GLOBAL MISSIONS

Hello friends and supporters!

So grateful to have you all thinking of us, praying for us, and uplifting us. August has been a challenging month on the church building front. We’ve had a few members come forward with some ongoing sin struggles..some wilingly and some unwillingly.

I’ve found the 12 steps, and Christian counseling to be fantastic tools for deep healing which addictive behaviors requires, and Thang and I are so grateful to have these tools to help our Vietnamese church members. Because of these tools, they have a safe space to confess their sin, recognize their patterns and pains, and receive healing. Jesus is the one doing the healing, we are just the ones passing on the message and listening to their pains. It’s a great system!

Please pray for our church members about this, and please pray for us. It is vulnerable, heart wrenching work, and when we open our heart to other’s pains, we also feel their pain, and carry it with us. Sometimes carrying that pain bleeds into our family life. We need the wisdom and strength of Christ to continue!

Deep, generational healing can and is happening. We are grateful, and we are tired. Thank you for praying for us, thank you for supporting us so that we can do this work!

P.s. LOTS of progress with relationships in the ag/environmental community last month! Thank you for praying!!!

Prayer Requests
-Pray for the church members who are seeking healing from sins and addictions. Pray also for those who are suffering in solitude and silence that they would find a safe community at Logos church!
-Pray for Thắng and I as we serve, navigate, and love our hurting members
-Pray for strength for Thắng as he continues to preach more often
-Pray for Vi Sinh Xinh, the environmental business and we may be establishing officially this month. We are praying to add our 3rd, 4th, and 5th customer this month!

Cultural Moment

The Garuna Christian School is thriving, teaching over 300 students each day! In fact, it’s growing so quickly that we conducted a mini-campaign and added an additional two-classroom building on the Prey Veng campus!

• Generous Gift from Bright Funds: An anonymous supporter made a recommendation to support a cause in India during a corporate acquisition that raised $78,787 from 144 donors via Bright Funds. This gift was dedicated to supporting the Women’s ARISE! Empowerment Program. This support allows more women to undergo training and addresses pressing needs, like purchasing new equipment and enhancing our training. These mothers will now be able to support their families with a decent income. A heartfelt big thank you for this great introduction that resulted in such amazing generosity!
• Championing Donors: Two donors converged to cover all the items on our Special Needs List, significantly enhancing our Children’s Program with improved technology, educational games, nutritious meals, and transportation capabilities.
• Scholarship Endowment Fund: We received a bequest gift that will help build the nursing program at the college and will seed the College Scholarship Endowment Fund.  Contact us to learn more about setting up an Endowment Fund to honor a loved one.
• New Donor Sponsors 24 children: When asked why, we were told God decided the best investment he could make was to sponsor 24 children for $1,000 a month. Imagine the impact this gift will have on these children that will give them opportunities for a promising future!
• The Goat Hope Project: Initiated by King of Kings Lutheran Church in Omaha as part of plan to create a sustainable future, this pilot program will lead the way to create sustainable income, feed families and provide nutritous milk for children. Be sure to read the touching stories below about the widows who have found hope and encouragement in their time of great sorrow.
• 70 New Child Sponsorships hail from India: A new campaign directed at local staff, teachers and friends of our partner has launched to create a plan for a sustainable future. Congratulations for a successful new venture!

Overall, the foundation work has been fully completed.

Local and Regional Updates: 

• We hosted a summer retreat in our home for New England senior pastors and their spouses. It was fantastic! We’re praising the Lord for how we saw joy and refreshment returning for so many as they encountered God’s presence and the goodness of being together.
• The teens we are discipling locally have been training in how to hear God’s voice for themselves, how to share God’s story, and how to talk about what God has done in their lives with someone who doesn’t know Jesus yet.
• We launched a 10-month gap-year program for young adults that is high levels of discipleship investment as well as missionary training. We are excited to be recruiting high-capacity young leaders for next year and praying for financial provision to continue this program!
• Our team has been coming alongside Gordon Conwell Theological Seminary to help them revamp their discipleship experience for seminary students. We’ll be helping them lead a training for students for the third year in a row.
• This fall we will be hosting a couple workshops for New England pastors and their teams. We are praying the Lord brings the right people in the room who are ready to make missionary disciples that will live like Jesus in their neighborhoods and workplaces and everyday spaces!

Prayer Requests: 

• We’re doing some rebuilding of our team out here in New England. Pray in the right leaders who have capacity to lead both locally and regionally.
• Our team and the pastors we are training have been experiencing quite a bit of spiritual warfare! It makes sense — New England has six of the top 10 most post-Christian cities in the United States, so the enemy is pushing back hard as we make disciples who are falling more in love with Jesus and bringing people to know him!
• In the coming year, we will be building new training for everyday people to learn effective ways to naturally live on-mission in their everyday lives and see their friends and neighbors follow Jesus and make new disciples. We are in great need of financial resources to get this training created — pray the Lord brings in every resource we need to train as many people as possible!
• We are prayer-walking our neighborhood regularly and asking God for favor with our neighbors — join us in that!
• Our kids are gearing up for a new school year. Addy is starting her senior year and will be applying to colleges this fall. Declan is starting his sophomore year in high school. Pray protection over our family, our home, our marriage, and our relationships as we continue to join God in what he’s doing here!

At 8:00PM on March 24, 2023, Rolling Fork, Miss., was mowed over by an EF4 Tornado. With little to no notice, it cut through the middle of town, destroying many structures and killing over a dozen people. Hand of Hope Omaha led three mission teams of nearly 90 volunteers from February 24 to March 16, focused on rebuilding the community.

Visit the site for pictures. https://www.handofhopeomaha.org/rolling-fork-mississippi.html