The Anabaptist Voice 08

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The Anabaptist Voice
08/19/2009

Proclaiming the Good News of the Kingdom of God: Love, Joy and Peace in Jesus.

Dear friend in Christ,

       We give thanks to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, for this day and for you, faithful friend. We praise God for his wonderful love for us all. We here in southern Arizona must be out of the monsoon season because we see the beautiful sunshine and very few clouds these days. We are surrounded by the trees and flowers, birds and bunnies. They are all alive! Trees grow and plants show their lovely flowers. (See photo below.) God created them for us to enjoy.
       We are all well. Naomi is doing much better. She was having a problem seeing double vision yesterday morning, but she is fine now. She went to Mary’s house again yesterday for the fellowship and crocheting. Mary is a wonderful helper for her. “Thank you, Mary. We appreciate you.”
       Kenny Wollman from the Baker Hutterite colony in Manitoba is helping us with our Anabaptist songbook. He has lots of good suggestions and it will be a big job to go through them all. Praise God that He has given us such a good helper. “Thank you, Kenny, for helping us. God bless you.”
       Our granddaughter Eryn is registered at the New Mexico State University and her parents took her there this past weekend to start her college career. She is on the swim team there and it is scheduled to have a swim meet here in Tucson in November. We hope to see her then.
       The other night Patrick called us so that our three year old granddaughter Elizabeth Michiko could sing “Jesus Loves Me” for us. It was so sweet. It is so wonderful to listen to her sing. She is a happy girl and we appreciate her.   About 20 or 30 minutes later the phone rang again and it was our six year old grandson Titus. Titus was very happy and excited about what he was doing outside. He told us, “I was a mud man!” He was playing in the mud and came into the house covered with mud from his head to toes. He had to go straight to the bathtub to clean up himself. We hope he won’t do that all the time, but it was a joy to hear his happy voice talking about his experience. Our grandchildren are very precious to us.
       May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you. (2 Cor 13:14)

Your brother and sisters in Christ,

Don, Michi & Naomi Murphy
Tucson, AZ, phone 520-297-1639
www.AnabaptistChurch.org

Jesus said, “People will know that you are my disciples by your love for one another.” (John 13:35)

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Hatred’s Bitter Brew

       The Sunday sermon at the Baptist church was based on the story of Joseph in Genesis 37:4-11. Joseph’s eleven brothers hated him because he was his father’s favorite. When the sermon started Don thought that it didn’t apply to him because he didn’t hate anyone. But when the definition of hatred was shown in Genesis 37, then he began to wonder. Was he ever jealous of anyone? Was there anyone who he could not speak peacefully to? Was there anyone whose troubles did not bother him? So it was a good sermon, one to ponder.

Speaking in Tongues

       The Sunday morning Sunday school at the Baptist church was on the subject of what the pastor called ‘sign gifts’, four of the nine gifts of the Holy Spirit (1 Cor 12:4-11), which are miracles, healings, tongues and interpretation of tongues. He taught that these gifts have not been given to anyone since the time of the apostles. He said that the gift of tongues is the ability to speak in an unknown language for the purpose to speaking the gospel to foreigners in their own language. Don thinks that doesn’t seem to be correct as it does not agree with the apostle Paul’s definition of speaking in tongues.
       “Anyone who speaks in a tongue does not speak to men but to God. Indeed, no one understands him; he utters mysteries with his spirit.” 1 Cor 14:2
       “He who speaks in a tongue edifies himself, but he who prophesies edifies the church.” 1 Cor 14:4
       “If I pray in a tongue, my spirit prays, but my mind is unfruitful. So what shall I do? I will pray with my spirit, but I will also pray with my mind; I will sing with my spirit, but I will also sing with my mind.” 1 Cor 14:14

Don and Michi’s Marriage

       In 1959 Don was discharged from the U.S. Air Force in Japan and got a job teaching English in a private school in Tokyo while waiting for his seaman's papers so that he could work his way around the world on cargo ships.
       There was a secretary in that school named Michiko who was the one who gave Don his paychecks. Don was 22 years old and somewhat of a good Catholic, having attended Catholic grade school and was an altar boy serving at mass and also sang in the church choir.
       Don was not a born again Christian but one day Don really felt that the Lord God was telling him that he was to marry Michiko. So he invited her out for a date, and they met in a bar. Don gave Michiko a cigarette and lit it for her but it was obvious that she had never smoked a cigarette.
       They talked in Japanese because Don’s Japanese was much better than her English, as Don had lived in Japan for three and a half years.
       Michiko’s father and grandfather, long since passed away, had been Christian ministers. Her great-grandfather and his ancestors were of the samurai class, the highest of the four classes of people in Japan. Michiko's birth certificate listed her class as 'Samurai'.
       One day Don asked her to marry him, a foreigner, and she agreed! Amazing. So they went to visit her mother in southern Japan and then met a few times with a Catholic priest who eventually married them in the chapel at the Sophia University, a Catholic university in Tokyo. Here is their wedding photo.
       They moved to the United States where Michiko had to learn to speak English, then they moved to Quito, Ecuador, where they both had to learn to speak Spanish. Later they lived in Antigua, West Indies, where they had to learn to understand their strange English.
       In 1974 Michiko was born again. Here is how she described her born again experience: “One day in September of 1974 while I was preparing for a Sunday school lesson, I felt so unworthy and unclean. Yet, I had to teach. I was looking for a picture of Jesus I wanted to use for the lesson. When I saw a picture of Jesus on the cross, something wonderful happened. I began to feel God's love being poured out on me. I felt His cleansing power coming down on me, from the top of my head to the tip of my toes. I felt washed and clean. Then my eyes were opened to God. I was saturated in His love.” A year later Don was also born again. This happened in a Seattle hospital where Don lay with an injured back when his co-worker visited him and helped him open his heart to receive Jesus. That same year the Lord gave them both the Baptism in the Holy Spirit with the wonderful gift of being able to pray from their spirit (called speaking in tongues 1 Cor 14:2). What a wonderful blessing that has been to them both all these years.
       In Japan the custom was that the wife address her husband as 'goshujin-sama' which translates to 'lord and master'. So it was not too hard for her to switch to English and follow the teachings in 1 Peter 3:6 where the Christian wife is to address her husband as 'master'.
       It was a bit harder for her, as it seems to be for most women, to start wearing a head covering as the Bible teaches in 1 Cor 11:1-16. But she has been doing that now for about 30 years, using the head covering of the Dariusleut branch of the Hutterian Brethren.
       They've been married for fifty years now, have raised five children and helped raise a couple dozen foster children.
       Don considers Michiko to be a perfect wife, like that described in the Bible. As they get older, they become more and more one, more and more perfectly bonded together. Don needs her and she needs Don. They love each other.

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