GLOBAL MISSIONS

Local and Regional Updates: 

• We hosted a summer retreat in our home for New England senior pastors and their spouses. It was fantastic! We’re praising the Lord for how we saw joy and refreshment returning for so many as they encountered God’s presence and the goodness of being together.
• The teens we are discipling locally have been training in how to hear God’s voice for themselves, how to share God’s story, and how to talk about what God has done in their lives with someone who doesn’t know Jesus yet.
• We launched a 10-month gap-year program for young adults that is high levels of discipleship investment as well as missionary training. We are excited to be recruiting high-capacity young leaders for next year and praying for financial provision to continue this program!
• Our team has been coming alongside Gordon Conwell Theological Seminary to help them revamp their discipleship experience for seminary students. We’ll be helping them lead a training for students for the third year in a row.
• This fall we will be hosting a couple workshops for New England pastors and their teams. We are praying the Lord brings the right people in the room who are ready to make missionary disciples that will live like Jesus in their neighborhoods and workplaces and everyday spaces!

Prayer Requests: 

• We’re doing some rebuilding of our team out here in New England. Pray in the right leaders who have capacity to lead both locally and regionally.
• Our team and the pastors we are training have been experiencing quite a bit of spiritual warfare! It makes sense — New England has six of the top 10 most post-Christian cities in the United States, so the enemy is pushing back hard as we make disciples who are falling more in love with Jesus and bringing people to know him!
• In the coming year, we will be building new training for everyday people to learn effective ways to naturally live on-mission in their everyday lives and see their friends and neighbors follow Jesus and make new disciples. We are in great need of financial resources to get this training created — pray the Lord brings in every resource we need to train as many people as possible!
• We are prayer-walking our neighborhood regularly and asking God for favor with our neighbors — join us in that!
• Our kids are gearing up for a new school year. Addy is starting her senior year and will be applying to colleges this fall. Declan is starting his sophomore year in high school. Pray protection over our family, our home, our marriage, and our relationships as we continue to join God in what he’s doing here!

The construction of our Garuna Christian School in Prey Veng is complete! Seven teachers have been sent by the Luther Institute of South Asia, and 196 students have been registered! With school starting, Garuna Kids is looking for families willing to sponsor a child.

For $30/month, your congregation and school families can sponsor a child attending the Omaha Garuna School in Cambodia! Please go to the Garuna website to set up your sponsorship — and receive your child’s brochure shortly thereafter! You can also sponsor a teacher for $100/month. 

“Here’s another way to put it: You’re here to be light, bringing out the God-colors in the world. God is not a secret to be kept. We’re going public with this, as public as a city on a hill. If I make you light-bearers, you don’t think I’m going to hide you under a bucket, do you? I’m putting you on a light stand. Now that I’ve put you there on a hilltop, on a light stand—shine! Keep open house; be generous with your lives. By opening up to others, you’ll prompt people to open up with God, this generous Father in heaven.”

 

– Matthew 5:14-16 (The Message)

---

Oh wow, April was really a month! Three big things happened:

1. I successfully defended my Master’s thesis and will graduate with my Master’s in Agriculture Education in May 2023!
2. In my spare time, I entered a pitch competition for a business idea I’ve been stewing over and received the honorable mention prize! That means I placed in the top five out of 90 entrants! More on this idea to come soon.
3. April 21, I gave birth to our beautiful daughter, Lena Lai. Lena means light and is an homage to my grandmother Jolene, and great-grandmother Letha. Her Vietnamese name is Hoai Anh, which means “enduring light.” We are praying she will reflect the light of Christ wherever she goes in life! (Matthew 5: 14-15). Mom and baby are both doing very well, but welcome your prayers as parenthood is a big change for us!

Obviously, most of you are here for the baby pictures, so I will oblige. Also, we are so blessed to have my mom visit us and meet Lena. It’s been one of the greatest joys of my life to see them together.  You’ll see her in some photos too.

Thank you all! God bless

In our culture, such construction machinery and techniques are part of the everyday landscape. Not so in India. This village on the east coast of India is a typical poor village of the lower caste. It was one of the many villages decimated by the 2004 tsunami, but things are changing. King of Kings has sponsored the building of a community center. New trades will be taught by Community Transformation workers. Women’s empowerment programs will bring new hope to many feeling powerless to change their well-being. The Children’s Center will provide a path to go to college. This three-story building will be a center of community life, with a water well that will offer clean water to the entire village. These are examples of Jesus’ love being shared and the precious people of Pappakoil being transformed!

Thank you, generous people of King of Kings for sharing your love and resources that make this possible!

---

Building progress updates: April 2023

• Bar bending work continued
• Earth was excavated according to the plan
• Sand filling work and plain cement concrete work was completed
• Column footing was completed
• Reinforced cement concrete mix was poured into the column footing
• Columns have been raised from the foundation up to the plinth beam bottom level
• Water consolidation work has begun

Overall, the foundation work has been fully completed.

Hand of Hope recently returned from it’s latest mission, spending three weeks in Grand Isle, Louisiana. We were able to work on 12 properties and provide over 2,200 volunteer hours. Read more about one of the inspiring people our volunteers worked with and check out trip recaps and photos on our website.

---

A member of our host church in Grand Isle told us about an eight-year Navy Special Ops veteran and his wife who needed assistance in recovering from Hurricane Ida, which hit Grand Isle in August of 2021.  Denied aid from FEMA and from the city, this veteran and his wife salvaged anything they could from their home and began work to rebuild. With little water and food for weeks after the storm, they began to gather materials to rebuild their home. Carrying materials through up to four feet of sand drifts, the husband single-handedly dragged five very large pieces of marble countertop from a neighbor’s house before it was demolished. (It took three of us to life each piece when we installed the countertops!)

His heart was hardened from all of his life struggles and he didn’t understand why we would help them, but our ten days together invited transformation for him, his wife, his home, and our volunteers.

---

Now we begin planning for our next mission. One town we are considering is Rolling Forks, Mississippi. Located in one of the poorest counties in the United States, Rolling Fork was hit by a tornado on March 24, 2023.

To get involved with Hand of Hope, visit our website.