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Christmas Greetings from the Robbins – December 2024

Thankful

Our year began with great thankfulness: both that my dad, appeared to be close to remission from the Lymphoma that had nearly killed him last fall, and that two of us from Water For Life had returned from the first of what we hope will be ongoing engagements with a church network in the Guna Yalla archipelago of 300 islands SE of Panama, (where there are great clean water and sanitation needs), but grateful we made it out in heavy seas on the very last boat before winter storms made access to the islands completely impassible.  

Learning to See Better

Our Kona Campus has long offered staff a tuition-free course every so many years and Dee had taken a course several years ago, but I had never taken advantage of the offer. I’ve often plied my friend Dennis with photography questions over lunch as he has led some 40 of the 3-month School Of Photography courses over the years. He would frequently answer me with “You just need to take the school,” but they often had a long waiting list. Well this year was Dennis’s last year to lead the school, in January I had time and they had room for me. I still had staff responsibilities, but I was amazed at how much I learned. One of our guest instructors summed it well saying, “It’s hard to see what you’re not looking for.” I’ve learned to “see better” and have developed a deeper understanding of light, something we rarely see, but through which we see everything else. I hope to help others see hidden or unrecognized connections to God’s creation, His nature and character.

Serving the needs of our campus and community

The first half of the year, Dee split her time between serving in our YWAM/UofN Campus Gateway office with student registration, new staff on-boarding and student financial aid; and as a Part-time Professional Teacher with Kealakehe Public High School where she has filled In as needed but mostly worked with the many students who arrive with little o no English skills, but need to graduate in 3-4 years. She taught in their summer school and the school administrators and students have commented on the caring relationships she builds.

I (Allan) still volunteer as a KHS STEM mentor, helping with their Regional and State Science Fair and with student field trips. With Hawaii County, I’m still the West Hawaii Community Emergency Response Team Coordinator and teach in their training courses.

On our campus I teach sections in various courses and seminars and though not completely finished, the Water Lab and Outdoor Classroom I’ve been building for the past year was opened and has been being regularly utilized for water-related seminars.

40 Years

It’s hard to believe that I started working with YWAM 40 years ago. Our mission has grown from 2000 staff to some 25,000 worldwide, and though we have our warts and blind spots, it’s been a wonderful group of fellow followers to work with. God has been so faithful and I trust He’s not finished with us yet.

Sadness/Gratefulness

We’ve been saddened this year by the deaths of several dear friends in our mission. Allan traveled to Texas to speak at the memorial for Sandy Tompkins in July (and was able to pop in and see his folks in SW Arkansas). We remain so grateful for the deposit of faith they left in our lives, and we have delighted that we have been able to host a number of visiting staff and guests in our home, which has also been the setting for many evening meals and discussions with staff and friends this year.

Update on our (grown) kids

In June, Benjamin and Lydia were able to come for a visit and then in late August-early September we were able to visit Tabitha in New York City, then take the Amtrak up to see Dee’s family in Cleveland (where Dee had her 45th HS reunion, and then to visit Allan’s folks in Arkansas. 

Benjamin is starting his third year as a Geologist working out of Denver for a Hawaiian-based Environmental Consulting Group, and volunteering with his local church and the Denver CERT team.

Lydia is at Kansas State doing wildlife research, in the midst of completing her Masters in wildlife conservation there, still playing the keyboard and leading worship on occasion.

Tabitha seems excited in her third year working in New York City, as this year has seen her work as a manager at Starbucks on Broadway conclude as her “side gig” job helping manage high-end apartments has expanded. Their management, impressed with her responsibility and initiative, doubled her properties and pay, which is allowing her to more fully pursue training and acting roles on Broadway.

She is also a part of the Gallery Church, which has had a storied past on Manhatton’s Fulton Street, but which now focuses on those in Acting, Media and the Arts.  

