March 2004

Dear Friends,

This is my year to do mission interpretation. I had hoped to get around to several regions in the United States and see many of you. Now a medical diagnosis has changed my plans, and although I will probably in fact manage to visit some of you, I will have to stay in the Atlanta area most of the year for medical treatment.

I had a sermon all ready that I would have repeated in more than one pulpit, entitled “A Tale of Two Places.” I am sending it to the Mission Connections office so that my friends may at least read it on the Web. I want to say one thing about this sermon. Before coming to the United States to preach this sermon here, I preached the same sermon in Brazil, at the Independent Presbyterian Church of Vila Romana. I thought that the integrity of my missionary interpretation depended on my willingness to preach the same sermon in Brazil as well as on my interpretation tour. After the service, several members of the church talked to me about what their church is doing “where the people are.” Vila Romana is a middle class church that regularly extends itself to the poor. For our churches in the United States, is there something to be learned from Vila Romana?

The Vila Romana sermon “afflicts the comfortable.” I also include another sermon that “comforts the afflicted.” Both come out of my study of the Gospel of Mark.

I would love to hear from my friends, as would Linnis. What I can’t do is travel more than a few hundred miles from Atlanta for a while.

Archibald M. Woodruff

The 2004 Mission Yearbook for Prayer & Study, p. 146