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Hello Praying Friends!
Can you believe it’s almost November? Time is flying by here in South Africa. The academic year for Levi and Chloe is starting to wind down, but there are many end-of-year functions and concerts coming up in November, so though its winding down, they aren’t slowing down! They have particularly been enjoying their extracurricular sports lately. Levi has been doing swimming, field hockey, and (his favorite) rugby; while Chloe has loved learning netball and gymnastics. Both are really starting to pickup the Afrikaans language; they’ll likely soon be teaching us! We have been so pleased with the schooling situation with Levi and Chloe and thank God for each of their schools.
Baby Lily is doing really great! She is now about 7 weeks old and growing like crazy. Last week at her 6-week checkup, she has almost doubled in weight (from 2.7 kgs to 4.5 kgs) and grown in length by 11 centimeters! She loves to cuddle, which is really good because it seems like all of Knysna loves this little girl and she gets lots of visitors! We are so grateful Lily is here. As you know, it had been a long and stressful pregnancy, so we are so happy that we can hold her in our arms!
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On the ministry side of things, we are just as busy as always! The life group that meets in our home every week is growing and consistent. We are getting close to finishing up our study through the Gospel of John. It has been an incredible time of growth together as we have been learning especially about the person of Christ through John’s gospel.
Cornerstone Fellowship, our “church-in-formation,” continues to meet on Sunday evenings. We and our partners, Brett & Brittni Stowe, are excited about the families that have been walking this path with us as we seek to plant a new church in the heart of downtown Knysna. We are averaging 5 family units each week and Brett has been teaching through the doctrine of the church. But for the last couple weeks and until mid-November, Brett has been on a short trip back to the US, so Caleb has been preaching a complimentary sub-series, looking at some of the side characters in the early church and their unique contribution to the mission of the church (Barnabas, Philip, Aquila and Priscilla, and John Mark). We are excited to see how the Lord guides our group and by faith, we’re trusting that he will make His will known to us as we seek to follow Jesus together!
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Terrah’s a Capella choir, Resound, has 4 performances coming up in November, two of which are fundraisers for the local chapters of Hospice. The choir has been hard at work practicing for several months now and we’re excited to begin actual performances! Our theme is called Stages, A Journey Through Life. We are reminded of Ecclesiastes 3:1, “For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven,” so we are singing about the various phases and seasons of life, including growing up, leaving home, finding love, growing old. So please pray for Resound and for the success of our concert season!
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Terrah’s leading of the Embark teen girls bible study continues with the help of Brittni Stowe. And recently she and one of our ministry partners, Kristen Golson, have started another mid-week bible study for ladies, and they are currently studying the book of James.
Our involvement with the Embark Teen ministry continues with our periodic youth events. This weekend our youth group is all gathering to watch the final of the Rugby World Cup. Once every 4 years, like the Soccer world cup, we’ve been watching with great excitement South Africa’s national team advance to the very end the tournament. So this Saturday, the South African Springboks are facing off against England in the final! If you hear shouting all the way in North America, don’t worry, its just us cheering on the Boks!
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We are still waiting to here from the Department of Home Affairs regarding our volunteer visa renewal extensions, which we submitted about 10 weeks ago now. Please continue to pray for this process, we were very much hoping to have this resolved sooner, particularly as we are coming close to traveling back to the US! There seems to be a path to permanent residency opening up to us, but that is a longer conversation (and quite an expense!) that we will update everyone on in the future. Hopefully, in the longer-term, we will not have to deal with this renewal process every three years.
But speaking of coming to the US, our travel plans are coming together for our 3-month visit. We have plane tickets already purchased, which was made much more affordable by a few of you our supporters who donated air miles. Thank you so much! We are departing South Africa on November 29th (so under a month away now!), and will be in the US until the 2nd of March, 2020. We haven’t been back to the US in over three years, so for most of December and through the holidays, we will be spending some much-needed time with family! We are so looking forward to being with them through this special time of year!
But in January and February, our focus will shift to fundraising. As you know, we have been delaying our return to do some necessary support-raising until after Lily was born. So we are already scheduling meetings and times to present our ministry well into February. Because our time-frame is so short, we have to be very strategic about our travels. Unfortunately, for this trip, we have to stay in the Southeast of the US, mostly in Florida and the Carolinas. But we would love to see as many of you as we can! So please reach out to us via email, Facebook or on WhatsApp and we can set something up even now.
As this is primarily a fund-raising trip, we wanted to give you an idea of our support levels and what will still need to be raised over those couple of months. As you probably remember, our personal support has undergone a planned reduction in mid-2019, as one of our main supporter’s commitment came to an end (for more details about our funding model, click here for more information, which we had written about a year ago). So for the last few months, we have watched God move through his people to provide for the shortfall in our budget as we had to wait until Lily’s birth to return to the US for fundraising. But the time is coming when we need to raise up more committed monthly supporters to our team. Below is what we are projecting our need to be at beginning in January 2020. So over January and February, we are trusting God that he will fill the 34% remaining to get us back to being 100% funded.
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Special, one-time gifts are always incredibly helpful, but we are very specifically in need of additional monthly partners. So related to this, we have three requests. First and foremost, would you pray for us as we re-embark on the support-raising journey? We have seen God work in amazing ways before, and we are confident he will do it again! Second, if you have been praying about partnering with us on a monthly basis, will you consider committing even now? Every little bit that comes in now is less that needs to be raised next year. Just click the “support us” button below. And finally, we are already recruiting a handful of families in our target areas to host small fund-raising gatherings, thereby helping us expand the network of people to present our ministry to. If you are interested in hosting a meeting for us, or would at least want some more details about what this might look like, would you please reply to this email? We would love to schedule a meeting with you! It would be a huge, tangible blessing to partner with us in this way.
We look forward to seeing as many of you as possible in just a few short weeks! Thank you for your continual prayers for our family and ministry. It is a privilege to serve the cause of the gospel here in Knysna!
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Leveraging business and music for the glory of God among the nations in Knysna, South Africa!
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