Our first project will be starting an adminsitrative hub that will serve the small and growing church plants in the SF Bay area. Many of these churches need bookkeeping, help with project planning, newsletters, databases of fundraising contacts and members, etc. Being small and growing the church staff wants to spend time buidling relationships and minsitering to their people and they do not have the resources for full time staff. Our vision is to pool resources and centralize these functions to serve these churches. I (Brook) am excited to use my compulsion to organize things for the kingdom.
As this is getting established, we will be working on getting to know the area and build relationships with the various ministries there. This will help us establish a centralized way to coordinate short-term mission teams into the Bay Area. As a popular vacation destiantion, the San Fran Bay area could be a great place for groups of people to serve and vacation at the same time. This fits well with our passion and something that Dave is particularly gifted at.
This will all be along side a wonderful church planting community. We've spoken with many planters over the last few monts and there is a great spirit of cooperation there. We are hoping that being part of this community will help us discern what direction God may have for us in church planting. We are excited about the Russian-speaking community there and we are open to whatever God has for us in the future. Like any missionary relocating to a different culture, it will take us about 2 years to get settled and adjust to the area. I am planning on brushing up my Russian language and am trying to get Sam excited about learning Russian as well. From there, we will see what God does.
Finally, we'd like to request your prayers on a couple things as we embark on this adventure. There are still many details left to fall into place (for example, a place to live when we get there) but we are seeing God pull all this together so beautifully that we are confident those things will work out. Please pray with us on the following:
* Kids - Lilia is blissfully unaware of the impending change but Samuel is starting to realize that he will be leaving friends, family, baseball team, homeschool community, etc and gets sad sometimes. Please pray for his adjustment.
* Dave's family, who lives in Sarasota, is understandably sad about us leaving. Please pray for comfort for them and a peace about not having us so close anymore.
* Selling our house! We are praying that like it has been to us for 11 years, this house will be a blessing to another family.
We will miss the lovely Gulf Coast but I'm sure we will enjoy the lovely Pacific Ocean!
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