“Broken…broken….”

We heard today of a Christian family who have a daughter who is now in her twenties. Outwardly completely normal, she has a mental age far below her physical age, including difficulties with speech. She is very affectionate and loves to welcome people. In fact when the doorbell rings she rushes to the door. But once it is open and she is face to face with the visitor, she doesn’t have the capacity to deal with them especially those who are strangers. But she realises that because she looks normal, many people may not make allowances for her. So she will look at the person and, while pointing to herself, she carefully says, “broken….broken”. We found this very moving. A longing to meet, a desire to relate and yet brokenness getting in the way. But she has a great advantage – she knows she is “broken”, lives within limits and is able to admit to it. She anticipates the day when that brokenness will be gone.

There are many different kinds of brokenness – we are all broken to a greater or lesser extent and in different ways. But what about those that are outwardly normal while inwardly broken and yet don’t know it or refuse to admit it? We often manage personnel situations on behalf of teams where there is brokenness but without self-awareness. Huge disruption, pain and misunderstandings can take place. Please pray for us working to limit damage and bring closure to situations. Humanly speaking, it often seems impossible.

Many of our personnel across the Fellowship are struggling with administrative work-loads as they bring candidates into the Fellowship, or handle OMFers moving from country to country, or care for TCKs. We run an extremely “mean and lean” administration with relatively few folk handling large teams. Due to a lack of understanding among many churches, OMFers involved in this key line of work often struggle with low support levels. It can also feel very demoralizing to not be considered a “real” missionary even though through your work you enable dozens of others to thrive on the field. In addition, we have realized that we don’t have a single “joined up” process for handling people. There is no single version of our data – with dozens of small databases being used in various offices. Important information on people is slow to gather and inaccurate which means that decisions are sometimes made with little information.

So we have stepped out in faith to work on a single Information Technology software program that will act as a tool and a prompt to make life easier for our Personnel people. This is a colossal project which will involve every home and field, affect every member and take two years to complete. Jon Watts, an energetic, visionary IT specialist (who previously built Asia-wide IT systems for a major investment bank) has joined us as Project Manager to build what we are calling “Connecting People” – the International Personnel System. The scope of the project is exciting but daunting. Please pray for people with the right expertise to join the team, for the necessary funds for the project to come in and for the Steering Group set up for the project. This is the 2nd major project Steve is currently overseeing. The Group will have its first teleconference on 8th November – even this is a challenge as we are spread across three continents and 15 time-zones!

We're sorry for the long delay since we last blogged. Life has been far too busy just recently and we realise that we need to be careful to trust in God more and rely on our human strength less.

Joshua has worked hard in prep for his exams, knowing that his results would determine which IGCSE subjects he could take. He also faced the additional challenge of joining the class halfway through the year. He did extra work every morning before school for months to cover the gaps. The results are out and Josh has done well – coming top in geography, qualifying to take triple science next year (one of only four in his class to do so) and flying through maths. His most astounding paper was in Religious Studies where he completed the paper in less than twenty minutes much to the alarm of his parents! His mark was 96.5%! Last night he took the part of Hamlet in a Speech Night presentation of “Doggs Hamlet" which he loved. He woke this morning to the end of the school year, the start of the Christmas holidays, exams all over, subjects chosen for GCSEs and a successful play - life is good for Josh! Thank you for praying for him through this period.

Aimee has been happier at school these last few weeks. She gleefully anticipates her last few weeks of school where there will be a number of fun activities - she and Josh have different school years. We have had to restrain her from getting out the Christmas decorations – like her father, she enjoys the Yule-tide customs! After a hectic and hardworking year we are all looking forward to a week’s holiday in the Cameron Highlands after Christmas. Right now we are in the thick of the November Orientation Course. Aimee and Josh have gone off with some of the young people to explore one of the small islands off the Singaporean coast. This course will take us to over 120 new people that have joined OMF this year. Praise God!

With love
Steve, Anna, Joshua & Aimée