The Wait is Over!

Written by Lauren Timberlake, Bhutanese ESL Director


We moved into our house in Kansas City, Kansas, on Saturday. It was a long time coming, but this week I am praising God for his faithfulness to my family and for bringing us to this neighborhood in his perfect timing.

I was first introduced to Bhutanese refugees three years ago. I had a background in teaching English as a second language (ESL), and my church had asked me to help train some volunteers to become conversation partners. I had two small children at the time, so I didn’t think I could do more than one or two meetings. I decided to go to the first little class, and I was hooked! The Bhutanese people were so endearing and had such great needs. Soon after, we formalized a relationship with Mission Adelante and began offering weekly ESL classes. A year ago, I agreed to join staff and began fundraising. We bought a home to remodel close to Mission Adelante last April and put our southern Overland Park home on the market. It sold in one day. We found out we were expecting our third child and moved in with my (incredibly awesome) parents for the summer.

So we thought. The remodel of our home took longer than expected to complete. By the end of the summer, there were studs and wires, but not much else. Our baby girl was born in October, two months ahead of her due date. Praise God she was and has been perfectly healthy since then, but we needed a little more room, so we found a furnished apartment. Sometimes it was hard to understand why God didn’t help move things along faster with our house. We felt very much out of control and far away from what God was doing in our KCK neighborhood. But I think God used that to help us lean into him. Our friends and my Jesus Calling book kept reminding us that God uses time to make his sovereignty known, and that he doesn’t waste anything--that we could be close to him even if we physically weren’t where we wanted to be. Waiting can be very purposeful. So we waited.

As soon as there were flushing toilets and light switches, we moved. What seemed like an army of friends (including some Bhutanese teens!) came to help brush off the construction rubble from our things stored in the basement and move them upstairs. Still surrounded by boxes, we are humbled and blessed by where God has called us. We had three Bhutanese boys over to play with our kids on Monday, and it felt really good. We have been commuting to this neighborhood for three years, and we are eager to see what proximity does to grow our relationships here.

Please join us in praying for our Bhutanese friends and our family’s role as we begin to live among them. Pray for our children (8, 5, and 4 months) to adjust well and enjoy the adventure God is calling us to. God is definitely alive and active in this place, and we want to press in to what He is doing and use our resources well. The wait is over, but the adventure has just begun!

In other news:

• We were glad to have Rachelle Pichardo and Chris Gorney of Redeemer Fellowship visit us this week.  Redeemer Fellowship exists to cultivate communities of transformed disciples who live for the glory of God and the good of the city, and we're thankful to be in partnership with them.

Prayer needs:

• Mission Adelante's Board of Directors and Leadership Team traveled to Arkansas for a couple of days this week to observe a ministry with experience in "business as missions."  Pray for the Lord to grant wisdom as we explore whether particular business ventures could align well with our mission.
• Pray for us as we finalize our selection of 2012 summer interns.  If you know someone that would be great for the internship this year, urge him or her to fill out this form.  We would look at a late application.

Current needs:

• Teens Adelante is hoping for swimming lessons for 10-15 teenagers. Please contact Brooke if you can teach swimming lessons (to full grown teens) or can help us in finding a good instructor! brookec@missionadelante.org
• An industrial sewing machine: the Bhutanese women's sewing cooperative is beginning a new and very promising product line using recycled burlap that is allowing a few women the opportunity to use their cultural trade and skills to earn an income for their family.  We already have orders for these products, but we need an industrial sewing machine to use with the burlap material
• A ceiling-mounted projector and protective cage
• A 3- or 4-drawer locking filing cabinet with keys
• A preschooler sized table and chairs or picnic table
• A small computer desk or computer table to create an additional workspace in our offices
• New vacuums or repair for our broken vacuums
• Men's and kids' winter clothing to make available through our resource center
• Containers of Goldfish crackers/animal crackers for Bhutanese Kids Club snacks (Sometimes the repeated purchase of seemingly inexpensive things can eat up a budget!)
• A well-working and Internet able C.P.U. or laptop for use by L.I.T. students

To respond to any of these needs, please e-mail Morgan at morganh@missionadelante.org.

