Loathsome but necessary

This morning David flew off to Malaysia with two colleagues for a week of Child Safety and Protection training. It is a horrible subject, but unfortunately necessary. This is something he's doing for CAJ (where he teaches) as well as for OMF Japan. 

It's not something we as Christians want to talk about. I brought it up at a prayer meeting several weeks ago and had a feeling that some in the room would rather ignore this ugliness and focus instead on nice things.

A quick google search just now brought up this article from The Chicago Tribune, with this quote:

Boz Tchividjian, a grandson of evangelist Billy Graham. The former sex-crimes prosecutor began selling his services as an independent investigator in 2001 to mission groups facing allegations of abuse. His group, Godly Response to Abuse in the Christian Environment, releases its findings to the public.

"There has been a culture of silence as it relates to abuse in the mission field," Tchividjian said. "What we're encountering is so many adults now whose lives were completely devastated by this abuse in the mission field, and also sadly the failure of family members or mission agencies to do anything about it. They were so focused on evangelizing and reaching souls for Christ, sometimes their own children were being sacrificed."

This is my lovely thing to dwell on: a
Cyclamen that David gave me yesterday.

Very sad. 

Paul exhorts us to think on nice stuff in Philippines 4:8:

 

 

Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things (NIV).

Despite that it is unfortunately necessary for all of us to be aware of this issue and for some  to delve more deeply. My prayer is that through the ugliness of this topic, that God would protect their minds and their hearts. David's also asked us to, 

"Pray that in God's grace we will rarely (even never) have to use the investigation side of this training. Pray that the prevention aspects will help me to be a blessing to all our OMF missionaries, their children, and the children we work with in ministry."

So our family is without David this week. I'm thankful he's able to do something that will potentially protect and benefit many more children than our three. But as always, we'll miss him.