Tuesday, January 24, 2017

What are we up to on furlough?

Why do we have a furlough? Sometimes we do not really want to have a furlough, but in reality, it is needed. Furloughs are based out of Acts, when Paul returned from his missionary journeys to report to the churches about all that God was doing. We have some main purposes that our mission board puts out for us to accomplish during furlough:
1. Rest
2. See family
3. Report to churches
4. Recruit new missionaries
5. Raise money
6. Use time for education
7. Do ministry from here

People understand furlough to mean rest and so some missionaries do not like to use that word and might go with home assignment as their term for furlough. I agree with them, but I do think we should rest. I know we needed it the last couple of weeks and have enjoyed sleeping a little more and having a more relaxed day.

We love seeing family! This last week Sarah's sister Anna was in town with her son Judah and we were able to spend a lot of time with them as we stay at Sarah's parent's barn while we are here. We get to go see my brother in New Hampshire the first weekend of February and meet his children (twins three years old, one baby not quite a year old yet), whom my girls have never met! Then in the end of March we will head up to Michigan and meet a new set of twins my other brother and his wife had this last year!



We are reporting to a few supporting churches and one new church while we are here. So we will be in Georgia, North Carolina, Virginia and Michigan. If you are semi-close to us in Chattanooga, let me know and we can schedule more.

We need new missionaries in Brazil, especially with us in the Sertão! If you are interested, let us know and we would love to talk to you. We need football coaches for a quick mission trip the end of May if you are interested in that!

We do need to raise some money this trip. We are short around 200 dollars in monthly support and would love to raise the $30,000 needed to get us moved into our Cetak building! (click to watch a video tour of the building)

My main projects these days have to do with my master's program. Fortunately the program integrates your present work into your studies and has already helped me so much practically speaking!

As I work on that homework we are still doing some of the work we normally do on the field. I am using these days to develop the Servant Leaders program for the US and for Brazil. If you are interested in having a seminar in your church, let me know! The site for Servant Leaders is servantleaderstraining.com and has great resources! This is the program we will be integrating in our church and that we would like to help other churches implement. There is actually an external platform that helps with mentoring leaders, going through classes and facilitating learning. There is an application that goes with it as well. Please let me know if you are interested!

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