Sunchild News - June 2005

Dear Friends,

It is frustrating, when there is so much to write about and I have to condense it to a short letter. I have to leave so many things out!

As a young person I had a very special pastor. I grew up under his ministry and then Rev. Everett Culp was responsible for directing me to Bible College. Though he passed away some years ago, his dear wife, Mrs. Ellen Culp has faithfully and sacrificially supported our ministry, and even visited our mission at Sunchild. She is now 95 years old and has to live in a nursing home. We just received a letter from her daughter explaining that due to these circumstances she will no longer be able to support our mission work financially. I'm writing about this to you, to give an insight and example of the incredible sacrificial love and faithfulness representing the group of God's people who have financially kept us in the Lord's work for so long. I really don't know how to express what it means to me that she has chosen to support us and be such an effective part of this team, all the way to 95 years of age! Actually, this makes me feel like Paul writing Hebrews ch. 11, in that there are others I should write about as well.

We did get moved into Three Hills, as explained in our last letter. We are living on the Three Hills Bible College campus part of town. The college administration met with us and requested us to get involved with a ministry to the Native students and the missionary kids in the school.

When I write about the news of the last few weeks at Sunchild I feel like a war correspondent. I mentioned in our last letter about the suicides and how we are working with some of the families going through all this. The last several weeks we have seen many wonderful things happening. One influential person many of you have been praying for over the years has had a miraculous change of heart and is now a huge influence in backing our ministry on the Reserve. This was a timely miracle for us that I could write pages about! Karen was talking with two people today that have recently found forgiveness and healing in dealing with wrongs they have suffered and how this has touched the people who have wronged them.

An inter-church meeting was held in Rocky Mountain House to discuss the situation of the relationship of the people on the Reserve to the churches in town. Two ladies from Sunchild and O'Chiese spoke out and gave wonderful testimonies with strong emotion and tears, and told how they were saved under the Rinker's ministry. We baptized one of these ladies several years ago. Her husband left her under very painful circumstances. She held steady and maintained a wonderful Christian witness through great suffering. Her husband recently came back to her and got saved. We had a very interesting meeting with the Band council. It was amazing to hear the reasons they gave for wanting us to move back to the Reserve. We are still waiting for them to find a way to work out the details for us to get the mission property back.

The Alliance church in Rocky is working with us to help staff the Sunchild VBS in August. We are working on making this one of the biggest VBS's we've had in a long time. The Child Evangelism Fellowship is supplying a family to head up the teaching staff. The date is for August 15 - 19. We are praying there won't be any major scheduling conflicts such as Pow Wow's, rodeo's, etc. I have about five tent frames to build, with floors. An interesting event took place that could provide all the framing lumber we need. A large, wood frame, commercial building is under construction here at Three Hills. Last week the walls were all up and they were starting to put the rafters on, when a storm came in and the entire thing totally collapsed. Most of the material was undamaged but the insurance company wouldn't let them reuse any of it. I made a request to the owner to salvage the material. He said he was hoping to use some of it himself, but promised me I could have what was left. So we are praying there will be a lot left for us to get when he is finished with it.

The price of gasoline is making it harder for us. Parts of Alberta are having the worse floods in recorded history. This past weekend major bridges were out causing me to go around in circles trying to get to the Reserve. When I got there I got in a situation where for part of two days I was stranded on a little plot of ground completely surrounded and cut off by the flood, and I'd still be there waiting for the water to go down except for a special answer to prayer.

In His Service, Rodger, Karen and Family