A time comes to many who like us realize just how much has happened in our lives and must acknowledge again just how truly great is our God. This time for us is back again. While it is surely true that no man who having set his hand to the plough begins wistfully looking back to former days is really fit for God’s Kingdom, the gift of remembrance is a constant companion for those who love the King. How grateful we are again for what the Lord has done for us! His ways are past finding out and all His paths are peace. November 17th marked for me an anniversary – exactly a year since my final surgery was completed in New Zealand, opening the doorway to a new lease on life. Again how honored we have been as a family to have so many friends both old and new that have joined in some way with us to help us toward the triumph of His grace and goodness. The past six months of travel again in the U.S. were marked by some precious reunions with many who have loved us and prayed for us for decades, and what times of joy they were! Though never billed or announced as such, it was our Gratitude Tour.We began two weeks in Southern California spending time first with our long-time friends, the Maddux family in San Diego. Bob and Claudia had their own miracle earlier this year, as terrible fires raged up the very road they lived in, with temperatures hot enough to break down brick and reduce almost anything to ashes and rubble. Warned to evacuate their home just a few hours before, they saved what few precious things they could and left with just enough time to sprinkle a little water on their roof. Once before such a fire had come to their area, and threatened their church. God spared them then, and did so again in an amazing way. When they were finally allowed back in, all around them was desolation; homes right across from them gone, the ones on either side razed to the ground. Yet there stood their house, still intact! On examination, the fire had come up to the wall of the bedroom Claudia’s Mom lived in, burned through the pile of wood outside the wall, burned into and right through the wall – then stopped at the inside wallpaper! You could see the light through the paper from the inside, but it had gone no further. On top of that, insurance replaced their carpet and curtains, dry-cleaned their clothes and put them up in a beautiful ocean-view home while repairs were going on. We were able to relax with them and I got to share again in their church as well as film some six hours of video interview to source a script for the new movie of our late friend Keith Greens’ life. This will be a full acted professional production for commercial theatrical release in the order of Walk the Line and Amazing Grace. We trust that like the last recorded concert Keith and Melody’s story will bless the world even further though he has been gone for more than a decade.We also spent a couple of days with Che and Sue Ahn in Pasadena. How much God has blessed and increased their lives and ministries from the first time I met Che as a 17-year old with a passion for seeing people come to Jesus. From his first involvement in the awakening among over 2,000 young people during the Jesus movement in Washington D.C. I have watched the hand of the Lord on Che and his family, who have also become some of our nearest and dearest friends. I was privileged to be able to input into his early life some of the great themes and truths of revival we outline in the 21CR podcasts now have used by thousands of high school and college students. I see now just how greatly God has blessed him with his team at Harvest Rock and a global fellowship of more than 2,000 churches linked to H.I.M around the world. More than a decade ago an initial tiny home meeting with Lou Engle and a few Asian Christians for prayer blossomed into the Call, and the evident blessing of the Lord. Che was the one who asked me to go to Korea under the auspices of the Wagner Institute, and he and the valiant Korean Christians (who have yet to have me share personally what God put on my heart for them!) stood so solidly behind us both in prayer and support that only eternity will tell how much my life depended on their faithful ministry to us. I was treated like a President or Billy Graham by these lovely saints who vowed against my certain death “Not on my watch!” Thanks again, dear ones both in the U.S. and in our ordeal in hospital for all you did for us.Another wonderful reunion also in Southern Cal. was with Tony and Kathy Salerno, founders of the Agape Force, one of the most amazingly creative street ministries of the Jesus Movement. They also have been some of our closest friends in the world, and we have shared many a battle and victory with them and their wonderful work over the past four decades. From the time I saw Tony first dedicate his life to Jesus as a young youth pastor in Glengrove California to the revival in Reedley that touched not only the town but cities around it and eventually through Agape Force, millions in the nation and the world, he has been a true blessing to our family and my ministry. “Adopted” by them first as friends and co-laborers we moved house with them from different places in California eventually to Texas where we still hang our hats in the U.S. We owe so much to their kindness and hospitality over the years; many young lives we were able to share with and rejoice with first met in the Force are a backbone of our friendship networks right through to the present time. Our closest friends in Texas, Jim and Dee Patton and their children, Sonny and Margie Jaynes, Charlie and Shelley Moore, Buddy and Caroline Hicks and many others who minister in music or in marketplace, even the area where we live in America all had their genesis in the Force. Ministering now in a second generation through Semperternity headed up by Tony’s son, Anthony, we were honored to be able to spend time again with both them and the band before they left on another tour.I have in previous posts mentioned two real ’08 highlights for me in the North Carolina Fireside Fathers DVD conference meet with Billy Graham and my surprise 64th birthday in August written up in a two-page section of the local paper. Shortly after these my son William and I co-shared in a youth advance near the Virginia Beach area. As well as my being able to sit up through ungodly hours of the night again (a great test of regenerated stamina), William and I later both got the privilege of having a personal lunch with Pat and Dede Robertson of CBN. Pat has likewise been a blessing to me in the early years of this significant ministry. I did two major multi-camera film set teaching series in the 70s with CBN for the Rock and Manna when these weekly one-hour slots were integral to the program, on the Nature and Character of God and the Parable of the Soils.I was also honored to be part of the literature side of the TV outreach in the former Soviet Union where the nation literally ran out of envelopes over the responses to their targeted cities with special evangelistic broadcasts. This culminated for me being able to spend more than sixty hours with a Russian interpreter helping train some 400 newly converted young men and women who gave two months of their time to learn to help restructure a nation through the principles and precepts of the Kingdom of God. To be able to share with Pat and his wife some of our story was a signal blessing. The generosity of CBN and partners helped Fae and I financially both in our own emergency medical crises and Pat’s contribution was both in international calls to prayer and financial aid during what happened to me. How much we appreciate him and the work God raised up through him.September proved yet another adventure and a brush with what might have been disaster averted by miracle. I was invited to speak at a great church in Houston by Randy Harvey a friend with whom I have shared some great times in the past, as part of a week-end Missions convention. Both Fae and William decided to come also, and as it was close enough to drive to, I rented a car for us instead of my usual short flight there. I called both the pastor, his church secretary and the hotel to O.K. this change, but none of were aware that I was actually on a different schedule. Checking into the hotel I had even called during the trip down one more time to make sure our reservation was in, the desk manager told me that he couldn’t find it now! Calling pastor Randy at 10:30 Friday night, the conversation went something like this: “Randy? I’m here.” “Here?” Yes. Here. “Here now?” Yes. They can’t find our reservation. “You’re in Houston now?” Yes. At the hotel. Long silence. Then his voice: “The meetings aren’t this week. They are next week.”

