MONDAY LETTER, 10 April 2006
Dear Colleagues:
Greetings at the start of what for us in Western Europe is “Holy Week”, when we remember and focus on the last few days of Jesus’ ministry before His crucifixion. Amazing that someone who lived 2,000 years ago, only lived to the age of about 33, who spent most of his life in an obscure village in a small country in the Middle-East, and who was crucified as a criminal, should still be the object of worship of millions in the world of the 21st century. People still die for him in their thousands every year as totalitarian governments imprison, torture and kill His followers – the man of peace, who preached that we should love our enemies and do good to those who persecute us. More books have been written about Him than about any other person in history (apparently Napoleon of France comes a distant second), and this Friday crosses will be carried through towns and villages to commemorate His death – before Sunday comes, and glorious and triumphant church services will celebrate the fact that, as He said He would, He rose from the dead – indisputably and without a doubt, with no other explanation for the empty tomb or His subsequent appearances to eye-witnesses ever having stood the test of forensic examination. This is my favourite week of the year!
LAST WEEK
Two major initiatives, both designed to improve the quality of our support to you in the field.
The first was that we sent out from this office probably the most important document to have come from here in my time as Area Director – a proposal for the radical re-structuring of the Area into six Regions, each with a Regional Director, and each RD looking after 5-6 nations. There’s a lot of detail behind that, but hopefully this will greatly and significantly improve the level of support and close-in care that we are able to offer to existing national programmes, as well as increase our capacity to pioneer into new nations. There are many opportunities to do this, and thus the proposal paper is entitled: “Through Open Doors”. If you are interested in seeing the proposals in detail, ask your National Director for a copy. (National Directors: if for any reason your copy has not come through, let me know right away. It was sent last Thursday.)
If you are reading this here, you will know that the second, more modest initiative was to set up our own blog-spot, to make our communication with the field much more immediate and current. Blogs have some advantages over websites, including, for the owner, very simple updating of news, and for the user, the ability to post comments very easily. Ours is at http://yfcemena.blogspot.com and I encourage you to check it out regularly. I will update it as often as there is anything newsworthy to report, or urgent stuff to pray about. We won’t be putting on there anything of a politically-or-geographically-sensitive nature, and people leaving comments should be similarly careful. We will also get around to putting on links to national YFC websites, so if you would prefer us not to do that for your nation, let me know.
NEW INTERNATIONAL BOARD MEMBER REPRESENTS OUR AREA
It was great to hear that at the meetings of our International Board in Rwanda the week before last, the nomination of Maarten van Helden from The Netherlands as our Lay Trustee was accepted. Maarten is one of the three Directors of the City of Zwolle, Chairman of the Council of his church, and he served on the National Board of YFC Netherlands for ten years. At the Board meeting he also agreed to head the newly-formed Audit Committee. Maarten came with strong recommendation from Marius Blom, Treasurer of the International Board, and Edward de Kam, YFC Netherlands National Director, both of whom have known him for many years. I too was highly-impressed when we met for a chat back in January. Pray for this man, and continue to remember also Alfons Hildebrandt, Field Representative, and Martin Homann, representing the newly-formed Alumni Association of YFC. Keeping these and other equally-talented and strong-minded characters in order is the job of Board Chairman Sam Wolgemuth, so make sure he also appears somewhere on your prayer-list.
PRAYER THIS WEEK
Monday - Cyprus, and Hungary
Tuesday - Arabian Gulf, and Finland
Wednesday - Northern Ireland, and the Area office
Thursday - Moldova, and France
Friday - Netherlands, and Germany
CONGRATULATIONS THIS WEEK
Eileen Bidwell (africanmom@aol.com) heavily involved in the YFC Africa Area for many years, celebrates her birthday on Wednesday. Her husband David, (dbidwell@yfc.net) Ministry Resources and Partnerships Director for the YFC Africa Area, celebrated his yesterday.
That’s all for the moment. Let us hear from you if you have news or special prayer requests, or anything else that you want to share with the whole Area family.
In the meantime, kindest regards, and let’s rejoice mightily in this special week.
In His grip and grace.
John Duncan
Area Director.
