I Haven't Done a Thing All Day

Jeremiah 31:14

Revised Standard Version (RSV)

My people shall be satisfied with my goodness,
                says the Lord.”

My wife, Sylvia, has an oft repeated lament. “I haven’t gotten a thing done today!” She was reared under the philosophy that, no matter how much good she accomplished, there was always room for improvement. As a child she remembers that when she brought home a good report card from school, or when she received a compliment for a beautiful musical performance her father would reply, “That’s good! But you still need to work on …” She remembers never receiving an unconditional statement of approval for anything she did.

Her parents had taken to heart the biblical and Spirit of Prophecy cautions about indulging oneself in pride. Gradually over the years a feeling of inferiority, a sense that nothing she ever did measured up to an unreachable standard, clouded her entire life.

She has earned a Masters degree in English and a TESOL certificate in teaching English to speakers of other languages. Her perceptive linguistic aid has enabled many a foreign doctoral student to submit their dissertations in excellent English. She periodically receives acknowledgements from these grateful professionals.

She has fought a lifelong battle against chronic depression. Now she counsels many others with depression on how to overcome this debilitating disease. Many an hour she has spent on the phone encouraging and counseling this person or that who is on the verge of doing themselves harm.

She loves children, and they love her. Seeing their special needs, she has produced a CD of her own music that is directed towards giving a child grace for the day and courage to meet the night and the future. She often gets reports from grateful parents about how their child loves her CD and goes to sleep listening to it every night. Many have memorized all the words of her songs.

Lord, bless Sylvia and everyone else who is dissatisfied with their own lives and accomplishments with satisfaction in Your goodness that makes up for their sense of lack. Amen

Water in a Drought

Jeremiah 32:17

Amplified Bible (AMP)

¹⁷ ‘Ah Lord God! Behold, You have made the heavens and the earth by Your great power and by Your outstretched arm! There is nothing too difficult or too wonderful for You

[1]

Ikizu Secondary School and Seminary is located in the great steppe country near Lake Victoria in Tanzania. Steppe country is characterized by 4 feet tall grass punctuated by picturesque flat topped acacia trees. It is only slightly better than desert. Being very close to the equator it receives two rainy seasons a year, two weeks in November and December and six weeks in February and March.

The year was about 1969, and I was a math and science teacher in the secondary school. It also became my responsibility to take care of all physical maintenance on campus, including providing the campus with electricity and water. I had some great student helpers that actually made the maintenance possible. One of these was Abraham Sando.

One Friday morning Abraham knocked on my door. “Sir, we are getting no water from the pump.” He broke the news apologetically but with finality.

“Has the pump broken down? Is the engine working okay?” I queried.

“Yes, sir!”

“Did you turn it off last night?”

“Yes, sir! And I started it this morning again.” He and I walked over to the water pipe that came up from the well, which was a mile down in the valley next to a creek that usually had a little water in it. There was definitely no water coming up the pipe. We had received no rain in the short rainy season. It was now the beginning of March, and we had received no rain so far this rainy season. The dam the villagers got their water from had dried up completely. Villagers had dug 6 and 8 feet deep holes in the bottom of the dam where a pitifully meager supply of water would trickle in overnight. The creek was dry, too.

My thoughts ran quickly to the more than 200 students and staff who depended on our well for water. We had a tank, but it would not last more than about three days.

“Please go back down the hill and turn the pump off,” I said resignedly to Abraham. “We’ll leave the pump off until Sunday morning, and I hope water will run into the well in the meantime. Hopefully we can pump on Sunday.” He smiled in agreement. He was also worried about the dire consequences we faced without water.

As soon as George Dunder, our principal, arrived in his office that morning, I went in and alerted him to our predicament. He asked for my suggestions. After a discussion of what we might do, I suggested that we make Sabbath a day of fasting and prayer for rain. We did exactly that. Really the only alternative would be to close the school down and send all of the students and staff away.

