Ministering to the Community

A quick update from Klosterneuburg.

One of the areas that I really worked to see the church in Klosterneuburg become involved in was, in the community. We had taken up conversations with the mayor and others in the community. Well, our co-workers and the church have continued down this path and the Lord is opening doors. Read what Joe and Brenda have reported on this. I was very excited to read how the Lord is going before the church and giving His church a growing presence in Klosterneuburg:

“I´m sure you remember before we came home on Home Ministry we started building a relationship with a children´s home near our meeting place. The home is actually a house that´s been fixed up and has eight children living in it along with two or three workers at all times. The home is very nice and is just what you would wish for children that have been removed from their families. The girls have canopy beds and the boys have rooms decorated for boys. We were very pleased with how well the children are cared for. The children are all 10 and under.





My friend, Margit (right), and another woman from the Kagran church are working at the home. It was amazing to all of us that they found work at the Klosterneuburg children´s home that´s so close to the community center where we meet for Sunday worship. It made us all feel that God must have some purpose in mind. The home just got a male director, who Margit found out once attended an evangelical youth group. Joe went with Gabi and I this time when we went to the home and was able to have a nice long talk with the director. He´s religious and open to talk about God. In fact he wants moral and religious exposure to be a part of the children´s lives. He has encouraged the workers to talk with the children about God and pray with them. You can bet we were all happy to hear about that.





Joe came up with the idea that we could pray for each child in our weekly group on the child´s birthday and give them a birthday present. The director thought the idea was good and was open to us visiting the children every once and a while. Above is a picture of the director (left) and a few of the boys in the home.




Please continue to pray for the ministries of Klosterneuburg.

Hello dear family and friends

Hope you had a great step into the New Year. We ended the old year with Katya emptying the contents of her stomach on mom and dad’s living room floor and Marika joining her later at the great white bowl.

However, by the next day and into the New Year they were fine again. We really enjoyed our visit with ‘Oma and Opa’. Our kids loved being with them and Connor was ready to put down roots right there.

Mom is doing well through her Chemo, though tired from it, she presses on and continues to be a help to my dad as he continues to battle his Parkinson’s. Her latest tests revealed a good prognosis and so we are rejoicing with her that things are going in the right direction.

We also got to spend time with Tim’s brother and family in Hide Park. It was great to connect with Jim as he is working toward full time ministry as well. In addition the cousins were able enjoy each other for a few days. While there, Tim was humiliated by his Nephew in a Video game but seems to have recovered.

Our visit with Tim’s older brother was sadly short-lived as he came down with a sinus infection. Our kids love uncle Dan and so missed him.

We are eager to see where the Lord takes us this coming year. Tim has been tasked with redeveloping the whole process for preparing our new appointees for the field. I am working with a team to reimagine this process and we will launch it for church based teams, short term and long term in March.

We are also developing a broader coaching process throughout GEM with a vision to train toward coaching in Europe as well.

As promised we want to update you on how our year

end support raising effort is going. At this point we have

received $1,375 I special gifts toward our need for 2010.

We would appreciate your prayers as we look, in faith, to

how the Lord continues to provide for our needs. He is

good and He is trustworthy.

Prayer requests:

Please pray for…
Tim who has torn his Achilles and will be seeing the doctor on Wednesday. We’re hoping he does not need a surgery.
Jennifer as she seeks out some pain management doctors to deal with the chronic pain she has been living with for over a decade.
Pray for Tim’s friend Hadschi in Austria who is really struggling with his relationship with God as he deals with his wife having left him to not return.

Also check out http://marburgerexperiment.wordpress.com/

Hey everyone.

Well, Christmas is creeping up on us, but it seems there is still too much to do until then.

We just celebrated Connor’s 13th birthday. Tim had started doing discipleship with him when he turned 7 and hopes to do so until he moves on to college. Along the way they are marking the significance of this spiritual journey. This year as Connor turned 13 (Dec 12) they celebrated a coming of age ceremony.

