Archive of ‘General’ category

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August 2016
Our Next Assignment Begins… 

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It is with great excitement and expectation that we can finally announce that we are launching into our next God-given assignment. During this past month we completed the Missionary Preparation Training with Go To Nations at the World Headquarters in Jacksonville, Florida and were presented with our certificates by the President, Dr. Jerry Williamson and Executive Vice President of Ministries, Nancy Lovelace. So it’s official! We are now full-time Go To Nations Missionaries!  

gtn-presentation-augusut-2016-nlGod has been preparing us our entire lives for this very moment! We now have an amazing opportunity to take all the life experience, gifting, training and skills we have gained in the business world, international mission field, non-profit organizations, church, ministries and community arenas and have a greater global impact in the Nations than ever before. Our role, which fits perfectly with our passion and hearts’ desire, is to serve the 881 Go To Nations Missionaries and National Workers, together investing our lives in amazing life changing projects, in more than 96 countries, bringing resources and sustainable development to some of the most challenging parts of the world!

mpo-august-2016-mark-julieInspiring New Missionary Recruits… 

As Missions Mobilizers working with the Go To Nations Mobilization Team, we will be involved in the recruitment and equipping of new missionaries. We are passionate about inspiring young people to become world changers and help them maximize their potential as they find their God given purpose and destiny. The new missionary on the far right in the picture above is Michael Biggs, one of the Christ For the Nations Missions students we trained and equipped from September to December last year. We facilitated his going to Go To Nations Missions’ Field School in Thailand from January to March 2016 and he just completed the Missionary Preparation training with us and is now a Go To Nations Missionary. He is heading back to Thailand in January, for the start of his 2 year Missions Apprenticeship. Michael was keen to remind us that every life he and his ministry will impact in future years will be part of our legacy too, as a direct result of our encouragement and investment in him. 

dr-jerry-tanzaniaEmpowering Native Pastors…

We will be facilitating missions training for national and international pastors and leaders, equipping them with tools to mobilize their churches to advance the Great Commission. By connecting Churches worldwide with the resources and opportunities available through Go To Nations, we will play a strategic role in mobilizing the Body of Christ globally to take their place in God’s plan for the world, reaching people we could never reach alone.

From the Neighborhood to the Nations… For the past 10 years as pastors in England the tag line of our ministry has been bringing positive change to our community. We now have an opportunity to take this positive change to a Global level!

come-touch-the-worldOur Next Step is to travel and share our vision and financial goals and identify those whom God is leading to partner with us. We are thankful for all the significant relationships we have established and would love to have you as part of our monthly partnership team! Please prayerfully consider taking your place on our team!

TOGETHER WE CAN MAKE A DIFFERENCE!
Go To Nations Missionaries have already planted more than 4,700 native churches, graduated 23,000 Bible College students, built orphanages, dug water wells, facilitated medical missions, been in the forefront of the battle against sex trafficking, established feeding programs, developed sustainable farming and have had the privilege of seeing more than 1.5 million people come to a personal relationship with Jesus.

Our 2020 Goal is to launch 1,000 missionaries, each being instrumental in bringing hope & restoration through the Good News of the Gospel, demonstrating God’s heart for the nations in practical ways.

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The World is waiting for us!

Our team needs you!

This new and exciting assignment is our greatest personal challenge to date! It requires a greater level of faith and trust than ever before, but we know that God is faithful. For maximum impact, we will need to relocate from the UK to the US to work directly as a strategic part of the Go To Nations World Headquarters Leadership Team. Our US Visa applications are under way and we are in the process of developing an International Partnership Team.

We appreciate your prayer for:
God’s provision & protection as we travel.
Our family as we make this transition.
Continued Good Health.

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Thanks for journeying with us!
The best is yet to come!

