Greetings all in the name of Jesus.

Sometime around the beginning of March, we were blessed to have a sweet 12 year old girl named Zalima move into our home. She was one of the first kids we met when we moved here over a year ago. She lived in one of the worst Muslim slums in town. At age 4, she was sent to Bangkok to work with her 8 year old sister. They sold noodles on the street and lived with a bunch of other kids in the same situation.Her mother was once a prositute and her dad is a violent alcoholic. Her parents forced her to go out each day and collect money from a Thai businessman. We would ask her "why does that man give you money", but she would not answer us. We have since found out there was some sort of sex involved. We are certain her parents knew, but they valued the money more than their little girl. Her mom died just before Christmas of last year. A short time later NyiNyi approached her father and asked if we could take Zalima and her little niece and raise them. Thankfully he agreed. Her niece, MeeMee is living with NyiNyi and Suzan and we took Zalima. She is going to a tutor everyday to prepare to start school in June. This will be the first time she has ever attended school.

She is changing for the better each day. She is very receptive to the Gospel. She reads her Bible daily and this Sunday she will sing in church with our other daughters. We are so encouraged.

Tonight something happened that brought tears to our eyes. We were going to the clinic to visit one of the people that attend our "Church in the Dump" and Zalima asked if she could go with us. When we arrived at the clinic we noticed a little girl with tumors on her neck and in her stomach. She was 14 years old and weighed 40 lbs. Zalima went right over to her and started talking to her and trying to cheer her up. It was so good to see our daughter, who has had a horrible childhood, go over and try to bring a smile to this little girls face. If only we all would love like this. Please pray for this little girl. She has no family with her and she is scared and lonely.

Please pray that Zalima continues to change and comes to know Jesus as her Lord and Savior. Also, pray for our other daughters (MooMoo Aye, Saw Win and DeeDee Aye). They will go to school and move out of our home in June. It will be a big change for everyone.

Thanks for your continued support. Without it, girls like Zalima will be destined to a life of selling their body to support themselves and their family.

One last reminder. We will be in the states in October and are starting to make plans to speak at several places. If you would like us to speak at your church or group,please let us know.
The Turman Family

Online donations: http://www.hhmin.org/make_donation.php
Ministry Project Name: Turman

Donate by Mail: Designate for Doug Turman
Helping Hands
P.O. Box 337
Tallulah Falls, GA 30573

In preparation for this week’s sermon, an old unreleased song by the band Caedmon’s Call has been running through my head. The first verse is especially stuck, but the whole song is is worth a few minutes of pondering. 

Lately I’ve been thinking about some pretty strange things

More than I’ll admit

Like the exact moment that milk goes bad and

even then isn’t it good for something

But not as much about why bad things happen to good folks

and age old questions

But more about why good things happen at all

and why I don’t notice them

 

Me – Caedmon’s Call

http://www.lyricsmania.com/me_lyrics_caedmons_call.html

Greetings in Christ!
We are enjoying being able to share gifts with all the kids we work with this Easter. These special treats called "Treasure Tubs" are an extravagant gift for these children, Pringles cans filled with paint sets, toothbrushes, crayons, glue, construction paper, stickers, etc. These are things that many children here cannot afford. Many thanks to the children of Pt. Washington UMC in Florida who sent them to us!

The death of Jesus on the cross was a huge extravagance, glorious and majestic God paying the price owed by us worthless sinners, a price we could never have afforded ourselves. Praise be to God for His indescribable gift!

Please pray with us for our "Church at the Dump" and check out the link to our sharesite to see photos.
Site URL: http://turmansinthailand.shutterfly.com/

Prayer requests:
*Rainy season begins in June. How will we meet with our "dump church" then? Please ask God to make a way!
*Pray for San San Tway, the young Muslim girl whose mother has been beating her and threatening her to not believe in Jesus. We visited her and her mother yesterday in an effort to gently soften the mom’s heart. The visit seemed to go well.
*We would like to bring one of our Burmese co-workers to the US with us when we come in October. Please pray for funds to travel and for visa approval for Nora Thida, and also for opportunities for spiritual development while she is in the US.
*Pray for Salima, the youngest Burmese girl who is now living with us. We are finding out more details about the past abuse in her life. She is a Muslim and prays religiously to the prophet Muhammed every night. Pray for her salvation, and healing from the past abuse.

