Happy Birthday Mandy!

Today is Mandy's Birthday. Make sure to send her and email to wish her a Happy Birthday!!!

Sunday Night Worship

Every Sunday night, we attend a cultural worship service. Every week, a different region of the world is represented. Last week we worshipped in the form that African’s saved from African Traditional Religions, Islam, and Animism worship their Lord and Savior. Tonight was very different and very sobering. We worshipped like the believers in the Pacific Rim Region (ie Indonesia and Japan). Part of tonight’s service touched on the persecution that these believers are enduring because of their unwavering faith in the Lord. Most of them were once followers of Islam, but found the truth in the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. This is persecution that most of us could not imagine, and some of us would be unwilling to endure for our Lord even though He suffered at the highest point for our sins because of His deep, abounding, unconditional love for us. Fortunately, some of us will never be asked to endure this, but may we encourage you to be on your knees asking the Lord to strengthen and comfort those who must endure this. And may we examine our own hearts and make sure we are willing to suffer, even to the point of death, to glorify our Lord.

• An Estimated 52 million killed for their faith in Jesus Christ throughout history.
• But half of those, 26 million, were killed in the last one hundred years.

“For it is given you, on behalf of Christ, not only to believe on Him but also to suffer for His sake.”
Philippians 1:29

“My brethren, count it all joy when you fall into various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience. But let patience have its perfect work, that you may be perfect and complete lacking nothing.”
James 1:2-3

“…Be faithful unto death, and I will give you the crown of life.”
Revelation 2:10

MLC: Week 3

This week we shifted from focusing on our personal lives in the field to focusing on the people to whom we will be going. We had a solid day of studying Anthropology, and as exciting as it sounds it was actually very enjoyable. It is amazing how different the worldview of other cultures is compared to ours and how people approach things differently. In some cultures, talking with your hands in your pocket is extremely rude and shows that you want to have nothing to do with them!

In light of the anthropology lesson, we spent another day studying the state of Orthodoxy in the CEE (Central and Eastern Europe) region. The people to whom we will be going in Macedonia are a predominately Orthodox. The Orthodox do not believe in the sufficiency of Christ. They believe that they must believe in Christ’s work on the cross as well as do good works. It is interesting to see how this theory of works has over time slowly grown far away from the Truth of the Bible in Ephesians 2:8-9.

“For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast.”

Unfortunately so many in Macedonia believe they have to be good and/or keep the Church Sacraments and keep up doing good works to earn their salvation. They do not know that they need and can have a relationship with God. They do not even know what having that faith means. It is our prayer that we will have an opportunity to share the truth of the Bible with them. Please be praying for the Macedonian people that we might be able to have open doors with which to talk to them.

Ohrid on the Web!

For those of you who are interested in seeing where we will be serving, keep your eyes posted on the THIS website in the future. Maybe we can even try and pose for your :)

MLC: Week 2 (late)

Last week, we had the privilege of attending a three-day seminar on spiritual warfare led by Dr. Jerry Rankin, the president of the IMB. It was a challenging and refreshing time of examination of the Bible to see what the word had to say about this subject. Dr. Rankin taught very thoroughly on the fact that Satan is going to use anything he can get his hands on in our life to distract us from glorifying God, our ultimate goal. From our own anxieties and fears to pride and bad attitudes. He can use anything we don’t fully surrender to the Lord, and he does. We will guard ourselves from thinking that Satan doesn’t attack us in indirect ways and are now not ignorant of his devices (2 Corinthians 2:11). This is an interesting subject for anyone looking to study it.

Our First Week at MLC

We have just finished our first week here at the ILC and we have finally settled into our apartment and gotten to know a lot of the people here. Our days start out with breakfast at 7:00 and usually end when we go to dinner at 5:00. During the day, we have sessions where they give us insight and training for multiple areas of the ministry. Occasionally we will get an hour and half off before dinner. Our region, CEE (Central and Eastern Europe), has given us additional material specific to our region that we need to do as well.
Mandy has gotten involved in the Children's Team where she will be providing Child Services the days when there are none provided by the ILC. I, quite obviously, got involved in the Computer Team where we troubleshoot problems with computer as well as teach classes for computer programs people will be using in the field. We have been designated Small Group Facilitators and this Sunday we are in charge of leading our Small Group in a time of worship.
This was our first opportunity to set up our blog and our posts will be more frequent and detailed from now on. We love you all and thanks for praying:

Prayer requests at the moment:

• Mandy's knee has been hurting her and they require physical activity everyday.
• Pray for our Small Group that we become unified in our time together.

Arrived at MLC!!!

“Live to the hilt every situation you believe to be the will of God.”
--Jim Elliott

We left today for our seven weeks of training in Richmond, VA. God has brought us through a stressful couple of weeks, but He has remained faithful granting grace and peace in every situation. We have tried and will continue to try to “live to the hilt” for we know that this departure is God’s desire for our lives. Pray that we will be able to do this to the glory of God the Father.

Our prayer for you and for ourselves is that we will be like Paul. He had no fear of persecution or death, but He boldly proclaimed the love of Christ. He “lived to the hilt,” and even while he was in chains for preaching the good news of the love of Christ, He praised the Lord (Acts 16).

“Therefore do not be ashamed of the testimony of our Lord, nor of me His prisoner, but share with me in the sufferings for the gospel according to the power of God, who has saved us and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works, but according to His own purpose and grace which was given to us in Christ Jesus before time began, but has now been revealed by the appearing of our Savior Jesus Christ, who has abolished death and brought immortality to light through the gospel, to which I was appointed a preacher, an apostle, and a teacher of the Gentiles. For this reason I also suffer these things; nevertheless, I am not ashamed, for I know whom I have believed and am persuaded that He is able to keep what I have committed to Him until that Day.”
1 Timothy 1:8-12