Layers upon layers…
Every visit is an adventure, well-lubricated by tons of Green Afghan tea. After visiting for a while, the real questions arise:
“What does this phone call about my car’s extended warranty mean? Do I have to call back?”
“Why did I get this letter about being referred to truancy court?”
“Can my baby take this medicine if I crush it up and put it in her bottle?”
American culture is just plain complicated. Though the Afghan refugees who settled in Colorado Springs are thrilled to be in a safe place of peace, that doesn’t mean it is easy. From navigating a doctor’s office phone system to get an appointment to knowing how to register your car, these Afghan newcomers face many obstacles to becoming a part of American life.
Jesus called us to love our neighbors (Mark 12:31), and it has been a joy and a privilege to walk alongside these newcomers and love them with the love of Christ. What an opportunity to walk into their homes and pray for each one, to know the Holy Spirit is calling and ministering to them through us!
As we’ve shown up and helped practically and grown closer to the family and their friends, more questions have arisen:
“Do you pray? How do you pray?”
“How are you the same as Catholics? How are you different?”
Each question allows us to share one more layer of who God is and who Jesus is and the peace and salvation that only He offers.
If God is calling you to this kind of adventure, please join the Afghan Refugee Team Info Meeting on Monday, 5/22, at 6pm in the High School Room of the Student Building (behind Pneuma Café). We’ll share more about our precious friends and the expanding opportunities to minister through English & reading lessons for the children, practical help, research, and prayer. Then apply to become part of the Afghan Refugee Team at:
If you can’t make it to the meeting and would like to meet for more information, please let us know:
Linda Weber, retired missionary to France, is visiting this weekend. Linda served in Chantilly and Lamorlaye, France, for over 30 years! Stop by and say "Hi!" on Sunday, 5/28, between services!
Everlast, CWC's Young Adult Ministry, is sending a group of 14 leaders to minister alongside Jon & Teresa Simons in Medellin, Colombia July 17th-27th. Please keep this team of young leaders in prayer for:
- The remaining passports to arrive on time
- Travel mercies and on-time flights
- Salvations
- Safety
- God-orchestrated encounters to share the gospel
- Plans & preparation for Vacation Bible School (2-3 afternoons) & Night of Worship
Please let us know if you have a van or large SUV available to loan a missionary family of 6 who will be visiting Colorado Springs from Central Asia July 13-August 13 (preferred) or July 26-August 13.
Praise God for the ongoing, faithful work of Nolan & Marie Schockey as they disciple and train Mexican pastors! They share this update:
- The recent violence has calmed significantly, but they are still not able to reach out to the migrants except through some local shelters in Juarez and El Paso.
- The team was recently able to visit Chihuahua, giving them a chance to evangelize, but also to check in on some recent graduates who are ministering in the area. These pastors are doing well!
- In Juarez, the students and graduates continue to lead small neighborhood churches and kids' clubs, as well as ministering to First Responders and soldiers. The church Pastor Juan Chez leads needs bathrooms & a patio roof added. Praise God! Juan Chez's son went to Bible College last year and has since became a Christian & is on fire and doing well!
- Please pray for Pastor Ramon. His mother-in-law and sister-in-law recently died in a car accident. Soon after than, a nephew & his oldest son’s best friend were murdered. Now his oldest son is living on the streets. Please pray for peace for the family, and for Ramon's son to turn to God for help and healing. For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind. 2 Timothy 1:7
- Praise God for Pastor Isaiah’s daughter, who we prayed for last year after a serious bus accident in Ecuador. She is doing well and following God whole-heartedly since the accident and her miraculous recovery. Pastor Isaiah is moving into a new home with an attached church. The team built this house/church at the dump to allow Pastor Isaiah to escape threats and violence in his current neighborhood. Pray for this to be a place of peace.
- Please continue to pray for Nolan & Marie's health, for wisdom as they budget time and money among so many needs, and for wisdom about next steps for the ministry as they move toward retirement age.
Praise God that Augustin Tharsis, CWC missionary in Paris, France, is at last fully funded! Also, please pray:
• In December, Augustin shared about Areski, who said that he had stopped drinking and was recovering from depression. Recently his wife shared that he has relapsed into drinking and depression. The doctors will not admit him to the hospital for further detoxification and his wife could not handle the situation. Please pray for God to intervene in Areski's life.
• Augustin continues to minister to Davy, despite his ups and downs. He rarely comes to church meetings but continues to call Augustin to read the Bible and pray together. Please pray Davy will persevere and develop spiritual discipline.
• Ramza and Augustin continue to get to know each other, play sports together, and have social time. Augustin has shared the gospel with Ramza before and would like to do so many more times. Please pray that Ramza, who is a practicing Muslim, will receive the revelation of Jesus who loves us and saves us from our sins by his death on the cross.
