Days like this—’football weather‘, as my Dad used to call it—speak volumes about the change of seasons, gradual but inexorable. Winter will be upon us, then Springtime after that, then these suddenly cool, corn-bounded roads on which I bike in splendid solitude will once more become steamy hot.  It’s how things roll. Same with the changing seasons of Karen’s and my shared life. We are rolling with satisfaction, commitment, and joy towards Colombia, rich with new opportunities, challenges, and surprises.  Here is a catch-up summary, which the nip in the air tells me is slightly overdue: Karen is in Florida with four women from our church in Indianapolis with whom she gathers for three or four days every year, a life-giving sisterhood that I once upon a time accidentally named ‘The Turtle Club’. The name stuck. Tomorrow, Karen will fly back to Baltimore. I’ll meet her there and on Sunday we’ll fly down to our soon-future home at the Biblical Seminary of Colombia for an intense work week. Why a week in Colombia now? Over the last year, I’ve been investing 5-8 hours per week in a marvelous translation and adaptation project that will bring instruction in Biblical Hebrew online to Spanish speakers. It’s now time to push through a bottleneck by recording Spanish-Hebrew voiceovers, which I can best accomplish onsite at the Seminary. Karen will spend her days face-to-face with Magdalena, whom you may remember as Karen’s Skype-inhabiting Spanish language teacher. They’ll giggle, chuckle, and hug their way to greater mastery of elementary Spanish. They’re a little crazy, these two. The seminary has invited Karen and me to stay in the apartment that will become ‘ours’ when we move to Colombia in May, which will be fun and allow us to identify any changes, repairs, and furnishing that will turn this space into our home in about six months. We already get a kick out of overhearing our seminary colleagues refer to the space as el apartmento de los Baer ( = ‘the Baers’ apartment’). Our schedule has now shaped up rather firmly: (a) now to December: finish our support-raising marathon, moving from 83% to 100%; (b) January-February: pre-field training in North Carolina; (c) March-April; final speaking/convening assignments Stateside, prepare for move to Colombia; (d) first week of May: move to Medellín, Colombia! I’ve been keeping a fairly busy speaking and ministry schedule, mainly in connection with churches that in one way or another have become partners of us and of our work. The seminary dean has given me my first teaching assignments in Colombia for the year’s second semester of 2018 (July-December): (a) Biblical Theology and (b) Sacred Writings (the third section of the Hebrew Bible, in which the Old Testament’s ‘wisdom’ and ‘poetic’ sections are prevalent). It’s exciting to see how much good literature (sadly, most of it still translations) has become available in this field since I was last teaching full-time in Latin America, c. 2004. Karen is making strides in figuring out the stomach ailments that have plagued her in occasionally acute manner over the last year. Email is probably not the place to discuss this further. No, please, I really mean that. The huge Belgian plow horses at the Amish farm just down the road now hustle over to get their immense heads scratched when we walk by with Rhea. Our farms here in the Lykens Valley have had such a harvest of corn for silage this year that their silos are full to the brim and they’re storing the excess in gigantic white-plastic ‘worms’ on the ground. Their livestock will eat well this winter. But the price of milk is in the gutter, which is partly because Karen is making me drink almond milk. I bet you didn’t think I knew about this stuff. As part of my Theological Education Initiative responsibilities (the other half of my portfolio, of which the first half is anchored at the seminary in Colombia), I’ll teach an Old Testament course and make a general nuisance of myself in other ways once per year at the Arab Baptist Theological Seminary in Beirut, Lebanon. Karen and I will leverage that anchor in the calendar to develop TEI relationships with other seminaries in the Middle East and then probably do the same with one seminary in Latin America each year. My TEI colleague Dr. Daniel Salinas and I will coordinate to make sure we’re deepening and intelligently broadening our TEI network in ways that more or less cover the globe. That last clause sounded a little more pompous than it was supposed to. Overseas Council, which I directed from 2004-2016 has just announced that they’re being acquired by our own United World Mission and will function under the ‘OC’ name as a division of United World Mission. Life is peculiar, inscrutable, and quite often beautiful. We are now at 83% of the full funding required for us to launch. May I ask you to consider becoming part of the final 17%? Email me if this is for you. Or if I got the math wrong. If you’re a Strava