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Dear praying friends and family,
Jairus continues to grow healthy and strong. One of the biggest blessings has been the fact that he is such a content baby. This has been tremendously helpful when we are trying to deal with Josiah and Isabelle and their daily needs. We are all adjusting very well, and life is getting into a nice rhythm and routine again. Melissa is adjusting her schooling plans for Josiah and Isabelle and hopes to start preschool again with them in the next couple of weeks. Pray that Jairus would begin sleeping longer stretches at night, as he is still up quite a bit during the night, equaling lack of sleep for Melissa.
After exploring several possibilities for a Christmas missions trip, it doesn’t seem like the Lord is opening up any doors to take a group anywhere at that time of year. The Lord also has not provided any funds for going anywhere, so we are taking from these things that He is leading us to minister again right here in our own community. Please pray that this would be used to impact this community for Christ and change the hearts of those helping as much as those being helped. Pray also that God would orchestrate a coordinating effort with other churches and youth groups in the area.
The Lord has recently given me a burden to focus less on completing the camp projects and more on using those projects as training opportunities. Perhaps this is why He has yet to send any volunteers to help with the long list of things to do. We are excited about the opportunity to use the ministry’s massive “to-do” list to give youth (although not necessarily exclusively youth) the opportunity to learn new and hone existing skills in a variety of trades. This is, after all, the heart of the ministry – to train people in a trade (and Bible) to make them more effective in ministry. The challenge, of course, is in recruiting these people; please pray for this. Right now there are two youth who are willing to be involved, but the second challenge is being able to find time to work with them as I am also presently working off-camp (for pay) quite a bit. God is, however, using the self-employment aspect to help give David (the same David you have prayed for before) opportunity to work alongside me and recently our pastor who is also a self- employed carpenter. This provides valuable work experience, as well as income to help him become more independent.
A second burden I continue to have is for personal discipleship. While it is extremely time consuming to work one-on-one (or two), it seems to be the most effective way to disciple and encourage people to stay on track. I would love to do more of it, but even with the handful of guys with whom I currently work, it is often difficult to meet consistently with them primarily because of my “schedule.” Pray that the Lord would continue to use me in this way, and that He would ultimately expand this work of personal discipleship and use it to change this community for His glory.
We continue developing Anchor’s and Pilgrimage’s outreach through Bible training. God is bringing together quite a team of which I am glad to be part. Pray as preparations are made to launch the Northeast Arkansas Learning Center’s first class in January. This class will teach the inductive Bible study method, the foundation course of Anchor’s curriculum. It will be open to all ages and offered as a certificate course at a church in Cherokee Village (one of our supporting churches). Please pray for effective marketing that reaches and draws all who need to enroll. Pray also that this would be the first of many such courses that could be offered at many churches in the area, and that churches would realize the huge benefit to having their members trained in how to effectively study the Bible and glean more from it.
Thanks for your prayers and support,
-Philip & Melissa
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