We are excited to share with you about our upcoming return to Mozambique… a different area of the country and a different ministry, but still the land where we met and became good friends. =)
We will be embarking on our journey into central Mozambique with 8 other students from our ministry school and will be joining a missionary named Tracy and her team ministering there. The times we have heard Tracy speak and times we have talked with her, we have been blown away by the things she has experienced and the ways God has used her. She has been captured by Guerillas and purposely not escaped so that she could witness to them. She has led national leaders to the Lord including a president! She has seen the sick healed and the dead raised. She has jumped off of a burning ship into burning water and swum to a remote island where she lived off of the land. More than any of her radical stories and experiences we love her heart to see people truly discipled and raised up to be leaders who will impact their nation. She intentionally moves in a manner that will ensure long-term and lasting fruit, even when she knows she could move faster and increase her “stats” and have more impressive newsletters.
For us, this is more than a short term ministry trip. It is an exploratory trip to see if living in Mozambique and working with Tracy is a longer term option. Although the trip is only a couple of weeks long, we will be “covering a lot of ground” and having the opportunity to take part in all of the regular ministry that Tracy and her team do from week to week. We will be visiting the prison, ministering in various remote villages and in the churches that Tracy has planted, teaching and praying for Mozambican leaders at a conference, demonstrating God’s love through dramas, teaching and children’s ministry, and whatever else comes up when we get there! Tracy has also built a stationary medical clinic and is a physician’s assistant.
When we were talking to Tracy about what we would do if we moved back there, the main need that she sees is teaching and discipleship- both things that we are passionate about!!! She has recently started a ministry school for nationals and also teaches government officials English and leadership skills. There are many opportunities for ministry and she is very open for missionaries to pioneer whatever is in their heart, if it doesn’t already exist. In many ways, it seems like this could be a good fit! We’re hoping that as we are in Mozambique and have more time to spend with Tracy and her team, it will be clear what our future involvement is to be there. We are also “sorting out” the timing of our future missionary ventures with Crystal’s green card renewal coming up and possible application for citizenship- both of these things will require us to be in the United States. Without getting into the boring details of it, we would appreciate your prayers for wisdom and discernment about timing. We are including a “prayer reminder” with some more specifics of how you can pray.
Our trip will be from April 4-16, 2008. If you would like to give towards this trip, refer to the financial slip attached for specific instructions. Our total cost (for the 2 of us) is approximately $6300. Our airfare portion has to be turned in by January 30th and the remainder of our payment by March 19th.
Miracle in Las Vegas! We were on a ministry trip (The Call Lax Vegas) in October where we met a really cool girl named Erin. She had been through a lot of really hard things in life and wasn’t sure how she felt about God or if she even believed in him. We hung out with her for quite a while and it came up that she had a root canal scheduled the next week. We prayed for her and the pain in her mouth instantly went away. The day of her operation rolled around and we got a text message from her saying that our prayers had worked and that she didn’t have to have a root canal!!! When we talked to her later on the phone she said that she was in the dentist chair, numbed up, when she asked if they would do another x-ray. They agreed and she watched the dentist examining the previous x-ray and the current one, shaking his head, calling another specialist for a 2nd opinion and finally they told her that her teeth were totally normal!!! Yay, Jesus! She told us that she never knew “that stuff” (healing) was real… but now she does! We have kept in Contact with her and she seems to be really curious and hungry for God, and asking good questions, and we have no doubt she will soon personally know the Jesus that healed her! It's obvious that Jesus is after her heart! Come on!
GOD IS MOVING!!
I want to really encourage all of you to be really pressing to the Lord right now. I don’t know if you have realized it or not, but we are in the beginnings of THE GREATEST MOVE OF GOD that the earth has ever seen!! The book of Acts has literally nothing on what the LORD is beginning to do right now!! The Body of Christ is just beginning to get the revelation of what Jesus tells us in John 14:12 that we will do “GREATER WORKS” than He did, because the same Holy Spirit that worked through Him, also longs to work through US! Acts 10:38 says that “God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with POWER, who went about doing good and HEALING ALL who were oppressed by the devil, for GOD WAS WITH HIM.” If Jesus needed to be anointed with Power than so do we!! The really cool thing is that He is pouring out His Holy Spirit like never before. Here at Bethel we are seeing and hearing testimonies of people getting dramatically healed, saved, and set free every day, in the church, and more often even in places like Wal-Mart. There is one pastor in our church, Kevin Dedmon, who has prayed for over 10 people this last year with 4th stage cancer, often given days to live, and they have been totally healed, the cancer miraculously disappearing! I could go on all day about the crazy miracles that we have seen and heard, and how people’s lives are getting transformed. It’s truly Amazing! Even thought God is using Bethel as a spearhead of this revival, and is training and equipping hundreds (probably thousands) of churches all over the planet, this move of God is not by any means limited to them, but is really igniting in pockets all over the world in every people group and denomination. That all to say that Jesus is calling His Bride to “Arise and Shine” (see Isaiah 60) and display His wonderful Glory to a world that desperately needs it. We should be excited and expectant to see how we can be a part of seeing HIS KINGDOM COME that it would be ON EARTH AS IT IS IN HEAVEN!
THANK YOU!!!!
We are really excited about this next season of our life after school gets out, but we really need people that are excited to partner with us in PRAYER for sure, and financially at times as well. Please pray with us for favor and wisdom as we explore missions and ministry possibilities. We are really honored the Lord has called us to be “covered” by Bethel, and right now we are exploring what that looks like. If you would like to partner with us longer term, and support us in Prayer and/or financially, please let us know! We really LOVE ALL OF YOU and couldn’t do what we’re doing without your encouragement, prayer, and generous giving!! Thank you so much for abundantly blessing us!! May His Glory and Goodness overtake you this year!!
