Every year, Outreach Magazine
celebrates some of the “best outreach oriented books and curricula by honoring them as Outreach Resources of the Year.”
What a great surprise and a wonderful honor to hear from my publisher today that Sent was named to this list for 2014!
You can find their review of Sent here.
Thank you, Outreach Magazine!
Since so many of you have asked..
In our beloved home in Southeast Asia, there are only two words representing only two ways to answer when someone asks about the status of something. One word will let you know if something has “already happened,” or “not yet happened.” One would never answer with just a “no.” I love that because “not yet” is so hopeful; it never gives up! For example, when asked, Are you married?, your choices are “Already,” or “Not yet.” Even a single, never before married senior citizen would answer “Not yet” to that question. Isn’t that great?!
I frequently get asked about the spiritual status of the Southeast Asian friends I talk about in “Sent.” While I am thrilled to tell you that there is an incredible church planting movement happening right now in the vicinity of where we lived, when it comes to the friends that you met in “Sent,” their status as I know it today is “Not yet.” The key word there to me is …yet. As we wait, here is an update on where they all are today.
Natalie continues to live in our province where she works for another believing ex pat family. Her dream of someday owning her own home has come to fruition, though the last update I got indicated that her house was not yet complete (and may not be for many years which is typical in a place where work gets done as money is available). She didn’t move far, as her new home literally touches the home she had previously lived in (which belongs to her mother). Natalie’s two children both graduated from high school this past summer, a wonderful achievement considering she ended her formal education in middle school, and her husband, who is illiterate, never went past second grade. Natalie was hoping to send her kids to a local college, but corruption in the province interfered with the selection process, so only her son can attend right now. She has not yet had another child. Molly and I are hoping to go back to SE Asia this year to visit her. It’s time.
Lee finished medical school, moved back home to her parents’ city, married a man that she was arranged to by an imam, and now has a year old daughter. Following graduation, she briefly worked for an insurance company but quickly grew disillusioned when she saw all of the corruption around her. Her joy now is in being a mother and volunteering at a local hospital after having that modeled by so many teams from the States who came to help following the tsunami. Her leg has never improved.
Glen is now in the States after receiving a one year scholarship to attend a college on the west coast. He is loving his time here and has enjoyed experiencing his first American holidays, Super Bowl, and seeing snow for the first time in his 29 years. When he returns home this summer, he hopes to get serious with a young lady he is interested in marrying.
Usher left our city and returned to his home village where he is always looking for work. He is also seeking a wife.
Adele has been hard to get updates on. The last I heard she had moved out of the province to a major city. She still spends time with believing friends.
Many of you have also asked about my kids and if Molly is still dancing…
Jordan is now a senior at Covenant College in Lookout Mountain, GA, graduating in May. A history major, he is now discerning where God will send him after graduation. He is considering a stateside internship with RUF, as well as positions in North Africa and the Middle East after joining Curt on trips to work alongside church planters over the last 4 years. He is a discipleship coordinator for his dorm, active in his church choir, and loving playing his trumpet again in a church ensemble and at Covenant basketball games. A deep thinker and a lover of good coffee, he reads Augustine, Martin Lloyd Jones, Calvin, Spurgeon, among others for fun.
Molly began training at the Ballet School of Chapel Hill following our return to the States under incredible teachers who nutured, challenged, and inspired her to continue pursuing her dream. She spent her senior year training at Duke University, followed by her first professional opportunity performing in Carolina Ballet’s Giselle. She is now a Ballet Trainee at the Joffrey Ballet School in NYC, having been promoted to a second year student after her first semester. She is thrilled to be living in the West Village of NYC, and is actively involved at Redeemer Presbyterian Church and RUF City Campus Ministry.
“Once more, he who really has this high estimate of Jesus will think much of him, and as the thoughts are sure to run over at the mouth, he will talk much of him. Do we so? If Jesus is precious to you, you will not be able to keep your good news to yourself; you will be whispering it into your child’s ear; you will be telling it to your husband; you will be earnestly imparting it to your friend; without the charms of eloquence you will be more than eloquent; your heart will speak, and your eyes will flash as you talk of his sweet love. Every Christian here is either a missionary or an impostor. Recollect that. You either try to spread abroad the kingdom of Christ, or else you do not love him at all. It cannot be that there is a high appreciation of Jesus and a totally silent tongue about him. Of course I do not mean by that, that those who use the pen are silent: they are not. And those who help others to use the tongue, or spread that which others have written, are doing their part well: but that man who says, “I believe in Jesus,” but does not think enough of Jesus ever to tell another about him, by mouth, or pen, or tract, is an impostor. You are either doing good, or you are not good yourself. If thou knowest Christ, thou art as one that has found honey; thou wilt call others to taste of it; thou art like the lepers who found the food which the Syrians had cast away: thou wilt go to Samaria and tell the hungry crowd that thou hast found Jesus, and art anxious that they should find him too. Be wise in your generation, and speak of him in fitting ways and at fitting times, and so in every place proclaim the fact that Jesus is most precious to your soul.”