 Love & Blessings,

 Mark & Julie
 Mark & Julie Morse

July 2016

P1010672 (1)Exciting Opportunities Ahead!… 

As we write this month’s update we are currently travelling in England and Wales, catching up with family and friends. We flew back to the UK on the 12th July for Julie to visit her Consultant on the 13th and for us to celebrate our Daughter Tasha graduating from her 3year Bachelors Degree in Inclusive Education on the 14th.
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The meeting with the consultant was short and sweet, as following a thorough examination he said “Everything is perfect”. There is no trace of the tumour and he wished us well for our future adventures! We were confident of a good report, but it is such a blessing to have medical confirmation of God’s healing touch as we start planning for our future.

DSC_0067 (1)Tasha’s graduation was a proud moment for us. Her passion for working with children who have special needs is inspiring and she has such a gift and patient attitude with the children she assists with on placement and at the special needs unit she has been working with. She has been so intentional about battling through these past 3 years, with University, holding down several part-time jobs and raising her 3 lively children! Well-done Tasha!

We have purposed to keep this month’s newsletter short and to the point as we have some exciting updates to share and would value your prayers as we take a leap of faith into our next assignment.
Dr Jerry WilliamsonIn our final days serving at Go To Nations in Jacksonville, Florida, we had a meeting with the President, Dr. Jerry Williamson. We have really enjoyed listening to him teach during our time in Jacksonville and we have great respect for his wisdom, practical understanding of the most complicated subjects and humble attitude. He is truly a great leader and an authority on World Missions!
The Executive team really appreciated us investing 6 weeks, serving the Leadership Development of their Missionary families. They really didn’t want us to leave! Dr. Jerry felt that we had come to a crossroads in our personal ministry and had a choice either to look for a job with a local church and continue to have a local impact, which he felt we were more than capable of doing, or he felt we now had an opportunity to have a global impact that would affect nations, people groups and the world. He was very affirming of our skills, experience and attitude in serving and he asked us to consider joining the Leadership Team at Go To Nations and use our experience to help GTN make significant strides in bringing hope and restoration to the millions of people Go To Nations Missionaries serve each day around the world. We felt his words, and his offer, resonated with what was already in our hearts and said yes immediately. We will travel back to Jacksonville in August for Missionary Preparation & Orientation training at the GTN World Headquarters, then spend the next few months establishing a team of partners who will journey with us, pray for us, encourage us and support us financially as we launch into this next exciting season of our lives as World Changers! Please continue to pray for us as we make this significant transition to full-time Missionaries and start to build our monthly support team!

We will be able to give much more detail of our next assignment after the 2 week training session in August.
We will keep you updated with what God is doing in our lives and the impact He is having around the world through Go To Nations Missionaries. 

June 2016

MarkJulieGTNWHQFollowing God’s Plan…

Wow! What a month we have had!
After spending the majority of the first four months of the year in recovery mode, we are so thankful for the opportunity to be able to travel and take steps towards our next ministry assignment. One thing we know for sure is that we were not designed to sit and do nothing! It was nice for a while and a very necessary part of Julie’s recovery, but now that she is healed and back to full strength, we felt it was time to move forward ‘at a sensible pace’! Our idea of ‘sensible’ may seem a little extreme to some with 4 flights in 2 weeks, but we assure those of you who have shown concern that we are being sensible and at least trying not to push our boundaries beyond what Julie is ablejeremiah_29-11-BibleBLK  to cope with comfortably each day. God hasn’t finished with us and our best is yet to come! We are assured that God has good things in store for us both and whatever God has lined up for us, He has been working behind the scenes on our behalf, setting things up in advance to guarantee us an amazing future, where we fit perfectly!

