2011 - Any favorable forecasts?

I came home from the office yesterday and asked Abbie if she wanted the good news or the bad news first. As usual, that question stumps her and she never knows what to say, so I gave her the bad news first: "There's no good news."

The day had started off with the confirmation that I have been filing my Portuguese tax returns wrong for the last 9 years, which opens up the prospects of all sorts of possible consequences that differ only in the amount of financial pain that will be inflicted in terms of additional taxes, fines and interest charges. None will be painless, especially as Portugal is teetering on the brink of financial collapse in the wake of Greece and Ireland. The final verdict is not in yet on which will be the next to fall: Spain or Portugal.

There is a lesson in this story. I've been reporting my income from the State Department according to information received from tax experts, who as recently as last week said I had been doing the right thing. When I was in the process of writing a letter to the Portuguese tax authorities and went to quote the tax treaty provision to support my position, I happened to read the next subparagraph. Everyone who advised me went as far as Art. 21(1)(b)(i). When I checked the law, I read the next subparagraph, Art. 21(1)(b)(ii). I immediately foresaw the consequences, and I asked my tax adviser about it, who said, "Yes, you have a problem!", apologizing for not being aware of all the facts that would affect my tax status. Moral: before you hang your doctrinal hat on one verse of the Bible, be sure you've read the preceding verse and the following one. Your hat may not fit on the hook, after all.

That was the start. Then I went to pick up the prescription for Abbie's heart medication. After 6 different pharmacies in Funchal all gave me the same story, I figured there must be some truth to it. That medication is sold out and the distributor is out and doesn't know when it will have more of it. The last pharmacist suggested I try some pharmacies out of town; I might get lucky and find one with a box or two of the pills.

Halfway home, I stopped at a pharmacy in a small village...same story...maybe she could find a generic drug that would serve. Everyone was in agreement: Abbie could not/should not stop taking this medication. I went on home with the doctor's phone number in my pocket. If I couldn't find the medication, he would have to write a prescription for a substitute.

All this, and on a rainy day, my umbrella broke. No good news to tell Abbie.

There was still one option for the medication. We went down to pharmacy in the village of Santa Cruz, where we live. The girl went and looked and came back shaking her head, adding, "There are no generic drugs that exactly fit this prescription." At the same time, the pharmacist came out of the back room with a package. It was a paper bag with Abbie's name written on it. In it was a box of the medication we were looking for. "Here, we've been holding this for you."

Ah, yes, some time before, Abbie had gone there with a prescription for two boxes of the medication and the pharmacy had only one. We paid for two, with the promise that if we came back the next week we could pick up the second box. We travelled; we forgot. Now, here was the box of medication she needed, already paid for! We checked the date on the receipt when we got home to see how long it had been on hold for us: March 23, 2010.
Is there any reason to doubt God's provision of our needs long before we are ever aware of them?

We have no clue what we will face in 2011, but God knows, and for His people, He has already made ample provision to see that our needs are met.

Mike

“Merry Christmas!”---“Happy New Year!”
This is the season and today is the day when the words “Merry” and “Happy” circle the earth on millions of greeting cards, form the subject lines of millions more e-mails, and roll off the tongue in rote repetition to people we don’t really know and for whom we have no clue about what would make them merry and happy now or at any other time. The essence of the human condition, however, has no knowledge of or respect for the times and seasons established by man’s arbitrary divisions called a calendar. In contrast to all those who make merry, there are countless souls who grieve, even on this day.

This morning, at 12:25 a.m., Mike Rogers vacated his earthly tent and moved into his house in heaven not built with human hands. 2Cor 5:1-5 For Debbie and their family, all the joy of any future Christmas will always be tinged with the shadow of the memory of their loss on this day.

Mike was the subject of some of my posts (here, here, here, and here) when his non-Hodgkins lymphoma was discovered about 4 years ago. From that time until this morning, the battle raged on between medical doctors and malignant disease, and Mike’s body was the battleground. When we heard last week that Mike was being moved from California to Colorado to be near his children and grandchildren, it was evident the battle was drawing to a close, and I took time to think back on what Mike and Debbie have meant to us.

