Forget about the fat lady singing - it's not over until God says it is...

OK – I hope I grabbed your attention earlier today with my brief post about ‘Hail Mary’ passes. No, we are not expecting another child, as one of our friends suggested. Let me walk you through the last 4 days so you can feel what we’ve felt. Grab a cup of coffee and enjoy this little journey.

Most of you should know our funding situation. We’ve been on the brink of coming home early for 11 months now. God has worked in spectacular ways to keep us here month after month (each month, He’s answered our $2000 monthly shortfall!) but, as we approached the holidays, things didn’t look very hopeful. Our support balance was below the threshold set by Global Partners and, unless a miracle happened by January 15, we would be making plans to come home.

January 15 came and went with no significant change in our account. Ministry was at an apex here with the church just finishing our national youth camp where we saw God really move in the lives of our young people. We expected a call or email but kept saying, “It’s not over til we are getting on a plane” and struggled to hold on to hope. On Friday AM, the email came – Global Partners needed us to make arrangements to fly home and they needed us to get on it by Monday. Our hearts were pretty heavy that morning – we were heading away with DaNae’s parents for two days and were trying to keep our emotions in control. We still wanted to hold on to hope.

As I was walking out the door, my phone rang. I got the look from DaNae – the one that says, “leave work at home and lets go away” – but I saw it was one of our Servant Leaders (elders) so I answered it. I think Frank said something like this – “Hey, I have a part-time position I need to fill in my department to be responsible for the Discovery programme and you’re who I want. Would this help you funding shortfall and are you interested.” I’m pretty sure the conversation involved more than that but that’s what stuck because, as Frank explained the role and the pay, my mind was saying, “God, is this for real? This is a great fit for what we are doing here.” The pay he was able to offer was the amount of our shortfall (he didn’t know what that was before offering it) and the role was to promote a programme we’ve already used with our trust – a programme I hope to bring to the states when we return one day. And, it was with a Christian aid organization that our church supports. I would be able to continue my role with cession|community AND be able to promote DISCOVERY (Tearfund’s community development resource that we use) to churches all over New Zealand.

We still had a few hurdles in front of us – Frank still had to get final approval at Tearfund, we had to work out how my visa would work with the restrictions it has as a religious worker, and we had to secure Global Partners approval. All of this happened in a 48 hour period and it seemed like someone greased the gears, it was so smooth. I still sit here tonight a bit dazed as I think of how quickly God moved and changed things for us.

What does this mean for us? It means we will be able to stay for another 6 months!! And, assuming this pilot works well, it means we will be looking at extending our term possibly to December 2013. It means we will be able to continue fulfilling the call God has for us at cession|community and be able to have a national influence as well. Isn’t that SOOOO cool? Just when we thought it was over and our doors were shut, God opened a window (Aedan says this and then makes a sound like he’s throwing a rock through a window – that’s kind of how we felt ). Once again, my favorite verse has come alive. “My ears had heard of You but now my eyes have seen You” – Job 42:5. We definitely feel we’ve seen a real God through this!

What does this mean for each of you on our team? For us to be able to accept this, we will need to know that our current support will continue and still need each of you to be part of our team. If you are on our prayer support team, will you continue to pray for our ministry as well as one-time and monthly gifts to invest in what we are doing here? We are still operating at a reduced budget and still need to fund a return trip home later this year (about $5,000) if we are to extend our term. In order to be able to return to our original monthly budget, we would need to partner with 8 new faith promise partners at $50/month. If you are part of our financial team, thank you so much for your faithful giving – we wouldn’t have been able to say yes to this development without your commitments. Your partnership has enabled us to partner with ministry here, both at the local and national level. Things like Ignite Camp and the relationships we are building at the local church level wouldn’t have happened if it weren’t for you. Would you also begin praying today if God would have you extend your giving to the end of our extended term?

I can’t wait to chat with you to share more of the details – the bits of the story that don’t translate to print very well! Over the next several weeks, we will try to connect with you and hear what God has been doing with you, too. In the meantime, feel free to drop us an email or note – we’d love to hear from you. And, for those who want to learn more about Tearfund, check out www.tearfund.org.nz. While you do that, we’re off to bed – your days just starting but ours finished a little while ago…

Love partnering in ministry with you,

Grateful!!