After a few hurried phone calls, it became obvious that we couldn’t now change the coming meetings. Though the church services might have been moved earlier for the Sunday, the scheduled Saturday Youth night was already area-wide advertised. We with apologies settled for a Saturday morning meet instead with his leadership and I got to spend a pleasant few hours sharing with them. We decided then for the rest of the now free week-end to drive up to meet with some other Houston long-term friends: Buddy and Caroline Hicks who gave up pastoring a large well-off suburban church to run a kids skate park and cyber-café in Humble Texas as an outreach to this oil-town. Dave Kirschke is another friend in the area who runs Straightway one of the most effective drug rehabilitation ministries in the nation. Dave helped me also in Korea as did the President of the company by supplying me in hospital the Mannatech supplement that had saved his little boys life, which was also instrumental within the grace of God in helping heal the massive damage to my system. We had some great meetings both with them and their ministries, and then headed back tired but happy Monday to Lindale.

Within a few days, it became obvious that one of the deadliest hurricanes in American history was headed right for our East Texas area. Ike was a category four when it struck the coastline and had barely slowed to a three on the eve of arriving in our region. Even a category three is enough to turn a trailer home like ours into matchsticks and blow those matchsticks away. All the prediction strands showed it striking us squarely in its path. You can imagine that much prayer went on in our local YWAM base ranch. Again mercifully and miraculously its path both moved suddenly away and had dropped in intensity by the time it hit us to a tropical storm. But in Houston, where we had been just a few days before, over a million people had to be evacuated, including our friends! The airports were all closed, and though there was much less damage than might have been, it took another two or three weeks for power and lights in some places to return. We even got to host our hosts’ daughter and son as refugees from Houston in our area, and help them get food and supplies loaded up for their family back in the city.