user and would like us to track with each other’s fitness routes, let me know. If this means nothing to you, don’t feel left out but please do move quickly to the next bullet point before you are overtaken by foolish ideas. I’ve nearly finished taking the 15-week online Perspectives on the World Christian Movement course and am hearing positive sounds from the Perspectives organization about my proposal that I offer the course online to a small number of highly motivated influencers in the seven churches to which we principally relate. If you want to know more about this absolutely stupendous learning opportunity, shoot me an email. I’m not kidding, it will change everything you thought you knew about ‘missions’. Things we’ll do around the margins of our Colombia work next week: √ one: locate the best places to ride in and around Medellín √ two: find a reputable and welcoming bike shop √ three: pour over a map of Medellín with colleagues to get our bearings √ four: locate and check out a big-box DIY (think Home Depot, Lowes, Menards) to price stuff we’ll need for our apartment; ditto on a furniture store √ five: check out the nearest gym and figure out what hours a person can safely run to it from the challenged neighborhood in which the seminary is located √ six: enjoy dinners with future colleagues and students √ seven: suck the high Andean evening air into our lungs and wonder about the surprises God has in store for us over these next 11 years. Here’s an addition to that last list: √ eight: laugh a lot. A few days ago a long-time friend who taught for some years at the Biblical Seminary of Colombia wrote this unsolicited description of the seminary community: ‘There’s a marketing slogan at the seminary – Una vivencia única (“a unique way of living”)- and it is all of that and much more … That place is special in so many ways.  There’s a word in Spanish “acogedor” which really sums it nicely.  But it is also intergenerational  and a great mentoring environment.’ Karen and I  don’t live chasing utopias, which always disappoint with a loud crashing sound anyway. But the seminary is at a beautiful place on its own organizational cycle, and we feel so privileged to be putting our skinny little shoulders to the plough in that place with these people at this unique moment. Here’s what Karen would say if she were not with the Turtle Club Ladies in Florida right now: ‘Ask them to pray that my Spanish will take a leap forward and that we’ll make progress on managing a health-diet-and-medical regimen that will empower me to serve from strength in Colombia.’ I think. Even if I didn’t get that exactly right, please do pray for us as we travel and serve and prepare and travel and serve. And prepare. Go, Astros! We love youse guys. Warmly, David (for Karen, too) Copyright © 2017 United World Mission, All rights reserved. You are receiving this email because we believe you may want to stand with our work in Latin America and beyond. Our mailing address is: 739 Church Street, Millersburg, PA 17061 Want to change how you receive these emails? You can update your preferences or unsubscribe from this list.

View this email in your browser Egyptian, Jordanian, Lebanese, Palestinian, South Sudanese, Sudanese, Syrian … These are the nationalities claimed by my students in the two-week Isaiah class I’m teaching here at Beirut’s Arab Baptist Theological Seminary. Each one of them has a story. Some of those narratives involve intense suffering for the gospel, including prison. Only a few of my students speak English, so I enjoy the camaraderie of Walid, an excellent translator and friend.. This man directs the academic program at ABTS and is pursuing advanced studies of his own in Old Testament. We also share a hair style, so if one of us falls in a hole the other one can just pick up where we left off. No one may notice. The half of my responsibilities that involves directing the Theological Education Initiative (TEI) requires me to remain active in Majority-World seminaries beyond the horizons our new main bailiwick in Latin America. After thirteen years spent largely outside the classroom, I rise to this challenge with joy and trembling. I feel as though I’m learning to teach all over again in a way that fits the things I’ve learned at 58 years of age that I didn’t know when I was 28, 38, or 48. I’ll teach short classes twice a year in seminaries like this one. This forced re-immersion in the Book of Isaiah is timely preparation for writing the Spanish-language commentary on Isaiah that is one of my goals for the next few years. I did my doctoral work on this biblical book back in the 1990s and for the last year have read a chapter of Isaiah every day as a pump-priming exercise for the writing. The ideas and fresh understanding are flowing as quickly as I can keep up with them. Providence draws together the disparate strands at just the right moment. I’m pumped. While enjoying an introvert’s quiet lunch with