Fall Update

Just a short update on our latest. Jim returned from a fantastic trip to Nicaragua with team members from three different churches at the end of August. After returning home he had to finish writing the curriculum for a trip to Nicaragua in October. Currently he is enjoying Nicaragua with dear friends from FBC Conway. Needless to say, he's staying out of trouble with all this work!!! In November he will travel to Guatemala and possibly Costa Rica. I'm a little sad that I have to keep my day job and cannot travel with him.

We have been looking for a house in Jacksonville as the house we were renting was recently sold. Through contacts with some friends at church, we rented an adorable older home that was clean. Being clean usually isn't that big of a deal, but after looking at a couple of houses I have a new appreciation for cleanliness or even the ability to reach the state of cleanliness. I felt rather ill after leaving two disgusting homes. Scarcity of rental property in Jacksonville had me a bit stressed, and I've been stretched to trust God on the little things in life.

I am enjoying teaching at East Side Elementary in Jacksonville. I had a good laugh this past week at the thinking of one of my students. He has been trying to impress another boy in the class, and as a result was getting in a lot of trouble. To try to help him do better I pointed out the fact that he never got into trouble when the other boy was absent. I asked what he thought of the pattern he saw on his behavior chart. He thought for a couple of minutes and then blurted out, "He cursed me!!" We are now trying to "break the curse."

SOLD!!!!

God has been so gracious to us!!! After juggling many different events in the past several weeks, we finally got our house on the market. God brought a buyer in less than a week (HUGE SMILE)! We are so thankful, and we give Him the praise for providing a buyer.

August will be a busy month for us:

*Completion of our relocation to Texas 8/1

*Jim preaches in Ft. Smith, AR 8/2

*Training with Jacksonville School District 8/3-6

*Close on the sale of our Conway home 8/7

*Back to Texas 8/9

*Attend BodyBuilders Support Team Building

Class in Fayetteville, AR 8/10-11

*Work starts for Melanie in Texas 8/13

*Jim is off to Nicaragua 8/22

WHEW! We'll have to stop and take a deep breath sometime soon.

THANKS FOR PRAYING FOR US!!

For Sale

As you can see the "For Sale" sign is in the front yard. Feelings of excitement and sadness rush through as I view the Wilson domain from the street. This sign represents another exciting step toward our new ministry in Latin America, but it is also the sad closing of a door to our everyday life in Conway. We have loved living here!!!

The ReachGlobal process has been stretching, intensive, and humorous at times. Many personality assessments were completed for team building, and all the results were posted on the walls at the Readiness Event we attended. Side-by-side our posters showed how opposite the two of us are in personality type. When Jim's arrows went left, mine went right. Where my graph went up, Jim's went down. We knew this about ourselves, but I just had to laugh out loud to see it on paper! I guess it's true that opposites attract! Together we make a great team - it just causes some friction at times! :-)

Here's my chart that was on the wall for all to see. I don't have Jim's chart, so just picture everything the opposite of mine! This is just too funny! Marriage counseling 101!

Sorting Through 25+ Years of Stuff

Going through 25+ years of stuff has brought the realization that we have tooooo much!! Why have I kept all this stuff for so many years? It is amazing how moving to Central America has made me evaluate the need to keep things. Now, only the dearest memories are safely tucked away in a box. Hope and Candace should be happy with this process as their job will be much simpler when we leave this all behind and permanently reside in Heaven. :-) Seeing representations of your life laying around the living room floor is quite hilarious!

By the way, moving isn't fun!!!

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Here are some pics of San Jose, Costa Rica where we will spend the first year of our ministry learning Spanish. I will enjoy being able to speak to Hope & Candace in Spanish!

ReachGlobal - YAY!!!!

Last night we were accepted as staff with ReachGlobal!!! After an intense week of assessing and learning, we have become a part of the ReachGlobal family. This week has allowed us to get to know the organization, and we feel it is a good fit. We are glad this part of the process is completed, and now we are moving forward with our plans to go to Latin America. We still don't have many details about where we will be eventually located, but we know that we will be spending our first year in Latin America at a Costa Rican language school. Now comes the next part - building our support team. Please pray for us.

Also, please continue to pray for our family through this time of grief.

We are grieving for our family with broken hearts for their deep pain. Ken (Jim's brother) and Dawn lost their oldest son, Jordan, on Tuesday (5/12). Jordan was a 20 year old young man attending Baylor University. We wish we could do something to ease the pain, but we know God is the only one who can meet their needs in this devastation. Please pray for our family at this time.

Minneapolis Bound

We are so excited! We received an invitation to attend a ReachGlobal the first week of June in Minneapolis, MN. This will be a time of getting to know ReachGlobal, and ReachGlobal getting to know us. At the end of this week, a decision will be made by both ReachGlobal and us as to whether we will become a part of the Latin American team.

A couple of weeks ago, Jim made the transition to Jacksonville, TX to be an interim pastor at Fellowship Bible Church. This church was our first pastorate after seminary. It was a little strange to see him packing up his things, and leaving an empty side of the closet. Our little dog, Bella, is so sad he left that she is sleeping on his discarded clothes.

In Home Interview With ReachGlobal

After a 3 1/2 hour in-home interview, we are patiently waiting for ReachGlobal to let us know if we've been accepted to attend a Readiness Event. We should be contacted around the 15th of April with an invitation or rejection. The next Readiness Event takes place in June, and after spending a week with ReachGlobal at the Readiness Event, they will offer an invitation to join the team or not.

