FOWLERS’ UPDATE FOR SEPTEMBER 2013Making books available by email can be very exciting! We are enthusiastic because distribution in electronic format makes efficient use of technology. We found it just about as easy as mailing out email updates. We have collected around 60 email addresses of individuals and churches and sent roughly 180 books and Bible studies to as many Christian leaders.
FOWLER'S UPDATE FOR AUGUST 2013
Summer’s End Convention at Florence. Sponsored by Harding University Florence, this convention brought together, as usual, many young people and church leaders. They asked Harold to lead the worship music at the convention and at the Florence Church of Christ. He was a little “rusty” because he does not lead the music in our home church, because other brothers do that. However, in this loving, friendly context he made it through.
We are so grateful to our Troy family for all of your prayers and the contributions of supplies for this year's Ternopil VBS! We've included a couple of videos in the report below.
The Slavic World for Christ (SWFC) ministry, which is under the oversight of the Minter Lane church in Abilene, TX, asked us to travel to Ukraine this summer to help evaluate how they could continue to support the work and facilitate the transition of Sasha and Olya Kolosha into their new ministry roles. The following is a summary of the report that we provided to SWFC.
July, 2013
The Begats
One of the least interesting sections of any book of the Bible for our Western culture seems to be the genealogies, or the 'begats', as that term is repeated many times in one translation. But that is what one of the students wanted to back-track to, long after the study in Genesis was over and Marty was prepared to teach from Romans 2.
FOWLERS’ UPDATE FOR JULY 2013
Linda’s whirlwind tour. We asked you to pray for our daughter Linda and her return to Italy for a first visit after 35 years of being away since she left for college. Linda was able to revisit old familiar sights and see some old friends during her time here. We even stumbled onto the son of our former landlord in Palese and saw our old apartment house. Surrounded by apartment buildings, it was almost unrecognizable. Italy had changed and so had we. Thank you for praying for her trip.
Fowlers pay taxes? One activity that we did not need for June concerns potential taxation by the Italian revenue service. We have been gathering information to determine if we really have to pay taxes in Italy on money that comes only from the States through donations and our minimum pension. We receive no income from Italy, and we already pay self-employment and social security taxes in the States. Pray that we won’t have the additional time-consuming burden of more paperwork (more than we already have!)
Dear church family! We have successfully collected a lot of supplies for Ukrainian VBS. Thank you all for your donations! We'll have at least 2 luggage bags with VBS materials to bring with us. At this point we'll close our donations. Your generosity is amazing!
With whom should we share the Gospel? Jesus told two stories (the parables of the Sower and the Tares) that point out that it is difficult to know where good soil for the Gospel can be found. His metaphor of dogs and hogs underscores the truth that some people do not appreciate the high value of the Gospel, and so trample it and reject those who proclaim it. We are told to broadcast it as widely as possible, without stopping to analyze which soils are good or bad, which will be receptive or not to the Word and which, in the long term, will produce a good harvest?
