Author: David Liddle

I grew up in Media, Pennsylvania, close to Philadelphia. I graduated from The Citadel in 1994. In 1995, I joined Wycliffe Bible Translators and have served in Africa, the United States, and Germany. Katherine and I were married in November 1998.

Well worth the wait

The dust has settled now from our move out of Dallas – and from our journeys north to put things in storage and west to celebrate Christmas and the new year with Katherine’s family. We’re leaving Colorado tomorrow for St. Joseph, Missouri, where we’ll live while we dig in to the work of getting to Germany.

Last month, moving out of the house took longer than we had hoped. As much as we had sold or given away, there was still too much left to fit safely into the trailer we had rented to pull north to Missouri. With God’s help, though, we persevered through that stressful time. We also traded in that trailer for a small truck!

Now both Christmas and the new year have passed, too. The holiday time was refreshing for both of us – we got to rest and play with the boys and with Katherine’s family. And we got to spend time together without the need to deal with stuff or moving or that house that we still own. What a relief!

When it comes to housing, we feel pretty good about both the house back in Dallas and our needs in St. Joe. We have had some good prospects for renters, so hopefully we’ll see someone in there soon. In Missouri, we have arrangements in place through February, and we’re praising God that we might have a place to stay after that as well.

These things come from praying – and waiting. It’s been about a year and a half since we first agreed to go to Germany, and while we’re closer than ever, we still have some work to do. But there’s often a lot of time between God’s promise and His answer, as I heard a pastor point out recently (Mark Gungor, “The Misery of Christmas”). We’re still waiting for Jesus to return, aren’t we? Just as we savor the possibility that each day might be The Day, our family is eagerly waiting for the day when we get on that plane bound for Europe. And just as Simeon and Anna praised God and rejoiced when they finally saw the child they were waiting for (Luke 2:25-28), we too will go completely nuts – spiritually speaking, of course – when we set foot in Holzhausen and see God’s calling fulfilled.

So it’s worth the wait! When you pray for us, please pray for that patience and trust that comes from the Spirit of Jesus. If God’s leading you to get more involved in our ministry, the Wycliffe Links to the right will help you learn more and get started. Happy New Year!

Going, going, going … gone?

The end of our time in Dallas is getting closer and closer. Ten days ago, we moved out of our house and into an apartment on the Wycliffe center. From here, we are making better progress with clearing out the house and selling the stuff we don’t need or can’t take with us to Germany. (If there were background music to this paragraph, it would be a strange mix of the theme from Jaws and the “Hallelujah” chorus from Handel’s Messiah.)

Our house has been re-listed for either sale or rent with a different real estate agency. The rental market in Duncanville is currently stronger than the market for home sales. We know the agency owner and the property manager personally, so we feel that we can leave Dallas confident that our home is in good hands. Our agent is confident that we can get and keep a good renter in the house, which will remove owning that property as a barrier to us leaving the area and the country. Hooray!

In another twenty days, we’ll drive out of Dallas with a trailer behind our car, not planning to return until we come back to visit supporters and friends. Our first stop is Denver, where we’ll spend Christmas and celebrate the new year with Katherine’s family. After that, it’s on to St. Joseph, Missouri, where we expect to stay (near family) while we find the additional financial supporters we need. Thanks to friends in a church there, we have housing arranged for the first month or so of our stay. That is a major answer to prayer! Thank you, God!

So when you pray for us, please pray that we’ll be able to sell or give away everything that remains. We’d like to throw away as little as possible. Pray for us to get everything we’re taking organized in plenty of time, so that we’re not completely stressed out when we arrive at my in-laws’. (We don’t like to just dump ourselves, exhausted, at their front door.) Thank you, pray-er friends!

Thoughts after the trip to Germany

It’s been a few weeks since I returned from what I called my “preview” trip to Germany. Do you remember that? No? That’s OK. There was a conference held in Germany some distance from the Wycliffe Europe office, and the attendees needed some computer support and services throughout the week. Many of them were Wycliffe workers, but some were not. I was invited by my future co-worker to come and help. I didn’t have to pray very hard about accepting that invitation.

The conference gave me a lot to think about, so far as ministry goes – what I do, who I do it for, and why I do it. I think the “what” is not a big deal. There are a lot of people who have computer skills – there are even many Christians who have computer skills. God appears to have gifted me with the ability to study and remember the things related to computing that place me squarely between the beasts and their users, ready to help. So, Lord, how do you want me to use this?

All of my co-laborers at the conference work, in some way, with people who live in sensitive situations. You can’t go there, or you can’t talk about this or that, or you can’t do this or that, etc. Some of them have to use other names for themselves or the places where they work. Perhaps you get the idea now. My point here is that my brothers and sisters are taking on some risk in order to fulfill Jesus’ mission for His Church. They are doing a great thing – possibly one of the greatest things. When they gather together to talk about what they’re doing, to share ideas, to learn from one another, to encourage each other, and to improve how the message of Jesus gets to people who desperately need to hear it, I don’t want them to have to worry about stupid technological problems getting in their way.

These are capable people, mind you, who use technology every day in their work – it often forms the center of their own ministries. They can solve many of their own problems. But when the purpose of their attending a conference is to learn and to become a better servant of Jesus, computer problems should not weigh them down. So I work in the background to relieve them of that burden.

Now let’s think about who they’re serving. We hear a lot in the media today about people who create fear when they move to other countries and start lives there, or about people who engage in hostility against “us” because of the cultures and nation-states we’re part of. “We” worry a lot over these people. Politicians and pundits argue on the TV and the radio about how to handle them. I’m sure you get my drift.

When I sat there at this conference, though, listening to one presentation after another, I thought, “This is the solution to all those worries.” Not that my colleagues were concerned with solving high political and social matters – they’re not. But they’re approaching the problem at the individual level – the Jesus level – and addressing the spiritual root of it all. And it would blow your mind to hear about the harvest of souls that their work is producing. I am ready to commit the rest of my life to make more and more of that happen.

If you’re a part of our ministry to all these people – in praying, in giving, in spreading the word – you are a part of what I am convinced is the best way to drive out fear and hate in this world. Don’t underestimate your place in the big picture. You’re laying and maintaining the foundation for that “harvest of souls”, and we appreciate you keeping us up and running. Hoo-yah!