God's Golden Acre

2005 Heather Reynolds and Dale le Vack
ISBN 1 85424 706 9 (UK)

A biography of Heather Reynolds – the inspirational story on one woman's fight for some of the world's most vulnerable AIDS orphans.

At first sight, this is not a book that would have appealed to me. It is about a white lady who cared for orphans in the Valley of a Thousand Hills region of South Africa in KwaZulu Natal.

But from the start I found it intensely gripping, real, and personally very helpful. Heather was brought up in South Africa, the daughter of white people who ran a trading post. Her father was a drunk though she speaks very warmly of him, and she made a very bad marriage which her mother could have prevented but didn't. Her elder brother was handicapped and her life was a shambles until God got hold of her in her twenties. This book pulls no punches.

She met a man who really cared for her, and when her divorce came through, she married him and did not look back. This man, under God, enabled her to make a comeback as a person. Fluent in Zulu as well as English and Afrikaans, under God, she committed her life to the care of poor Zulu families. In human terms she had little going for her and few resources, and for years lived close to the breadline, fighting to help the poor people around her in the midst of opposition from her white neighbours who saw no reason to help 'black people'.

The hand of God is very clearly seen in the way that Heather was led, the people that God led to associate with her, and the amazing timing of supply that only God could provide.

This book has been of particular interest to me because of visits I made to All Africa Bible College when it was situated at Hillcrest overlooking the Valley of a Thousand Hills on the N3 motorway between Pietermaritzburg and Durban. The college has now closed and the premises bought by 'Focus on the Family, South Africa'.

I particularly remember a couple of incidents that occurred while Janet and I were staying at AABC with the boys, when intruders came up the very steep hill from the Valley of a Thousand Hills to the college at the top and attempted to break into staff houses. It was very frightening for all involved, and the electric fence and other defences did nothing to keep intruders out of the college premises.

Amazon.co.uk reviews of this book

God's Undertaker: has science buried God?

2007 John C Lennox – Reader in Maths at Oxford University
ISBN 978 0 7459 5303 8

A Christmas present from my wife, probably the most convincing book I have read about the Creation – Evolution debate. But not for the fainthearted. On the way the book answers various comments made by Richard Dawkins among a host of others. The cover says:

If we believe many modern commentators, science has squeezed God into a corner, killed and then buried him with its all-embracing explanations. Atheism, we are told, is the only intellectually tenable position, and any attempt to reintroduce God is likely to impede the progress of science.

In this stimulating and thought-provoking book, John Lennox invites us to consider such claims very carefully. Is it really true, he asks, that everything in science points towards atheism? Could it be possible that theism sits more comfortably with science than atheism? Has science buried God or not?

The titles of the chapters are:

• War of the worldviews
• The scope and limits of science
• Reduction, reduction, reduction...
• Designer universe
• Designer biospere
• The nature and scope of evolution
• The origin of life
• The genetic code and its origin
• Matters of information
• The monkey machine
• The origin of information

I enjoyed reading this book and will read it again in a little while to let it sink in further. As a seeker after truth, I have the responsibility to educate myself against the false doctrines that are in the world. If God has said that He made everything, which He does, I have a responsibility to deal with any remnants of doubt that may linger, and to align myself totally with everything He tells me. That's precisely why books like this are written.

The day that I realised, through attending a Creationist presentation, that God has done what He says He has done, it was as though something dirty fell away from me; I suddenly felt clean. That speaks volumes.

Amazon.co.uk reviews of this book

Christmas 2009 News

How wonderful to receive Newsletters from dear friends at and around Christmas. And how grateful we are that they have not given up when we have failed to reciprocate!

Mike
Although he was supposed to hand over responsibility for the UK World Outreach office at the start of October, six and a half years of development work takes time to document, especially since development continued right up to the end. So it was on December 17 that the final version of the 180 page Operations Manual was sent to the new Operations Director in Market Harborough.

Christmas was a peculiar time for Mike; a massive anticlimax with plenty to do but no energy to do it. Janet said 'Relax, and enjoy having some time', but it's not so easy when all you've been doing has suddenly stopped.

