Category Archives: Support Raising

Support Raising: The Home Stretch

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Happy Monday!

Today we wanted to share with you what’s going on with our support raising, our goals, and overall, just how we’re feeling.

First, we’re feeling excited, hopeful, focused, energized and encouraged. Honest. That’s where our hearts are at. Praise God. If you’ve been praying those things for us — thank you. Here’s proof that our God is awesome and provides great things for His children.

We are trusting God to be on the UW-Stevens Point campus in time for the fall semester. That’s in a week. Currently, we have 75 percent of our monthly financial goal. We’re trusting Him for big things.

Note: A few weeks ago we shared with many friends and family that we were at 80 percent. But after some re-calculating, we realized we made a miscalculation, and we were actually at 70 percent. 😦 We wanted to give you that update, because the Lord has done A LOT since returning from Colorado. We don’t want you to think we went backwards. Cause we didn’t. 🙂

As always, we are in God’s hands and trust in His timing. One core belief we hold, and have held throughout this adventure, is that God is good. The Bible is filled with the following truth, “For the Lord is good, His steadfast love endures forever.”

Psalm 100

Make a joyful noise to the LORD, all the earth!
2 Serve the LORD with gladness!
Come into his presence with singing!

3Know that the LORD, he is God!
It is he who made us, and we are his;
we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture.

4 Enter his gates with thanksgiving,
and his courts with praise!
Give thanks to him; bless his name!

5 For the LORD is good;
his steadfast love endures forever,
and his faithfulness to all generations.

We’re waiting, praying and trusting in His will. We praise Him and we know and trust in His goodness. We’ve experienced His affirmation in our call. He has us where He has us because it is His will. We serve an Awesome God and trust Him with a heart of gladness.

We wanted to invite you to trust in Him with us, and join us as we pray to see our final 25 percent come in so we can be on campus this fall.

Here are some specifics:

  • Pray that God would continue to encourage, sustain and provide for us. Only by His grace and Spirit have we seen these two years through, and continue to be excited by fundraising (it’s true! we still are!). Pray that our hearts would be humble before Him, and that we would continue to see His goodness as we raise our support.
  • We’re waiting to hear back from two church missions boards about financial support. Pray that we would receive answers from them this week, that each would join our team financially, and that our hearts would be prepared for their response.
  • Pray for Erick tomorrow as he meets with another local pastor in St. Paul. This pastor shepherds one of the largest Hmong Christian churches in the Twin Cities. Pray that Erick would be filled with the Holy Spirit as he casts vision for our need, and how we can partner with this church through the ministry at UW-Stevens Point.
  • We still have nearly 100 contacts we’re working to connect with — praise the Lord!! Pray that God would lay our ministry on the hearts of those we’ve been calling, and the new referrals we received last week. Pray that they would answer their phones, would be available to meet with us, and can join financially and in prayer.
Thanks for reading this, praying for us, and supporting us. We’ve said it before — but don’t say it often enough — we can’t do this without you. And to those who’ve had a front-row seat to this adventure, we praise our God for you. He has shown His love for us through your friendship, truth, grace and encouragement.

How Are We Doing?

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Lately, many people have been asking us, “how is support coming along?” If we had a penny for every time someone asked us this question, we’d have a lot of copper in our possession.

We appreciate you asking. It encourages us to know that you’re thinking about us, praying for us, and are in this ministry with us. As we’ve said so many times before, we couldn’t do what we do without you.

As you are probably aware, Courtney and I are still in the process of raising up our initial ministry team. This team will support us both in prayer, as well as financially, throughout our ministry with Campus Crusade for Christ in the Central Wisconsin area.

Currently, we have a little less than 70% of our financial need committed. Praise the Lord!

But we’re not done yet. “In his heart a man plans his course, but the Lord determines his steps.” – Proverbs 16:9.

The Lord has more planned for us in this season. We wouldn’t have planned to be in month 21 — but alas, here we are. We are more amazed every day in the way God meets our needs, challenges us to step out in our faith, and lead us to individuals who need to be encouraged by His love.

Here’s an update on the oars in the water, and specifics you can be praying for us. It’s all hands on deck people — here’s the scoop.

  • Recently, we’ve been pointed to two pockets of new contacts and referrals (nearly 200 people) for us to connect with; these were clear gifts from the Lord, and God has His hand over how we recieved them, and how fruitful they’ve been. Please continue to pray that we can connect quickly with this individuals, and that they would join our team financially.
  • We recently met with a church missions pastor here in Minneapolis. He said our current team of 70% of financial partners is encouraging to him. Our current ministry team is 100% individuals and families. He was amazed that no significant support comes from a church or business, but we are still 2/3 done with our funding. Please pray that some of our remaining 30% can be fulfilled by the two churches who have heard our stories in the past week, and that they would be a part of our financial team.
  • We are praying to be completely done with our initial support raising by the end of July. We have a Campus Crusade National Conference this summer in Colorado, and our prayer is to be fully-funded by the time we leave for the conference.

Jesus is worthy of our lives, and this work with our ministry is worth it. It’s been a long road, but honestly, the time we’ve had with the Lord, with each other, and the people we continue to meet, is priceless. We wouldn’t want it any other way.

All of you who support us, whether it be through financial or prayer support, have blessed our ministry. You have brought us to this amazing place. Thank you so much!

Please be praying that God would continue to shine His favor on us, our ministry, and our ministry partners (that’s you! :-D) as we connect with more and more individuals to partner with us all in reaching college students with the message of Jesus Christ.

Sorry for the delay

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We haven’t been ignoring you. We swear. We know we should be providing you with timely updates.You shouldn’t have to say, “by golly, they actually posted something new today.”

So sorry friends. We don’t have a good excuse.

Does anyone even say “by golly” anymore? I’m sorry again for making that retro phrase pop out of your mouth. Apparently I’m channelling, “Leave it to Beaver” this morning.

Happy Monday to you. Happy Spring too. Though, it isn’t very springy in Minneapolis. It’s cloudy, 40-degrees, and snow still covers my yard. It’s ugly snow too. Check out Nicollet Avenue. Gross.

My brother Kyle and his lovely girlfriend are in Florida for the week. Needless to say I’m incredibly jealous. As a consolation, Kyle said he’d ride an extra roller coaster in honor me. Thanks brother, but instead, could you possibly bring back sunshine and 80-degree weather? That’d be swell.

What’s new in our lives these days? We’re still raising our support — we did not finish on March 15. Yes, it’s disappointing and we were hopeful to be done. But God isn’t done with us yet. If He wanted to, we know God is capable of having us finish tomorrow. But, He has some more things up His sleeve.

We do have to be honest with you, there were moments this last week — out of pure exhaustion, frustration and disappointment — we didn’t know how God would give us the strength and vision to press on. Support raising is hard. Anyone who tells you otherwise is totally pulling your leg. But it really is worth it and we wouldn’t want it any other way.

It’s like going to the gym for a really hard workout. You know it’s good for you, you know it will make those pants you’ve been wanting to wear look fantastic, but in the moment, while you’re doing it, you’d much rather be eating ice cream while watching “Biggest Loser.” Watching people workout counts, right?!

But, we watched the Lord do so much in this 10-week season of praying for this goal. Our monthly support grew 10 percent, we stepped out and took some risks we never thought we’d do, and we experienced the Lord more intimately than we ever have before.

Thanks for praying. You really are the best.

We’ll continue to keep you updated. Please pray for renewed vision for us this week. Pray for support appointments and more contacts. Pray for intimacy with the Lord.

Also, please let us know how we can be praying for you. We like to hear from you too. 🙂 Blessings friends.