Blessed to be a Blessing……  

So what have we been up to in Florida this past month? We are glad you asked!!
We flew to Florida in the middle of May from Dallas Texas to take an opportunity to volunteer at the World Headquarters of Go To Nations, a Missionary sending agency based in Jacksonville Florida.  IMG_7290One of our main activities during our time here has been to help with a 3 week Leadership Development Forum for 11 Missionary Families, who have travelled to Florida from other parts of the US, the Philippines, Thailand, Greece and Vietnam.
IMG_7158Our serving has consisted of various roles including cleaning and preparing the Ministry Centre ready for their arrival, shopping for supplies and welcome gifts, serving meals and refreshments, capturing the teaching sessions on video, sound and visual media, bringing the Go To Nations Global Missionary database up to date by helping transfer their information to a new system and anything else that needed our input. IMG_7286It’s not IMG_7289IMG_7212 (1)always easy to serve Missionaries as they are so used to being the ones who sacrifice so much to selflessly serve others! It has been an honor to be a blessing to these 11 families each day and volunteer alongside a great team of amazing people at the World Headquarters to give them a great experience. We have had the opportunity to sit on most of the Leadership Development Teaching sessions and have really enjoyed hearing the Heart of GTN from their Executive Team and getting to see first hand how Go To Nations operates Globally. GTN has been in operation for more than 30 years and currently supports more than 800 missionaries impacting over 93 countries throughout the world. blessed to be a blessingThe Missionaries they support are involved with so many wonderful projects such as Church Planting, setting up and supporting Orphanages, Feeding Programs, Community Health, Aid and Relief Projects to the Poor, Aquaponics Projects, working with Refugees, Bible Schools and they are in the forefront of the battle against Human Trafficking.
For the past 12 years of full time ministry, we have been intentional about investing ourselves in changing people’s lives and bringing hope to the communities we have served. It has been such a worthwhile use of our time to be a blessing to this great Missions organization during this 7-week visit to Jacksonville, as their vision, mission and values line up so well with the call of God on our lives. In fact it was Go To Nations Missionaries that we served on our first ever Missions Outreach to the Philippines to work with Street Children 13 years ago, when we were students at Christ For The Nations in 2003, even though we didn’t make this connection until recently! 

God Keeps On Blessing Us……

John and Carolyn EllisWe have been staying with a delightful couple, John & Carolyn Ellis, in an apartment above their garage which they built 25 years ago for use by visiting missionaries. They are now retired and in their late 70s and mid 80s and are a real blessing to so many people. We have enjoyed hearing about the many adventures they have had. They have visited 30 Countries and are still world travelers! They have loaned us their car for a few weeks to save us renting one and blessed us further by filling it up with fuel before handing us the keys.
lizardWe have quite a few 4-legged neighbors, Lizards of all sorts that climb the walls outside our apartment, that seem to greet us as we leave at 7.30am each morning for our drive to GTN HQ. They don’t stay around long when we appear but seeing their little legs scurry away is quite cute! Thankfully we haven’t had any inside yet as that might be a different story! Our hosts were telling us that there are Raccoons, Eagles, Osprey and all manner of other wildlife around our home! There are even Alligators in the small creek that runs past the end of the garden! We will stick to enjoying the lizards and leave their much larger cousins to swim undisturbed!

One great perk of being here in Florida near the P1010587 (1)coast is that we are only 20 minutes from the beach. We have taken the opportunity several times after a long day serving, to take a walk on the beach and paddle in the ocean as the sun is going down! There are miles of unspoiled coastline and this is a fun way to end a busy day and unwind, watching Pelicans flying by and diving into the waves to catch an evening snack! There are Turtles and Dolphins that swim quite close to the beach, but we haven’t seen any yet! 
Florida has had its weather challenges recently with tropical storms, amazing thunder and lightening storms, torrential rain, 90% humidity and temperatures around 38°C (100°F). Thank God for air-conditioning!
IMG_7073We drove 8 hours on our day off last Saturday from Jacksonville to St. Petersburg and back to swap our loan vehicles after the first month and Julie had to drive one of the vehicles for 100 miles in the rain that day. IMG_7278This was her first time driving in the US for 13 years, but she did well considering it was on the wrong side of the road and the wrong side of the car!!!!
We still treat every day as a God given adventure and are thankful for the love and support of friends who have encouraged us and partnered with us financially and in prayer. We have always lived by the philosophy that you can’t out-give God and as we try to be a blessing to others, God makes sure we are blessed in the process too.

