CMS From the Lakes
Andrew Lake has published this book for Tasmanian supporters of CMS.
CMS supporters with Syrian flag for Andrew and Pam Lake.
Andrew and Pam write...
While in Melbourne we had a coffee with David and Prue Boyd who will be moving from Victoria for David to take up the position of State Director of CMS Tasmania in February. We also had a helpful phone conversation with Peter and Elizabeth Smart, who are doing the locum in Damascus.
The MILL (Maximum Impact Language Learning) course was a great confidence-booster for us all.
We were reminded that as children we all learned to speak perfectly good English, first by just listening to what was happening around us and then by our first tentative attempts as speaking. So we had fun with a Mandarin speaker learning to listen and identify simple objects.
Our initial aim is not to learn written Arabic but to understand and speak the local dialect as well as read shop signs and road signs so that we can get around Damascus.
Thank you for your prayers, encouragement through letters and emails and financial support.
CMS missionaries are supported by link churches, CMS members and other individuals. Missionaries really appreciate getting emails, letters and packages from you. It encourages them to know that supporters in Australia are praying, caring and giving to keep them on the field.
However some of our missionaries work in contexts which are hostile to the gospel. Emails and letters may be monitored, so anything you write needs to be worded carefully. Please note CMS guidelines when communicating with missionaries.
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Book for Tasmanians
While Andrew and Pam Lake have been visiting over 24 parishes in the Diocese before heading to the posting in Damascus, Andrew has been busy. He has released a short book called Christian Mission for Tasmanians. This is a very personal approach from Andrew on this important topic of Mission written for the Missionary Diocese of Tasmania.
Andrew says of the book,
‘My hope and prayer is that this study will help put mission front and centre of the church’s agenda. I make no claim to infallibility and will have achieved my aim if this has helped start some fruitful conversations about mission.’
We offer our thanks to Andrew, having served in the Diocese as an Archdeacon and Mission Support Officer. But now we offer our thanks for this impressive gift to the church in Tasmania.
Of particular interest to you, dear reader, is the freely available nature of this book. In fact, you can read it right now.
So is it free? Andrew explains in his Foreword:
‘This study is a gift to the Tasmanian church. It is freely available on the diocesan website but I invite you when you use it for personal or group study to make a donation of $10 per person to the Church Missionary Society of Tasmania.’
Please pray that many Australians will purchase a $500 gift from the Looking for the Perfect Gift? catalogue to help sponsor five students with the potential to have a great impact on God’s Church in Tanzania.