-C.H. Spurgeon
I like to say I got my start in radio in Southeast Asia. 🙂 One of the things that my family and I had fun with during our time overseas was appearing on live call-in radio shows that encouraged locals in their English language learning. We would speak about a certain topic, and then locals could call in with questions and comments to give them a chance to practice their sometimes verrry newly acquired English skills with native speakers. Some of the topics we were asked to speak on included culture shock, cheating in school, dating and romance, differences between America and SE Asia, among others. Always the kidder, my handsome Curt likes to say he has “a great face for radio.”
Over the last several months, I have enjoyed doing live radio interviews again. This time though, I am in the States and telling my family’s story as I promote “Sent.” The first time I did one on this side of the world though was a little more intimidating than it was in SE Asia. To prepare myself, I prayed, and then imagined that I was talking to my good friend who hosted the radio program we appeared on back in Asia. 🙂 No worries 🙂
This morning I had the privilege and pleasure of speaking with Lynne Ford of WBCL in Ft. Wayne, IN. Through this process, I have learned that there are good interviewers, and then there are great interviewers like Lynne. She prayed for me before we went on the air and then drove a very fun conversation, even though she almost made me cry twice.
Here’s a link to the program from this morning…
http://www.wbcl.org/media-manager/his-ambassadors
Thank you so much for having me on the show Lynne!!
Recently, part of our family had the privilege to be interviewed at the Advance 13 conference.
[audio http://www.advance13.com/audio/Allen-Family.mp3]A few months ago MTL “More to Life” magazine asked me to write an article for them. They published it in February! But.. with a picture…that..just for the record..is NOT me.
http://mtlmagazine.com/article/its-not-about-the-company/
Whoever this woman is, she appears to be the proud recipient of a couple of awards! The only thing I can make out in the background is “Birmingham.” Sure hope they mean, England, and not the city in Alabama, because then maybe THIS Hilary Alan has a British accent 🙂
I love this..
My guest blogger today is my 18 year old daughter…
When I chose to follow Christ, it meant that I began a life of surrender. Surrender of my own comfort, plans, dreams, and desires. As my parents were obedient to God’s calling to our family to move halfway across the world following the 2004 tsunami, I got my first example of what true surrender meant and looked like. My family began a life-changing journey that brought each one of us to our knees, and broke of us of our own self-reliance. My time overseas living in a strict Islamic culture without a doubt made me the person that I am today because every day as we lived in an area that was so incredibly spiritually dark, we were forced to rely on the power of God’s Word and His Gospel. But as I left many things in America that meant so much to me the day we boarded the plane, I never could have imagined all that God would show me, teach me, and break me of. Yes, it was surrender, but it was never a sacrifice.
Since living overseas and growing in my understanding of the Word of God, I have begun to realize what matters on this earth- what I want to devote my life to. I now long for my life to have eternal value and significance because otherwise, a life not lived in servitude to Christ is a life wasted. While living in Southeast Asia, God began to show me what it is in life that truly matters. I was taken away from American public school, church, and youth group, and was instead surrounded by men and women who were so burdened for the souls of these lost people that they would devote their lives to making His name known. As I saw my parents pour out their lives for the Muslims of Southeast Asia in the name of the Gospel, it compelled me to step out of what was previously convenient or comfortable for my first-world self. Every day was a leap outside of my comfort zone, whether it be not having power or running water for days, or even something as small as trying an unfamiliar food at a local’s house. My eyes were suddenly opened to a whole other world that existed outside of our fifty states- one where I was a social, ethnic, and religious minority for the first time in my life.