On Sabbath I overheard a number of students discussing our water situation. These particular students tended to be very skeptical all the time. They reasoned that the day of fasting and prayer was really worthless. After all it was in the middle of the longer rainy season, so if it started to rain, it would not be God answering our prayer; it would simply be the natural course of events. On the other hand, if it didn’t rain, then God clearly hadn’t answered our request, if He existed at all. I couldn’t help seeing their reasoning and wondering how God would answer our prayers and preserve His integrity. I said nothing to them because all I had was questions, too.

Our water tank was nearly empty by Sunday morning. After Abraham came up from starting the pump, we walked over to check the flow in the pipe. We had a tap located on the main water pipe. We measured how fast the water was coming up by opening the tap and timing how long it took to fill a five gallon can. Water was indeed coming up the hill but only at a quarter of the normal rate. I asked Abraham to check this tap every hour or two during the day to gauge how much water was running or see if the well had again run dry.

He checked in with me that evening and reported that the water was still pumping at the same slow rate. We normally ran the pump about 8 or 10 hours a day 6 days a week, and this kept us in ample supply of water.

“Good! If we are still getting water, let’s run the pump night and day until either the flow of water returns to normal or until the water runs out entirely. When you go down in the evenings, just fill up the diesel tank to run the pump engine and check the oil. Then watch the flow of water up here on the hill several times during the day. Don’t go down there on Sabbath. I will personally do the Sabbath duty.” I didn’t want him to worry about whether he should work on Sabbath.

For the next six weeks we continued on this regimen. There was not even a hint of rain. The tropical sun burned down on us every day from a clear blue sky. But we had just enough water to meet our needs.

One day in the middle of April, well into the dry season, a black storm came up. It rained hard and long. All the creeks started running. Some water ran into the dam, more than filling the holes the desperate villagers had dug. A great relief filled my soul. And the well ran totally dry!

I said to the skeptical students, “What do you think? You suggested that either way our need was met, it couldn’t be the hand of God. Now you are witnesses. You have drunk the water God provided for six whole weeks without rain.”

For once in their smug skepticism they were speechless.

Thank You, God, that Your might power and outstretched arm is still as mighty today as in the time of Jeremiah and that You have ways of meeting our needs that we would never even dream of!

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[1] https://www.hipporoller.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/gokwe-dry-dam-zim.jpg

Tread on Serpents

April 25, 2017

Luke 10:19

King James Version (KJV)

¹⁹ Behold, I give unto you power to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy: and nothing shall by any means hurt you.

[i]

Thirty or more years ago when we were searching for a home near La Sierra University, we spelled out several criteria. We wanted a home near enough for me to walk to work. It had to have four bedrooms, one for us, one for our boy and one for our girls, and one for a guest room especially for grandparents. We hoped it would have a swimming pool so we could keep an eye on what our kids and their friends were doing. We also hoped it would have access to countryside where we could walk for recreation. Of course, it also had to be in our price range.

The home we got couldn’t have matched these criteria any better. Its selling point to me was that it was situated in a little valley with desert hills on three sides. We could walk up into the hills by simply walking past three houses, and we were into the hills. During a normal year the hills turn a rich green color in the winter rains. For spring, summer and fall the hills are the color of dried grass.

Almost every day over the last 30 odd years we have walked at least some distance up into the hills, usually with a dog at our heels or galloping merrily ahead. The dog’s favorite pastime is chasing, unsuccessfully, every lizard that makes a mad dash to get out of our way. Occasionally it would be a bird, ground squirrel or rabbit. Even more rarely, there would be a lone coyote or as many as four or five them to give us a short thrill of the chase.

Sylvia and I have delighted ourselves in counting the number of species of flowers actually blooming on a particular walk. Usually we count anywhere between a dozen and two dozen species. During spring after the hills have turned brown, we find the richest number of flower species. The other day we had counted over 40 species and were at the very top of our La Sierra range and heading home down a very rough trail.

As I walked I suddenly felt something soft under my right foot, not the usual rock hard surface. In the shortest of moments, far shorter than it takes to think it, let alone write it, I shifted the weight off my right foot and made a lunge for Sylvia. I grabbed her by her waist and pushed her backwards and away. I guessed it might have been a snake I had stepped on and didn’t want her to be bitten. She thought I had lost my balance, which I have been doing since my bout with West Nile Virus, and fought to keep me upright. Neither of us fell, and I swung around to see what I had stepped on.