Community Development School in the Solomon Islands
(Just east of Papua New Guinea and north of Australia)

For five weeks this fall Dee and I were asked to travel to the Solomon Islands to mentor and teach in the final part of the first UofN Community Development School with 15 wonderful student from the Solomons and Papua New Guinea.

 We taught weeks on Creation Care, Community Health and the Local Church & Development as well as Water For Life approaches throughout all 4 weeks.

We lived on the YWAM base which is located in the midst of the Burns Creek neighborhood, in the capital of Honiara on the Island of Guadalcanal

We attended church just a few hundred yards from the memorial park remembering the Battle of Bloody Ridge where some 16,000 Solomon Islanders and Allied Soldiers died in one of the crucial battles of WWII, but over half of the deaths were from Malaria and Dengue which continue to plague the nation along with child killers like pneumonia and water-born diseases. 

Malaria was still active on the base while we were there and the local church which is well established and devoted, still struggles to relate their faith to many of the difficult issues facing the nation, but getting to know the YWAM staff, many of whom were taking the school we were teaching in, and see their faithfulness and vision for their nation was perhaps the highlight of our time there. We learned so much from them.

, 

Development

When teaching about development we often use the model from Luke 2;52 of how Jesus grew: in Wisdom and in Stature and in Favor with God and in Favor with others. It was fun watching our students with wisdom and great creativity, begin teaching others about the Good News of restored relationships with God, with others and with God’s creation.

A good word for it is flourishing – adequacy at least, but generally more than adequacy, yet rarely affluence. Human flourishing is where all these spiritual, social and physical relationships are restored.

Inspired by Amy Sherman, I like to hold up a pink Baskin Robbins Ice cream sample spoon as a life model: I want my life to be a foretaste of God’s good intentions for those around me.

Wishing you a Wonderful Christmas 

& a Blessed New Year

Emanual – Christ With Us
Allan & Dee

 Our mailing address is:

73-1222 Loloa Dr., Kailua-Kona, HI 96740, USA

Email Address’s:  Allan’s – arobbins@uofnkona.edu   Dee’s – deidrerobbins@uofnkona.edu

Support info:   

USA/International giving: https://giving.ywammontana.org/support/rottier

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2024 

Jan

Were able to see family in Colorado Springs for Christmas.

SOP

Feb

SOP

KHS Science Fair

Pailila Bird Hike

CERT BCT

Mar

SOP

Birding at KMC

Marine Mammal cenSeal Response

Water Lab Outdoor Classroom work

April

Solar Eclipse

Hosting guests in our home

May 

Jn Stott Birding Day

KHS Cultural Festival

1st Photo Gig for graduates

Day In The Life of Humanities

June

Dee works at High School Summer school

HVNP camping

Lydia & Benjamin visit for 2 weeks

July

4 dear friends have diedI

Sandi Tompkins dies

Pickleball with kids and Waddell’s

Allan asked to speak at memorial in Texas July 17-21 See M&D

Seal Response

Aug 

House Tenting

Install ropes and Shade Sales in Water Lab and Outdoor Classroom

Visit Tabitha in NYC for a week

Sep 

Took Amtrak from NYC to Cleveland to

Visit Dee’s family & for Dee’s 45th HS reunion) for a week

Visited Dale & Gail in Arkansas 2 weeks

Kona Campus Staff training 3 days

Oct 

Allan helps lead first CERT training back on UofN Campus in 4 years

And taught on Faith and Science the the Creation Care section of the Truth & Transformation course

Nov – Dec

Wedding of close family friends brings out all 3 of our kids to Kona in the days before we leave for the Solomon Islands.

Updates on our 3 kids

5 week trip to Solomon Islands to teach in their 1st Community Development School

Taught weeks on Creation Care, Community Health and the Local Church & Development as well as Water For Life approaches throughout all 4 weeks.

