By nature of being missionaries, we must fully depend on God to meet our financial needs. And, he chooses to do this through the body of Christ getting behind us. Over the past few years, our family has expanded (tripled, actually), and we moved overseas. Also, as a result of difficult financial times, we have lost a significant amount of financial supporters. These factors combined have created a very large need. In order to remain on the mission field, we must replenish our team of faithful supporters.

Exposure is a key word for us right now. We are praying that our ministry would be exposed to as many people as possible. We’re very excited about where the Lord is taking us, and want to give as many individuals as possible an opportunity to consider joining our team.

Sensitivity would be another key word. Being aware that times are tough, we want to be careful as we approach people inviting them to give financially towards our ministry. Our hope is to invite people to give $25/month, which is an amount most people can swallow. By exposing ourselves to hundreds of people, we are hoping that this challenge will bring in the support needed to continue.

Would you please pray for us, that we would be able to meet (personally or via the web) as many people as possible and invite them to join our team? Would you also consider sharing (Facebook or Twitter) or forwarding our emails to others that you think might be interested in our ministry to Italy? It feels as if we have quite the mountain to climb, but we’re confident God will provide!

This was our most recent newsletter mailing to our friends and supporters. Click on the image above to view the full newsletter. You can also right click and “save as” to save it to your desktop.

(Click to Enlarge)

Sunday

Our spiritual life - Time to read and pray. Spiritual growth. Encouragement. Fellowship with local Christians. Good links with sending churches and prayer supporters. For integrity, reliability, consistency.

Monday

Our personal life - Relationships between husband and wife. Maintaining contact with children, parents and family back home. Friendships with nationals. Health and strength. Physical and spiritual protection.

Tuesday

Communication - Progress in language study. Adaptation to culture, customs and people. Clarity, creativity and relevance in preaching and teaching. Biblical emphasis. Involvement with those hearing the message.

Wednesday

Relationships - Harmonious relationships with other Christians, team members and church leaders. Partnership with the local church.

Thursday

Evangelism - For boldness. For godly, sensitive, Spirit-led ministry. Hungry hearts and the opening of spiritually blind eyes. For the establishing of Christ’s church. For national missionary movements.

Friday

Discipling - For patience and empathy. Training young people. Encouraging new believers. Equipping those with leadership gifts.

Saturday

Their country - For those in authority. The political situation. Religious freedom. Openness to the gospel. Favour with officials and other churches. Visa renewal processes and other legal matters.

More specifically, please pray that we will:

- ‘speak as men approved by God’ (1 Thessalonians 2:4).
- that our conversations will be ‘full of grace’ and ‘salt’ (Colossians 4:6).
- that we’ll preach ‘in season and out of season’ (2 Timothy 4:2).
- laying foundations ‘as an expert builder’ (1 Corinthians 3:10).

Colossians 1:9-12; Ephesians 3:14-21; Philippians 1:9-11 teach us about Paul’s faith and about God and his plans for his Church. Why not use them in praying for us and the Christians in our area?

(adapted from UFM Worldwide)

DID YOU KNOW:
• 32,000 (out of 33,500) Italian communities have no established evangelical witness
• Only 10% (of expatriate missionaries) on average return for a second term
• there are 616 official religions in Italy
• there are an estimated 100,000 recognized fortune-tellers
• less than 5% of Catholics are actually practicing
• Islam is the second religion in Italy. Jehovah’s Witnesses are as numerous as all Evangelicals put together
• 2.6 million foreigners live in Italy
• in Milan alone more than 1000 teenagers commit suicide each year

Would you take a moment and pray about these things?

One of the main things we try to accomplish while they are here is to find creative ways for them to interact with Italians at the University and engage in spiritual conversations that hopefully lead to sharing the gospel. So for the past two days, we’ve setup large photo exhibits that allow students to come and observe. While observing, we engage in conversation asking how these pictures relate to their life, and their relationship with God. It has opened up some neat opportunities for conversation that we would not have had otherwise. Pray for more opportunities like this in the coming weeks! Next week we will host a group of 25 from Mississippi.

We sent this letter out to each of our friends and supporters, regarding our lives. Click on the image to view it in its entirety (or right click to save it to your computer). Please take time to pray for us concerning its contents.