Missio Colonia | Kevin and Kathi in Cologne, Germany

I thought I'd update everyone on what's going on. May has been a slow and arduous month. I mentioned earlier that we were having a discouraging string of cancellations a few weeks ago. That has been followed by general difficulty in meeting with people because of graduation weekend and the holiday coming up. But, despite these roadblocks, we've seen a good number of new supporters, so praise God for that. I think by the time we get to the end of the month, we'll be at 37%. But, in order to make the training in the fall, we'll have to sail at a clip of about 8% per month for the next four months. Please be praying for that.

June's going to be busy. We've already planned three support trips: one to Upper Sandusky, one to Chicago, and the last down to Athens. We hope that these will be fruitful. And in between all of that we need to meet with a lot of people. It's going to be an interesting month.

I've been reading a really good biblical theology of missions lately, and the section I'm going through now is about Paul's theology of Christian mission. In particular, Paul writes in Romans 1:5 that he received "grace and apostleship to call people from among all the Gentiles to the obedience that comes from faith." This idea of the obedience of faith really struck me. I think we in America tend to be very results oriented. In relation to missions, we want to see people being saved. But, that's not the whole story.

We admire Paul's visionary missionary efforts to unreached peoples, but we tend to overlook that he spent a significant amount of his missionary career building up the churches he help found. With this in mind, God has impressed upon me the fact that our ministry isn't just going to be about "conversion numbers." It's about building up the body of Christ "until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ." (Eph. 4:13).

It's been a really strange week in the world of support. God has really met us in our discouragement that past few days and has brought along some more supporters to bring our percentage up to 34%. He has constantly been reminding us how faithful He is to provide for His people. But, then on the other side, we've had some frustrating circumstances in our attempts to meet with people. In the past week we have had four or five appointments all of which have had to cancel. I can't figure out if it's our bad luck or whether there's some spiritual opposition to all of the dead ends we've been experiencing. It's especially difficult because we feel like these few free evenings we have to raise support are wasted. Please pray for us. Pray that God would enable all of the people we're connecting to meet with us.

Sorry I haven't updated this blog in a while. I have no excuses. Kathi and I have really been struggling with a support raising funk recently. The ebb and flow of discouragement has creeped back up. But, even just today, God has shown us that He is walking with us through it all. There were a few things around the house this afternoon that caused Kathi to reach a breaking point. I tried to comfort her reminding her that we will get to Germany and we won't be in this uncomfortable place forever. Barely five minutes after I told her this we got a phone call from a couple we had met with a few weeks ago. They had decided to support us monthly! It was such a comforting reminder that God is near us and working on our behalf even when He seems so far away.