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The Speed of Life

October 27, 2017 by Joel Potter

Earlier this year, the Ethnos360 Home Office team all moved from the office spaces we’d all occupied since 1978 into new space, a mile deeper into downtown Sanford. To move a huge team of 200+ support personnel into new offices is huge, but we one-upped that!  Our Communications and Marketing team led our organization through the process of taking on a new name and brand, Ethnos360 just two months later.

These two things would be enough to put anyone in a work-coma for the rest of the year, but there was no rest for us.

The final event featured a panel of speakers, never seen before videos and was attended by several hundred people as well as thousands online.

Following the name change, our team led the efforts to help Ethnos360 celebrate it’s 75th Anniversary!  For the last 6 months, we prepared for four live events, spread out over just one week, here at our recently completely finished offices. It was an incredible series of events that encouraged thousands of people. The final event of the week was live streamed to other ministry locations around the world as well as to roughly 5000 people online!

In the meantime, life at home has been equally busy and tiring. After a sweet reunion with all of Joel’s immediate family at a cabin in Georgia, we welcomed the very unwelcome Hurricane Irma. We’re still in the process of working with our insurance company and will need to replace our roof and fence, as well as have some other repairs completed.

We did come “up close and personal” with catastrophic loss when a family in our church lost their home to a fire, related to the storm. We had the privilege of hosting them and two of their kids for three weeks while they worked through the next steps to rebuild their home and lives. We constantly saw opportunities to encourage them with the comfort that God had encouraged us with many times in our lives.

All the while, the kids continue in school and life. We covet your prayers for us as a family. This school year has shown us some big areas of struggle that we are totally dependent upon God for grace and wisdom to shepherd them through. And, it’s worth mentioning that we’ve been incredibly encouraged by a parenting book we would totally recommend; Paul Tripp’s “Parenting: The 14 Gospel Principles” We are constantly having our hearts challenged and taught as we both read through it.

As much as rest from work is a want right now, more stamina is needed as Joel’s team heads into the final two months of the year. They are full months with mailings and year-end campaigns as well as holiday related things. Joel is approaching having served in his role as ‘Social Media Strategist’ for a full year and is taking stock of what he learned and implemented and how it all worked in relationship to the strategies of Ethnos360.

Finally, we have to ask you concertedly pray with us in the area of Bethany’s health. Overall, the year has been relatively healthier as she has been able to manage things, like what she’s exposed to with skin issues, her need for consistent/full nights of sleep and the general need to maintain a more restful lifestyle. But after investing much time and resources, working with the team at the Mayo Clinic, we are still without an answer as to why she’s struggled so much with swelling, water retention, fatigue and related issues. Those issues have progressively gotten worse over the past year and Bethany is finding herself in a lot of discomfort and pain on a regular basis. It’s not debilitating but it’s frequently present and sapping her strength. We don’t see many options remaining ahead of us as she has already pursued the care of several different medical specialists, but we recently became aware of a doctor in our area who’s both an MD and ND, and who takes a combined medical and holistic approach to conditions like hers.

We’re praying for wisdom on whether to take a route like this. The initial treatment and testing are costly and not covered by our insurance so we would approach it soberly. We are constantly driven to wholly depend on the Father for everything we need daily and are grateful for His presence in our everyday lives. But we would love to see Bethany be able to live free from chronic issues like this one. Would you pray that the Lord might exercise His healing of Bethany in whatever way He would choose?

Filed Under: Family Tagged With: Communications, Ethnos360, Family, health, Hurricane, missions

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The Potters…

are missionaries helping every people group around the world have the chance to understand the gospel and have access to a thriving church. We are serving with the International Ministries Office as it assists Ethnos360 and its Global Partners.

joeldpotter

Late last week, we shared a "Can we be candid..." Late last week, we shared a "Can we be candid..." update, this time about a BIG ministry change. Many of you read that and wrote your sweet prayers back to us. For some of you, email is not your thing and so we don't want you to miss out. So, there's a link to the full post on our blog in my profile link or you can read the brief overview of update if you just want the basics.

Shortly after we returned from our trip to Missouri in June we had some realizations that led us to conclude, with the counsel of others, that our time serving with the Equip Asia team was coming to an end. The Lord had already been putting desires on my (Joel’s) heart to pursue a role that would allow me to serve our wider global missions community in the area of media and communications and we knew that with Kate starting to hybrid homeschool, she was going to need much more support as a homeschooled student. We also realized that Bethany needed to pursue some side-jobs and employment to supplement our very tight financial state.

So, for now, I’ve had my new ministry role approved and am making strides at getting an audio and video studio setup here in Sanford as well as beginning to make many plans for upcoming projects both here and abroad. I’ll be able to use both the experience I gained working with the Communications team for 8 years as well as the newfound skills in videography and media production to serve many different teams in what we call the “Global Partners” family (all related to Ethnos360).

Bethany is also off to the races, so to speak, helping to homeschool Owen and Kate, working several small jobs on the side, all while keeping our incredibly busy household sane and well organized. It’s a different scene for sure after the last three years, but there are some blessings that come from it.

Again, there’s more detail at the post you can get to in my profile link. 
______
#thepottermission @ethnos360
After learning of this book, I had to read it. Not After learning of this book, I had to read it. Not reading a lot of books, I used every renewal cycle that the local library allowed (it is due tomorrow) to finish this one and boy am I glad I finished it. 

@andrewpetersonmusic wrote a book about trees (and SO much more) and moved me at a time when I needed moving and reminding of how the God who created me and knows me intimately, is carefully tending the garden of my own being. 

There were moments when I gasped as I read his words and his realizations which I found paralleled some of my own. 

Having been transplanted from Pennsylvania and it’s temperate woods to Central Florida and it’s weird mix of prairies and swamps at 11 years old, I identified with his interpretation of his childhood. 

Two huge realizations will remain with me. The first is that the God who admonishes me to “be slow to speak…” is entitled to the same right to be “slow to speak.” The second is these imagined words from Jesus to me: “I love you. Let me love you.”

I’ve always loved trees and only love them more now. In fact a week ago I took the chance to go visit some of trees that AP mentioned in the book; the somber remains of our truly ancient Bald Cypress, “the Senator”, that tree’s younger (but still 2,000 years old) sibling, “Lady Liberty”, and the youngest of the family, a clone of the original, the relative sapling, “Phoenix”. (Big Tree Park, near the Spring Hammock Preserve)

I commend this book highly and again, pass my thanks to Andrew Peterson for it. 
______
#andrewpeterson #thegodofthegarden
#plantmoretrees 
@bhpub 
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The tree in this photo is the pride and joy of our backyard, a Chinese or lacebark Elm (Ulmus parvifolia)and was planted by us not long after we moved to this house and provides lush shade to the eastern side of our backyard and filters the early morning sunrise light beautifully!
After running for a long time, like since 2002, I After running for a long time, like since 2002, I finally found a partner to train with, someone who although they live states away, knows the value of partnership and how to push another person to do better. I’m pretty excited about what’s to come as he and I work towards a goal that will be a lifetime highlight when we achieve it. Until then, here’s some highlight runs of the last month. 
______
#runwithstrava #floridarunner @strava @altrarunning
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