END OF A CHAPTER

It was just about 28 years ago when we received the telegram that informed us that we were being appointed to the islands of Samoa as missionaries for the Church of the Nazarene. A few months later we boarded the plane with our four young children and headed out over the South Pacific to our new home in Samoa. It has been an incredible adventure filled with opportunities to be partners with God and experience events equal to many you would read about in the New Testament. Our 28 years as missionaries has been an incredible, wonderful chapter in our lives; One that has and will continue to impact us for the good for as long as we live. Raising our children in the South Pacific has been a blessing that I would not trade for anything. The virtues and values we wanted our children to learn were easily learned in the context of the Samoan culture that held in high esteem these same values. Virtues such as sharing, forgiveness, serving, esteeming age and experience, working in community, patience and more were also Samoan values and our home and family was blessed as we taught these values to our children and had the culture to re-affirm and strengthen as well. Thank you for letting us serve as your missionaries in the South Pacific cultures and environment. It has been an adventure that few will ever have the opportunity to experience. We feel blessed. Recently my mother breathed her last earthly breath and raced toward the eternal to breathe her first breath of heaven where she is now with the Jesus she learned to love early. I have told a few that I started attending church 9 months before I was born and have grown up around and involved in the life of the church. As a child I asked Jesus to forgive my sins and help me live a Christian life. He has done both. When I was 17 I heard Jesus call my name again as I was reading the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus said, "the harvest is plentiful but the laborers are few". As I read those words I knew I was being called by God to be a missionary. To my own surprise I immediately responded with a yes and, frankly, had no comprehension of what I was getting into. When I asked Joy to marry me, she knew that to say yes to the proposal was also to say yes to this call to missions. Thankfully, she said yes to both. Throughout the years, both of our parents have been fully supportive of our calling and have prayed daily for us. From the beginning they have never asked us to come home or do anything less than absolute obedience to the call of God. A couple days following my mother’s funeral my father asked me if I would be able to come home now. It was, as it had been when I was 17 and heard God's call. I recognized God's voice once again. This time he was speaking through my dad and I immediately knew that our life chapter as missionaries was about to end. I knew God was saying it was my time to care for my father. There were a couple scriptures that quickly came to mind about honoring mother and father and caring for family that reaffirmed everything we have always believed about family and have tried to instill in our own children. Joy and I have felt an incredible peace about the need of caring for my father and making the decision to bring our missionary career to and end and I have felt the Lord affirm this decision many times since. This was a surprise to both of us. I had not anticipated leaving World Mission for several more years. The future now presents a new challenge to our faith. The church has cared so well for us so that we have given little thought to the routine needs such as housing, insurance, salary etc. That is quickly changing. We are confident, however, that the grace of God, which has provided for us until now will continue to provide for us in days to come. We will leave the South Pacific for the last time on February 1, which has been our home for our entire missionary career. Our intended destination is Laurel, Montana where we will make our home. Many of you have been our friends for a long, long time. Others of you are new friends and just as valued. We will miss each one of you but do hope that our paths may one day cross again. I continue to trust that God will work out his plans, in his way and in his time. As you have prayed for us in the past, we would appreciate your prayers for us as we transition from this chapter to the next. We are ever your friends, James and Joy