Richard & Sandra van Dillen

Richard & Sandra van Dillen             HOLLAND           14 December, 2010

                                                              PRAISES

1.1. Last night I was able to share the gospel again with my Hindu neighbor and good friend, Soenita. After she read the evangelistic Dutch Christmas card that Richard made, I read it to her again and asked her questions. I asked her why God became a man and came to the earth and lived a short life and was crucified. She told me that Jesus came to the earth the first Christmas to save us from our sins. I asked her if she understood that we were all sinners. She said yes, but she still doesn’t understand why she needs to accept Jesus as her personal Savior and why He alone is God. She feels she can remain a Hindu and worship her Hindu gods and Jesus at the same time.

2.2. On 16 December we will be celebrating our 27th wedding anniversary. We praise the Lord for the happiness He has blessed us with, our 4 healthy, good-looking PD's and our lovely daughter-in-law, Amber. (We make no claim to be unbiased as parents.

3 3. Peter Daniel broke his middle toe break dancing, but he taped it up and is still able to dance. Pray for quick healing!

 

                                                                    PRAYER

1. 1.   Please continue to pray for Soenita to be able to understand her need for Jesus and that He is the ONLY God.

2. 2.     After Perry-David & Amber’s wedding we were awarded 4 Delta tickets for giving up our airplane seats and staying overnight for free in a nice hotel with a complementary breakfast buffet in Ohio. Over six months ago we used the vouchers (just before they expired) and made the reservations for Patrice Danielle & Paul-Duffy to fly to Holland for this Christmas. We took  the cheapest flight from San Diego we could get. We set up Paul-Duffy to fly to Holland on our 27^th wedding anniversary, 16 December. Patrice Danielle , Perry-David, & Amber are flying out on 17 December. We need urgent prayer that Paul-Duffy’s German professor will allow him to take his German final early since it is scheduled for the same time he will be flying. Paul-Duffy has a good relationship with her. She likes him since he is a European and doesn't speak German with an American accent. He also understands the European culture since he was born and raised in Holland. I called Delta in Holland and just as it was in June, all of the cheap seats on 17 December have already been sold. If Paul-Duffy is allowed to take his German final today or tomorrow we will not have to pay the high price to change his cheap ticket to a more expensive ticket on 17 December.

3.   3. Patrice Danielle has been working very hard on her final papers. She called last night and could not sleep, because her shoulder and arm which she injured l3 months ago during her bike accident in El Cajon, CA were all of a sudden causing her extreme pain.  We prayed for her and she was finally able to sleep. Please pray she can finish 5 papers and take her exams for her final grades.  Please also pray that the LORD would heal her shoulder and arm!          

Richard & Sandra van Dillen

Richard & Sandra van Dillen                 Holland                             10 December, 2010

                                                              PRAISES

1.   1.  Thanks so much for your prayers for Manisha, Vikash, and their 18 month old baby, Rikash, because they are now living in their very own apartment.  Richard was able to move them with several trips in the past 3 days. I helped Manisha with Rikash and some shopping.  Manisha said that Rikash slept through the night in their new apartment and was peaceful for the first time since his birth in June of 2008.

2.    2. Parvin (Muslim convert and sister of Zari) received several Christian books & 2 DVD’s in Farsi for Sinterklaasdag last Sunday from Allyn & Diane (also missionaries with Christar who worked several years in Iran). Allyn is in charge of the Christar workers who are ministering among Muslims & Hindus in the states. Parvin’s face lit up like a child’s does on Christmas morning when she received the gifts.

3.    3. Grace (a faithful Hindustani believer that we led to the Lord in 1995) called us on Wednesday evening and offered us free tickets she got from her work to the professional Dutch musical production of Mary Poppins! This was our first time to go to a professional theater as a couple since 1997(before the death of Dad van Dillen). Dad gave us tickets to a Broadway show in 1995 and then to the Dutch production of The Phantom of the Opera in 1997. What a blessing to spend an evening in a Dutch professional theater with some of our Hindustani Christian friends.

4.    4. The 3 other PD’s and Amber will be flying to Holland in one week and arriving at Schipol airport in just 8 short days!

5.    5. I spoke with little Soenita (Hindu) and her Muslim Hindustani boyfriend Ivan Vijzel for an hour and a half last night. They plan to visit us soon. Soenita went through a nasty divorce two years ago from an insane radical Hindu. He went to prison for faking terrorist acts at Hindu temples to give Muslims a bad name. He actually threatened to murder her 3 different times in 7 years with a huge carving knife.   

