Crazy

Well things here in Katy have been crazy and good!

We have been looking for a more permanent space to rent for our campus and have been coming up dry. We really need space that we can access 24/7 and not just on Sundays and it is keeping us from growing right now. We have looked into every available retail space and come up dry now we are looking into office space. There are no available places for rent other than that or the schools. so Please be praying that we would find something soon.

We are just finishing a series called "Emotionally Healthy Spirituality" a sermon series we have done in conjunction with our community groups going through Peter Scazzero's book with the same title. It has been life changing not just for our people but for Kim and I as well! I would strongly encourage all of you tor read the book if you haven't. It is raw, honest and VERY GOOD!

Lou (my associate pastor) and I have been taking Perspectives this semester. As many of you know it is really good and while most of it is not new information for me I had never officially taken the course and have been asked to do so because they are wanting me to help teach it, especially in Spanish. While it isn't necessarily new information it is great to review it in such a concise and well designed fashion. It has restrengthened my passion for U.P.G.'s and our need to be reaching them. As Kim and I process all of this we have felt a tremendous sense of responsibility to raise our boys to know and have passion for reaching the lost and unreached as well. With this in mind we feel like God is calling us to take our family along with me to work with our U.P.G's the next time I go. This is a little scary and physically, spiritually and financially overwhelming. However the benefit of our boys experiencing a 3rd world culture and a muslim culture at that right as they enter their teen years we feel is vital to us raising them with a passion for God's glory and sharing that glory with the unreached.

We won't be going to South East Asia until 2017 and even though it is 18 months away there is much to be done. We will have to get the boys passports, vaccinations, culture training for being in a muslim country, and Spiritually preparing them and ourselves. This will also give us 18 months to try and scrape and save (sell some blood and who knows what else) so that we can afford to take them to the other side of the world for a couple of weeks.

As you know from previous posts, one of the things we do over there is minister to missionary families. I can think of no better way to do that than to bring my family. It communicates trust, it communicates importance and priority, it lets them know that they matter so much to us that we want our boys to walk a day or 14 in their shoes. And the rewards for us and our boys are innumerable!

Would you please join us in prayer for wisdom, provision and good stewardship over the next 18 months as we get ready for this adventure?

To help you have a little more insight to where we go and who we work with I am posting the link to a great friend of ours who works undercover over there. He just became ill last week and this is the first blog entry since leaving the hospital on Saturday. in His blog there is also a video at the end that shows you what he does as a cover so that he can be in country.

PLEASE DO NOT SHARE OR REPOST THIS BLOG LINK OR HIS BLOG LINK OR THE VIDEO AS IT COULD COMPROMISE HIM AND HIS FMAILY!


http://www.theswampengineer.com/typhoid-that-stinks/


Pray for Him and His family as they navigate the struggles of living out the gospel in a muslim country.

Thank you all for your prayers and support! It is so vital for us!

Jeff, Kim, Max, Joshua and Tate

It seems like forever...

It seems like forever since we updated you with how things are going here in Katy.  My last post was at the beginning of the summer and so much has happened since then.

Our family took a couple of weeks of vacation this summer which was great and much needed time to get away from the business of planting/launching a campus.  We were able to see both sides of our family traveling to Oklahoma and the panhandle of Texas. We also were blessed to get to spend a week at One Way Camp. I was the speaker and the family got to tag along. This is a high school summer camp in the Palo Duro Canyon Basin. IT is where Kim and I met and the boys have been raised.  There were over 600 campers and about three hundred students accepted Jesus or re affirmed their commitment to Him as we talked about Lordship and covenant. It was great!

Grace Fellowship North is moving steadily along and God is moving. Summer is always a challenge especially for smaller bodies like we are as so many people are out of town. This summer was no exception. July was abysmal but good for our people to get to rest. Now School is starting we are getting back into the swing of things and looking forward to seeing what God has in store for us.

One area of prayer would be our pursuit of more permanence. We are looking to lease some space that would be dedicated for Grace North that could be used whenever we want. Right now we are still setting up and tearing down in a school and only have access on Sundays. We feel, after much study and consulting,  like we have hit a sealing on our growth potential for this area in transitory space.

