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May/June 1990 Newsletter
COLOMBIAN CHRISTIAN MISSION
Dale and Jeanie Meade
In the jungle and prairie of Southeastern Colombia
Volume 18, Issue 5/6 May/June, 1990
HALF DONE
As May ended and the semester was finished, I have reached the halfway mark in my work at Wheaton. It has been a long and difficult semester. I have learned that I can still survive on a lot less than eight hours of sleep. My poor old car continues to log the miles with nary a complaint. My poor old body does occasionally grumble though. Somehow those eight hour drives seem longer than they did ten years ago. That must be due to the fact that the car seat is getting broken down. With the ending of the semester, I have 18 of the 36 credit hours that I need to graduate.
The semester was very difficult. I have never read so much in my life. As final projects, I had to turn in a 50 page research paper, and two other term papers for a total of nearly one hundred pages. Considering the many rough drafts that it took to finish all of that, it is a wonder that my poor typewriter managed to survive. All in all, I was not too disappointed by my grades. I received an A in InterCultural Communication, A- in Contextuatlization, A- in InterCultural Research, and an A- in Electronic Publishing from my correspondence work, I have a 3.8 average out of a possible 4. I was pleased to do so well considering it has been so long since I did my undergraduate work. I was hoping to just pass; I never expected to make the honor roll. Some classes that KCC graciously allowed me to take certainly helped refresh my study habits. Now I only hope that I can do as well next semester.
As I write this, I am at Wheaton, away from my family on Memorial Day weekend. I am taking a class in the Principles of Community Development. This class deals with the issues involved in helping a poverty stricken people lift themselves up through community action. We have always worked in community development, with varying degrees of success. This class has been so beneficial that I find myself wishing I had come here fifteen years ago. That way I could have avoided many mistakes. I could have been a better steward of the money we invested in social upliftment. I have found myself saying that many times about many different areas of the work over this past semester. In July, I have a class in High School Newspaper Advising. You may wonder what that has to do with missions. In Colombia we have to write and publish virtually all of our Sunday school literature. What I learn about layout and production, should do a lot to improve the looks of the material we produce there.
I will be looking forward to the day when I can put all that I am learning to good use in Colombia. There has been so much that I can see as very useful as we strive to make the most out of our efforts in Colombia. There is a lot that I want to share with Mark and the Colombian brethren later this Summer while we are there to renew our visas. It should be an exciting and beneficial trip.
As the semester ends, I think about how Jeanie has put with my absence, as have the children. I am well aware that without such a capable and supporting wife, I would never have been able to realize my dream of studying. But there have been adjustments for all. The kids, especially Alex, still seem to thing it strange that their dad is going to school at the same time they are. Jeanie has had to deal with problems around the house all by herself. We are all looking forward to the summer break. I have only three weeks of VBS's, as opposed to my normal eight to ten. I have kept it that way so that I could spend more time with my family this summer. One church in Cincinnati offered to put us all up in a motel for their week of VBS, so that we could be together as a family. I will also have one more class during summer school. That will occupy one more week of the summer. We hope to squeeze in a short vacation, too.
It has been a good year. God has richly blessed us. Several churches and individuals gave special gifts that covered my living expenses. An unexpected scholarship covered my full tuition. After one full semester and the summer school session, I have only $300 in school loans. We have not used any of the regular mission support for school expenses. Yes, God, through you, has blessed us beyond our expectations. May God return those blessings to you many times over.
GARDEN TIME
With the coming of Spring, we have been putting in our garden. Actually, since I have been gone so much, Jeanie has dome most of the work. It is enjoyable to be out in the fresh air and sunshine at this time of the year. We enjoy watching the garden grow. The kids don't enjoy the garden quite as much as we do though. But then I didn't like a garden when I was their age either. Kids don't change much from one generation to the next, do they?
We plant a garden for more reason than simply watching it grow. We make an effort to live as simply and as economically as possible. We have made a simple lifestyle a part of our way of life since we first decided to become missionaries. After having lived among such poverty, I often feel a bit guilty with all that we have anyhow. A garden allows us to live on a much smaller salary, thus freeing up more of the mission funds for the Lord's work in Colombia. It is sometimes difficult to balance our desire to maintain a simple lifestyle with the needs of a family. We try to make sure that the children are able to fit in at school without spending the sums that most of their friends spend on needlessly changing styles. But generally we try to be content with what we have.
The garden is part of our chosen lifestyle. It enables us to produce most of our food needs. Last year we canned over three hundred quarts of food. We froze another fifty quarts. With a deer from the woods and a few fish from Lake Erie, we spend very little at the store. We are thankful that we live in a land that produces in such abundance, and that we have a place to plant. In this way we hope to be good stewards of what God has given us, sharing of those blessings with whose who were not so fortunate as to have heard the Good News so early in life!