Thank you for your prayers and support! We love you all!

"When I came to you, dear brothers and sisters, I didn’t use lofty words and impressive wisdom to tell you God’s secret plan. For I decided that while I was with you I would forget everything except Jesus Christ, the one who was crucified." I Corinthians 2:1-2

The Turman Family

Online donations: http://www.hhmin.org/make_donation.php
Ministry Project Name: Turman

Donate by Mail: Designate for Doug Turman
Helping Hands
P.O. Box 337
Tallulah Falls, GA 30573

Imagine describing this route to a visitor.

It’s the path Alison Thompson follows to get herself to Sunday School and her son into Sunday School and the Nursery. 1/3 of a mile.  Every Sunday morning.

We have a vision of something better; come share it with us in worship on Sunday

They had taken some wrong turns along the way.  They would have arrived forty years ago if the people, upon seeing the city of Jericho, had not complained to God: “But it’s army is too big, it’s walls are too strong. Have you brought us here to destroy us?” God was wounded by their lack of faith and turned them away, to wait for a generation that would trust Him, and go where he led them. And now that generation has matured, and they are ready, and just before they cross the river Jordan, Moses calls them all together and summons the voice to teach them one last time.  You see, Moses knows that he is not going to go on with this generation – God has allowed him to see the promised land, but not to enter it – and Moses is scared.

He is not scared of dying, of resting in the Lord he loves so well. He is not scared of the enemies and dangers in the promised land. He is scared that this generation will fall back into old ways, that they will forget the Lord and neglect His will, and so lose their way just when they ought to arriving home.  And so Moses leaves nothing to chance. He gives them a Deuteronomy – a second word– and he begins to retell the story of how God made them and brought them here.  He asks, do you remember old King Og, who brought out a 60- city army against us? Do you remember what God did to him? Do you remember when we were terrified of the Edomites; do you remember how they welcomed us in peace?

And after recounting the battles and the long walks and the hunger and the miracles, Moses asks “Do you remember the best moment of all. Do you remember when God spoke?” Now, of course, most of the listeners don’t remember, because their generation was not with Moses at Mt. Sinai, or maybe they were infants in arms.  But they have heard the stories in bits and pieces, and their mothers would snap at them with little snatches of God-talk every once in a while “Now, Caleb, you know what God said, honor your father and mother.” “Now Moshe, don’t dip your goat meat in the milk, God said so. “ But they didn’t hear the story straight from the mountain, and maybe they never heard all the words that God spoke from beginning to end. And so now, for his last words, Moses chooses God’s words, so that this generation can carry forward something more than a memory of a memory.  Now, Moses does not invite them to remember, he calls them to…

“…Hear, O Israel, Hear The LORD our God, the LORD is one.^[ 5 Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. ⁶ These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts. ⁷ Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. ⁸ Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. ⁹ Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates.

¹⁰ When the LORD your God brings you into the land he swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, to give you—a land with large, flourishing cities you did not build, ¹¹ houses filled with all kinds of good things you did not provide, wells you did not dig, and vineyards and olive groves you did not plant—then when you eat and are satisfied, ¹² be careful that you do not forget the LORD.”

