boston commoner.

welcome home

Dear friends:

I received the following e-mail from my good friend and the daughter of Fred and Ruth Fueller, missionaries to Hamburg, Germany. The tragedy of these events is overwhelming for me, just a distant acquaintance. I can’t imagine what Dennis and his mother are going through. Please join us in prayer for them.

I would appreciate it if you all could pray for a prayer request that came up in our church last week. A member of our church (Dennis M, some of you might know him – he’s from Russia) got a call early last week that his 16-year old brother had gone out to take a walk and he never returned. It was very devestating to the whole family, of course, especially to the father, who was not saved and the mother, who had gotten saved on May 1st. On Wednesday or Thursday, his father took his bike out to look for the brother, and was hit by a car. He was severely injured, and taken to the hospital right away. When Dennis found out, he imediately took the next flight to Russia, so he could talk to his father in the hospital. However, while he was in the air, his wife, Uljana, got a call that the father had died. Needless to say, this is a very hard trial to the whole family. Please pray for them, especially the mother, who has, as I have already mentioned, not even been saved for a month. The brother is still missing. They found out that he went to visit a church in a different town, but that was the last he was seen.

Thank you for praying. I will be sure to let you know if there is any new information, esp. about the brother.

In Christ,
Heidi Marie

The German mission team is in Hamburg this week. This is the third German mission team I thought I might travel with, but didn’t. Last summer, when I thought I’d be going back down to Greenville for grad school, I wrote my German professor and asked him if there were any chance I might be able to travel with the team in 2005. He said that yes, of course there was. It was something to look forward to. Something I had been looking forward to for five years, or so, actually. But it never panned out. In 2001 I decided to wait to apply for the team until my senior year, when I’d be more prepared with the language (amongst other things). My senior year, I decided to go to Germany as an Au Pair, instead — a choice I’d make again, even though there are certain things I regret about those nine months abroad. And then, last summer, I decided to stay in Boston. No regrets there. Can there be regrets in the center of God’s will? I don’t think so. But there can be a sweet sort of longing for places, people and experiences that might have been good and blessed, if things had turned out differently. (more…)

A marvelous thing happened in Sunday evening Bible study this weekend. We had three new visitors. Four, if you count the gigantic beach-ball that was Yan’s belly. Peng and Wendy invited Yan, who is expecting her first child–a little boy. Yan brought her parents-in-law. Her mother-in-law, a beautiful, tiny Chinese woman, speaks good but somewhat broken English. Her husband speaks only Chinese. It was the first time that any of them had ever heard the Bible.

Peng and Wendy translated Pastor’s lesson into Mandarin for them. The five of them sat along one wall of the room, huddled together over this strange, new Book. It was easy to get lost in the melody of Wendy’s voice as it broke free of the chains of a second language and rode hushed and wild along the waves of its original tongue. (more…)