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Click to see the very splendid graduation day at the Lubumbashi School of Mission in RD Congo, led by Jules Wazeng.

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Click to see this very beautiful three minute video from our friends Angel and Abigail of EMSIMision in Spain showing you their medical mission to Burkina Faso. No words, it is all smiles and music. You will love it.

My favourite author is Henri Nouwen, and I have most of his penetratingly honest books, which have a way of softening my heart and shaping my life. His book, ‘Gracias’, recalls how he sacrificially resigned from teaching at Yale to go and serve the poor of Bolivia and Peru. Wholly convinced, he went on a one-way ticket yet not twelve months later he wrote, “The poor of Latin America had not called me, and the Christian community back home had not sent me. My experience was not what I expected and as friends say, I can do more for the South from the North.” With that, he caught the next Pan Am flight home. I also have found myself in such unusual places that I had to wonder which brains – if any, I had employed to plan the trip. Zeal, you see, is a fine asset, a driving force with Ferrari power but like Ferrari ownership, it can consume you if you are not careful, and you need to know what you are doing. The ancient proverb puts it this way, “Zeal without knowledge is not good.”

More like this in The DCI Stories and The DCI Minute.

Jim Morris, UK says six of us are going to the Crimea to do four days mission with children and put a new roof on a old building because in the Crimea if you don’t have a building you are classed as a sect. The pastor has been working on the building for 7 years and needs help to finish, so we feel excited to go. Click to see the Crimea.

The world of the generous gets larger and larger;
the world of the stingy gets smaller and smaller.
The one who blesses others is abundantly blessed;
those who help others are helped.
Proverbs 11.24, The Message.

Success does not come from being 100% better than the competition, but from being 1%  better in 100 different ways. Writer Dale Dauten says, ‘If you want to be creative in your company, church, career or your life, it all comes down to one easy step - the extra one.”

Selah – think about it for a moment.
From the UCB Word For Today.

When people of retirement age meet together, generally everyone has a story about their cruise, the caravan, the camper or last Christmas in Cancun. That’s OK. They all worked harder than I did, for longer and did better by far. Enjoy, because at our age my friends, today has no manufacturer’s guarantee of replacement. Rest by all means but to be complacent, to call it a day, never. Complacency extinguishes the driving force that paid for the cruise in the first place, stifles creativity and is a sure recipe for dementia. Contentment is fine, gratitude is better yet best of all is continuing in the call of God to leave the world a fairer, healthier, saner place for our children and those of Africa, Asia and the Americas. Personally, I do suspect that when the ageing apostle Paul urged young Timothy to stir up the gift in him; it was only what he insisted to his own soul every single morning. After all at Paul’s age, the Aegean is as good as the Caribbean, and a deck chair on a Greek island is as comfortable as a deck chair anywhere else.

More like this in The DCI Stories and The DCI Minute.

Assistant editor wanted to turn incoming news into these articles, must have writing skills and English, can live anywhere in the world, takes an hour or two a week. Sorry, same as me, no salary but you get lots of thanks. E-mail Les Norman.

Sandra Hoving from the UK, following Jesus in Uganda with Links International says we visited an area where the death and sickness has really fallen because the villagers organized a health team to visit every home, most of which now have a latrine with a bowl of water for hand washing.