John & Esther Shrader 22: Now with An Enforcer!

[Gobsmacked]

Fight for supremacy? Off to bed sulking? Drought problems?  I’m hoping for the first. Haven’t needed popcorn for a while on a John thread. 

[gustava]

22 hours ago, Gobsmacked said:

Fight for supremacy? Off to bed sulking? Drought problems?  I’m hoping for the first. Haven’t needed popcorn for a while on a John thread. 

All of the above?

[Xan]

John has no business being over there with his family and his helpers when the country is going through a drought.  The church should have pulled him back to the United States.  Zambia has enough trouble and there are limited resources.  Sometimes I think they don't realize how selfish they're being.

And John and Esther have tiny children.  Will there be enough for them to eat?  Will the local people do without in order to help worthless John?

[Gobsmacked]

5 minutes ago, Xan said:

John has no business being over there with his family and his helpers when the country is going through a drought.  The church should have pulled him back to the United States.  Zambia has enough trouble and there are limited resources.  Sometimes I think they don't realize how selfish they're being.

And John and Esther have tiny children.  Will there be enough for them to eat?  Will the local people do without in order to help worthless John?

I agree. Sadly John’s wonderful daddy doesn’t want him anywhere near him. John should have been the obvious candidate to help aging Daddy Schrader with his church.  Nope Johns daddy loves him from afar. Afar away as possible 

[Giraffe]

2 hours ago, Xan said:

John has no business being over there with his family and his helpers when the country is going through a drought.  The church should have pulled him back to the United States.  Zambia has enough trouble and there are limited resources.  Sometimes I think they don't realize how selfish they're being.

And John and Esther have tiny children.  Will there be enough for them to eat?  Will the local people do without in order to help worthless John?

Colonists rarely admit they shouldn't be where they are. 

[gustava]

Something must be seriously wrong ......Too quiet for tooooo long.

[Ozlsn]

19 hours ago, gustava said:

Something must be seriously wrong ......Too quiet for tooooo long.

I think both John and Wade just aren't updating their mission FB profiles publicly but are either posting friends-locked only or just posting to their personal FB profiles. It looks like both Wade and Vicky have locked down their personal profiles in the last couple of months, which is interesting. 

[gustava]

 I wonder if they got blowback on having an enforcer?

[NoneIsEnough]

John must have known we were curious about him, he finally posted an update. Not much to it, but at least we know he's still alive and in Zambia and hasn't been kicked out. 

Quote

Greetings dear friends, acquaintances, and Faithful Prayer Partners,

No, I haven't died or quit, just pretty much not on fb at all any more.

We marked our 10th Anniversary Serving the Lord here in Zambia on the 8th of June. Counting myself, it was a blessing having 10 men attending a lengthy in-depth salvation Bible Study that day. One of the men is a faithful church member, thankful he wants to be better equipped to share the Gospel. Several are repeating because they really want to make sure they understand, and several new ones.

The Lord has also opened a new preaching point about an hour South, in a beautiful place called The Kafue Gorge, and even provided a lovely place to meet. We were preaching there this morning. God is clearly working in some hearts there, the testimony of how God took us to that place is amazing. It includes a Zambian Ordained Pastor, 4 years of Bible Training, but taught the damnable heresy that Baptism makes one born again. He received a John and Romans with Gospel Tracts inserted, and read my Tract "Are You Sure You're Biblically Born Again?" and immediately Rejected the heresy he was taught, and Recognized and Received the Bible Truth. He then contacted me desiring to know more Truth. Hope to share the testimony in its entirety eventually.

Bro. Mears and I also met with a father and his 21 year old son this evening, the dad, Mr. Felix, has been listening to our Radio Broadcast for a while, and his son Gift is being troubled by devils. He contacted me last night, then we just "happened" to see him in the Compound on our way out of town for the trip to the preaching point. We made a program, and met for several hours in the dark as Zambia is experiencing scheduled 12 hour daily load shedding power outages due to a very poor rainy season (some places in the country are without power even more than 12 hours).

Satan is fighting in more ways than I can almost fathom, and seems to keep adding and throwing more at us, and has been for the past 7 or 8 months.

We really and truly thank those that pray for us.

I am overdue to send out a prayer letter, but for now, thank you from the depths of our hearts for your precious prayers.

- Bro. John

Zambia

 

[Xan]

So Satan is responsible for the drought and the power outages?  Satan seems pretty busy what with all that drought and then sending devils to bother poor "Gift".  He's probably also responsible for John being depressed for the past few months and there being so few people that want to hear him drone on for hours on the only true way to be saved.  I had no idea that Satan stayed so involved.

[Xan]

New prayer letter out from John.  Of course, the devil has been after the family.  Nevertheless, John has managed to wear down a few people who now parrot back what John believes.  He says to particularly pray for the children so I wonder if the older ones are getting weary of lazy John playing white savior in Zambia.

Spoiler

 

[CTRLZero]

Esther seems to be bringing in more souls than John.  I wonder why the children’s hearts are hurting.  We have questions, John!  

