God is Smart

I mentioned before about walking home from a Passover meal carrying my granddaughter, when she looked up at the constellation Orion and said, "God is really smart." I've been thinking about that truth lately. We drove through the desert in our move from California to Texas and saw its stark beauty. And here in Texas we saw a lightning storm, as great bolts hit the ground all around. I walk a great deal, partly to keep the diabetes in check and to stay relatively fit, partly to have time to think or to talk to Darlene, and I have looked at all the ways we use concrete.

There is an enormous amount of concrete all over the world. One aspect is that it means the removal of trees and the loss of farm land. But another is revelation of the enormous amounts of raw materials for concrete.

So...in the beginning...God planned for our future. He made raw materials for something people would learn to use many thousands of years after their making. And he made enough for all the creative ways we would use the materials. And then there are radio waves, which we would learn to use. And who knows what else lies in our universe that we have not even dreamed of, but will be useful to people who live long after us.

God is really smart. He not only makes what is needed for the moment -- all manner of fruits and plants for the young couple in the Garden to eat and use -- but for all the long future of mankind before He decides the time is finished. That's why the marveling Paul of Tarsus writes that in Christ all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are hidden (Col. 2:3) and in Christ all things hold together (Col. 1:17).

And there are a lot of other things to marvel at, not to mention the people whom God has transformed into the image of his Son.

Coulston Address

We have a new address to receive mail. The family is now based in the Fort Worth/Dallas area. We are less than 20 minutes from DFW, so our flights to visit people on behalf of Made in the Streets will be easy to catch and centrally located.

Continue to donate online (see www.made-in-the-streets.org or www.madeinthestreets.blogspot.com for the online) or send to Made in the Streets, 409 Franklin Road, Brentwood, TN 37027. But for mail about the ministry, or for sponsors to send mail for us to take to students, please send to

Charles/Darlene Coulston
P. O. Box 93165
Southlake, TX 76092

We look forward to hearing from you.

I Fell Off the Truck

We are now in Texas. We have been warmly welcomed. Joel Quile, who was in the youth group in the Redwood Church when we were in the Bay Area, lives 5 minutes away and he found us kind and serving believers who came over and helped us unload at the house. And Kim brought pizza and someone else brought a cake and water bottles...it was a great welcome.

We received a wonderful goodbye from the Conejo Church in Thousand Oaks, CA. They let me preach on August 16 and gave us a reception goodbye after second worship. Then we drove the pickup and the van the 1,474 miles from Thousand Oaks to the Fort Worth/Dallas area, along with me in a rental truck. So, back to the topic...

Darlene and I are putting our belongings in storage for the time being; maybe by this time next year we'll have a place to put it all. We took the rental truck to the storage unit and started unloading. Our son-by-marriage was in the truck with me handing out a large mattress, and Darlene and our daughter were below, with the kids in the car. Darlene slightly tripped on a bed frame and I thought I'd be a good guy and get down and help them with the mattress, so I walked off the truck.

I am impressed with how efficient gravity is. Seemingly with no time in between I left the truck and landed on the asphalt. Everybody screamed, and I don't know what they did with the mattress. It was quite a shock to my system, and I lay there a bit to assess the damage. My head hit the ground but there seemed to be no pain there. After a while I isolated damage to my left knee, my right elbow and the right side of my back in the rib cage. In the last few days I have supported the Ibuprofen industry and been pampered by the family. Each day one of the granddaughters asks me how I am, and I tell her I am sore, and she says she wants God to help me feel better. That helps a lot!

I am still able to drink lattes and talk short walks around the neighborhood. And now I am back at work on the internet. And I have this short piece of advice that is useless -- it isn't wise for a medicare patient to be too helpful.

peace, charles

Ready to Move

We always try to be ready to move, whether to heaven or to another spot here.  There is so much work to moving, to remind us of the value of where we are and the joy of where we are going.  Nothing against Texas, but we would stay in California if it were up to us -- we are following granddaughters (and they have parents, of course).  The Coulston's new mailing address is P.O. Box 93165, Southlake, Texas, 76092.  Donations to Made in the Streets may be done online or sent to Made in the Streets, 409 Franklin Road, Brentwood, TN 37027.  But anything that needs our special attention please send to the Texas address.  

Tomorrow is a granddaughter's 5th birthday, and in two weeks we will have been married 45 years.  As Scripture says of the early church - "much grace was upon them all" - we have first-hand experience of that great and wondrous grace that grows out of not only the kindness of God but also the kindness of God's people.  

So...be kind!   And rejoice in grace!

