Learn your Lessons

I just came back from DayStar Academy. We had a board meeting yesterday. Steve Grabiner and I rode over there and back again together. On our way, we were not very optimistic about the prospects for DayStar. It seemed, at the moment, that their financial woes would be too much to overcome. On the way back, we were thrilled to be encouraged. There are certainly financial troubles, but somehow the people are full of faith and even if they've had no stipend for a long time, they believe the Lord will turn things around for them. Oh, I need to find someone with means to help these lovely people.

Joy Grabiner (five foot two, cute as a button and only 26) has been a missionary in Honduras for the last two years. A couple of days ago, she and a visiting friend, Alissa, needed to go a few blocks away from Joy's house. Joy asked Alissa what she was carrying. (Joy lives in a bad neighborhood.) The girl had her camera and some money. Joy was worried, but it's just two blocks, "we should be alright," she thought. On the way, two men came around on bicycles, stopped right in their faces and pulled a gun.

"We want all you have," they said.

Joy stepped between Alissa and the would be robbers and accosted them in Spanish with, "That's not nice." (Or its equivalent.) She proceeded to chastise them for what they intended to do. Well, she took so much time that, in their urgency, they decided to grab her cell phone and high tail out of there.

Was the gun they were brandishing real ? I don't know, but poor old Steven wishes his daughter wouldn't be quite so bold in such circumstances. Anyway, all's well that ends well, and Joy is a heroine for a day.

We are doing our first cutting of hay for this year at EVI. The weather doesn't look too promising, but we are going ahead anyway. We are praying for no rain. With that, we are selling tiny tomatoes and cucs to Whole Foods, Inc. and sunflowers to someone else. Everything on the farm looks great. May the Lord keep the blankedy blank devil at bay this year.

I have eight or nine classes (sermons) to do this week in the L.I.G.H.T. program and in Estes Park on Sabbath. Then I go to 3ABN. (That is so nerve wracking.)

We had our first Search Committee to find the next president for OCI. My logic and heart leans heavily toward Steve Grabiner for President. On the other hand, my prayer is that God's will be done. It will be interesting to see how things develop. I'm glad we are finally on our way with this responsibility.

I was asked, by another search committee, if I would accept to be the president of another OCI institution. The answer is no, no more if I can help it. I hope that my institutional leadership days are over. I'll be happy to support my wife in her work and to teach at Kibi, RFI, and any other African school on a relaxed basis. The Lord knows the freedom I experience from knowing my incompetence in these matters. Let the young men/women pick up the heavy loads and by God's mercies avoid the mistakes I've made.

RH Dec. 16, 1902:9 "There are some lessons that are never learned only through failure." Supposing now, your life has been an on-going success. You've learned every lesson you can possibly learn through life thus far and all that remains is to learn the lessons that can never be learned except through failure, would you be willing to learn those lessons too?

Doesn't that place failure in its proper perspective? The quotation goes on to say that "Peter was a better man after his fall." He lost his self-sufficient confidence. Listen, dear ones, the sooner the better. Try, unlike me, to learn on small projects instead of big ones.

So says the Preacher to his Tribe.