God's Mysterious Ways

One of my favorite hymns, written by William Cowper in 1774, deals with the tension we sometimes experience bewteen God's providential dealings and his promise of grace. The hymn has such memorable lines as:

God moves in a mysterious way his wonders to perform....
Behind a frowning providence he hides a smiling face....
The bud may have a bitter taste, but sweet will be the flow'r....

Like many believers, I have often meditated on these works in times of deep grief and sorrow. However, they are also applicable in situations that are simply dissapointing and puzzling, as I was reminded last month. Continue reading below to hear the details.

MTW Latin America Vision-Casting Meetings

The second Latin America vision-casting meeting was held in Santiago, Chile, from March 4-7. This was a repeat of the meeting that was held in Monterrey, Mexico, last October. The idea was that everyone ministering with MTW in Latin America attend either the one or the other. I was supposed to deliver two of the presentations, but the day before I was scheduled to leave I came down with bronchitis. So the doctor told me not to travel. I was sick for a week. But I ended up working harder during the conference staying at home than I would have had I gone. I had to create a slide show of my presentations with Spanish audio, and upload them to a website so my colleagues meeting in Santiago could download the videos and watch them. Had I been able to go to the meeting, I could have simply delivered the presentations live in Spanish. I finished the second presentation at 3:00 AM (5:00 AM Santiago time) , just a few hours before they were supposed to view it. I went to upload the file only to discover that I had lost my internet connection. Phyllis and I got in the car and went to downtown Chattanooga looking for some place that had a fast WiFi connection so I could make my presentation available for download. We finally found a Paneras that was in the process of opening, and got the file uploaded in time. I'm told that the meeting went well. I'm not sure why the Lord allowed me to get sick so that I couldn't attend the meeting in Santiago. It was very disappointing and puzzling. In any case, we needed these talks available in Spanish for our missionaries and associates in Latin America, and as a result of my having to stay home, this job got done fairly quickly.

Keeping in Touch

I want to remind you of the website that is dedicated to giving you information about our ministry:

http://partners.waldecker.net.

This site has family pictures, previous prayer letters, thoughts on missions, and other information. It also includes a link to our page on the regional website, which is http://www.mtwla.org.

Thanks again for your prayers. We very much appreciate your partnership with us in the gospel.

Gary and Phyllis Waldecker 
gary@mtwla.org

I gave two talks at the Latin America vision-casting meetings--one on contextualization and the other on training. More on this in another letter.

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