Month: April 2024

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Taste Sampler

Puzzling or Amusing, which is it? Both perhaps. . .

Cross-cultural workers meet up with any number of puzzlements, leaving one off balance enough to keep the journey intriguing.

The slight-of-body PhD scholar smiled sheepishly as he related a kind of tug-of-war he was in with their nine-year-old daughter.

“Jerry, you know that Bible for children, the one with many pictures that you gave us?”

Noting my nod, Mr. Tang went on. . .

“Well, my daughter and I, we fight over it. She finds the book very interesting, and so do I! So, when she is reading it, I want to read it, and also the other way around.”

For those like me, not raised in a society where the world’s most popular (international best-seller-book ever) is virtually a banned product, the reaction is astonishment.

It is remarkable really. How could a brilliant scholar with multiple degrees to his name find such a widespread piece of famous literature nearly inaccessible?

The entrance of your word gives light*

At Mr. Tang’s tug-of-war description, I couldn’t help smile. The mental image of a distinguished petroleum engineer husband and father pitted in a feisty back-and-forth with his fourth-grade daughter over the Holy Bible. Amusing to be sure. Yet, moments later the weightier, more sobering implication settled in.

Here is nine-year-old Angie, brought by her warm-hearted and, yes, atheist parents to the Land of the Free.

Angie (perhaps from simple curiosity at this point) yearns to take in the stories of God and Jesus. This, while her mother and father – grappling with the thousand adjustments called for in adapting to a new land and culture – carry their own yearnings. Daddy himself nurtures an appetite of some kind or other sufficient to sneak in bits of Bible reading during moments when his daughter isn’t on guard.

Can this household – others as well – be gently introduced to further samplings of the life-giving Word? Lead us, Father.

©2024 Jerry Lout                                                                             *Psalm 119:130

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Eventful Venue

“There! That should do it.

Sigh”.

Word-smithing a workable mission statement can be a daunting venture. While, in our case it surely was, we felt gratified in the outcome. The Lord’s fingerprint seemed present. This was humbling.

So, by now most of our official-sounding boxes had gotten ticked. Yay. . .

Register as a campus organization, Tick. Recruit faculty advisor, Tick. Secure Photo I.D. etc. Tick. Do the Non-profit 501©3 Thing, Tick. Set in place a governing Board (lots of prayer invested on that one!) Tick.

Our residential move into Tulsa County meant a fresh schooling adventure for ten-year-old Amy. Not the easiest transition, since her growing up years till now had passed in far off East African. It was amazing – to her credit and God’s – that the many topsy-turvy upside-down experiences Amy underwent throughout the seasons of adolescence, the teens and young woman-hood left her reasonably unscathed.

The sprawling Haikey Creek Park lay a short distance from our home and served as a kind of therapy-session zone for the three of us. I had come to realize that I was way over my head in the parenting-skills department. Perhaps, especially here in America. The Lord’s mercies graciously brought us all through these seasons. My wonderful third-born proved herself nearly super-human in resilience. . . and in forgiveness toward her rather often dysfunctional dad.

Haikey Creek Park – its acreage playing host to a host of pecan trees – gained added notoriety in our family circle when Amy’s big brother started making wedding plans with his bride-to-be, Sarah.

In time, the Rehearsal Dinner topic was broached.

“Dad”, our M.K. son began, “could you find us a goat to barbeque?”

©2024 Jerry Lout

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Stated Intent

A brilliant and beloved Southern California professor was fond of urging his fellow believers to live life on purpose, employing principles which he dubbed VIM.

Those lives that bear the marks of wholeness and flourishing for the good, Dallas Willard contended, tend to stem from persons who have firmly embraced Vision (the first letter of the acronym).

Alongside Vision come Intention and Means. Our infant ministry on the Tulsa campus – testing its wobbly legs with gangly stops and starts that are common to the very young – had started hammering out our Intention piece.

Just what were we sensing that God actually wanted? What would bring a ready smile to his magnificent countenance?

Jim Garton and I set out to give it our best in crafting a mission statement. It was clear that International Student Ministries needed one.

What shall we count as ISM’s Intention (the aim or aims that could be counted on to mark us and keep us grounded and focused through coming years). While we understood that a mission purpose can be tweaked and that often the best of aims can meet with course corrections, we felt daily the gravity of this assignment. It weighed on us.

At long last, with a lot of needed grace from above, we landed the plane.

The stated purpose carried two crucial features, neither of which could be realized apart from the other. Students needed to be able to enjoy the assurance that they are genuinely welcomed and cared about. Relationship must be key, with Christ’s tangible love and presence the heartbeat of it all.

The team’s next newsletter to be rolled out would herald our reason for being. Our Intention:

International Community Outreach exists to glorify God by meeting practical and spiritual needs of international students, through acts of service and through the proclamation of the gospel of Christ.

With our stated mission now in place, all that remained was to live it out!

This was to take some doing.

©2024 Jerry Lout

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Overflow

 

Turning onto Xanthus Ave that Thursday evening, I glanced at my watch. “How will this go? Who will show up? Will I be on my game (whatever that means)?

The young lady of last night’s call had suggested the newly-arrived grad students I was preparing to meet were open to learn something of the story of Jesus. “Had any of these scholarly young men ever seen a Bible?”, I wondered, Influenced and shaped as they likely were by their homeland’s official doctrine of atheism.

 A niggling question played at my own conscience, “How mindful am I of Jesus Christ in the course of my routine days?”

Dialing back the musings, I eased the car along the curb before the Jesus Inn. Minutes later I was settling into easy introductions and conversations with our new arrivals. The easy part was much to the credit of Weili, her cheery personality mitigating any sense of awkwardness. “At last,” I thought, smiling, “we have a face to go with that sing-song voice from the phone visit!”

That first evening at Jesus Inn – engaging, laughing with, welcoming the newcomers – served as a treasured early catalyst for us at the university. Propelling the ministry forward slow-motion, as we inched our way to becoming a truly transcultural family. We (students, volunteers, friendship partners) could with God’s help, steward a faith culture flowering in deep-hearted care, engaging throughout in meaningful acts of service.

Now – three decades in – the miracle of good seed planted, and of lives yet being changed for the good, stands as evidence that any misgivings or nail-biting angst earlier on were mere distractions. Several of the Jesus-Inn graduate students with their specialties (geology – information technology – petroleum) have proceeded wonderfully forward, bearing fruit within their fresh-discovered faith.

Issuing from the overflow of a young lady’s renovated heart.

©2024 Jerry Lout