September/October 2015

Opportunities Galore…

A 2-page newsletter could not even come close to sharing with you a tiny fraction of what we have been up to this past month!
Our 3-month trip to the US started with a visit to Christ For The Nations Bible College in Dallas Texas, where we trained for ministry in 2003/04.
It was our intention to visit CFNI for a few weeks as we waited on the Lord for direction for our
next ministry assignment, spend time encouraging Alex & Tom from our previous church in the UK, who are both studying at CFNI and doing really well, eat some good old American food, attend the 3-day Voice of Healing Conference and then travel to visit friends in other parts of the States.

Well, the first part of our trip went to plan as we had an amazing reception from friends on staff and students who we had built relationship with in Israel earlier in the year and from the 2004 & 2005 UK Outreach Teams who had served with our church in Wellington as part of Mission Outreaches from CFNI.
We were privileged to be part of Alex and Amy’s Celebration as they got engaged in October and we went with them to the most amazing Brazilian Steakhouse to mark the occasion!

It has been fun to see Tom Booth on campus enjoying his first semester and he invited us to join his 19th birthday meal with friends at Red Robin restaurant. Courtney, who has been interning with our church in the UK has a brother called Spencer and he is Tom’s roommate at CFNI and he came out with us too. Tom is working in the Gym at CFNI serving students as part of his scholarship work and we are so proud that he get’s up at 5am each day, works for a few hours before going to classes and then works in the afternoon and some nights leaves straight for church to be part of the Worship Band.
We had a great opportunity to catch up briefly with Courtney Gill as she spent 3-weeks in Dallas renewing her visa to go back to the UK to serve King’s Church for another year. Courtney’s parents, Jalee & Martha met up with us too and took us out for a meal and it was great to meet with them on their home turf! They really appreciated the opportunity we facilitated for Courtney to serve in the UK and how we looked after her. It has been such a pleasure to get to know the family and we are excited for the great plans God has in store for Courtney in her future!

We had 5 star treatment as Amber Hill invited us to the top class hotel she works at in Downtown Dallas as the People and Culture Manager. She treated us to complimentary valet parking, a first for us and took us to a great restaurant in the hotel where the staff were so accommodating. Amber is doing really well and we are so proud of the amazing young lady she is continuing to develop into. She has always had style but now she is taking it to a whole new level! We have had so many opportunities to teach classes and share some of our experience in the Global Missions 3rd Year School and have really enjoyed having the opportunity to encourage the Missions students as they prepare themselves to go to the Mission Field. Part of our time at CFNI has included being called on in various classes throughout the Bible School to share our story and it has been humbling to see the level of respect these amazing students from over 50 nations have for us. God has reaffirmed our call in the past month to inspire, encourage, teach, train and equip people to take the good news of the Gospel to the uttermost parts of the Earth. This is an exciting time for us and we are blessed to have the opportunities we have been given during our time here.

Time For A New Assignment

We have been overwhelmed this month with opportunities to encourage and inspire hundreds of students in various classes at CFNI.

As we took opportunities to get to know new staff members in the 3rd Year Missions Training School, it was obvious that they were swamped with the workload of training students and helping them submit paperwork to allow them to go to Field Schools to work with missionaries in other countries in 2016. With deadlines for submission of paperwork looming, what seemed like a mammoth task, fell right in line with our experience and areas of gifting, having been through similar processes previously in the US, Zimbabwe and The UK. We were blessed to be able to give direction to staff and students and turn the situation around in just 2 weeks. The Director Dr Terry Sparks is a great guy. He is as Texan as they come and we feel as though we have known him forever! The scholarship students serving in the office are from the Philippines and Nepal and are already calling us their British parents. It has been so much fun interacting with this team of World Changers.

