I was recently asked a question and thought that the answer might benefit others who find themselves confident that God is calling them to short-term missions involvement, but they’re perhaps not yet quite sure where.
I’m applying for short-term missions. Do I indicate the country that I’m feeling or is there only a list of certain countries that the organization is recruiting for?
Well… I made my first visit to the Police station. …nothing major and they let me out after only 30 minutes later so all’s good! 🙂
For some time now, I’ve been thinking about adding a new element to the blog and it’s finally found its place: I’m calling it “Short Term Missions Mondays.” Continue reading
I took today’s feature image Thursday while waiting for the boys to finish school. The day had been cloudy and damp but the setting sun caught the top of a cold, stone building, against a cool grey sky and set it ablaze with light and warmth. Continue reading
Got to have coffee with this guy yesterday morning… just a bit of exclusive time out together (of the non-punitive persuasion)… he’s the real-deal! Continue reading
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So… you have visioned, prayed, applied and been accepted to serve as an AIMer. Now what?
Now you start the check list (…the dozen or so checklists, if you’re anything like me), you know the one… the “I-have-so-many-things-to-do-and-I-don’t-know-where-to-start” checklist.
See… I knew you had it too. Continue reading
Over time, my own STM involvement has required that I do my share of fundraising, and I’m by no means a specialist. It takes ideas and today… idea generation often begins with a Google search.
I want to save you a step and share some of the resources that I’ve come across and particularly like:
(note: Books & blogs come from various doctrinal confessions with great best-practices in the area of fundraising.)
Both sites below have premium product or content for sale, but the links provided take you to free content (articles or blog-posts).
– Support Raising Solutions
– People Raising
– Financial Partnership Development
Find the titles listed right at their Amazon store:
– The God Ask (Steve Shadrach)
– People Raising (William P. Dillon – *haven’t read this one*)
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As a rule… Communication is key with any relationship building exercise related to raising financial partners.
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In a series of upcoming posts, I’ll share how I applied the ideas above into our own fundraising efforts leading up to France and since we’ve been here.
BUT… if you’ve been accepted by a sending organization and already have a time frame for your STM trip, start now!
– start reading
– start preparing
– start building resources
– start pulling together a communication strategy
Time goes quickly and the more you do now, the less stress & scrambling you’ll experience at the last minute.
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STM involvement is an incredible opportunity. If God has called you and men have affirmed you (sending organization), you are well positioned to live an extraordinary life. If you have questions, leave them either in the comments section below or email me via the “E-Mail” button.
God bless your preparations!
Since we’d done a fair bit of visiting over the past week, we opted for a quiet New Year’s Eve as a family watching Mary Poppins (since we forgot to bring “the Sound of Music” with us).
We spent New Year’s Day preparing a nice meal that we would share with friends from the community… complete with foie gras, leek soup, duck and Italian panettone, topped off with a game of turkey foot over coffee. Lovely way to begin the new year & Liz outdid herself as the hostess with the mostest.
Tomorrow at church we’ll be kicking off the new year with a fresh call to grow in the Lord and reach out beyond our walls to those around us.
We’ve purchased calendars for each of our church members with a daily Bible verses to help each one discover some of the major themes of scripture. In addition though, we’ve also given everyone a second, gift-wrapped calendar that they can in turn give to a friend that they’ve been praying for. The goal… to bring others closer to Christ. Please keep this particular outreach in prayer this week.
Many of you know that our missionaries return to France in March – six months ahead of schedule thanks to #IAmGlobal. That being said, we’d like to continue on here for a while, working with them after their return.
Need: While on furlough, their budget covered several of our expenses which, when they return, will become our responsibility, increasing the amount of required monthly financial support.
I’ve put together the following 3-min video to outline “our Beginnings, our First Year and beyond.” It will generally reside elsewhere on the site, but I wanted to give you a sneak peak at it first.
