Dear Friend,

Wearing traditional Christmas crowns because God crowns all believers with glory and honor, giving us dominion over the works of His hands.

As 2016 comes to a close, Lisa and I want to thank you for being a part of our journey over the past year. This season of transition is positioning us for exciting new ministry opportunities. It is a huge blessing for us to be on mission with God here in Scotland. As you pray and partner with us you are able to share in that blessing too.

Wonderful Christmas

Our first Christmas here in Scotland was truly a wonderful experience. Christmas landed on a Sunday this year. So we started the day at Glen Aros, which is our new church home. It was a lovely service. Christmas carols alternated with scripture passages as a way of telling the nativity story. It was a privilege for both Lisa and I to take part in reading passages from the Bible for the service.

Lisa & Chris reading scripture as part of the Christmas service at church.

After church we enjoyed Christmas dinner with the Joseph family. If you remember, they moved to Dumfries so they can help us with the Bible college. It was a time of fellowship and a fabulous way to round out our holiday.

Later in the week we met for coffee with pastor Sandy Jamieson from Lighthouse church here in Dumfries. It was an extremely encouraging meeting. Sandy is very positive about the new Charis Bible College location we will be opening. And he’s excited for the prospect of working with Charis mission teams here in Dumfries.

Working on some of the more mundane aspects of ministry has occupied much of the rest of our time. These less exciting tasks include things like catching up on our bookkeeping and whatnot. Our goal is to get all our year end paperwork taken care of as quickly as we can. Then we can focus on the more exciting parts of the ministry work ahead of us in the new year.

First Priorities for 2017

One of the big questions we get concerns the location for the school. Many have asked where we plan to open. Beyond knowing it will be in Dumfries, it is still a bit premature for us to try and nail down a specific location at this point.

For one thing, leasing a facility this far ahead of our opening date would be unwise. In addition there are some legal pieces which are still being put in place.

James & Khandu moved their family to Dumfries to be available to help with the Bible College.
(And they are great cooks too!)

Some things about the United Kingdom are not so united. For example, Scotland is a completely separate legal jurisdiction for overseeing charities. Andrew Wommack Ministries Europe (AWME) sponsored our visas to be here. They are registering with the Office of the Scottish Charity Regulator (OSCR for short). Approval by OSCR will allow the Bible College to legally operate here in Scotland.

They expect to hear back next month and we hope to have full OSCR approval at that time. Please pray that we will continue to find favor with the government officials as we move forward in the process. Also pray that that the approval comes through quickly.

Once AWME receives OSCR approval our work starts in earnest. We will be able to begin marketing the opening of the school here in Dumfries. Until then we are somewhat limited in what we can do here beyond meeting with folks in person.

In the meantime, Lisa and I see that it would be good for us to focus on getting our UK drivers licenses in the first part of the year. We will need to get UK licenses sometime within the first twelve months we are here.

Passing our driving tests in the first part of the year just makes sense. From what we understand the testing process is a bit more challenging than back in the USA. Therefore we will sign up for some driving lessons to ensure we are ready and can pass the test the first time. That seems to us like a good use of our time.

So that’s something you can pray for us about.

Finance Update

That brings us to the status of partnership. We are so blessed by the partners of NewCREEations Ministries who enabled us to get this far. Our expenses were unusually high for the past two months during this transition process, as I’m sure you can appreciate. We had several one-time costs for things like visa applications, airline flights, hotel and other travel costs, setting up a new household overseas entirely from scratch, and the list goes on. Most everything is more expensive here compared to Colorado. Though there are a few things which cost less like groceries and cell phone service.

God has many people here in Scotland waiting to hear the balanced message of grace and faith, spirit and truth.

Fortunately every expense so far has been covered by our generous partners.

Even so, we currently sit at approximately half of the $5,000 we need in monthly partnership. As you likely recall, this covers things such as eating, sleeping, “in country” travel costs, computer upkeep, etc.

Lisa and I know by faith that God has already provided what we need for this. If you haven’t already, you can partner with us and join in sharing the blessing of what God is already accomplishing here in Scotland. Click here for our secure online giving form where you can select your local currency.

We speak a blessing over your life as we head into 2017. We declare that this next year will be more prosperous for you by every measure – in your health, in your relationships, in your finances, and in the personal freedom and peace you experience as you move deeper in your relationship with God.

Blessings,

Chris & Lisa Cree

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P.S. Friend you may not already know, but right before we left Colorado last month I published my first book, Church Websites: How to Communicate the Gospel Effectively in a Social Media World.

I wrote it to help people desiring to reach people online but who don’t have any idea how to get started. It's also for those who started a website only to find that they don’t have any idea how to get anyone to visit their site. It shares the same proven strategies and tools that I have been teaching my web clients for over ten years. It’s available at both Amazon and the Apple iBooks store.

Please join us in prayer that sales of the book will continue to increase. We want to bless people more with success through the strategies and tools they learn about in the book.