Missions and Me
By Eugene Prewitt
For Beloved Friends, Co-workers, Family, and for the Courtesy of Informing
The Prewitts are leaving Ouachita Hills after this semester. This letter is a brief explanation of why we are leaving, what we will be doing, and has suggestions as to what you should do about it. It closes with insights into how God has led us.
Why We Are Leaving
First, it is not because of any dissatisfaction with Ouachita Hills. If I had a college-age child seeking my advice on education, I would recommend him or her to Ouachita Hills. The program here is excellent. The teachers that have come, especially of late, are precious and powerful. The values of the school reflect my own better than any institution I know.
Second, neither is it because of money. Heidi and I have been blessed by the Lord in ways that I can not quite understand. We are debt free. The pay at OH is plentifully adequate.
We are leaving because there is something to do elsewhere that needs to be done and it seems to us that God is calling us to do it.
At the same time, God has been (it seems to me) preparing me for this calling for almost 18 months. During this period I have watched a number of unexpected and unlikely events work together to free me from a tangle of responsibilities here. I will list a few of these things later.
When I have assessed my own spiritual walk with the Lord, the needs of our family, and the gifts and experience that I have, I have found that God has qualified me to be a pioneer in His work. I do best, spiritually and functionally, when raising up new enterprises. Ouachita Hills was this kind of project seven years ago. The Arkadelphia church plant was this kind even up until about a year ago. But now these ministries have matured and God has brought to them a wealth of talent that better matches their mature state.
Finally, I find that I have been doing my job at Ouachita Hills poorly. This is the result partly of my frequent traveling and partly of the spectacular growth of the school’s magabook program. And there are other causes not related to this letter. But, on reflection, I could neither stop traveling to preach nor could I wish for a shrinkage of the schools literature program.
But the largest reason we are leaving is the “something” to do. That is the best reason too.
What We Will Be Doing
We will be starting schools in mission lands. Initially, we will be especially helping with schools in the United Kingdom, Ukraine, India, and the Philippines. The latter school will start a year from now. ($150,000 was recently donated for its founding). The school in India starts this coming July. Over the course of the next four years another five schools, above these, will be established. Africa will be targeted, as well as other locations in Asia and perhaps Latin America.
I have encouraged scores of my past students to go establish schools. It is time that I do it myself. Here in the USA you students have several good educational options. Ouachita is perhaps the best of those options. But many persons like yourself, except born elsewhere, have no such good educational options. And God will, it seems, use the Prewitts to help alleviate this problem.
We will be working with the AFCOE (Amazing Facts College of Evangelism) system. I approached them two weeks ago about my interest in helping to establish these mission schools and received swift responses regarding their interest in this project.
Sentimentally, we do not appear to yet be called to make the kind of complete sacrifice of friends and familiar associations that previous missionary persons have selflessly made. I have requested the AFCOE system to only employ me eight months each year and to leave me the months of December, January, June and July. During those months I still intend to help train persons in the art of selling magabooks. Twenty years of my life has been invested in doing this and it seems a wise use of my time must include some practice of the trade I have spent my life developing. So during these months I will see you, many of you, and that is a great comfort to me, to us. Also, we both have aging parents and grand-parents and treasure this organization that allows us to give them some attention while we yet work largely abroad.
That is what we will be doing and it seems that it will start this coming August.
What You Should Do About It
Ellen White wrote to a group of students at a school like this one. What she wrote is relevant today.
We want to say to the students here, You are just where the Lord wants you to be. You have been obtaining an education, and the Lord wants you to go on from grace to grace, from point to point, not to settle down here, but to obtain an education to go out, you know not where. {SpM 357.6}
What can you do? If you are a student, study with all your might. Master your subjects. Prepare to go “you know not where” and to teach those things. Then, when you graduate, consider working with the Prewitts. We will have need for more principled godly teachers than we will have an easy time finding. But in the mean-time, take your debt reduction seriously. If you are burdened with a large debt it is doubtful that you will be able to help us. Raise money, pay down your debts.
If you are a friend or a relative, consider giving to the cause of establishing training schools in countries where the trained workers will work for $100/month. These schools will be a power in the world and, if well funded, may even be able to be the mission-sending organizations that hire their own graduates to enter the field and work. The location and timing of the founding of future schools depends partly on the work of donors. (That is, if your local church gives $50,000 to establish a training school in China, then China will be more likely to receive the next school plant than some other place. We are planting schools debt free.) But it is the $50/month regular contributions that are most helpful to new schools.
Whoever you are, you should encourage us. Love us, miss us, write to us later (and write to us now.) But don’t ask us to stay. Send us with your blessing. And, again, write to us. You may have heard that I am overwhelmed with email. But I would rather get a letter from you than from any one of the other persons, largely unknown to me, who write for reasons not so close to my heart as your life and work.
