I was in Oregon the first week of August for the Winema Week of Missions, an annual gathering of hundreds of people on the beautiful Oregon coast.  The weather was spectacular, with people saying “the best in twenty years” for the conference.  The conference is for the entire family, with the whole week dedicated to missions.  Five missionary speakers and one Bible lecturer constitute the program.  Each speaker talks with various groups (children, youth, adults) about seven times during the week.

Those participating this year (besides me) were Bible lecturer Mark Moore (Ozark Christian College); Marsha Miles (Pioneer Bible Translators); Steven Carpenter (CMF missionary to Mexico); Rick Jett (International Disaster Emergency Services); and Doug Lucas (Team Expansion).

I went out a few days early to see my folks and to go salmon fishing.  The ocean was not Pacific and boating was not allowed.  So I went to central Oregon to do a little birding with my friend Terry O’Casey.  I was able to get a couple of lifers – the gray jay and the pinyon jay.  We were east and north of Lapine, driving all over looking for the pinyon jay, only to be told (thank you, friend) by another birder we happened across that the pinyon jays were right outside of his house in Bend.  We drove to where he directed us, and sure enough, got the noisy bird.

After the Week of Missions, I stopped on the way to my aunt and uncle’s house at the Tualatin National Wildlife Refuge where I picked up a third lifer, the Vaux’s swift.  The bird is common; I just had not been in the right place at the right time.  This bird roosts in chimneys by the thousands.  In fact, this last week I got an email from my cousin in Oregon about hundreds of these swifts roosting in their chimney in Woodburn, Oregon.

This week Robyn is in California for a family wedding, leaving me a confirmed bachelor.  She gets home and then two days later I leave for a trip to Kenya.

The president for this conference this year was Dr. Rob Gallagher, a friend who teaches at Wheaton College.  The theme of the conference was Mission Spirituality.  I was blessed by the presentations and came away wanting to deepen my own spiritual life.  We had Rob speak at our Mission Trainer’s Forum at the National Missionary Convention last year.  Leading worship for the conference were Rob and Shannon Maupin.  Rob is a missions professor from Lincoln Christian University.

Of special interest to me is a three year undertaking of the ASM to talk about the future of the academic discipline of missiology.  It was noted that many chairs of missiology in European universities have been closed down, and that it is almost impossible to get a degree in missiology in American universities.  If one desires a degree in missiology these days, one goes to a seminary.  Getting a teaching position in the field is difficult because there are more qualified people than there are positions!  So, the discussion on the future is needed. One thing is for sure:  The Lord continues to want His Creation to honor him, so the task is ongoing.

I enjoyed the chance to see folks I only see every few years, and to meet some people whose books and articles I have read over the years.  Kip Lines, former CMF missionary in Kenya and completing his Ph.D. was there, my colleague Darrell Whitemann (going back to Fuller’s School of World Mission, 1975) was there, and it was great to spend some time with each of them. My roommate for the conference was a long term missionary to India now working with the US Center for World Missions in Pasadena.  He told me he was well aware of the Tippett series I am working on, and he also informed me that Vol. 1 of the Donald McGavran biography is soon to come out (written by Vernon Middleton).

This is the third ASM meeting I have attended in the sixteen years I have been living in Indianapolis. Maybe I need to go more often.

So years later when I heard that there was a movie made about this, I definitely wanted to see it.  The movie is called The Ghost and the Darkness (referring to the names of the two lions), and it starred Michael Douglas and Val Kilmer.  It is a great movie, but don’t let your young children see it.

The same week I saw the movie I was in Chicago and went to the Museum of Natural History.  (I had gone there back in the mid-sixties when we lived in Aurora, IL and wanted to go back and visit again).  In that museum are the two stuffed lions from the movie (I believe they are the actual two lions).  And just after being in Chicago, I had a trip to Kenya in which we drove from Nairobi to Mombasa, right along the railroad where some of the killings took place.

So, I am certain that I am the only person in the world who, in the same week, 1) saw the movie; 2) saw the stuffed lions; and 3) drove by the spot where some of the actual killings took place.

