MISSION TIDINGS

GIFTS RECEIVED FOR MISSIONS IN SEPTEMBER 1979

CLASSIS MIDWEST SOURCE AMOUNT Friend in Michigan Gift $135.00

CLASSIS FAR WEST

Port Alberni Collection 400.00

OTHER

Friend in Scheveningen Gift 25.00

Friend in Scheveningen Gift 50.00

Friend in Scheveningen Gift 50.00

TOTAL $660.00

Dear friends,

Herewith we want to acknowledge the gifts that we have again received for the mission. May the Lord bless you and your gifts.

Due to the fact that I am weak at this time, due to having a kidney stone removed, we hope to write more later about our trip to Haiti with Rev. Verhoef and elder Bert Harskamp.

Though our way was through deep waters because in Haiti I suffered severely from kidney attacks, but wonderfully the Lord brought us safely home and we could experience that the Lord was not a God afar off, but a God nigh at hand. After we suffered more at home it had to be removed. Though the Lord afflicts us, we must say not according to our sins. The day we left Haiti so weak, we were nevertheless given to believe that the Lord would bring us safely home. What a wonder, I didn’t have an attack all day, but how the faith was tried also with brother Harskamp. When we got to Omaha we had to change planes and the manager in the airport said that due to a mistake there were no reservations and that the plane was full. There we sat under the onslaught of the prince of darkness and our faith was greatly tried, because I had told brother Harskamp that we might believe the Lord would bring us safely home. As the plane filled up much went through our minds and then the manager called for us saying he had two places and we could sit together in the plane. Oh, dear friends, don’t ever think it was by chance, for those two places were known from all eternity.

How our hearts were humbled together over the faithfulness of a Triune God, and again we could say, the Lord is good for a sinful wretch. We would say to all God’s people to keep courage, for He is faithful Who has promised. That we may have a heart to always exalt His worthy name. I wasn’t going to write much, but we were led to write this. The Lord willing, the next time something about Haiti. We also include a letter of Ria Baaijens. You can imagine what a happy feeling it was to meet our wife and children again.

America General Mission Fund

Netherlands Reformed Churches

of United States and Canada

John Spaans, Treasurer

R.R. 3 - Box 17

Plankinton, S. Dakota 57368

Phone 1-605-732-4539

A LETTER FROM RIA BAAIJENS

Rotterdam, 30th August, 1979

Dear Mr. Spaans,

We were very surprised to again receive a check of $6000 from the American churches. We want to thank you very much for this generous gift. At the time you sent it, I was already in Holland for medical reasons, a hernia (spine). I had to come to Holland for treatment. The check was sent to me, and I have sent it back to Nigeria in order to have it cashed at the bank at Enugu. I authorized Mr. G. Nieuwenhuis to cash it.

In our team meeting we will discuss how to use it. It will probably be spent for the new hospital, but we will let you know after discussion in the meeting.

You asked about the progress of the new hospital. There still is much to be done. It is progressing very slowly due to lack of trained staff to build it. Our deputies are now trying to get a group of trained people from some organization, with material, to help us finish the hospital, as it is very essential that it be finished quickly. When it is completed, the Nigerian government will probably recognize our clinic as a hospital. Up till now they do not want to reorganize it because of the old buildings.

When it is recognized as a hospital we will probably be able to get more trained medical and nursing staff, which will help us to continue the medical work.

At the moment we are in a very difficult situation as we have hardly any trained staff left. Some left because they did not like our Christian conditions of service anymore. Others had to be dismissed because of an unchristian way of life. Marrying a second wife or theft of medicines. As a result, we have only a very small staff left, and the remaining trained staff and missionaries are nearly working day and night.

This is only one of our problems. There are still more. But we are very thankful for the good and faithful workers who are left with us, and who are working very hard. They need much prayer as it is very difficult for them to remain faithful to God and to His service, because there are many temptations. Relatives and friends are trying to pull them away from the Word of God. It is not easy for the Christians in Igede to withstand everything. The power of Satan is strong and he is trying everything to destroy the work of God in Igede. But it is our comfort to know that God will never leave nor forsake His Church. He will be with His children till the end of the world, and have victory over Satan.