Greetings at the start of what for us in Western Europe is “Holy Week”, when we remember and focus on the last few days of Jesus’ ministry before His crucifixion. Amazing that someone who lived 2,000 years ago, only lived to the age of about 33, who spent most of his life in an obscure village in a small country in the Middle-East, and who was crucified as a criminal, should still be the object of worship of millions in the world of the 21st century. People still die for him in their thousands every year as totalitarian governments imprison, torture and kill His followers – the man of peace, who preached that we should love our enemies and do good to those who persecute us. More books have been written about Him than about any other person in history (apparently Napoleon of France comes a distant second), and this Friday crosses will be carried through towns and villages to commemorate His death – before Sunday comes, and glorious and triumphant church services will celebrate the fact that, as He said He would, He rose from the dead – indisputably and without a doubt, with no other explanation for the empty tomb or His subsequent appearances to eye-witnesses ever having stood the test of forensic examination. This is my favourite week of the year!
LAST WEEK
Two major initiatives, both designed to improve the quality of our support to you in the field.
The first was that we sent out from this office probably the most important document to have come from here in my time as Area Director – a proposal for the radical re-structuring of the Area into six Regions, each with a Regional Director, and each RD looking after 5-6 nations. There’s a lot of detail behind that, but hopefully this will greatly and significantly improve the level of support and close-in care that we are able to offer to existing national programmes, as well as increase our capacity to pioneer into new nations. There are many opportunities to do this, and thus the proposal paper is entitled: “Through Open Doors”. If you are interested in seeing the proposals in detail, ask your National Director for a copy. (National Directors: if for any reason your copy has not come through, let me know right away. It was sent last Thursday.)
If you are reading this here, you will know that the second, more modest initiative was to set up our own blog-spot, to make our communication with the field much more immediate and current. Blogs have some advantages over websites, including, for the owner, very simple updating of news, and for the user, the ability to post comments very easily. Ours is at http://yfcemena.blogspot.com and I encourage you to check it out regularly. I will update it as often as there is anything newsworthy to report, or urgent stuff to pray about. We won’t be putting on there anything of a politically-or-geographically-sensitive nature, and people leaving comments should be similarly careful. We will also get around to putting on links to national YFC websites, so if you would prefer us not to do that for your nation, let me know.
NEW INTERNATIONAL BOARD MEMBER REPRESENTS OUR AREA
It was great to hear that at the meetings of our International Board in Rwanda the week before last, the nomination of Maarten van Helden from The Netherlands as our Lay Trustee was accepted. Maarten is one of the three Directors of the City of Zwolle, Chairman of the Council of his church, and he served on the National Board of YFC Netherlands for ten years. At the Board meeting he also agreed to head the newly-formed Audit Committee. Maarten came with strong recommendation from Marius Blom, Treasurer of the International Board, and Edward de Kam, YFC Netherlands National Director, both of whom have known him for many years. I too was highly-impressed when we met for a chat back in January. Pray for this man, and continue to remember also Alfons Hildebrandt, Field Representative, and Martin Homann, representing the newly-formed Alumni Association of YFC. Keeping these and other equally-talented and strong-minded characters in order is the job of Board Chairman Sam Wolgemuth, so make sure he also appears somewhere on your prayer-list.
PRAYER THIS WEEK
Monday - Cyprus, and Hungary
Tuesday - Arabian Gulf, and Finland
Wednesday - Northern Ireland, and the Area office
Thursday - Moldova, and France
Friday - Netherlands, and Germany
CONGRATULATIONS THIS WEEK
Eileen Bidwell (africanmom@aol.com) heavily involved in the YFC Africa Area for many years, celebrates her birthday on Wednesday. Her husband David, (dbidwell@yfc.net) Ministry Resources and Partnerships Director for the YFC Africa Area, celebrated his yesterday.
That’s all for the moment. Let us hear from you if you have news or special prayer requests, or anything else that you want to share with the whole Area family.
In the meantime, kindest regards, and let’s rejoice mightily in this special week.
In His grip and grace.
John Duncan
Area Director.
posted by John Duncan @ 11:04 am
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home