Beginning next month, Lyli and I have accepted a call to join the team at MOVE (Missionary Outreach Volunteer Evangelism) a missionary training school in Belize where we will be teaching classes, preparing educational materials and completing a mentorship training program. We are very excited for this opportunity to learn and grow. Many of our volunteers at the Bolivia Industrial School the last few years have been MOVE graduates, and they have done excellent work.
Recently I came across the following excerpt and it made me think of MOVE and the work being done there. I look forward to being a part of it.
"The third angel
is represented as flying in the midst of the heavens, showing that the message
is to go forth throughout the length and breadth of the earth. It is the most
solemn message ever given to mortals, and all who connect with the work should
first feel their need of an education, and a most thorough training process for
the work, in reference to their future usefulness; and there should be plans
made and efforts adopted for the improvement of that class who anticipate
connecting with any branch of the work. Ministerial labor cannot and should not
be intrusted to boys, neither should the work of giving Bible readings be
intrusted to inexperienced girls, because they offer their services, and are
willing to take responsible positions, but who are wanting in religious
experience, without a thorough education and training. They must be proved to
see if they will bear the test; and unless there is developed a firm,
conscientious principle to be all that God would have them to be, they will not
correctly represent our cause and work for this time. There must be with our
sisters engaged in the work in every mission, a depth of experience, gained
from those who have had an experience, and who understand the manners and ways
of working. The missionary operations are constantly embarrassed for the want
of workers of the right class of minds, and the devotion and piety that will
correctly represent our faith. {RH, June
21, 1887 par. 1}
There are numbers
that ought to become missionaries who never enter the field, because those who
are united with them in church capacity or in our colleges do not feel the
burden to labor with them, to open before them the claims that God has upon all
the powers, and do not pray with them and for them; and the eventful period
which decides the plans and course of life passes, convictions with them are
stifled, other influences and inducements attract them, and temptations to seek
worldly positions that will, they think, bring them money, take them into the
worldly current. These young men might have been saved to the ministry through
well organized plans. If the churches in the different places do their duty,
God will work with their efforts by his Spirit, and will supply faithful men to
the ministry. {RH, June 21, 1887 par.
2}
Our schools are
to be educating schools and training schools; and if men and women come forth
from them fitted in any sense for the missionary field, they must have
impressed upon them the greatness of the work, and that practical godliness
must be brought into their daily experience, to be fitted for any place of
usefulness in our world, or in the church, or in God's great moral vineyard,
now calling for laborers in foreign lands.
{RH, June 21, 1887 par. 3}
From COUSELS TO TEACHERS chapter 70, “OBTAINING EFFECIENCY”
