Morning Glory Christian Academy – Aug 8 2016 – A Morning Glory Story from the Past…and what it means for the future

   “I just can’t write this in the newsletter,” Lori said, “It is all lies.” That opened an hour long father and daughter, minister and intern, teaching time.  Her job, was to do what was assigned by the mission. The truthfulness was upon the writer, not the scribe and Lori typed the mission newsletter. At that point a dislike of missions and missionaries set in.

   I’ll skip forward past top female and second highest graduate of DCC and her time at CCS in Ohio to when Lori was sending out résumés to every Christian School in America and being ignored. My phone rang at my business office.  It was Dean Cary at Colegio Biblico on the border of Texas and Mexico. He was in need of a Dean of Women and a Pedagogy teacher at the mission school. I told Dean Cary I had the perfect candidate for him and gave him our home number with the instructions to avoid the words ‘missionary’ and ‘mission’ at all costs.

   Lori drove to Eagle Pass and before she knew it, she was a missionary.

   Dean Pinney was in high school, and together we set out to raise her salary and travel money in the youth work of the churches in Mexico. I had bought her a Volvo Stationwagon: a vehicle tough enough to run guerrilla road blocks, defect bullets off the front fenders, and carry the students to teaching assignments and all their youthful baggage.

   I had already had experience in raising mission money for the NIMA’s first division, the Navajo Christian churches, so this was a snap. Lori and our elders at the First Christian Church in Vidor, Texas, sought transparency in all reporting as to finances of the new mission. About a year into her travel for the college, one of the early supporting churches objected to the financial statement. I was called into account that maintenance costs of the Volvo were too high, and they could not support a missionary that drove a Volvo. Their minister unloaded on them that not only had I bought the Volvo out of my pocket, 75% of Lori’s mission financing was a check from Herb. This alerted me to the fact that most small or plateaued churches usually seek a one-size-fits-all approach to missions. Here at Colegio Biblico, Lori was the teacher and missions partner with an older student from Guatemala, Sr. Eugenio Queno Nij.

   I was invited to be the graduation speaker at Colegio. Edgar Clavijo, now married to Linda Dawn and planning a life of Church work in Colombia, and Eugenio Queno Nij, now married to Lori and planning a life of church work in Guatemala, were in that class. God is moving Lori into place to get her school she was dreaming about. God’s timing, if not our own, is always perfect.

   The next few years were a blur; Queno went home to preach for the Iglesia de Cristo in San Raymundo and Lori settled down to being a minister’s wife.  The property that belonged to a church member and one time minister was on the Llano de la Virgen, north of the city a few km.

   Lori and Queno said the price was right and if we owned it, it would cut the cost of their mission work and we could buy it for less than $6,000.00 US dollars.  I borrowed the money and repaid it for the property that is the original location of Morning Glory. It was not right for a residence, and sat idle until we began to develop the children’s work of NIMA in San Raymundo.
 

   I want to tell you wonderful folks that have made all of this possible, you are my heroes, you have scrapped, borrowed, given till often that it hurt. I love you everyone. Every Electronic donation, check, bank transfer and cash donation comes across my desk and is photo copied by me and filed, assigned to the receipt desk and to the Google computer file. I realize that there are financial limits to giving and with the projects God has placed on our plate, with the needed reorganizing of our 501c3 government filing we can’t move; because of needed additional monthly income to carry on of $15,000.00.

   That means Dean and I will be looking for new financial partners, not to replace anyone, but to build with you on the foundation that you have laid.  Just as we outgrown Herb’s back pocket; we have grown to the place by the wonderful gifts that you folks have laid at the Lord’s feet we need more.

   There are several options before us. Agape Christian Church took one, to downsize. We left our very modern building and campus for one that costs way less, an old building that needs lot of repairs, but we will be able here to pay 100% of the USA NIMA office costs, and we can desk- top publish all our material such at the Navigator and promotional supplies to reach new partners.  Lori was set to do the same thing in Guatemala. I said, “no”.  Dean and I are working in a whole new realm of partners.  One in the Dallas area gave a gift of $7,000.00 last month.

   So this is the secret; the Morning Glory School cost a lot of money, sweat and tears. Each of us has a limit to what we can do, and I so understand that. We will be opening the doors to new partners, not to replace anyone, but to go hand-in-hand with us all into a bright and God blessed debt-free future for Morning Glory.