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January/February 2002
Dear Friends,
We send warm greetings to you in this New Year! We hope that
in the months of our silence you have known the nearness of the
One who speaks always.
As we write this letter in the latter part of January, our lives
are once again in transition and we are doing what we should be
very good at by now (oh we wish!)—moving. A very familiar
New Years’ verse is found in the prophet Isaiah where we
hear God saying, "I am about to do a new thing; now it springs
forth, do you not perceive it?" (43:18). We have in the past
few weeks heard God speaking a new and unexpected thing and our
silence in the writing of letters has been because of our silence
to listen, hear, and perceive what God has been saying.
Up until a very few weeks ago we were packing and planning,
had begun saying our goodbyes, in preparation for our anticipated
return the beginning of February to Ethiopia and to the Charles
Haspels Bible School. The week before Thanksgiving, however, a
job description for a missionary-in-residence position in the
Mission Co-worker Office of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) in
Louisville, Kentucky, caught our eye. Knowing we were returning
to Ethiopia, we threw the paper away. But it would not go away,
and so we felt we should at least inquire into the position and
see if there was anyway we could be involved from Ethiopia. Through
several discussions with different people in the Louisville office
we began to sense that God was asking us to step back and look
again at what we felt to be a commitment to return to Ethiopia.
It is an involved story, but the end of the first chapter is that
we have felt we were
not to return to Ethiopia just now but were to take this one-year
position in Louisville.
We will be working as missionaries in residence with the Mission
Co-worker Office to help look into pastoral concerns and needs
of mission personnel, find out what resources for help in particular
situations are available, and help develop spiritual resources
for people on the field, among other things. This has been an
area both of personal and professional interest in recent years
and is part of what led us into the doctor of ministry program
in Christian spirituality through Fuller Seminary. On one side,
the timing of things seems incredibly serendipitous. But on the
other hand we feel the disappointment of our brothers and sisters
in Ethiopia at our unexpected change of direction at this juncture.
The Charles Haspels Bible School in Gatcheb continues to do
well under the leadership of Qes (Rev.) Yohannes Sherab. A second
class of 28 students, including four women, began their studies
in September 2001. Qes Yohannes and the board have continued to
stress the need for a self-sustaining program and have increased
the amount each congregation sending a student is to pay for the
year. For this year that amount is the equivalent of about $220.
We find this very challenging, as we know the difficult economic
situation for many of these rural congregations in southwest Ethiopia.
We are so grateful for your continued support for the Charles
Haspels Bible School (ECO account #047902) and for us as well.
This year we continue as mission co-workers, though based in Louisville,
and will appreciate your prayers as we enter into a new ministry
and new community.
Our excitement at the new challenges of this new year and new
position are mixed with the sadness we feel from not returning
to be with our friends in South West Bethel Synod. The late Henri
Nouwen wrote of a ministry both of presence and of absence. We
would ask that you join us in praying that God will be powerfully
present to these friends and if need be, that God may use our
physical absence in ways beyond their and our imagining.
May you also know God’s powerful and loving presence in
this year.
Blessings,
Anne & John Wheeler-Waddell
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