A letter from Bruce and Lora Whearty in Louisville
April 2010
Dear friends and family,
This is the first newsletter that Lora and I have written since ending our service as mission co-workers. I am pleased that you have opted to stay in touch and hear from us once in a while. That reminds me that our relationship as brothers and sisters in Christ is not based on financial support (though that help was certainly appreciated when we needed it!) but on deeper connections, forged through a mutual journey, complete with rejoicing and sorrow.
So what should I share, this week after Easter?
Well, I just had my first-anniversary check-up, complete with lots of beeping equipment and computer printouts, and my heart valve got a clean bill of health. (And why shouldn’t it, since it’s by far the youngest part of me?) My cardiologist says that I have a beautiful valve and he’ll listen again in six months. Lora and I are overwhelmed with gratitude. Please share this news with your congregation as a prayer of thanksgiving, OK? That thanks mostly goes to God, of course, but your share comes to you, since we have felt so well-supported by so many people around the world. Thanks!
My work for Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) World Mission is interesting and challenging, especially in these economic times, since my goal is to ensure that all of our mission co-workers around the world are securely supported. I hope that each one of the churches receiving this letter is already in a support relationship with another mission co-worker, either in Ethiopia or some other place where they feel called to mission. If you need help, please just give me a call at 1-800-728-7228, ext. 5157. If you’re struggling with your budget, like so many of our congregations are, go ahead and commit to support a missionary by praying and by writing letters of encouragement. When the time comes, the money will follow. It’s the connection that matters.
Earlier this week I had an evening Skype conversation with First Presbyterian Church in Champaign, Illinois, and it was great fun! They used a projector to blow up my face (ouch!) onto a big screen, and used external speakers to amplify the computer that was receiving the signal. Please let your mission committee know that I would be happy to ‘meet’ with you, tell a story or two, and answer questions about mission funding. If I don’t know the answer, I’ll find it for you! If you can’t find a projector for large-scale Skyping, I could also have a conversation with a room full of people by speaker phone. We can arrange a time so that I can call you, and the conversation will be free.
One humbling thing about my job is that I am often in so many different conversations at the same time that I can’t remember what the topic is. Just yesterday, I answered a phone call from a pastor who was responding to a message that I had left. He introduced himself by name, and after about a minute of floundering, I said, “Oh! You’re from Ashtabula, right?” He laughed and said, “OK, so now we’re on the same page! Good!”
After spending three months without work, Lora has taken a job at a pre-school center. The school is run by the University of Louisville and has a beautiful facility right at the edge of the campus. There is one-way glass in all of the classrooms, so neither the teacher nor the students know who’s watching. It might be a parent, or the director, or a whole class of grad students taking notes on child development. This is a difficult transition for Lora, though, from being an educational consultant and teacher-trainer in reading readiness and basic literacy, to being a teacher’s aide in a pre-school. Please hold her in prayer, along with everyone else in this economy who is un- or under-employed.
I recently attended a workshop on resilience, the ability to bounce back after a set-back. One of the most intriguing things for me was the idea that we need to take control of some part of our life, so that our sense of being powerful and successful can assert itself. When I’ve been completely beaten down, I may have to start small, like with brushing my teeth. Brushing each day increases my confidence in my ability to follow through on goals, so I can commit to flossing, too. The habit of flossing leads to the freedom to choose better diets and healthier exercise patterns. It’s like a toddler growing up all over again and gaining power over wider and wider circles of their life. The presenter said that we all ‘tolerate’ a lot of things that we don’t like in our lives. Some of them are beyond our power to impact, but we also just put up with a lot of little annoyances day-by-day and week-by-week and never get around to dealing with them. Her advice was to make a list of 25 things that you merely ‘tolerate,’ and then try to solve two or three. If you can cross even a couple of items off the list in a month, you have made your world better, and that makes it easier to believe in a brighter future.
That sounds a lot like faith and works to me. Choose something to do, some small place where you can make a difference by eliminating some small annoyance or injustice. Then do it. The world looks brighter, you have more faith, and that gives you the strength to do something else. And then you’re on an upward spiral, where faith feeds works and works feed faith. As we become more capable and confident, we become more useful tools in the hands of God.
If we like, we could call it “resurrection.”
In this season of new life, we rejoice in God’s promise, a promise fulfilled every day in our lives. Stay connected, look each other in the face, and share a good laugh. Do the work placed before you today, even if it feels insignificant. Choose to master one small area, and it will help you grow to larger life.
Love and peace,
Bruce and Lora Whearty
P.S. Would you please reply to this letter and let us know what church you go to? Our email lists are sorted mostly by presbytery, but I’d also like to have a record of who fits with which congregation. About that memory thing ... Thanks!
Love and peace,
Bruce Whearty
World Mission Church Support
100 Witherspoon Street
Louisville, Kentucky 40202
office: (888) 728-7228, x5157
mobile: (502) 407-9636
fax: (502) 569-8039
email: bruce.whearty@pcusa.org