The gentleman from ReachGlobal who came to our house was exposed to the real Wilsons as it was a crazy week for both of us, and we couldn't fake anything. :-) JD and Hope graciously agreed to be a part of the interview, and hopefully they have a clearer picture of our future possibilities.


The questions asked of us were follow-up questions based on our responses to the Written Application. It wasn't difficult - just long!!! We were able to understand the mission of ReachGlobal a little better.

Jim has spent the entire week packing up his office at FBC Conway. Today he had to break down and rent a U-Haul trailer to move all his books and files. May I say - he has plenty of resources! (ha)

Please keep us in your prayers as we begin to make the transition. Jim will be moving to Jacksonville, TX next week to begin an interim pastorate while we pursue moving to Latin America. I will be staying in Conway until the end of the school year, and until our home sells.

Next Steps

We have completed the initial steps in the application for ReachGlobal (www.efca.org/reachglobal/).  The paperwork was quite extensive, but it gave us the opportunity to see the focus of the organization through the questions that were asked.  In a few days, a representative of ReachGlobal will make a home visit (sounds a little scary) to finalize the application process.  If we are accepted by ReachGlobal, we will attend a Readiness Event and then begin the next step of the process.  

During this time we will be getting our house in Conway ready to put on the market, and Jim will start working with Fellowship Bible Church in Jacksonville, TX beginning April 1st.  

While going through this transition, we have enjoyed having Candace and Mark here with us! This is the first time Candace has been back home for more than 3-4 days since she left for college 4 1/2 years ago.  We have enjoyed every minute of our precious time together.  Now, if JD & Hope were here it would be perfect. Mark and Candace have seen first hand the chaos of our current lives, and can say with us - life isn't boring!!!

Our New Adventure

Here is Jim's announcement to our church about our new adventure to Central America. It gives the details of what we will be doing.

Following God is seldom easy. At times He’s hard to figure out, and at other times He asks us to make difficult decisions. In the Spiritual Warfare series, the Practical Atheism Equipping Class, and now in Habakkuk, I’ve been teaching that we have a natural passion for comfort and predictability. The problem is that God doesn’t often cooperate with that. Comfort and predictability are not the fields in which trust takes root and flourishes.

Now, I get to swallow a dose of my own medicine and practice what I’ve been preaching. God has opened a door of opportunity for Melanie and I and we are confident He is leading us to walk through the door. My passion for Latin America has been obvious over the past five years and God is giving us an opportunity to have a strategic and hopefully significant ministry in Latin America. This opportunity involves a move to Central America where Melanie and I will live and serve.

This passion for cross-cultural ministry has been growing for more than a decade. I’ve seriously considered moving to Nicaragua in the past but the timing has never been right. Our daughters were finishing high school and then going through college. Now that they have both graduated from college and have married wonderful men and have established their own families, Melanie and I have a greater sense of freedom to follow God in this new adventure. It will be difficult to not live close to family and friends, but God’s call is clear.

God has blessed and equipped me with a good theological education, almost three decades of pastoral experience, and a good measure of cross-cultural involvement. I will be using all this to continue the Bible Institute ministry and expand it through establishing new Bible Institutes and mobilizing other churches to duplicate what we have been successful with. I will also write and teach in other theological education settings. I will also focus on Latin American pastors by investing in a mentoring and coaching relationship with them. Melanie will have opportunities to develop relationships with wives and explore a wide variety of opportunities to serve in her gifting.

This move will, of course, take time and money. We will be spending the next year to two years raising the necessary funds to make this ministry possible. Then we will go to Costa Rica for a year for Spanish language school. After that, we will decide just where we will live and serve.

God is not only not easy to follow, God also has a sense of humor. When I graduated from seminary, I thought there were two things I would never do: Plant Churches and Be A Missionary. Well, after seminary I planted two churches and now I’m going to be a missionary. Unpredictability and Irony make God fun to follow even if it’s not easy or comfortable. The first church I planted was in East Texas and they have recently experienced a couple of years of turmoil. I have maintained close relationships with three of the elders there and I have been a long-distance advisor as they have gone through this turmoil. God has laid it on their hearts and on mine and Melanie’s heart, that we can help them regain a sense of stability and growth. So, we will be making a move to Fellowship Bible Church in Jacksonville, Texas to serve that local church while we raise the funds for our journey to Central America. I will make that move in April after I complete my series on Habakkuk. Melanie will stay here until she finishes her teaching responsibilities at Sallie Cone.

As we move on to another setting, I want to give you some assurances. First, this move is taking place because passion and opportunity have finally converged. It is not taking place because I have a problem with Fellowship or that the elders have a problem with me. Second, I want to give you my assurance that in my judgment, the elders here are a great group of men who truly operate with the best of Fellowship in mind. They deserve your respect and they deserve to be followed according to Hebrews 13. Third, the staff here is loaded with skill and integrity. As Ken leads the staff, I want to encourage you to honor and respect the work they do among you.

We will remain involved in the ministry of Fellowship and Tommy will tell you about that. I want to tell you that the time we have spent in this great church has been a source of growth and development for Melanie and myself. We have learned so much from you. We will be better Christians and servants because of your impact on us. Your love, friendships, support, encouragement, challenges, have enriched our lives. We will deeply miss the regularity of contact, but know that we will take with us the good things you have built into us. Our prayer is and will continue to be that Fellowship continues to flourish.