This Pile of Stones - Discovering Hope Between a Rock and a Hard Place This Pile of Stones (220 pages) is a recollection of God's faithfulness and seeks to provide purpose and hope to fellow travellers even in the midst of the harsh realities of life. ". . .I found myself profoundly stirred, emotionally and spiritually. . . This Pile of Stones is a gripping and compelling narrative - much easier to pick up than to set down." John A. Anonby, PhD. Professor, Trinity Western University by Phil and Nancy Jeske $15CDN

Book Reviews
The Authors
A Few Reasons to Read
Forward
Introduction

Book Reviews

The Authors

The Jeskes were married in 1982 after meeting in bible college in California. Phil grew up in Alberta in Canada and Nancy in South San Francisco. They moved to Vancouver after their wedding and Phil pursued further studies earning a BTh. In the mid-eighties they interned at a church and then joined the pastoral team of that church. Their only child, a daughter, was born in 1986. As a young boy and teen Phil felt a call to missions and in 1988 a door of ministry opened to train nationals in Africa.

A Few Reasons to Read...

Life is full of challenges and we all have our fair share of dark days. But how do we function when the days are so dark and the valleys are so deep that we are paralysed? How do we pursue God and his purposes in our life when it seems that the waters of our Jordan will overwhelm us - at those times when we have more questions than answers?

This Pile of Stones is a reflection of some of the Jordan experiences which the Jeskes have passed through, from near fatal accidents, illness and even homicide. They describe their own pain, fear and disillusionment - while still trying to fulfill God´s purpose for their lives. Without cliches or simplistic answers, their openness offers fellow pilgrims the freedom to be honest with themselves while still trying to understand the ways of God. These stones of remembrance direct the reader to see an eternal perspective where purpose and hope can be realized, even in the midst of the inevitable grief, evil and irreconcilables of life.

This Pile of Stones serves as a signpost of God's faithfulness and grace; it is a witness to the fact that God has good purposes for all of our lives - to give us a hope and a future - even in the midst of the uncertainties and difficulties along the way. You will find yourself being challenged to participate with God in his desire to bless others through your life, seeing beyond the circumstances of your life to the purposes of God in your life. You can find new hope . . .even if you are between a rock and a hard place.

Foreword...

I first met Phil Jeske on the campus of Pan African Christian College in Nairobi, Kenya, where I had been serving as Academic Dean during an extended leave of absence from Trinity Western University in Langley, British Columbia. Phil shared with me his unique vision of Bible training for African pastors who desired to upgrade their qualifications without having to leave their ministerial responsibilities for extended periods of time. Little did I know that, some years down the road, I would be invited to join the Canadian Board of International Christian Ministries. Nor had I anticipated that I would be requested to write a Foreword to Phil and Nancy´s soul-stirring missionary autobiography.

When I began to turn the pages of this testimonial manuscript, I found myself profoundly stirred, emotionally and spiritually. These pages emanate authenticity, fuelled by a sincerity tinged with high hopes, deep disappointments, and a maturing faith in God's sovereignty over life's most challenging circumstances.

While reading these reminiscences and reflections, I had a strange sense that they resembled something familiar. Phrases such as "through much tribulation entering the Kingdom of God" (Acts 14:22) came to mind... referring to the Apostle Paul, of course! And Paul, as we all know, was the greatest of the earliest missionaries to take the Gospel from Jerusalem to Rome. Other passages came to me -- all from II Corinthians, which depicts Paul's internal struggles more probingly than anywhere else in the New Testament. His list of painful experiences in 11:23 - 28 is both astonishing and formidable, ranging from brutal beatings and deprivation to almost unbelievable burdens of responsibility relating to his fledgling churches planted in hostile pagan territory. Why does Paul share his pain through this letter? The answer is crystal clear: to give glory to the "God of all comfort" and to "comfort others by the comfort we have received from God" (II Cor. 1:3-4).

And this is where Phil and Nancy Jeske's This Pile of Stones comes into focus. All my life I have heard thrilling stories from missionaries who have shared their exciting experiences and narrow escapes from danger. Having served overseas, I too can share stories like these. What is much harder to express publicly are the petty frustrations, the bureaucratic red tape, the untimely illnesses (is sickness ever timely?), inexplicable delays of every variety... Yet, in spite of these uncomfortable realities - so frankly recorded in these pages - there is evidence of an irrepressible and tenacious conviction that God is greater than any circumstances.

The unmistakable sense of calling which Phil traces back to his childhood, the intractable griefs experienced within Phil and Nancy's family, the miraculous "coincidences" that testify to God's timely interventions, the hurdles that accompany every opportunity - all of this resembles the struggles Paul divulges to us in his frankest and most sensitive epistle.

