April Prayer update

 

 

It's less than two months before John takes off for Ghana, and things are progressing pretty normally for this time of year.  There's lots of work to be done, but it still feels like there is time to do it all in!  ☺ Plus, we have discovered that when I do not accompany John on a Discovery trip, May is somewhat less stressful than it normally is, since we are only preparing for one person to travel and are not having to make all the necessary household arrangements that need to be taken care of when we both leave our condo for a couple of months.  But even though life is more relaxed than usual for this time of year, we can still use your prayer support in a number of areas:

 

• We now have our third leader for the Ghanaian Discovery team; Bernice Buabeng-Odoom.  Bernice is a Discovery alumnus from the same team as this year's other Ghanaian team leader, Frederick Ammisah.  Thanks for your prayers as we sought God's provision of this year's leadership team.

 

• Another praise; Shevawn continues to do great physically and is able to be fully engaged in the trip preparation process.

 

• Now for some prayer requests: Ryan (our co-worker here in the Discovery office) has been having some problems with his computer that really slows it down…and the interesting thing is, Shevawn was having similar problems throughout the three months she was working so hard on getting Discovery team leader trainer materials on-line.  The similarities cause us to think we may be encountering some kind of spiritual warfare here…

 

• Team leader training is still going on as the leaders finish working through their materials.  Please pray especially for the leaders of the Mozambique team, who are leading a team for the first time and figuring this all out.  Pray that we will know how to best help and encourage them.

 

• Many arrangements are still being made in Ghana for our trip as Ghanaian participants are still being selected as well as the language projects they will work in.   Please pray for Uncle Alex as he seeks to make arrangements from the GILLBT end. 

 

• It is looking very likely that we will have a gender imbalance on our team this year, meaning we will have more male than female Ghanaian participants, while the ex-pat team will have more females than males.  We know God is in control… we just need wisdom to figure out how to make the cross-cultural partnering for the teams ministry assignment time in light of this projected imbalance.

 

• May 14-16 we will be helping out at our church's training weekend for their summer short term mission trips.  We value your prayers as we prepare our seminar on cross-cultural sensitivity, and as we interact with the short-termers throughout the weekend.

 

Thanks so much for partnering with us in this way!

 

In His service,

 John & Shevawn

 

The photo above was taken recently with our daughter Leanna, for those of you who may not recognize her