TRADITIONS
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Ahh…Christmas! Everything here is very much the picture of a traditional English Christmas; the English do keep the holiday, but for many in Oxford, Christ is not the central focus. However, the crisp winter backdrop is the perfect setting for Christmas traditions (much like our past Romania and Colorado settings once were). Tonight we came across “Traditional Fresh Turkeys” in Oxford’s well-known Covered Market and laughed to think it’s cold enough to leave scores of plucked birds hanging for the shop front! The picture shows it’s true…
Last week we enjoyed walking through the cold to attend Handel’s Messiah at the historic Sheldonian Theatre. This week we’ll take in the classic Dickens play, A Christmas Carol, at the trendy North Wall venue. Church oriented events have included a family carol service at our “happy-clappy” home church, St. Aldate’s, and a “high church” carol concert at Christ Church Cathedral featuring Jeremy Irons (famous film/theatre star of The Mission) as the reader. We are fortunate to be part of a very vibrant community of faith here, but we know that for most who live in this intellectual city the Christmas story is ancient history.
One break in our tradition is due to the first time absence of our son, Daniel, from our festivities. As an adult in the world of work, he didn’t have the days available to join us in England. Other friends remind us that traditions are broken for them too as not everyone sees Christmas as a cold weather celebration–friends from Zimbabwe are longing for holiday water polo in the backyard pool! We remember warm Christmas Days in Thailand, Cambodia and Florida and know that every climate has something to offer when Christ is celebrated.
Whatever your traditions and weather might be, we hope that you will keep the coming of Christ central and the love of family and friends dear. We send you love always,
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Bill and Ky Prevette
Oxford, England
December, 2011
From Ky’s desk overlooking our small English garden (or ‘yard’ in American English):
Oxford is an internationally recognized university city. In the autumn, the new academic year begins and students flock back (increasing the town's population by over 20,000!), matriculation gowns grace the more casual scholarly attire (jeans and sweatshirts), and bicycles spill across the pavement from nearly every pub in town. The pace definitely quickens and the face of the town looks younger and more eager.
Although we at Oxford Centre for Mission Studies (OCMS) are not tied to the traditional academic semesters, we do hold an autumn Research Induction School (RIS) to welcome new scholars. And, despite our tendency to draw more mature students, our new arrivals quicken the pace and change the face here, too! This fall's RIS includes scholars from India, Egypt, Indonesia, Korea, Nigeria, Japan, Singapore, Chile, and America; some of their areas of research include “textual studies in the New Testament”, “cultural identity formation of immigrants who were traumatized in their home countries”, “Nigerian churches in Birmingham, England” and “the use of Western finances in development work in Cambodia”.
Bill is very involved with the RIS sessions introducing the new scholars to qualitative and practitioner research methods. He continues supervision of several PhD candidates engaged in action research and was recently appointed as the Admissions Tutor at OCMS. Over the last few months, he edited and submitted his doctoral thesis for publication – Church, Child, and Theology in Romania – and wrote two chapters for new books. In his "spare time", he has signed us up to adopt and mentor a few Oxford University undergraduates through the ministry of St Aldates Church.
During the month of September Bill helped facilitate a theological forum at The 4-14 Global Summit for Children in Singapore. He then traveled into Cambodia to provide research supervision for two OCMS students and spent two weeks leading seminars in Moldova and Romania. November holds an invitation to present a plenary paper at a conference in Nairobi, Kenya concerning African children in crisis. His travels originating out of Oxford have been more global than I would have ever imagined… So, whatever your images of Oxford and scholarly endeavor might be, I hope this broadens them to include taking Gospel truth into the whole world!
I stay closer to home as far as travels go, but the world still finds me out. The OCMS Women's Gathering I organized a year ago continues to meet weekly. It has joined women together from Taiwan, Hong Kong, Korea, Ghana, Ethiopia, Pakistan, Netherlands, Niger, Zimbabwe, Romania, UK and America. The English spoken amongst us is musical and the prayers are far reaching; I am blessed to be among these women!
