May 12, 2014
Three Internet teachers are now on short-term missions in Albania: Bob Patterson, Leon Haight (Fier) and Jo Huddleston (Tirana). They will recommend that their students continue to study via the Internet.
In addition to conversions behind the Quran Curtain, more and more Muslim students declare they believe Jesus is the Son of God but are still too fearful to make the final decision to become Christians. Changes in attitude are apparent. Complaints that we are not in God’s image because God doesn’t have a body, that God never got tired, so he didn’t need to rest on the seventh day, that all prophets were sinless, that God did not have a wife (Mary), and that God took Jesus to heaven without dying, etc., were once frequent, but not now. Effective teaching continues.
This quarter, several new teachers have started, but some have had to stop because of declining health, and one has died.
Clifford Yeldell had a missionary heart, having worked in Russia, Ghana, and Cameroon. As he taught on the website, he noticed the large number of Haitians, so he not only traveled there himself but persuaded Samuel Matthews, a preacher in St. Thomas, to go last year and work with Manius Vixamar in teaching denominational preachers and others. While there, Samuel also further taught Steve Foltz’s Internet student, Jean Gardy Joseph, and Manius baptized him.
This spring, Clifford traveled to Haiti again and was scheduled to go again when a fatal heart attack took him from us. Surely at the resurrection, he will hear, “Well done, good and faithful servant.”