Just and Justifier

God presented Christ as a sacrifice of atonement, through the shedding of his blood—to be received by faith. He did this to demonstrate his righteousness, because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished— he did it to demonstrate his righteousness at the present time, so as Read more…

Why We Should Forgive the Unrepentant

I was asked this question in our home group recently, after a larger discussion on church discipline, and forgiving the repentant. I found a large number of documents online with various opinions. I read through the first nine that showed up on a google search, and summarized their positions below. Read more…

Christmas Depression

As we approached the Christmas season, I’ve asked various groups to pray for the depressed on a number of occasions. I’ve been aware of the general increase in depression around Christmas for some time. But I hadn’t thought seriously recently about my own struggles in feeling left behind in the Read more…

25km

For our second weekend in the rainforest, it seemed right to visit Simon’s father’s church, which was just 25 km north of Nya-nya — in fact, while it has another name, it is typically referred to as “25km”. Simon’s father traveled down to work with us a lot in 2014, Read more…

Missionary Linguist

It hasn’t always been easy describing what I do to a broad audience, but for some time now on immigration forms requiring a short answer, I indicate my profession as “Missionary Linguist”. I heard a chapel talk at the first SIL summer training I went to, in Eugene, OR, on Read more…

Tickets!

After a couple days of struggle, and finally giving up, Kim made one more call. God parted the clouds, and let the rainbows through.  The tickets we got today are a bit more expensive than the ones we originally had, but they’re actually better, in terms of the connections in Read more…

Dictionaries

I just finished drafting the line “good progress on dictionaries for each of the languages” for the newsletter we’re hoping to put out in the next couple days, and I realized I’m not sure that it is clear to all why that is a good thing.  So here’s a bit Read more…

Boys cabin

Joel poses with a couple of his cabin mates. They all started out best friends, as nine of the ten of them were in the same cabin last year. But this afternoon, one wanted to stay in bed because others were being mean. So we took a break from our Read more…