A Good Book

Now and then I find a book that reaches deep down within me where my true heart resides.  That part of my life needs to be touched now and then with great ideas, because it is out of that place that my actions come.  Last year Mike Rivas of Thousand Oaks, CA, gave us several copies of John Ortberg's Everybody's Normal Till You Get to Know Them.  Two weeks ago I finally got around to reading it myself.  Chapter 3 on "the fellowship of the mat" is worth spending my own money for.  So today I introduced the book to the Team members at Made in the Streets who are dorm supervisors for the boys.  I asked them to read it at the same time and talk in pairs after each chapter.  They agreed.  I found out that a couple of the Team have already read it, and now 6 are engaged with it.  We will see what it touches in them and what it will come to mean to the street kids also.

When you find a book that reaches you, we would love for you to recommend it to our Team, or buy a few copies for us.  We can get the books over here in suitcases when we travel.  Let us know.  It's a way to powerfully impact young men and women who powerfully impact kids who have no home and no hope.  

Matatus

Matatus are fascinating.  They are mini-buses that are used for public transport in Nairobi and all over Kenya.  They have 30 seats and hold 77 people - or they did until they passed a law in 1994 saying everyone had to have a seat.  Once Darlene and I turned off 1st Avenue in Eastleigh into Juja Road and there were 4 matatus abreast coming at us (and that's on a 2-lane street).  I guess they missed us; I didn't remember anything for a few days.  Here is a picture of two matatus coming down a street in Eastleigh with lots of trash in it.  Many of them are wildly painted, with all sorts of graphics and words on them.  And they play loud music and drive as fast as they can wherever they are.  The objective is to pass one more car.  And the method is to stop anywhere and without warning to try to pick up one more customer before another matatu does.  They cause lots of traffic jams by passing anywhere, especially if there is a slowdown, blocking cars from the other direction, filling up the round-a-bouts (traffic circles) and causing all traffic to come to a standstill.  Everybody hates them, and everybody rides them.  Of course some of our kids at Made in the Streets aspire to be matatu drivers. 

  And yesterday we were in a small traffic jam on the highway, following a matatu, and we saw written on the back of it -- Max Lucado!  Now that's fame!  

Virda Stevens

  Sadness and joy seem always mixed in our lives.  We have to say good-bye to a close friend.  Virda Stevens, the person who convinced us to visit Kenya in 1990, died, and we feel an empty space.  We often tell this story when people ask us how we came to work with street kids or why we do what we do.  In 1988 Bill and Virda visited Kenya, spent time with some missionaries, and fell in love with the concept of ministry the missionaries held.  And they developed a great vision for the work that led to a great school in Eastleigh Section II of Nairobi -- KCITI.  Under their vision and help, it became a computer and electronics school that excelled in training computer operators and technicians.  For many years KCITI produced more graduate than all the other schools in Nairobi combined, and they got the jobs because they had everyday experience on the computer.  

  But back to the story.  In 1989 they decided to join an evangelism campaign led by Lloyd Deal in Eastleigh.  They invited us to go with them, but we refused.  We had no intention of working in Africa, since we wanted to eventually go to Singapore and Malaysia.  Besides that, we were set on going on a backpacking trip in Europe that summer.  So they took several other people with them on the trip.  Deal's campaign, lasting over 2 months, baptized 360+ people, and a church was begun.  

  That was great, but Virda had another vision.  She saw hundreds of kids on the streets, and they were only evangelizing adults.  So she wanted to return and do a Vacation Bible School and train teachers, so they would one day have a good children's ministry and Sunday school.  She came to us and asked us to write a series of 5 classes and a two-day teaching training manual of the type she felt they needed for the kids in poverty in Eastleigh.  We said, "Okay, but we are not going."  It took about 3 months to write the material.  When we gave it to Virda, she read it and liked all the graphics and lesson plans and crafts.  A few weeks later she came back to us and said, "Uh, you are the ones who wrote this teacher training material; you really ought to be the one to do the training."  That was too much to resist.  So we went, and 35 people from the Eastleigh Church came for training, and it was wonderful. And on the last day of VBS, there were 435 kids.  

  She wanted to go again the next year, so we did the same thing.  This time 76 people came for training for the two long and grueling days of preparation.  And on the last day, 1003 kids showed up for VBS.  We could have died and gone to heaven then.

  But Virda has continued to serve the Lord, and so much more has been done in all the years since.  And we are still in Nairobi, now working with street children, still in the Eastleigh area, because of Virda's love for us and her perseverance. Thanks, Virda, for a friendship well lived.