Important dates:

• Observation Day: Thursday, February 23 (Latino) 6:30-8:30-  Have you wondered what all goes on around here on a typical evening of programming?  Here's your opportunity to come and see for yourself!  If these dates don't work for you, please contact info@missionadelante.org to schedule an alternate evening.
• Spring Break: March 14-17 the Mission Adelante office will be closed.  No evening programs Tuesday, March 13 or Thursday, March 15.
• Adelante Missions Institute Seminar: Saturday, June 30 at 9:00  We're pleased to announce that Noel Castellanos, CEO of Christian Community Development Association, will visit Kansas City at the end of June.  Mark your calendar!

Would You Pray?

Written by Jason Schoff, Director of Latino Outreach

Would you turn down a chance to pray?  We at Mission Adelante believe that dependent prayer glorifies the ultimate Provider and is the best weapon in a spiritual battle that can only be won if God moves.  That is why we decided a couple of years ago that all our Latino English (ESL) classes should include this component at the beginning or end of class.  Thankfully, our students have responded warmly to this important piece.  We might start with a beginning class by praying for simple and broad things like our students' success with learning and for God to take care of all our families and needs.  Later we transition into praying for the personal, individual needs of our students.  While this may not happen over night, we hope our groups grow in faith to believe that God cares about them enough to listen and He answers their prayers.  

Little by little, our classes become communities that begin to pray for one another.  They feel free enough to share about their needs and even express praise for ways God is responding to them.  We often begin asking our students to lead the prayer time by the second or third trimester of their studies with us.  It is an invitation, never an obligation.  Some in our groups have never in their lives prayed aloud and this becomes an open door for them to experience acceptance by their classroom community.  

Last week one of our volunteers asked Oscar* to pray.  She knew Oscar attended a church in our neighborhood and hoped he would take her up on the opportunity.  However, he wanted to pass!  He expressed how he stopped going to church several months ago and felt like he couldn't pray because God would not accept his prayers for that reason.  Ugh!  It was a sad moment.  The volunteer encouraged him and let him know that God would be very willing to receive his prayers.  What a humbling end to class!

Would you pray for Oscar to sense God's love and longing to hear his prayers?  Also, would you join us in praying that our Latino English classes will see prayer continue to touch people's hearts and draw them to God?  

*Name changed to protect privacy

In other news:

• We were pleased to have Dan Deeble and the rest of the Heartland Community Church Management Team visit our staff last week, and to hear about their vision for a great number of Christians practicing evangelism as a lifestyle throughout Kansas City.
• David and Holly Stetler attended a conference in South Carolina last week with 3d Ministries called Community of Practice and learned about leadership and community.
• The third of three Latino house churches began meeting in an  immigrant home last Sunday.  This demonstrates the ownership of the gatherings that immigrants are taking as our focus remains on reproducing disciples and leaders who are capable of multiplying the work.

Prayer needs:

• Join  us in asking the Lord's blessing of our staff's various fundraising efforts.

Current needs:

• An industrial sewing machine: the Bhutanese women's sewing cooperative is beginning a new and very promising product line using recycled burlap that is allowing a few women the opportunity to use their cultural trade and skills to earn an income for their family.  We already have orders for these products, but we need an industrial sewing machine to use on the burlap material
• A 3- or 4-drawer locking filing cabinet with keys
• A preschooler sized table and chairs or picnic table
• A small computer desk or computer table to create an additional workspace in our offices
• New vacuums or repair for our broken vacuums
• Men's and kids' winter clothing to make available through our resource center
• Containers of Goldfish crackers/animal crackers for Bhutanese Kids Club snacks (Sometimes the repeated purchase of seemingly inexpensive things can eat up a budget!)
• A well-working and Internet able C.P.U. or laptop for use by L.I.T. students

To respond to any of these needs, please e-mail Morgan at morganh@missionadelante.org.

Important dates:

• Observation Days: Tuesday, February 21 (Bhutanese)/Thursday, February 23 (Latino) 6:30-8:30  Have you wondered what all goes on around here on a typical evening of programming?  Here's your opportunity to come and see for yourself!  If these dates don't work for you, please contact info@missionadelante.org to schedule an alternate evening.
• Adelante Missions Institute Seminar: Saturday, June 30 at 9:00  We're pleased to announce that Noel Castellanos, CEO of Christian Community Development Association, will visit Kansas City at the end of June.  Mark your calendar!

