Hello dear friends,

We wish you a very wonderful, joyous, Happy Christmas in the name of our Saviour! We pray you have a fun time celebrating Jesus' birthday and remembering the Word of God being made flesh to hang out with us.

We've already had our GFA Christmas party and we had a great time. Calvary Chapel York very kindly let us use one of their rooms:

We also showed them the brand new Forgotten Christmas video:



It's our way of encouraging people to remember Christmas this Christ-mas, and the fact that some have never celebrated it before because they have never heard of Jesus. I heard a story about a Christian in Asia who was driving somewhere on Christmas day when he saw a man working in a field. He stopped his car, got out, walked over to the man, and said to him; "sir, don't you know it's Christmas?" To which the man replied; "What's a Christmas?"

2013 will be bringing some big things for us; firstly in January our office will be moving to Manchester! We have sensed the Lord moving us on from our place here in York and leading us to share the new offices belonging to The Message Trust. We will be sharing their nice new Enterprise Centre:

We have already found our new housing (more on that in a moment!), and so have most of the team, but Brian and Mindy are still waiting for their house to sell and our current office still needs a new tenant to take over our lease.

2013 will also see the previously postponed Renew Your Passion Conference! As you may already know, KP Yohannan, GFA's president and founder, was unable to be in the UK for the previous date that was set...

...but we have re-scheduled it for Saturday 23rd March 2013. It looks like it'll be better than we thought as the timing will now allow us to have other mission field leaders there as well! We are aiming to have 300 people there and we have 98 confirmed registrations so far.

We joyously anticipated the Kiriks' return at the beginning of November:

We gave them back their house and their dog, and as a thank you for looking after their helpless estate they whisked us away to a faraway cottage to spend a quiet, restful weekend.

They spoiled us rotten; they cooked for us, looked after us, required nothing of us, and took us to some nice places like Bakewell (home of the famous Bakewell pudding) and Chatsworth House (where Pride & Prejudice was filmed).

JP also saw his first real live reindeer:

It was all in all a very welcome, much enjoyed break.

We also very much enjoyed a welcome visit from JP's brother, Jonathan.

Being always pressed for time we decided to combine Jonathan's visit with our house-hunting trip to Manchester - so Jonathan took the 2 hour train from London to York and then we dragged him on a 2 hour drive to Manchester to stare at houses!

We had a great time and Jonathan was able to join in on our house-choosing deliberations and prayers.

We settled on a 3 bed house-to-rent about 3 miles away:

We chose something bigger than we currently need because we want to have room to grow our family in the future, and we also want to be able to host a School of Discipleship student. That's when a young person spends a gap year at GFA, serving at the office, being discipled, drawing closer to the Lord, attending prayer meetings for the unreached, and growing in passion for the lost. The year culminates in a visit to the mission field (the student having to raised their own support for everything). It's currently only available in the US but we want to start doing it here in the UK. Our hope is to inspire our next generation; to bring them the reality of 2 billion people who have never before heard the name of Jesus, and how much our heavenly Father's heart breaks for them. It's a little intimidating because we don't feel particularly up to scratch for the job, but we trust that the Lord can, and will, use even us!

We've just started filling out Angie's 42-page Marriage Visa application form:

Angie's current visa expires in March and will need a new one in order to stay in the country. It costs £561 and JP is wondering if it might be made of gold! It's not due for a few months so we have some time to save up the pennies for it.

We will be back to Norwich only very briefly over the holiday as we plan to spend Christmas in York. We'll be at Servants Church in Norwich this Sunday (23rd December), if you're around we'll see you there!

We're intending to cook our first Christmas meal as a married couple at home and have some of the GFA team over.

Angie has been using her chill time to make various creative Christmas decorations and make our flat look festive!

We know it's easy to forget but our desire is to remember Jesus in our Christmas, and to make it about Him. We're very grateful for Brian and Mindy's tradition of getting Jesus a birthday and singing Him Happy Birthday each Christmas! After all, that's what you do on someone's birthday :-)

So Merry Christmas and Happy Birthday Jesus! Just think, thousands of people in Asia will be celebrating Christmas for the first time this year, and you've had a part in that through your prayers, love and support.

Thank you for your partnership in the Gospel. Thank you for helping to reach the lost in Asia with the love of Jesus Christ.

Your partners in reaching the unreached,

JP & Angie

"I have felt the impact of your prayer in these past weeks. I am certain now that nothing has had a more powerful influence on this life of mine than your prayers."
- Jim Elliot

Hello everybody,

Wow, it's been a tiring couple of months! With the Kiriks away there has been plenty to do, but the Lord has sustained us and kept us going despite our weaknesses. He is faithful!