Perhaps the most valuable feature of This Pile of Stones, with its ongoing implications that God leads all of us in unique ways in our individual lives, is the long-range perspective illuminated in this book. The title reminds us that we should not forget God's intervention and guidance in the past. As we share with others both the joys and pain in our lives, we become living proofs of God's grace and guidance. The long-range perspective is not, however, confined to reflections on the past - for we are also admonished to glimpse into God's glorious future plans for all the saints of all the ages. "The Final Stone" is the culminating and climactic chapter in this heart-stirring autobiography. The stone "cut without hands" (Daniel 2:34), God's great kingdom, will some day fill heaven and earth, and we can be a part of it as "living stones" strategically placed by the "chief corner stone," Christ Himself (1 Peter 2: 5 - 6).

This Pile of Stones is a gripping and compelling narrative - much easier to pick up than to set down.

John A. Anonby (Ph.D.)
Department of English
Trinity Western University

Introduction...

The sky was a bright blue that reminded me of the big blue sky I had grown up with on the Canadian prairies. Though living in the middle of Berlin didn’t allow for a clear view to the horizon, as on the prairies, it was one of those days which showed the city off at its best. The wall to wall sunshine danced with the shadows created by the large green leaves of the majestic chestnut and oak trees that lined the city's many historic boulevards.

It was on days like this that the challenges of the fledgling ministry in Central Europe did not even seem as difficult. On such days, when the sunshine would stream though the window of my home office, the problems and struggles did not seem as insurmountable. It was also easier to ignore all the challenges still facing this once divided city on such days; to forget the divisions and ideological differences that the crumbling of a concrete Wall did not solve.

Our own journey to this city was anything but a straight line. After launching a missions society in Canada, we had lived in Africa and then had returned to serve the cause of world missions from Canada. It was during this time, in the mid to late nineties, that we had felt God begin to lead us here to Central Europe. Not unlike the Macedonian Call of old, we were responding to the plea to "Come over and help us!" The practicalities of this meant moving to Berlin to be catalysts in facilitating pastoral and leadership training with those that had invited us. But in the midst of this, while much of our energy, thoughts, and prayers were focussed in this direction, an event occurred which made us again take stock of our lives and our priorities - ultimately causing us to reflect on what God had done thus far in our lives and finally commit it to writing.

It all began with a phone call to our friend and fellow missionary in Berlin. I had first met Hans and his wife, Dee, on a ministry trip through Berlin years earlier. We shared the common vision of training leaders for the European church. It so happened that we had ended up moving a few blocks from them in the Steglitz community of Berlin. Not only did we hit it off, but our wives also became friends and were involved in various women's ministries in the city. To top it off, our daughters were close to the same age and had become friends. It seemed that God had placed us together to be a blessing to each other; sharing the ups and downs of the ministry together.

On this particularly sunny summer day, Hans' wife had gone into the hospital for some relatively routine back surgery. But events in the next few hours were to be anything but routine. I waited until the day after the surgery to call, as I wanted to find out how things had gone. But instead of good news, I heard from her thirteen year old son that, earlier that morning, his mother's heart had stopped for a time due to a blood clot. He continued to tell me that his Dad was now at the hospital, though he still did not know how his mother was.

As I quickly jumped into the car and raced to the hospital, the sun did not seem to shine as bright and the Berlin sky had seemed to lose some of its deep blue, as cloudy thoughts filled my mind. I managed to navigate the labyrinth of the large hospital and arrived at the intensive care unit where Hans was at the bedside of his wife. She had, by now, slipped into a coma.

Waiting on the single chair in the small cubicle that served as a waiting room, I was alone with my thoughts. To the slight flicker of the colourless flourescent light and almost inaudible hum of the hospital, I mentally began to retrace the steps to our pile of stones that we had labouriously placed by the shore of our Jordan river. Perhaps it was that many of these stones were pulled from the river bottom of the tragedies in our lives, or perhaps it was just the shock and gravity of the situation, but as I sat there praying for our friends and the dark valley of death which they were now passing through, some of the deep valleys that we had come through flashed before my mind's eye. "Why," I couldn't help wondering, "did so many of the most meaningful lessons of our lives need to be shaped through tragedy and turmoil?" Only the institutional hum of the hospital air-conditioning answered my rhetorical question.

As I mindlessly gazed at the medical posters that lined the walls, I flashed back in time to another hospital, another waiting room. This time it was my wife that was in emergency surgery. The large moving truck, which I had tried driving out of our driveway, had lurched backwards against our carport and the whole structure had collapsed on her and our two year old daughter. While I had waited in the hospital on that occasion, the surgeons had reattached her foot and determined the extent of her other life-threatening wounds. At the time it seemed life would never be the same again - and in some ways it never really was.

My mind then fast forwarded to almost one year exactly after that accident to the phone call we had received one night from my mother-in-law in California. She was the bearer of the shocking news that my wife's father had been brutally murdered by his own son - my wife's brother. Where was God in this senseless act that defied explanation? Another rhetorical question that had no easy answers...