How You Can Support Us……

Pray for us! We are coming to a point in the next few weeks when we have to make some important decisions about our next steps! Please pray for wisdom and a clear direction for our future.
Support us practically. We have opportunities to return to the US as Full Time Missionaries in August, to serve at Go To Nations World Headquarters Jacksonville, Florida (http://www.gotonations.org) or as Full Time Missionaries based at Trinity Church in Dallas, Texas. (http://www.trinitychurch.org)
To take either of these options, we will need to cover our living costs, accommodation and transport. Our forecasted budget shows that we need financial support of $3,500 (£2,500) each month. That is a $2,900 (£2,020) per month increase on our current $600 (£400) monthly income. The funds from selling our home are depleting rapidly as we have spent the past 12 months volunteering.
IMG_6551We would love you to partner with us in bringing hope and restoration to the lives of thousands of people worldwide by giving a regular financial gift, large or small as we continue to impact Nations and fulfill the Great Commission. 

A one off financial gift towards our travel costs, would be a huge blessing too! 
We fly back to the UK on 12th July for Julie to have her second consultant appointment in Bristol as a routine follow up on the 13th. We are also thrilled to be able to attend our daughter’s graduation ceremony in Wales on 14th, as she has recently passed her 3 year Bachelors Degree in Inclusive Education.
We will need use of a vehicle for a few weeks during our time in the UK, so car keyif you have a car we could use in the UK for all or part of this time, please let us know.

May 2016

NOT HOW MY STORY ENDS

Steps of Faith…

What do you do when your future plans are squashed and what seemed like the perfect pathway ahead gets blocked? This has been one of the big questions on our hearts for the past month!
Proverbs 3:5,6 says, ‘Trust in the Lord with all your heart and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him and He will direct your paths.’
As we contemplated our options, following Julie’s clearance to travel and the amazing turnaround in her strength and energy levels, even though our employment options at Christ For The Nations in Dallas had recently changed, we still felt that God was leading us to continue our journey of faith and explore what might open up to us as we travel.
We have never been ones to sit back and allow disappointment to derail us! There is a whole world out there and we have lots of capacity to go and make a positive difference somewhere! With this in mind we move forward expectantly and full of faith!

Pressing on toward the goal…!IMG_2160Next-assignement

It is amazing when you choose to move forward positively past life’s trials, just how much your life seems to encourage and impact on others. We had a very busy end to April since leaving the retreat cottage in the Cotswolds on the 22nd. We went to stay with friends in Wellington for a few days where Mark celebrated his 51st Birthday on the 24th. We took this opportunity to catch up with a some great friends in the area who had been praying for us and encouraging us throughout this past few months and then we made a quick two day trip to Wales to visit family and to attend a friend’s funeral. We drove back to Wellington for a few days, sold our car, booked our flights to Dallas, packed our cases and caught a bus to London to fly to the US on the 28th. 
P1010022Our first stop in the US was at Christ For The Nations, as we had left all our summer clothes and personal items there in our good friend, Connie McKenzie’s apartment, expecting to be back at the end of December. We had fun staying with Connie as she prepared to go to Asia on a missions outreach for 3 weeks. She is always such an inspiration to be around and we are so thankful for her encouragement and friendship!
It was tougher than we thought returning to CFNI Campus. Even though we had personally processed the disappointment of the job offers being withdrawn, the discouragement and sadness we saw in our friends on staff, the students on campus and friends in Dallas, was challenging to come to terms with.
P1010020Everyone was really pleased to see us and encouraged by how well Julie looks. We had a really busy first seven days trying to fit everyone in who wanted to get together with us. We enjoyed dinner at Rod & Celeste Groomer’s home and hearing all about their latest venture to serve the First Nation Native Americans. Apologies to all those we didn’t get to visit! Jalee & Martha Gill took us out to dinner and we were blessed to be able to catch up with their daughter, Courtney, who interned with us at our Church in England and who had returned briefly from the UK to attend her Granddad’s funeral.
P1010061We enjoyed interacting with and encouraging the Global Missions Major Students and had the opportunity to speak to more than a hundred of the 3rd year students at the final session of one of the classes we would have been teaching this semester. We were overwhelmed by their standing ovation as we were introduced.
P1010111We also spoke at the Children’s and Family Major Graduation Dinner and shared how Childrens’ and Family Outreach had played such a big part in our ministry since graduating from CFNI in 2004. We had fun sharing part of our journey and we ended with Julie leading an Action Song! This was a real test of her energy levels as she hadn’t done this for almost 12 months, but as usual she put maximum effort into it and enjoyed getting everyone involved.
It was exciting also to be part of the event to pray over and send out the 16 teams of staff and students who left on Mission Outreaches to other parts of the World this summer.
P1010133We were honoured to attend the CFNI Graduation Ceremony for all students completing their studies and this was a major reason for the timing of our visit.
P1010146Our time in Dallas was a great opportunity to spend time with Nina (our ‘Filipina Daughter’) and see her graduate, along with many of our other students who are now great friends too!
We were blessed to be part of the sending out service for our students and friends, Derek & Amber Crowe and their girls as they head off to serve the First Nation people of Hawaii in June. We got to help them pack their shipping container and be part of the preparation for their next exciting adventure! P1010453 (1)
P1010086We were thankful to have the opportunity to visit Trinity, our home church in Dallas, and enjoyed catching up with our Pastor Jim Hennesy over lunch. He is always such a great encouragement to us! We also met with several of our friends on staff at Trinity and were thrilled to hear all the exciting things that are happening at the church and in the local community. We seemed to fit a month’s worth of activity into our first week in Dallas and thankfully didn’t have time for jetlag! Thanks to everyone for your continued love and support!

