The Summer of Separation

Chris and Micah have been gone for 5 weeks now. No one in our family has ever been apart this long before. Micah found a job and is working full-time, and he’s traveling around seeing friends and supporters with Chris on his days off. He will be starting at Liberty University in about a month, and he has been learning to do grown-up things like carry a wallet and interact with co-workers and even speak in a few churches! We are excited for him to be taking his next steps.

The rest of us have been doing fine. I am working to prepare for the classes I’ll be teaching this fall, and the kids have been reading lots of books and trying to organize game nights for the other teenagers who are here this summer. We are thankful that many missionaries enjoy playing volleyball because we get together to play twice a week! We are finding ways to keep ourselves busy and are counting the days until school starts and Chris comes back.

One thing that happened this summer which has been huge for us is the increase in our monthly support as well as receiving several one-time gifts. Thank you so much for those of you who have been praying for that and for those who have joined the team and started to give or are giving more. Praise God with us for his faithfulness and kindness.

In Pal, the Bible teachers are in the middle of an outreach to a different Pal village. The people there live too far away from the village where we lived to have heard the Gospel or come to church, so the Bible teachers have taken the Gospel to them. Additionally, there are three other villages whose people are gathering to hear the teaching, and we are praying that many will believe and the Gospel will light up that whole area with truth. Teachers from the first outreach which was carried out several years ago are helping with this one, and we hope that this partnership will result in a more vibrant relationship between the two existing Pal churches and growing ties with future outreaches and church plants.

While outreach is exciting and sounds really good in missionary newsletters, the work of the church is really what happens after the outreach teaching is done. New believers need mentors who will invest in helping them live this new life and lead them down the narrow path while the roots of faith grow deeper. They need faithful people who will be there when problems come up and the new believers are tempted to slip back into old ways of dealing with sickness and death and conflict. Please pray for discernment and perseverance for the believers in the established churches so that they will care for new believers and give their time to building relationships with them and helping them grow.

And please be praying for Micah as he spends the next year in a new place without his family! Besides being away from us, he needs to learn how to function in American culture and navigate all the new things that are sure to come up. Let us know how we can be praying for you, as well. We love hearing from you!