Angie and I have been to a couple of small conferences where we got the chance to remind Christians about the Great Commission and tell them about what the Lord is doing through National Missionaries in Asia:

Special mention goes to friend and supporter Reverend Paul Blackham, who we ran into at the CRE in Manchester. His fiery enthusiasm was an extremely powerful encouragement to us and we were very grateful for seeing him:

Helen White is adjusting well and has courageously dived into the training for her role in Partner Relations. It's a lot to take in, but she is trusting the Lord and is doing us all proud:

We are constantly reminded that it is prayer that will make the real difference in eternity. We can do all the work we want, but without the Lord it's futile fleshly activity. He is the one who will accomplish His will on earth. We've prayed together in our prayer room...

...and also outside of the prayer room! We realise the importance of bathing everything in prayer and keeping the Lord central in our everyday service.

We were wonderfully blessed by Elliot (our web developer) and Anthony (our printer) who visited the office recently to help us out. We consider them both part of our family and are always happy to see them whenever they can cut the time out of their busy schedules to make the trip from London to York.

While dog-sitting got the Kiriks' we discovered their dog's surprising ability of breaking wooden gates.

This prompted some impromptu home DIY:

In case anyone was wondering, we were not severely affected by the recent flooding in the North of England. York only caught the edge of the heavy rainfall and besides a high river and some re-directed traffic we were untouched by it.

Angie has very kindly taken to knitting a couple of Christmas stockings for us both, greatly impressing me with her creativity, skill, and diligence.

Also, not being fans of the traditional Halloween, we decided to use the opportunity to voice a sweeter message to any trick-or-treaters we night get at our door. Again I was very impressed at Angie's creativity:

We are about to enter an extremely busy time. We have the Renew Your Passion conference on Saturday 24th November in Manchester (have you booked your place yet?) and then KP Yohannan will be speaking at St Michael-le-Belfrey in York the day after.

Please pray for the Renew Your Passion conference, that the Lord would use KP Yohannan to encourage all who come and renew their passion for Jesus, for prayer, and for the unreached world. Pray that people who are spiritually dry would get refreshed, and that they would have a renewed understanding that the Great Commission is still ours, still not finished, and still urgent.

Thank you again for reading, and thank you for your love, prayers, support and friendship.

God bless you,

JP & Angie

Hello friends,

Thank you again for your prayers, love and support. You are enabling us to serve the Lord through Gospel for Asia here in York, and we appreciate your sacrifice and commitment to give and pray.

ONE Expo

Last week JP camped at the ONE (Grapevine) conference at the Lincolnshire Showground:

...it was a good time serving with Richard and Brenda again:

...and we were joined by Jennie, who proved to be an extremely effective Conference Rep:

We've been trying a new approach at the last few conferences. Instead of starting off by offering people a free copy of "Revolution of World Missions," we have been asking people what they are doing to make disciples and further the Great Commission. Our aim has been to get people to think about how many souls will be in heaven as a result of their lives - Brian calls it their "eternal footprint". We let them know that national missionary sponsorship is a great way for them to see more people come to know Christ as a result of their lives. We had 7 sponsorships at this conference! I took pictures of some of them:

The Office

It's been business as usual in the office, trying to raise senders from the UK church for national missionaries in Asia:

...Catherine's brother Richard has been Volunteering with us while he job searches. He's been a huge blessing and has proved himself to be a very faithful and diligent worker:

Renew Your Passion

On Saturday 24th November we will be holding our Renew Your Passion conference in Manchester:

...join us for a day of worship, prayer and teaching with KP Yohannan, the founder and president of Gospel for Asia. Come and renew your passion for prayer, for Jesus, and for the unreached. Mark the date in your diary! And click the picture for more info.

Annual Report

Gospel for Asia's 2011 Annual Report has arrived!

This great little booklet will tell you what the Lord did through Gospel for Asia last year. It was delayed because extra time was taken to determine what information was safe to publicise. If you haven't had one of these, e-mail jpdao@gfa.org with your full address and JP will send you one.

Personal Stuff

The Kiriks are away on sabbatical, their first real holiday in about 6 years! We were sad to say goodbye to them for 10 weeks but we are glad they will get some time off after serving so faithfully, diligently, lovingly and sacrificially, for so long.

We are house-sitting and dog-sitting for them in their absence. Rubi is an extremely playful dog, and we are also learning some basic parenting lessons :-)

We still have some time to hang out with the rest of the team now and then, and to be cooked for by them!

A kind friend recently gave us a great deal on a great car. We are now the proud owners of a 2005 Ford Fiesta 1.2, with only 16,400 miles on it. It's much cheaper to run than our previous car, and if the Lord tarries it should last us 10 years. Also, the boot doesn't fall on our heads.

Prayer for Judy Thrasher

Judy has been diagnosed with Hodgkins Lymphoma and is currently undergoing chemo-therapy. Tim's mother has come over from America for three months to help out in their home. We are scheduled to bring a meal this Wednesday. Judy values prayer for healing, strength and sleep.

Well, that's all for now. Thank you again for your prayers, it's a real blessing to know that we are being prayed for, and it's so encouraging to know that our family is so big. The work is great and widely spread, and we are separated on the wall, but truly our God fights for us.

God bless you all,

JP & Angie