Right where my foot had trod a thick red western diamond backed rattlesnake was slithering slowly away from us. It hadn’t so much as tried to rattle and warn us. It had also not bitten me. I don’t know whether it had tried or not. I was wearing heavy jeans and thick leather shoes, so it might have tried but failed to penetrate to the skin. Furthermore, red western diamond backs are known to be reticent to bite unless directly attacked. But I do feel that I was under the direct protection of the Lord. In the words of Christ in the next verse:

"Notwithstanding in this rejoice not, that the spirits are subject unto you; but rather rejoice, because your names are written in heaven." Thank You, Heavenly Father!

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[i]  http://www.desertusa.com/reptiles/red-diamond-rattlesnake.html

The Desert Shall Blossom as a Rose

Song of Solomon 2:12

New King James Version (NKJV)

¹² The flowers appear on the earth;
The time of singing has come,
And the voice of the turtledove.

It was twelve years ago, in 2005, that we last had a season like this one. The desolate desert meadows of Anza Borrego were blanketed in the royal purple of the sand verbena punctuated by the lush desert primroses. Hundreds of people walked delicately through the blossoms. Lovers hugged each other in the irresistible romance the flowers leant to their courtship.

In recent years, the entire desert longed for relief from a fierce sun, desiccating winds, and a drought that seemed never ending. Then the winter of the year of our Lord 2017 finally came with lavish, soaking rains. They washed the mountain crags clean. At long last the former lakebed caught the rain and allowed it to sink deeply into the ground again and again over a number of weeks.

On a recent Saturday Sylvia and I drove down to Anza Borrego State Park again just to see with our own eyes the fruit of rains that had brought so much green to our desolate, desert hills. As before we found hundreds of people, starry eyed lovers, excited children, and rejuvenated old folks all wandering, entranced, amongst the desert gold flowers. This time the golden blanket was punctuated by the purple sand verbena and the white desert primrose.

Besides the flowers, we were blessed to see several types of birds.  Not only did we see doves (mourning doves) but great raptors and tiny hummingbirds as well. The hummingbirds benefit the most from a plenitude of flowers. In addition, great, fat, striped caterpillars sat in the shade of the withered leaves gorging themselves on the rich feast, unknowingly heading toward their transformation into creatures with beautiful wings and delicate antennae.

The hand of the Creator stretched out and reminded us that, in the midst of the desert of death and sin in this old world, God is still personally interested in us, in our joy and happiness. He is still interested in instantaneously changing us into beautiful, imperishable immortality.

Thank You, Lord, for these beautiful reminders of the bright future You have already prepared for us!

Win Some, Lose Some, Ever Forward

[i]

Psalm 138:7

New Living Translation (NLT)

⁷ Though I am surrounded by troubles,
    you will protect me from the anger of my enemies.
You reach out your hand,
    and the power of your right hand saves me.

For four months now I have been suffering with a headache when I’m not lying down. This appears to be the result of my bout with West Nile Virus (WNV). The hospital did several lumbar punctures to diagnose the disease. After seeing numerous doctors who were simply clueless as to how to solve the issue, I was finally referred to Dr Olivo, a neurologist.

When I described my symptoms to him, his eyes lit up, and he said, “It’s undoubtedly a cerebrospinal fluid leak (CSF) at a lumbar puncture site.” I had come to the same conclusion after reading the Internet. Apparently the fact that the headache and other symptoms disappear when I lie down is characteristic of a CSF leak.

Dr Olivo went right to work to get the various preliminary tests done and then get me into the hospital to have the patch done. Results are supposed to be immediate, so the patch is an outpatient procedure. The radiologist who administered the patch had me lie down for a half hour afterwards and then had me get up and dress. Of course he inquired if I felt better.

I walked around a bit, somewhat bewildered. The room swayed from left to right as I turned my head. I needed to hold onto something in order to walk straight. My entire head ached from my shoulders on up. Not only was I not better, I was also a lot worse.

