Another season is quickly coming to a close. Jay’s program ends on May 2nd. My last day of work is May 27th. We’re packing up and leaving Georgia May 29th. We are so excited to announce what’s next, but would be remiss if we didn’t take time to catch you up all that this season has entailed. Jay and I will probably write individual blogs about the Lord’s faithfulness in this season soon, but here’s an overview.
We spent less than 4 weeks home visiting as many friends, family and supporters as we could. We made countless trips between Oklahoma and Texas and sorted through the biggest pile of mail I’ve ever seen. All of this happened alongside the busyness of the Christmas season. We absolutely wouldn’t have made it through that hectic time without first taking a few days of pure R&R in Chicago with my real deal BFF, Brittany, preceding the craziness which made for the perfect transition from India to America.
We arrived in Georgia in early January to bone-chilling, single digit temperatures and nearly two weeks of living in a hotel while our apartment was made ready. We were exhausted but excited. Our time in Georgia started with Project Searchlight, a squad reunion of sorts. Project Searchlight aimed to teach us how to share our stories and to keep living a great story by letting the World Race launch us into a Kingdom dream rather than just becoming this one crazy thing that we did that one time in 2013.
Shortly after, Jay began the Field Leadership track of The Center for Global Action apprenticeship program at Adventures in Missions. We found a church for this season and started co-leading a Life Group for young couples, something the Lord gave us a taste of and placed on our hearts in Uganda. We thought of it as a distant dream and thought we’d have to be more established in a church to be able to lead in that capacity. As always, His timing was better than ours. He also led us to be involved with the startup of a youth group. We were blessed to be able to attend a Soul Care conference that is usually taught to seminary students. It equipped us well to do our own soul work in letting Jesus bring more healing to our pasts and opened our eyes in a new way to the hurts in the lives of others. For me, this season has included two part-time jobs – float pharmacist for a grocery chain and consultant pharmacist for a drug information company. I’ve also been blessed to be involved in a growing women’s ministry, Phylla House. We’ve made short trips to Memphis, Orlando, DC, Baltimore and Lancaster County to visit family, friends and supporters which FINALLY afforded us the opportunity to meet our nephew who was born when we were in Thailand last year! In our free time, we’ve enjoyed making our home one of hospitality and feeding all the local, poor missionaries…and somewhere in all the craziness, we became certified by AIM to lead short-term trips for them for the next three years. It has been a busy season, but as I was telling a friend yesterday, it feels like we’re finally busy with the right things. We look back over this season and see so much preparation for the next…
D R U M R O L L P L E A S E
We are so excited to announce that we will be going back to the nations in JULY as squad leaders of a World Race trip. We will leave in early July with a squad of 40-50 new World Racers. We’ll lead them through their first five months/countries of the Race. We’ll pour into them, disciple them, minister alongside them, love them, pray over them, empower them, teach them and point them to Jesus in all things. At the end of five months, we’ll raise up leaders from their squad to take our places. We’ll head back to America and encourage them from afar. We are so excited for this next season and would love to invite you to partner with us once again!
Most importantly, we need your prayer and encouragement. We have felt the presence of your prayers. We have read and reread your encouraging words in the hard times. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
Also, as you may have guessed, this means we’re fundraising again. As we’ve mentioned time and again, we have such a fantastic group of generous supporters. We came off the field in December with a surplus in our support account that completely covered Jay’s time in the CGA and has already made a dent in our next fundraising goal. We need to raise a total of $13,000 for five months on the field and returning to two of their debriefs. You’ll notice the fundraising bar at the top of this page indicates that we already have over $3,000 towards this. God is good, you are obedient, and we are blessed.
If you would like to give a tax-deductible donation, there are four options:
1) Set up a monthly donation via bank draft by going to: http://adventures.org/dynapay
2) Click “Support Us!” on the left-hand side of this blog to give with credit/debit cards
3) Send a check with our names in the memo line to:
Adventures in Missions
P.O. Box 742570
Atlanta, GA 30374-2570*
4) Jay has enabled a PayPal link on our home page of this blog to allow you to give to us personally
*NOTE: This address has changed. If you have given this way before, please update your records*
We do not have all the details yet of where we are going and who we are leading, but promise to pass info on as it becomes available in the weeks to come. Thank you so much for the outpour of love.
