The place of the missionary is vital as churches seek to make an eternal difference, worldwide, through preaching the Gospel in obedience to the Great Commission. Thank you for sending missionaries to care for the lost, and thank you for caring for the missionaries as they go, by way of your prayers for us.
During these winter months, missionaries have contacted us with quite a variety of concerns:
• Guidance regarding medical problems and how to best work together with their doctors
• Administrative questions with regard to insurance, taxes, finances, and financial planning
• Communication matters related to prayer letters in general and churches in particular
• Planning and preparation for trips to the field, individually or as part of a group
• Emergency preparedness in an ever more complex and dangerous world
• Missions conferences and missions resources for churches
• Professional and spiritual growth of the missionaries, including their continuing education
• Guidance for missionaries in different stages of their professional lives and “careers”
• Marriage and family questions and challenges
• Reaching and serving children and adults with special needs
• Visa concerns and other legal matters with their host country
Let me please tell you a wonderful answer to prayer. For years I’ve been concerned that missionaries have been so “alone,” for lack of a better word. They go to the field and must develop so much from scratch, building their churches and ministries from the ground up. The biggest challenge is to effectively reach people with the Gospel and then to train them to spiritual maturity, prayerfully identifying and building laymen to help serve and full-time Christian servants to help lead.
The Lord answered by giving more work to do! He opened the door to help develop the Foundations of My Faith discipleship program for our local church and also the 150-lesson, three-level Teaching All Nations “Bible college in a box” program for missionaries worldwide. God has blessed both as they have been introduced and put into practice, and now I’ve been given the green light to prepare to travel and teach the latter program to missionaries and their people. More time on the field, winning souls and helping to plant churches—can’t wait!
Praise God for souls won to Christ. It is obvious that such occasions are of the Lord. For example, on one cold and windy Saturday, we prayed and went out to knock on doors. Talking to a lot of people, no one trusted Christ. However, the next day the Lord brought a visitor to my Spanish Sunday school class. He was hungry to listen to the Gospel and received Christ as his Saviour.
Please pray for fruitfulness in soul winning, that those won would grow in the Lord, and for wisdom
and God’s direction as we plan and prepare for the church-planting trip to Guadalajara, Mexico,
in May. Please pray that God would assemble the right team and direct to the right community.
In partnership for the Gospel,
Dan and Lana Siemer
