Prayer update

Our time for receiving new Discovery applications is over, and what has transpired over the past few months has turned out to be very interesting. In November we wrote that for 2011 we had almost twice as many trips (7) and twice as many participant openings (74) available. We were very excited...and so you can imagine our surprise as the months unfolded and the number of applications we received were not at all what we expected. As of today, it looks like we will have 36 participants, half of what we were aiming for, and 30% less than we had last year. We have had to eliminate and consolidate some trips in order to make them viable; we will send a team to Ghana, Papua New Guinea, and one (instead of two teams) to Indonesia, along with several individuals to different places. GetGlobal, the other short term missions program in Wycliffe that focuses on the Next Generation, has half as many participants as we do, and the summer internships program at Wycliffe has even less. While we are excited about the trips we have going, we would appreciate your prayers for all involved as we seek to understand why this happened and what changes we ought to make in light of our decreasing numbers.


In a recent blog posting, we mentioned that the young man we had chosen to be our Ghanaian co-leader was unsure whether he could commit after all; this past week he let us know that he would not be available. We are thankful to be able to say that we now have another leader; since we had a very hard time choosing between all those who were available to help us, we see this as continued answer to our prayers. We would appreciate your prayers for good and timely communications with our co-leader Wisdom, Uncle Alex (who is selecting our Ghanaian participants and communicating with language projects that our participants will be working with) and others in Ghana as we all make plans and arrangements together.

We would also appreciate your prayers for the leaders of the other trips (David, Denise, Stephanie, David and Anne) as they begin pre-trip training with their participants online, and as they work out details of their trips. Please pray for Ryan and John as they work on logistics from this end… and for Sheryl as she does the same for two individual trips she is coordinating. This year our application deadline was several weeks later than normal, which means a shorter time period in which to pull things together; we’d appreciate your prayers for strength, wisdom, peace and joy in the midst of pressure. Please also pray for our participants, many of whom have less time to do their support raising than in previous years.

Thanks so much for partnering in prayer with us!

In His love;

Shevawn Ramsey