Milestone Reached!

I have two different goals for raising my support: 1) The one-time costs of preparing, getting to, and setting up life and ministry in Namibia, and 2) The ongoing monthly costs of living and doing ministry in Namibia. At the beginning of December, I was at approximately 42% for each of those goals, but God has blown me away with His provision this month!

If you've read about God's provision through my Christmas Benefit Concert below, then you know I made it 25% closer to the goal for my one-time needs in just that one event. Additionally, some of my expenses have come in significantly under budget. For example, God provided a vehicle for half of what we had budgeted! I was able to sit down with my financial guy at SIM and adjust my total need to reflect these God-provided savings. As a result, I now have 100% of my one-time needs!

So are one-time gifts still needed? Absolutely! I still need about 43% of my monthly support. So we will take those additional one-time gifts and spread them out over the length of my first term to count as monthly support. So if all you can give is a one-time gift, please do give because it still helps toward my monthly support.

 Thank you so much to all those who continue to give generously and faithfully! It's a privilege to partner with you and I couldn't do it without you!

Merry Christmas

Christmas is easily my favorite holiday. I love the decorations, the lights, Christmas music, Christmas parties, giving presents, seeing family. The whole thing's great!

But what I love most is that it's a celebration of my favorite person, Jesus. :) God sent His Son in the form of a helpless little baby born to a virgin woman in the humblest setting imaginable. The King of the universe, proclaimed by the angels, worshiped by kings from the East and shepherds from the foothills.

"Mild He lay His glory by, born that man no more may die!"

May you all have a blessed Christmas remembering the true reason why we celebrate.

A Successful Show

A huge thank you to everyone who helped out with the Christmas concert! Everything went sooo well and everybody seemed to have a great time. When we first started the sanctuary was about half full and many of those were the performers' families, but by intermission the place was packed out! We had a bake sale (thanks to all who baked!) and a raffle (thanks to all who donated!). Not to mention the music was amazing (thanks to all who played and sang!). We shared the whole Advent story through song from our great need for a Savior, to the wisemen and shepherds and angels, to Mary's labor and the joyful celebration of God with us! You can check out some videos on the event page if you wanna hear some of it. Just before intermission we took up an offering and I had a donor who agreed to gift-match everything that came in that night. Including the gift-matching, the total donations came in at over a quarter (25%) of my one time needs! What a huge answer to prayer and provision from God!! Thanks again so much to everyone who contributed and to all the volunteers who helped out. It was a joy to serve with you!

p.s. I know there are a lot of exclamation points, but that's because it was exciting! :)