May God be merciful and bless us.
May his face smile with favor on us.
May your ways be known throughout the earth,
your saving power among people everywhere.
Psalm 67:1-2
WOW! I have forgotten
how beautiful the state of Michigan can be in the summer. Waking up to a cool morning listening to the
birds sing and watching all the wildlife roam around in the neighbor’s yards
and ours is refreshing. It reminds me
just how creative God is, as if we could fathom the fullness of his
creativity. I am also reminded that all
good things must come to an end. Yes,
winter is right around the corner. LOL
With the month of July coming to a close it brings a bit of
excitement and sadness to the both of us.
We are having such a great time hanging out with our Grandchildren and
their parents. Okay, our kids! We have been able to do things with them now
verses watching their experiences on Facebook or by having them communicating
their experiences to us over the phone.
We would spend every hour of the day with them if it was possible, but
we have other responsibilities while spending a few months here in Michigan.
We started learning Spanish, using software called
“Duolingo”, before we left Uganda. We are still going strong with the software
and we have also found a great Spanish teacher to work with us while we are
here. Her name is Jean and she meets
with us once a week. We know we will not
be fluent before we leave and that it may take several years to be fluent. But, we are enjoying learning and meeting
with her and her daughters (Noel and Jackie).
We will also take Spanish for 2-3 months when we arrive in the Dominican
Republic.
We used to enjoy adding a little sentence to our newsletter
using the language we are learning each month, but we fear doing so now because
you may know Spanish a lot better than we do.
No matter how incorrect we may have been with our Lusoga language, you
had to trust that we were correct. LOL
We mentioned that we are starting to experience a bit of
sadness. This sadness is brought on by
the fact that we will be leaving our loved ones behind again. We will be leaving Family, Friends and our
Family of supporters sometime in the end of September. We can’t put into words what it does to us
inside as we watch our loved ones cry at our leaving. Sometimes we have to leave family behind to
follow Christ!
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At the Coker Family Reunion
they had an Auction to help us raise some money.
These Awesome & Sweet Girls made this
quilt to sell!
Thank you everyone for your
Love & Support!
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Who says furlough = vacation?
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Here’s One way to
Raise Support. LOL
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Now for the excitement!
We are so excited to start ministering in another part of the
world. We are excited that you have
decided to join us on this journey. We
are excited that we have already started building a family in the D.R. We are excited that God is willing to use us
again and he is already paving the way for us to be there. We are excited that we get to use our gifts
and talents to teach and train God’s children so that they can in turn go and
train others.
Luke 15 uses three parables to show the importance of
reaching the lost and how important these lost ones are to God. The first parable is of the shepherd leaving
ninety-nine sheep behind to GO
and find the ONE that is
lost. Jesus tells us in Luke 15:7 there
is more rejoicing in heaven over the one whom repents than the ninety-nine who
do not need to repent.
The second parable is of the woman who had ten coins and
lost one. She searched hard for the one
that was lost. Again Jesus tells us in
Luke 15:9 there is rejoicing in the presence of the angels of God over the one
sinner who repents.
The third parable is of the lost son. The son took his portion of the father’s
estate and squandered it on wild living.
The son finally came to his senses and returned to his father. In Luke 15:31-32 the father explains to the
older son the need to celebrate over the younger sons decision to return. The father says, “this brother of yours was
dead and is now alive, he was lost and is found.”
We as humans can sometimes feel as if we cant make a
difference for the Kingdom of God because we can’t reach the masses that are
lost. I believe Satan has deceived us
into thinking that we are of no use because we aren’t able to reach so many
lost people. Let us be encouraged by
Luke 15, because we may not be called to reach the masses. God would love for us to focus on one lost
soul at a time. If the thousands of
Christians focused on one soul at a time, we would be reaching the masses.
We are moving to the Dominican Republic to teach and train
so that we may reach one soul at a time!
Serving Our KING
together with you!
Bruce
& Janine
