November 2012 Update

Greetings from the Tex-Mex border!  “Oh, magnify the Lord with me, and let us exalt His name together.”  (Psalm 34:3)  We find it hard to believe that we have been in Texas almost 5 months now.  In this season of thankfulness, we look back on these past few months and have so much to praise God for and so much to be thankful for.  We are so thankful to each of you who are faithful prayer partners on our behalf and for those of you who are financially investing as well. November was a blessed month for our family!

This was our first Thanksgiving away from our families and we did miss being together with them.  However, our church here in TX invited us to a wonderful Thanksgiving lunch & we enjoyed a great meal there. Then we had a delicious afternoon Thanksgiving meal here on campus with our To Every Tribe family too. We were doubly blessed for our first Texas Thanksgiving!

Don Richardson went to Papau New Guinea in 1962 to take the gospel to the Sawi tribe, a group of warring headhunters.  He and his family lived with them for 40 years and he wrote the famous missions book, “Peace Child” about their experiences.  It was such a privilege to have him as our instructor for a week.  He had a wealth of knowledge to share, amazing stories of God at work and we learned so much not only about the need for missions in Papau New Guinea but were encouraged about taking the gospel to hostile people groups as well.   He came to our home for dinner one evening and the kids loved listening to him share about his life too.

David and I were blessed to attend a full week of classes taught by Vern & Carla Sterk.  They were missionaries for over 40 years in Chiapas, Mexico (considered a restricted nation by the Voice of the Martyrs) and worked with tribal people there.  They taught us contextulization, how to handle persecution, about families on the mission field, daily living in a tribal village and much more.  Abbey also attended their EthnoMusicology class with us as she enjoys playing guitar. This class taught how to take the music of the people and help them write Christian songs/hymns for themselves. We enjoyed having the Sterks in our home one evening for dinner as well and getting to spend more time with them learning more about the unreached in Mexico.

Our team was blessed with safe travels and another good trip into Mexico this month to work in "Village M".  They spent time in discipleship and prayer with the 3 Christians there, had a Bible study with the people, were able to start a few new Bible studies with villagers there and had the opportunity to witness to a man in the village who is a homosexual.  They were also invited into several homes for studies this time too.  God is moving here so please keep praying for “Village M” & our team as we travel there monthly.  

We have added a brief missions video to our here under “Our Missions Video” tab and we would love to for you to watch it and share it with family, friends or churches who might be willing to pray for and partner with us.  Lord willing, we will be headed back to Alabama for Christmas.  We plan to arrive in Alabama on Dec. 21 and will be there through Jan. 4th.  We hope to see lots of you while we are home over Christmas holidays! 

Thank you for praying for our family, our ministry and for all your support.

We enjoy hearing from you & are praying for each of you. 

WWW.JESUSISWORTHIT.COM

October 2012

Life on the border is treating us well here in south Texas.  As you probably noticed, we made some changes to our missions blog and there are now tabs at the top that you can click to learn more about our family, see our school calendar, how to partner with us, prayer request and about the missions agency we are serving with.

David and I got to enjoy some wonderful training classes in October.  We both spent a full week with Dr. David Edgington learning about Biblical Counseling and how to work alongside other missionaries on a team.   Then David spent the next week in Mexico working in "Village M".  David Depew taught a week on Ethno-Theology and then David Morris spent a week teaching about "Christ in the Old Testament".  That's a lot of David's right? The training classes this past month were so rich and wonderful and it is such a privilege to be here learning and growing.

As a family, we are learning about Biblical Storytelling.  David is receiving instruction in their classes and the kids and I are learning it together during some of the Friday afternoon classes.  It has been truly amazing to see how quickly the kids have caught on to this way of orally sharing the gospel and I have no doubt they will be great at sharing it on the mission field soon.

Speaking of kids, we started an entirely new homeschool curriculum this week.  We needed something that worked with our busy schedule here yet gave the kids everything we felt like they needed each day.  We are all excited about this new material. We are continuing to build relationships and friendships with the other families here on campus and enjoy having friends and even some of the instructors over for dinner too.

After visiting around for quite a while, we have found a church family to worship with during our time here in south Texas. We are attending First Baptist Church of Los Fresnos and really enjoy it.  The preacher is a former missionary in Venezuela and our Sunday school teacher is originally from Tennessee (he still has his southern accent!).  It is a bilingual congregation, as most churches down here are, and we are enjoying getting to know the people there and building relationships right here in our community.  David and I also have plugged into their music ministry so David is playing guitar and I am playing piano on Sunday mornings. We feel very blessed to be part of this congregation during our time here.

We've been having a little bit of fun despite our busy schedules too.  We've been enjoying watching  Alabama Crimson Tide football games each Saturday night here on campus with 2 other families that are also from Alabama.  We took the kids to the Los Fresnos' OctoberFest at the local park on Halloween night and they had a great time playing carnival games and getting candy.  Then we had a birthday party/costume party for one of the girls on campus so we got to all dress up that weekend too.  We also visited the Gladys Porter Zoo in Brownsville for the first time and it was awesome!  We were given a 1 year family membership so we will be going to the zoo as often as we can over the next year because we loved it as much as the kids did.

Thank you for continuing to pray for us and our ministry.  

"Therefore, preparing your minds for action, and being sober-minded, set your hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ." - 1 Pet 1:13