And what if you are a student that I personally invited to come to OHC? And now you have arrived just in time to find that I am leaving? Please know that these plans were not in my mind, no, not even 21 days ago. It was only three weeks ago that I told Heidi that we would most likely be reapplying to come back here next year. (We pray about this every year.) Be faithful here. I would be very happy to study under the man that it appears is likely to replace me. But that name, like your future work location, is not for you to know yet.
How God Led Us
There are three ways that God speaks to us. These are summed up in 5T 512. They are through inspired writings, providential leadings, and impressions of His Spirit. The first two items are most relevant in cases like our own where one is making a major decision regarding the future.
A few of the counsels that have most impacted me have communicated the following ideas:
There are many openings for missionaries in Australia, New Zealand, and the islands of the sea. And it will not be possible to supply laborers from America to fill all the many openings. Workers must be educated in these fields, who can take up the work, and go forth as light-bearers to the dark places of these lands. Not many can go to America to obtain an education; and even if they could go, it might not be best for them, or for the advancement of the work. The Lord would have schools established in this country to educate workers, to give character to the work of present truth in these new fields, and to awaken an interest in unbelievers. He would have you make a center for education in your own country, where students of promise may be educated in practical branches, and in the truths of the Bible, that they may be prepared to work in these lands, rescuing souls from the bondage of Satan. Teachers may come from America, until the work is fairly established, and by this means a new bond of union may be formed between America and Australia, New Zealand, and the islands of the sea. {FE 203.1}
I know his constitution. From what has been presented to me over and over again, I know that for a while he will take hold of a line of work enthusiastically, but after a time he wearies of it, and should have a change. He is not to be held too long in any one place. He should go from place to place, speaking to new congregations. . . . but it is not wisest to keep him over one congregation too long. He has another work to do. {17MR 53.6}
The incredible providences that I have observed include the following:
1. In Arkadelphia I went from being needed to teach or preach very regularly to being needed very rarely. This happened in the last year.
2. At OHC I went from teaching four classes per semester to three (last fall) and two (this spring). Meanwhile, Brethren Baute, Arthur and Zuhl, are cumulatively teaching seven classes that I had been teaching previously. And when I talked to Mrs. Clark, earlier last week, about my plans, she mentioned that qualified Bible teachers were already looking at Ouachita Hills for future employment.
3. My work in helping my sister-in-law, Pam, is coming to an unexpected end (I learned just a week ago) as she is moving back to VA to be nearer her oldest son. This also brings to an end my responsibilities as a land-lord.
4. My heavy logistical work of organizing the OHC magabook programs has been taken up by Christine Neall. She has done such a thorough work that, for the first time since 1996, I feel comfortable putting that work into someone else’s hand. She knows how to negotiate prices, sponsorships, housing. She is ready to cooperate with knowing student leaders to make these programs a success. I saw this most clearly when I returned from Australia and found that, if she had only had the authority to do so, she could have organized these coming programs completely without me. (And it would have been easier for her as she would not have had to wait for my tardy responses.)
5. The time I have recently spent in the UK, Norway, France and Australia has convinced me that the need in foreign countries for true education institutions far exceeds the need for new ones here in the US.
6. In the last six months I have been asked to help start magabook programs in India, Australia, the Philippines, and in the UK. This closely coincides with where there are plans to establish AFCOE programs. Then, when talking to AFCOE last week, I was asked if I would help these new schools to establish canvassing programs. This makes a tongue-in-groove fit between my training/experience and the needs of the proposed project.
7. Last semester I was pleased to find that I have several students who are ready and able to head up summer programs and to organize them, start to finish, without me. Wow.
8. Last week I received two emails, in one day, inviting me to teach at two AFCOE programs (in the UK and in the Ukraine). This was the day that the idea of visiting these other programs (India, etc.) suggested itself to me with greatest force.
9. So the summary of all these other eight pointes is that they weigh more together than the sum of their individual weights. Together they suggest to me that God has been organizing and orchestrating to allow my complex life with all its many responsibilities to, in a short time, be cut free from those complexities. I am bidden to go. I will go.
Look for More Info on the Overseas Schools Development Project? I plan to abandon facebook at the end of February, but will see if I can set up some web resource where you can keep posted on what is happening without too much trouble. (Why abandon facebook? I hear you asking. I have already eliminated bad things from my life. But my life has filled up with too many good things to allow sufficient time for prayer and study. So some good things will have to go. And facebook and email from persons I have not likely to see personally in the next year or two...are the good things I am dropping. That will allow me to give more attention to people that Providence has brought into my path.) FB and email-from-not-with-me-personally-people have grown to inordinate levels and threaten my real-life life. So, end of February, there they go.
