Dear Family and Friends,
Happy
New Year!! We hope you are well this season and that you may rest in
the hope that only our Savior brings. We are SO thankful for your
support and prayers. As some of you may know, we had the pleasure of
having Cindy and Jay visit us (on their honeymoon!) from the East Coast.
Cindy made it her mission to help us set up our family blog on tumblr -
thank you so much Cindy!! You can now follow our blog on "www.theimfamily.tumblr.com" and the password is "jesuslovesme".
We have posted many pictures and captions already. We will do our
best to upload videos, pictures and short updates through this blog, as
many of you have requested. We thank you for being understanding and
patient with us.
Here's our update:
Alex:
Have been truly busy serving many different ministries on the campus.
Recently, Alex was temporarily asked to oversee the maintenance
department as the leader was going to the mainland for over six weeks
period. During the interim, Alex was able to oversee, train and
physically work with several of the mission builders to almost complete
couple of projects (turning previous kitchen into new DTS classrooms and
remodeling couple of the old rooms in the Go Center to become ADA
approved rooms). Just yesterday, Alex was asked to be in the leadership
for the Operations Dept with three others. One of the "up" side of all
this is Alex being able to train the young mission builders while
working alongside them to finish a "project". He gets to have fun
working and sowing into their lives. We remember a specific prayer for
Alex before coming here about Alex not just coming to "build" buildings,
but "building" lives and we are witnessing this taking root. We may
never see the fruits, but we know that God is good and His Holy Spirit
will be the one to move and grow in these young men that Alex has the
privilege of working with. For example, just before one of his mission
builders (Benjamin) left to return home to Sweden, he asked Alex to come
to Sweden and start a company so he could come work under Alex. This
was because Alex was able to share his testimony/life, which really
moved Benjamin.
On another exciting
note, Alex has been invited to join/partner with YWAM Mission21 in Fiji.
He has met on several occasions the director/leader, Emosi Tatukivei
through our good friend Tia, a good Fijian friend. His vision is to
equip and send forth missionaries from the Islands of the Pacific to the
10/40 Window. He has already discipled over 1,500 missionaries in
Africa. With Alex's skills, Emosi has invited him to come initially at
the end of February 2015 for the opening ceremony/a vision trip to scope
out and see the future works to "train/build" on the land that has been
given to him to build YWAM Fiji Training Center from Loren Cunningham
(crazy/amazing story in itself). Please call or email Alex directly so
he may share more about this if you are interested in hearing this God
story!!
Pam: I
continue to serve my second year at the Learning Center. Like most of
the staff here, I continue to wear many hats: office manager,
receptionist, bookkeeper, nurse, banker, and an organizer as well as a
liaison to parents and teachers. As we continue to experience great
teachers leaving and new teachers coming, I am still in awe of His
perfect timing and His continued provision. We continue to share meals
and our lives with mission builders, work duty students, visiting
friends and other missionaries. It's encouraging, uplifting, and
exhausting, but most of all, a real blessing!!
Nicholas continues
to thrive and grow physically (his feet is now larger than his dad's),
spiritually, emotionally and with his HAIR! ;) He's growing up to be a
young man we are so proud to call our son (sorry, so biased!). At the
last day of school before the winter break, Nicholas was one of the few
students to receive superior honor roll. He continues to work hard at
school as well as play hard in basketball and football, but most of all
he loves the Lord with all his heart. As
we shared in our last update, he's in a blended learning using an
online curriculum with other 6th-8th graders. It's a very small class,
total of nine students, with the possibility of two more joining them
starting in January. His classroom went on a "spiritual formation"
camping weekend in October with his teacher and her husband. He had a
wonderful time hiking, climbing, campfires and as they were studying
about the stars in their class, they went to Mauna Kea and saw the stars
and was able to connect that to how God created all things, what a
blessing!!
Makayla is
growing strong and VERY active: she's no sedentary child; she loves
playing dodgeball that she even forewent a fall festival party at Judy
Cunningham's where most of her friends attended to play/participate in a
dodgeball tournament for outreach fundraising. She is also the
Hualalai (our neighborhood) Nerf Battle leader with all the boys. She
loves playing tackle football with her brother and all the boys in the
neighborhood. She's currently taking volleyball through the county, but
is not too excited about it. She's very athletic, I think she gets
this from her dad and my sister, Erica. She is also doing well in
school, earned an honor roll this past quarter. Due to her love of
science and deep understanding of polymers (a.k.a., slime, goo, putty),
her science teacher, Mrs. Ernst asked Makayla if she would share her
knowledge with her class, so Makayla took several of her "polymer
examples" and had a presentation in front of her class. We (mom and
daughter) briefly took hula class, but decided to bow out to do a favor
for our friends and public! ;)
Praise Report:
-God
is answering prayers. As Alex has steadfastly stood by with his
resolve to build with (standard) quality and physically work with the
mission builders and in the last two months moved to
maintenance/renovations, campus is slowly starting to remodel/rebuild
dorms and classrooms to "standard" codes and aesthetics. Per one of the
leaders, after inspecting two of the projects Alex has
"remodeled/renovated", he stated, "this will be our new standard". It
has taken perseverance, looking to God alone, and trusting in Him fully
to find joy, peace and release.
-Thankful for all your prayers and support, we could not do this without you believing in us and supporting us.
Prayer Requests:
-Alex
has decided to accept the role of one of the leadership positions in
the operations department. Please pray for God's grace and favor as he
serves in this position
-Upcoming trip
to Fiji at the end of February for Alex. Pray Alex's airfare will be
covered and/or provided. If this is God's will, may God open doors and
may Alex hear and obey the call to serve in the future on a routine
short term basis for our family to go and serve: for Alex to train the
students in construction trade school with marketable training skills
with biblical truths and to go help build and finish projects
-Family's overall health
-More wisdom, discernment, mercy and grace
-New partners/supporters for our family's ministry "to serve God and make Him known"
Happy New Year!!
"We exist to glorify God wherever He has placed us! Be on missions to amplify Him because we are all missionaries" (Pastor Travis from Shorebreak Church) |