the seminary’s president—my dear friend Elie Haddad—in the school’s dining hall, a group of forty Christian university students from Syria rolled in. Simply beautiful young people, most of them from Damascus. One can only imagine, peering into these gorgeous Arab faces, what trauma they have known in that disintegrating nation where no eyes remain untouched by smoke and tears, no ears innocent of screams. Yet God has not abandoned his love for Syria nor given up on the Syrian people. Christ is alive among them. It shows in the presence of these students, all participants in Syria’s New Life Agape(Cru) movement. The heart migrates between the breaking and the leaping spaces as the Egyptian and Lebanese couple that leads this group explain with beaming faces how the Lord is at work in, of all places, Syria. They’d be in no other place in this fine and terrible moment. Isaiah said it: The nations shall flow like a river to Zion. Here, citizens of eight of them gather around the biblical book that bears that prophet’s name. We have reached 81% of our financial support goal! It’ll be important to reach 100% by December 31. Will you consider joining our team? Click here to join our amazing support team. Me homesick? Are you kidding? I know, it kind of snuck up on me. I haven’t used the ‘h word’ of myself in thirty years. But on this long international itinerary, which involved meetings in Rome, a visit with colleagues who are dear friends farther north in Italy, and now these two weeks in the Middle East, I find—in and around the joys and challenges of this work—an embarrassing longing for the tall-corn country roads around Millersburg, Pennsylvania. And for the people who travel them home. Not to mention Karen and little Rhea, our newly commissioned Therapy Dog. It’s not true that ‘being away’ in places that are not home—though enriched by the indescribable company of friends—simply ‘flows’.  At least not all the time. Sometimes being here rather than being there is a matter of grit. And the quiet trust that God is in even this. Our little sojourn with our home-and-sending church in Pennsylvania has allowed Karen to visit family in Connecticut, the state that will in 2019 become our home base for half of each year. Left: Connecticut granddaughter Kyla and our doggie Rhea completely ignore brother Quinn’s football practice. Center: Tennessee grandson Connor, who owns his own rocket ship, prepares for the solar eclipse. Right: I’m grateful that this season of life has brought back a core focus on teaching Scripture. ‘Feels good to be working from the center. We’re on our way to Colombia. After a working visit in October, we plan to move there in April. Snippets from the front Our financial support, now at 81.35% of our goal, is creeping towards 100%, where we need it to be by December 31. ‘Wanna join us?  On the front end of this current travel, I participated in an advisory board for the new ICETE Academy, in Rome. The Academy intends to provide micro-bursts of instruction on how to become a great educator (and related topics) to theologians teaching in Majority-World settings who have a specialist’s mastery of their own field, but little or no training in teaching and learning. We’ll travel to the Biblical Seminary of Colombia from October 29 to November 4. Karen will work face-to-face on Spanish with Magdalena and get her claws into the campus apartment that’ll become our home next April. I’ll record Spanish-language voice-overs for the Bible Mesh online training in biblical Hebrew that a team of us at the seminary are adapting and translating for Spanish speakers. A separate seminary team is doing the same for biblical Greek. We’ve begun to consolidate and circulate plans for how we might serve in an ongoing way the cluster of churches that are part of our sending team. Initial conversations are promising and, to be honest, both daunting and exciting. I’m halfway through my online course called Perspectives on the World Christian Movement. I’m taking inputs from two Colombian graduates of our seminary to fashion a final project on how to bring Christ to demobilizing FARC guerillas. Did you know that we maintain a Baerly There … blog? And that David’s blog, Canter Bridgehas been churning out miserable pablum for a decade now? Both Karen and I struggle to go a day without a slice of Shoofly Pie. But we’re racking up serious miles on our bikes, so who cares? Copyright © 2017 United World Mission, All rights reserved. You are receiving this email because we believe you may want to stand with our work in Latin America and beyond. Our mailing address is: 739 Church Street, Millersburg, PA 17061 United World Mission is located at: 205 Regency Executive Park Dr Suite 430, Charlotte, NC 28217 800-825-5896 uwm.org Want to change how you receive these emails? You can update your preferences or unsubscribe from this list. This edition of Baerly There … has been brought to you by Shoofly Pie. Spell it right!