On The Rhoads

Several years ago, Bill Hybels wrote book titled, Too Busy Not To Pray. I was just reminded of that book, as I started this email, approaching the 11^th hour on my main topic. Susan and I have been very busy working on details related to our church moving into a new building.

Susan has gotten involved in organizing the children’s’ ministries from birth – 5^th grade. Her administrative gifts have been met with a warm welcome. And it’s been good for her to have the opportunity. Please pray that all her hard work will result in a good experience for the kids, their parents and for everyone serving there.

I’ve been helping with the computer network, the sound system and on building a new website. Please pray that I’ll be able to get it going quickly, as a very high percentage of people check out a church’s website before attending.

Finally, I think I mentioned the Simply The Story training I was in a few weeks ago. Well, I was asked to teach a 2^nd adult Sunday school class once we’re in the new building (that’s tomorrow). I suggested we do a multi-generational class going through God’s Story (http://www.gods-story.org), which is what lead to Simply The Story.

That’s probably confusing – God’s Story is one presentation that goes through the Bible chronologically. It has been very successful in evangelism. And it’s success was studied, resulting in a teaching technique called Simply The Story (STS). So God’s Story is one presentation (which may be broken up as I’ll be doing). And STS is a technique for telling and teaching any Bible story.

My class starts tomorrow morning. This is going to be a new experience for everyone. Please pray God will use my feeble efforts and that this will also be the start of a more family-integrated approach to doing church.

Thanks for praying!

Here’s a presentation on my vision for mobile learning.

There are lots of things on my heart today.

I wanted to share is about the training I had this past week. I was basically learning to teach people how to tell stories. It’s a technique called Simply The Story (STS) (http://www.simplythestory.com) . It’s very powerful in oral societies especially. And I’ll be working on ways to use technology, mobile phones in particular, with this technique.

I’m also excited about using STS in our family worship. Plus I was asked yesterday (I finished this training on Sat) to teach another adult Sunday school class at our church. I said I wanted to teach a multi-generational class using STS.

Finally, God gave me a renewed vision for reaching our neighborhood. I realized that God has put a group of us Christians right next to each other. Our next door neighbor and two neighbors across the street are all Christians. I just told Susan I want to have all those neighbors over for dinner to God Storm how we can reach our mostly Mormon neighborhood. I think STS might come in here too.

I should add to that I am a visionary and get new ideas all time. So besides praying for these things, please also pray that I will have wisdom in what I take on. It would be very easy to get so busy in outside ministry that I neglected my primary ministry to my family.

Thanks for praying!

Here’s our February 2009 Prayer Letter.

What an amazing journey!  And what a GREAT God we serve!  Just two years ago we began the application process with Mission Aviation Fellowship.  As we have trusted God, he has led us and blessed us beyond measure.  We can not get over what a blessing it is to get to serve God through the ministry of Mission Aviation Fellowship.  It seemed a little crazy for Brad to quit his job and sell our house in a downturned economy, but God can do anything.  We reached out initial support goal this fall and have moved to MAF’s home office in Nampa, ID.

We had people praying for us for months about our housing and finding a new church home.  We just wanted to be where God could use us the most.

We thought we would have to rent a house, but the downturn in the economy meant a great opportunity for us.  Housing prices here are at their lowest in years.  We looked for a house for about a week and were ready to make an offer on one when our realtor attended a lunch sponsored by a local builder.  Our realtor told the builder about us and explained that our budget would not allow us to purchase one of his houses.  They discussed our needs and our realtor left the lunch.  Three hours later, our realtor got a call.  They said, “Show them this house.”  Our realtor pulled up the listing on his computer and reminded them of our budget.  They said, “Show them the house and put in a low offer.”

The builder had done a custom job for someone that fell through.  He had a BEAUTIFUL: home that had been sitting empty for a year after completion and he was willing to let us buy it for what our budget allowed, which was WAY below the market value, even in a slow market.  God clearly answered the prayers about directing us to the house he wanted us in.  And He blessed us with a home more incredible than we could ever imagine.  We moved in December 20^th.  We go to bed every night wondering when someone is going to knock on the door and tell us to get out because this couldn’t possibly be our house!

Our new house is very close to the site where our new church is building a new building.  We had people praying for us to find a new church home quickly and it happened.  We are very excited to be a part of this body.  Between friends from MAF and our new church, we had over 30 people come to help unload the moving truck that had been in storage since we left Illinois.  It was completely emptied in only ONE hour.

We also asked for people to pray for friends for our kids.  God has covered every detail.  The house across the street has a Christian family with a ten year old boy and they just moved here in September.  We also have MANY new friends both at church and through MAF.  Sarah has a little playmate who has been over several times already.