Pray that God would lead us to the right space that would communicate to the community that we are here to stay and that it would become a home for us!

Love you all!

Jeff, Kim, Max, Joshua and Tate

Our second Summer is upon us!

So sorry it has been so long since our last post!

There are many reasons for us to be thankful!

 Kim  has been completely pain and med free for over 120 days now. She is not only off all her pain meds (including all over the counter pain meds) but she has been off antidepressants and anxiety meds. She is losing weight and is healthier than she has been in over 12 years.  We are having the time of our life as a family having the woman I married 15 years ago back and the boys getting to experience a mom they never got to experience before!

As you all know I traveled to Indo*nesia to work with our 3 adopted UPG's over there this spring and we saw and experienced the Lord in miraculous ways as well as encountered spiritual warfare first hand. Our work here coupled with our adoption of the Khmer people of Cambodia while in Carrollton is the kind of work one can take into eternity with them.

Romans 15:20 "It has always been my ambition to preach the gospel where Christ was not known, so that I would not be building on someone else’s foundation."

Here is a little insight as to why it is important to me:

WORLDWIDE

• Total People Groups: 16,761

UNREACHED PEOPLE GROUPS 

Less than 2% Evangelical Christian.1

• Total Unreached People Groups: 7,050
• Total Population of UPGs: 2.88 billion people
• Total Percentage of world: UPG’s make up 42.1% of world population

UNEVANGELIZED PEOPLES

Greater than 2% Evangelical Christian but still great numbers of unsaved.

• Total Unevangelized People Groups: 2,854
• Total Population: 900 million
• Total Percentage of world: the unevangelized make up 17% of world population

HOW MISSIONS MONEY IS DIVIDED.

Money that goes toward the Reached world: $609 billion

(that means 87% of the money given to "Missions" goes to areas with "reached" status or access to the gospel already). [2]

Money that goes toward Unreached Peoples: $450 million (that's only 1% of what is given to "Missions.") [2]

That's also how much Americans in 2011 spent on Halloween costumes (for their pets).

The $450 million (going toward UPG's) is only .001% of the $42 trillion Income of Christians. (for every $100,000 that Christians make, they give $1 to the unreached.)

ALL MISSIONARIES

• All Missionaries in the World (Catholic, Protestant, etc.):  400,000 foreign missionaries [1]
• Missionaries in the Reached World : 309,315 foreign missionaries  (77.3%) [2]
• Missionaries in the Unevangelized : 77,610 foreign missionaries (19.4%) [2]
• Missionaries in the Unreached : 13,315 foreign missionaries  (3.3%) [2]

CHRISTIAN WORKERS

• Full time Christian Workers in the World : 5.5 million workers
• Christian workers in the Reached World : 4.19 million local workers (75.9%)
• Christian workers in the Unevangelized : 1.3 million local workers (23.7%)
• Christian workers in the Unreached : 20,500 local workers (0.37%)

MORE TTT OBSERVATIONS

The number of current UPG missionaries compared to the total 2 billion Christians in the world equals the same probability of being in a plane accident (.0005%).

The ratio of UPG workers the total unreached world is: 1 missionary for every 216,300 people.

There are 78,000 Evangelical Christians for every one unreached people group.

These statistics are mind boggling to me! I praise God that at my current church and my last church we sought to reach the unreached. I pray this continues to be a priority and main point of vision and spending for both Grace North And FUMC Carrollton!

Max finished sixth grade and survived! This means that he will be starting football next year and We will officially have two jr high aged youth at the end of the summer. (I don't know if that is a praise or a prayer request)

Over all we are blessed! Thank you for being a part of that blessing!

Moving forward pray for us as we have begun the task of looking for land and preparing for a capital campaign for land and building! We are at the very beginning stages so pray that God would lead us each step of the way! 

Love you all!

Jeff, Kim,  Max, Joshua and Tate

God is doing a new thing in our family!

