Saturday, July 23, 2016

Travel Update

The last few weeks have been filled with travelling for us. We embarked on a long road trip, going through 13 states to arrive at our final destination for a month in northern Michigan where we plan to stay with Shannon's parents. We had a great time traveling, seeing parts of the country, and places and things we've never seen before, and visiting with a few friends and supporters along the way! The kids were great, and the trip served to expose them to more of their passport country. We hope it will tie in more to some of their homeschooling over the years. The plan is to return to Arizona around August 8th, passing through at least 6 more states!

You can be praying as once again, our housing plans in Arizona kind of fell apart. The new plans have us moving a couple more times yet. Each move is a significant interruption in the kids' schooling and in our work so we would appreciate your prayers there.

Several months ago, we as a team realized that the Walkers would need to transition to a more itinerant ministry focus for a time in order to help all three of their kids with various schooling needs, as well as to allow the church the opportunity to function on their own a bit. Chris will be making several trips in to Mibu, even while continuing his work in literacy development and restarting a role in translation. This move happened just a week or so ago, with Chris having spent the last couple months doing all he can to further equip the leaders in the church to continue the work while we're all away. Of course this is what we're constantly working toward in Mibu, and the church in Mibu is always closer and closer to being able to stand on their own. Times away like this aren't unexpected, and they aren't a bad thing. In fact, they're good for the church. This will be a great period to see how they do on their own for longer periods of time. It'll help us gauge areas where the church needs further help. Please be in prayer for this extended time where the church leaders in Mibu will certainly be stretched a bit further. Pray for their faithfulness to serve and uphold the vision and purpose of Christ's body.

I've been so grateful for several opportunities to skype and email with some of my friends there in Mibu about life, work, and church. It's wonderful to be able to connect that way. It also opens up new possibilities for us as we try to keep the work moving forward. We have many documents that need correcting and cleaning up so they can be printed and put to use in Mibu. Hopefully this little window of communication will allow us to do more of this while we're here in the US. I've been able to continue to help our friends with some much needed final steps on the adaptation of the Mibu materials into the neighboring Mina language, for the growing church there. Hopefully soon I'll be able to begin working on 1 Thessalonians lessons with Sesi!

We've been missing our friends in Mibu a lot lately. We are already anxious to return and to continue with the needed discipleship and leadership training and bible translation so that someday we can see a fully functioning, mature church in Mibu.

Thank you so very much to those of you who are praying for us regularly and who have so graciously given of your financial resources to help keep this ministry moving forward! We appreciate all of you!

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