A thousand gifts.

It has been a while since I last did a thousand gifts post, I am only up to number 72, oops! I guess things have been kind of hectic the last few months 🙂
If you don’t remember what these posts are about, it is listing a thousand things that God has given you that you are thankful for.  You can click on the link on the left for more info.

73. Reese.
74. Skype
75. Facebook
76. The rain, there needs to be some more of it though!
77. The few hours of sleep that we do get 😉
78. I am thankful for the next chapter in our lives. It is going to be an exciting year!

At three months!

At three months Reese is thriving, and growing faster than I thought possible. His adjusted age is only a month and a few weeks, but he seems to be on par with other three month olds, he is just maybe a little smaller. Reese weighs in at 12 pounds and is almost 24 inches long.

 

Three measures in 10 years.

“The kingdom of God is like yeast that a women used in making bread. Even though she put only a little yeast into three measures of flour, it permeated every part of the dough.”
Matt 13:33

In 2002 David and I met on the YWAM base here in Namibia. He was in the middle of a church plant in the North, and after the DTS school we both attended I went up to the North with him to help establish that ministry. It was during that time that I felt called to missions in Africa, and that David and I fell in love and realized we had the same goals. In 2005 we finally made it to Bible college to prepare ourselves better for a life in ministry, specifically cross cultural ministry. We graduated with top honors in 2009.
In 2010 we finally made it back to Namibia to begin the work we had felt called to do in 2002. But they don’t just hand out visas for anyone who wants to come and work in Namibia. So we agreed to spend two years (those two years will be coming to an end at the end of April) working with John and Suzanne at Community Hope School while getting a new ministry in the works and in return they would let us use CHS for visa purposes.
 The last two years have been fun, exciting, trying, exhausting, and a million other things. I think that perhaps we felt at times that the two years were dragging by as we were chomping at the bit to begin the ministry we had been working towards. But as I look back now I know that these last two years have been invaluable. We have grown and learned more than I could put down here. God has used these last two years as a time to refine us as people, and as a family. We have had some very rough and sad times, but we have also celebrated great victories, including new births!
 He has also used this time to bring the plan and work He has for us here into focus. And above all we have had two years immersed in the community that we will be reaching out to, under the covering of another ministry. This has given us an opportunity to get to know the people, make mistakes, learn, and make relationships without having our names on the line. Does that make sense? If we had just jumped in with our own thing without this knowledge and relationships we would have fallen flat on our faces 🙂

So now in 2012, exactly ten years after we met and felt the call, we are ready to announce and start a new ministry here in Namibia.It is an amazing feeling to be at the point we have been working towards!
 Brian and Pam Kinghorn, the directors of YWAM Namibia, have welcomed us with open arms. So we will be working under the covering of YWAM. YWAM currently has two main ministries in Namibia. CHS and Beautiful kids (BK). CHS you know about, Beautiful kids is an outreach to preschool aged kids primarily, but they also have youth programs, after school programs, teacher training, classes on how to be a good parent, and they have a sewing project that is creating jobs for women in the community. Our ministry will come along side these two and complement what they are doing. Our ministry will have two parts.

Bear with me, I know this post is getting long…

The first part of the ministry will be focused in Katutura, for now we will be working out of the BK offices.
Our ministry is based on the verse at the start of this post. We believe that if the Kingdom of God is present in a community it’s reach is unlimited. It should not only transform a part of that community. But it reaches into every aspect of the community, the physical, the social and the spiritual. We are calling those three parts of society the three measure, and that will also be the name of our ministry! Three measures will exist to bring change to the physical, social, and spiritual lives of people in Katutura Namibia. We will begin with cell groups in people’s homes, skills training so people can get jobs, and activities for the men of the community especially. You can read more about the specifics in the ministry tab on the left hand side.

The second part of our ministry will be in the North of Namibia. This is where David worked when he was here before in 2002. We will be going up to the rural village areas of the country to train local Christian leaders. We will spend 2-3 weeks in the area three times a year doing what we are calling “Restoration Seminars.” You can also read more about those in the 3Measures tab on the left hand side.

Our official launch date is August 2012, we will be in the USA for a furlough and support raising trip from May through July.

God is great, and He is so good to us. Join with us in prayer and celebration as we end our time with CHS and launch a brand new ministry.

Prayer!

What are some of your prayer requests? We are going to spend some time in the coming weeks in prayer for the next step in our ministry, and would love to pray for you too.

A little project.

We took some pictures of Reese last Sunday, and then yesterday David put it to music. This song can calm a crying baby down very quickly, we thought it would be fun to be able to show this to him some day too.
Enjoy!