Jesus said “The wind blows where it wants to. You can hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it came from or where it is going. So is every one that is born of the Spirit” (John 3:8). So here is a curious question: Did I arrive in Houston at the wrong time or not?” Later I was able to return and do the meetings originally scheduled for that earlier time.

Near the end of our six month U.S visit, after a great conference in San Jose I traveled up to a Northern California town that remains an enclave to some of the spirit of the sixties. A hippie commune once populated by young freedom seekers of those times, acres of redwood forest had been turned into a refuge for those longing for a back to nature reality. Some still live there. A revival broke out during that time that transformed the German lady who set it up and it became a Christian community, now offered to YWAM to run a school. After some days of teaching a class reminiscent of those early days, on my return drive to San Jose airport I got to meet with two more sets of long-term friends, Chip and Linda Worthington and their son Chris, and Mario & Mechelle Murillo.

Chip was one of the original practics teachers in the Agape Force and also in Genesis the discipleship training school in Santa Rosa I helped Jim Argue found in the early 70s. Genesis put nearly two thousand young people from the turbulent sixties and seventies into the ministry. Chip also was youth pastor at Bill Johnson’s Bethel church in Redding, teaching my Youth Aflame! material to some of the foundational young people in this lovely work, now seeing daily practical revival in that city. Chip and his family have been close friends for more than three decades now. It was fun to have lunch there and journey down with him to San Francisco to meet again with a mutual friend who for me over the years was more like a soul brother, ministry twins accidentally separated at birth.

Mario Murillo is arguably one of the best and articulate street ministers of all time, whose chosen home region of the Bay Area was touched at different times by his Resurrection City from street and college outreaches in the radical sixties to city-wide crusades drawing thousands in ways no-one has ever seen before. We first met in the Carousel restaurant in Anaheim; me, a young punk preacher from New Zealand in a white polyester suit and Mario a newly saved and called teenager with a look in his eyes like Moses come down from the mountain. There, over a two-hour lunch, we two unknown nobodies with visions much larger than our lives schemed and dreamed together of changing the world. We shared in youth camps in Northern and Southern California in the 60s and 70s, I was photographer at his wedding, helped host him in New Zealand and Australia in his first overseas ministry travels, and encouraged him to put some of his preaching into print. Over the forty years we have known and loved each other’s work and calling, it has been one of the great privileges of my life to count Mario as my friend. We got to spend an evening together with him, Mechelle and their son Michael and swap miracle stories of the goodness of God in redeeming our lives from destruction.

So here we are now at home again. Our son William is with us for a few special weeks; now 30, the age that Jesus began His ministry. He will serve out a few more months back in Texas as a missionary with YWAM and then begin his own new journey with God.

Fae has been catching up with many friends and besides reorganizing and re-beautifying the whole house and garden, ministering each week when possible to her parents on the North Shore. We have a new project to replace our old batch roof and refurbish it inside to provide a place where our friends from abroad can stay that visit from time to time.

In just the past few weeks my tennis is getting some strength back both in serve and baseline play, and while both Fae and William presently have knee problems that are somewhat painful and limiting so we cannot all go crazy together on court, we are otherwise enjoying good health by His grace. Your prayers still carry the weight of power that took me to the throne from you on our behalf. Keep us in the shelter of those arms as He brings us to your remembrance. We need Him still as much as ever.

I have a Christmas card I read here in N.Z on our major national radio broadcast a few years ago around this time when this commercial station turned over its broadcast to friends. It says of the shepherds: “They said they saw a star moving in the sky. They said they saw lights, and heard angels singing and fell on the ground. What were they on?”

What are we on, indeed. We are those brought out of darkness into His marvelous light. We are the children who know what it is to walk in darkness and despite such history may still have times when we see no signs and hear no songs but know still He cannot fail. And though the world sings its carols now many times without reason or reality, we still celebrate. Peace may not be yet on earth, but it reigns nevertheless in our hearts. The winds may blow, storms may rage, but we are sheltered by and grounded on a Rock. The One Who made the worlds is our friend and our Savior, and this year again, we are glad.

Our love and affection to all of you with whom we share Him –

Winkie, Fae and William.