(Deut 6:4-12)

When Moses spoke, what had been a memory for the people of Israel became instead a living reality.  The word was no longer something to be remembered; it was ringing in their ears. And with those words from Moses came a challenge. God’s people would never be able to live with a dead word again.  God’s laws were written on stone tablets and scrolls, but Moses meant to create a more powerful testament in the skin and the speech of God’s living people.  The word was meant to surround them and welcome them and send them on in a tangible way, every doorpost and gate would be an invitation to step into God’s story.  To this day, Orthodox Jewish families will keep a mezzuzah – a little box with this scripture – mounted on the doorframe of their home, and the most devout Jews will wear phylacteries – containers on a a leather strap that can be worn on the head or the wrist so that they might bind God’s word to themselves. But all these accessories were only signs and aids to the real purpose God had set for his people, that they might be a living example of his word through every generation. “Keep these words in your heart, and impress them upon your children.”

This passage – known as the Shema, or Hebrew for “Hear” – would be taken up as the charter verse of the nation of Israel. Thousands of years later, when Jesus was asked to name the greatest commandment, he would quote the word that we have heard today: Lve the lord your god with all your heart, all your soul, and all your strength.  Now, an interesting quirk of bible verses in Jesus’ day was that there were no bible verses. A scroll of the Old Testament would not have had chapter and verse markers, so you couldn’t say to a congregation “open you bible to Deuteronomy 6:4.” Instead, when a biblical scholar wanted to refer to a passage, he would just quote the first part of it, and all the other scholars, who would have also memorized the Torah, would mentally fill in the rest. For example, if I said “for God so loved the world,” you would automatically know to finish it “that he gave his only begotten son, that whosoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” If I sang to each of you who lived the eighties “Oh, we’re halfway there,” you would automatically hear in your head….. right. When Jesus said that the greatest commandment is to love your God with all your heart, soul and strength, his listeners would have automatically heard in their heads the rest of this passsage, that to love God in this way meant to wake up and lie down with God’s word on your mind, and to pass it on to your children. This, Jesus says, is pretty much what it’s all about.

So what are we all about? The front of your bulletin should remind you, if you’ve forgotten. We are here to “make disciples of Jesus Christ, for the transformation of the world.” This is our purpose; this is our mission.  This last fall, we spent a lot of time talking about this mission and why it was worth our prayers, gifts, presence, and service. This is the driving purpose of all that we do.  Tonight when your church leaders gather for their monthly meeting, each of them will bring a notebook, and the cover of that notebook will read “to make disciples of Jesus Christ, for the transformation of the world.” And when they make decisions about various ministries in the church, the very first question they are supposed to ask is “does this make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world?” Now, we know that disciple is just a fancy translation of the word follower. So, our purpose is help each other and all others learn to follow Jesus. It seems like the best place to start would be with the greatest commandment, as quoted by Jesus himself. Love God with ever thing you have; talk about his word, and pass it on to your children.

Today and for the next two Sundays, we will be talking about the future of our church. It will be easy for us to think that this conversation is all about a building and money, but those questions are a distant second to the question of our mission.  How are we going to make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world? For the last 18 months, a lot of people have worked very hard, and talked through long meetings and prayed openly and honestly to seek what this church needs to fulfill our mission. These leaders have come to see that our facilities are a significant barrier to our ability to gather as God’s people, to study his Words and impress them upon our children.

We will be talking about why our current facilities are such a barrier, and about how this proposed building could release a pent-up flood of possibilities for making disciples of Jesus Christ and transforming our corner of the world. But today, I want you to understand that we are not talking about beginning anything, or completing anything. We are continuing the mission that has driven this church for a long time.

We are continuing the mission that carried this church during lean and uncertain years.  The only Sunday School class in this church with an official name is the Henry Foster Class, and many of you have told me how Mr. Foster cheered this church on and kept it going at times. He had a standing agreement with our church leadership that if ever, at the end of the year, we could not afford to pay what we owed to our conference, he would write a check for what was needed.  By paying into the shared mission of the Methodist church, you were making disciples you would never meet.  Decades ago, you were making disciples when one of you would invite a neighbor kid to church, or you would teach Children’s Sunday school to the two kids in the church, never dreaming of a day when we would run out of room for the children among us. We are continuing the mission that you prayed for when you as a church prayed that God would send this church some children almost two decades ago. It’s the same mission that first inspired you to build a gym of all things, and then throw it open so that hundreds of kids and their parents could hear the gospel through Upward Basketball. We are continuing the mission that first brought some of you here, when you found a Sunday school class or a small group that made you feel welcome, and invited you to admit what you didn’t know while still making you feel as if your voice mattered to everyone else.

