A Prayer Update from Gary and Barb Bennett

1. Pray for our colleague Nick Pirolo who has just come back from home assignment and is working on accreditation for our University program CLIR. Praise for wisdom and discernment for him and the others as they meet with officials and try to figure out the way forward. We are reminded of the lyrics from CeCe Winan's song "move the unmovable, break the unbreakable, Lord we believe". It really is going to take moving the unmovable, but that is God's specialty.


2. Continue to pray for one of our NCM professors Alphonse and his radio teaching program. God is using him mightily, so pray for wisdom and direction for Alphonse as he continues to teach God's Word.

A Prayer Update From Catherine Coon

                                       

Personal

• Praise that my move from Fremont to Cottonwood went well.

• There is still much to do on the house, as well as much catch up from helping my mom move. I’d appreciate prayer for wisdom in handling all that needs to be done.
• Pray that I will settle in well and have a clear sense of how God would like me to be involved in the neighborhood, church, and larger community.


Hope Alive!
• Pray for a smooth transition of the executive director position of Hope Alive! from me to Caleb Smagacz at the end of the year.
• Pray for God’s guidance as we work on my job description for my new responsibilities with Hope Alive! after the transition.
• Pray that the Ugandan government will have a realistic plan to get all students back in school in January. Except for a few very special classes, schools have been closed for 19 months.
• We continue to provide educational classes for our students. Pray for the encouragement of all involved, that good learning will take place in encouraging and safe settings.
• Small acts of terrorism have been taking place in Uganda. Pray for safety for our students, staff, mentors, and their families.
• Pray that our students (and staff and mentors) will grow in their walk with God during these challenging times.

 

A Prayer Update from Jill Hostetler

1. Pray for our after-school Good News Clubs. Praise God we have been able to restart 4 clubs.

2. Pray for a 2 week course I am taking at the CEF International HQ (Sept 19-Oct 1).

3. Pray for many children to attend our outdoor neighborhood outreach at our CEF office in October.

A Prayer Update from Dougg and LeAnn Custer

Praises:

• Great Mobilization Ministries Team retreat full of praying for each other's ministries as well as for more workers, encouraging each other, and training to enhance our effectiveness. 

• The Ministry and Cultural Preparation Trainings this summer went very well - one was in person, and the other on Zoom. We all feel like we are hitting our stride!

Prayer Requests:

• For these missionaries who were trained and are nearing departure, that God would use the cultural and ministry training to make them better disciples in South America, Southeast and Central Asia, India, Japan, Europe and Africa. 

• Pray that God would provide visas and open borders for the 14 fully supported units excitedly awaiting deployment to their field of service.

• Decisions are being made to hire a mobilizer for those working in the Disciple Making Movement as well as a media mobilizer, someone who would produce videos, brochures, etc. for the mobilizers to use on campuses, in churches and at conferences. Pray for all the details to be worked out.

A Prayer Update from Sam and Jamie Hornbrook

                                              

1. We are grateful our daughter Nicole spent two months with us this summer while she worked for a company in California. The internet allows you to do things like that these days. Nicole is 20 years old and will be starting her Junior year of college at Purdue University in just a few days.

2. We continue to have discipleship classes with our next door neighbors. We meet with Rosi the nurse and the elderly lady, Tere. Both are very excited and grateful for the gospel. The Lady Marisol had a conflict with her mother, who is Tere, and has refused to attend the class for over a month. We pray she will humble herself and come back, but also trust the Lord to reveal what is in each person's heart.

3. The third wave of covid is filling up hospitals and taking the lives of extended family members of church families. We are thankful that we have not had a death because of Covid yet, in our church.

4. We continue to meet as a church but are back down to about half of our congregation attending as people are concerned about public events.

5. Praise the Lord with us for a church member who returned to the fellowship of the church after 2 and a half years of being church disciplined. The result is she is now a single mother, but has come back and given her testimony of repentance and restoration to the Church. We thank the Lord for bringing Paty back to Himself and to our church!

Thank you so much for praying for us and giving faithfully!
Blessings in Christ,
Sam and Jamie Hornbrook

A Prayer Update from Catherine Coon

1. My mom has successfully moved into independent living in a senior residence center and is settling in well. We are very thankful.

2. Hope Alive! students are doing much better with the tutoring that we are providing while schools are closed than they do in their very large classrooms (60 – 100+ kids). We are looking for ways to increase what we are able to offer as schools continue closed due to the pandemic.