For those of you that remember our MK, Daniel, he is now 23 years old, graduated from Southeastern University and is working full-time as a Production Assistant for Warner Brothers Entertainment. His apartment (shared with four other Hollywood hopefuls) looks across West Los Angeles at the famous Hollywood sign and he crosses the star-studded Hollywood Blvd each day on his commute to work. With 60 hour work weeks, his life is mostly work, sleep and laundry, but we couldn't be prouder of him. He is launched into the world of film and movies!
We do hope that you are finding your work, life and family to be blessed of God. We pray for you; we are grateful for you; we remember you with love.
Always,
Bill and Ky Prevette
In true British fashion, a remark on the weather is always appropriate, so here it is — Britain remains on course for the hottest April since records began – it’s a remarkable contrast to the record breaking cold of the past winter! The seasonal changes remind us that we have been here a full year now. We feel happily at home, but a reliable (and cynical) British friend says that in regards to accepting us foreigners, “The first 20 years are the hardest…” We are enjoying putting him to the test!
Ky and I have just celebrated a wonderful Easter Holy Week in Oxford. The English celebrate Maundy Thursday with foot washing and the giving of money to the poor. We participated by attending a very meaningful service at OCMS led by one of our scholars who is the Archbishop of the Baptist Church in the Republic of Georgia (near Southern Russia). That evening we enjoyed a Passover Meal with a local church congregation.
On Good Friday, Bill carried the cross for an open-air community service called, Churches Together for North Oxford click here for more.
Our Easter Sunday was celebrated with a number of international friends at St. Aldate’s in the center of Oxford City and we closed the day with a contemplative Taize service. Christ is Risen, He is Risen, indeed!
The last three months have been both challenging and rewarding. Thankfully, we continue to experience God’s grace in our lives and ministry. Here are some of the highlights:
- Bill continues to work as both tutor and mentor with OCMS PhD candidates.
These men and women are from El Salvador, Columbia, India, Mainland China, Cambodia, Vietnam, Korea, Zambia, Nigeria, Kenya, Ghana and Australia. To work intensively with these leaders is especially rewarding – each is working on critical areas of mission and research.
- We just completed our OCMS March-April Research Induction School where we welcomed 10 new students from China, Zimbabwe, Canada, Korea, Japan, and India. These scholars are beginning a five to six year process of research and will make significant contributions to their home nations and churches.
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In March, Bill was a speaker and participant at a global forum called ‘Now and Next’ held in Nairobi, Kenya. This theological conference on children brought together 106 leaders of major church organizations as well as key leaders of the ‘4/ 14 Window’ Global Movement, Child Theology Movement, and the Holistic Child Development Global Alliance. The outcomes of conference and all papers can be viewed online at http://www.hcd-alliance.org/nowandnext.
- Ky continues to lead the ‘Women’s Gathering’ every Friday at the Oxford Centre for Mission Studies and meets with individuals regularly to mentor and develop their spiritual lives. She also gives “background support” where needed whether by providing tax assistance to our son, long-distance bookkeeping for her mother, babysitting a scholar’s child so that the papa can attend lectures and the mama can work, welcoming guests in our home or simply bringing in the groceries and the laundry! She finds God’s presence in the daily doings…
On May 6th our son, Daniel, will graduate with a BS in Film Studies and Communication from Southeastern University in Lakeland, Florida. Daniel has excelled in his undergraduate work and overcome several extremely difficult circumstances this past semester. We are proud of his accomplishments and will be celebrating this milestone from the cheering section at his graduation ceremony. Please be praying for him as he comes to your mind; he has decided to base in Los Angeles following graduation and work in the film industry.
We pray that your relationships and your work continue to bear fruit in the Kingdom of God. May you be blessed!
We are deeply grateful for your continued friendship and prayers,
Bill and Ky Prevette
P.S. In our last update, we mentioned our friend, Dr. Julie Ma, who suffered a cerebral aneurysm in mid-December. It is a testimony to the power of prayer and the mercy of God that Julie is back at her duties as a research tutor at OCMS! She has completely recovered from what the best doctors here in Oxford considered a severely life-threatening incident. Special thanks to all of you who joined with many others around the world on Julie’s behalf!
Greetings from Oxford, on the first day of 2011! We trust the New Year is beginning well for you. The ending of one year and the beginning of the next reminds us of both past experiences and fresh opportunities. We anticipate with each of you the joys, surprises and unforeseen challenges of a new year.
