Impacting and Entrusting Leaders with the Word of God for Ministry

2 Timothy 2:2 - And the things you have heard me say in the presence of many witnesses entrust to reliable men who will also be qualified to teach others.  

It is our hope to work in preparing the men and women that the Lord is calling to lead the church planting efforts in Durban, South Africa and beyond.   As we prepare for this new ministry focus  with ABWE and the Baptist Bible College we are constantly reminded of the need for trained and prepared workers in the church.  There is a striking difference between America and other parts of the world when it comes to the ratio of trained church workers to people.  It is estimated that there is 1 trained church leader for every 230 people in America.  However, that ratio jumps drastically to one in 450,000 elsewhere in the world!  When we first learned about this ratio it caused us to realize that church planting ministry efforts would move forward much better if theological training and education is taking place along side church planting ministry.  

While serving in Czech for 15 years we worked alongside wonderful people who wanted to serve well and needed to he held accountable.  They asked us to stand with them while they served.  It is our desire to stand with and help prepare men and women being called into ministry. In a country like South Africa, which has so many different people groups represented, we believe that Baptist Bible College will potentially have a wide ranging impact for the gospel.  Baptist Bible College presently has an increase in enrollment and their focus is to "prepare God's people for ministry through culturally relevant theological education. We want God to bring spiritual change to the world through the lives and ministries of our graduates".  Robert will be spending time with leaders of BBC from May 25-29th in Harrisburg, PA at the Theological Education in Action Conference.  Please pray for the Lord to provide us with prayer and financial supporters that we need to make up the last amounts of our support and to be able to reach Durban for this all important ministry.  

The Big Restart!

Well, it's been well over half a year since beginning this blog, but I suppose it's not a problem since a lot of focus and effort had to be given to other projects.  We intend to use this blog as a location to send supporters to find updated prayer requests and information.  One of our goals this year is to improve communication and so we will be sending out email announcements to highlight a blog update so that our supporters are more aware of what is happening for us both in pre-field ministry as we prepare to get to Durban as well as family news.  Feel free to check in at anytime.  

We are finally together as a family after 16 months of adoption process.  Kaitlyn and Broden are getting much more settled into the family and are beginning to speak English the majority of the time to each other.  Since we know a slavic language we've managed to hear some stories of their life in the orphanage.  Often parents have to wait for some time before hearing about these things.  It's allowed us to reassure them and build trust when we have told them that what happened to them in Ukraine won't happen in this family. 

We are presently feeling more settled and into a routine then we have felt for a long time.  It has allowed us to get more focused on support raising and preparing for certain ministry events.  Just recently we had a ministry and sharing opportunity at Calvary Baptist Church of Oceanside, CA.  This was a wonderful experience of sharing with a congregation of folks who are very overseas missions minded.  We also just finished a 4 week series of teaching an Equipping Class called "Sharing the Gospel by Cultivating Good Soil".  This was on Sunday mornings at Faith Bible Church in Murrieta.  There is another church in the area that is praying about having us come on several Wednesdays to share the same materials.  Please pray for the Lord's leading in helping us schedule ministry opportunities with churches and potential supporters.