Monday 19 December 2011

Hello and Happy Christmas to you!


May you have a wonderful few weeks celebrating Jesus' birthday this Christmas! And praise His name that there will be many, many people in Asia who will be celebrating Christmas for the first time this season.

Well, I have had a busy couple of months. I recently had the privilege of meeting a youth group at a church just outside of Norwich who had raised some money for Gospel for Asia.


They did a sponsored walk:




...a sponsored sponge throw (where they let people throw 3 soaked sponges at them for a £1):




...and a cake sale:


These amazing kids raised over £400 to forward the Great Commission in Asia, and I was impressed by their example, and their drive.


Things have been busier at the office lately, and we have been especially grateful for all our office volunteers.


We were particularly blessed when 8 students from Calvary Chapel Bible College turned up to help us out in their free time:








Helen, who has been faithfully volunteering, has sensed the Lord's call to join us as a staff member and is currently in the process of raising support. She would appreciate your prayers!


I have been arranging our presence at The Mission-Net Congress, an annual mission conference held in Germany. Brian will be manning our stall there, along with two volunteers. I will be arranging the shipping of some materials and equipment to Germany:


...so I will almost certainly be calling on Tim's shipping expertise:


We celebrated Thanksgiving as a GFA family:




...and of course we had our Christmas Party at the office:




Peter Hulley recently dropped by for a visit. He was working in York for two days so Angie and I invited him for dinner. Of course we made him play us several numbers on the guitar!


Angie continues to show me great kindness as my fiancee, and we have been spending more time together. She cuts my hair:


...provides a formidable opponent for Chinese Chess:


...reads books to me:


...and made me some very tasty eggnog:


I also found out she is very proficient on the flute:


This Thursday 22nd December we fly off to Washington (state), where we will spend Christmas and the New Year with Angie's friends and family. Needless to say, I am really excited about this trip!




Thank you for reading. Please continue to remember Angie and I in your prayers as we press on in Christ together, and all of us at the GFA office as we serve the Lord to the best of our ability, knowing that it is the Lord who does all these things in us.

Please have a marvellous Christmas! May God continue to bless you, sustain you, strengthen, and guide you.

Thursday 3 November 2011

SLUMDOG MILLION PRAYER

Please pray with us tomorrow on Friday 4th November!

In India 300,000,000 people fall below their society's caste system, and are treated worse than cats and dogs. On 4th November 2001, 10 years ago on this day, thousands of India’s Dalits gathered in Delhi. Several Christian leaders, including GFA’s founder, K.P. Yohannan, had an opportunity to address the crowd:



Today, 10 years later, very little has changed. They still find themselves oppressed and discriminated against, and the task of reaching them with Jesus' love is largely unfinished. Pray for them with us! Prayer requests are here. Go to our special website and pledge your prayer time, be it 5mins, 30mins or 2 hours. We have already had almost 400 people who have pledged approximately 500,000 seconds of prayer. Also, you can “Like” our Facebook page.



FORUM CONFERENCE

Thank you for your prayers for the Forum conference. It was a great time! I camped:


…met many other ministry reps:



…and we talked to loads of Christian students who were amazed to hear that 97% of the world’s unreached are in the 10/40 window, and about what the Lord is doing through National Missionaries.



207 free copies of “Revolution in World Missions” were taken, and I even got 5 minutes to address one of the seminar groups.


BACK AT THE OFFICE

Catherine has taken to my old role like a fish to water:


…she only occasionally needs help, and the accountant talks almost solely to her when she comes in to reconcile the books:


Angie designed Bridge of Hope writing forms for GFA Finland. This has space for Finnish child sponsors to write to their children in Finnish, have a translation into English, and then have a translation into the appropriate Asian language.


We could always use more help in the office, but have been blessed by several volunteers:




Also, my dad gave me a car! So I am once again mobile and able to give lifts:


…and within a couple of weeks of having it I pranged it against our fence. James built the thing to withstand a tank:



PERSONAL STUFF

In case anyone didn’t know, on Saturday 1st October I asked Angie to marry me, and she said yes!



This is how she got the message:


I went to Filey beach and spent the morning digging in the sand:


…and the Lord even provided helpers for me:




So we are engaged! Please continue to pray that we would honour the Lord with our lives, be filled with the knowledge of His will, and filled with His Spirit to serve Him.


Thanks for reading!

JP