We do not think ourselves into new ways of living. We live ourselves into new ways of thinking. (Richard Rohr: Everything Belongs)
Here in England, we have just been through the coldest December since 1863 and the second coldest since sometime in the 1600s. The temperature today is a balmy 41 degrees, but we had snow on the ground for most of the Christmas holiday.
We had a wonderful Christmas; our son, Daniel joined us for the holiday and flew back to the USA yesterday. He has just finished his last resident semester at Southeastern University in Lakeland, Florida and will drive to Los Angeles over the next several days. Daniel will finish his film degree with a semester at the LA Film Studies Center (LAFSC) and plans to work in the film industry following graduation.
We want to share a friend’s recent crisis, challenge and ongoing prayer request with you. As you know, Ky and I are ‘on loan’ to the Oxford Centre for Mission Studies (www.ocms.ac.uk) by AGWM. We came at the invitation of the Centre’s directors, Dr. Wonsuk and Dr. Julie Ma. We have known Wonsuk and Julie for many years through our work with AGWM in Asia. Thursday night, December 8th, Julie suffered a ruptured cerebral aneurysm – a very devastating event. She remained unconscious in the Neurology ICU for two weeks. Her doctors were cautiously optimistic that she would survive, but did not know the degree to which she would recover due to the severity of the hemorrhage.
The OCMS community and many friends around the world were praying for Julie. Incredibly, a few days before Christmas, Julie began to regain consciousness and recognized her husband and friends who came to visit. Since then, she has been improving slightly each day and is now able to sit up right, move her arms and legs and even speak and smile a bit! We believe that God has shown his mercy and healing grace in this situation. We are continuing to pray that Julie will recover completely in the days to come.
Thanks to each of you for your faithfulness in praying for us over the last year and for remembering our work here at OCMS. We look forward to all that God has in store during the months ahead.
Happy New Year,
Bill and Ky Prevette
Three months have passed since our last email update. The seasons have changed, at least for us here in Northern Europe, and cooler days have brought out fall colour and what Ky refers to as ‘sideways light’. Since my recovery in July, following two months of illness, God has also given us a fresh awareness of His grace and several new expressions of ministry. We will highlight these for you in this update.
Partly because our move to the UK was interrupted by illness and a longer period of transition, Ky found this relocation more difficult than expected. It was during this time that she was blessed by three women who were well established in Oxford. This befriending reminded her again of the importance of “belonging in relationship” and she launched a weekly gathering for all women associated with OCMS. Grace, the wife of an Ethiopian scholar, made this comment after the first meeting, ‘for the first time since I came to the UK, I felt like I was the old me’. Ky also takes part in the broader OCMS community by leading the prayer time during the Wednesday Chapel and Community Day each week.
September was taken up with the bi-annual Research Induction School at OCMS. Nine new scholars joined our community to begin their PhD studies. I led a number of sessions on practitioner research and designing field-based study. Faculty at OCMS are assigned as ‘house tutors’ to these scholars as they design proposals that will guide their next 5-6 years of study. I am currently working with Jebaraj Devasagayam from Calcutta, India who will evaluate the impact of child sponsorship among a group of tribal people in Bihar and Jules Compaore from Burkina Faso who will investigate the implications of spiritual power in Pentecostal churches in Burkina. I also sat as the ‘internal examiner’ for a colleague’s PhD verbal defence in September, a ‘rite of passage’ into British academia I felt honored to undertake.
In early October, we were invited to participate in an international conference on human trafficking in Chisinau, Moldova. This meeting brought together 150 grass roots practitioners from 30 countries in Eastern and Western Europe. We offered a workshop as a couple and I presented a plenary paper concerning holistic mission to women and youth who have suffered violence and abuse. Listening to the stories of pain and recovery told at this conference brought to mind these words from Dietrich Bonheoffer:
We have learned to see the great events of world history from below, from the perspective of the outcast, the suspects, the maltreated, the powerless, the oppressed, the reviled, in short from the perspective of those who suffer. Mere waiting and looking is not Christian behaviour. Christians are called to compassion and action (After Ten Years: Letters to Family 1942).