(Words by Colleen Briggs, Hope’s Promise and photograph by Keenan Morgan)
We walked their community where half a million people live in six square miles of abject poverty. We slipped in its sewage-laced mud; ducked under its live, pirated-electricity wires; crowded into its one-room, windowless homes; gazed over its garbage clogged river. We stepped past drunken men sprawled in the shadows of rusty, corrugated metal roofs; clutched the hands of child after child in a village of children with adults sprinkled through; and listened to the heartache of destitute mothers.
We mourned the gap between what is and what should be. In their living circumstances. And in our own hearts.
Then, we danced, created art, and played musical instruments with them in a Kuza (Hope’s Promise Kenya’s relative based orphan care program, Swahili for “nurture”) day camp. We worshipped beside them and listened to teaching about their incalculable worth.
On our last of four days with the children, they display the treasure they’ve been digging up all week – an art exhibit, masterpieces taped to the tent walls; a dance, bodies moving in effortless rhythm; a musical performance with keyboards and guitars. Then, a Kuza leader asks us to stand at the front as three children pray God’s blessings over us. We respond, passing the microphone, trying one-by-one to put into words our gratitude that they’ve entrusted us with the magnificence of their souls.
A Kuza leaders announces we will close with the song “The Blessing.” A member of our team whispers to me, asking if he can go to a few children he’s connected with and sing it over them. I reply, “Follow the Spirit’s leading.” As the chords fill the open-air sanctuary of Mathare Worship Centre, we can no more stay away from them than water can resist running in trenches.
We press around the group of seventy children, lifting hands over them, touching them, gazing into their eyes, singing the ancient words directly to them. Then, a rat a tat tat begins to ring out on the roof, rat a tat tat, faster and faster like an out of control tap dance. We sing louder. Until sheets of water run like curtains from the edges of the tent roof and a mighty rushing of heaven’s music drowns out the earthly.
My hands raised, eyes closed, I grin. Then I start laughing. He has come, powerless to stay away from His beloved children. Unable to remain silent, proclaiming His love over them.
Opening my eyes, I notice a little girl in the front row, who’d been leading the song. Tears stream over her face. Seth, one of the Kuza leaders, crouches beside her, arm wrapped around her, gently taking the microphone. I glance at the children around her. All are swiping tears. I meet their glazed gazes, “He is for YOU, He is for YOU.” Although they can’t possibly hear the words over the roar of the rain, I know they comprehend deep in their hearts. A roomful of crying children.
Strange how I can feel the fury of flames even as the rush of water drenches the earth. I fear my heart will burst with love. I am at once satiated and starving. This Presence, it’s what we are all hungry for. The Blessing flows into each little heart, each adult soul. We, like a desert unable to absorb this much moisture, overflow in weeping.
Only a few moments later, our team tears away, boards the bus, slumps into seats. We are lumps of dust in the aftermath of a power surge, unfamiliar with the frequency we’ve just experienced. Overflowing with gratitude, yet speechless. Some of us try to pray, but words fail. A team member leads us in the song “Gratitude” by Brandon Lake.
… So I throw up my hands
And praise You again and again
‘Cause all that I have is a hallelujah
Hallelujah
And I know it’s not much
But I’ve nothing else fit for a King
Except for a heart singing hallelujah
Hallelujah
Days later, I ask the Kuza leaders for their perspective. I think maybe it happens all the time. Mathare Worship Centre is a Spirit-filled place and the leaders love Jesus. Maybe Kuza camps usually end in tear-filled awe of God.
But, no, they say, as leaders they’ve taken to calling it “the thing that happened.” The kids will never be the same, they say.
Indeed, none of us who stumbled into this invasion of the Kingdom of God into a little slum church will ever be the same.
Prayers & Praises for our partners in Nairobi, Kenya - Mathare Worship Centre & Hope's Promise Kuza (relative based care) and Sanctuary of Hope (foster care for orphans):
• Pray for S, a young adult from Sanctuary of Hope who was swept up in 2021 school fire incidents and continues to attend re-scheduled court hearings, scheduled next for August 16. Pray for stable mental health and hope.
• Pray for Kenya's relative based orphan care program (Kuza) as they started the year with 50 kids and hope to expand to 100 by end of 2023, and 150 children in 3 locations by the end of 2024. Pray for provision of staff and funding.
• Praise for peace in Kenya as the opposition has ceased calling for demonstrations.
• Praise and prayer for a new connection with Endiro coffee in Uganda, a possible buyer for the Karaus' Meru coffee.
• Praise and prayer for a US IT expert who will be meeting with George (Sanctuary of Hope) and Stanley (Kuza graduate) on zoom to review their resumes and discuss options.
• Praise for Sammy's (Sanctuary of Hope) appointment as Chairman of Africa for Special Olympics, representing athletes across the continent to the African Board of Directors.