As many of you know Kim has Rheumatoid Arthritis and Fibro Myalgia. This has caused her severe pain over the years!  Kim has had doctors treat her pain with various and ever increasing narcotics and while Kim has never taken anything that wasn't prescribed for her over the past 8 years it has been a bondage for her.

We started this year with a 40 day prayer experiment where we challenged our church to pray for something only God could do, something specific. Kim health was at the top of Kim's and my list for the 40 day prayer challenge.

Kim distinctly felt God tell her that if she wanted to be healed she needed to work through letting go of the security blanket of pain meds so she told me two weeks ago she wanted to go somewhere to get off the meds. so last week she went to a treatment center in Sugar Land TX as she described in a Facebook post last week:



"For those of you who don't know, I am at a detox facility right now, detoxing off of pain meds. For 9 years, I believed the lie that I couldn't function without Oxycodone, Fentanyl, OxyContin and the list goes on and on. As I reflected today about how I came to this place, I realized 2 things. First, Jesus, in His extravagant love and mercy, heard me call His name and He rescued me. Also, He began this journey on April 22,2014, when I dared to believe that there could be something better and I gave Plexus Slim a try. Over the last 9 months, the Holy Spirit has been moving in me, using Plexus to show me the life He created me to live! I am so excited about the future right now! I can't wait to bust out of this joint and jump head on into everything Jesus has for my life. I know it's gonna be better than anything I could ever dream up!"

Today, she has been released! Completely narcotic free! And Pain free! 

Please join with us in praying for complete and total freedom form this bondage! The doctor says it can take up to 90 days for the body to fully recuperate and become symptom free. Sometimes it can be 20-30 days free of symptoms and them bam the body begins to crave again. Our concern is not that she would turn to meds again. she is completely done with that, rather that we don't want her to have to deal with withdraw symptoms at home. SO please pray for total healing! Also join us in praying that God would do new and amazing things in our marriage, family and church now that my better half is free! Free to be all whom God created her to be and do for His kingdom!

Thank you all! 

We love you guys! 

Specific request!

I have been given the opportunity to go spend a couple of weeks with the  UPG's we have adopted. Specifically three of them. All three of them are 99% Muslim. While there I will be visiting workers and seeing first hand what they do. I will also have the opportunity to preach at one of the underground meetings. But most importantly We bring all the workers and families to a different island and put in a retreat for them. For many it's the first time in over a year they get to worship corporately and listen to preaching and worship live. Pray for safe travels for our team. Pray for the sirit to go with and through us to break up ground the first week as we decide and visit workers in their field. Finally pray for the retreat for rejuvenation, healing, and the spirit to manifest!

Happy New Year!

Well we have official closed out our first year of holding services at Grace Fellowship North Campus! There now  is a community of faith where there was none this time last year. We have 300 people who would call Grace North their home! We average between 140-160 any given week in attendance! We have 90+ people active in community groups! We have 36 nations represented in our community of faith as well! 

None of this would have been possible without your prayer support! WE COVET YOUR PRAYERS! 

This year we will kick off the year with a six week challenge::

The 40 Day Prayer Experiment

·         Ask God what to pray for:

o    Something specific

o    Something that only God can do (Hebrews 11:1)

o    Something on your heart (Psalm 37:4)

·         Pray for that every day for 40 days (Jan 1 - Feb 9 or Jan 4 - Feb 12)

·         Come to church the first six Sundays of the year to learn more about prayer from the Lord’s Prayer (in Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount).

·         On Sunday, February 15, we will share how the prayer experiment went.

Would you please pray that God would do amazing things in our midst through this challenge! 

Consider taking the challenge yourself!

Pray that God would bring the lost to knowledge of Him through this series! That they would hear as our members begin to tell of all that God is doing and want to know the reason for the hope they have as Peter says!

Consider following along in the series with us by watching the sermons that will be posted as of next week @: gfnorth.org then click on the sermon button in bottom right of screen

Thank you so much for covering us in prayer!

Jeff, Kim, Max, Josh and Tate!