Celebrating 100!!!!!

At school the girls celebrated the 100th day of school when they were in the primary grades, and we agree that 100 is definitely a number to be celebrated.  Can you guess why???

This week we are celebrating because we reached 100% in our outgoing one time fund.
That is amazing!!!   In just 6 months God has seen fit to provide our full outgoing amount.  We are so encouraged and know that He will continue to provide for our support needs.  These funds will be used to cover the cost of our visas, vaccines, plane tickets, language training and other things involved in just getting us overseas and launching us into ministry

So what does this mean?

It means that now we will strongly emphasize our monthly support, encouraging everyone to consider even a small monthly gift.  $20 or $30 a month is an incredible encouragement to us and helps us out greatly.

 Maybe monthly isn't do able, but an annual gift would better suit you.  That is wonderful too and will equally count towards our monthly fund, just be sure to mention with your gift that it is annual so it can be recorded accordingly.

And for those able to contribute once, we continue to invite you to do so.  We are grateful and your funds will top us up as we get closer to our full monthly support.

This week we reached 42% of our monthly goal, which is also amazing and we are so grateful to each one that God has brought into our path, that has chosen to partner with us monthly.  We are so close to being half way and that inspires us to keep pressing on.   Another celebration could be right around the corner!!!  We would be thrilled if we could reach 50% of our monthly MAF ministry goal in the next week and a half.  We know God is at work and we have seen Him do some amazing things,  we invite you to be a part of it. 

May is for Missions Results

I realize we have neglected to write any blog posts over the past month and I can only attribute it to the fact that we were busy writing posts on Facebook for our May is for Missions Challenge.  For those on our email list you hopefully received update emails through out the month alerting you to our challenge and goal of 30 new ministry partners in 30 days. 

We had a great start and met the half way point with 15 new partners.  The last half of the month took in our trip to northern Ontario (which I will fill you in on in once we return home) and allowed us to meet some amazing people, bringing our 30 day total to 29 new ministry partners.

We are so thankful for all those who have come along side of us this month in our ministry with MAF.  The right hand column of this blog shows our % increase.  Wow, 40.5% monthly and 99.5% of our one time out going amount.  It is so encouraging to be only 5% away from 100% of our out going.  Thank you so much. We have been blessed beyond measure and continue to praise God for His work in our lives and give Him all the glory for opening doors ahead of us to share about this work and our calling to serve.

 

 

Our Most Asked Question.

I am sure you can guess what our most asked question is.

That's right, "Where will you be serving?"
 This question has been on our minds too and we would love to have an answer.  But we don't.  In short, the MAF staff can't make a final decision until we are closer to being fully supported in our MAF ministry.  Why, because things are changing all the time, with new missionaries going overseas and others moving around, the countries that need mechanics keeps changing too.   There may be an urgent need for a mechanic in a certain country but until we have our full ministry amount raised, we aren't able to go, and there may be another mechanic that is fully funded before us, that is ready and can fill the need right away.
So.... when we reach over 50% (give or take) of our monthly ministry support things begin to change and they can begin to fit us into a timeline of a possible departure date, which then translates to being able to fit us into a need in an MAF program in one of the 30 countries around the world where MAF serves.  We are currently at 32% of our monthly ministry support.
Now as much as we don't like asking for money, we do, really want to be out there serving the people that are isolated from physical help and the hope of the Gospel.   We need you to consider if God is calling you to support MAF by partnering with us as a monthly supporter and be a part of keeping the planes running that provide this lifeline to the many people in these remote areas.  Help us jump over the 50% of ministry support, so that we can finally answer our most asked question.

Live on The Radio

Listen to RetroSwitch Live on Friday, May 2 at 7:30pm on 94.3 Faith FM, Kitchener.  Our friend Parker, is the host of the show and has invited us to come and share about life and our ministry with MAF.  If you aren't in the Kitchener area, no worries, listen online at http://retroswitch.blogspot.ca/p/listen-live-now.html

Tracking our Monthly Ministry Support

We have been so blessed and encouraged by all of those who have partnered with us in this ministry.  Our one time, out going fund is up to 90%, which is so amazing.  Thank you so much for coming along side of us with your gifts for our ministry with MAF.  We are also excited to see how God is at work in providing for our monthly support as well.  Recently we came up with a new way to track our monthly ministry support progress and encourage our supporters as well.

$7200, that is the amount it takes to support the average MAF family for a month while overseas (and we are as average as they come J).  Divide this by a rough average of 30 days in a month and it takes $240 to support us for one day. What does this mean? It means that for every $20/month of support for our MAF ministry that we receive ($20 x 12 months = $240), we can “mark off” one day of the year as having been “supported”. When 365 days are marked off, our MAF ministry is fully supported and we can head into the field.

Part of the relationship with our supporters is prayer, they pray for us and we pray for them. So as someone commits to support us in our ministry with MAF, one (or more) of these stickers will symbolically represent the day they are supporting us, and the day we will be praying for them.  Most people like to choose birthdays, anniversaries, and other special or significant days, the options are endless…. well up to 365 anyways J. The number of stickers on the calendar is fairly accurate but most of them are placed there arbitrarily because they represent supporters before we developed the calendar, so if you are a supporter, one of these stickers represents you. We’d encourage you to pick a day and let us know, we’ll be happy to move the sticker and add that day to our prayer list.  We will be praying for every financial and prayer supporter whether you give us a day or not, so you’d might as well give us a day that’s important to you ;)

 

Invited to Share

On April 13th we will be sharing at Emmanuel Bible Church in Simcoe as part of their evening service.  The church is located at 24 Churchill Circle, Simcoe and the service starts at 6:30pm.  If you are in the area or know of anyone interested in the work of  MAF and want to hear more, we would love to meet you.   We are excited to see God open this door for us to share and know that He is at work in putting the pieces together as we build our team of ministry partners.  We are encouraged by those who have come alongside us and look forward with excitement for those we have yet to meet.

MAF Multiplies the Effectiveness of over 1500 organizations . 

As we began our ministry with MAF only 3 short months ago, we had a fairly good knowledge of the work they did around the globe. But as we research ministry stories for our newsletters and for sharing with the small groups that we have met, we continue to learn more of the big picture and what MAF is a part of. We knew that MAF partners with over 1500 organizations and that's a big deal. But what are those organizations and how do we enable them to do their task. The Halo Trust is one of them. The work of The Halo Trust is incredible as they decommission land mines in countries like Angola that have been hurt by years of civil war.  Mission Aviation Fellowship partners with The Halo Trust in Angola to safely bring their workers and supplies to and from the land mine areas.