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For those of you who may not know, allow me to fill you in concerning the mission trip.

We have many friends in the Word of Life (WOL) Bible Institute in Hungary (WOLH).   WOLH is a bible school in Hungary that desires to teach and train the next generation of church leaders in Europe.  WOL is an organization that is headquartered in NY, but has many bible schools located in many countries.  To learn more about WOL, you can check out their website here; wol.org

To learn more about WOLH, you can check out their website here; www.eletszava.org

The academic dean of WOLH, Paul, was my roommate in seminary before I got married.  After Teah and I wed, we moved into married student housing at Dallas Seminary (affectionately called the Swindoll Suites by DTSers).  Take a wild guess who our next door neighbors were…you got it, a couple from Hungary, Lazi and Szandra Kadar (well, the wife, Szandra is from Croatia, but Lazi is from Hungary), and they are currently ministering at WOLH.

One day a few weeks ago I got a phone call from Paul, my old roommate.  He explained that at the Bible Institute, sometimes they have a guest teacher who comes and teaches through a book of the bible.  The week of October 20th was assigned for the book of Galatians.  In finalizing the class, the originally scheduled teacher thought he was coming in October of 2009.  WOLH had him scheduled for 2008.  Which meant they had a class starting 7 weeks without a teacher.  Paul said gulp.

And then Paul thought, “who can I call, on short notice, who is an extremely gifted teacher and an expert in the scriptures?”  Paul called the first and only person of whom he could think.

Well, that person declined the invite…so he grudgingly called me!   After all, he did room with me …  Be quite, Teah.

The English language does not contain the words to express how excited I am about this trip.  God has planted a desire within me to help teach and train foreign national pastors in their ministries.  This trip is my first opportunity to express and foster that desire.  Paul told me I would be teaching the second year students, around 40 in all, from many different countries on 4 continents.  I am just humbled that God would call me to serve Him in this capacity.  I can’t wait for October!

Of course, this whole experience has just been a God thing;  Having so many friends at WOLH, Galatians being one of my favorite books, the fact that I preached through Galatians a while back (so I am fairly familiar with it, helping immensly with the preparation), the support of our family, friends, and church, etc

I also forgot to mention, the orginally scheduled teacher is a prof at Dallas Seminary.  This prof is the same person who hosted me the first time I visited Dallas Seminary, and not only that, but he and I are shirt-tail relatives.  He told me he knew about Van Buren, IN, and that a member of his family married a Doyle from Van Buren many years ago.  How wild is that?

I know people often say the Devil is in the details, but I think we can find God there a lot of times, too