We want to thank you for praying for us and encourage you with the news of how God has answered your prayers.  Here are our current needs to lay before God:

1. Brad’s work:  How exciting it is to be working as part of the learning technologies team!  Here is Brad’s technical update on his work:

I’m working on two main projects right now. The first one is our DEViewer program. It’s a program for presenting training that has a very simple user interface. I’m trying to make it available to a wider audience by getting it to work in another web browser (Firefox). The current program only works in Internet Explorer and so limits its use to machines running Microsoft Windows. After my update is released it will be able to run on computers running other operating systems, such as Linux and the Macintosh.

The other project I’m actively working on is called Flash Lit (pronounced Flash Light). It’s a program I’m starting from scratch that is a kind of digital card catalog. It’s an index for digital libraries. For example, we have a missionary in Thailand who is building a library of theological resources in the Thai language. Whereas we might not be able to freely distribute all of the resources (many we can), Flash Lit will make the availability of these resources know and at least provide information on where the resources can be found. A neat feature of Flash Lit is that it can be given to other people to develop indexes and then all of these separate indexes can be aggregated automatically. So our missionary may have the master index that brings in information from other people all over the country.

I’d love to talk to anyone who’s interested in hearing more.

1. Susan’s Trip:  Jan 4 will be one year since my dad went home to be with the Lord.  I got a bargain ticket (yeah southwest!) and am going to fly back to Illinois on New Years Day to be with Mom for a week.  Please pray for God’s comfort and peace at this time.  Pray for Brad as he is home with the kids by himself.  Thank God for our new friends who will watch the kids while Brad is at work.

1. Financial Support:  Praise God for providing for the financial needs of our ministry!  Pray for our ministry support to be maintained and grow a little to cover rising costs.

Thank you again for your prayer support.  Without you, our ministry would not be effective.  We can’t wait to see what God does next!

Happy New Year!

Love,

Brad and Susan

Here’s our first Christmas Letter with MAF. Merry Christmas!

Please help us unload our truck at our new house on Sat 12/19/2008 from 9:00-1:00. Details and directions are here: Dump The Truck

Thank you!

I’m I bit late on this post, but I’ve been busy -packing! Yes, God brought in the initial support we needed and I’m writing this from a hotel room in Cheyenne, WY, about half way to Idaho!

Thanks for partnering with us and especially for praying for us. Our top prayer concerns now are getting the rest of the way to Idaho safely and finding a place to live. We’ll live in the MAF apartments for a short time, while we finalize where we’ll be living.

We would really like to not move again, but we’re not in a position to buy right now. So we’re praying for a good rent-to-own. There are lots of them available, but for a long-term purchase we really want a 4 bedroom which is more money. So please pray that we end up where God wants us to be.

I just got this email from from the president of MAF International, Ron Pritz. He makes a great point that “sacrafice is suffering chosen.”  Please join us in praying for the family of our lost pilot.

Dear MAF Family,

Greetings in the Name of the One Who sacrificed His own Son for our sake.

As I write this letter the word “sacrifice” stands out.  You are all aware that yesterday, on our world-wide Day of Prayer, our brother Hadleigh Smith, a young single pilot, and his aircraft were lost while on a routine flight in northern Australia.  Today the search and rescue effort discovered debris from his airplane on the shoreline, indicating that the aircraft had crashed at sea.  The tragedy and loss impacts us all, some far more than others.  The grief will be intense for Hadleigh’s family in Australia.  His “immediate” MAF family in Arnhem Land will suffer the loss plus the trauma that comes with any fatal accident in a program.  The rest of us will grieve with them and support them on our knees before the Lord.

Sacrifice is suffering chosen.  Many people in the world suffer.  But what distinguishes suffering from sacrifice is that sacrifice is suffering chosen by the one who will have to actually endure it.  This is exactly what our Savior did for us.  He chose to “make Himself nothing . . . and (become) obedient to death – even death on a cross!” (Philippians 2:7-8). The Apostle Paul puts the believer’s sacrifice in a new light.  In Philippians 1:29 he says, “It has been granted to you on behalf of Christ . . . to suffer for Him.”  Somehow, in God’s economy, the sacrifice (intentional suffering) of His saints is a “grant” -  a positive thing, something of great value to the one who suffers.  This is not very evident when we lose a brother, as we have this week.  But in an economy absolutely reversed from the world, in God’s economy, there is no greater love!

Just as Christ has sacrificed Himself for us, each of you, including Hadleigh, has chosen to sacrifice for the sake of the Gospel.  Thank you for being willing to take less than you could have so that others might have the chance to hear of the sacrifice of Jesus.

In just a few hours I will be flying out of London for Gove, north Australia.  My desire is to be with Bill Harding and the team and in some way come along side them to help bear the incredible burden they are carrying at this time.  I covet your prayers for all of these dear people along with Hadleigh’s family at this time.  Thank you.

In Him,

Ron

OK, so our October Prayer Letter says that we’ve reached 100% of our original goal of $5,700/month. Well it looks like my accoutning and MAF’s is slightly out of sync. MAF has us at 99%. So who want’s to invest the last 1% of our support ($57/month)? Just call MAF at 1800-FLYS-MAF or give online. Thank you!