We are continuing the mission for which no pastor in the history of this church has ever received any credit.  I’m serious. In all that I’ve heard of the history of this church, I’ve heard that so and so was a great pastor, and so and so was a bum.  But I’ve never heard anyone here say about any victory in the history of this church “well, you know we never could have done it without that pastor.” This is as it should be. Because your pastor is your cheerleader and encourager and maybe a teacher. But the mission belongs to Jesus, and you are his body.  You accepted his mission when you were baptized, and when you have taken hold of it with both hands, there’s no pastor in the world incompetent enough to stop you.

Over these next two weeks, it is for you to prayerfully consider if this plan before you is belongs to  God’s mission for the church. If you believe it is, then I know you will declare your faith with all the support you can give.  If you believe it is not, then I know you will be ready and willing to pray and talk with us until we see what bold, risk-taking mission God is asking of us.  Whatever happens these next two weeks, I know that the mission will not be completed. Until every knee shall bow and tongue confess that Jesus is Lord, we will continue to make disciples of Jesus Chrsit for the transformation of the world.

Judy Woolley reminded me of this over a year ago.  For months, I had been meeting with her and the rest of our Joel Team. You can see their names and signatures there in the back.  This was this group that gathered to pray over and recommend a 3-5 year plan for our church’s ministry.  I first called them together in September of 2010, and by December, they had come up with 4 goals that included the building project before you now. I knew these goals were big, and so I asked “How important do you think these goals are? After all, the church is in a pretty good place financially, spiritually and all that. What happens if we just stay with what we have?” Judy spoke up and said “You never get to stand still. You’re always moving forward, or you’re going backward. We can’t just say, ‘Oh, things are good enough.’” The mission continues.

And thank God, because you know I believe in C.S. Lewis’ definition of friendship. “It is when we are doing things together that friendship springs up—painting, sailing ships, praying, philosophizing, fighting shoulder to shoulder. Friends look in the same direction.” This mission is what we do, and when we walk with fixed eyes toward God, we cannot help being drawn together.  Last month, when our church Leadership Team – we used to call it theAdministrative Board – first saw the plans and the cost estimates and all the details of our Building Committee’s work, I asked the team to stop and pray for a moment. And I asked what concerns there were.  And I asked what was exciting about this possibility.  Melissa Bush had the most surprising answer, she said nothing about the building itself she just said. “I’m excited, because I remember how it felt when we were building the Bethany Center, and I remember this sense that we had a mission, and how it created and energy and a unity in this church. And it’s exciting to think what God might have in store this time.” Now, I happen to think (and I think Melissa would agree) that this church is already tightly knit; we have a gift of unity.  But unity is not meant to serve us or exist for its own sake, we are meant, as Melissa explained, to be unified in Christ and in his purpose.  Our friendship continues as the mission does.

And thank God for that friendship, because we need each other’s voices to carry out this mission.   A couple days after that presentation to the Leadership Team, I was talking with Steve Walker, our congregation’s Lay Leader, a man who has been in on every step of this discernment process as part of the Joel Team, Building Committee, and Leadership Team.  I am grateful to Steve because I suspect that he argues with himself as much as I argue with myself. No matter the question, there’s always another angle to look at it from. Anyway, I was talking with Steve and I mentioned that meeting, and he mentioned that one of the questions he had was if this building was going to lead directly to a larger number of members for our church. And Steve said, “I realized that’s the wrong question.  It might be a reason we grow, but the real question is does this meet our mission?” Thanks be to God for Steve, for asking the question that I hope will clarify your own discernment.  In all that you hear about square footages and programs and cost, this is what you should be asking. Will this continue our mission? Will this equip us to make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world?