There was the hope that it would clear up over time. That hope never materialized. I was sorely disappointed but not discouraged or depressed. By chance I had read the promise in the verse above the very morning of the procedure. I sensed as I read the promise that I might need its comfort that very day, though I certainly hoped not.

God has brought me through alive from the very deadly WNV after 9 weeks in hospital and rehab. There are some lingering areas where I haven’t fully recovered besides the CSF leak. The literature suggests that healing from the WNV usually takes at least a year. So I have a while to go yet.

Thank You, Lord, for the promise that Your mighty right hand will save me in the very midst of my troubles.

#CALIFORNIA, #IE, #PSALMS, #BIBLEPROMISE, #WESTNILEVIRUS, #HEADACHE, #NEUROLOGY, #LUMBARPATCH, #DEPRESSION, #CEREBROSPINALFLUID, #CSFLEAK, #MEDICALFAILURE, #HEALING

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[i] Picture from http://bloximages.chicago2.vip.townnews.com/normantranscript.com/content/tncms/assets/v3/editorial/1/e0/1e07211b-16d6-5bef-ba77-3e091c456d63/58713d2bb304f.image.jpg

Gender Discrimination

Titus 1:5-7

King James Version (KJV)

⁵ For this cause left I thee in Crete, that thou shouldest set in order the things that are wanting, and ordain elders in every city, as I had appointed thee: if any be blameless, the husband of one wife, having faithful children not accused of riot or unruly.  For a bishop must be blameless, as the steward of God.

My great-grandfather was an Adventist.   In his later years he lived with my grandfather.  My grandfather was an itinerant preacher in the Michigan conference.  His brother was sent by Ellen White as a missionary to freed slaves in the South.  My father spent 42 years as a missionary to Africa.  He founded a university at Solusi Mission.  He spent 18 years teaching and being an administrator at Helderberg College.  He carved an Adventist Academy for over 700 students from virgin bush in Zambia.  So I am at least 4^th generation Adventist.

When I was born in the first years of World War II, I was reared in the strictest form of Seventh-day Adventism.  I attended Adventists schools from my first year in school through a Bachelor of Science.  I was taught that the Bible is the Word of God and the Spirit of Prophecy was given to point us to the Bible.  The Bible is the foundation of both individual Christian life and the Church.  I gave my life and career to the Church as a foreign missionary and educator. 

I have watched the Church grow and prosper where it followed the council and guidance of Scripture and the Spirit of Prophecy.  It has grown from an insignificant American sect to a vast Spirit-led worldwide denomination.  It has worked its way from a works-based theology to a grace-based dynamo of spiritual power.

Following the example of Ellen White, the Church has encouraged all members, male and female, to contribute as witnesses to the world.  Over the years I have been interested in how we have ordained men and women as elders and deacons as Bible sanctioned officials of the Church.  We have interpreted “husband of one wife” (KJV) to mean “faithful in marriage” (CEV).  This choice has stood us well.

The Church has a group of officials whom they pay.  The rest of the officials perform their duty as many did in early Christian times, namely voluntarily and without pay.  Now the Church has become of two minds.  The Church is happy to ordain the volunteers without reference to gender even though many of them are mentioned as elders and deacons in Titus.  The majority of Church leaders have decided to not be consistent and insist that those whom the church is paying must now follow the instructions above and be husbands, i.e. males.  On the contrary a strong minority of Church leaders have decided that they will be consistent in their Christian belief and treat and pay the officials equally without reference to their gender.  This disagreement is fast escalating into a rift.

The Church, my Church, is racing down a road to self-destruction and significant loss of human souls to the Kingdom of Jesus Christ.  My soul weeps to see the leaders of the Church, to which I have given 47 years of service, doing their utmost to destroy the very Church I love. 

May the all wise, all powerful, gracious Lord Jesus Christ be able to convince my church leaders to be gentle in their leadership and totally fair in how they treat everyone whom He has called to be His officials.