Engineered Ministry

Written by Operations Director Marla Hansen

In the years before joining the staff of Mission Adelante, I enjoyed a career as a manufacturing engineer.  My job was to improve the production and bottom line of the factories I worked in.  Throughout my career this ranged from factories that made anything from mailboxes to nuclear control valves.  My specific area of expertise was in the implementation of something called Lean Manufacturing and in Constraint Theory.  Basically both these ideas are based on the concept that individual efficiency is not always the answer, and can actually make both your production and your bottom line worse.  In brief this is how it works: when you first begin to work with a process, the first thing you do is just watch.  Take time to understand each step of the process, the equipment involved, the people involved, and the output capabilities at that step.  Constraint theory will lead you to identify your bottlenecks (the processes that can’t keep up) and you then focus your resources on improving them.  Lean Manufacturing will lead you to remove any waste (excess work) out of those bottlenecks.  It can be very counter-intuitive and counter-cultural.  In some cases you would actually be better off to pay workers to go home than to have them keep producing faster than the bottleneck process can keep up. 

As I have spent the last year being a part of Mission Adelante, I have come to realize that ministry done well works in pretty much the same way.  Jesus said himself, “the harvest is plenty, but the workers are few”.  It’s incredibly important to use resources strategically in order to make the biggest kingdom impact.  I have watched the leadership and ministry staff at Mission Adelante do much the same in the neighborhood as I did in the factory with one important difference:  where my job in factories was to get to know the processes and look for the bottleneck, the Mission Adelante staff gets to know the neighborhood and looks for where God is at work.  From there out, it’s really the same thing.  In manufacturing you subordinate your resources to the bottleneck whereas in ministry you submit your resources to God’s plan; both will allow you to be the most productive whether you are trying to produce mailboxes or Kingdom fruit.  And just like Lean Manufacturing, applying resource to the wrong place can be completely ineffective – regardless of the intention or hard work of any individual.  If it isn’t God’s will, you’d be better off sitting at home.   

So other than being interesting to nerdy types like myself what is the point of this comparison, you might ask?  Well I think there are two:

1. If you’ve ever wondered if the time, talent or financial donation you share with Mission Adelante is being used in the most effective way, this engineer’s opinion is: Absolutely. 
2.  If you’ve ever thought that maybe your talents don’t really fit any ministry role, ask God to show you differently and watch expectantly for Him to show you the answer.  This article narrates the answer I received when I asked that question.

In other news:

• Drew Hammond, Bhutanese Outreach Intern, visited Xenos Christian Fellowship the weekend before last in Columbus, Ohio.  Like Kansas City, KS, Columbus is a resettlement location for Bhutanese refugees, and like Mission Adelante, Xenos is actively reaching out to their population to demonstrate the love of Christ.  Drew enjoyed conversing with Xenos leadership and meeting Bhutanese believers, including a young man who is one of the only believers in his family. Drew was able to encourage him with the news that there are many believers in Kansas City that share his last name!
• It's really exciting to see the enthusiasm of people that are new to reading the Bible! The Latino teens are learning about the various spiritual gifts, and thereby finding very clear application of scripture to their lives. The Bhutanese kids are reading through the narrative contained in Genesis week by week, and are simply captivated by it.

Prayer needs:

• Please pray for a family that has been away from our community for a period of time to begin coming to our church gatherings again, which they expressed interest in doing.
• Ask the Holy Spirit to provide Molly Merrick with guidance and wisdom as she mentors two pre-teen girls.

Current needs:

• A 3- or 4-drawer locking filing cabinet with keys
• A preschooler sized table and chairs or picnic table
• A small computer desk or computer table to create an additional workspace in our offices.
• New vacuums or repair for our broken vacuums
• Men's and kids' winter clothing to make available through our resource center.

Upcoming dates:

• Summer Internship Application Deadline--Wednesday, February 15: Our summer internship combines practical missions experience in an urban context with mentoring and seminars on key topics relevant to ministry. This opportunity is perfect for the college or post-college person who is exploring a potential call to missions or urban ministry.  The internship lasts from May 26 until August 12.  To fill out the our interest form go to www.missionadelante.org/internform. You'll also find an attachment there with all the details.
• Observation Days: Tuesday, February 21 (Bhutanese)/Thursday, February 23 (Latino) 6:30-8:30  Have you wondered what all goes on around here on a typical evening of programming?  Here's your opportunity to come and see for yourself!  If these dates don't work for you, please contact info@missionadelante.org to schedule an alternate evening.
• Adelante Missions Institute Seminar: Saturday, June 30 at 9:00  We're pleased to announce that Noel Castellanos, CEO of Christian Community Development Association, will visit Kansas City at the end of June.  Mark your calendar!