• No longer is he waking up in the middle of the night and writing a list of jobs to do the next day.
• No longer does he suddenly realise a better way to program something and go out to the office to bury himself for hours till the changes are made.
• No longer will he wake up at 4.30 in the morning with a brilliant idea that prohibits further sleep so he starts work that day at 5am.
• No longer will he still be out in the office at 9pm because 'there's still something he must finish'.
• No longer will he have to be in the office for several days over month-end to ensure that all financial transactions are up to date and all month-end transfers to missionaries have been made. It has meant that holidays and trips always had to kept away from the end of the month so as not to impact office schedules.

Janet serving the meal

Much of the work has had nothing to do with processing donations or liaising with supporters, but much more to do with development work, something that will not need to be repeated by those who come after. It would have been a doddle if there had been no development. But that's how it was, and he's completed it now.

Janet
Always supportive and understanding; always gentle and kind. Her father is 83 and doing very well. We try to go to see him at regular intervals, but our visits have not been as frequent as we would have liked, although Janet rings every week.

Tim
Continues to share a house with a number of other young professions a mile or two from home and calls in for a meal at least once a week. He is doing well working for the Civil Service and is no stranger to hard work. He enjoys regular visits to the gym and football twice a week with friends.

Ben
Has returned to enjoy the pleasures of home life for a season, though we realise that next time he moves out it will be permanent. He is working hard for an American company in Bracknell after suffering for a while in a post that seemed to be going nowhere. When Ben is motivated, nothing can stand in his way and he is doing well.

Kik, Ben and Tim enjoying a
traditional Christmas meal

We enjoy watching our sons, now 27 and 25 respectively, growing up into fine young men and pray that God will make them well-pleasing to Him.

Kik
Our Japanese friend Kikuyo joined us again in the middle of December to our great pleasure. She had stayed with us before for 5 years from about 2002 to 2007 so the whole family know her well.

Since this is going on a blog, there is no need to tell you about other events that have taken place during the year. These will be the subject of other entries.

It’s Our Turn to Eat: the story of a Kenyan whistleblower

2009, Michela Wong
ISBN-10: 0061346586
ISBN-13: 978-0061346583

If you have an interest in Africa and why most of the people of African continue in utmost destitution and poverty while their rulers drive around in luxury cars, you need to read this book.

It is the story of Kenya, and how since independence successive governments have succeeded in milking the system. Michela Wong writes brilliantly and with insight about the situation in Kenya, and about John Githongo who was appointed by the new Kenyan president in 2002 to expose corruption, and the process by which he realised that the president was running the corruption, and using John as a ‘clean’ front-man. The UN and the British government, as usual, come out of book as parts of the problem. Africans are rarely able to be really corrupt without the help of their foreign friends.

A review in the Economist (Feb 28, 2009) says 'This gripping saga is a down-to-earth yet sophisticated exposé of how an entire country can be munched in the clammy claws of corruption. It is also a devastating account of how corruption and tribalism reinforce each other, as clannish elites exploit collective feelings of jealousy or superiority in an effort to ensure that their lot wins a fat, or the fattest, share of the cake. Hence the book’s title: “It’s our turn to eat”'.

Amazon.co.uk reviews of this book

The end of the (World Outreach) line

Early in October 2009 I hand all the work of World Outreach UK Operations Director over to John Ball, one of the other WOUK trustees. I think it would be hard to find a more suitable man than John. As an ex-Publishing Manager of Scripture Union with links to Bible Society, he will bring valuable expertise to the job in areas of management, publicity and much more.

Now that what I began to do in 2003 is complete, that is developing and documenting office systems for World Outreach, it is clearly the right time to hand over.

Janet, my wife, reminds me that beginning in Summer 2003 when I began the initial work to take over the administration of World Outreach UK from the office in Dorchester, which employed 3 people, I had to work very hard to get everything going. The aim was to take all the records that were needed for the continuance of the trust from the 3-storey office in Dorchester, and to compress them into a form that could be held by a PC and filing cabinet in a small office in Reading.

