Get to Know Our Missionaries (6)
One of my classmates in seminary was Edwer Dethan. Edwer came to Hamilton from West Timor, Indonesia. When he graduated from seminary, he was called to serve as a missionary by the Smithville CanRC here in Ontario. Since 2003, he has served in a small federation of Reformed churches on his home island. Rev. Dethan and his wife Femmie are involved in evangelistic work, theological training, church development, and works of mercy. There used to be a more up to date website (www.missiontimor.com) with more information, but the only thing that I can point to you now is this older website.
Related to that, I find it odd that the Smithville CanRC website doesn’t even mention their missionary and the work they support in Timor. But then we have to be fair and point out that the same is true of the Smithers CanRC with Rev. Witteveen and his work in Prince George. Strange. You would think that churches would want to give maximum public exposure to their mission efforts. Here’s an area where we could definitely be doing better. It’s great that we send out men as missionaries, but we should also support their work in the best way we can — and one way is by implementing effective public relations.
In my experience, some churches websites aren’t updated that often, nor thought through 100%. I’m not saying that’s the case with Smithville CRC, but perhaps they just haven’t added the info about their missionaries to Timor? Perhaps a simple phone call or email could get that fixed!