Living on base which is located in the midst of the Burns Creek neighborhood of the capital of Honiara on the Island of Guadalcanal, Solomon Islands

Dec

Our trip had required stops in Fiji and the Republic of Kiribati, which has allowed some needed rest and reflection on the year. 

We will be taking Dale & Gail to New Orleans for Christmas to be with mom’s brother’s family for Christmas.

WELCOME TO THE ROBBINS’ RENDEZVOUS

 

 

Posted on January 14, 2012 by konaallan

(a visit with Uganda’s First Lady)

The three of us had been invited to a private meeting at the Ugandan State House, the presidential residence, and the person asking the question was Mrs. Janet Museveni, Ugandaʼs First lady and wife of the President.

In YWAM, we often talk about our goal of discipling nations in every sphere of life, but are we ready to step up to the plate. When leaders of nations ask us for Godly wisdom on their most vexing issues, do we just speak in generalities or are we ready to share specific ways God uses to bring transformation in health, in water, in development?

Do we even really believe God has good intentions for water?… for every sphere of life?

Iʼm reminded of a conversation I had with a missionary I met in a middle-eastern nation some years ago.

“Weʼre restoring water to villages that have not had it since the war,” he said. “Weʼre drilling wells in these communities and installing $10,000 high-tech in-well pumps that weʼre getting donated from the United States and then weʼre sharing with them the Good News of Jesus.”

Wow, I said. Are you able to train any mechanics in the community to keep the pumps running?

No, was the reply. These are too sophisticated a pump to be repaired in this nation.

Well are they just such a robust design that they can last 10 or 20 years without any maintenance?

Well no, again was the reply. They’re really only expected to last about two years, but they are our “foot in the door” as it were to get to share about Jesus and His wonderful plan for our lives.

I had to fight back tears as this man continued on about his group’s efforts to use water as an evangelistic tool, but my thoughts were, “What are these communities going to think about Jesus’ good news in two years when they again have no water?  Is the Gospel only Good News about the spiritual part of our lives?

Does God not have good news about water? 

Just as the University of the Nations is beginning to evaluate our educational efforts not by what is taught, but by what is caught, so must those working in medical missions and community development focus not on those things we do to and for communities, but on what we help equip them to discover and do themselves, long after we’re gone.

God has no grandchildren, only children. Unless we learn to seek and find His answers for our lives we will always be dependent on others.

“Those working in medical missions and community development must focus not on those things we do to and for communities, but on what we help equip them to discover and do themselves, long after we’re gone.”  

Allan Robbins

For 3 months in 2008, a team of 12 from the UofN-Kona Community Health Development school joined long-term YWAM ministries in Uganda in equipping servant-leaders who wanted to see lasting fruit in their nation.

Pioneering Not just a School but a School of Thought

While drought and food shortage had made life especially difficult in Uganda this year, interest wasn’t just in our workshops on water, malnutrition, and infectious diseases, but on expanding discipleship training through the local church to encompass worldview issues which pastors were recognizing as the only hope of sustainable change.

In Uganda, it is not uncommon for many believers to be fatalistic and fearful of spirits that would be angered by change.  We worked with Ugandan pastors associations to equip local pastors and YWAM staff to see that the giants in their land can be overcome and to help them decide what their part should be. Much of the enthusiastic feedback we received was that, “You’ve restored our hope that things can change… that God does have good intentions for our families, churches, and communities, and there are practical things WE can do about it!”

Helping the Church be the Church

Our CHD students helped three communities start meeting to address and resolve their own water problems, we trained a YWAM staff team at their Hopeland base to build inexpensive rain-water catchment tanks to catch and store safe drinking water. We were asked to train two groups of Parish Health Care Workers and got to work with former UofN Health Care graduates  now working long-term in the Buvuma Islands of Lake Victoria in helping equip and launch a new network of community-based health educators comprised mostly of pastors and church leaders who live in the islands. Finally, our team helped YWAM-Uganda prepare for their first School of Health Promotion & Development developed specifically to address the needs of sub-saharan Africa, but our goal was not just another school but a whole new school  of thought.