Can we remove barriers that keep us from talking about God’s word and sharing the conversation with others?

Can we be better stewards of our ministry to impress God’s word on our children, the children for whom we prayed?

Because these are the things that we are about.

We have already accepted the mission, but it’s still good, every once in a while, to hear.

It started with a phone call. Two families we have been working with at the dump called and asked us to come to their huts and see them. One family is the one where the husband has HIV and TB and the other is a lady and her two children. They have both been on our prayer list. When we arrived they told us that they had heard that the police were coming later that day to raid the area and send everyone back to Burma. When the police come the people loose all their possessions (about two bags worth) and any chance they have at making a living ($2/day). If they are sent back to Burma, they will have no chance at a job, school for their children and may even be persecuted by the government.

The two families ask if we had a place that they could stay for a couple of nights. We said yes and brought them and their meager holdings to the house next to ours that we use to teach the ‘street kids’. They stayed one night and we took them back the next day to check on their houses. When we got there one of their neighbors told them that he talked to the land owner where they live and told him they had stayed with us last night. The land owner then decided that since they did this , he would not allow them to return to their homes. I do not know why he did this. I do know that for the past few Sundays we had gone to see these two families and had Bible Study with them and several of their neighbors.

The family with the sick father is still staying next door and they are in good spirit. We share with them daily and they are quickly becoming part of our family. I believe the man knows that his time on earth is very short. The other family is staying at the garbage dump with some friends until they decide where they want to go. Please pray that both of these families will continue to be receptive to the gospel and that we will continue to show them the love of Christ.

John 15:18 and 19 "If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first. If you belonged to the world, it would love you as its own. As it is, you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world. That is why the world hates you."

The Turman Family

Online donations: http://www.hhmin.org/make_donation.php
Ministry Project Name: Turman

Donate by Mail: Designate for Doug Turman
Helping Hands
P.O. Box 337
Tallulah Falls, GA 30573

My father was very sure about certain matters pertaining to the universe. To him, all good things – trout as well as eternal salvation – came by grace; and grace comes by art; and art does not come easy.

– A River Runs Through It, Norman Maclean

"Finally, brethren, pray for us that the word of the Lord will spread rapidly and be glorified, just as it did also with you; and that we will be rescued from perverse and evil men; for not all have faith." 2 Thess 3:1-2

Thank you for your prayers and support. We are so grateful to you for making it possible for us to spread the word of the Lord here in Thailand.

School continues, and has grown and changed already. The kids now show up around 2 every day and stay till 6, so we are having full days! God has allowed us to become more involved in their lives and community. This week, a widowed Muslim father signed over his 2 youngest daughters to NyiNyi and Suzan. They have taken them into their home, and the girls are being transformed daily as we all love them and teach them about Jesus!

We see so much growth and maturity in our Burmese Christian friends with whom we minister. NyiNyi and Suzan are newlyweds, with a baby on the way already, and they have decided to adopt these girls. Please pray for the Lord to give them the strength, wisdom, and endurance they will need as they make this loving commitment.

Every Sunday night we are now going into the dump leading a worship and Bible time with 3-4 families. 2 new families plan to join us this week, and we will begin teaching the children separately from the adults. The Bible verse, "I have much people in this city" now comes to mind when we approach the garbage dump.

God has truly led us there; we never had intentions of trying to become involved in the dump community! What an amazing work to be a part of! And thank you again for helping us to buy a 4 wheel drive vehicle. Our ‘DumpMobile’ makes it possible for us to get where we need to go there. Even in the current dry season, its difficult to drive through.

The link to our sharesite is below. Take a look to see more photos and to learn "How to love Osama bin Laden!"

Click on the URL to view our website:
Site URL: http://turmansinthailand.shutterfly.com/

The Turman Family

Online donations: http://www.hhmin.org/make_donation.php
Ministry Project Name: Turman

Donate by Mail: Designate for Doug Turman
Helping Hands
P.O. Box 337
Tallulah Falls, GA 30573