Happy 19 days into the New Year everyone!!! We pray that you had a wonderful and joyous Christmas and New years. The Reynolds have enjoyed wonderful Kiwi holidays, and find ourselves peaceful and more grateful than ever for all of you that God has crossed our paths with. I hope you have stayed caught up with our blog updates as we walked through our outreach events prior to Christmas. God used this past Christmas season to connect our church with so many in and around our community. Fruit was evident of this at our Christmas Eve service as we saw some of these families come into join our family on that special night. It was really exciting! Once we got through that busy end of December, we have enjoyed a bit of down time with friends and just soaking in the joy of the season with so many precious relationships we have here.
Rob jumped right back into action in continued work and preparation for Ignite Camp, the national Wesleyan Youth camp that is took place this weekend. It has been an intense time, but we know every minute has been worth it. An amazing team of talented leaders gathered around Rob to make this happen. 147 leaders and teens from all over the island left on Friday (Thursday for the U.S.) for 4 days of camp. Rob has been home for just a few days now from camp, and it has been amazing to continue to hear the stories and testimonies that have come out of those 4 days. They felt your prayers and it was evident that God was on the move in the lives of these young people. In our church alone, we had one new commitment (celebrate!), one recommitment (celebrate again!), and one desire to lead a Bible study to study the gifts of the Spirit(celebrate some more!!). As parents, we’ve loved the conversations we’ve had with Caleb since camp. Thank you for lifting them up, continue to pray for the aftermath of camp, and continue to pray for the churches and young people involved over the following weeks as they open themselves to the work of the Holy Spirit and then most are returning to new school year in just a few weeks.
You know that our prayer and deep request to God was to be able to stay in NZ long enough to see the important community out reaches through in December and to see Ignite camp through to its completion as Rob had accepted the position of Camp Director. I am in awe at the work of God’s hand and the way He used so many of you to make that happen. Here we are on the other side of those Christmas outreaches and smack in the middle of camp. My heart is overwhelmed. Now that we have made it to this point, the Reynolds may very well be facing the beginning of the next chapter in our lives. We are grateful and blessed beyond words to make it to camp, more so to witness Gods provision month after month for over a year and what He has allowed us to be a part of over this year. As you all know, we have had a deficit in our monthly funding , and we are now at a point that unless something happens in the immediate future, we will be making arrangements to return to the States in late February. This is not a surprise to us as we have leaned on God to provide our manna each month, and this is certainly no surprise to God. God is at work (He always is) and some things could be coming into place that would keep us here longer, but we are down to just days to figure this out. We have complete peace as to what the near future holds and we know that either way, God has got this covered.
We need your love, support and prayers now more than ever as we navigate through these next few weeks and begin to lay this out. My parents have decided to make a trip to this awesome country and are here with us now which is a gift beyond words not only to have them here, to share with them but also to process things with them. So please cover us in prayer as Rob has returned from camp and we begin to figure some of this out. We will update you in the next week or so as to where some of this is landing, but in the mean time we are peaceful and rejoice in a God whose mercy in new every single morning.

Aotearoa (New Zealand) Christmas

We wanted to update as soon as possible because we knew so many of you were carrying us in prayer over the past week. Thank you for covering us, We have felt your prayers and carried that into the past weekend with us. This past Saturday morning our church (which meets in a community center in the center of a large park) opened its doors to welcome families from our community to a morning of quality time with their children, in a fun environment with activities, crafts, challenges and live puppet show. One of the huge wins with this outreach was the way our church community came together to see this happen. This has been such a busy time between the Santa Parade and then the Aotearoa Christmas (pronounce A-O-TA-Row –A; which means New Zealand) this past weekend. We had so many involved from singles, to families, to youth. It was an awesome time of serving together and have had several comments of people sharing they didn’t feel craziness or stress. The other big win was that we saw several families come through that had nothing to do with cession or the other programs we offer. They came from the community because of the Santa Parade or the printed invites we had. I saw children giggling, parents smiling and most stuck around like they wanted to be there. We have names and contact info for these families and we will be doing “gentle” follow ups with them. We are grateful to God for all of his provisions both in staffing and supplies and for the families brought onto us. Continue to pray for these families, that our churches name might stick in their minds, that they may choose to come to a Christmas service or some of our other programs and that they would be open to our follow ups.
So amazing to believe that we are now only days away from Christmas Day!! I have shared this with many of you but, I have done a lot of pondering in my heart in mind over these past weeks of what does it means to be thankful….it would be easy for me to just go down the list of things I have, people in my life…..all the good things. But I think the word, thankful, means so much more then the list of provisions, people or blessings in my life (although of course I am thankful for those things). I think that true thankfulness is also an attitude of the heart. Am I thankful in the trying times as well as the good times. Am I thankful on thanksgiving and Christmas, or on all days? I feel that having an attitude of thankfulness directly effects my worship to my God, and then as a result effects how I live out my day. It helps to keep me from being in that place of “entitlement” and instead strive to be in a place of surrender. It tenderizes my heart to remember that all of this, my life, my family, serving in NZ……..all of it, is all about my Savior and that it is not about me.
As Rob and I look over this past year and serving in NZ…..words cannot express the gratefulness that overflows in our hearts. We have seen our family through transition and adjusting to a new culture, we have been given amazing relationships both within and without our church walls, we have seen hundreds of people exposed to Christ through community outreaches, we have seen the birth of youth ministry within our church and the opportunity to influence youth ministry as a whole on the North Island, we have witnessed the pain of a city literally broken by earthquake and were blessed to help be a balm to weary souls, we have seen healing of relationships and have been blessed to mentor some on their journey, we have seen the growth of the Trust which will enable cession|community to continue to reach out to their community, we have had the opportunity to work with at risk teens, God has carried us through illness, home sickness and times of fear and doubt. And God has taught us about His provision and His manna month after month as He has continued to keep us here month after month through our partnership with so many of you. As God continues to remain at work here, we would love to hear how God has remained at work in your lives over this past year as well. I would also love to hear your thoughts on an attitude of thankfulness.
In our last post we were pretty open about our current goal to remain here at least until February to see the National Youth Camp through completion. We are still waiting and fully trusting on our Lord to provide our “manna”. We desperately need your prayers in this area. If you at all felt your heart nudged in our last post about end of year gifts and would like to have further conversation, we have a way to call you for free so just drop us a note at dreynolds422@gmail.com or you can go to giving links on this web site.
Please know that during this season, and all other days that we are deeply grateful for you, for the offerings of your prayers, love, friendship, gifts and support. We are here representing you and we serve with a humble and joyful heart.