3. The transition to a new executive director for Hope Alive! is moving forward well. Caleb Smagacz is in Uganda with his family. He and I continue to meet via Zoom. The expected date for handing off the baton is January 1, 2022. I will then focus on fund-raising, partner development, and curriculum development and hope to travel to Uganda two or three times a year for a few weeks. Please pray that the transition will be smooth.

Meditations on 1 Peter (Part 4): Engage

Often when we are experiencing hardship, our natural tendency can be to turn inward, focusing on our pain and isolating ourselves from God, the body of Christ, and those who sin against us. Often, we may spend hours crying, but we do not direct our cries to God (Hos. 7:14). We may think no person can understand the depth of our sorrow. We may simply have no words to express what we are feeling. We may feel too ashamed to draw near to God or others because of the devastating effects of sin in our lives. The last thing we feel like doing is interacting with someone who has hurt us. Even if we don’t actively retaliate, we very purposely avoid. However, Peter is clear that if we are going to glorify God in our suffering we must engage with both God and people.

Our relationship with God is the foundational relationship of our lives. The quality, depth, and intimacy of this relationship affects how we interact in all other relationships – with ourselves, with others, and with our circumstances. Peter makes it clear that we must actively engage with God. We can’t be passive in our relationship with God at any time, but especially in times of suffering, we have to be actively pursuing and cultivating our relationship with God. We must be continually turning to Him in humble dependence and trust.

Peter describes this active involvement with many different verbs throughout the book of 1 Peter. Peter encourages believers to rejoice in God’s mercy in causing us to be born again and giving us an inheritance. Peter tells us to hope in God (1 Pet. 1:13, 3:5). We are believers in God who call on Him as Father (1 Pet. 1:17, 21) We are to fear God (1 Pet. 1:17). We are to honor Christ as Lord. We are to humble ourselves under God’s mighty hand. These are more than just commands. They describe how we are to respond in our ongoing relationship with God.

Finally, we are to cast our cares on the Lord. He does care about us, and He does take care of us. We are to actively take our concerns to Him. We can talk to Him and know He hears. We can voice our questions. We can explain our concerns and ask for help. Then we must actively choose to trust Him and wait with hope for His strengthening and deliverance. This casting is not just a one-time prayer offered up as we then seek to solve our own problems in our own wisdom. In an ongoing relationship, we must engage with God in moment-by-moment dependence as we walk through suffering.

Secondly, as we walk through suffering, we also need to engage with other believers. We are involved in a brotherhood of suffering (1 Pet. 5:9), and we need each other. We must be encouraging and strengthening each other. In 1 Peter 4:8-11 Peter exhorts his readers, even in the midst of hardships, to love one another earnestly. Sometimes suffering provides us an excuse to back away from loving and serving others, but each believer is to use his gift to serve one another. God will supply the strength to serve. Sometimes our suffering may limit or shape how we can serve in the immediate context. That is ok. There is a mutuality in the one-anothering of the body of Christ. We should always, in some way, be both receiving from others and giving to others, and the degree and nature of this giving and receiving changes depending on our situation in life. What is important is that we be cultivating an attitude that acknowledges our need for the body of Christ and makes loving and serving one another the priority.

Finally, we are to actively engage with unbelievers or others who have sinned against us, even those who may be persecuting us. This is not a popular idea. One of the first things we teach our kids is to stay away from kids who aren’t kind to them. As adults we make rules about what behavior is acceptable from others if they want a relationship with us. Any relationship that costs more than it gives is likely to be abandoned pretty quickly. But 1 Peter is so clear about how to relate to difficult people. We are to follow the example of the Lord Jesus – both on the cross and throughout his whole life. He did not take vengeance. He didn’t revile those who reviled him. He didn’t slander or threaten. He didn’t return evil for evil. He didn’t fear them but feared God.

But that is not enough. It is not enough to refrain from evil. We must actively do good to those who harm us. We must bless those who curse us – not just ignore them. The way to overcome evil is by doing good (Rom. 12:21). We must learn to love our enemies. We need to grow so that concern for the welfare of their souls and God’s glory become more important than our concern for our personal rights. Peter is clear that a Christlike response to suffering provides a tremendous opportunity to display the glory of God (1Pet. 2:12, 3:1, 15-16). It also provides a powerful gospel witness, even causing the unbeliever to ask us about the hope we have (1 Pet. 3:15). Sometimes wise love will be difficult to discern in specific situations, but we know that the way is found in following in the footsteps of our Savior, who entrusted His soul to God and actively engaged with sinners.

1 Peter 4:19 offers a concise summary of Peter’s message on how to face suffering:

Therefore, let those who suffer according to God’s will entrust their souls to a faithful Creator while doing good.

Kim Anderson