Another hospital, another stone to carry as a remembrance from the riverbed, while crossing yet another Jordan. This time we were living in Kenya as missionaries. Repeated malaria attacks on our then four year old daughter, Alysia, resulted in a particularly long night as her body repeatedly convulsed from the feverish seizures, culminating in a frantic three hour helicopter flight later that night to a mission hospital in Kijabe, near Nairobi. Kenya, at the time, was going through its first elections as an independent country, which resulted in tribal turmoil and killings. The unrest, in addition to Alysia's health situation and the need of my wife to grieve for the loss of her father, eventually led to our earlier than anticipated return to Canada. This was to usher in a difficult valley in my life and ministry, which was to put incredible strains on our marriage. Yet another Jordan, yet another stone to add to the pile accumulating along the riverbank of our lives... each representing a memory of God's dealings in our lives.

One thing we have definitely learned through these and other valleys is that we will never be able to answer satisfactorily all the "why" questions this side of eternity. But we have personally proven that God does have a good plan for each of our lives, plans that include giving us a hope and a future (Jer. 29:11). While the circumstances of life may force some of us to our knees, in mere fatalistic surrender to the fact the we are not in control, God's purposes for his children are so much higher than this. For others, the circumstances of life do not lead to fatalism, but instead resignation. They reason, with or without realizing it, that since God outweighs them, they will just have to accept his will, albeit rather grudgingly.

But I would like to suggest that there is yet another alternative. We have discovered that in the midst of the storm, concrete answers are hard to come by, and even though God does not always answer our why questions, we can testify that He never gives up on us and continues to work in our lives according to his good pleasure and purposes. This is actually the greatest security there is. We are not so naive as to believe that every tragedy and circumstance has its source in God but, as his children, we are confident that everything that He has entrusted us to bear has had to pass by his desk first. If God has the confidence to entrust us with it, then we can be assured that it is his purpose to bring us through it. We must just remember to pick up a stone from the middle of our Jordan as a reminder of what God has brought us through.

Our goal is to encourage you to come to that healthy place in your life that our heavenly father wants to bring all of us to: a place of acceptance of his will in our lives - even including the Jordans that we must pass through. Yet we also desire to broaden your horizons so that you might perceive how you can participate in the Great Commission - to go into all the world - even though there are times in your life when you may just be trying to figure out what God is up to... those times when there seems to be more questions than answers, more clouds than blue sky. It is particularly then that we need to have the perseverance to carry on. For each of us these dark days may differ in intensity and duration, but they will inevitably come.

This book is not an answer book outlining all the reasons for evil or a systematic explanation of the big questions of life. While we do not believe that God is the originator of evil and is not merely playing celestial chess with his earthly pawns, the fact remains that bad things do happen to good people. We all need his grace in order to learn to deal with the thorns, while not forgetting to appreciate the roses along the way. In all these things we have found that God's purpose is to form us into the image of Christ, whatever may come our way. These events that we go through, then become our memorial by the shore of our Jordan. If we take the step to walk through Jordan, instead of just looking across at Canaan, we will reach the other side - the place to which God wants to bring us. Our pile of stones can then be used to encourage those who find themselves facing similar challenges and obstacles along the way.

Only those who have gone through the river can truly empathize and effectively assist those facing similar waters. That, in essence, is our life message. Without personal experience, our advice, and even Bible answers, are merely theoretical and lack the power that brings change. It is only as we participate in "the fellowship of his sufferings" (Phil. 3:10), that we are able to bring a message of reconciliation to a fallen world - a message that does not ring hollow or powerless. Someday, as we all join in worship around the throne - from every tribe, nation, culture and language - we will finally be able to fully share in his joy.

Our lives are not just our own; we have been bought with a price. God has a plan and purpose for each of us. As we are obedient, we will find the fulfilment and meaning we seek in our lives. In this life, this may even mean carrying what may seem like a heavy cross at times, though our natural man never enjoys that. While some experiences along our path are of our own making, others are strewn there by the enemy, and yet others have a divine origin to test our faith. But whatever the source, God has promised to walk us through each one, never leaving our side. They are not there to drown us, but to show us God’s grace, love and power, so that we might grow stronger.

Our perspective is from those who have made it to half-time, as it were. We are not at the end of our race, but are still in the race. Yet we would like to encourage you that it is well worth it, not only for this life, but also for the life to come. As you read, we hope that you will be encouraged to finish the race that God has called you to in your life. He has a plan that spans beyond time into eternity, yet which is revealed in very down-to-earth, bite-sized pieces - our individual lives.

Join us as we describe a few of the stones which we have piled as a memorial of God's faithfulness. The first begins on what was to be as normal as any moving day could be, on that unforgettable September long weekend of 1988.