“Share in suffering as a good soldier of Christ Jesus” (2 Timothy 2:3). Last month, I wrote about LCMS Vicar Peter Williams who was already able to read the lectionary readings from his Persian Bible and preach in Farsi at our Wittenberg Persian Conference. Last Sunday, he once again put his God-given linguistic skills to use as he assisted me in the Persian-language Divine Service at Zion Lutheran in Hamburg. This young man has a lot on his plate, preaching two Sundays per month at the Lutheran church in Paris, one Sunday at Kaiserslautern Evangelical Lutheran Church (under local pastor Rev. Nathaniel Jensen), and now also scheduled to travel up to Hamburg every four weeks. Fascinated by the world of Islam since childhood, Vicar Williams is passionate about sharing the Gospel with the many Persian refugees here. As such, he has been invited to serve six to eight weeks at a very large Lutheran church here in Germany later this year, with a congregation that is almost exclusively Iranian and Afghan. There he will live among their church asylum refugees under Spartan conditions. Talk about an immersion experience… The vocation of pastor is often challenging, but just preparing for this most wonderful vocation is in many ways difficult as well. While we pastors frequently get pushback simply for remaining faithful to Jesus Christ and defending historical biblical positions, we sometimes are called to endure physically, as we walk side-by-side with the people of God in their various circumstances. We praise God for the many young men preparing to become pastors, which also includes suffering as they soldier through the grammar and syntax of multiple languages, so that people can hear the Good News of Jesus Christ in their mother tongue.
The Tiews in Germany 