Christmas Letter

Christmas 2016

Last year Christmas day found us in Madagascar. Our very dear friends Pam and Gideon Peteresen invited us to climb the mountains to the east of the Zurcher Adventist University (UAZ) campus. We had a student along since none of us speak Malagasy so he could translate for us. We crossed the highway and walked down into the valley where we crossed a very angry looking river on a couple narrow logs.

Sylvia Crossing the River on Logs

Then we hiked along a narrow mud ridge separating two rice paddies. We passed several homes and some communal graves. We climbed the steep slopes of the mountain until we finally came to a grass covered meadow that sloped fairly steeply back towards UAZ.

Wil in Front of Our Flat at UAZ

While eating our delicious lunch we idly watched a tropical thunder storm pouring rain on the UAZ campus then realized that it was coming directly towards us.  However there was nothing we could do to escape its path. In due course we were soaked to the skin. The trails were all on red clay, which now became extremely slippery, and our shoes built up great layers of clay.

At the University Gate

We spent three months at UAZ as English teachers to the freshman and sophomore students. We also toured a rain forest and a dry forest, both of which sported several Lemur species.

Ruffed Lemur

In many ways our stay in Madagascar reminded us of our 5 year stay in Tanzania way back in the late 1960s. If you wish to read more about our experiences in Madagascar, please see the Sojourn to Madagascar entries in December 2015 and January to March 2016 blogs at http://wils-thoughts.blogspot.com.

Two Ring-Tailed Lemur Babies Riding Piggy-Back

We found the people to be very friendly and helpful. The 150,000 Adventists in Madagascar are quite conservative and often spend all day Sabbath at their churches. UAZ is serving an essential role in providing leaders for the church and its missions in the Indian Ocean and increasingly to the Francophone portion of worldwide Adventism. It was a great privilege to have a brief chance to help their program. If you are interested in volunteering in Madagascar, contact Pam Petersen at headinghomesoon@gmail.com

One of Several Churchs Founded by UAZ Students

Allée des Baobabs in Madagascar at Sunset

Returning From the Trip to See the Baobabs and Lemurs With the Bairagees

On our way home from Madagascar we spent 17 days in and around Cape Town, South Africa. We spent most of the time with long time friends. We toured Butterfly World on our way to climb Paarl Rock. Joy didn’t feel up to climbing, but then, spurred on by our example, she and Rodney joined us at the top where we had a grand panoramic, if smoggy, view of the Western Cape including Helderberg Mountain and Table Mountain.

Rodney & Joy with Sylvia on Paarl Rock

Joy and Rodney are Pam’s parents. On Sabbath Lincoln, Rosemary, and Gwen hosted a potluck with his Sabbath School class. Many of the members are our friends, so it was a great reunion.

African Penguins

The first part of the next week we tried to visit Cape Point but picked a holiday to do it, and half of Cape Town was also trying to get there, so we watched kiteboarding at the Cape’s most popular beach instead. We also stopped at a breeding colony of African penguins. They were called jackass penguins when I was a kid because their call sounds like the braying of a donkey.

With Rodney & Joy in Kirstenbosch Gardens

We reveled in the beauty of Kirstenbosch Gardens that specializes in the beautiful and rich Cape flora. Heather took us out to a posh resort in Arniston where we were able to tour Cape Agulhas and the area surrounding the southernmost tip of Africa.

With Heather at Arniston

The next Sabbath Gideon had invited us to his mother’s home in Ottery, a suburb of Cape Town. Gideon and Pam had come from Madagascar especially to see his mother since she was very sick with cancer. The whole Petersen family showed up, and we had more excellent food than we could eat. We toured Cape Town in the afternoon with Pam and Gideon.

Lincoln and Rosemary took us around to their special sites during our last three days. We drove through four beautiful mountain passes and stopped for lunch at Gideon’s Famous Franschhoek Pancake House, not to be confused with the Gideon in previous paragraphs. We also got to pet alpacas and llamas. Now it’s your turn to figure out what the difference between them is.

