Thank you once again so much for all of your prayers! Below are the links to our latest prayer update.

Late Summer 2010 E-zine

These past couple weeks have truly plunged us into quite the adventure! It’s interesting how God often leads us to related Scriptures as if He know what lies ahead. Funny how that works, huh! One of my interests in the Scriptures lately revolves around the Spirit’s work of leading in the believer’s life. I am currently reading through a related book on this subject. The title and premise of this book curiously grasped my attention. Apparently according to the author’s research, Celtic Christians previously referred to the Holy Spirit as the “Wild Goose.” While I am not exactly sure of the validity of this tale, it’s undergirding principle I believe is somewhat valid and often overlooked in Christendom today. We often neglect the role and logistical capacity of the Spirit’s work today in fear of slipping into some extreme unbiblical teaching on the Spirit. While the afore mentioned subject could encapsulate much writing on a myriad of subtopics, the one of my particular interest currently is the guiding role of the Spirit in the everyday lives of **(continued from 1 page newsletter)** believers. As a hunter or hunting dog may encounter quite the adventure following after a wild goose, I believe Scriptures’ teaching on the Spirit’s guiding in life often bears an uncanny resemblance. It’s not that God is on a mission to plunge us into life of “Indiana Jones” adventure to which maybe we can’t currently relate, but that our submission to His leading may often seem like an adventure. I think this truth is often not just neglected, but completely forgotten and misunderstood. I’m not saying that we all need to go out looking for the most adventurous choice and go for it assuming that God is in it just because it seems adventurous. No, what I am saying is that we don’t often treat the Spirit’s leading seriously and if we truly did, many of us would experience or maybe even realize His often unexpected ways of guidance throughout life. Biblically, we often neglect a submissive and discerning attitude toward the Spirit’s guidance throughout our everyday lives. When Christ walked this earth, He continually directed, taught, encouraged, and rebuked His followers. As He left back to the Father, He promised God’s Spirit would come to continue His function in His physical absence. Do you see it? We live in this Spirit fulfilled age where every believer personally has the indwelling of the Spirit. Just as Christ ministered to His followers in the Gospels, so the Spirit today ministers to modern day followers of Jesus. Jesus taught His followers to ask in faith their concerns and requests regarding guidance in life and really for anything. We have the awesome privilege of asking the Father in faith for His guidance predicated on our relationship to Jesus and answered and enacted through the earthly ministry of the Holy Spirit. Oh, how I know I am so often naive or oblivious to the Spirit’s work in my life! May God truly drive us back to a Biblically-centered understanding of His work in our everyday lives through His Spirit.

Allow me to share our most recent experience with the Spirit’s leading. I pray it will serve as a personal example that may help as some form of encouragement to you. It all started as I continued calling churches for support-raising meetings. Our fall schedule was filling up very slowly. At this same time, we also began looking seriously into “Travel Nursing” positions. In the need to fill the demand of nurses at various hospitals throughout our country, there are several contract nursing agencies that hire nurses to temporarily fill in these nursing gaps. Well, particularly interesting to us was the availability of these positions throughout Alaska. So after praying and seeking counsel, Laura applied to one of these companies. She began receiving Alaska job openings generally lasting around 13 weeks. The only problem initially revolved around a little thing called a state nursing license! It was quite the fiasco, but after several weeks Laura finally secured her Alaska state nursing license. During this license acquiring process, a few jobs had come and gone. So, we continued to wait on God’s leading in the matter. As I continued calling, our fall schedule remained mostly open. As a scheduled missions **(continued here from 3 page E-zine)** conference in Denver drew near, Laura received 2 calls for Alaska job openings. One located in Bethel and the other located in Wrangell. Additionally, there was one previous opening in Anchorage. To make a long story even longer, we earnestly sought God in prayer and listened to godly counsel in the matter. So now at this point we are well into the missions conference when we get a call that the Wrangell position is filled, but Bethel’s is still open. Now, you have to know that Bethel is the exact area where we are praying about initially entering full-time. Needless to say, Bethel seemed like the perfect choice. Bringing this story to a close, Laura received another phone call toward the end of the missions conference week in Denver. I can still recall the phone ringtone and seeing the (907) Alaska area code. The call was regarding the position in Wrangell. Apparently, the medical facility determined they needed another nurse for a 8 week assignment. Obviously, this was a crucial time for prayer as we sought God’s direction in this decision. Questions flooded our minds. Could this be why our fall schedule is so open? Could this be the job for Laura even though it is in a totally different part of the state? Why would God send us to an area where we are not looking to minister full-time? It turns out that the Bethel position remained open, but bypassed Laura’s resume’ in search of someone with a little different qualifications. Remember the whole first paragraph regarding my recent study on the Spirit’s leading. All of these calls came in literally as I was reading and pondering through God’s often unexpected leading and the faith it takes to follow Him even when it doesn’t make much sense. Wrapping up the story, Laura secured the job in Wrangell and we pulled an all-night drive from Denver back to Chicago for our last-minute plane flight to Wrangell. By the way, the airline tickets were another confirmation of God’s leading…He blessed us with an incredible deal!