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Subscribe to the monthly newsletter
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In the video I mentioned a special newsletter and article as my thanks for subscribing to the newsletter; spreading & building awareness. Here’s a quick overview:
I credit my current involvement in ministry to extensive Short Term Missions (STM) involvement beginning in youth. Missions truly changed my life. In this 6-page eBooklet, I detail:
– My STM experiences & their impact
– STM expectations & outcomes
– Positive outcome influencers
– UPCI STM opportunities
If you want to see young people impact the world and be impacted by Short Term Missions, this booklet will give you an overview of what’s possible.
This 4-page eBooklet is simply a quick overview of the Top 15 moments of Ministry involvement and Family Life during our first eleven months as AIMers (or volunteer missionaries) here in France.
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Both are .PDF documents, optimized for reading on your iPad, tablet or computer, but could be printed as well.
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Both of these eBooklets are my way of thanking subscribers to our Newsletter. If you’d like to receive them, simply click here to subscribe and you’ll immediately receive download links via email. (Newsletters are published bi-monthly or monthly at the most – so don’t worry, I won’t flood your inbox.)
In the month of March, our expenses will more than double. Below is a minimum breakdown of what we’ll need in new monthly financial partners:
If you or your church are not currently supporting us financially, would you consider doing so this month? Click Here for instructions on partnering with us.
Thank you for stopping by today. God bless you richly and help both of us to become more and more like him. Happy New Year!
Never heard of Chamallows you say?
Oh yes you have… you just gave them another name…. Marshmallows.
Earlier this week I read an instagram post by AIMer to Brazil, Jonathan DeVall, that pretty much nailed it! In summing up what AIMers do, he said:
“What do AIMers do exactly? Well, we help career missionaries in any way they need it. Today, for instance, our old fuel truck needed its carburetor rebuilt. so, I got some parts and got ‘er running again. It’s not all preaching. Sometimes you get your hands dirty!”
This week held a bit of dirty hands work for us as well.
Last fall, the electrical utility trimmed a treeline on the back of our church property to protect overhead power lines. They did it at their cost but the church was left with the cleanup responsibility. They rented a large bin last fall for just over $700, filled it with trimmings and sent it off, but the larger branches & pieces of wood could not be included.
We spent one day last week as well as another 7+ hours this past Thursday, cutting, hauling, picking up and burning much of the remaining wood & trimmings… and we’re not quite done yet. Perhaps one more good day might do it.
It made for some stiffness and a good night’s sleep after the fact, but in the meantime… we found the silver lining in all that work. Bonfire time!
The kids joined us after their school day was done and we roasted hot dogs and marshmallows. Get this… hot dogs here are called “Saucisses de Strasbourg” (or Strasbourg Sausages) Man! The French can make even hot dogs sound fancy!
In addition to that, the boys got to learn how to manoeuvre the tractor with help from Andy (one of our local Bible School students) and Sophie had some “tree time” (who said that skirts can’t climb trees! …girl power!)
Jonathan DeVall – whom I quoted above – isn’t just any AIMer: he’s a float plane pilot and works with the DeMerchants in Brazil. You need to check out his incredible Instagram Feed: Using a GoPro camera attached to the fuselage of PT-Lee, he has some truly awesome pics! You can also check out his website Mission-Brazil.com… all AIMers need support and if you are able to help him in any way, you would be advancing the work of the Kingdom in Brazil.
Do you remember the last time you used a public telephone booth?
Any memorable phone-booth story you’d like to share?
I remember one time arriving in Brussels central train station after a standby flight via London. Liz was already in Belgium with Dominic and I was arriving with Sophie (we had to go through Toronto Pearson in the height of the SARS crisis). I had change, but no chip-enabled phone card… Balancing a tired 4 year-old Sophie on one hand and our luggage on the other, I had to put a $5.00 phone card purchase on my visa before I could use the phone… ahhhh memories!
Thanks for visiting today… and thank you for your prayers. They are essential!
AIM Long 