After a few months the military government will hand over to a civil government. The Christians in Igede, and also we, are worried that it will be a Moslem government. If so, problems may arise for the Christians in Nigeria and also for the missions. Let us pray, that the Christians in Nigeria may keep their freedom to worship God.

We are very happy that another sister was added to our mission team. Sister Annie Visser is a great help for us in the work. Mr. Dieleman, our engineer, had to return to Holland for medical reasons with his family.

Another engineer has gone to Igede to replace him temporarily. I hope and pray that God will bless the treatment we are receiving, and that we will be able to return to Igede soon to continue our work again.

We hope that you will remember our work in Igede in your prayers.

May God bless the work which is done for His Kingdom at home, and the work which is done at difficult places in the mission fields.

Receive greetings also from all our other Igede missionaries. Kindest regards from Ria Baaijens.

Ria Baaijens

A-v-s’ Gravesnadestraat 2

306 KA Rotterdam

The Netherlands

THANKSGIVING DAY

The congregations in Canada had their annual Thanksgiving Day on Monday, October 8.

The day appointed and proclaimed by President Carter is Thursday, November 22.

In Ontario, especially, there was much impression of what had taken place in the vicinity of Norwich with the tornado that came through some places. It took precious lives, and damaged barns and houses and crops.

In the States there were floods, storms, earthquakes, and many callings in various ways. All these things show that God has a controversy with the inhabitants of the world because of our great guilt and sin. We are not making ourselves ripe for the judgments of the Lord, but we are ripe with our nation and our people. From day to day it must be a wonder that we are not given over to a total destruction. But the long-suffering of the Lord is great, and His mercies are manifold. In an abundant way the Lord has blessed us in our fields, and in so many other ways to provide for our temporal lives. In other countries many people are starving for lack of food. Think about Cambodia where before there were 10,000,000 people, and now there are hardly 1,000,000 left.

We do not realize the conditions in other nations in the world. Alas, considering all that happens in the world, we must say that we have Cain’s attitude, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” How deep our soul should bow before the most high God! We with our families are overloaded with blessings of the Lord, both in the realm of nature, and in the realm of grace, in that God has not yet taken away from us His Word and testimony. Life and death, law and gospel, and blessing and curse are still read and preached to us. That only Name given under heaven whereby we must be saved is still proclaimed. We can still hear that there is salvation, redemption, and restoration into communion with God, in that way that God is glorified and a sinner is saved in and through Christ Jesus by the applying of the Holy Spirit. Righteously the Lord could have taken everything away from us, but He is still taking pains with us.

But now the question is, what have we personally done with these blessings? The majority of the confessors of the truth say, “You must have faith.” But we all know that such language leads to deceiving our souls for eternity. Let them tell us that we are dead in trespasses and sins, and that we must be regenerated by the power of the Holy Spirit, and be converted as the Lord once converted Adam and Eve.

The Lord hides His face so much from the house of Israel. He is standing at the threshhold to leave us. And who is truly concerned about it? Where is the godly sorrow that it is all because of our sins, and because of our forsaking the right ways of the Lord?

Dear friends: we should really have a prayer day, a day as we read about in the prophecy of Joel (ch. 2:12, 13) “Therefore also now, saith the LORD, turn ye even to Me with all your heart, and with fasting, and with weeping, and with mourning: And rend your heart, and not your garments, and turn unto the LORD your God; etc.”

Thanksgiving Day. We must experience that it is not found in us. We lost everything in Paradise. Let us consider what Christ said in Matt. 7:21. “Not every one that saith unto Me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of My Father which is in heaven.” And the will of God is that ye believe on Him Whom He hath sent: John 6:40. That blessed Christ is the praying and thanking High Priest at the right hand of the Father. With that Christ we can have a right prayer day, but also a right thanksgiving day. And the sacrifices of God are a broken spirit: a broken and a contrite heart, O God, Thou wilt not despise.

May the Lord grant it graciously unto us out of free and sovereign grace, as He grants it to all His chosen people. Without that our Thanksgiving Day has no value. O God, be merciful to us and our children, our congregation, and our nation. May the Lord bring us all in the valley of true humiliation!

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