I am so very thankful for current opportunities to serve the mission community in a variety of ways. I am grateful to you who keep making this possible through your prayers, financial support and encouragement.
Our February trip to Liberia was challenging on a number of levels. The weather was warm– consistently day and night from mid-80 to mid-90 – but the humidity made it feel like a constant sauna. Thankfully there was air conditioning in our bedrooms. We arrived with a day or two to adjust to jet lag and orient to Liberia. We were treated to a tour of the new ELWA hospital and a drive through Monrovia, the capital city nearby. We then had three days, at a resort area an hour away, for the Spiritual Life Conference. We took a program on living in families, featuring Adam and Eve. Over and over parents expressed their appreciation of our service to provide for their children while they were in sessions that refreshed and fed them. We were then able to do some resting, and a small amount of shopping from several local vendors who were invited to share specialty goods they craft to support themselves. 
The last task we had was to sort a shipment of medical supplies that had arrived six months previously. Due to a shortage of workers, and a lack of knowledge to which department it belonged, this inventory had not been sorted. We had two members of our group who could identify and organize the sorting and our team unpacked pallets of goods and sorted them into operating room supplies, patient gowns, syringes, orthopedic supplies and other categories. In two days the warehouse was sorted! Broad smiles and profusions of thanks assured us the work was greatly appreciated.
The team returned to the States and I hopped over to spend a long weekend with Corey, Katie, and the girls in Senegal. Emma and Molly had a midterm break and we vacationed at a spot near their school on the coast. 
It was far too short, but we did enjoy being together and celebrating Molly’s 14th birthday! It was also a great blessing to spend some time with a new couple in Senegal, the Gallaghers, as they came to celebrate a milestone in their language training. It was so good to see them in Senegal after all the prayers and efforts of walking with them through the year they worked to get to the field.
Soon after I returned to the USA and rested a bit from jet lag, I was asked to help in the kitchen preparing meals for 50 candidates and family members for the SIM week-long training event (SIMGo) for future missionaries. It is a great blessing to be able to assist these people answering God’s call on their lives to serve him around the world in full-time missions.
In reviewing our trip to Liberia, our team sees a need to have materials prepared in advance available for other country’s Spiritual Life Conference teams and we are working on exploring what we can do to arrange this sort of thing. It is a true privilege to serve missionaries on the field so they can be refreshed and renewed in this way. They then are able to return to their areas of service energized and strengthened.
At the same time, I am working on completing another edition of the prayer calendar, By Prayer. I am constantly amazed at God’s provision of just the right wording for requests to fit the space available and pack the greatest amount of meaning in those few words. Frequently I hear back comments, “the prayer request you edited is perfect,” or “Your rendition is perfect! THANKS!!” I know it is NOT my ability, but God’s! Every issue grows my relationships with the 86 contributors with whom I correspond. One contributor wrote in with an apology for being a little late, and included this testimony, “We believe in [By Prayer] and we are glad that we get the opportunity to serve along with you in this [ministry].” It is a distinct pleasure to serve together in this valuable ministry of prayer.
Last week in chapel I brought an urgent prayer request to Charlie, the director of Celebration and Prayer at SIM USA: a couple on the field who had a short-term team with them for the weekend and had planned to show the Jesus film in three different villages. This involves taking a gasoline powered generator to the villages to run the projector and sound system to show the movie. For several days prior to these planned showings there had been no gasoline available in their remote town. Charlie announced at 9:00 a.m. in morning chapel their need for 20 liters of gasoline to run the generator for these three showings for the next three nights, and we prayed. Within two hours a truck had arrived in town and they were able to get the needed 20 liters, even though they were rationing the gasoline in five-gallon increments. It is wonderful to see direct answers to prayers.
Because I see answers like these, and a history of many answered prayers in my life, I solicit your prayers for me at this time of serious concern. Upon return from Liberia I have had to earnestly examine my support account. The February report shows giving for the last five months has averaged around 42% of what has been my budget requirement. In order to remain in good standing with SIM financially, something must drastically change. Accordingly, I met with the budget department this week and decreased my budget by 30% in an effort to make the money that does come in last longer.