6.    6. Rio (Paul-Duffy’s good friend from Christian High School in El Cajon, CA) is home and is turning 18 today. Paul-Duffy is happy to be able to see his good friend again after 9 months. We praise the Lord that Rio’s relationship with the Lord is stronger!

                                                       PRAYER

1.    Vikash gave Manisha a Hindu idol as a wedding gift in 2008. He insisted that the idol be placed on a shelf in their living room. Although Vikash is not a practicing Hindu, his mother, Bea, is. Please pray for this young couple to come to Christ and to be able to realize the emptiness of their idols and Hindu gods.

2.    Please pray that Zari would be open to watching the Farsi Christian DVDs with her sister Parvin. Zari grew up a Muslim in Iran and converted to Christianity here in Holland through our ministry. She later joined an Iranian Sufi Muslim sect. She worships their charismatic leader even after his recent death. Zari says she still believes in Jesus.  Many Muslims say this, but they do not believe in the Jesus of the Bible. Please pray for God to use the Farsi DVDs and Parvin’s testimony to bring Zari back to the truth.

3.    We delivered some Dutch evangelical Christmas cards that Richard made to Muslim Hindustanis in the neighborhood. Unfortunately in the past three years some of our Muslim friends have moved and we do not have a forwarding address. Please pray that God would enable us to somehow reconnect with these Hindustani Muslim friends from the PD’s boys soccer teams (Dynamo 67) soon.

4.    Please pray for us to be able to borrow 2 bicycles for Perry-David and Amber to use in Den Haag for the 2 weeks during Christmas and New Year’s that they are here. We bike to our Dutch church (6 miles one way) and everywhere we go. Patrice Danielle and Paul-Duffy still have their old bikes.  

5.    Please pray that the Lord would use the trials in Soenita &Ivan Vijzel’s horrific pasts to open their hearts to the love of Christ.

6.    Patrice Danielle needs prayer to be able to get out of the 9 month housing contract with The King’s College. We can’t afford to send her there for the spring semester since our FASFA grant was much less than we anticipated.

7.     Pray for Rio, Paul-Duffy, Ronnie, and Ashley to always put Jesus first in their young lives and to be good testimonies at their secular college.  

8.    EXAM WEEK! Please pray for Patrice Danielle who has to write four final papers for college English, history, government, and logic. Please pray for Paul-Duffy to get at least a B on his philosophy final so he can pass his difficult philosophy course. Pray for him to do very well on his projects for acting and art and to get an A on his German final.  

                                                

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Water for Ukarumpa compound in PNG

About 1,000 adult volunteers, national employees, translators, support personnel, and their children are in PNG at any given time for Bible translation and related projects. Fifty national translation workers can be trained at a time at the Center in Ukarumpa.

“The sense of desperation, of frustration, when you don’t have access to water . . . it’s something [Americans] almost never experience,” says Bruce Smith, president and CEO of Wycliffe Associates. “The Bible translation personnel at Ukarumpa live with the threat of this situation every single day. This shouldn’t be.” The current system brings up to 65,000 gallons of water per day from a stream outside the Translation Center compound. However, last year the owner of the land where the pipes enter the stream, hired armed guards to prevent workers from fixing damaged pipes at the stream, leaving the compound without water for plumbing and the basic necessities of life. It was only through police intervention that the Center could resume piping from the stream. Unfortunately, the land where the stream is located cannot be purchased. As a result, Wycliffe Associates has been raising funds and sending volunteers to work alongside nationals to install a new, more modern system to provide a reliable water supply for the Translation Center property.

The new system will draw up to 80,000 gallons of water per day from two sources within the center, ensuring an uninterrupted supply, and will bring water into new storage tanks. Wycliffe Associates also anticipates water loss to go down dramatically when the system’s leaky, 50-year-old pipes are replaced.

Funds raised by Wycliffe Associates will be used to create access roads for construction equipment, dig interceptor trenches, dig and line sump and surge tanks, measure production rates from the tanks, and modify existing security fencing. An additional $100,000 needs to be raised to finish the work before the rainy season starts in December.

The Plight of Sudanese Christians

From Chuck Colson's Break Point

Defusing a Time Bomb
The Plight of Sudanese Christians

November 18, 2010

When he was seven years old, Francis Bok, a Christian from the southern part of Sudan, was captured and sold into slavery by Arab raiders. Bok spent the next ten years as a slave before escaping.

Eventually, with the help of Christian groups, Bok emigrated to the United States, where he has devoted himself to telling his story and the plight of other Sudanese Christians. Now he is telling an updated version of the tale, one whose ending is yet to be written.

