February 2003

Dear Friends,

Lithuania is a place that captures your heart both by its needs and by its gifts. I have been here more than four years now, and I find it daily both challenge and reward. Life is simple for me; I have no car, no bank account, and a very small wardrobe. But it is not difficult; I have plenty of good food, a comfortable apartment, and warm clothing. So as I reach the spring break of another school year, I am clarifying for myself and for you, who have supported me in prayer and finances for the time I have been here, what the mission in this place is.

Lithuania Christian College is still unique in the central European post-Soviet region. It still has a largely volunteer or mission-agency-supported faculty, a largely Lithuanian paid staff, and an increasingly international student population. Offering a liberal arts Christian education to students who don't really understand liberal arts and who are largely uncommitted Christians remains a miraculous challenge. Some students come committed to newly emerging Protestant churches; many are inactive Roman Catholic or Russian Orthodox members, most are uncertain of any faith. Many soon experience what they only comprehend as a "different" attitude toward life and people, but LCC is working to clarify that life-changing impression into a real understanding. This year the governing board challenged the staff and faculty to identify the degree to which we are representing a Christian worldview to students, as our mission statement declares. I have a strong feeling that "preaching" in the classroom and manipulating the selection of literature and writing topics to deliberately inculcate a particular Christian view is not fair to students and is counterproductive. I believe that in my living witness and my teaching students to weigh issues of ethics and faith, I offer them the power of a Christian worldview of their own.

It was a great relief to me to see my class evaluations on which one question addressed this area. Student evaluations in my writing classes indicated a rating of "very good" in response to the statement that "Christian worldview was well integrated into the course content."

However, even more important to me in my confirmation of my mission in this place are the individual messages I have received recently. One student wrote at the end of first semester, "Jackie, when you teach, you change people." Another wrote to me last week, "I wish you love, joy and peace, even though you wish those often to the people around you. I want to wish those to you." It is this gift of love, peace, and joy that is essential to my Christian worldview.

Valentine's Day brought me gifts of love that may help you to envision my role here as I do. One dear student sent me a postcard picturing three infants of different races on which she wrote, "You're like that white guy that sits in the middle of the other two. You are the one who is helping me to get to know other cultures in literature. This picture made me think of you. By the way you introduce other cultures to me, you also help me to come to love them in a special way." This is the way in which I see literature offering an understanding of the love essential to my Christian worldview.

The postcard message continues, "Keep being the way you are: holding somebody with one of your hands and comforting someone else with another." Similarly, an anonymous Valentine's greeting confirmed the clarity of this message outside of the classroom as well, saying, "To the person in whose loving heart there is always some place for everyone." It's this message of the power of Christian love that is central to the message I am trying to bring to my work with ALPHA, a program for new, young believers to explore the nature of Christianity.

It is a miracle to me that I am in Lithuania—a place I never dreamed of being-and that it is the right place for me to bring God's message of love and peace and joy. What I wish for you is that you would see in these messages the part you are playing in making this miracle of God possible in this place where many have struggled to keep the light of faith alive and where, every day, the brightness of that light grows in the hope and love and joy that are growing in these youth.

Jackie

The 2003 Mission Yearbook for Prayer & Study, p. 91