Mission Work

Bible Teaching

​G.B. and Ruth

Shelburne

4307 55th St, Lubbock, TX 79413-4621 USA
bshelb@shelburnes.com
Phone 713-614-8210
WhatsApp +17136148210
December, 2023

Dear Friends and Loved Ones,

Another Christmas, and we love the reconnecting at this time of year. Thank you for your cards and messages and for the pleasant visits from some of you this year. 

We constantly thank God that we are still living independently in our own home. Looking back over our 87 years of life and our 67 years of marriage, Ruth and I have been hugely blessed.

Ruth keeps getting good reports at her cancer checks. She has pain but controls it with medication. She is now taking insulin for her diabetes. I have gotten over much of the tendonitis I had for two years. 
We still worship at Quaker Avenue Church of Christ, a wonderful congregation. On Sundays when Ruth is not well enough to go, we join their worship by video.  Ruth also loves to watch the yearly tennis tournaments on TV and reads many books.

Ruth and I now have eleven grandchildren, most of them now grown up. We have three great-grandchildren. Our children are doing well. Ian and Danetta are still in Abilene, TX. Ian is doing some teaching at Abilene Christian University, along with other work and is an elder in his congregation. Danetta is tutoring public school students. Both of them are very involved with the Eden Center for Regenerative Culture. Two of their seven children are still at home (Josiah and Asher). Their daughter Leila and husband Matt have given us two of our great-grandchildren with another on the way. Their son Nathanael and wife Olivia have given us our other great-grandchild.

Our son David lives near us in Lubbock, Texas. He works at a secular job but is also active in Bible teaching and prayer ministry. His son Ryan is about to complete a college degree. Our daughter Anne-Marie and husband Kent live in Parker, Colorado, a suburb of Denver. One of their three children, Kasen, still lives with them. Kent and Anne-Marie operate a successful business. They were blessed to be able to visit Namikango Mission in Malawi this year, where Anne-Marie lived as an infant. 

Ruth and I enjoy our yard outdoors. We have oak trees in front and back. Last January we had 6 or 7 inches of snow on a still night so that the snow piled high atop all the branches. It was a beautiful scene. We always look forward to the exquisite blooms of our night-blooming cactus. We had a terribly hot, dry summer. As I was watering plants, a box turtle came to me more than once for water. On July 4th, Independence Day, we drove up to Muleshoe, Texas, where my brother Curtis and wife Juana live, and sat outdoors enjoying a beautiful fireworks display celebrating the holiday.

God blessed me with the usual week-long gatherings with my brothers at Robert Lee in spring and fall. We stay in the 95-year-old house my mother grew up in. The younger brothers have done a lot of repair work on the house. We try to keep alive the shrubs and trees that started growing during the time of my grandparents, but this last summer was torturously hot and dry, damaging some of the plants. That place is so full of happy childhood memories.

We were sad this year to lose Lendal Wilks, our long-time missionary work mate in Malawi. Lendal and Peggy were so well-adapted and effective working with the Malawians. We were also sad to lose a brother-in-law, Eddy Ketchersid, husband of Ruth’s sister Verlen. Eddy was a true professional (in the good sense) in preaching ministry. Lendal and Eddy were responsible for the saving of so many souls.

I still oversee the distance learning program at South Houston Bible Institute and serve on the boards for SHBI and Namikango Mission. For many years I taught an SHBI course called the Christian Growth Course (later named The Transformed Life). I have long wanted to turn the course lectures into a book and I have now finished most of the chapters. I have also made many notes for a book on the story of our life and ministry including the mission years in Malawi. I keep praying that I will last long enough to finish all of this.

SHBI offers about 40 tuition-free distance courses in Bible and ministry. Material has usually been sent out via postal mail or email. This year I have helped add a new channel for the DL courses, an overseas social media network called WhatsApp. It is not so well known in the U.S. but has a huge number of members overseas. Relatively few people in the third world have email, but a surprising number now have cell phones, and most of those phones have the app for the WhatsApp network. I pray this new outreach will grow and help us teach many more people.

We have always looked forward to the time when Malawians would lead the work of Namikango Mission. An exciting event this year was the creation of a Malawian board which will work in parallel with the U.S. board to move forward in that ministry. Recently we enjoyed an electronic meeting in which the two boards met together for the first time and got off to a good start. You can see more of Namikango’s work in Malawi at Namikango.org and also on the Facebook page for Namikango Mission. There are some great pictures there.

Malawi needs our prayers and support. A cyclonic storm last spring destroyed the just-harvested crops which were to be the food supply for the year ahead. Quite a bit of food relief work was done right after the storm but now in the affected areas many are running out of food with several months to go before another harvest. On top of that, there has been a 27% inflation rate so that the poor villagers can hardly afford to buy even basics.

God willing, this coming spring we will contract some repairs on our home where we have been living for over 11 years. Also we hope to join Ruth’s siblings in traveling to Northeast Texas to visit their parents’ graves.
Please note that we have retired our landline phone number 713-947-2535.  We still have our cell phone numbers.

May the love and help of the Lord be with you in the coming year. May we all live and pray in a way that will add good in the world and help overcome the hateful conflicts and suffering.

Our love to you all,

B. and Ruth