Before we tell you the most significant news, we must tell you about our blessing of a free car to use during our time here. We posted on Facebook that we were in Dallas for a while and asked if anyone had a vehicle we could use. Renting in Dallas is really expensive so we were blessed when friends from the UK said they had a vehicle in Dallas parked up at a family members house that we would be welcome to use for as long as we like.
It’s a really long story how this came about, but the couple who loaned us the car were interviewed to take on our jobs as pastors in the UK and didn’t get the job. We had met them to show them hospitality when they visited Wellington for their interview and bought them a cup of coffee and encouraged them. Little did we know that this cup of coffee would yield the loan of a vehicle for a few months 4,000 miles away. Don’t underestimate what showing kindness and sowing into other people’s lives will bring back to you in your future.

The Director of CFNI Dr. John Hollar, with whom we have a great relationship with, met with us during this time and asked us if we would consider coming to serve the school as staff members. He told us that the school had enough funds available for one role, but having researched options to obtain work permits we asked them to consider employing us both part-time for 20 hours per week to share the budget available. The Senior Leadership of CFNI met and offered us the roles of Assistant Director of the 3rd Year Global Missions Major and Global Missions Outreach Supervisor.
It is such an honour to be offered these positions and after much thought and prayer we decided that this is in line with what we feel God wants us to invest our lives into for the next season. Our desire to train and equip others to change the world through outreach and missions and make a difference wherever in the world they feel God is calling them, has now been taken to a whole new level as we have been given this amazing opportunity!

Paperwork! Paperwork! Paperwork!…

We have spent the past few weeks helping the Human Resources staff at CFNI to fill out the paperwork for our work permits and visa applications and collect the evidence of our qualifications and experience required to take on the roles offered. We have collated hundreds of forms and they are now ready to send off to the US Immigration Department. The original time scale quoted for the applications to gain approval was 4 – 6 months, but on further investigation we found that we could expedite the process to have a decision in 15 days if we pay an extra $2450. As the students and Missions Department can’t wait a further 6 months to have someone in this position without jeopardizing the opportunity for some to make it to the mission field, we felt that we should pay the expediting fee from our personal funds to give us the opportunity to return to the US as staff members for the start of the January 2016 term. Within 24 hours of saying we would pay this fee we had an anonymous financial gift deposited at CFNI of $1000 towards these costs! We have a return flight back to the UK in December and will need to apply for the Visa at the US Embassy in London immediately on our return, trusting that it can be processed in time for us to fly back to Dallas after Christmas, so we are praying all goes through without any delay.

How you can support us.

The salary available for our 2 part-time jobs will not cover the costs of housing, food, transport and medical insurance in the US for both of us, so we are in the process of raising support from anyone who feels God is laying on your heart to partner with us financially as we prepare to take on this mission of training and equipping 25+ international students each semester as oversees missionaries.

Please prayerfully consider how you can help us take on this vital role at CFNI.

You can support and encourage us by emailing us with your news, even if only a few sentences! Hearing from friends and family is always an encouragement and we love to support you and pray for you too!

You can support us by praying for us! Please pray that the visa applications will be approved in sufficient time for us to be able to take on these roles for the start of the Spring Term at CFNI.

August/September 2015

Globetrotting…

As we got to grips with all the moving and handing over our roles in August 2015, we finally had time to think about planning some of the adventures we have had on our hearts for a while.

After 8 years of being invited to visit friends in Sweden, we boarded a plane and set off to explore the Swedish Archipelago, which is a series of islands close to Gothenburg. Our friends, who were students with us at Christ For The Nations Bible College in Dallas in 2003, are now leading Smedjan Church in Skarhamn.
We were thrilled to spend a week with Fredric & Malin Crona and their beautiful daughter Lisa.

We visited several of the small islands and enjoyed worshiping at their church, even though we didn’t speak the language! There was lots of laughter as we reminisced about our time in college and the fun we had was relived as we made more great memories together on this trip.

Following God’s leading…

During our time in Sweden we had lots of quality time to talk and explore together the possibilities of our next steps. Sweden was the 27th country we had visited and as we considered our future, we felt strongly that our time of travelling was not over. As we waited in Gothenburg airport to board our plane back to London, we made the most of the airport’s free internet and went online and booked tickets to Dallas, Texas for 8th September, so just 7 days in the UK to pack!