Learning from one-another

At the same time we learned so much from these beautiful Ugandan YWAM staff and local pastors. Their dedication, compassion and personal sacrifice in addressing Uganda’s HIV & AIDS epidemic which has touched every family, creative new community-based savings & loan strategies to address family health issues, high-efficiency, vented, wood-burning clay stoves made freely made from the 12 ft tall termite mounds found everywhere in Uganda and story-telling, one of our students commented, I only wish I could learn to tell such winsome stories in my teaching.

“So what to you recommend our nation should do about water?”

The First Lady looked at me expectantly. I glanced across the table at Jeff, also with Kona’s Water For Life team, and Sam, YWAM’s Foundations in Community Development school leader in Uganda, but they both had their eyes closed in what I hoped was a fervent prayer for my response.

I said, “If it were an easy problem you would have already solved it long ago. It’s not just a problem of contaminated water but the problems where families even have difficulty even gaining access to water.“

It is a problem of technology that needs to be affordable, acceptable and sustainable, but mostly it is a problem of beliefs and behaviors that must change.  Yet as you prayed when we opened our meeting today, we KNOW God has answer’s, that He has good intentions for our families and communities.  

The First Lady nodded and I continued,

YWAM has worked with water issues for over nearly 50 years all over the world. We keep learning as we see successes and we have several household and community-based approaches to water that we think could be very helpful, but each nation is unique. We would like an opportunity for ongoing work with your office, the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Water & Environment in finding the answers we know God has for Uganda.

Uganda’s churches and Pastor’s Associations want to help with this, because at the heart of the water problem, there is a need to renew how we think, to change our behavior.

How would you do this? the First Lady asked.

In other nations, YWAM, and other organizations have begun having amazing results with a Care Group network where a handful of trainers each equip 8 Care Group Leaders who each lead 8 groups over a two week cycle. Each Care Group is made up of 10 Leader Mothers who then go back and each week visit 5-10 of their closest neighbor families sharing the simple messages they learned.  When the messages are kept simple but profound, we have been amazed at the lasting behavior change this approach has had in families and suddenly that small group of trainers are impacting 12-20,000 families.

Sam Kiwinacha reminded the First Lady of her visit to the YWAM Hopeland training center for a Global AIDS conference last, and she asked, What kind of training can YWAM offer us in Uganda? 

We were ready with an answer: from YWAM-Uganda’s many years of experience with community HIV/AIDS work, children at risk and satellite family support networks, and Integrated Health Projects they could offer 2 day – 2 week seminars and workshops on Water & Sanitation, Village Technology, Health Promotion & Global Health Issues, Food & Income Security, Community Leadership & Capacity Building and Biblical Worldview Training and networking with Pastor’s Associations.  YWAM-Uganda also offered 6 month certificate courses in Community Development and Health Promotion & Development.

Nodding and looking thoughtful, the First Lady asked, What could my office do for you?

Glancing at Jeff & Sam, I replied, “You could help promote our training opportunities to a wider audience and include us in future collaborations on water.”

“You could help identify people who would especially benefit from our training seminars…and  if possible, you could help fund scholarships for those students.”

“But mostly you could help us have an on-going relationship in working together to make water safe and accessible, and in convincing communities that God has good intentions for them in every area of life.

Smiling broadly, the First Lady said, I can do this. Yes this is something I can do.

What does it mean to disciple a nation?

We’re still discovering it, but you’re invited to come walk walk with some fellow followers of Jesus, who are convinced that we’ve never lived in such exciting days.  It’s not about what we do TO or FOR people. It’s about what’s left behind…trusting friendships, nationals equipped with new skills and new revelation of God’s nature and character – that He has good intentions for all aspects of our lives; and seeing churches with a new passion to fulfill their role of bringing Hope through simple, practical gifts of service.

by Allan Robbins