[Ozlsn]

That highlighting is getting worse but at least the letters are getting shorter.

Count me in as another who is curious as to why the children's hearts are hurting... don't tell me the govt is cracking down on visas!

[gustava]

Does anyone have an estimate of how much it costs John and family to live in Zambia per month?  Excluding trips back to the US.

[NoneIsEnough]

New Prayer letter from Wade. These seems to be on an every 3 month cadence now, with no other facebook updates. 

Like John's prayer letters, he seems to not really say much while still using a lot of words and highlighting. They've been in Zambia just over a year now. I think this lasted longer than any of us predicted. They did get some cute puppies. 

 

Spoiler

 

 

 

 

[Xan]

"It seems like most Zambians think they can get to heaven by their own works.  Being good, not sinning (big sins), keeping the commandments (10), being baptized, and being faithful to their church."

That's not enough?  You have to have what John considers "the righteousness of God" to be saved?  What a pretentious, insufferable bunch of faux saviors they are.  C'mon, Zambians!  Toss this bunch out!

[Giraffe]

Wade and his wife have only been married for ten years? Was he divorced or widowed? Is he a late in life convert? If he's only been a Christian a relatively short time I understand how he could be swelt up in John's world. But if he's a lifelong IFB'er I'm stumped.

I'd love to know the real dynamics between these two. I wonder how often he and John "fellowship" directly. If he's a newer Christian he could be enamored with John. When the Mears were first brought up I pictured an aggressive brute. Now Imm starting to think Mears is probably the opposite of that - career military who's exceptional at kissing asses to get ahead but essentially a coward and a bully to those under his charge. 

Edited July 18 by Giraffe

[TacoBellKimmy]

36 minutes ago, Xan said:

"It seems like most Zambians think they can get to heaven by their own works.  Being good, not sinning (big sins), keeping the commandments (10), being baptized, and being faithful to their church."

That's not enough?  You have to have what John considers "the righteousness of God" to be saved?  What a pretentious, insufferable bunch of faux saviors they are.  C'mon, Zambians!  Toss this bunch out!

What a bunch of bullshit! Is anything good enough for these yahoos? It all reads to me like "keep sending money because the ignorant people are STILL not holy enough". I don't advocate violence but it wouldn't break my heart if the "natives" ran them all out with a big stick.

[Xan]

I know that Vicky was widowed.  I'm not sure whether Wade's first wife died or divorced him.  I've always felt that Vicky's family wasn't thrilled with the marriage.  She married fairly quickly after her husband died.  She sold everything to follow Wade's dream.  And Wade was career military (retired in 2001) but appears to have "been saved" in 1980.  He originally felt moved to go into full time service for God in 1981 in Guam.  He had been hoping to be a missionary for years and finally talked Vicky into it.  It helped that the sponsoring churches assisted him to get out of debt.

Vicky met Wade in 2014.  Her husband died in 2013.

Edited July 18 by Xan

[postscript]

The puppies are cute. I hope they aren’t planning to breed them. 

The rest of it - bleagh. Sounds like he’s still under John’s spell. 

[gustava]

On 7/18/2024 at 5:54 PM, postscript said:

The puppies are cute. I hope they aren’t planning to breed them. 

The rest of it - bleagh. Sounds like he’s still under John’s spell. 

Where did they come from, especially if they are pure german shephard?  Will they be trained to "enforce"?

[Jasmar]

One funny thing, one creepy thing:

1. I’m picturing the church people singing Happy Anniversary a la The Flintstones, in the episode where Fred buys Wilma a stolen piano for their anniversary.

2. Children snuggling up against strange people, men in particular, is not cute or wholesome. Those are usually the insecure-attachment type kids, and they’re prime candidates for abuse.

[Ozlsn]

On 6/27/2024 at 9:47 PM, gustava said:

Does anyone have an estimate of how much it costs John and family to live in Zambia per month?  Excluding trips back to the US.

I got curious and found this cost of living calculator. it's set to Lukasa as not enough data for Kafue, but it gives an estimate of various costs. Taking rent as a jumping off point it looks to be about $USD400-450/month, then about $110/month for utilities. Food looks pretty cheap (certainly compared to here) but with the number of mouths would certainly add up. I'd be interested to know how much Rick's church is chipping in as the sending church for four grown adults, plus all John's dependents.

[gustava]

3 hours ago, Ozlsn said:

I got curious and found this cost of living calculator. it's set to Lukasa as not enough data for Kafue, but it gives an estimate of various costs. Taking rent as a jumping off point it looks to be about $USD400-450/month, then about $110/month for utilities. Food looks pretty cheap (certainly compared to here) but with the number of mouths would certainly add up. I'd be interested to know how much Rick's church is chipping in as the sending church for four grown adults, plus all John's dependents.

Thanks Ozlsn.  Minimum of $1000/mo?  Plus $ for the TP tracts, gas, clothes, diapers, etc

[Howl]

Where's Esther on the baby factory assembly line?