Dallas has a special place in our hearts since living there in 2003/04 when we trained at CFNI. In recent weeks, we had been in contact with several of our friends who work on staff at the Bible College and now having 2 of our Youth Group training there, we felt it would be a good place to visit for a while. We knew there was a conference planned for early September and we offered to serve on the team to help facilitate this. With a last minute trip to Wales to visit family, this meant we had been in 4 countries in just 7 days! We arrived in the USA late Tuesday evening and hit the ground running as we attended a briefing 8am next morning. Thankfully jetlag had no effect on us and we had an amazing first 3 days with some of the greatest staff and students you could ever wish to meet. We were overwhelmed by the reception we received from our friends and the many students we had got to know in recent months and years. At the conference we enjoyed the ministry of the guest speakers Heidi Baker, Dr. Caroline Leaf and British Evangelist Nathan Morris.

Current & Future Plans 

We have been really blessed to be able to stay at Simon & Jessica Dunn’s (Pictured left) home for the first week of our stay in Dallas. Simon is the Worship School Director and he & Jessica have stayed with us in the UK twice when they led CFNI Outreach teams to serve at our church in 2014 & 15 and it was great fun to spend time with them again.

Our return flight date to the UK is 4th December and so far we don’t have a plan for the next 3 months and are taking each day as it comes. Christ For the Nations has played a very special role in our lives for the past 12 years, training us, sending 3 summer outreach teams to the UK to support us and our church and facilitating 2 interns to volunteer with us in Wellington in recent years. Two of our youth from King’s Church Wellington where we pastored for the last 10 years are currently attending CFNI. Tom Booth and Alex Lane are both doing so well and it is encouraging to see how they are thriving in this environment and making the most out of every opportunity.
Tom Booth is in his first year of study and Alex Lane is in is final Semester at the School of Worship having almost completed two years. It was fun also to see Tom Booth playing bass at the Antioch Church midweek service which he attends regularly and to see him in college enjoying every minute of his experience here. Alex leads the Youth Worship at Antioch too and it has been great to catch up with him and girlfriend Amy. Alex’s younger brother Will is currently waiting to hear if his application for CFNI has been approved as he plans to come to Dallas to study in January 2016. Having 3 students follow in our footsteps and attend Bible College as a result of our 10 years in England is such a blessing to us and part of the legacy we know will continue to impact the next generation.

Currently, with no paid employment on the horizon for us, we feel Christ For the Nations Bible College is a great place to sow back our time by visiting the college and encourage staff and students as we wait for God to show us our next assignment. For 10 days the Federation of Ministers and Churches who licensed us as ministers have allowed us to use a guest apartment on campus. This week we have a loan of Simon Dunn’s big yellow truck as he is out of town. We feel so at home on CFNI Campus and are enjoying being around so many faith filled incredible people. Christ For The Nations is training and equipping future leaders and world changers and if we can play even a small part in helping to make that continue to happen we will count our time here well spent.

Friends are such a blessing!

We have been so blessed in the UK and abroad since stepping out in faith to serve the Lord.

Having no permanent base in the UK has had its challenges and we are so grateful to our friends Jack & Anne Hunter and Frieder & Grace Kreschnak for opening their homes to us as we finalised our personal arrangements and made our travel plans. It was a blessing to be able to use the church storage facilities for a while in July and August as we sorted out the few personal belongings we had left and decided what we needed for the immediate future.

How you can support us.

Being away from home with no house, car or job is nothing new to us as we did something similar 12 years ago when we first came to Christ For The Nations to train. It feels a little different now being 12 years older, but our faith in God is stronger than ever and we have more than a decade of experience under our belt of God providing and doing the impossible during that time.

You can support us as we travel by emailing us with your news! Hearing from friends and family back home is always an encouragement and we love to support you and pray for you too!

You can support us by praying for us! Nothing happens without prayer! Pray for wisdom for us, health and strength and clear guidance of what the Lord wants us to do next. Pray for affordable accommodation, use of a vehicle during our time here and provision for living costs.