During June 2003 I had made a whistle-stop visit to World Outreach offices in Singapore, Brisbane and Auckland to evaluate their computer systems and had learnt that none of them could be utilised to provide accounting and office systems for the UK office. Researching the software market in the UK also revealed that there was nothing available that was not either simplistic or over-complex for the task we faced. It seemed remarkable to me that with thousands of UK charities with similar requirements (or so I imagined), there should be nothing suitable for us in the marketplace.

So, apart from having to convert existing supporter records into a form that we could use, it was necessary to write a fair amount of software to interface to the hybrid QuickBooks package that was providing core accounting. As the months went by, the software expanded and generated work because we able to do more with the data than we had ever done before. We began to discover which supporters were interested in what and to write to them to keep them informed about their interests.

In time the World Outreach UK website was developed and it became difficult to keep all the balls in the air, especially because the office system continually developed as my understanding of VB6 programming and web systems increased. We moved to web platforms for forex transfers which greatly reduced the cost of sending money to missionaries. This development was spurred on by the comment made by one forex bureau that banks made 60% of their profits from foreign exchange. I don't know how true this is.

So while this was all going on, a lot of normal living had to be on hold. Although we managed to take holidays away at least once a year, it did mean that for 6 years the house did not get painted and the garden did not get dug, all the jobs that a man's muscles do better! Janet proved her mettle in allowing me to get on with the job and supporting me in manic working while onlookers sometimes assumed that because she didn't go out to work time must weigh heavily on her hands.

So it is going to be a great relief to pass the responsibility on to someone else. The office routines are set up, all systems are now frozen, and it only remains to complete the online documentation for 'those that shall come after', because John will eventually pass the work on to someone else.

Christmas 2008 News

"Really!" you say. "Have we not heard from them for 5 years?" It is very likely that there has been radio silence on our part for all of that time, but we will now attempt to rectify the situation.

It was in 2003 that Mike took up the responsibility of 'Operations Director' of World Outreach, an international Christian mission. Over the last 5 years the role has grown and developed, providing continuously changing challenges, which he has generally enjoyed. He has spent a lot of time writing computer programs 'to make the work easier', and hopes to spend a good part of his Christmas 'break' moving the website www.wouk.org onto a new, easier to maintain basis..

Over the years we have visited people in foreign places like Thailand, Cambodia (Mike only), Malawi, Tanzania, South Africa, Florida, Scotland and Cornwall, and even tried a short cruise to the Bahamas from Miami! Mike has this terrible idea that every holiday has to have a purpose while Janet is very happy to enjoy a rest and change of scene.

Having been a part of Whiteknights Church in Reading for about 10 years, we have this year removed ourselves back to Earley Christian Fellowship, enjoying friendship across both situations. Mike also attends the Leaders' Prayer Meeting in town at Greyfriars Anglican Church once a week, enjoying association with the wider church.

Janet continues in the calling of a housewife, looking after Mike, and keeping the house and the food supplies running. She keeps up with friends and family around the place and spends an hour every morning in a warm corner by the French windows reading theological tomes alongside the bible. We like the little house we have owned in Reading since 1995, it's warm and dry with a pleasant outlook front and back, and we feel God has been very kind to us in providing it.

Janet enjoyed the pleasures of the NHS from the 'other side of the sheets' when, while visiting South Mimms service station on our way to visit Mike's brother and sister-in-law in Norfolk, she fell into a flower bed and heard a snapping sound on the way down. A passing St John's lady diagnosed a broken arm and the satnav took us directly to the nearest A&E where it was put into plaster. Some days later, the Royal Berkshire Hospital, discovering that the arm was not healing correctly, put 2" stainlesss nails into Janet's wrist, and it took six months for her arm to return almost to normal. The lengths we go for excitement! A month previously, Mike had tripped over a kerb-stone in Morrison's car park. As he went down, a voice said in his ear "roll into a ball". He obeyed and rolled across the car-park, sustaining no damage except slight bruising. Amazing.

Tim (26) now works for DEFRA in the town centre, awarding subsidies to qualifying farmers, and enjoys applying his quick wits to using their computer systems and helping others who work with him. He's now moved out to a bedsit a couple of miles away in a large Victorian house and is enjoying a bit more freedom carving out his own lifestyle.

