The Periodically

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.

                                        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 provi...

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.

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. ...

                                                         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 live...

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.

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 circumstanc...

Peter encouraged his readers to expect suffering. He encouraged them to embrace suffering – to accept it willingly because it is God’s will for His people and because of the opportunities that it provides. The teaching of Scripture is that suffering for the sake of Christ is a gift of grace (Phil. 1:28) that brings great reward (Phil. 3:9-10, 1 Pet. 4:14). Peter also encouraged the suffering Christians to follow the example of the Lord Jesus and entrust themselves to God. To entrust means to “hand something over to someone (usually a right or authority).” In entrusting ourselves to God, we give up our right and authority to do whatever we want to with our lives. We give up our right to do whatever necessary to make our lives turn out the way we want. We hand over the responsibility for the care, keeping, and outcome of our lives to God. 1 Peter 5:6 speaks of this attitude of submission. “Humble yourselves therefore, under the mighty hand of God.” Humbling myself means giving up the rig...

To expect suffering is the clear teaching of 1 Peter and the rest of Scripture. It catches me off guard less often now, but Peter also encourages the believers to embrace suffering. An attitude of embracing suffering is essential if we are going to respond to suffering in a way that glorifies God, but this has been one of the hardest aspects in my journey of developing my theology of suffering. To embrace means to “to take or receive gladly, to accept willingly, to avail oneself of (an opportunity).” Accept willingly? See it as an opportunity? Throughout my life I have struggled and pushed back against suffering. I have tried to avoid it. I have railed angrily against those who have caused my suffering and against the God who ordained it. I suspect I am not the only one who has felt this way. What makes it so hard to embrace suffering? Some reasons are obvious. Whether physical, emotional, relational, or spiritual, suffering is painful - sometimes mild, sometimes excruciating, but neve...

- Barb is having surgery for impacted sinuses on Aug 3. Pray for a successful surgery and that it may resolve some of the issues she has been experiencing. - Pray for our colleagues in Rwanda, the Fergusons. They have only been back on the field since April and now are the only WorldVenture unit on the field. - Pray for the need for a new director for New Creation Ministries. - Pray for Barb as she still needs housing in the St. Paul area while she does her internship with the St. Paul School District.

How long, O Lord, how long! Where are You? Why don’t You help me? Why don’t you answer my prayers? Why do I still struggle with this after all these years? How long, O Lord? How long can this go on? When will this be over? When will this stop affecting my family? Lord, why so much suffering? Why? Why so much pain and sickness and death among those I love and care about? Over the last couple of months these words have come out of my mouth as I have struggled to process all that is going in my own life and in the world around me. So much suffering and so much sin. Looking around, all is not as it should be. How are we to think about these things? Back in the fall while attending a virtual counseling conference, I bought the book Dark Clouds, Deep Mercy: Discovering the Grace of Lament by Mark Vroegop. Like many of the books I buy, it sat on my desk in a growing stack waiting to be read – until one day a friend called it to my attention again. I decided to dust it off and start reading. T...

1). Discover WorldVenture Weekend May 21-23:          -  Pray for the 12 attendees seeking whether God would have them serve in missions with WorldVenture.          -  Pray for those hosting and presenting that weekend, that God would guide and give wisdom, not only for the formal presentations, but individual, informal interactions and conversations.         -   Pray , too, that if the Lord has any others to be invited, He would make that known.  2) Student Mobilization Philippines Team Debrief May 26-29:         -   Pray for Dougg's team members who will be leading the Debrief, that they can see, hear and understand what is being said and how to help.          -  Pray for all the logistics that are being worked out.          -  Pray that God will use this Debrief to encourage, help and energize ...

Below are the words shared by Pastor Ben on Sunday, 4/25 related to evangelism and Bethany Community Church: 2 Timothy 4:1–2 says [1] I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and by his appearing and his kingdom: [2] preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, and exhort, with complete patience and teaching. As believers, we get the joy of being a part of God's evangelism ministry to the world--telling other beggars where we, as beggars, found bread. What a delight to be a part of God's mission. Does He need us? No. But He delights in including us in the mission. Think of a father and young son working on a project in the garage. The good father tells his son--come over here and help me drive this nail. The son, smiling from ear to ear, wraps his hands around the hammer, the father wraps his hands around his son's hand, and the work begins. Both delighting in the work. The Great commission ...