By Eugene Prewitt
For Beloved Friends, Co-workers, Family, and for the Courtesy of Informing
The Prewitts are leaving Ouachita Hills after this semester. This letter is a brief explanation of why we are leaving, what we will be doing, and has suggestions as to what you should do about it. It closes with insights into how God has led us.
Why We Are Leaving
First, it is not because of any dissatisfaction with Ouachita Hills. If I had a college-age child seeking my advice on education, I would recommend him or her to Ouachita Hills. The program here is excellent. The teachers that have come, especially of late, are precious and powerful. The values of the school reflect my own better than any institution I know.
Second, neither is it because of money. Heidi and I have been blessed by the Lord in ways that I can not quite understand. We are debt free. The pay at OH is plentifully adequate.
We are leaving because there is something to do elsewhere that needs to be done and it seems to us that God is calling us to do it.
At the same time, God has been (it seems to me) preparing me for this calling for almost 18 months. During this period I have watched a number of unexpected and unlikely events work together to free me from a tangle of responsibilities here. I will list a few of these things later.
When I have assessed my own spiritual walk with the Lord, the needs of our family, and the gifts and experience that I have, I have found that God has qualified me to be a pioneer in His work. I do best, spiritually and functionally, when raising up new enterprises. Ouachita Hills was this kind of project seven years ago. The Arkadelphia church plant was this kind even up until about a year ago. But now these ministries have matured and God has brought to them a wealth of talent that better matches their mature state.
Finally, I find that I have been doing my job at Ouachita Hills poorly. This is the result partly of my frequent traveling and partly of the spectacular growth of the school’s magabook program. And there are other causes not related to this letter. But, on reflection, I could neither stop traveling to preach nor could I wish for a shrinkage of the schools literature program.
But the largest reason we are leaving is the “something” to do. That is the best reason too.
What We Will Be Doing
We will be starting schools in mission lands. Initially, we will be especially helping with schools in the United Kingdom, Ukraine, India, and the Philippines. The latter school will start a year from now. ($150,000 was recently donated for its founding). The school in India starts this coming July. Over the course of the next four years another five schools, above these, will be established. Africa will be targeted, as well as other locations in Asia and perhaps Latin America.
I have encouraged scores of my past students to go establish schools. It is time that I do it myself. Here in the USA you students have several good educational options. Ouachita is perhaps the best of those options. But many persons like yourself, except born elsewhere, have no such good educational options. And God will, it seems, use the Prewitts to help alleviate this problem.
We will be working with the AFCOE (Amazing Facts College of Evangelism) system. I approached them two weeks ago about my interest in helping to establish these mission schools and received swift responses regarding their interest in this project.
Sentimentally, we do not appear to yet be called to make the kind of complete sacrifice of friends and familiar associations that previous missionary persons have selflessly made. I have requested the AFCOE system to only employ me eight months each year and to leave me the months of December, January, June and July. During those months I still intend to help train persons in the art of selling magabooks. Twenty years of my life has been invested in doing this and it seems a wise use of my time must include some practice of the trade I have spent my life developing. So during these months I will see you, many of you, and that is a great comfort to me, to us. Also, we both have aging parents and grand-parents and treasure this organization that allows us to give them some attention while we yet work largely abroad.
That is what we will be doing and it seems that it will start this coming August.
What You Should Do About It
Ellen White wrote to a group of students at a school like this one. What she wrote is relevant today.
We want to say to the students here, You are just where the Lord wants you to be. You have been obtaining an education, and the Lord wants you to go on from grace to grace, from point to point, not to settle down here, but to obtain an education to go out, you know not where. {SpM 357.6}
What can you do? If you are a student, study with all your might. Master your subjects. Prepare to go “you know not where” and to teach those things. Then, when you graduate, consider working with the Prewitts. We will have need for more principled godly teachers than we will have an easy time finding. But in the mean-time, take your debt reduction seriously. If you are burdened with a large debt it is doubtful that you will be able to help us. Raise money, pay down your debts.
If you are a friend or a relative, consider giving to the cause of establishing training schools in countries where the trained workers will work for $100/month. These schools will be a power in the world and, if well funded, may even be able to be the mission-sending organizations that hire their own graduates to enter the field and work. The location and timing of the founding of future schools depends partly on the work of donors. (That is, if your local church gives $50,000 to establish a training school in China, then China will be more likely to receive the next school plant than some other place. We are planting schools debt free.) But it is the $50/month regular contributions that are most helpful to new schools.
Whoever you are, you should encourage us. Love us, miss us, write to us later (and write to us now.) But don’t ask us to stay. Send us with your blessing. And, again, write to us. You may have heard that I am overwhelmed with email. But I would rather get a letter from you than from any one of the other persons, largely unknown to me, who write for reasons not so close to my heart as your life and work.
