July 2019 Newsletter
Hello friends!
We hope you are having a wonderful summer.
It has been a busy summer for our family!
From June 3-29, we attended COMPASS training with Mission Training International in Palmer Lake, Colorado. It was a fabulous experience packed with important information to help us become better missionaries. The topics covered were extensive. Language learning techniques, conflict resolution, and entering a new culture were only a few of the talking points for the training. It was incredibly intensive and yet at the same time, amazing. What a blessing to meet so many wonderful missionary families who were heading all over the globe. The training wasn’t only for the adults; the kids also covered many of the subjects, but at their age level. It was very helpful for our family.
From Palmer Lake we traveled to the Southwest Indian Ministries Center in Peoria, Arizona for a week of summer camp. The children attending were fourth through sixth graders and there were almost 40 campers in attendance. A work team from Walnut Hill CCCU in Leesburg, Ohio helped with camp. They were an incredible blessing! The team came with wonderful enthusiasm to serve and so much love for the children. Before camp was even over, it was easy to see the kids loved them, too! One team member fell and injured herself and still returned from the E.R. with a smile and finished the week of camp.
And now for the hard stuff….
We have to sell our house… As you may or may not know, we have lived in our home since 2005. When we moved in, Noah was 4 and Elijah was 18-months-old. They don’t really remember anything else. The idea of selling the house has been heartbreaking for all of us. This is home. At COMPASS training, we were given the opportunity to write out our prayers about different areas in which we were suffering loss. This is the prayer I wrote about our house. It feels a little personal, but we wanted to give you a glimpse of what is going on in our hearts as we proceed on the path God has called us.
“Lord,
I didn’t realize a structure could mean so much. There are so many memories here: moving in, meeting neighbors who would become like family, hordes of kids in the cul-de-sac, Nerf gun fights, the nursery, opening our doors to baby-sitting kids, Christmas mornings, snow days, Thanksgiving meals …
I realize it’s the people that make a house a home. Please help us to let go. Please bring a new family into its doors who will cherish it like we do. Please help the boys to not only survive this transition, but to eventually thrive. Thank you for giving us this house. Thank you for the years we had in our community. Again, I ask for your help in letting go. Amen.”
We built new relationships and rekindled old ones with the Native American children this summer. It was so good to see the teenagers that we once knew as younger campers now helping run the camps. We need to go back to Arizona and cultivate those relationships. We have already raised 77% of the funding needed before we can make the full-time move to Arizona. We need your help with the last 23%. We need people to pledge to give monthly for 36 months. Any amount.
We want to meet with people who have questions and/or need more information. It could be you, someone you know, a small group, or an entire church. Please call or e-mail: 614-203-0494 or doug.darfus@wgm.org
Do you give automatically through a credit card? If so, you may have recently received an updated expiration date or chip technology. In order to continue automatic credit card giving, WGM will need your updated information. You may contact Cheryl Bishir in Financial Services at (765) 671-7258 or cheryl.bishir@wgm.org.
Comments