We are please to announce that we now have a Facebook page for New Directions International's Alumni!  This page is maintained by our staff here at JL, Patt & Friends and is intended to help keep us in touch with each other.  So stop by, click on the like button day "hello" and keep in touch! 

NDI Alumni Facebook page

Dear ND Alumni,

I am writing this quick email to you on this Thanksgiving Day morning.  I seldom have or take time to go to movies, but last night Patt and I went to see the movie, "The Help."  I had started watching it on my flight home last week from Asia but the sound was so bad that I had to stop watching it. However, I saw enough to want to clearly hear and see the whole story in a theatre when I got back.  Patt readily agreed to go with me even though she had already seen it with our daughter, daughters-in-law and friends.  It was showing at the Graham Cinema -- where all movies are just $3.00 and popcorn comes with free refills!  What a deal!

For me it was a powerful, painful and poignant movie!  It was like stepping in a time machine and going back to the early days of The New Directions.  As a ministry, we were born in those tumultuous days of segregation and integration. Some of our earlier ND members came out of the kinds of homes that were reflected in 'The Help.'  Some were from more privileged 'white homes' that had 'domestic help' as the norm.  Others came from the 'colored homes' of those same domestic workers.  Both our Black and White members had grown up in largely segregated communities and spent most of their earlier education in racially segregated schools.  So for us to be working together -- singing together…praying together...traveling together…witnessing together...eating together -- was radical!

Because of our interracial profile, we were thrust into the forefront of the Civil Rights Movement in Alamance County -- and everywhere we traveled with our "Action Experience in Christian Love!"  We were just naively seeking to be a positive incarnation and demonstration of the reconciliation that we were finding in the Lord Jesus.  We believed and taught that "Racism is not a skin problem -- but a sin problem!"  And only the Lord Jesus could forgive the sin and transform the heart to the degree that racism and prejudices could be laid aside for authentic reconciliation in Christ!

 

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Dear ND Alumni,

Loving greetings in Christ to each of you!  I just got home last night from Sudan and Ethiopia and leave a week from today for India and Nepal.  Then in December I have one more trip to Kenya -- which will end my year of travel.  So I am really enjoying my laid-back-slowed-down-easy-going-retirement!  NOT!  So thanks for your prayers during this past year of travel and ministry!  My schedule has been just like some of our old "ND Tours" -- packed to the gills!  

I am shooting this quick email to EVERYONE we have on our ND Alumni Email List as a follow-up to my most recent email to you.  As a result of that last mailing, Patt and I have gotten some encouraging responses.  Some had apparently not gotten my earlier emails and letters about this…some had procrastinated…others had thought it was too late to respond!  Regardless, I hope that any of you who have still not responded will do so ASAP.  To that end, I hope you will send us your latest "family picture" to post with your memories -- just like this great one from Steve "Fuji" Allen, who was in the original NDs!

So please follow his example and get us your memories ASAP!  

Thanks…JL & Patt

PS:  As many of you know, I will turn the "Big 70" this year!  So by God's grace I am moving toward the "4 score and 10" the Bible talks about (Ps. 90:10). So if any of you are in town on Dec. 31st, Patt and I would love to have you drop by to help me celebrate!  To that end, I am attaching the invitation below.

 

Dear NDs...Loving greetings in Christ again to each of you from Patt and me.  We trust you have had a blessed summer and are now into a full and fruitful Fall.  And as the 'leaves are falling,' I need many of you to 'turn over a new leaf' and send us your 'Alumni Response Form!  As you know from my earlier emails and letter, we are hoping to publish a ND History Book around my "70th Birthday" on Dec. 31st.  So we need ALL of you to respond.  Since I know everyone has had busy summers, we have extended our deadline on this until Nov. 1st.  So PLEASE get us your response ASAP.  Also any recent family picture to print with your story.

In His Faithful Love,

JL

PS:  In case you lost them, I have attached my earlier letter and the form again for you to open...fill out...return ASAP.

J.L. and I had the joy of being in Charlotte to be part of a surprise 60th birthday party for an original New Directions alumnus, Dan Apple.  He was TOTALLY surprised!! His wife, Judy, also pictured, did a wonderful job of keeping it a secret. (She wondered if God would forgive her for telling so many lies to get Dan to the venue!)  It was our first time to see her since her recovery from breast cancer surgery—a wonderful survivor story—and we had a joyful evening of reminiscing and enjoying each other’s company.  That’s when we got the call that Charlie was being flown by helicopter to Carolinas Medical Center for emergency heart surgery.  We left the party early and headed over to the hospital in time to meet up with Judy and pray with Charlie.  Interesting, isn’t it, that we just “happened” to be in Charlotte and Charlie just “happened” to be flown there AND the best doctor for aortic repair surgery just “happened” to be on call?!  I tell you, God’s timing is always perfect!

I hope you enjoy the pictures below.

In His Love,

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