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Chintamani – Update from India

Here is a quick update. For those of you keeping track of my “name that airport” challenge.  Here were our flights yesterday.  BLR to CCU to DIB to DMU.  See how many of you know those airport codes.

We have been in India for a few days.  Slow internet, so not many updates, but I have wifi now.  It has been a great time.  We visited our orphanage in Chintamani and got to work with the kids there.  It was awesome to see the work.  Jacob and his wife Sonasuman are the house parents for the orphanage and they are doing a wonderful job.  The kids were reciting tons of Scripture and singing songs and dances for us. It was a huge blessing.

About to head to church in Dimapur. I will update you on it tomorrow.  We travel 19 hours back to Bangkok this afternoon.

Here are some pictures for you.

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A New Year Awaits

I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas and New Year’s. We were tremendously blessed in 2014 from your prayers and support. We are looking forward to 2015. In keeping with the new year theme, we have a new website for our family. This will allow people to keep up with us all of the time. My updates will be there, along with pictures, videos, etc.

www.Jones4Missions.com

To finish out 2014, one of the coolest things happened on Christmas Day. My nephew came to me that morning and gave me a $100 bill. He said that he had asked Santa Claus for money to give to missions. That morning he had $100 in his stocking and he was very excited to bring it to me and give it to us. What a humble blessing for us. I’m in the process of raising money to take a 5 week trip to visit our projects in India, Nepal, Myanmar, Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam. It is really neat to know that his money was the first given to go towards the trip.

Please be praying in advance for the trip, we will be building a water tank and delivering water to some homes in a village in Myanmar where we just built a school that is set to open this spring, taking a team to Nepal to look at helping expand the work there, and meeting with missionaries in 6 countries.

#GivingTuesday

Black Friday has great deals.  Cyber Monday has cool technology.  Now Giving Tuesday has an eternal impact.

GivingTuesday.org has developed Giving Tuesday as a day that all Americans can give to their favorite charities on the same day.  Why not make that charity MANNA Worldwide.  We are a registered charity at GivingTuesday.org.  Want to help?  Tell your friends, co-workers, family at Thanksgiving, Facebook, Twitter, etc.  Let them know about Giving Tuesday and tell them why you choose to give to MANNA.

What are the advantages to giving to MANNA?  Over 90% of the money donated for projects actually makes it to the project.  I’m a real human being that you can talk to, not an actor on the television. You can visit our projects in person with us.

Here is a short video I put together of our family and what Giving Tuesday represents for us. I hope you enjoy it.
http://youtu.be/CEmKVmu2FjA

Watch here for more information on how you can get involved on Tuesday, December 2.

KDKR Thailand Interview

Last month we were interviewed by KDKR radio regarding our trip to Thailand. (91.3 in DFW)  I cannot thank them enough for giving us that opportunity.  We had a wonderful trip to Thailand in June and were able to have several friends of ours join us.  There has already been fruit from the trip.  A teacher fund was established for our schools in Thailand and the orphanage’s soccer team got new uniforms.

KDKR gave me a copy of the interview that I can share with people.  Here is a link for you to listen to it at your leisure if you missed it.  It lasts 26 minutes.

Also, most of our support and connections come from people that know us and recommend or connect us to their friends, church, etc.  So, if you know someone that you’ve wanted to tell about our mission work, this is a great opportunity to share with them this interview.  It will help them know more about what we do.

Thank you so much for your connections.  You are opening many doors for us to minister around the world.

Vamos a Guatemala

What a weekend.  We started today with feeding the homeless in downtown Fort Worth with our home church, Trinity Baptist Temple.  Then we will wrap up the weekend tomorrow evening by leading TBT to Guatemala!

We are so excited to be able to take them to Guatemala and let them experience first hand what MANNA does.  We are taking an awesome group with us.  They will be in Guatemala for a week, then Kim and I, and the girls, will stay in Guatemala a second week to help lead a church from Alabama on a mission trip to Guatemala.

I know the Lord is going to do amazing things on this trip in us and through us all and I feel honored to be a part of such a great group going.  I can’t wait to keep you updated on our trip.

Month of June

As many of you know, June was a crazy busy month for us. Here it is a picture of some kids in Romania and my trips by the numbers.

30,000+ airline miles
5 Languages over
4 Weeks in
3 Countries on
2 Continents, but
1 God.

The God we serve needs no translator and the world we are living in is larger than we can ever imagine. At the end of the day, there is still 1 God, and He is still on His throne. It is easy to get overwhelmed by the enormity of it all, but I have learned the following things:

God is in control, I’m not.
I can only do what I can do.
This world needs what we can give.
God can use everyone.

Thank you for your support and prayers. You each mean a lot to us and you help encourage us continually. Join us sometime on a trip and see how big our God really is.

Thailand Video

It has been a whirlwind of a month. It feels a little strange being home and doing “normal” things again.  Kim and I went to Thailand, we came home for one day, then I was off to Hungary and Romania.  But, the Lord has blessed and I feel unworthy to be able to do what I do.

Kayla Bishop went on our trip to Thailand and put a video together of where we went and what we did.  She did a wonderful job with it and I wanted to share it with everyone.

Here is a video of the people’s reaction when we brought them water filters.

Thank you so much for your support.  Because of you, many were ministered to in Thailand.

Thailand Update

We arrived back home late last night and I am repacking today to head to Budapest tomorrow.  Words cannot describe how amazing our trip was to Thailand.  Thank you so much for your prayers and support.

We got to see kids who had grown up in our project as refugee children now become teachers in that same school.  We got to take clean water to a community that had never had it before.  Kim got to use her physical therapy training to help a boy that could barely walk regain his range of motion. We got to go to church and worship the same God in multiple languages.

I have posted many pictures and stories from throughout our trip on Facebook.  If you are not on Facebook, I will be working on a video when I get back from Romania in July.  For now, click the button below for a short video I took of us singing with the kids to give you an idea of who we are ministering to.

After the song we did a skit of Jonah and the whale. They asked me to be the whale. Not sure if I should be honored or offended. LOL

Moving Ahead

Last week at a conference, a pastor shared a quote from Theodore Roosevelt that was an encouragement to me, and I hope it is to you as well.  As a family, we strive to do what the Lord has called us to do. There are ups & downs, victories & defeats, confirmations & doubts.  We are no different than any of you.  This summer we will begin a journey that takes us to Thailand, Hungary, Romania, and Guatemala.  We covet your prayers, and serve on your behalf.

At the end of the day, I want to be strong and courageous as David instructed Solomon in 1 Chronicles 28:20, and I pray that for you as well. We count it an honor to run this race with each of you, and are humbled by your support of our mission work.

Theodore Roosevelt: “It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”

Be encouraged, God has even greater works for each of you.