Czech Republic
10 February 2008
IBTS
Nad Habrovkou 3
Jeneralka, CZ – 16400 Prague 6

Dear Friends and Family,

The second week of the doctoral seminars was exciting and challenging. In fact, there were also several of the Master’s and Magister’s distance students on campus as well, so the breakfast and lunch crowds swelled considerably in numbers. Roger was a part of the private meetings of the Biblical studies group, and had some meetings late into the evening. It has been since Singapore days that he has critiqued doctoral work, and it was challenging and stimulating for him. I think he really would love to get back into such a routine.

Next week a very well known Scottish theologian whom Roger knew of in his own doctoral student days, I. Howard Marshall will be on campus for a three-day Biblical Studies Colloquium with the title: Life after Death: Changing Aspects of Soteriology. My goodness! I am not very up on that! But it will be interesting to have Marshall and other scholars on campus, to interact with them and get to know them. I’m glad I don’t have Roger’s job – to respond to Marshall’s paper when he presents it on Thursday morning. I only hope I will be allowed to sit in and listen to the discussion (Whether I’ll understand it or not is another question.) I am usually in class during the late morning, but maybe I can rearrange things for this event.

I want to share with you about one of the doctoral students. Ellie Haddad is the president of the Lebanon Baptist Theological Seminary. He went through some problems getting here, but with some difficulty he came for most of the two-week period. There were snags getting out of Beirut, but he was helped by some of the leadership of the Baptist World Alliance. Ellie led in chapel on Monday morning, and, after leading us in singing, “Great is Thy Faithfulness,” he shared what CNN can’t share about Lebanon – what God is doing there. He said the seminary student body has doubled over the last year. He said that because of special accreditation and government registration, this seminary is the only one that can receive any students from a Muslim background, students from all over the Middle East – Morocco to Iraq, Tunisia to Egypt. Of course there are students from a Christian background as well. But the seminary is in a unique position to receive the students who were formerly Muslims. And despite the unrest in Lebanon, they continue to come to study, to prepare themselves for leadership among the Baptist people in their own countries. The Lebanon seminary term started two weeks late this year because of militant activity, but the students from other places came anyway. God had been faithful to them in their own places, and they were sure He would be faithful in Lebanon. Haddad told us about the amazing reception the Baptist school is having among affluent Muslims in Beirut. They don’t like Americans, but they like American education and are proud to be sending their children (K – 12) to this school though the children hear the gospel message on a daily basis. He said the seminary is highly respected even by the Shia Muslim community. They have established dialogue with the leadership of two Shia institutions; one of which invited a Baptist faculty member to teach a course on Evangelicalism in the Shia school. This Baptist was able to give 13 lectures, and, as Haddad said, to share the gospel story thirteen times. And on one of the Shia holy days, during the festival, the Baptists were invited to set up a book table from their publishing house where they sold Bibles and other Christian literature. “We are amazed and thankful for God’s faithfulness in Lebanon,” Haddad said, “Let us spend the last two minutes of our time together giving thanks to God for His faithfulness.”

I think I may have mentioned somewhere that the chapel service lasts only 15 minutes. With the song and Ellie’s sharing and the five minutes of prayer, we finished right on time, but truly, we could all have profited by another hour or so of such sharing. Ellie has returned to Lebanon. We must remember him in prayer as we remember to pray for the Baptist work in the Muslim world.

Roger and I were thinking that, in fact, this seminary here in Prague is probably in its golden prime right now. As these young men and women finish their work and get their doctorates, they will be able in the next few years to set up their own graduate programs in their own seminaries in their own countries. It is really a privilege to be a part of what is going own right now – here in this place. We realize that Parush and Ian and Peter Penner and Tim Noble are giving their all to these students, spending their lives at this moment to bring out the best from people from all over Europe who will go back and train their own people. The great thing is that when these students are the teachers, they will be able to allow their students to do their work in their own languages; that will be much more comfortable for them to say the least. Doing it here in a second language – Wow! They are heroes!

We are responsible for feeding the CATS this Tuesday. (Sixteen students and four others) I’ve decided to make several trays of Lasagna. I’ll serve it with steamed broccoli, but I haven’t worked out a dessert yet. It will be necessary to prepare dessert!

My private Russian student took a “quarterly” test on Friday and didn’t do so well. She was very, very disappointed, and really, so was I. The test was a standardized test in the teacher’s book of the set we’re using. And I think this British system is the problem because there are always some tricks. In fact, I think the passing grade is actually 50% in Britain, and they don’t expect students to do very much above that score. In Russia and, of course, in American marking is very different. But Christina didn’t feel any better after my explanation. Normally, in our tests we don’t see things we’ve never seen before. I understand her pain. I felt it some years ago in Bulgaria. Now our task is to build up her self-confidence again. Another problem for me is the fact that this is a one-on-one situation, and our work grows out of our relationship. Giving her the test from the book, not a test that I devised from what we’ve studied, was probably a mistake. She is already working hard. I don’t think I could expect her to do more work than she does. My national Cambridge Exam Cert. student is doing pretty well. But I need to warn her about the British system.

We’ve heard from some of you. Thanks. And Happy Valentines Day!

With love,
Janice and Roger