![BucharestOct10 014[1]](http://prevetteresearch.net/wp-content/2010/10/BucharestOct10-0141-225x300.jpg "BucharestOct10 014[1]")
After Moldova, we spent a week visiting our ‘old home’ in Romania. Ky commented, ‘our recent ministry visit to Bucharest was a wonderful reminder of the life I have been privileged to live—so many people to love, so many memories to share, so many lives touching mine! Even after three years away, it felt so normal and right to be there again.’ We led a seminar for a group of emerging leaders at Bucharest International Church where he had served as co-pastors, did a workshop for Alege Viata (who work with the over 100,000 university students of the city), offered a lecture at the Institute of Pentecostal Studies, spoke with the ministry staff of Touched Romania, and reconnected with our good friends at Teen Challenge of Romania. These and other contacts resulted in planning at least two more trips to Romania in 2011 with the hope that we will continue to see growth in research, training and ministry there.
As we compose these periodic updates, we are aware that some of our friends and supporters are facing difficulties and challenges in their own lives or ministry. We send this letter as an expression of thanks for your prayers and friendship, and in the hope that our partnership will be an encouragement and reminder of the grace and goodness of God in all of our lives.
In Christ’s love,
Bill and Ky
Our thanks to everyone who has been praying for us so faithfully these last several weeks. Finally, it seems that things are getting a bit more back to ‘normal’!
As we communicated with you in early June, I (Bill) was hospitalized for nine days in Spain beginning May 15th for pancreatitis and we returned to the UK to recover. The last eight weeks have resulted in a roller coaster of health issues for me. Apparently, the pancreatic attack caused a great deal of gastrointestinal inflammation and I developed diverticulitis (our updates are starting to sound like medical journals). After an MRI, a specialist in the UK determined I should have my gall bladder removed and the surgery was performed on July 2. Thanks be to God, this was performed without complications and finally, after another week of recovery, the pain caused by the diverticulitis has started to subside.
When we were preparing to move to Oxford, we visited many churches, friends and individuals as I sought to communicate a bit of what goes on at the Centre. OCMS has about 120 students currently working towards their PhDs in mission research. Ky and I have been able to make contacts with students and scholars from around the world in our first three months here. My role is to both mentor and tutor these candidates. OCMS was designed to be a place for men and women who are Christian leaders from the Global South (the Non-Western counties of the world). About one week ago a good friend of ours, Philippe Ouédraogo of Burkina Faso, successfully defended his PhD thesis. Here is his title:
If this sort of topic interests you, Phillippe has given me permission to post an abstract of his research on our website. You can find this on our site www.prevetteresearch.net under ‘Blog Posts’.
Thanks for praying and staying in touch with us.
Bill and Ky
For some of you this will be an update and for others new information, either way, thanks for your prayers and concerns the last several weeks.
Wilt thou not regard my call?
Wilt thou not accept my prayer?
Lo! I sink, I faint, I fall! Lo! on thee I cast my care!
Reach me out thy gracious hand
While I of thy strength receive,
Hoping against hope I stand, Dying, and behold I live!
We returned to Oxford the night of Friday May 28th, tired but very grateful to be home where we understood the language and our local surroundings. The following day, our shipment from the USA arrived and 13 friends showed up to unload it and help us start getting settled into our new home in Oxford. We had been living out of suitcases since February 22nd. I will be seeing doctors here in Oxford this week for another CT and consultation about ongoing treatment.
Charles Wesley was right – living is not to be taken for granted. We rest in Him!
Bill and Ky
Oxford UK
June 2, 2010
I was hospitalized in Barcelona Spain on May 19th with Acute Pancreatitis. This was probably the most painful experience of my life, certainly the only time as an adult I have been in the hospital for anything other than an injury
During my 9 day hospitalization. a colleague from the Oxford Centre for Mission Studies sent me the words to Charles Wesley’s famous hymn, ‘Jesus Lover of My Soul’. On the last night I was in the hospital I wrote a personal reflection about my time of illness and a few lessons learned. I was particularly struck with the the 3rd stanza of the hymn.
