Really super cool awesome news

This week, Joe Stowell, the president of Moody Bible Institute announced his plans to retire from his position, effective February. Click here for the full details.

Anyway, for those of you to lazy to click the link, or you're just waiting till you're done reading the full post to check it out, Stowell, who has preached at our church several times in the past, made the point that God has gifted him in two very distinct areas. One is administration and leadership, the other is teaching/preaching. For the past 18 years he has, in his words used up almost all of his ability to do the first, while barely tapping the latter. Over the past few years, he has had the growing desire and passion for teaching, so after much prayer, and on the advice of many of his trusted friends and advisors, he decided to step down as president of Moody.

This morning, after the service, James MacDonald, head pastor of our church had a little "family meeting" with our congregation of several thousand to talk about the financial situation of one or two of the projects the church has undertaken, and to announce that Joe Stowell will be taking a position here at Harvest as assistant pastor in March of next year. James preaches an average of 39 sundays a year, and that number will move down only to 37 next year, with Joe taking the 15 of the remaining sundays. So anyway... this is great news. We're very excited, and happy to see some of the pressure off of James.

That's it for today.

Tammy and Josh

Well, today I talked to my younger sister, who got married earlier this year, and is living out in New York. She and her husband Josh closed on their first house today. It's really well priced for the size of house that it is. 3 bedroom with a 2 car garage and a big yard. What great news!

My creativity's been on the fritz again lately, and Sarah's been overwhelmed with all the things she has coming up. Please pray for her, as she will be going back to school, and working her crazy schedule at two jobs.

That's all for now. I'll be back with more later.

Jim

Missions

For those of you who don't know the situation concerning my parents, I'll catch you up. My parents and my 2 younger brothers are planning on going into the missions field in Africa. Specifically, Tanzania, and have been facing delay after delay in the process. They were to have a meeting in New York state this week with the heads of the mission board that they'd be serving under to determine whether they were ready to begin their "training" in NY city. This training would take from 6 months to a year, when it started, which might not even be till Jan of next year. Needless to say, mom and dad have been very antsy to get going, and we've all been praying that something would happen soon.

Well, today it did. They met with the board, who was so impressed, they've decided to skip the NYC part, and send them directly to Tanzania!
They're soooo excited, and I am too. The head of the board was so enthusiastic about them, that he is going to call the pastor in Tanzania to see when they can come. The situation there is absolutely perfect. The pastor they'd be serving under is an aging missionary who is looking to retire soon, and needs someone to mentor. They are on what the board calls a "fast track" which consists of 2 years out, and then they come back for evaluation. From there, They'll decide to go back or somewhere else.

Anyway... very exciting news.

Jim