Thank you for your continued faithful prayers and friendship.  I just want to take a few minutes to catch you up on how your prayers were answered!  After a long, 4 week quarantine, Jamie, Emma and I hit the ground running!  God gave us an amazing 6-week, action packed summer.
 
We started off by reuniting with many and spending a time with our leaders.  Then, in preparation for our Island Jams outreaches we began to equip the church with four-weeks of evangelistic training during our Thursday Night Bible Study. 
 
This summer was our 16^th Island Jams tournament!  We held 2 different tournaments this year – 18 and under and then a 19+ tournament. Both tournaments were well attended, and the Gospel was clearly presented by our local leaders.  As we finished, we distributed decision cards which allowed the players and spectators to let us know if they would like us to visit them and explain more clearly how they can have their sins forgiven.   It was so exciting to see God moving in many hearts.

The day after each tournament, we mobilized into groups of 4 young people and began to visit those who had expressed a desire to learn more about God. It was such an energizing and exciting time as we came back together to share stories of how seeds were planted, watered and even some that put their faith in Jesus! God is good and is growing His church one heart at a time.
 
As a final capstone to our packed but short summer, we had a baptism at the K.B. Bridge and 11 people shared their testimony of God’s grace in their lives and were baptized. It was such an exciting day, and many more visitors came and heard the amazing grace our great God.

I want to also catch you up on what God is doing in our leaders.  As we mentioned in the past, God used Ruetei Baiei in an amazing way while all of the American Missionaries were in the States due to furlough and closed borders.  For 8 months, Ruetei led the church and many people stepped up and ministered in ways that could not have happened with us there.  It was amazing to see how God used “problems” for the good of the church!  It showed our people that they CAN and SHOULD lead…and they are! It also confirmed in our team the need to make a deliberate shift from leading to coaching.
 
Ruetei was just married to Lauren Morgan this weekend at Harvest Baptist Church, and they will be living in Guam for the next year as Lauren finishes her teaching contract for the year.

Another young man, Mclane Masao, graduated from Harvest in May and is now serving with us as an Assistant Pastor.  It is exciting to invest in these young men at a new level.  Our goal will be to help them get ordained and continue to discover their unique role in advancing the Gospel. 

We have several more young men that are close to finishing their Bible training in Guam and are in the “leadership pipeline”.  These are exciting times, and we anticipate God to do great things in the days ahead.

As many of you know, we have been looking at reaching our “Judea” – our nearby neighbors in Indonesia.   We came back to the States to drop Emma (our youngest) for college and then on our return flight, planned to stop in Ternate, Indonesia for about 6 weeks to explore the possibilities of advancing the Gospel there.  Our tickets were scheduled for September 15^th, but about a month ago they cancelled the tickets again (for a third time) because of Covid. So, Lord willing, we will return directly to Palau on September 18^th with the possibility of traveling to Ternate in January. Please pray with us to know God’s timing and what His plans are for us on this next phase.
 

Please continue to pray:
Leaders – wisdom to shift from “leading to coaching”
Pastoral Training Housing – Permits and planning as we seek to build a small bungalow for our pastoral interns
Land – God’s provision and wisdom as we continue to seek land for the church
Missions– Direction, timing and open doors as we seek to reach our nearby neighbors with the Gospel