Missioblogging 2006: Finale

The concluding day of the 2006 Valley Bible Church Missionary Conference was all over the worship festivities from sunrise to past sunset. Rich & Joyce Mattocks drew the adult Sunday School hour, and both worship services featured a field report from Kameel Kilada and, IMHO, a sermon from Reverend Tim Wetmore with a melodramatic and guiltmongering missionary challenge to the men of the congregation that I found rather off-putting. He focused on his past failures to witness to people who dropped dead soon thereafter as an example for the rest of us not to follow, as if to say, as I jotted down in my notes, "Don't be a huge failure like all the pagans I sent to hell." He also seemed to be implicitly asserting that only missionaries should reproduce, and then only for the purpose of bulldozing one's kids to the mission field. Of course, his son is a building contractor in Nevada. I guess that was of a piece with the scorn he expressed for "matriarchal" churchs that elevate emotionalism over doctrine, and the weepiness he himself excreted later in his remarks. Count me as underwhelmed.

We'll get back to Reverend Wetmore shortly. I want to make sure I get in the profile for the last of the conference's featured missionaries, Bob & Teresa Reister.

The Christar couple teaches missionary kids at the American Christian School in the Yamaguchi prefecture of Japan. Teresa primarily teaches the elementary students, while Bob focuses on junior and senior high. They have also found many opportunies to use hospitality and English as an outreach tool.

The Reisters have two children, Natalie and Benjamin.

And now, the moment you've all been waiting for, the profile of our headline performer, the appropriately surnamed Reverend Tim Wetmore!

He and his wife, Marilyn, have been home missionaries ("We let the mission field come to us") with American Missionary Fellowship in eastern Nevada for thirty-six years. He is pastor at Ruby Mountain Bible Church in Elko, which began as a Sunday School mission work. Tim grew up in a missionary home, as his parents were also with AMF (then known at American Sunday School Union). The area of the Wetmores' ministry is heavily populated with Mormons and, more recently, an influx of Hispanics. The LORD has opened up many doors in the Hispanic community to minister.

Tim and Marilyn have nine children and thirteen grandchildren, which may explain the man's propensity to blubber at the drop of a hint. No word on how many of them are in missions, a topic that Tim never did bring up. Perhaps that will be a future lamentation.

I will reprise my post-conference posting of VBC missionary news and prayer requests as I did last year, except that instead of blowing through them all daily, I'll post one every Sunday. I don't think it will quite last to next year's conference, but hopefully it will keep missions closer to the front of my thoughts - and yours.