American Missionary Fellowship

We’ve just completed a week at the national staff meeting in Forest Falls, California. Eighty-four of us gathered together to seek God’s will and spend time discussing, learning, and exchanging ideas. But when I think about the week, I think about the evenings, when we were simply allowing God’s Spirit to move in our lives.

Sitting in our little apartment with a room full of paper spread all over, trying to get work done, trying to make it happen, the words of Psalm 95 leapt off the page.

RobAnne is my wife.  We’ve been married for thirty-five years. There’s a lot I know about RobAnne. When you live with someone for that long, you know her inside and out. You know when she’s happy and sad; you know when she’s fulfilled. Well, in less than a week, our national staff meeting takes place, and I have seen RobAnne working in her passion.

Our son, R.W., is working full-time, going to graduate school full-time, and living in the Chicago area in the middle of winter. Until recently, his only form of transportation was a bike. For the past eight years, we’ve had a Jeep for our kids to use. It’s been sitting in front of our house, and I decided to drive it to Chicago so R.W. could have a form of transportation other than his feet or his bike during the cold winter months.

It’s twenty-eight hours of pure driving time from southern California to Chicago. It took me just over two days to get there. I used the time to think about what was important, about what was happening in my life, and about the kinds of things that are important to the future of the mission. During those twenty-eight hours of think time, I came up with three things that are very important to the life of the mission.

I’m amazed at how little decisions that seem insignificant can become huge in our lives. They become life-changing decisions. For me, it was being a boy from Michigan going to school in California. From there I met RobAnne, got involved in ministry, and had wonderful experiences that changed my life.