Greetings everyone.

Life continues to press forward non-stop. Last week Tim had the opportunity to run a pilot orientation with the newly developed program. We served two families who have now been appointed to France. The time together was incredibly encouraging and the couples were very positive about the new format. Praise the Lord.

Please pray for us as we continue to work on developing the orientation process. Tim and a co-worker are about to launch a 6 week online course as well, designed to help our candidates become familiar with GEM before the arrive for orientation. Each week includes a 5 minute video and a discussion forum.

Beginning with the launch of the online course we begin a season of processing applications, inviting individuals and running a number of orientations. We will have two orientations running consecutively end of May and into the first week of June, another in August and another in end of October. Mean while we will be starting up the online class every couple of months.

Tim will be taking a few days off next week to spend it with the family while the kids are on spring break. We’re all looking forward to a little down time.

Tim’s achillies finally healed again and then the whole family got the respitory flu that was going around. Jennifer had it for 6 weeks and did two rounds of antibiotics. But, thankfully, we’ve all healed in the mean time.

Jennifer is connecting with a lot of school moms and has made some good contacts into the home school groups here, where she may be able to serve with her music. Please pray for us as we seek out the ministries God would have us engage in. We long to connect with unbelievers and bring the light of the Lord to them.

The kids are doing extremely well and we thank you for your continued prayers for them. We’ve heard a couple of times that they miss Austria, but their transition has been better than textbook.

We do appreciate your continued prayers.

From our family to yours, Tim, Jennifer, Connor, Katya and Marika J

Reinventing the wheel

Hello everyone.

It has been a time since we last posted, but this does not reflect how much we have thought or prayed for you.

Our whole family decided it was time to share that pesky cold flu that’s going around. Jennifer was hit the worst and is still trying to bounce back.

Work has been very busy as we are continue to redevelop the whole preparation process for all our candidates and appointees. We would covet your prayers for March 10-14 when we launch our first pilot-orientation. This means we have a small group of people we are taking through the new format. We are eager to see how it will equip our appointees in a more effective way. Please pray for this time that Christ will be the center and receive the Glory.

Coaching is going well as I have the privilege to engage with those who are in the process of getting to the field. This is proving to be an incredibly helpful tool in strengthening, preparing and launching our new missionaries. Please continue to pray that the coaching will be God centered and that He might raise others to serve in this capacity.


We have another update for you financially.

While we ended the year needing to raise $12,000 to make it through 2010, we are sadly in a different situation. Due to the continued economic issues, we have had a number of individuals who have had to necessarily stop giving and some churches that have had to reduce their giving. This has left us with the situation to have to raise $21,000 in order to make it through 2010.


Of that $21,000 we have already received $3,000 ad praise the Lord for it.

Please continue praying for this with us that the Lord will provide for our needs.


May God bless you and your family today.
All our love, Tim, Jennifer, Connor, Katya and Marika

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