We are so excited!  We have 4 new missionaries with us for 10 weeks for an internship.  They flew in just a few hours ago and we just showed them around their new house.  We are going to have an amazing 10 weeks.  Here are the week’s themes:

1. Discipleship - what it means to be and to make disciples
2. New Testament Team - what is a church, how to form a team that conforms to the New Testament
3. Church planting and strategic prayer
4. Islam and Cultural adaptation - they will go to a mosque and meet an Imam
5. Project management - here they will actually write a project proposal for Kids of Hope
6. Survey and Assessment - how to determine the physical and spiritual needs of a community.  We will go to an unreached village this week.
7. Children’s Ministry - they will plan and execute 2-3 children’s outreaches.
8. Village Outreach - the interns will plan every aspect of an outreach to the village we went to in week 6.  This should be amazing!
9. Day in the life of a missionary - we will visit different ministries and missionaries here on the field (medical, street kids, Bible translation, ethnomusicology, etc…) and then have a “hands-on” time.
10. A lifetime of missions - getting them ready to go home and prepare to go do missions full-time

Yep, it’s that time again!  We are planning for the Give a Kid a Christmas Outreaches 2009.  Christmas is still 4 months away, but for our purposes, that;s just around the corner.  We need to start choosing new schools, training the actors, buying the gifts, and on and on.  It’s a ton of fun, but it’s a lot of work.

This year we are going to give a gift to 2000 schoolchildren.  About half will go to kids right here in the capital, and the other 1000 gifts will go to children in remote villages.  Each one will get a brand-new gift (for some, the 1st gift they will ever receive), then we will share a 20 minute message on how to stay healthy - brush your teeth, sleep under a mosquito net, etc..  Then we invite them to come out that evening after school to see more.

At the evening outreach we share the simple Gospel message through skits, puppets, songs, etc..  - all in their native language.  Then, when the sun sets, we share a film and Joseph offers the opportunity to follow Jesus.  We have had over 2000 people show up at these evening outreaches!

This year, we are hoping to raise $10,000.  This will enable us to give 2000 kids an unforgettable Christmas.  Would you consider making a gift?  Here’s a link to explain how.  Just scroll down till you see the heading “Give a Kid a Christmas”.

Thank you!!

This is a HUGE month for us!  Would you pray for a couple of things that are coming up?

We have 4 missionary interns coming for a 10 week internship at the end of the month, and there are 10,000 last-minute details to take care of.  Please pray that this internship will be a powerful, life-changing experience for all of us.

We have been without power at our house (and therefore my office) for 8 days now, and there appears to be no end in sight…

Joseph and Joel have planned to have a training for Children’s Pastors here in Ouagadougou to teach on how to do Child Evangelism.  Please pray that the details will come together and that it will revolutionize many of them interact with kids.

This is a ‘big expense’ month for us: Jakob’s school, yearly health insurance, etc…  God always provides, but He does tell us to ask - would you ask with us?

What can we say? Ghana is very different than Burkina. It really was such beautiful scenery with all the green everywhere and pretty hills and the gorgeous beach lined with palm trees.  Even the nice paved streets and construction of the buildings is more impressive.  It was very nice to change up our dry dusty scenery to landscapes of ocean and hills of banana and coconut trees.  :)  We were so blessed to get Heidi’s passport renewed just before we left for Ghana (thank you God!), and also very blessed to get to drive down in a beautiful new LandCruiser borrowed from our friends that were traveling back to the Netherlands who let us use it.  It was so clean and still had that new car smell!  What luxury it was to drive in it, especially since it takes 2 days there and 2 days back.  

We went with 3 other missionary families, which made it a lot of fun to eat, swim and play games with, especially the kids.  Joel and Jakob enjoyed boogie boarding, Silas enjoyed digging and throwing the sand everywhere with no restrictions, and poor Heidi came down with a massive fever and stayed in the room the whole 5 days with an intestinal infection, possibly a relapse of typhoid.  But she was very grateful that the 4 days of travel, she felt fine.  She is perfectly healthy now; it was only those 5 days on the beach that were affected.  Of course it tainted Joel’s time there as well.  But everyone tried to make the most out of it. Everyone cheered when she was strong enough to come sit on the beach a little the last day.  

We stayed at a lovely resort called Anomabo Beach resort, ate incredible food, and visited a slave castle in Cape Coast.  Joel even got to see Obama’s helicopter along with protecting military copters fly overhead going to that same slave castle the next day as Obama and his family came there for a visit!!  Here are a few pics, but we’ll add a vacation slideshow soon.

Thank you for praying for the kids’ worship retreat! We could truly sense your prayers as the Lord gave us strength to hold 5 sessions for the children, to lead 3 worship services for the adults, and then intense prayer ministry Saturday night after all of the other stuff! ☺ I, Heidi, felt the fatigue sinking in at about 9pm when the last session ended and we were asked to stick around as prayer counselors for missionaries with specific needs. But when we get to the end of our strength, it seems that’s when God’s strength takes over! That night of prayer ministry time for these SIM missionaries was really anointed. If that were the only reason I went, it would have been worth it. God worked deeply in the weary, hurting hearts of those few missionaries were really needing a touch from God. And they got it!

As for the children! They were such a fun-loving, obedient, participatory group! We taught them different aspects of worship using puppet shows, a home-made volcano (worship bubbles up from the inside of us and spills over!), Bible stories and skits, a crafts, etc. We asked the children what their favorite part of the weekend was. They said 1. “Buster’s” rap (Buster is a puppet played by my wildly creative and hilarious husband) 2. Acting out in costume the story of King Jehoshaphat leading Israel’s army with the worshippers in the front praising God ahead of time for the victory  3. Letting loose and dancing to upbeat worship music and 4. Learning how to really focus on Jesus in worship.      

It was really touching to teach the children that they can lift their hands and close their eyes to focus and surrender to Jesus, and watch them do just that with simple faith and sincerity. I think this was the first time for all of them to realize that intimate worship is for kids as well as adults, and can be done when we’re happy, sad, frustrated, and even when we don’t feel like it. When we make a sacrifice of praise, it pleases the Lord and He often will bless us by filling us up to overflowing!

Thank you so much for remembering us, the children and the missionaries in prayer this last weekend!