What a great way to spend Father’s Day, with my family in Thailand! We are in Mae Sot, Thailand and have been able to spend the day at church with the children at our orphanage. Now we are at a soccer game between our soccer team and a Chinese church.
We are officially on our way! Flight #1 of 17. I am sitting on the plane in Dallas as I write this. We are looking forward to what the Lord will do on this extended trip. Thank you for the prayers and I appreciate your prayers.
2016 has started off very well. Thank you for your support. My Bradford Pear tree in the front yard is already blooming and it looks like spring is already upon us. As spring begins to break, the sprint is about to begin.
In one week from now I will be traveling to Florida and we will be presenting in 8 churches in 5 states. As soon as we finish the last church, we will head to Asia for nearly 7 weeks to help lead teams. Then, come back a week to repack and take a team to Nicaragua.
My daughter was asking why we visit so many churches. I told her it is because we need to raise support for places like Vietnam, Thailand and North Korea to help sustain our feeding programs and orphanages. Otherwise we cannot buy the food that we need to feed the kids.
She looked at me and said, “I have $30 in my room if you need it.” Wow! The heart of a child. It blows me away, and humbles me all the time.
Thank you for supporting our family. It is an honor to walk with you in this endeavor the Lord has placed before us.
It never ceases to amaze me how the Lord provides for our every need. This week I had a Pastor’s Fellowship that I attended. I knew someone in the town and sent them an email about staying with them. However, I never heard back from them. Unfortunately, all I had was an email address and not a phone number. I drove to the fellowship on Monday and figured if I didn’t hear anything by the time we concluded Monday night, I would venture into nearby towns to look for a hotel room. I wasn’t quite sure how it would all work out, but I knew I needed to go.
Well, after the meeting was over a pastor that I have been on a trip with in the past came up to me and asked if I had any place to stay. The only person that knew about my lack of a place to stay was my wife, who was 3 hours away. I said it was a funny story, but no I did not have a place to stay yet. He then proceeded to tell me to follow him and he would buy me dinner and get me a hotel room. It is amazing that God had put that on his heart without him even knowing. What a tremendous blessing.
It is in times like this that really illustrate how the Lord uses the body to serve others and work together. I’m grateful for each of you.
We got to unload 6,000 pairs of shoes to go around the world! What does 6,000 pairs of shoes look like, well, the picture above is only half of them. We use these shoes to take to our projects on trips. Our trip participants get people to sponsor the shoes and help them go on the trip and put them on a child. It is really amazing to watch the impact a simple pair of shoes can have on a child.
As most of you know, I was with a team in Mongolia this past October. Part of our time was spent at our orphanage there. We had the distinction of being named the number 1 orphanage in Mongolia. They did a special news documentary on our orphanage that broadcast across Mongolia. Unfortunately, it is in Mongolian, or I would send it out for you to watch.
However, our team interviewed me on the trip and they have put together a video with a few clips from the news broadcast, then to my interview about the orphanage. I’m really excited about this project. In the 10 years that it has been open, we have been able to adopt out of the orphanage 110 children to loving families both in Mongolia and around the world. Here is the video:
But, don’t take my word for it, join me sometime and see it with your own eyes.
We had a great trip with a wonderful church in Guatemala just before Thanksgiving. It was a blessing to me, and I know it was a blessing to those in Guatemala. We were able to visit multiple projects, and perform 8 home visits where we delivered food to a family in need and shared the Gospel with them. We were able to see around 10 people get saved during the week! On one of the visits we went to a family that had 3 children with muscular dystrophy. And, they had lost a son to MD recently. The food was a great blessing to them, but the greater blessing was when 2 of the family members came to trust the Lord with their salvation.
We had a special Thanksgiving dinner with the orphans at our orphanage also. They had never celebrated Thanksgiving since it is an American holiday, so we treated them to a great meal. They asked if we could all eat with them and pass the food like they had seen in the movies. How touching! The things we take for granted.
The final two days were spent in a Mayan village performing a Vacation Bible School and a lice and foot washing outreach. We had a Christian clown as part of the event and it was a great way to reach the children and the parents that came. We are excited for the church to have their first ever service on Christmas Eve this year.
Here are some pictures of the trip.
It is difficult to explain all that happened on our trip to Mongolia and Nepal. It was like going the uttermost parts of the earth. I put a video together for everyone to see the results of our trip. Thank you so much for your prayers and support for our work in Asia.
When people give to disaster relief many wonder what all the funds go towards. In the case of MANNA, some of these funds went to rebuild a church on the north side of Kathmandu. This church stepped out in faith to begin a building, and MANNA is honored to be able to contribute towards helping them to rebuild it. Below you can see the before and after pictures.
This may be the most beautiful picture I have seen of my time in Nepal. To be able to visit a local church in Nepal and see this Nepalese man worshiping the same Savior that we worship, in the middle of a land devastated by the earthquake says more than any words could express.