I don’t know what it was in Charles Wesley’s life that brought him to write this hymn but it does parallel so much my personal pain and angst. I include the entire hymn here followed by my thoughts from a hospital room in Spain:
Jesus, lover of my soul,
Let me to thy bosom fly,
While the nearer waters roll,
While the tempest still is high:
Hide me, O my Saviour, hide
Till the storm of life is past,
Safe into the haven guide,
O, receive my soul at last!
Other refuge have I none,
Hangs my helpless soul on thee;
Leave, ah, leave me not alone,
Still support and comfort me:
All my trust on thee is stayed,
All my help from thee I bring;
Cover my defenceless head
With the shadow of thy wing.
Wilt thou not regard my call?
Wilt thou not accept my prayer?
Lo! I sink, I faint, I fall!
Lo! on thee I cast my care!
Reach me out thy gracious hand
While I of thy strength receive,
Hoping against hope I stand,
Dying, and behold I live!
Plenteous grace with thee is found,
Grace to cover all my sin;
Let the healing streams abound,
Make and keep me pure within:
Thou of life the fountain art;
Freely let me take of thee,
Spring thou up within my heart,
Rise to all eternity!
A Personal Reflection after 9 days in a Barcelona Hospital, written May, 27th 2010
May 19 – 20
Wilt thou not regard my call?
Wilt thou not accept my prayer?
By the first night of my hospital stay it was clear I was in real trouble, with pain like I have not known before. I am usually ok with physical pain if I understand what is going on around me in this case I felt lost and confused. The nurses spoke no English, the man with whom I was sharing a room had a family member spending the night with him (typical in Spain) and these guys snored so loud it was impossible to sleep. It seems humorous now but I was praying out loud at a pretty high volume – ‘OH God help me – make these guys shut up or heal their adenoids’. To no avail, I slept 2 hours that night and watched the dawn with something like knives in my abdomen. My two room partners got up and immediately started talking and laughing like they were at a soccer match. (Later I found out they were from Southern Spain and love large gatherings with lots of noise, the room was full of their family most of the day talking and laughing. If I had known these lyrics I would have sung them ‘wilt you not regard my call – wilt thou not accept my prayer.’
May 21-24
Lo! I sink, I faint, I fall!
Lo! on thee I cast my care!
Night two was a repeat of one, by now I understood there is no real treatment for acute pancreatitis (at least here in this hospital) other than shut down all oral intake and ride it out living on pain killers. Usually pain killers just make me have strange dreams and I suppose they dull pain but I feel the pharmaceutical companies have created their own language with ‘pain killers’. The nurses gave me morphine that night to calm me down as I was getting so agitated at the snoring and complete lack of control I had in the situation. I ‘cast my care on God’ and asked to be moved to another room the next day. What is that cliché about ‘jumping from the frying pan into the fire’? The next three nights were painful but things were starting to feel more like small pieces of glass in my abdomen than knives. But my new room mate redefined the term snoring. I had fluid in my lungs so I could not make a noise that loud if I had to. As soon as he woke up, he went in our common bathroom and smoked a cigarette and the fumes made me sick. Funny thing was he was a big likeable guy. We talked a bit – he in Cataluña and me in English, and we got to be buddies. I probably slept 2 hours each night. I had a positive CT scan on Monday and my new buddy was released on Tuesday the day I started showing some real improvement. Just as I was starting to think ‘at last a night where I might sleep a few hours’ the nurses came and told me they would move me again. So I just threw up my hands and said oh well, ‘Lo! I sink, I faint, I fall Lo! on thee I cast my care! Whatever you think of God in times like this it is pretty clear we don’t direct the movie. God writes his Story in our lives but this sort of writing is painful.
May25-27
Reach out thy gracious hand
While I of thy strength receive,
Hoping against hope I stand,
Dying, and behold I live!
My new room mate was a younger guy in his 40s in much worse shape than I. Last year he had colon cancer and part of his colon removed. He is back this time with 10 inch incision up his abdomen because his bowel was twisted and occluded. He made no noise whatsoever at night, other than to occasionally moan in the night. By now I was feeling like I would live and I prayed with deep empathy that God would touch him. ‘Reach out thy gracious hand’ not to me but this brother who needs a touch from you. His mother slept in a chair next to him. My strength was slowly returning, now I had only to contend with Level 5 pain and diarrhoea and needing to pee every 10 minutes. ‘While of thy strength I receive hoping against hope’ I was beginning to see in my personal trial that this too shall pass.