One of Tim’s friends asked if he and his son (Dec 3) could join in the ceremony and so Tim’s men’s group gathered around and celebrated with them. Connor memorized 2 Timothy for the event and recited the 2nd chapter. Then each man in turn gave them words of wisdom to take with them into this net chapter.

What a joy it has been to watch Connor become a young man who loves the Lord. Please celebrate with us by sending up a prayer of protection for him.

As promised we are posting our progress bar. We are hoping to raise $12,000 in special gifts that will help us make it through 2010. We have received $375
to date and a monthly $25 gift. Keep praying with us that we would hit our goal and be able to continue our ministry to future GEM missionaries without distraction.

We are also praising the Lord for a Christmas Concert Weekend past in Klosterneuburg which was attended by 26 people. Pray that the Lord continues to use the believers to spread the Gospel.

Greetings again and Happy Thanksgiving.

Well, our last Candidate Orientation has come and gone. We had 17 individuals, some heading to France, Germany, Ireland, Austria and Spain. What a privilege it is to be able to walk along side these individuals as they went through our orientation, were appointed and are now raising their support so they can get overseas and engage on a dark continent.

Thank you all for your prayers. It was an incredible time. While Tim served out 7, 14 hour days, the rest of the family did incredibly well in supporting him. Also, this was Tim’s first time carrying the full responsibility for the Euro Quest (short termers) portion of the orientation, and he survived. :)

It is truly amazing to be able to speak into each of these individuals lives and then to be able to continue following their path as Tim now coaches them through this next leg of their journey.

Here is a picture of our group we just sent out.




PRAYER:

We would also appreciate your prayers. A short while ago Tim’s Mom was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma and is currently undergoing Chemo therapy. Please pray for her as she goes through this time. My sister was able to visit with Mom and dad for a couple of weeks as someone gifted her with miles to fly back from Prague and be with them as Mom got her first burst of Chemo. We are planning on visiting them over Christmas too. It’s been a while since they’ve seen the grandchildren and we look forward to some quiet family time together, with them and my two brothers + family in the area.

May you and yours have an incredible Thanksgiving. We thank the Lord for provision and that we are able to continue to have an impact on the continent of Europe in so may ways.

Thank you for your continued prayers, Tim, Jennifer and the kids

Prayer

Just a few thoughts.
I have picked up the book, Fresh Wind, Fresh Spirit by Jim Cymbala of the Brooklyn Tabernacle.
In it he speaks so aptly about prayer.:
A visiting minister said to the congregation one day:
“you can tell how popular a church is by who comes on Sunday morning.
You ca tell how popular a pastor is by who comes on Sunday night.
But you can tell how popular Jesus is by who comes to the prayer meeting.”

CH Spurgeon said:
“the condition of the church may be very accurately gauged by its prayer meetings. So is the prayer meeting a grace-ometer, ad from it we may judge of the amount of divine working among a people. If God be near a church, it must pray. And if he be not there, one of the first tokens of his absence will be a slothfulness I prayer.”

Wow, how does this grip you? I wonder what churches would, could look like if we embraced some of these concepts.
On that note, please pray for us this week as we have 18 new candidates here for training, as they are prepared for ministry in Europe. Pray that the enemies hand would be stayed and that his attempts to interrupt would be foiled.
Tim and Jennifer

Fall tidbits

Hey all again.
Well, we had our first snow on the last day of summer here in Monument, and yesterday we had 85 degrees again. We love Colorado.

The fall semester is in full swing. Jennifer has begun teaching her classes and is loving it. The added benefit of having a wife that teaches strings is that it costs nothing for lessons for our girls. Katya is learning the Cello and Marika is learning the Violin, while Connor continues to work on guitar.

Well, there are new and exciting things happening here. As we prepare for our next Candidate Orientation October 31st, we are moving our last group into full swing with our coaching program. As we do this we are piloting a program called the Tangible Kingdom. (http://www.tangiblekingdom.com/)

We will be walking through this directed learning and living, experience over the next 12 weeks. We have assembled a group of 20 missionaries, appointees and home office staff to discover how this material might be useful to our ministries in Europe in the future.