So here I now sit in our hospital-provided apartment writing this as I look out across Wrangell’s turquoise harbor and surrounded evergreen mountain backdrop. I can’t help but smile at the wondrous, sovereign leading of our God! Laura is enjoying her job here and gaining Alaska nursing experience. We are delighted to connect up with the Baptist church here in town, while we also work on building our 2011 support-raising calendar. While we don’t yet fully comprehend God’s reasons for sending us here to Wrangell, it is crystal clear to us that His Spirit prodded us along as we leaned on Him in total faith amidst our apparent lack of understanding. Why am I sharing all of this? Because I firmly believe that God often delights in bringing His sovereign leading to bear on our finite, independent minds. We as the redeemed in Jesus must bring ourselves back to a submission to the Spirit’s role of guiding throughout life.

Thank you once again so much for all of your prayers! Below are the links to our latest prayer update.

Summer 2010 E-zine

Thank you once again so much for all of your prayers! Below are the links to our latest prayer update.

Spring ’10 E-zine

Mahalo (thank you in Hawaiian) to all who prayed for our round of deputation meetings in Hawaii! A few months back God orchestrated a trip to the Hawaiian islands. I had always joked about missionaries having deputation meetings there until one day when I decided to make some calls. As the weeks unfolded, the month long trip came together. Have you ever been led somewhere by God and experienced an unusual orchestration of events? If that makes any sense, this was our experience in Hawaii. I’m serious; it was really like God Himself was opening doors, providing needs, and putting us in contact with just the right people! So as I attempt to give an update of our trip, I’d like to give a few snapshots of our God’s blessings.

*Free air mileage travel
*Local aviation Christian contact for inter-island flights
*Church on Kaua’i where the pastor’s wife is from the same area in S. Missouri as my mom’s side of family
*Church on Kaua’i where the message God led me to preach fit right into their current series
*Church contact on Kaua’i had a Christian family who has a beautiful vacation rental. They enjoy having missionaries stay in it & it just so happened to be available while we were there! Praise the Lord!
*Great meetings (Anahola Baptist and Kaua’i Baptist Temple) on Kaua’i and we look forward to remaining in contact
*Church on Oahu (Lanakila Baptist) also very helpful and we look forward to remaining in contact as well
*God provided a place to stay on Oahu @ a S. Baptist camp. The director grew up in the same area of Missouri as my dad’s side of the family! Crazy stuff! Anyway, he then was a pastor in Alaska for 25 years. Also there was a work team there that week from Soldotna (near one of supporting churches). Turns out we know some of the same people! It was awesome to make contact with some additional churches on Alaska’s road system!

*We also met up with friends from high school on Oahu as well as two other great church contacts on the island!
*It was also on Oahu that God provided a rather nice $11 per day rental car (jet black, brand new Dodge Charger).
*The final stretch of our trip took us to the big island of Hawai’i. Again through a church, God provided another beautiful vacation home! The church & Christian home owners even stocked it with some basic food items! What a blessing!
*We then travelled north on the island for another Sunday meeting on Hawai’i. The pastor here @ Aloha Baptist was in the military in Alaska previously. One of our supporting pastors from Alaska has been here before. There is also a former MAF missionary pilot here, so that was some good discussion. The church put us up here for the night. The people here were also extremely generous and hospitable!

*Our last meeting in Hawaii brought us to Grace Baptist of Hilo. The church was very helpful in helping us with housing and fellowshipping with them throughout the weekend. The pastor’s family is related to some Chicago area contacts of ours. We really enjoyed the time with the joyful believers here in Hilo and it was a great way to end our round of deputation meetings in Hawaii!
*Finally, lodging for the last night back on Oahu (before our flight home) was provided through one of the Oahu contacts from the previous week. Maili Bible Church graciously put us up for the night in their prophet’s chamber. We enjoyed briefly seeing this ministry and discussing ours with the pastor!
*God met our needs through the very generous giving of each church! We truly look forward to remaining in contact with each church as we continue on for service in Alaska!

I hope you can see God’s orchestrating hand amidst all of these snapshots! I think there are probably many times when God orchestrates our lives and we often just miss it. Obviously God is always sovereignly in control, but there are sometimes when He allows to actually see it more visually. I would encourage you to ponder His great sovereign reign in your own life and then praise Him for it!

So thank you for praying for us and our ministry! Please continue to pray that God will now give us the right long-term partners from the Hawaii trip! From here, we have a quick 1-week break over Easter at home, before heading to the West coast for another month of meetings in Oregon, possibly Washington, and then Montana.

In His Grace,
- Derek

A quick video update from Hawaii, specifically on the island of Kaua’i. God has been so good orchestrating this trip! We enjoyed our first meeting already and look forward to the others! Thanks for praying!

- Derek

Thank you once again so much for all of your prayers! Below are the links to our latest prayer update.

Late Winter ’10 E-zine

This week’s conference went great! I thoroughly enjoyed my time during track 3 of Faith’s Biblical Counseling Conference. I would

This week has been incredible! God has really chiseled away at my heart throughout all the sessions! Faith Baptist in Lafayette, IN every February; good stuff!

Greetings from the deputation trail! Here is a short video update of our travels.