The story concerns a referendum scheduled for January 9, 2011. On that day, the people of southern Sudan will vote on whether to remain a part of Sudan. Even if the run-up of the election had gone smoothly, which it hasn't, there would still be ample reason to fear what happens after the vote.

One government official has hinted that the government "may not recognize the results" of the referendum. Its stated reason is that the Sudan People's Liberation Movement hasn't fulfilled its obligations under the 2005 agreement that ended a 22-year civil war.

That civil war killed at least 2 million people in the south and caused another 4 million to flee their homes. It followed an attempt to impose Shari'a law on Sudan's Christians and animists. Those who weren't killed or turned into refuges were often, like Bok, enslaved.

Given this eliminationist history, southerners are expected to vote for independence, and the Sudanese government is expected to balk at letting them go. Not because it's had a change of heart about its Christian population, but because that population is living atop Sudan's oil reserves.

That's the real reason Khartoum won't recognize the results: If the south goes, it will take Sudan's economy with it.

The Sudanese government has already proven, both in the south and more recently in Darfur that it is willing to repeatedly commit crimes against humanity to get what it wants. Sudan's president, Omar al-Bashir, has already been charged with genocide and crimes against humanity by the International Criminal Court.

That's why Bok is crisscrossing this country warning audiences about the likelihood that catastrophic violence will follow the January 9^th referendum.  He's not alone: Secretary of State Clinton has called Sudan a "ticking time bomb."

More ominously, Dennis Blair, the National Director of Intelligence, told Congress that southern Sudan was the most likely candidate for "a new mass killing or genocide."

Despite the rhetoric, Bok says that he and his countrymen are worried, and it's right that they are. Because the only way the U.S. will protect Bok's people is if the American people, especially Christians, make it clear that standing by and doing nothing is unacceptable.

That's why I need you to become informed on this issue-we'll link you to a few articles at BreakPoint.org; just click on today's BreakPoint commentary.

You and I have an obligation--after all, for two decades, we've been fighting against the persecution of Christians Southern Sudan. And we were successful under the Bush Administration in getting a peace agreement in 2005. So, I want you to be prepared now to tell your representatives and the Administration they must do the right thing.

Sudanese Christians like Francis Bok are determined not to be enslaved again. The question is: Are we willing to help them safeguard their freedom?

Free Christian Audio Books

http://www.freechristianaudiobooks.com/

Richard and Sandra van Dillen in Holland

Richard & Sandra van Dillen        Hindustani Ministry     15 November, 2010

                                                              PRAISES

1.     We praise the Lord for providing so many witnessing opportunities for us since we have been in Holland. We thank God for making this verse so dominant in our lives the past couple of months: 2 Corinthians 2:15

For we are a sweet aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing.

2.     Last week Peter Daniel was able to share Christ with one of his pagan Dutch friends, Rick. Peter Daniel was able to dismiss many of his pagan beliefs with facts. Rick said he would read Meer Christianity by C.S.Lewis in Dutch. I was so impressed by Peter Daniel’s ability to negate every point Rick brought up with Biblical answers. Rick is a self proclaimed Buddist.

3.     Manisha and Vikash’s kitchen came in last week and Richard and Duffy were able to help Vikash pick up the kitchen and deliver it to their new house. The kitchen, the light fixtures, and the bathroom still need to be assembled and installed. We are praising God that the kitchen finally arrived. Manisha told me yesterday that Vikash worked all weekend with his Hindu freinds to assemble the kitchen!

4.     Ten days ago Friday 5 November was a Hindu holiday, Diwali. Last Tuesday I was able to share the gospel with my Hindu friend and neighbor, Bea, by contrasting her Hindu beliefs and her Hindu gods with the one true God revealed in the Bible. Bea listened but her daughter-in-law, Manisha, really enjoyed what I shared. Bea goes through the rituals of Hinduism without even knowing what they mean, and Manisha thinks the not eating of meat for the entire week of Diwali and the other Hindu rituals involved with Diwali are ridiculous. She always urges me to pray to Jesus for her marriage.  Manisha is also really struggling to continue to live in the same house with her mother-in-law, Bea. She has lived with Bea for the past 2.5 years, and they were supposed to move to their new house more than a month ago, but the house is still not ready to move into. Viskash works on his new house every evening after work, but he is working very slowly!

5.       We praise the Lord for our celebration with Peter and Margre Hays (church planters & missionaries among the Dutch in North Holland) on 11 November or Saint Maartin’s Day. The Dutch kids in North Holland sing songs at the door and receive candy for their efforts. One little Dutch boy about 4 years old insisted that he sing a solo so he could get his candy! We really missed having their four grown kids and our four grown PD’s involved in the celebration last week. It was a very quiet Saint Maartin!

