As kid growing up I enjoyed the end of the month when both my mother and father got paid and we went to “Lee’s Grocery Story” and bought what seemed to me as a kid, a mountain of food. Mom with her list filled the cabinets and frig at home with all sorts of delights to eat … well except green-beans! Of course there were those store runs throughout the month for the necessities of milk and bread.
Can you imagine having to decide what you need to buy for a an entire month with only a small window of time to get it all together … with no daily or occasional runs to Walmart? Oh and did I mention, you would be in the tribal areas of the Philippines?
Dave Meyers my good friend with New Tribes Mission in Roach, Missouri, sent me an email about missionaries Dave and Helen Johanson …
Missionaries David and Helen Johanson buy supplies for missionaries serving in rural areas in the Philippines. Their regular pilot is gone for the month of October, so all of their supply flights are scheduled for a four-day period when they’ll have a substitute pilot form JAARS, the missionary aviation program of Wycliffe Bible Translators.
They have “eight lots of groceries, eight fruit and veggie orders, eight meat orders, as well as all the other things that have been ordered like hardware, medicines, kerosene and petrol,” Helen writes. Typically the deliveries are stretched out over a full month. But with a four-day window to get all of the supplies to the missionaries in tribal locations, everything has to go and it must all be correct.
Pilots and mechanics, supply buyers, administrators, teachers and more are vital to support missionaries serving in remote tribal locations.
I admit as I read the article about the Johanson’s planning and depending on the likes of pilots to bring in their supplies, I thought … man we have it made with Walmart down the street. Well what difference can I make for such missionaries?
Dave asks … “Please pray for our staff – very dedicated missionaries who are serving as missionary trainers, pouring their experience and knowledge into the next generation of missionaries.”
So the next time you go to Walmart or a local grocery store to pick up some milk, coffee, or even greenbeans … remember to say a prayer for missionaries such as the Johanson’s as well as so many others somewhere out there in the world.
Colossians 1:9a For this reason we also, since the day we heard it, do not cease to pray for you,
Peace & Glorify!
Filed under: Random