I do plan to start receiving Social Security this year, significantly reducing my support needs, but there are seven more months before that happens. Even after I start Social Security, I will still need ministry funds to continue to participate in short-term trips to fields to help with Spiritual Life Conferences and other service opportunities that arise. Please pray with me for the additional $1,200 per month that is needed through October, as well as continued ministry fund support into the foreseeable future.
I thank God daily for your prayers and support. I can tell you are praying in the many ways I see God acting in each day. Without you lifting me up, I would be able to do nothing. Please continue to pray diligently on my behalf so I can continue to serve faithfully.
Be sure to look at the 40+ pictures from my trip!
Praises:
- A meaningful service to the Liberia team in their SLC
- Safe travels for the whole team there and back
- The completion of the SIMGo week for the new missionaries training, and the energy to help prepare delicious meals each day
- Continued production of meaningful prayer requests processed through By Prayer
Prayers:
- Wisdom to know how to rearrange finances with reduced income
- Support funds to increase the $1,200 per month needed until October
- Donors to contribute to ministry activities for the long term
- Guidance in evaluating how to plan in advance in helping country SLC events
Is there something I left out you have questions about? Email me and ask! So much happened, I can’t put it all here!
Greetings in 2017! This year looks like it will be a year of significant events. On January 15th, I celebrated a whole year in my little town house. When I moved in, I had one air bed mattress, and now I have a whole house full of furniture!
This will be the first time I have led a team to help out at a Spiritual Life Conference for a field group of SIM missionaries. There is so much I don’t know about leading a team of this sort but I have lots of help here at SIM in figuring out what is required and how to do it. We depart around February 10th and will help with the conference as well as a medical health check for the staff of the ELWA hospital. Below is a notice compiled by another member of the SLC team with a brief description of the work being done in Liberia and links to publicity received through the Ebola crisis there.
You may remember that Nancy Writebol was one of the American SIM missionaries who contracted the Ebola virus while serving in Liberia in 2014. Now recovered, Nancy is serving at ELWA once again.
Its Christmas week and I can hardly believe 2016 is drawing to a close. As I look back at this year I am amazed at all that has happened.
One is 
We did take some fun trips around the area to see an ancient Buddhist temple, a modern shopping mall, the ancient wall and moat around the old city, and out to the countryside to see and ride elephants. I took off my sandals so I wouldn’t drop them and then just rested my feet on the elephant’s back! W
e saw an entertaining elephant show that ended with the elephants painting pictures. Be sure to note the photo with the elephant’s painting in it!
pictures, so I went and even petted some (thankfully) lethargic tigers.
talk with him about Christianity. He said a man had prayed for him once and he felt a current through his touch. When I prayed for him, he said, “nothing, no current.” The next time we saw him he stopped me and said that after we left his stall, he sold more shoes than he has ever sold in one night, almost all the stock he had. He was clearly impressed. He expressed interest to receive a Bible and I made arrangements for one of the Thailand SIM staff to take him one. Please pray for this lovely Buddhist man to come to know Jesus as his savior.
We were pampered at a lovely resort set in the Thailand hills with individual huts nestled in trees with meandering paths all set on a peaceful little lake complete with canoes, a picturesque bridge, and fabulous sunsets. Meals were served on a shaded sprawling porch right next to the modern air-conditioned conference room where the worship and adult sessions were held. Over meals, I was able to meet with and get to know some of the adults and parents, some of whom I have been corresponding with for By Prayer over the past year. It was nice to get to have people’s faces to put with email addresses.
Austin Thorsen and I held our sessions next door to the conference room. We had six children and studied a different Bible hero/heroine across the five sessions. When one boy was told his family would have to leave the retreat a day early, he begged his mom to come back for the final day, and they did. So, I think they all had fun and learned some. The highlight was tie dying t-shirts, reenacting the rout of the Philistines after David killed Goliath (Austin), and the contest of Bible Trivia between the children and myself. When I beat them the first go round, they spent the rest of the days trying to collectively beat me! Yes, they finally did…. I think we all will remember this SLC together a long time.