Friday, June 26, 2020

Please Pray for Dougg and LeAnne Custer


Here are some ways that you can be praying for Dougg and LeAnne Custer as they serve the Lord during the COVID-19 situation:
1) Praise God for providing an experienced recruiter that will begin mid-July. Please continue to pray for someone to handle our online Learning Management System.
   
 2) Praise God for a couple who was appointed to Black Forest Academy to help with the residence program. July 6th we will be interviewing - via Zoom - a couple who is interested in a central Asian country and would appreciate your prayers for all to go well.
    
3) There were 5 other candidates who decided they want to wait until November, when we hope to do our interviews in person. Pray that they will follow through on their desire to serve cross-culturally.
   
 4) Dougg's training team has been busy discussing what sessions of the first pre-field training are vital and how to best to teach them via Zoom July 13-16. They hope to have the new appointees come to headquarters later in the summer or early fall for the remainder of the training, which gives them the opportunity to bond with each other and our trainers. Please pray there won't be any snags as this is a new endeavor due to the Corona virus pandemic and everyone is a little concerned how it will go.
   
 5) Dougg and I, along with two other Mobilization staff members, attended an on-line Cultural Intelligence course a couple weeks ago. This material is presented to appointees during the Cultural and Ministry Preparation training before they leave for the field. It was extremely interesting and we are thankful for the generosity of our partners so that we could participate. Please pray for guidance as we prepare how best to pass on the valuable tools we learned.
   
 6) WorldVenture, like most churches and ministries, is dependent on generous giving, which has decreased during this pandemic, leading unfortunately to a few office staff being released. Pray that God will provide through whatever means He desires to use, to keep WorldVenture able to fulfill its mandate of sending global workers to the billions who don't know Jesus. Praise God with us that the giving to our ministry has remained constant so far.

Wednesday, June 17, 2020

Please Pray for Dave and Carol Beakley


Here are some ways that you can be praying for Dave and Carol Beakley as they server the Lord during COVID-19:
  1. Pray for wisdom as we strive to ensure that all of our students have enough data to "zoom" classes coming up in mid-July. Our next semester begins at that time.
  2. Pray for patience as we await our government's new restrictions and instructions on whether churches are allowed to meet. Currently, we can only meet with the conditions that 50 people or less meet at once, all with masks, 1.5m apart, no singing at all, no fellowship. Pretty tough conditions as this include whether you are inside or outside.
  3. Pray for opportunities to share the gospel with the lost. With church at such limitations, and people afraid to go out and speak with one another, the truth is being stifled.

Wednesday, June 10, 2020

Please Pray for Sam and Jamie Hornbrook



Here are some ways that you can be praying for Sam and Jamie Hornbrook as they serve the Lord during this fragile time:

1. This past week, David Worrel, the son of dear friends of ours in Lafayette, IN died. He was 25 years old. He died due to complications of his severe handicaps. He was born at 1.6 lbs and in the 24th week of the pregnancy. He and his twin brother, Kyle, survived being born so early but David had more severe developmental problems. He was confined to a wheelchair all his life and could never talk, but he could communicate through sign language. He became a very sweet boy, taught us a great deal about having joy and being grateful even with multiple surgeries, chronic pain, and limitations. We will miss him. He and his siblings are like nephews and nieces to us. In fact, they call us Uncle Sam and Aunt Jamie. We couldn't go back for the funeral because of the restrictions on travel right now. In fact, we were scheduled to be there so I could take a master's class and we would have been there, but the class was done on-line also, because of the virus and travel restrictions.

We would appreciate your prayers for our good friends Scott and Cynday Worrell, David's parents who are especially feeling the loss right now. Today was the funeral. We watched it on-line and it was very God honoring. We're thankful for that. 

This is a very long prayer request, so if you need to make it short or not include it we will just appreciate your's and Ben praying with us for the Worrells.


2. Our church here in Mexico City seems to be doing well through the quarantine. Two of our members lost their jobs, but none have had the virus yet. Our church helps 7 families, every month, by buying food for them to help with their needs. During the pandemic this has been an even more vital ministry. Pray for special provision for all of them. We gave them all fiancial gifts this month.


3. Mexico reported the highest number of new cases as well as deaths 3 days ago. We are certain that there are two or three times the number of deaths than reported because of the lack of tests. Mexico City is the worst hot spot for the virus as you might expect.


4. We continue to do our services on facebook live. We have improved our equipment to make better transmissions and recordings. These services have been very succesful in reaching new people with as many as 1000 views on one of our recordings. We know some of the ones watching are from connections we had in the past that did not stay with the church as we moved from location to location. Some are not believers yet, so pray for our internet ministry to be used to bring people to Christ.

We pray you're transition back to doing church together will go well. We praise God with you for the way you new auditorium is coming along!!!

Thanks so much for your partnership with us and for praying for us!!!
Sam and Jamie