• Pray for planning for Steve Kariithi to visit the US in August.
Eddie Broussard serves as a vice president with The Navigators and is heading into a vary busy ministry season. May 26-31, he is scheduled to help lead the largest worldwide Navigators' conference that has ever taken place. They pray that it will encourage and strengthen over 500 ministry leaders from over 70 countries to continue to disciple men and women. These disciples of Christ will help fulfill the Great Commission by taking the Good News of Jesus Christ to the uttermost ends of the earth (Acts 1:8). At the same time, his wife Barbie’s mom fell and has entered hospice care in Texas.
- Please pray for Eddie & Barbie to know the next steps they should take, to have great peace, and for God to gently care for Barbie's mom.
- Ask God to build up the leaders in the conference next week. Ask that they will be unified and have clear vision of what God is calling each one to do in order to carry the Gospel to their Jerusalems, Samarias, and the uttermost ends of the earth.
A Day in the Life of a Missionary Family - Jon & Teresa Simons, Medellin, Colombia
Teresa shares:
In our morning devotional, the kids and I were reading in Ecclesiastes 2–Jon had just run out the door to prepare and set-up for his 7am Greek 3 class which is followed immediately by him preaching in chapel, grading papers, and then leading a patristic reading group. For the kids and I, our day will start with algebra, studying the founding of the North and South American slave trade in history, and subjunctive and conditional verbs (for Norah) and perfect and progressive conjugations of verb phrases (for Caedmon and Lina). There will be a lot of struggle and a lot of frustration. These newsletters have a habit of looking and sounding the same: "New Semester has Begun!" or "We've Reached the End of Another Term".
As I started to think about what to write this time, I was struck by how no matter where we are on Earth, we are called to live faithfully, work hard, and honor the Lord through what he has placed before us. Our tasks of the day may feel meaningless, mundane, unpleasant, or overwhelming, but we have a Father who loves us and who has called us according to his purpose to serve him in what he has placed before us. The meaning comes in that we are doing it for his glory.
As I write this, I can hear Jon's students in the building across from us translating a passage together from Greek. The murmur of their conversation and bursts of laughter mingle with the sounds of my daughter singing "Great is Thy Faithfulness" while she corrects all the questions she got wrong on her last algebra test.
God gives us work as a blessing to teach us to lean on him, to draw strength from him, and to pursue hard things. In Genesis 3, the toil of working the ground was a part of the curse God gave Adam, but it is through this very toil that we recognize more deeply our need to walk with our Father and the great distance between ourselves and him. It is through this that meaning comes into our toil and that the broken soil of the garden begins to bloom again.
Based on all of that not-so-newsy prose, you can probably tell that we are feeling busy, weary, and yet flooded in blessing. Another term (or bimester) is indeed coming to an end, and with that we have students frantic over the amount of "tareas" that are due in the next week of midterms. We have profs with tight smiles and weary eyes, but genuine love for the students in their hearts. We have campus staff, who do the daily things like mowing the lawn and cleaning gutters, gearing up for the busy week break in which they will try to cram as many big projects as possible. All of that said, we are weary, but we rest in our Savior and in his finished work of the cross that makes our own work fruitful and not meaningless.
We pray that this season of Lent is a blessing to you as you walk with our Savior through these last weeks before the crucifixion. We pray that any intentional decisions to add or omit to your routine or habits this season will draw you lean into our Savior and his goodness. We pray that you can grow in your understanding of truth as you gaze upon him, and that you will be stopped and stilled by his beauty.
Prayer Requests and Updates:
- This January we started 4th grade, 5th grade, and 7th grade.
- This year we were able to put our kids into organized sports for the first time (we did try in 2020, but, you know...). It has been a big adjustment for us, but so good to see the kids playing with others their own age, challenged by things they aren't good at, and working hard to improve. It has also been good to learn the city better, and meet other families from outside of the seminary/church community.
- Our kids have been asking for a dog for several years and we have despaired of ever having the stability to be able to provide that for them. The house that we live in now is also not appropriate for having a dog as it has no outdoor space, but the seminary had a house open up that has a patio. We are going to be moving over the coming break. Jon and I aren't thrilled to be moving again (even if it's just up the hill), but we are incredibly thankful that God has provided an answer to this prayer of many, many years.
- Teresa has organized a weekly sports time for the single female students. It's a new endeavor, but so far we are all greatly enjoying this time to play, exercise, and laugh together.
- Teresa has been wrestling with how to homeschool in high school for the past year. Homeschooling here in Medellín, there is not a co-op or school community and there is not the option for dual-enrollment. After over a year of research, we have settled on enrolling Norah in some online classes with Veritas Scholars Academy. This will provide her with other teachers than just Teresa, as well as a classroom environment. We aren't settled on it for long-term, but she will be starting a few classes this September. We're really excited and nervous to see how this trial goes, but thankful that, for now, God has provided a good option.
