Editorial Comment

Roberta and I have been gone longer than we have ever been away from the Center.

We spent four weeks in May in Morocco, London (two weeks), and Riga (Latvia), the latter week being the AD2000 Movement's meeting of about 1,000 representing the entire former Soviet Union and the Baltic nations.

The earlier three weeks were our first vacation of more than a week for twenty years. It was also our fortieth wedding anniversary. On this trip we saw all four of our missionary daughters and their families, including twelve grandchildren.

When I got back I went off to six other conferences in a row, in Milwaukee, three in Chicago, and two in the Philippines. That added another month to my absence.

Such an extended absence would not have been possible if the team running things here in Pasadena were not a really capable, experienced bunch of very dear people.

But two months is not the same as two years--it has been two years since I was the active administrator of the USCWM. Note the phone list on page two--Greg Parsons is the Executive Director and has been in charge since March of 1990.* (See note on page nine)

Greg and I travelled together over and back, and roomed together those ten days in the Philippines. Quite a retreat!

The meeting in the Philippines was the every-six-years meeting of the World Evangelical Fellowship (representing 100 million people). It was preceded by the WEF Missions Commission, a recently mounting influence on the global mission scene, run by a marvelous trio: a man from Guatemala, another from Argentina, and a third from New Zealand.

The former two are children of missionaries, Bill Taylor and John Lewis; Ray Windsor is third, formerly Principal of England's superb All Nations Christian College. (Along with Columbia Biblical Seminary, All Nations in my opinion is one of the two best missionary training institutions in the world in regard to the training of people who are already beyond college.)

One of the books I read during this extended period was edited by the Taylor just mentioned, was Internationalizing Missionary Training, focusing on the fact that missionaries are now arising from all parts of the globe and thus missionary training needs to be available all over the globe as well. A remarkable book. I was asked to write a review of it (send me a self-addressed envelope and I will send you a copy).

After all these trips in May and June I had a marvelous opportunity to participate in the first national level missions congress in Mexico in July, and I had to cross the Pacific again in August to attend the largest student mission conference ever held in Asia. (It was in Korea.)

Well, in the next four weeks I have five more technical conferences, but only one is abroad (Costa Rica).

To give you even a glimpse of some of the remarkable dimensions of these events I am going to run over to the tiny free space on page nine.

During the very same week I was in Korea (Aug 9-15) another conference was going on in Lagos, Nigeria, West Africa--which I did not attend(!)--which was also a "largest ever" conference, and in some ways even more astounding. From 45 countries, over 12,000 pastors came to Lagos to a church with an auditorium seating 12,500, capable of dealing with 27 languages, and lodging facilities for 7,000. Nothing of this magnitude bringing pastors together has ever occurred in human history--all funded by Africans. This was the kick- off meeting of the AD2000 Movement in Africa. Luis Bush, International Director of that movement gave five plenary addresses.

At the same time, across the world, Thomas Wang, the Chairman/Founder of the AD2000 Movement, was the main speaker in the Korean meeting (where I spoke three mornings), the largest student mission movement in the history of Asia.

God is moving!

Milestone Dates in the Growth of True Christianity!

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