Time with Friends and Future steps… 

P1010275After spending a week in Dallas we flew to Colorado for 4 days to attend our friends, Rick & Joan’s, daughter’s wedding. They were CFNI students with us in 2003/04 and we had great fun catching up with them. P1010238The wedding was outdoors and we met some great people before and after the wedding ceremony. Rick & Joan took us on a trip into the mountains of Colorado and we stopped off at Andrew Wommack’s amazing Charis Bible College, over looking Pikes Peak on the way. After a day exploring Eleven Mile Canyon, in the wilds of Colorado, where we saw lots of wildlife and got to feed the P1010325wild chipmunks, we stopped off on the way home to visit Rick & Joan’s friends in their cabin in the mountains and we had a great evening eating and chatting around the campfire.
P1010429We flew back to Dallas midweek to speak at Trinity Church Missions Class and felt really encouraged by the people we met there. We have been Trinity Missionaries for the past 13 years and the church has recently started sending us monthly financial support.
At the end of our time in Dallas, we flew to Tampa, Florida. P1010489We were blessed to be loaned a 2001 Honda CRV for a month from Missionary Ministries and drove up the East Coast of Florida to Jacksonville. Florida-1999-to-2016We stopped off briefly for a quick photograph at the lake view gazebo in the grounds of the hotel where we married in Orlando, Florida, 17 years ago! We could never have guessed how our lives would have turned out when we started out married life together in 1999 and are so thankful God joined us together for this journey!
We will spend at least the next month here in Jacksonville, Florida serving the missions sending ministry, Go To Nations. GTN arranged use of the vehicle for us and also use of an P1010540upstairs Garage Apartment with our hosts John & Carolyn Ellis, who built the apartment at their home and have been allowing visiting missionaries P1010566to use it for more than 25 years. It is a really comfortable one bedroom facility and we are grateful for being allowed use of it. We liaised with Go To Nations from September to December last year when we arranged for the Global Missions Students from Christ For The Nations to attend their Missions Field Schools in Thailand and Honduras.
GTN contacted us in April when they heard we were available and looking for an opportunity to serve somewhere. We had a Skype call in April with one of their  Directors and we offered to volunteer at their Leadership Development Forum for Missionaries next month. We will be exploring possibilities for future ministry opportunities as we continue to seek the Lord’s guidance on our next steps, so watch this space!
 Thank you for sharing our journey!

How you can support us. 

Pray for us! Please pray for our health, strength and provision! Pray for wisdom for us to make wise choices!
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!