Prayer
Requests:
- Pray for Priscilla as Bill will be away presenting four Discovery seminars, visiting churches, and an Imago Christi Gathering. He’ll only be home 20 days of the next six weeks. Then the travel season slows till March.
- We are so grateful for a smooth move to CO and an adequate and reasonably priced apartment in CO.
- Pray for the safe arrival of the rest our personal belongings from Russia.
- Please pray for Liam (11th grade) and Olivia (4th grade) during their transition to American life and schools, new friendships, and our church hunt!
- Pray for our Wheaton College girls: Gillian is student teaching, and Karina is Orchestra Chaplain and an RA's assistant on her floor.
- Continue to pray for comfort in our continuing grief over "losing our lives in St. Pete" that we loved!
Knowing Not Where:
In the last six months, we have
experienced our version of “leaving Ur” and “going to the land I will show
you.” God has provided for us in amazing ways:
- · Temporary housing in CO for July promised in April (Thank you, John & Kathy!)
- · Leaving so much behind, giving away, selling some, giving more, pitching the rest. It is “just stuff,” right? But it’s our stuff, and made up our lives.
- · We got airline tickets with extra baggage allowances, and no hassle about our 13 carry-ons!
- · While our apartment in Saint Petersburg did not sell, the renters agreed to purchase our furnishings, which meant we didn’t have to get rid of it all, and that gave us enough money to furnish our new apartment in CO!
- · We found an affordable 2-bedroom apartment that actually had enough room for the four of us, a home office, storage, and guests.
- · Bicycles donated or loaned from various sources!
Colorado Welcome:
This week the Imago Christi team
here in Colorado held a “welcome reception” for us. We were able to share our story
with leaders in the area of spiritual formation in the Denver area,
Discovery Continues in Russia
We met a regional pastor “Igor” at
the the Discovery seminar that Olga Pavlovna and I led in May. Soon after we
left Russia, Olga teamed up with Igor to take Spiritual Formation Discovery for
Leaders to a group of a dozen church planters and young pastors that he
supervises in the Novgorod Province. Olga did a great job with her first solo
seminar; leaders were encouraged their life with God, which is the source of
their power and authority in ministry!
Russia’s
Long Reach:
We sent 14 boxes of personal items,
books and clothes from Russia directly to Colorado via Russian Post. Apart from
some small items that were bent or broken, and some photo albums that were
ripped, two of the parcels arrived in completely different boxes. One box
contained 1 and two half-pairs of shoes, and a notice of apology from the US
Postal Service for the condition in which they arrived! Other boxes had random
items missing! Another box had items in them that were not ours, a Korean
textbook, and a book on a French painter!
Kids’ News:
- · Gillian is student teaching in Wheaton, IL with half her kids – refugees from Burma! She takes the full class for most of October!
- · Karina is our “over-extended sophomore” loving everything that Wheaton has to offer!
- · Liam is settling in to the Jim Elliot Christian School as a junior, in a small class of 10, where he has already had opportunities in the arts, sports and even meeting a presidential candidate!
- · Olivia is homeschooling and going to a charter school once a week. She is starting with gymnastics and worship dance weekly as well.
What we’re
moving into:
Imago Christi “cultivates
spiritual depth in ministry leaders” who minister among:
the Poor, in the Church and
pioneering New Ground,
so
that God will be renowned and disciples made among the nations!
The main tasks of my leadership of this team will be
to:
- · Expand our training and resource offerings
- · Build the community of our present members
- · Train our members and partners
- · Coordinate spiritual formation communities regionally and internationally
- · Collaborate with other spiritual formation ministries, seminaries and mission agencies, and
- · Recruit more “spiritual formation missionaries” to help people lead their ministries out of their intimacy with Christ.
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