There is so much I could update on this blog I would be writing (and you reading) for a week! So we will do it in chunks instead  We put out the word that this month is a huge month in outreach opportunities for our community. I know that several of you have been praying because we literally feel your prayers sustaining us, thank you! Our God delights when His people pray. Last weekend we participated in the Santa Parade. Now you may be asking “how is being in a parade an effective outreach tool”. Well for us it was just that, a “tool”. It served two functions. First It was an event that our church community came together with families from Mainly Music (which is one of the ministries we offer to families in the wider community) to create and participate in this fun event. We had a least 4 families that came and “rubbed shoulders” with us all morning, it was awesome! Secondly, the way the float was designed it advertised to hundreds of people the event we have this coming Saturday along with some of us handing out over 150 invites along the parade route. It allowed from some great conversations with families watching the parade. Thank you for praying for us, and now shift your prayers to this coming weekend. It has been a lot of working doing the two events back to back, but we have an awesome team along beside us, and we are anticipating at least 300 kids this weekend. Pray that people from the community was would come, would be blessed and fell loved on, would hear good messages, and just might choose to connect with us because they feel loved and welcomed. Pray for our energy levels, this has been an intense two weeks plus looking ahead to our Christmas services and even our health as some families have been attacked with throat and stomach bugs. I really look forward to updating you on this event.
God remains at work in our lives, the life of cession|community and the impact she can have on her community. We had another huge prayer answered last week as we found out we received money from a grant Rob worked on, that will allow cession to be able to fund this Christmas event and the events that will revolve around Easter. This is a huge blessing and a great win for the beginnings of the Trust.
Finally as most of you know, we are probably in one of the most crucial periods financially that we have been in since we arrived. We do not know how long our ministry will continue here in NZ, we do know that God remains at work in our lives and we will strive to approach each day we have to minister here with thankfulness. Because God has used so many of you, we are seeing these current December projects through. We are humbled and grateful. We now are trusting God to provide our manna to keep us into Jan/Feb as Rob leads the National Youth Camp. We have a deficit of a few thousand dollars to make up by Dec. 15 and have made it our goal to do what we can to stay at least that long (Jan/Feb), knowing that all of this belongs to God.
As we look at the last few weeks of 2011, Rob and I would like to ask you to pray about considering an end of year gift, and to have the conversation with God if He is asking you to join us now.
We are aware that many of us look to this last month of the year as an opportunity to give to nonprofit organizations as we evaluate our giving over the year and taxes for the next. If you are in that place of evaluating would you consider an end of year gift to invest in what God is doing here in NZ? We were so blessed by individuals who stood in the Gap a few weeks ago to insure our commitments could take place this month, we know that they were blessed in return to be a part of it, and ultimately God will use their gives to help touch the hearts of those who will be influenced by our outreaches this month. Would you pray and ask if God is asking you to invest in our ministry in January, by offering a onetime gift now before the end of the year?
We are very aware that this is a huge season for most of us with the extra business, family focus, travel, church……..the list goes on during the holidays. Rob and I feel the magnitude of the upcoming Dec deadline, and strive for the goal of at least seeing ministry through Jan/Feb to see the national youth camp project through to completion, knowing full well this is all in God’s hands. We appreciate your time in reading this update and would be humbled if you set aside a few minutes to pray over this area and discuss with God if He may be asking you to be a part of this journey. If He is nudging your heart there is more information on the tabs here on the website or you can go directly to our giving link - click here or go to https://secure.wesleyan.org/gp/mdirectory2/WM29-0053 .
It is with a thankful heart that I close this, knowing that God can and will do more then we could possibly imagine and that He alone is our past, present and future