Yes, those three years were the best three years of my life, and yes, it was absolutely the most intensive learning experience of my life, but there were parts that were incredibly hard. Each day in times of great doubt I had to claim the promises of the Bible for my life- promises that He is faithful, He is good, and He provides. And on days when I was unable to do so for myself, my parents claimed them for me and reminded me of what is true. Our family’s favorite verse became Proverbs 3: 5-6 which says, “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge Him and he will make your paths straight.” It was my three years overseas that I really learned to trust God with my whole life. He showed me how to lay all of my own desires for my life at His feet, and learn that without a doubt His plans are so incredibly better than mine. As John Piper says, “Every significant advance I have ever made in grasping the depths of God’s love and growing deep in Him has come through suffering.” While I would not say that I ‘suffered’ during my time overseas, I definitely relate to the idea of having to be broken before being molded. All that I have learned about God’s character during my walk with Christ has come through times of being broken and fighting through feelings of unbelief. God’s Word became so real to me, because I watched as He was so incredibly faithful, to both me and my future.
As the Dutch missionary Andrew van der Bijl said, “Jesus didn’t say, ‘Go if the doors are open, because they weren’t. He didn’t say ‘Go if you have an invitation or a red carpet treatment.’ He said, ‘Go’, because people need His word.” Because my parents were first obedient to God’s calling, I was then able to follow them and be shown how desperately our world needs Christ. I wasn’t reading about these people in books, and they weren’t just a number to me in the estimated 4,194,493,061 people who are living in countries with a population of less than 2% evangelical Christians- they were friends. Real people that my family and I grew to love. And while we laughed together around the dinner table, it became clear to me that no matter how many times a day they knelt on their prayer rugs, Jesus wasn’t Lord of their lives, and their souls destined for an eternity in hell.
People need Jesus, and now as I contemplate how I want my life to have significance, there seems no greater purpose than to devote your life to mission work. As a family, we often talk about how when we were serving overseas we felt that our lives mattered. We were a part of something that was so much greater than just ourselves- and everyday as we surrendered our lives to the will of God, He moved and worked in miraculous ways and did the inexplicable. What a pleasure and privilege it is to be used by God for the glorification of His name. One of my favorite quotes from John Piper’s Desiring God is “Jesus promises to work and be for us so much that we will not be able to speak of having sacrificed anything”, and that is exactly how I feel. God really was all for us- He was so incredibly all-sufficient to us during our time overseas, in the tangible and intangible.
In my Bible, I keep my original one-way plane ticket from Raleigh-Durham to Southeast Asia from 2006. As a reminder, it is bookmarked next to one of my favorite verses which reads, “Now to Him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to His power that is at work within us”, (Eph 3:20). Yes, Christ calls us out of what’s comfortable, what’s convenient, and what’s safe, but I have continually learned that obedience to His calling and will is best. May I never forget to always see the immeasurable worth of knowing Jesus as my reward, and be willing to give of myself to gain even just a little bit more of the greatness of Christ, wherever in the world He leads.
Warning..I’m going to call out the women in this one. Which I can. Because I am one. And I’m 50 too. Which means I have been a woman for a long, long time, so I know some stuff. And I’ve been a mother for 22 years and a wife for almost 28, so I know some stuff about that too.
Recently Curt and I spoke on a panel about living overseas. Our audience was prospective international church planters. When I learned about a very serious issue facing the global organization we worked for when we served in Southeast Asia, I jumped at the chance to address it. The problem? The prevalence of families serving overseas who (in the organization’s words) “want to recreate a middle class American family existence overseas where the wife stays home and the husband does the ministry.” In short, they are finding that wives do not want to be held to the same expectations as their husband when it comes to learning language and sharing the Gospel. They want to have the freedom to stay at home to raise their children, be a housewife, and leave the “work” to their husbands.
WHAT?!
Since you can always count on me to have a strong opinion (I wasn’t born and raised in NYC for nothing), let me preface this the way I did that night to the people in attendance: In the 22 years that I have been a mother, I have been both a working mom and a stay at home mom. And yes, I believe that being a stay at home mom was the far more rewarding role and the one that absolutely was best for my family. So this is not a stay_at_home_Mom_hater post. Read on.
When you become a follower of Jesus, your life is no longer your own.
” Then Jesus told his disciples, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.” (Matthew 16:24 ESV).
In addition, all of Jesus’ followers are called to make disciples.
“And Jesus came and said to them, All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” (Matthew 28:18-20 ESV).
Although disciple-making is something every Christian husband and wife is called to do, when you are called into full time ministry, and become “professional Christians,” 😉 you don’t take on a new job, you begin a new life. If you then compare your husband’s work hours with someone who has a 9-5 corporate job, it won’t be long before the “overworked and definitely underpaid” aspect will get to you. Don’t ever look at it as a job. Remember, its a life, and one that is being well spent!
