ja_koniga

April 2, 2010

Dear praying friends and family,

We didn’t get a letter out last month. We took a week off at the beginning of the month for vacation. We and the kids enjoyed hiking in the Smoky Mountains, seeing an aquarium, museums, a children’s hands-on science museum, and visiting with friends we hadn’t seen in over ten years. We even got to see the JAARS campus where our high school math teacher and his wife serve now. JAARS is the support branch of Wycliffe Bible Translators, and it is a very interesting ministry. The kids really liked the airplanes there, and we were encouraged to see how God is at work in that ministry.

We returned less than a week before the appreciation banquet to get things ready for that. The banquet went well; we had some challenges to overcome, but God supplied. The speaker this year was a youth pastor from Batesville, AR, who has spoken at one of our youth rallies. He showed with great clarity how, as we come to understand God’s awesome and terrifying glory, our natural response should be to offer Him our life in full service to His kingdom. We only wish more could have been there to hear this challenge to involvement in God’s work. This year we took a survey to determine if this banquet was something we would continue or change in the future. While there were 45 attending, only 24 of those were non-family adults. Financially, the banquet was a break-even event, but we are still praying about what could be done differently to make this an event that more people want to attend so they can see what God is doing.

Progress is being made on the road. We are beginning to run into difficulties making all the land owners happy with our plans for the road. One land owner wants to run the road on his land in a place where the contiguous land owner does not want to run the road. There is a slight possibility that part of the cost and work of this project will be undertaken by the county, but we can’t find that out until everyone can agree on a location for the road. Please continue to pray that God would provide what is needed for more people to access the center more easily and safely.

This month we are planning a trip to Kansas and Nebraska primarily for the purpose of visiting some churches to share with them what God is doing here and how it may benefit His work in and through their churches. So far we have two churches lined up in Nebraska and are working on at least one in Kansas. Please pray that God would open up doors of more churches. Ironically, this seems to be one of the most difficult areas of promotion. Even though we now have over 400 people on our mailing list, after twelve years of trying to get churches involved, we still only have a handful of churches involved through prayer, volunteering, or financial support. The vision God has given is for Pilgrimage to train Christian young people and families in practical ways to live out their faith in the world. This should excite the church as an opportunity to see God’s people do more than just learn principles but live them. Pray that more of the churches represented by people on our list would catch the vision, and encourage more of their people to take advantage of the practical training available. Pray that we could also make better inroads with the churches, especially locally, that are not represented by people on our mailing list.

Continue to pray for the outreach to local teens every Friday night and the accountability and one-on-one Bible studies with most of them during the week. Our local public school is closing this year so the outreach to community youth is going to change as students will be attending various outlying schools rather than one nearby, central school. We pray that God will continue to keep us connected with youth in the community and make new connections as well. Pray that those involved now would continue to seek God’s will for their lives and make good decisions especially as a couple of them are graduating.

Thanks for your prayers and support,