Big Family, Small World
Have you ever visited a Church of Christ in another city and met someone who had a mutual acquaintance? I’ve seen that happen over and over. Let me give you two recent examples.
Example #1: Jonathan Hanegan began doing mission work in Caracas, Venezuela, in 2006 and Northside started supporting him a year later. For his first six months, one of his fellow workers in Caracas was Michelle Goff, who later moved back to the States and in 2013 started Iron Rose Sister Ministries. Her ministry produces small group Bible study material in Spanish, English, and Portuguese, and conducts equipping seminars throughout Latin America and the US. On April 25, the women in Jonathan’s Buenos Aires church hosted a women’s conference where Michelle spoke. Vanessa Izarra (another Northside missionary) organized the conference. A few days later, Michelle flew to Cuenca, Ecuador, to speak at another conference where she was joined by Kim Solis, an instructor at ILEB (Latin American Bible Institute), which Northside also supports. As I announced on Sunday, our missionaries in Salinas, Ecuador, will move in a few months to plant a new church in Cuenca. And Brittany Brown, a missionary in Cuenca with her husband, Rusty, knows Jonathan from when they sang together in a Denver church chorus. Rusty is the son of the very successful missionary, Bob Brown, who worked for years in Venezuela, Ecuador, and other countries, and I heard Bob preach at Oklahoma Christian College in 1977! Wow!
Example #2: Last week I attended the Pepperdine Bible Lectures in California. On my flight home I sat next to a married couple who noticed I was reading a book on discipling, and they asked if I had just come from Pepperdine. It turns out he preaches at the Caldwell Church of Christ near Boise, Idaho. As we talked, we discovered several mutual acquaintances. Jay & Kerry both attended Harding University, where my dad taught Bible for 21 years, and Jay said he had met him. When I told them I helped coordinate Northside’s mission work and mentioned Jonathan, they said they knew him because a friend of his named Sergio, who had met Jonathan in Venezuela, had come to the US and moved to Boise. In fact, when Jonathan was in Wichita on furlough, Sergio joined him here and some of us met him. Later, when Sergio moved to Boise, the Caldwell church took him in and became like family to him. Wow again!
I just love how interconnected we are within the body of Christ. It truly is a big family and a small world!