James and Nicky Poarch Follow our journey 
James & Nicky Poarch
To all of my women friends…(okay…guys, you can read it too)
HAVE YOU EVER…not read a book because the cover looked boring? Right now I am reading a book that my mother gave me last Christmas. I didn’t read it right away, even though she told me that it was good, because it looked pretty boring!
The book is called “Holding Nothing Back” by Ron Susek – it’s a true story about Ernst Vatter who worked in Germany. Ernst and his wife Sigrid, went to Japan as missionaries for 12 years. BUT, before Ernst became a Christian he was enlisted in Hitler’s “service” to become a teacher.
After Hitler fell, Ernst was then falsely accused (he was mistaken as his brother who was actually serving) by the French and imprisoned (even though it was illegal to imprison 16 year olds). After this, he became a Christian and went on to train and eventually served in Japan.
This book has taught me so much, I can hardly put it down. The main aspect of the book that has taught me is looking at the attitude of Ernst’s wife – Sigrid. She seemed like a wonderful example of a missionary wife. She always tried to encourage her husband, to love him, and to challenge him.
In one part of the book, she said that when Ernst came home, she always tried to have the children ready to greet him and was ready to show her children of her love and respect for her husband. Sigrid knew that although she was a missionary, right now – her first priority was her children and “freeing” her husband to go without anything holding him back to the Japanese.
WOW – this is exactly the position that I find myself in daily. I’m home with the children, although I love it, it’s hard to be content daily. It was a challenge to see how Sigrid showed her love and respect to her husband by trying to have things in order so that when Ernst came home he could enjoy sitting and spending time with the children. What a challenge!
I’m sure that we can all think about that in whatever area of our life we find ourselves in. The main challenge that I see is to show love without expecting gain or something in return. Sigrid gave and gave and gave to her husband so he could have a “successful” ministry.
Thank you all for lovingly praying for us, we are continuing to press on…we will celebrate Luke’s first birthday next Sunday (Halloween). It’ll be a lot of fun as we’re having a “dress up” party for the missionary kids here.
It seems that we are busy everyday with James helping out with supply buying for the missionaries in the tribes and me watching the kids as well as being involved with the local church here. We are praying about our future ministry here in Asia-Pacific and the timing of moving into a tribe…please continue to pray for us in that.
Isa 41:9 You whom I have taken from the ends of the earth, And called from its remotest parts And said to you, ‘You are My servant, I have chosen you and not rejected you.
