Newsletter of June 2000


Dear Congregation of Hull and our other congregations:

Greetings in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.

We address this newsletter to you with great joy that it has pleased God to call to Hull a minister of the Word to pastor our
flock. We are grateful that Rev. Key was lead to accept the call extended to him by Hull. We look forward to his ministry.
May God give to him and his family blessing in the midst of the congregation, and in the labors.

As to our work, we have been extremely busy lately. It seems as though there is hardly enough time in each day and week to
get everything done that you would like. So we must learn patience also in these things. And we know that God leads us in
those paths He is pleased to send us.

There are two things or three that have helped make this a busy time. The first is computer problems, which have interfered
with the smooth and orderly way of labor in the study. Secondly, we have had quite a few power shortages (this problem
should be solved as we have a donation of a generator that will provide electricity to the whole house during outages, this
donation was approved by our ruling bodies and will be acknowledged more fully later). And thirdly, we took a trip to Togo
and Northern Ghana. The trip was necessitated to facilitate our obtaining our Resident Permits without paying a large
penalty. We are to have been outside of the country when we make application for quota and residency, so that this trip
served that purpose. At least that is what we are told. It also gave Jan and I a week and half away as a vacation for the
year. We did enjoy this time spent in a relaxing way seeing more of this continent of Africa.

Many of the school children that have written have asked whether we have seen any animals. We have always replied that
most all the animals are in Eastern Africa and are not found in Ghana. Well now I will have to say that there are animals in
Ghana. We stopped at Mole National Park in northern Ghana on the way home from our trip in Togo, and we saw a variety
of African game. We saw elephants, about five kinds of antelope, baboons, monkeys, warthog, wild dog and many birds of
many kinds. It was enjoyable walking about in this park and getting quite close to some of the animals.

This reminds me that while I was having computer problems I received a very nice letter from the children in Mrs. De Boer’s
classes. And in the busyness and in the time when I could not use the computer much, I was not able to answer them before
school was out. So I use this letter to say a big thank you. And to tell you I also miss you. But am glad you were well cared
for by Rev. Smit in catechism and by the elders. You sure have a nice school and excellent teacher so it must have been a
very good year for you. Again thanks for all the letters.

During all of this last month then we have been busy with some of the more technical parts of being on the Mission Field. Not
only working on broken things, but on getting documents ready for the government, looking into technical things with respect
to our place of labor here and the such. In the meantime all of our teaching and preaching have continued. The group of
people continues to become more stable and consistent in the attendance and worship. We have been averaging around
seventy plus in the morning and around forty present in the evening. The people are really becoming more and more used to
the Psalters and are growing in love of them. Many have their favorites that they like to sing and even have memorized many
of them. I have heard young people walking down our alley singing the songs of the Psalter. I have also heard them singing
their native songs as well. But I thought it amazing to be sitting in our house and hearing the Psalter being sung while someone
passed by.

There is an increasing presence of entire families worshipping with us, and several at both worship services. We are very
pleased that God is so bringing them to worship with us. There also are those that do come without their husbands, or without
their wives. About three weeks ago one young wife with a child came to church even though she believed that her husband
would beat her for coming to church. She was in our midst this past Sunday as well. And I believe that she did so this time
without the same fear. The reason for this I believe is that there is a growing respect for our work in the particular area where
we have many of our attendees coming from even though many are unbelievers in the area.

The Sunday that we were gone to Togo we had a tape. The missionary preached a taped sermon with pauses as though he
were being interpreted, and then John controlled the tape recorder with the pause button and pastor Acheampong interpreted
just like on every other Sunday. It worked well and the day we learned was edifying. This was done in accordance to Hull’s
Consistory direction and the FMC’s approval.

We were glad to get back to our labor after our break, but now we are in the process of trying to catch up on things that must
be done. There are many visits I have been able to make, but there are many more to make. I will be speaking to a grade
school on Wednesday morning at seven, and will help lead a Bible Study and answer questions out to Ashaley Botwe in the
evening on Wednesday at pastor Acheampong’s house, which is an unfinished house in which we will meet with kerosene
lantern. We will be doing this from time to time if it works out well. We are still having very good attendance and excellent
discussions in our Tuesday evening Bible Studies. We spent about five weeks on the lesson on the church from the Essentials
book. There are many strange conceptions of the church in this land that has many churches, but not much truth. So it was
good to build a good foundation of what the church is. Even after five weeks, however there shall still be much to learn.

Fridays and Saturdays we have catechism. On Friday evenings we have had eight or nine present for the last month. These
young people are a joy to teach and instruct. This past Friday three arrived from Ashaley Botwe a bit late about ten minutes.
The next day when I was visiting at her home she told me that the reason they were late is that they walked all the way. I
asked her why did they do that, she said simply we did not have enough money for a car. So they walked the six or so miles
to get to our house so that they could study the Word of God. What a blessing to experience some of these things. May our
covenant youth in the states have this same desire and joy to study the Word of God.

On this past Friday and Saturday in three classes I was able to instruct some twenty-five children and young people in the
truth of the word of God. With the younger ones we are now studying the New Testament using the New Testament for
Juniors book from our catechism series.

Well it is getting long enough for this time so will try to close this letter. By the way about two weeks before we went to Togo
John and Judy went to Togo to get their visas renewed. This is also a common practice for those laboring as volunteers in
Ghana for an extended time. They only took about three days to do this, and one of these days John was sick with flu, so
they did not have such an enjoyable time and were glad to get back home. Again we really appreciate their companionship
and labor in our midst. They seem to have very little trouble keeping busy, and they do save us time for study and other
pastoral labor and are excellent companions for my wife as well.

One sad note this month and that is Jan’s older sister next to her in age passed away about a week ago, and because of our
being here she was not able to go to be with the family. But she confesses that the Lord also gives her strength for this. We
know that and are assured of this even when we get a bit lonely for family. God has cared for us abundantly well, and we are
blessed in the labors.

May God continue to bless you all.


In Christian Love
From the Missionary and the Mission House,

Rev. Richard Moore