6.      Moncef (raised Muslim) spent the entire weekend with us. He is a break dancing friend of Peter Daniel’s. We had many opportunities to share Christ with Moncef this weekend.  He trained with Peter Daniel and Daan on Friday evening and spent Friday, Saturday, and Sunday evening with us. He doesn’t feel that God loves him since he lost both parents within three months to cancer when he was only 13 years old.

7.     Papa Perry would be 89 today. I know that Daddy is celebrating in heaven with Jesus, but Stevie and I still miss our daddy very much. We feel so blessed to have been raised by two godly parents who loved the Lord!

                                                 PRAYER

1.     Seventeen years ago we met Zari through a Hindustani friend of ours. She was a Muslim from Iran. We had the privilege of leading Zari to the Lord and having opportunities to witness to her family members who live in Holland. Zari was baptized by Richard and I had the joy of teaching Zari God’s Word.  Unfortunately Zari has fallen away from the Lord but through our faithful prayers her sister, Parvin, trusted Christ about 5 years ago. Parvin is a member of our Dutch supporting church, a CAMA church in Delft. Tomorrow she is having an examination of her large intestine. She was too sick to go to church yesterday. Please pray for total healing of Parvin. Pray for her continual witness to her Muslim family members and to Zari. She prays daily for the salvation of her family members and for Zari to return to her first love, Jesus Christ. Please pray for the salvation of Parvin’s family and for Zari the lost sheep to return to the Good Shepherd.  

2.     Please continue to pray for the salvation of Peter Daniel’s Dutch and Muslim unsaved friends: Moncef, Shah, Psiertje (Muslims) Rick, Dominique, Danny, & Nicky (Dutch).  Pray for Rick, Moncef, & Nicky to read the books we have given them: More than a Carpenter by Josh McDowell & Meer Christianity by C.S.Lewis.

3.     Manisha came to me in a panic yesterday. She said that her mother-in-law was so mean and hateful to her this past weekend because Bea does not want them to move. She treats Manisha like she is her servant. Manisha’s delicious good cooking and her constant cleaning are going to be greatly missed by Bea. Manisha told me yesterday that she was afraid that Bea had put a hex on their marriage. She begged me to pray to Jesus for her marriage. Vikash was extremely spoiled by Bea and Rudi. His two older sisters are 11 and 10 years older than him. Fortunately, Sandia and Anita (Vikash’s sisters) are very kind to Manisha. They have taken her side every time and they have told Manisha several times that they know their own mother much too well. Please pray for Manisha & Vikash’s marriage. Pray for the salvation of Manisha, Vikash, Sandia, Anita, Bea and their family members.    

4.     Many missionaries in Europe are struggling financially do to the drop of the dollar to the euro. Please pray for the individuals who have promised to support our ministry financially to start supporting our work. Pray for our financial monthly support to be at 100% by the end of this year!

5.     Thank you for your prayers for Stevie’s knee surgery. He is walking much better now. Please continue to pray for complete healing of his knee. Pray for Stevie & I since we still really miss our Papa Perry. I really missed not being able to call Daddy this past Veteran’s Day. Pray also or the renter, Teresa, to keep the renter contract that she signed. Last month her electric bill was 3 times as much as when Daddy lived in his small house. Please pray that Teresa (a nice lady) would pay her electric bill and not expect Stevie to bail her out when she uses too much electricity.

6.     Thanks to your prayers Peter Daniel’s right shoulder and right ankle are healing. He was able to work on some flips last week. Please continue to pray for the Lord to totally heal Peter Daniel’s injuries and for his body to stay healthy! 

7.     Paul-Duffy failed his philosophy test. The professor told him the only way he can pass is to make a B on the final in 4 weeks. Paul-Duffy promised to study every weekend for the next 4 weeks. Please pray for Paul-Duffy to study the necessary material for his philosophy class and to make a good B or A on the final in December. 

Invitation

I invite all missionaries to post anything they'd like us in the States to know and pray about.  I understand that some of you are concerned about security and may have to communicate via pseudonyms, but we want to get to know you better and how we may support you better.  Conversely, I invite all Christians in the US to share their questions, concerns, and prayers with the missionaries.  Lets reach out to one another, support one another and love one another.

Lets Talk

We Christians in the United States tend to have a poor appreciation of missions.  I am creating this blog to allow everyday people in the United States and on the mission field all over the world to talk to one another, to share with one another, to communicate our pains and our joys so we may help and support one another in our growth in Christ and in the spread of the gospel.  May God shine through all of us to His glory.