Several years ago, when I first heard the term “theology of suffering” I thought, ‘Hhmm, not my favorite topic.” But as I listened, I became more aware that God’s Word addresses the subject often and that I needed to let God’s Word shape my thinking about the topic of suffering. Shortly after this, the Lord brought me into my own period of intense personal suffering, and I quickly realized that whatever my professed theology of suffering was, my practical theology of suffering was simply, “Run the other direction as quickly as possible!”In my own journey to make sense of how a good, sovereign God connects with the intense personal pain of suffering, I have often turned to the book of 1 Peter, written to encourage those facing difficult times to remain faithful. Recently I led a Bible study through the book of 1 Peter and was once again challenged to evaluate how I think about and respond to hardships in my life. As I’ve studied and meditated on 1 Peter over the last nine weeks, four wo...

Remember that the mind is the watchman of the soul, commanded to judge and determine whether something is good and pleasing to God, so that the affections can long for it and the will can choose it. If the mind fails to identify as sin as evil, wicked, vile and bitter, the affections will not be safe from clinging to it, nor will the will from giving consent. This is one side of the castle wall, the first line of defense: to keep in mind that every sin is a forsaking of God (Jeremiah 2:19), to never forget the polluting, corrupting, defiling power of sin-to be shaken to the core by how much God loathes sin. When Paul said Christ's love compelled him (2 Corinthians 5:14), he described the other side of this first defense: the mind must stay fixed on God, especially on his grace and goodness towards us. His love propels, fuels, drives us to obey. It is the fountain of our obedience, and our highest motive to finding out what pleases the Lord and doing it. In order to walk before God,...

  Here are some ways that you can be praying for Jill Hostetler as she continues to serve the ʟᴏʀᴅ through CEF (Child Evangelism Fellowship): 1. Please pray for our online discipleship ministry to children. We have 12 students enrolled. 2. Please pray for our 6 students that we have taking our Teaching Children Effectively Level 1 Course. 3. Please pray for our staff as we begin to pray and look for summer missionaries to serve this summer.

  Dear brothers and sisters in Christ at Bethany Community Church, 1. The virus is hitting Mexico hard. This is not only reflected on the World Meter, which shows Mexico as third highest in the world in total numbers of deaths, behind the US. and Brazil, but our church members share regularly how friends and family are dying from it. This past week, a cousin of a church member and a former church member died. Many prayer requests get shared on our church's media link, every week, of family and friends that have been admitted to the hospital, are sick or have died. Thank you for praying for Mexico and our church. We thank the Lord for no deaths in our church, till now. Many have had COVID, including Jamie and me, but we have all recovered. 2. Because of the conditions here in Mexico, especially here in the Mexico City area, all our church services have been back on line, since the middle of December. The income of our families is also way down. We pray for the Lord to provide for ea...

Below are some ways that you can pray for Dougg and LeAnn Custer as they serve the ʟᴏʀᴅ during the COVID-19 pandemic: 1) On Febr. 15th, we will be part of the committees interviewing three candidates for acceptance by WorldVenture. Pray for wisdom and unity and God's clear leading as we try to ensure (as much as is humanly possible) that these candidates are a good fit for both cross-cultural work and service together with WorldVenture.  2) Following the interviews, Pre-Field ministry & Orientation will again be held virtually Febr. 22-24. These are three intensive days of training and guiding these new WorldVenture workers into the organization and then into their next steps of Partner Development. Please also pray for the following: For those organizing and refining the training to make it the best it can be, including the coordination of the sessions and the scheduling of presenters For the presenters to speak in such a way that not only communicates important information, b...

BCC family, As we head into 2021, I thought this email from a fellow BCCer would encourage you. I have permission to share, but the writer asked to remain anonymous because children are mentioned--though the writer would be happy to discuss face to face. You can contact me if you are interested. May God continue to work in all our hearts for His glory. Pastor Ben -- 2020 has been a year of Joy. 2020 has been a year where my heart's brokenness has bubbled to the surface. Pridefulness has been revealed in my heart in glaring ways. My lack of control has been set before my face in profound ways. My children have struggled in ways that were too big and too dark for me to help with. I struggled with despair and begged God to take my life instead of allowing me to exist in this present state of despair. But then God revealed HIMSELF more. He took great lengths to meet me where I was and gently turned my face to look at him. He took me from a place of false belief. I know he has called me...

“…if my people who are called by my name humble themselves, and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land.”  This verse, (2 Chronicles 7:14), is familiar to many. Supposedly President Dwight Eisenhower opened his Bible to the verse during his 1953 inauguration. What’s not generally known is that this passage records God’s response to King Solomon’s prayer of dedication of the temple as recorded in 2 Chron. 6:36-42. I realize that this is a specific promise, made to Israel, not to America, however I believe our nation is in desperate need of this same kind of promise from God at this time in our history, perhaps like no other. We are in an ethical war that threatens our very existence. Ironically, a myriad of voices cry for justice while at the same time, motivate prejudice, oppression, violence, injustice and anarchy. All of which is in stark violation of our nation’s long-established ethical...