When I got my Kindle at Christmas, I went to the Amazon website and found that there are free books that can be downloaded.  Many of the ones highlighted were literary works.  I downloaded  several: Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Edwin Drood, and one by Upton Sinclair.  All of these books were written years ago, so their copyright has expired.  Hence, they are free to download.  I also purchased a few current books for the Kindle and have been reading those as well. Several were on microfinance since that is something I need to know about related to CMF ministries and some writing I will be doing.

I’ve returned several times to Amazon’s webpage about free e-books, and noted that there are several sites that also offer free books.  The Gutenberg Project has a site, there is another one called Many Books, and another one, archive.org. I looked at Gutenberg and Many Books, but was not too interested in some of the books.

But then I started exploring archive.org and hit a gold mine.  The site has a search engine of the thousands of books that have been scanned and are available for free downloads.  I typed in the word “anthropology” and there were 1000 entries.  Again, these are not current, they are old.  But the discipline of anthropology relies a lot on the theories and field work of the earlier anthropologists.  I think I downloaded about 12 books.

Then I typed in the word “missions.”  Up popped thousands of entries, but a lot of the entries had to do with government missions.  It looked like a lot of work to sift through looking for the gems.  So I typed in the word “missionary,” and there were 4600 entries.  “That’s more like it,” I said to myself.  I began scrolling through the pages, each with 50 entries per page.  I began to realize that there were lots of materials to be had right at one’s fingertips.  Over the next few days I would look at a few pages at a time.  By the time I finished, I had downloaded some 50 books.  I could have downloaded hundreds!

Most of what I downloaded were missionary biographies, many of these I had run across in my work on getting Alan Tippett’s material published.  Tippett was an expert on missions in the South Pacific; he was a scholar, researcher and historian.  I found book after book of the people he referred to in his own writing.

What are the other sorts of things to be found?  Many mission agencies have journals that have been scanned.  There are  annual reports of the mission agencies.  Lots of biographies from all areas of the world.  As I said, a gold mine at one’s fingertips.  The implications for research are mind-boggling.  One need not necessarily travel to distant libraries. One need not buy books.  One need not photocopy materials.  From the ease of one’s office, a ton of valid research can be done.  Many of these sources are primary sources, not secondary sources.

A nice feature on archive.org is that once you are reading the book, you can search the book.  So, if you are wanting to research cannibalism, you just type in “cannibal” and you will see the places in the book where the word is mentioned.  If your book is a missionary biography, think what a time savings it would be to not have to read the entire book just to find the few places where cannibalism is mentioned.  A lot of these books had no index, so research on the subject would take a lot of time.

The difference between what can be done today as opposed to what could be done when I was in school is hard to comprehend.  It reminds me of the old, “when I was a boy, I had to walk six miles through the snow to get to school” sort of comment.

Good reading!

The festival has been going on for 95 years, and celebrates the diversity of San Antonio.  Robyn says it was like a combination of the state fair and Mardi Gras (though we have never been to Mardi Gras).  The area of the celebration is on the famous river walk.  The main thing you do at NIOSA is listen to live bands/singing groups; eat (there were some 240 food vendors); and watch the capacity crowd.

Besides the expected Mexican and frontier areas, there were Irish areas, French areas, Chinese areas, and bayou areas.  We did not sample food in each area, but we did eat more than we should.

Robyn had gone on Priceline to get a hotel for us.  It was called Hotel Indigo, and it was only a half mile walk to the festival.  What a special hotel, wonderfully decorated and exceptional service.  If you are ever there, try the Hotel Indigo.

Of course we also went on the nationally known river walk and took in the Alamo, which was a first for Robyn.  I would not be quite truthful if I didn’t say that we also took in some time for bird watching and hiking … well, actually a lot of time.  I won’t bore you with the details, except to say that the “close to extinction” lesser prairie chicken has now been added to the lifer list along with six others.

We attended the Cy-Fair Christian Church in Houston along with Dr. Suzie Snyder, then returned to Indy on Monday. A good part of our vacation was that thanks to an airline a year ago overbooking, we took the option to go on a later flight in exchange for two free tickets to use at our convenience; hence the airfare was free.