Greetings to you each, and thanks to all of you that have supported and prayed for this ministry during the past year. Our almost completed calendar year has proven to be an eventful season of growth and change! I’ve highlighted a few of the bigger events and changes below.
Vision and Mission. We've worked hard this year to articulate our vision, mission, and core values. Along with that process came a few changes, such as an updated logo and a new tagline: Partnering with Anabaptist churches for the unreached.
Apologetics Film. Another thing that has kept us extra busy within the past six months is the new DVD that we hope to be able put out on our display tables during the 2020 tour. “God’s Word: Enduring through the Ages” has been a really intense and rewarding project. We hope to be able to review this film in the final stage of production at the Board and Advisors annual meeting on the weekend of January 3-4. Paul Shirk, Adam Boyd, and Joe Root did an excellent job of articulating many convincing evidences regarding the authenticity of the Scriptures. We are excited to see what God may do with this film—including raising awareness of the need for translation!
New Building The building project plans continue to creep steadily one inch at a time throughout the permitting process. It’s taken over a year to get to the point of breaking ground! We’ve appreciate your support and prayers. We finally have green lights from nearly all the necessary departments now. We finally were able to break ground this week; a moment that I think we as staff will always remember! We’re hoping to have the footers, foundation, and slab all finished up before the ground freezes (typically by the end of the calendar year).
Mixtec Team. We really enjoyed the chance to have the Mixtec team here with us this past fall. The Wagoner’s came back from Mexico to join these new team members for the first half of this final month of training. The Hege’s and Flory’s finished up their training just before Thanksgiving and plan to head down to Mexico the end of this year. Picture below: a group of school students sent a package for each of them during their time here.
The New Year The Apostle James exhorted us to say "if the Lord wills" when speaking of future plans. Therefore, with that opening statement we now close with a few things we anticipate seeing the LORD do in the not-too-distant future.
- Annual Board & Advisers Meeting coming up in Belleville on January 3-4th. We anticipate this time!
- A new staff member to start serving as an assistant to our executive team sometime in 2020. We’ve been thinking and praying about this need for some time and are beginning to actively recruit for this position.
- Office spaces inside a new building; hoping we’ll be able to move in this spring.
God is good and we are honored to serve Him with you in the work of the Harvest!
Until the nations worship,
Joel Martin