With Lincoln & Rosemary Feeding Alpacas

Against my better judgment, I allowed myself to be elected the president of the Fellowship of Adventist Missionaries to Africa (FAMA) at the meeting held in 2014 at La Sierra University. Just before we went to Madagascar, our very capable editor passed away. So in Madagascar I spent a lot of time and energy trying to get the FAMA address list. Then I sent out several Newsletters mainly to apprise our members of our next meeting in Fletcher, NC.

We left home on May 17 to drive to the FAMA get together which started on June 2. We headed towards Indianapolis and then south to Tennessee and eventually our niece’s home in Roanoke, Virginia. En route we got to visit relatives and very good friends. When we didn’t overnight with people we knew, we “camped” in Walmart parking lots. We were driving our F-150 pickup with a cap on the back that covers our bed. We suffered from some very cold nights as well as some extremely hot nights in these parking lots.

FAMA Meeting in Fletcher NC 2016

Thanks to excellent help from many sources, our FAMA meetings were very spiritually rewarding and allowed us to form new friendships as well as renew many old ones. The meetings lasted from Thursday night until Sunday morning, the first weekend of June. When we left there we drove south from Fletcher and paid a very brief visit to new FAMA Newsletter editor, Lorna. She is proving an excellent editor with lots of new ideas and artistic talent.

We continued south to Orlando, Florida. In April we had spent a weekend with a group that facilitates Bible translations in many parts of the world where the Bible is still not available to people in their mother tongues. We stopped at Wycliffe to see firsthand what was happening. Wycliffe Associates has pioneered a radical new translation technique that relies on native speakers of these languages. The average time for translating a Bible has been around 25 years per language and is very expensive. The old technique is too expensive because translators must be supported by others all this time.

 The new technique produces a very passable gospel of Mark in the target language in about two weeks. It uses a computer printer to produce a copy that is passed out to Christians who speak the target language. These critique it and then encourage and support their translators who, with due diligence, can turn out the New Testament in less than a year and the whole Bible in two years. Since the expenses are borne by the local churches, they feel an integral part of the whole production. We are very excited by the obvious blessing of the Holy Spirit on their efforts. Their goal of having a copy of the Bible in every language that people want a translation in by 2025 now seems to be a real possibility.

Wycliffe Associates Bible Translators

We got home before our 51^st wedding anniversary on June 27. A month and a half later I, Wil, came down with West Nile Virus (WNV), a mosquito borne disease. It originated in Africa but is now found in almost all of the states in the U. S. The county health department here keeps close track of the spread of the disease. WNV hit me very hard. I remember taking a group from the church to the San Bernardino County Museum on August 18 to see their new mastodon exhibit. I was feeling sick on that day. Then I remember essentially nothing until the second week of October. I was in hospital for three weeks before they finally diagnosed WNV. It is a rare disease in Riverside County, where I was the fourth person diagnosed with it this year. I hallucinated a lot and spoke absolute garbage. Then they put me in a rehabilitation center for another 6 weeks, where I slowly regained my senses and learned to walk again. I lost 30 pounds (14kg) of muscle during those weeks in hospital. I just wish the loss had been around my waist!

Sylvia Supporting Wil in Rehab

The picture was taken after a total of eight or nine weeks in hospital and rehab.

A headache and dizziness have haunted me constantly ever since my memory kicked in again in early October. Recently I had another MRI done on my head to try and pinpoint the cause of the problem. From reading on the Internet it appears that these symptoms may be with me for a year or longer. My family has been very supportive, especially Sylvia and Elwood who have spent long hours day after day with me. I returned home the end of October. Since then I have been to Joshua Tree National Park three times. I don’t have the muscular strength to climb anything, but I do enjoy the hikes that are somewhat level. I also spend time almost every day hiking in the hills around our home. Our dog, Cleopatra, who has been with us for over 15 years, is ailing and has a hard time doing the longer walks.

Thank you for your prayers for our well being and my healing. We covet your further prayers on our behalf. We pray that you will have a lovely Christmas and a prosperous New Year, 2017. We treasure each of your greetings.

Our Address is still:

Wil & Sylvia Clarke

5547 Wentworth Dr.

Riverside, CA 92505

Phone: 951-687-4556

e-mail: wil.clarke@gmail.com