Dear Redeemer Family,
As you know, our great God of the nations has opened for us a door to play a meaningful role in the planting of a church in rural Cambodia in partnership with our friends at Jumpah. Last September, we sent a team to Sobhan village to do an exploratory trip with the aim of learning what the pressing needs are that we might be able to help address as a church. Through our trip and our continuing conversation with Jumpah leadership, the following areas have been identified as most pressing and strategic for our church’s immediate involvement:
- Church leadership development
- Children’s outreach ministry training
- Teacher support for Jumpah school
- Woodshop and farm support for Jumpah
In agreement with Jumpah leadership, it seems good to our team of elders to plan our next trip for June 2020 with those four goals in view. We’d like to put together a team of 10-12 people who feel particularly gifted and called to offer support in one of these areas. We invite you to begin praying and seeking input from others to determine if you might be part of this next trip. The attached application form will provide more details about the trip as well as next steps for those interested. Once again, we are working on a short window to pull this trip together, so we’re asking the Lord to give us clear leading by the end of January.
We realize there may be some who are reading this letter with a sense of disappointment because you eagerly desire to take a trip like this, but for one reason or another don’t view yourself as a viable candidate for this particular trip. One of the great prayers and desires of our hearts as elders is that the Lord would give all of us a bigger heart for the nations and that each of us would have the right opportunities for meaningful involvement as He opens doors along the way. To that end, we invite you to join us in praying for more open doors in different parts of the world where the Lord would connect our ability with other people’s needs. We feel particularly called to be a part of planting gospel-centered churches where none yet exist. The need is abundant, so let’s plead with the Lord of the Harvest to direct our future endeavors.
In addition to praying for open doors, if you would please inform us of your desire to be part of a missions trip in the next 3-5 years, we’d love to begin praying alongside you. (See Trip Details form for directions.) It is our prayer that everyone who wants to go would have opportunity to go. And we recognize and rejoice that while some people will not feel called to go, many of us will be called to send. This is a whole-church ministry, and we pray that all of our hearts will be knit together for whatever the Lord has for us.
Let’s join together in praying and anticipating what the Lord might do among us and through us as we participate in what He is already doing in our own hearts, our homes, our church, our community, and the nations! May the Lamb receive the reward of His suffering! He is worthy!
Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen.
(Ephesians 3:20–21)
In faith,
Josh Anderson, Josh Fenska, Tim Tatum, Matt Vent, Mike Wiersema