On The Rhoads

Here is our Christmas 2011 Prayer Letter.

Please visit http://www.maf.org/rhoads to partner with our ministry.

Merry Christmas

On my way to Paris. Turns out you don’t depart from the international terminal. And terminal 1 is pretty far away from terminal 5. It wasn’t obvious how to get there. But after finding the tram, I made it in plenty of time.

I have a mechanical heart valve. It’s  strange to listen to it beat and then hear it, or rather not hear it, skip a beat.

Who was it that said, “Listen to your heart”?

I was really blessed to have my dad go ahead and get me android phone. .
Now I have a word press app that I can a post with speech recognition.

You’ve probably heard the cleshay, “It’s all God’s money.”  I’ve always believed that, at least at an intellectual level. But the truth of that statement just hit my heart today.

A few weeks ago, my dad was gracious enough to provide my  family with a membership to the Nampa Rec Center (a park district health club). I’ve been very faithful in going 5-6 days a week myself and also taking at least my daughter swimming and rock climbing.

I’ve found that the fact that my dad paid for the membership is much more motivating than if I had paid for it myself. I felt like if I didn’t use the membership and I paid for it that I’d just have been wasting my own money, but I could never waist my dad’s money.

But then that old cleshay hit me hard. My money isn’t my money. It’s my Heavenly Father’s money. And I should be just as motivated not to waste a penny of His money as I am not to waist my dad’s money.

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!

Our last prayer letter made the point that if everyone we talked to would invest just $10/month, we’d be fully funded. First, that is completely true! For the cost of 1 visit to McDonald’s or a few cups of coffee, you could make a big difference and be part of training the 3 million pastors in the developing world.

Next, people are responding. And praise the Lord, we’ve reached 47% of our support.  Want to help us get to 50%? Just click here!

Read our bio at www.maf.org/rhoads.

Welcome to On The Rhoads! This, the main blog, will have entries about our overall ministry with Mission Aviation Fellowship Learning Technologies. Follow the links under Blogroll for personal reflections from Brad, David and maybe even Susan (some day), plus Brad’s technical blog. There’s also a podcast in the works!