But that applies no matter what side of the world we find ourselves on. So specific to those serving overseas, I broke my response down into 5 of the roles that I now play..
GIVER
My family and I financially give as generously as we possibly can to the organization that sent us overseas for one reason.. so that unreached, unengaged people groups can hear the Gospel. Remember that. Your salary and benefits are a result of people giving “sacrificially.” (I’m not such a fan of the whole ‘sacrificial giving’ description..Jesus is the only one in every equation who made a ‘sacrifice’) As international church planters, you made a committment to devote your lives to seeing the Gospel transform entire people groups. In the case of our sending organization, both the husband and the wife sign the contract. No one financially gives so you can transplant your American life overseas, brag about being “bilingual” to your friends back home, and post exotic photos on your blog.
SENDER
In Curt’s role at the Summit Church of training and leading international church planters, he will not send anyone who is not a well equipped disciple maker fully committed to the main thing, male or female. People who are not already actively engaging unreached people in their own culture won’t do it in a foreign one. We expect both husband and wife to be doing this, while they are still in America. There are only missionaries, not ‘missionary wives’ (which sounds like a bad reality show). If you aren’t both called, then you aren’t ready to go, because you don’t yet fully understand calling.
WIFE
As Curt’s wife of almost TWENTY EIGHT YEARS, I was designed by God to be a helper to him. That’s why I participate in helping him train and equip others to take the Gospel to places where Jesus is not yet known outside of America. Although I still have a child at home, who is homeschooled, I don’t use that as an excuse not to join my husband in the work God has called us to do. As my husband and spiritual leader, Curt is called to encourage me in my own giftings in our ministry. We are one another’s first partner in the Gospel.
MOTHER
None of us lead single focus lives. For example, I am a Christ follower, a wife, a mother, a homeschooler, an author, a pregnancy care center director, a volunteer, a friend, etc. I want to model for my children what I hope to see them do: make disciples. That is not “Dad’s job,” it’s who we are as a family. And before you say, “Oh Hilary, you don’t understand how HARD it is to learn language and do ministry when you have babies or little ones.” Yes I do. First of all, Jordan and Molly weren’t born awesome teenagers. They were babies too once. Secondly, I lived alongside wives and mothers who were actively engaged in what we were all there to do. Finally, don’t forget that during my term overseas, I transitioned a middle schooler and a high schooler who had lived their whole life in the States up until that point, and were having to be homeschooled for the first time in their lives while I did language and ministry. That was not easy or relaxing. When I was home with the kids in Southeast Asia, I made my house helper my best language teacher by talking to her for extended periods of time every day. She was the first person I shared the Gospel with in SE Asia. In addition, Curt made sure I had time every week to get out of the house and be with friends that I was actively sharing the Gospel with. Your husband can and should do that too. And think about the great mothers who have gone before us all…Ann Judson, Elisabeth Elliot, Maria Taylor, Betty Stam, just to name a few..were they sitting at home while their husbands did the work? Definitely not.
TEAMMATE
I’m so thankful to have served on a highly successful and highly functioning team in SE Asia. Although we were (and still are) FAMILY, we were also employees of the same company. And as someone who has years and years of work experience in many different roles, one thing was the same no matter where I worked: employees don’t get to pick and choose what part of their job they will do. They call those people, “former employees.” In our organization, during the first year we are paid to learn the language and culture so that we can share the Gospel in the local language and in culturally appropriate ways. If you make excuses about being too busy or tired with the kids to learn, then you are taking money for a job you were hired to do that you aren’t doing. Besides, in the part of the world where we lived, males and females were segregated for the most part. It wasn’t appropriate for Curt to share with a woman. So if wives don’t learn language and culture, how will the unreached, unenaged women hear? I wouldn’t want to be on a team with a woman who wasn’t actively engaged with the language, culture, and ministry.
In short it comes down to two questions..
Are you going overseas to facilitate a specific lifestyle? If so, do that on your own dime.
Or are you going overseas willing to do whatever God asks you to do so that unreached, unengaged people groups can hear the Gospel? Fifty percent of the unreached and unenaged won’t hear the Gospel if fifty percent of those sent to proclaim the Gospel are silent. So learn the language and culture and share the Gospel because ministry is not “your husband’s job.”
Hilary Alan 