Ben (24) works for Slipstream at Green Park on the edge of Reading, ringing up companies to interrogate their technical experts about their computing needs. It's been a steep learning curve for him, but he's making the grade and growing into a very socially competent chap. But they both are; it's called growing up!

So, what else can we tell you? Well Mike is 63 and Janet's a bit less, and we're both wondering what the future's going to hold. For some years we have been thinking about moving to a flat, but the time hasn't been right. We both enjoy the garden, so if we move to a flat in the future we'd like there to be a mature garden around it. Ben still lives with us, and we don't want to turf him out, so he's got to be settled before we would move.

The World Outreach position involves routine office work which Mike tires of, and computer work which is beginning to become too difficult, so the writing is on the wall to pass the work to someone younger, more energetic and hopefully with a 21st century vision. At such time as this happens, we have wondered if it might be possible to live abroad again for a while and perhaps to become involved in some kind of Gospel work until it is no longer possible. We do wonder if all the bible reading and study over the years will find this kind of outlet again. It all depends on continuing good health and the will of God.

We read your newsletters with delight and great interest, so thanks for keeping up with us.

Funding the Family Business

Myles Wilson and Stewardship

Funding the Family Business, published by Stewardship for Christian workers, is packed with 25 chapters covering almost everything you need to know to establish a support base.

Early chapters look at the principles of giving: "If you are going to receive financial support, someone needs to give it, and because you can’t receive until they give, it is important to understand what the Bible says about being a giver before exploring what it means to be a receiver". The clear message is that because "it is more blessed to give than receive", support raisers are helping others to experience God’s blessing and reticence to approach potential supporters can deny them this privilege.

Later chapters deal more with the practicalities of finding supporters and asking for their commitment: "You want to make sure that those on your support team know why you want them to be your supporters, what being a supporter will involve and how they can be the best help to you in following Gods' call on your life".

As a workbook it is packed with stories, insight and exercises that will inspire, inform and guide in the ministry journey.

Testimonies
"Our support was declining and we were considering quitting. Myles' intervention and teaching completely transformed our view of support raising and set us on a fresh course with faith and vision"

"When we started looking into serving overseas, we vowed we would never raise our own support. But God had other ideas and soon we found ourselves reluctantly doing so. We then attended a Myles Wilson seminar and our reluctance was transformed into enthusiasm. We haven't looked back since and wouldn't change from it now - even if we were given the option."

"Several years ago, my wife and I  were receiving 70% of our target annual budget. We were in a financial hole, and could see no way up and out. I'm delighted to say that, with Myles as our coach, we were able to get to 95% of our budget within 6-9 months. Myles was a wonderful "coach" with a wealth of experience in this field. He not only has a firm grasp of biblical principles that lie behind the whole area of support raising, but has the personal qualities that a coach needs - encouraging all the time, but also prepared to confront and call for change when needed. He nurtured our faith in the Lord's ability to provide, and is a great teacher. He was for us a messenger from God, and we thank God for Him.

"Our mission has benefited enormously from Myles' training of both staff and mission Partners.  We have learnt not only how to go about raising support but why we want to do it.  Our aim is to develop partnerships between ourselves and churches, mission partners and the projects and ministries in which we serve, both here and abroad, and Myles has helped us to achieve that much more effectively."

"We have published a number of Myles' articles on giving and receiving in our magazine and have received more requests to re-use these in other church and charity publications than any other resource.

"For well over a decade we have used Myles Wilson to train our candidates in support raising.  His biblical, practical and enthusiastic approach has been a great help to many new candidates who can often feel unsure if they will ever be able to raise the amounts they need to follow God's call into mission.  However, despite some members coming from small churches with very limited finances, in the years Myles has trained our staff we have never had anyone not go to the field because they couldn't raise their support.   The foundation that Myles has helped us lay is to see support raising as a genuine way of getting churches, friends and family of our members involved in mission and as a blessing to the supporters where it is more blessed to give than receive."

More information