Mike and Debbie both came from missionary families working in Brazil (and later, Paraguay and Chile, in the case of Mike’s parents). As missionaries, their families came to churches where Abbie and I were growing up as children. As my father would have said, “the four of us grew up together in different places.” We two couples married within a couple of years of one another and in time, at approximately the same times, we each had four children.

We switched roles. Mike and Debbie left the mission field when they grew up, and they settled in the US. We left the US and settled on the mission field in Brazil, then Madeira. But we still continued to grow up together in different places.

A special relationship

In truth, we have seen very little of Mike and Debbie, especially in the last 10 years, but as I thought back over the many years we have known each other, I realized that Mike was involved at crucial points in our ministry. As some would put it, our destinies were intertwined.

In the early 70’s, when we went to Brazil, it was the church in Arkansas where Mike was pastoring that raised the money for us to buy a car. Until then, we were on foot or dependent on others to get around.

In 1977, when we were forced to buy a house in order to stay and work on Madeira Island, it was the church Mike was pastoring in Kentucky that “single-handedly” contributed over 35% of the funds that allowed us to buy a house, the house we are still living in today.

In 2000, as a result of Mike’s teachings at our home church in Colorado, we lost all our remaining financial support from churches in the US that had supported us for almost 30 years. Actually, Mike resigned from that church on doctrinal principles, and our being cut off was a consequence of that issue, because we had both come to similar doctrinal positions that were not in line with the teachings received by tradition from the churches we were brought up in. I publicly thank God for Mike’s role in this phase of my spiritual growth and that of the church here.

Brother-Friend

Did Mike and I always agree? No. Were we always friends? Yes. I have come to realize that I have friends who are not brothers, and brothers who are not really friends. Mike was both. Because we were brothers in the Lord, we shared a common love for the Lord and His Word; because we were friends, we didn’t have to agree on every doctrine and every decision.

Mike came to Madeira twice, once by himself in the early 80s, and a second time, with Debbie in the late 90s. On his first visit, after I recounted in detail how the Lord had called us to Madeira, he looked at me and said, in essence, “That is a story I would reject outright, coming from anyone else; but I respect you when you tell it.” He told me why he would normally not respect such a tale, and although I had every personal reason to defend my position, I learned some important truths from what he said to me over lunch that day.

And that’s the way it was whenever our paths crossed. Our kindred spirits were in agreement on so much, but when we disagreed on a point of doctrine or a course of action, we listened to each other with respect.

I speak for myself. If Abbie were to add her thoughts, I know what she would say. She and Debbie are also kindred spirits. Besides their being mothers who raised four children who love and serve the Lord, the similarities between their talents in the field of music and decorative arts are uncanny.

Today Debbie and family mourn. We pray for them and mourn with them, but we do not grieve as those who have no hope. We have been growing up together with Mike and Debbie in different places all our lives; physically, Mike is just more distant from us than he has been. That is only temporary, however; in His time, the Lord will call each of us, and distance shall be no more.

It's a boy!...

...but that's what he always was. Joy and Mark's son, Finnian Jude Stoner, was born Friday night (in Arkansas). That's "middle of the wee Saturday morning hours" where we live. When the phone rang at 5:30 a.m. Saturday, I told Abbie as I got out of bed, "I bet you're a grandmother again." And I was right. Finn was born about two hours earlier (about the time I happened to be awake in the night). We talked with Joy for about 30 minutes, long enough to know Finn is not Baby Jesus, because "away in his manger, crying he made." We could hear him clear across the Atlantic.

All went well for mother and son (and supposedly father, but no one ever asks). We are very grateful to the Lord for His care over them. If you're interested in more details and pictures, click here for Joy and Mark's blog.

Sorry I haven't posted since AUGUST!!??? There was some traveling in that time, and a lot of work. Of course, with Christmas coming up and the cantata (this year one time in Portuguese and the other in English), we feel pushed to the limit. Will try to get some more postings to fill in the blanks of the past months. Right now the biggest blank is my mind.