Please be praying for us as we launch into this cohort and seek Gods direction. There is much enthusiasm and as we reach into this area of creating community, living intentionally and seeking opportunities to witness and bring the Gospel to where the people are, we look forward to seeing what God has in store for us.

On the Austria front, please continue to pray for my friend Hadschi, he wrote me again today ad asked for prayer as he tries to gather his thoughts ad figure out what’s going on with his life. It seems that things have just fallen apart all over in his life

Lastly, please also pray for my parents. Many of you know that my dad has been battling with Parkinson’s for some time. Well, my mother was just diagnosed with non-hodgkin's lymphoma. Please pray for the both of them as they walk through this next stage of their lives.

Thanks for praying, Tim for us all

Hello everyone.

Well, the seasons are moving ahead, the kids are back in school and loving it. While we still have warm days, we have also been met with some fall-like weather like many of you have.

Ministry

We have already gotten back into the swing of things here. Tim has already been up to Christian Colorado University for a missions-fair. He is also preparing to connect up with Missionary kids on campus. We are preparing our trips for next summer already, putting together a couple of 9 week trips throughout Europe, Internships and other trips. Now we are working at bringing these opportunities to people who feel God’s leading to go.
Our group is also preparing for this year’s Urbana Missions Conference. It is no longer hosted at the University of Champagne as it has grow to over 30 thousand participants.
Our next Candidate Orientation will be end of October, beginning of November. So please be in prayer for us during that time. We will remind you again before then.
In the mean time Tim has started a men’s group at the office. It is a place where we are challenging one another to right living, coming alongside one another and growing together in the Lord.
It has also been a pure delight for Tim to continue coaching the new appointees from our last Candidate Orientation in June. The response to the coaching has been great and Tim is able to really provide an alongside encouragement to a number of them.

Family

The kids are enjoying their first weeks of school. Last semester brought about a lot of stress for Connor who is very bent on getting excellent grades even though we were trying to help him focus on doing a good job, no matter the grade. Some of his stress probably came from being sick ad missing almost 1 month of classes. This semester is going far better for him, he is loving school and feeling free again. Praise the Lord for that. The girls are still doing great and enjoying their classes. All three of the kids are incredible readers too.
Jennifer continues to heal, though she wishes she was able to run, her knee and leg are still slow on the mend. She is enjoying teaching strings and continues to crochet up a storm.

Church

Our church in Monument is moving the coming week, to a larger facility. It appears that the Lord is growing the congregation and so we are bracing for the changes. We have had some very intense conversations with the missions committee, now that we actually exist with a budget. One of our goals is to get our pastor on a short missions trip as he has never been overseas yet. Please pray for wisdom as Tim leads this committee, and every beginning is tricky.

Austria

Please continue to pray for our friend Hadschi. He just recently sent Tim an E-mail and told us that his marriage is over. His wife has decided to live with another man. From his facebook entries we can see that he has experienced some significant pain through this. He is also in a new relationship of his own, with a gal he call, a great Christian lady.
Also continue to pray for Sabse, the gal that Tim is counseling/coaching in Germany via Skype. She seems to have backed off a bit. In the mean we have found someone who has good friends in the next town over and is trying to make connection there.
Thanks for your continued prayers.

Please pray for:

continued healing for Jennifer

for Tim’s mouth – it looks like it is going to cost us a fortune this year. Due to bad jeans (genes) his teeth have always been bad, with his night time breathing machine, it has gotten worse. He has already had to have to crowns this year and needs a bridge ($7,000). And our insurance has already covered their part.

For the many ministries we are participating in.

For our church in Austria that God would bring a couple to Klosterneuburg to step into the work and relieve some of the pressure for our co-workers Joe and Brenda.

Please continue to keep them in your prayers as well as Joe continues to battle with prostate cancer.

Please also pray for our friends Andrea and Arleta in Klosterneuburg, who I am trying to get connected up with our co-workers. Pray that they would attend a service, as they have show real interest in what we are all about.

Pray also as we are trying to launch, locally, as well as with some of our people on the field a 24 month effort toward missional living, here and there.

God bless you all and thank you for your significant part in the work of Christ which is far reaching.