A High-Light

The new group of volunteers participated in a commissioning service led by Resonate's volunteer ministry.

One of the high-points of Zach’s job as Director of Resonate Global Mission is to play a small part in the sending of volunteers and long-term missionaries overseas.  This spring Resonate orientated over twenty new volunteers who are going out to serve Christ around the world.  During the commissioning service we noted that we are sending the group to both serve, learn and listen to what the Holy Spirit could be saying about a future in Gospel ministry.  There was tremendous diversity in this group.  Several retired couples were commissioned along with several newly graduated high-school seniors.  In fact, one of the volunteers going out as a volunteer is the son of a missionary couple who hosted and mentored us when we served as missionaries in Nigeria fifteen years ago.  Please remember to pray for all our volunteers.  Pray specifically that God will use these experiences to shape them for future callings in Gospel service.

A Hope for the Future

On this mountainous piece of land the Consortium for the Reinforcement of Christian Education hopes to build a office and training center

During Zach's recent return visit to Haiti in May, he got a chance to visit the property where the Consortium for the Reinforcement of Christian Education (CRECH) is hoping to build a new office and training center.  CRECH is a ministry partner of Resonate which trains Christian school teachers, produces curriculum and advocates for Christian schools throughout Haiti.  Because of the disordered state of the public education system, privately and church-owned Christian schools educate the majority of Haitian children.  Thus, CRECH's work is absolutely essential to raise up a new generation of young people of faith ready and willing to act on their Christian beliefs for the good of society.  If you or your church would like to be involved in this project, please contact Cody Zuiderveen, one of Resonate's missionaries in Haiti at the following address: czuiderveen@crcna.org.

There Is a Time for Everything

"There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven... (Ecclesiastes 3:1)."  The Teacher of Ecclesiastes wrote these words while searching for a deep order in the creation, or as we might say today, "The meaning of life."  The Teacher reminds us that in his inscrutable providence, God has appointed beginnings and endings along with limits and transitions in our lives and in our world.  A big part of wisdom is knowing when we run up against these moments.  Our first year back from Haiti came to an end this month.  We are thankful that God made it clear to us that our moment of new beginning and transition arrived last summer.  God helped us to realize that the "the time had come" and gave us the courage to follow the Spirit into new opportunities for kingdom service.  People often ask us what the first year back from Haiti has been like.  Sometimes it feels like people want us to say that this first year has been great.  The reality is that through it all--the ups the downs, the joys and the tears--we can honestly say that God "has been in it," patiently pushing, prodding and stretching us.  All things have happened in God's time.

Zach had a chance to return to Haiti last month for a strategic reflection on Resonate's work over the last few years.  We spent an afternoon discussing this work in Furcy, our family's former hangout in the mountains above Port-au-Prince.  This environment is perfect for farming carrots, lettuce, potatoes and other tubers (see below).  It is also good for growing decorative cut flowers to sell in the big city below.

As the mists float over Haiti's mountains, one gets a sense of the vastness of time and of the limit of human life.  There is a time for everything , and a season for every activity under heaven: A time to be born and time to die, a time to plant and a time to uproot, a time to kill and a time to heal..."