by Matt and Sora Colvin | Jan 2, 2016 | Indonesia, SAMS Missionaries
On Monday, we will hit the road for a month long trip on which we will spend Sunday’s in five churches in NY, MD, and VA, with a stop for debriefing at the SAMS office in Ambridge, PA.
Here’s an updated schedule of visits as of January 15:
- Jan 8 – Christ Church, Ithaca, NY.
- Jan 10 – St. Stephens REC, Sykesville, MD
- Jan 12-13 – at SAMS office in Ambridge, PA
- Jan 17 – Bp. Cummins, Catonsville, MD
- Jan 24 – Holy Trinity, Fairfax, VA
- Jan 31 – St. Jude’s, Richmond, VA
- Feb 7-14 – Ash Wednesday in New Jersey: Covenant Chapel and St. Luke’s REC
- Feb 25-26 – Synod of REC Diocese of Mid-America
- Feb 28 – Holy Trinity, Houston
- March 6 – Christ Our Hope in Dayton, OH
- March 13 – St. Paul’s REC (Indiana, Fr. Daniel Sparks)
- March 27 – Easter (at TREC)
- April 3 – All Saints REC in Raleigh, NC
- April 7-10 – New Wineskins Conference in Asheville, NC
- April 12 – RE Seminary
- April 17 – St. Paul’s, Oreland with Dean of Indonesia, Timothy Chong.
- May 1 – St. Nicholas Church in Owensboro, KY (Dcn. Rob Sexton).
- May 8 – Grace Church, Circleville, OH (ACNA, Melanie Shuter)
- May 15 – Christ the King in Dayton, OH
- May 22 – St. Barnabas Anglican (ACNA) in Covington, KY.
- May 29 – St. Stephen’s REC in Flowood, MS
by Matt and Sora Colvin | Jul 30, 2015 | Indonesia, SAMS Missionaries
Before leaving STT St. Paul’s in Bandung, Indonesia, I left the students some essay questions, which were then translated into Bahasa Indonesia by the Rev. Yopie B. I reproduce them here for our readers’ enjoyment.
(Recommended sources: R. Hays, Reading Backward; N. T. Wright, Jesus and the Victory of God; R. Bauckham, Jesus and the God of Israel.)
Essays:
In 10 pages or less, answer ONE of these questions:
1. Explain how the NT epistles and the book of Revelation identify Jesus as divine while still holding to monotheism.
2. Explain how Jesus Himself and the authors of the four canonical gospels use the Old Testament to make the claim that Jesus is identified with the God of Israel.
3. List and explain five main ways that the OT asserts monotheism and show how the NT used those ways to say that Jesus is included in the identity of Israel’s God.
by Matt and Sora Colvin | Jun 14, 2015 | Indonesia
If our kids are looking more colorful than usual, it is because they’re wearing batik to their first Indonesian worship service.
It has been a mixed visit so far. For me, a fruitful week of ministry. For Sora and the kids, a painful time fighting the sort of digestive tract illness that we thought we would not experience since we were coming already from the Philippines.
I preached on Psalm 42 & 43 for GAI St. Paul’s in Bandung, Indonesia this morning. Many thanks to Pr. Denny Kussoy for translating my sermon.
The congregation on Sunday included many students from my week-long intensive class at the Bible College.
At lunch on Sunday, Rev. Yopie Buyung explained that he believes Biblical theology (in the technical sense) is greatly needed in Indonesian churches. I believe it. The delighted looks of the students as I explained how the New Testament claims Jesus to be God made it clear that they had not heard it put this (Jewish, Old Testamentish) way before, and that they will be USING these arguments in their own conversations with those who do not know the Lord, or deny that we should worship Him, or who think that “it is far from God’s glory to beget a son”.
Here are the essay assignment questions that I left for the students to write. (Pak Yopie translated them into Bahasa Indonesia.)
Essays:
In 10 pages or less, answer ONE of these questions:
1. Explain how the NT epistles and the book of Revelation identify Jesus as divine while still holding to monotheism.
2. Explain how Jesus and the four gospels use the Old Testament to claim that Jesus is identified with the God of Israel.
3. List and explain five main ways that the OT asserts monotheism and show how the NT used those ways to say that Jesus is included in the identity of Israel’s God.
