The Periodically

Please be praying for Dougg and LeAnn Custer during COVID-19: Praise:  Our daughter, Katrina, who teaches at Black Forest Academy (BFA), is out of quarantine and with us for a few days as she begins her year-long home assignment. Every 6th year, she has to deregister and leave Germany for 366 days in order to keep her US social security. Pray for her as she is seeking God’s will about returning to BFA or going to another mission school. She is also in need of more financial partners. Dougg and his team are happy that the decision has been made for an in-person Discover WorldVenture Weekend on October 23 – 25! Of course, new protocols will be in place, and it will look a little different than previous weekends. But it is anticipated that it will be a meaningful time for those who attend.  Prayer: For people who receive invitations to come to the weekend; space is limited to 20 For safety and good health in travel and during the meetings themselves For those who are organizing...

  Below are some ways that you can be praying for Mark and Charity during this turbulent time: We praise the Lord for a good opportunity to reengage with our house church in China. Mostly due to security issues, we had stopped attending last fall. Meeting with them via Zoom starting this spring has been a great opportunity to continue ministry to the pastor, parents, and Sunday School teachers who we meet with each month. We are thankful for the continued translation work at the IRC office. We have recently finished up and formatted for addition to the Chinese Bible Study Toolbox, a commentary on Hebrews by Homer Kent, as well as a Bible Atlas. We are currently working on nine commentaries which are at different stages in the translation/editing process and about 10 other books and resources. Please pray for a continued blessing on our staff and that these would be completed well and be a blessing to our Chinese brother and sisters. We are thankful for the ministry opportunities we...

- NCM LEADERSHIP: Please join us in prayer as we seek God regarding the leadership vacuum at New Creation Ministries. We believe that in God’s perfect timing, He will provide someone, or enable someone already on staff, to rise to the occasion and lead the school forward through the accreditation process and program development. Our missionary colleagues responsible for these tasks are currently out of the country…one on home assignment in the US and the other one stranded in Brazil due to Covid-19 restrictions. Our long term goal is to have a Rwandan in this position rather than a missionary. One of the most challenging requirements in this process of accreditation is finding Africans with PHDs to be on staff. - REOPENING CHURCHES: Pray for wisdom for churches here to know what to do about trying to meet all the new government requirements in order to reopen. It feels as though churches are being held to a higher standard than every other organization. Requirements have been cha...

Pray for wisdom for our leadership as we seek to open up our church services. Currently, we are only allowed to have 50 people in a service (total, including preacher, worship, and sound/deacon people). No singing is allowed, and masks are compulsory. An attendance roster must be completed, along with ID's and temperatures. Full sanitization required before and after. Very restrictive. The people here in RSA seem to be very afraid of the virus. We are hoping to open in a couple of weeks as we put our plan together. Much wisdom is needed as there are folks on both sides of the spectrum here.

I continue to talk with/meet with parents with wayward children. As parents, our hearts grieve for our kids who think they can find more joy in the things of this world as opposed to the things of God. We want to model the father of the prodigal son. The son remembered his father's kindness. That kindness drew the prodigal home. At the same time, we recognize that we can be the same kind father or mother to all our kids, and God allows some to respond to spiritual things and some to not respond. It's God that does the work. We hope to be the instruments in His hands to bring about change in our kids, but sometimes He allows our kids to be wayward to expose our pride that we, as parents, think we can "make" our children respond to the gospel. He crushes us as parents and strips us of our idols to force us to consider Him as sufficient...as glorious...and able to change us and our kids without our prideful recipes that we erroneously think can change hearts. “God is no...