And what if you are a student that I personally invited to come to OHC? And now you have arrived just in time to find that I am leaving? Please know that these plans were not in my mind, no, not even 21 days ago. It was only three weeks ago that I told Heidi that we would most likely be reapplying to come back here next year. (We pray about this every year.) Be faithful here. I would be very happy to study under the man that it appears is likely to replace me. But that name, like your future work location, is not for you to know yet.
How God Led Us
There are three ways that God speaks to us. These are summed up in 5T 512. They are through inspired writings, providential leadings, and impressions of His Spirit. The first two items are most relevant in cases like our own where one is making a major decision regarding the future.
A few of the counsels that have most impacted me have communicated the following ideas:
There are many openings for missionaries in Australia, New Zealand, and the islands of the sea. And it will not be possible to supply laborers from America to fill all the many openings. Workers must be educated in these fields, who can take up the work, and go forth as light-bearers to the dark places of these lands. Not many can go to America to obtain an education; and even if they could go, it might not be best for them, or for the advancement of the work. The Lord would have schools established in this country to educate workers, to give character to the work of present truth in these new fields, and to awaken an interest in unbelievers. He would have you make a center for education in your own country, where students of promise may be educated in practical branches, and in the truths of the Bible, that they may be prepared to work in these lands, rescuing souls from the bondage of Satan. Teachers may come from America, until the work is fairly established, and by this means a new bond of union may be formed between America and Australia, New Zealand, and the islands of the sea. {FE 203.1}
I know his constitution. From what has been presented to me over and over again, I know that for a while he will take hold of a line of work enthusiastically, but after a time he wearies of it, and should have a change. He is not to be held too long in any one place. He should go from place to place, speaking to new congregations. . . . but it is not wisest to keep him over one congregation too long. He has another work to do. {17MR 53.6}
The incredible providences that I have observed include the following:
1. In Arkadelphia I went from being needed to teach or preach very regularly to being needed very rarely. This happened in the last year.
2. At OHC I went from teaching four classes per semester to three (last fall) and two (this spring). Meanwhile, Brethren Baute, Arthur and Zuhl, are cumulatively teaching seven classes that I had been teaching previously. And when I talked to Mrs. Clark, earlier last week, about my plans, she mentioned that qualified Bible teachers were already looking at Ouachita Hills for future employment.
3. My work in helping my sister-in-law, Pam, is coming to an unexpected end (I learned just a week ago) as she is moving back to VA to be nearer her oldest son. This also brings to an end my responsibilities as a land-lord.
4. My heavy logistical work of organizing the OHC magabook programs has been taken up by Christine Neall. She has done such a thorough work that, for the first time since 1996, I feel comfortable putting that work into someone else’s hand. She knows how to negotiate prices, sponsorships, housing. She is ready to cooperate with knowing student leaders to make these programs a success. I saw this most clearly when I returned from Australia and found that, if she had only had the authority to do so, she could have organized these coming programs completely without me. (And it would have been easier for her as she would not have had to wait for my tardy responses.)
5. The time I have recently spent in the UK, Norway, France and Australia has convinced me that the need in foreign countries for true education institutions far exceeds the need for new ones here in the US.
6. In the last six months I have been asked to help start magabook programs in India, Australia, the Philippines, and in the UK. This closely coincides with where there are plans to establish AFCOE programs. Then, when talking to AFCOE last week, I was asked if I would help these new schools to establish canvassing programs. This makes a tongue-in-groove fit between my training/experience and the needs of the proposed project.
7. Last semester I was pleased to find that I have several students who are ready and able to head up summer programs and to organize them, start to finish, without me. Wow.
8. Last week I received two emails, in one day, inviting me to teach at two AFCOE programs (in the UK and in the Ukraine). This was the day that the idea of visiting these other programs (India, etc.) suggested itself to me with greatest force.
9. So the summary of all these other eight pointes is that they weigh more together than the sum of their individual weights. Together they suggest to me that God has been organizing and orchestrating to allow my complex life with all its many responsibilities to, in a short time, be cut free from those complexities. I am bidden to go. I will go.
Look for More Info on the Overseas Schools Development Project? I plan to abandon facebook at the end of February, but will see if I can set up some web resource where you can keep posted on what is happening without too much trouble. (Why abandon facebook? I hear you asking. I have already eliminated bad things from my life. But my life has filled up with too many good things to allow sufficient time for prayer and study. So some good things will have to go. And facebook and email from persons I have not likely to see personally in the next year or two...are the good things I am dropping. That will allow me to give more attention to people that Providence has brought into my path.) FB and email-from-not-with-me-personally-people have grown to inordinate levels and threaten my real-life life. So, end of February, there they go.
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