Unfortunately, our family has been dealing with some sickness. Three kids came with me to church, wearing their new batik clothing. Sora stayed back at the guest house with Naomi, who is still recovering. Later, Isaiah and Hosanna also lost their lunches. Everyone is on the mend, however.
We have one more day in Bandung. Rev. Yopie and his wife Hertina and younger son Rexa have been taking very good care of us. Indonesian hospitality is justly famous, and Pak Yopie’s family has been amazing in that respect.
Tuesday, we head to Jakarta for four days, then to Phnom Penh, Cambodia, en route to meet with our SAMS directors and other SAMS missionary families at a retreat in Kep.
Pray that:
– Our kids will recover quickly, and that we will have no more illness on this trip.
– We may have a pleasant and uneventful train ride full of beautiful scenery from Bandung to Jakarta.
– The STT St. Paul’s students will continue to pursue the Biblical approaches to Christology and theology that I introduced them to in the lectures this week, and that the Lord may bless those methods with good fruit.
– That our kids will continue to be good ambassadors for our family and the REC and ACNA. The boys especially have done a good job so far, even though they don’t like being the center of attention. (Hosanna on the other hand, loves being the center of attention, and is apparently in her element being greeted and photographed, whether by Filipinos or Indonesians.)
Thanks to Natalina H for the pictures!
by Matt and Sora Colvin | May 24, 2015 | SAMS Missionaries
Thanks to my friendship with Pastor Vic Bernales, I was introduced this afternoon to Rev. Michael Hong, the owner and proprietor of Mango Radio, which broadcasts evangelical radio programs in Zamboanga and here in Davao City. Pastor Hong has a heart for bringing the gospel to Muslims here on the island of Mindanao by using radio.
It was a fruitful discussion, and the result was that I will be starting a live one-hour radio show on June 1st. There will then be a four week break while our family is in Indonesia and Cambodia in June, and I will resume broadcasting after June 28. We hope to air the show at rush hour, but Mango is currently still trying to obtain a frequency for broadcasting in Davao. It will also be broadcast via the Internet.
The show will be devoted to explaining Scripture, using history and the original languages and the Jewish background. I’ll be trying to make these things clear and accessible — something I have striven to do for many years in my high school classes.
I need a name for the show. Any suggestions?
Above: Matt and Pr. Michael Hong in the Mango Radio studio.
Pray that the show will be a success and a blessing both to Filipino Christians and to those who do not yet own Christ as the world’s Lord.
by Matt and Sora Colvin | May 1, 2015 | SAMS Missionaries
I’m feeling a bit remiss about blogging. We keep to our deadline for publishing our monthly newsletter, but it’s easy to forget to write on this blog, and that for two reasons, both of which are good for missionary work, but not for missionary communication: first, life in the Philippines feels more “normal” for us than it did during our first two years; we encounter less that seems remarkable and needing to be photographed or shared. Second, we are both crazy busy with our respective ministries and have a hard time carving out time to blog.
Here are some photos from March and April, which may be taken as fairly representative of what we’ve been up to:
On the way home from dropping the kids at school one morning, the words of the Psalmist came to mind: “Many bulls have surrounded me; strong bulls of Bashan have encircled me.” OK, maybe just cows, and a calf that decided the middle of the road looked like a good place to enjoy sunbathing.
Sora continues to do outreach with other midwives from the birth clinic to bring prenatal care to the women of Isla Verde. Here, laundry hangs on a line and bicycle taxis (pedicabs) ply the streets beneath the coconut palms, while the ubiquitous Coca-Cola ad serves as a silent missionary of Western consumerism even in this very poor neighborhood.
Of course, the birth clinic continues to welcome Filipino babies into the world, and Sora continues to supervise shifts and take care that they arrive safely. Here are three from the past few months:
Sora continues to teach, too. Most recently, she’s been teaching statistics for this enthusiastic bunch of student midwives. Here, the students are lined up in a “living histogram” by height:
Water lillies from Sora’s visit to Thailand in March:
Matt’s ministry continues apace. Introductory Greek is finished now, so we have moved on to Hebrew, while continuing to read the Greek New Testament so that students don’t lose their skills. Here, Carl, one of Matt’s friends who has been with him from the beginning of his classes here in Davao, puts up answers to the second Hebrew homework assignment on the whiteboard.
