June Update

Dear friends and supporters,

We are taking a break from our massive pre-trip cleaning/packing/baking/car tune-up routine to bring you all with us on our next journey! Lord willing, we will be leaving for Cottage Cove to spend another summer ministering to faithful ministers of inner city Nashville. The goal of this project is to renovate another section of the facility, providing better opportunity for these children to learn, be loved, and ultimately be introduced to faith in Christ. We will also be filling in wherever there is need in the summer programming since they are facing a packed summer short staffed! Please come along with us whether it is in prayer for the work at Cottage Cove or perhaps following God’s leading to join His work in a physical way. We are praising God that we get to be together as a family for this trip and would cherish your prayers as we seek to draw our children and each other closer to our Father in the midst of leaving behind “normal” life for a while. We want to be fully dependent on Him for strength and only display HIS power and provision through us this summer.

Some of you may not have heard updates since our last newsletter…Joel has been able to serve with teams in Liberia on the school project and in Kentucky providing tornado relief. Both trips were successful and we continue to pray for guidance as the need in both of these areas is vast. We also had a wonderful opportunity to travel the midwest visiting our church families at Gulfhaven Mennonite in Mississippi and Rockport Baptist in Missouri! It was an honor to share in both of these places how God is working with Steppin-Out and we were so refreshed and encouraged by the people we came across. It is always amazing as we share our stories with others and likewise, hear theirs, to see what God has done in our midst! As trips fly by and blur together it’s so easy to lose sight of His amazing provision and blessing if we don’t make an effort to recall them. We are so thankful for those of you we were able to fellowship with and hope to be with more of you at some point in the future!

That about brings us up to date…with a lot of potty training, homeschooling, frog catching and princess dances in between.J Today, as I write this, we will be attending and Joel will be performing the wedding of some dear friends that met on one of our projects in Guatemala two years ago! Yet again, it is beautiful to see the hand of our generous God on the lives of His children!  

There is no way to describe the feeling of knowing that we take each trip and each day for that matter riding on the prayers of all of you who so faithfully lift us to our Father, who send us, and who love us with Christ’s love. A lot has happened in the last month (personal to our church family here) that has caused us to recognize our own inadequacies and to wonder at how God could use us in our weakness.  Along with numerous other even greater questions involved, we couldn’t see how plans for this summer would be possible. But our faithful God makes the way for His work to be accomplished! He has so tenderly ministered to us and those around us in ways we have never known. We’ve been learning to walk constantly in His presence, turning every thought, every waking moment over to conversing with and meditating on Him. We are far from there but just striving for it and knowing that this is the kind of intimate relationship He wants with us changes everything! He is a sovereign God who has so much happening in this world! We’ll miss out if we can’t see just how much He desires ALL of our love and just how much He wants to do great and mighty things through the humblest of His creation. We pray that we will be counted in that number and pray the same for all of you. We travel with you this summer and pray that the blessing of His constant presence is heavy upon you at every moment. 

By His Grace Alone,

Joel & Meg