Each day got progressively better. I was hooked to about 4 bags of IV, had a sub-clavian catheter for feeding. They took out my wrist IV on Tuesday and the sub-clavian on Wednesday. Now they are monitoring my progress which seems good, I am swollen like a balloon from all the inflammation but I am able to walk and ‘stand’. On Thursday my doctor said my blood analysis was good and I could be released to travel on Friday.
This ordeal began on the day we were scheduled to fly back to London. I have asked every day since starting to improve if I can leave at the end of the week. The doctors just tell me that I have a serious condition and it had potential to be fatal. ‘Dying, and behold I live’. I now see these words in a much different perspective. Its true what they say about trauma and near-death experiences, it does get your attention.
I am now beginning a new chapter of my life. Joining OCMS is a part of that. I will continue with care in the UK, hopefully avoiding any surgery, and will need to lose at least 30-40 pounds and be super vigilant about my diet. I will need to adopt a new lifestyle – where reflection, soul and body care are not just pretty words.
Wesley was right – living is not to be taken for granted. We rest in Him! Thanks be to God for giving us life in both weakness, frailty and recovery.
Bill Prevette
Arrival In Oxford
On Easter weekend 2010,
Ky and I arrived safely in Oxford. After 11 months of travel in 35 states and 110 meetings with friends, churches and supporters – we finally MADE IT to England. The last month we were stateside, was blur of activity as we moved out of our house, stored most of our belongings, finished our travel and ‘closed down’ our US base of operations.
We owe a huge debt of gratitude to more people than we can name in this update. This 2009-2010 itineration was indeed a challenging time to raise our budget for another four-year term of mission. Thanks to those of you who housed us, invited us to speak, took time to meet with us and placed your confidence in us as your partners and representatives in working around the world with children and youth at risk and training international leaders.
April Research Induction School at OCMS
The first week in the UK Bill was welcomed as a new faculty member at the Oxford Centre for Mission Studies (see www.ocms.ac.uk). There was little time for formalities as 14 new PhD candidates had just arrived at the Centre for the Spring Research Induction School. These students came from Korea, El Salvador, Ghana, Niger, UK and New York City. Bill will be mentoring several of these candidates who are working on practice-based research in their areas of mission and calling. Ky was asked to join the Regnum Books International publishing team. We are able carry out these assignments as supported Assemblies of God missionaries; by not receiving a faculty salary we help to underwrite the cost of students who come to Oxford from the Global South for advanced study and research.
We will be dividing our time between OCMS and continued work with missions in Europe and Asia. This connection with OCMS enables us to blend cutting edge global scholarship with application and practice in our ministry with children and youth at risk. Bill will be getting more involved with international initiatives and interventions where women and children are at risk from human trafficking.
We will be providing regular updates through our newsletter and website. Ky is making regular postings on Facebook if you want to follow us there. We want to stay connected with our support base in ways that facilitate interactive communication. I will occasionally do interviews with churches and supporters through Skype. Let us know how we can better connect with you.
Until next time, we thank you again for helping us make this move into a new arena of global ministry.
December Update and Greetings for a Merry Christmas
Jesus came with the good news that God is not a God who hides himself, that God is not a God whom only the philosophers may know, that God is the God who at all costs desires to be known, and who in the most costly way has revealed himself to all.
— From The Mind of Jesus by William Barclay
I have spent most of the last 7 months traveling and have logged about 60,000 domestic air and road miles since beginning itineration in May. This has included over 130 meetings with pastors, business leaders and foundations, speaking in churches and on university campuses. Many are increasingly aware of the needs of at-risk children and youth around the world. Fundraising has continued to be a challenge but we are making steady progress. In November, God began to open some unique doors to us and as a result we have now raised about 85% of our needed financial commitments. God willing, Ky and I will relocate to Oxford in late March 2010.
Ky has been able to join me on a few of my trips, but continues working in the registrar’s office at Southeastern University. Daniel is finishing his first semester as a junior at Southeastern. He added acting roles in the play, Enemy of the People, and the musical, Jane Eyre, to his theatre repertoire this fall.