Janice Evans, serving in Ukraine and Budapest Hungary, is back in Ukraine for another round of documents. She is in the same city she lived in this winter, will stay for about a month, and then return to Budapest, where she hosts Ukrainian refugees. While in Ukraine, she helps a friend and church minister to refugees and also works with the citizen volunteers to make camouflage nets for tanks. This work gives her many opportunities to share that God's love is what compels her to stay and minister to these people she loves in the middle of a war.
Please pray for Janice's friend who may be going into a very dangerous area to help for a few days soon. Please pray for her and her companions, that God will put them in the cleft of the rock and protest them as they minister to people in that area. Pray for wisdom for the leaders.
Michael Parks, Frontier Partners International, and their partners continue to assist earthquake victims in Northern Syria and Turkey.
As this crisis fades from the news, many thousands continue to suffer a lack of shelter, food, and rest. As time goes by, the ones still living in tents and continuing to need assistance are those who do not have the resources to recover.
The Least & the Last.
They are partnering with highly capable believers in these regions to provide the immediate needs of food, clothing, shelter, and water. They are planning long-term development efforts to help communities recover and improve their lives, bringing the presence of Jesus into the midst of the suffering.
Frontier Partners has brought a container of wheelchairs, canes, walkers, and crutches (donated by "Joni and Friends") Syria to help those injured by the earthquake.
- Please pray that they clear the port in Beirut and cross the Syrian border without trouble.
- Please pray that these needed gifts will earn trust and an opportunity to share the Gospel with many who are hurt and disillusioned. Pray for open hearts to hear and turn from their sins and be saved.
Continue to remember those in prison as if you were together with them in prison. Hebrews 13:3
“Thank you for your ministry at Limon Correctional Facility. Our son Kevin attended the first half of his two Tuesday seminars today and said it was really good. He was excited that the gospel was presented and that apparently several of the guys prayed to accept Christ. We appreciate you pouring into our son." –– Larry and Diane, Florence, SC
Please pray for:
* Training of more Chaplains, volunteers and offenders to facilitate the small groups in each prison. They now have 17 trained facilitators in three facilities.
*A support group for parents of the incarcerated and outside local mentors for released offenders.
*That participants will come to Christ and live out their faith and receive aftercare when they get out.
*More funding to provide more programs with teammates in Colorado prisons and beyond.
Please pray for Matt & Noelle Harris, CWC Missionaries in Gulu, Uganda, as they begin adoption proceedings for their Ugandan daughter, Apio Cynthia! They share:
In April of 2021, soon after our return to Uganda from our furlough in the States, we began fostering a girl from our village. We had known Apiyo Cynthia (nicknamed Ah-peach-ay) since we officially moved to Uganda in 2018, when she was 8 years old. At the start we had thought she was an orphan because she appeared malnourished and severely neglected, not even knowing her real name. We found over time that she was simply rejected from the community. Once we found out she had a family, we tried many times to help reconcile her to them through various means to no avail. We even left provision so that if schools opened up again when we were visiting the States, she could be enrolled as soon as possible (schools were closed for 2 years due to the very lengthy lockdown here).
When we returned from our furlough, we began finding her on our porch after dark, sometimes as late as 11PM. We continued trying to reconcile her to her family while looking for options of where she could go that would take better care of her. When we heard rumors that she could be in mortal danger from a relative, we got permission from the officials concerned to keep her in our home until a better living situation was decided.
Since then it has been a true labor of love to teach and train her in every aspect of life. Late nights, long days, and many prayers have brought her from the desperate small form peaking through our window, to the energetic, dreaming teenage girl she is now. It has now been two years, and Apiche is a daughter to us and a sister to all our children.
After much prayer and careful consideration of the present situations, we have officially begun the process for legal adoption. There are a few serious obstacles in the way of successful adoption in this instance, but we look to the Lord to make a way, since we know He loves her even more than we do.
Please pray:
• For their lawyer to be “crafty as a serpent but innocent as a dove”, knowing how to bring the facts but not portraying anything untrue.
• For the judges to consider all the present factors and judge in favor of Apiche.
• That God would provide the finances necessary for the legal process.
• For speed and honesty during this process.
• For her family to turn to the Lord.
• For Apiche’s heart to be soft toward the Lord and eagerly listen for and obey His voice.
James 1:27 says, “Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world.”
Thank you for praying for our CWC missionaries! If you would like to be more involved in sending or encouraging our missionaries, please contact us at kellyb@cwccs.org.
Credits:
Created with images by Moose - "Woman is holding car keys in front of minivan" • pigprox - "Champs-Elysees at sunset in Paris" • m. letschert - "Budapest Kettenbrücke und St. Stephansbasilika" • Meysam Azarneshin - "Destroyed houses and ruined apartment building"