Orientation Success - Workers for the Harvest

Each time I go through this process I am amazed by God. Each one of these people has been specially designed and equipped by God to do the things He has set up for them to do. God is doing amazing thins around the world through His people. His heart longs for His creation to be redeemed and brought back to Himself.

Please pray with me as we join with Him is seeing the nations filled with worshiping, serving, disciple-making churches that change their world by word and deed. The harvest field is ripe and ready so pray the Lord of the Harvest to send forth laborers.

Mark

Family Update

I wanted to show you all a picture of our family. It is hard to imagine that everyone is growing and getting so big. I'm standing beside Cathy who is seated on the top right step. Matt and Devon are seated at the top step left beside Cathy with their daughter Lilly Ann. Kristen and her daughter Bailey are seated in front of Cathy and beside me. And Laura and Jason are seated in front with their two kids Christian and Hannah.

Enjoy,
Mark and Cathy

New Church Partnership in Birmingham AL

Thanks for praying for me as I traveled with Kevin Mason who lives and works in Northern Europe. We had the chance to develop a partnership between Developing Church Networks which is a group whose focus is to assist new church plants in Alabama, George, Mississippi, Florida and now in Missouri. You'll see us here is the picture: Kevin Mason, Royce Collins, Monte Erwin, Todd McMichen, and myself.

Things went very well as we are moving forward to a place where DCN churches will be provided the necessary help to connect to new churches not only in Northern Europe but also in Cuba, Senegal, Vietnam, Thailand and Congo.

Our desire is to have 10 locations arounf the world were churches can partner with to see nationals church planting initiatives move forward. I can see the day when we have connected 150 to 200 churches around the world to strategic relationships.

Keep praying for me as I need to focus on developing the needed infrustructure to make this work well.

Mark and Cathy

PS: Pray for our candiate orientation which starts this Saturday 6/16. We have people coming taht are headed to Central Asia, Africa, Russia and Europe.

New Partnership in Beginning Stages

This Friday, June 8th I am headed to Birmingham AL to begin dialoguing with a network of new churches (www.developchurches.com) that number about 35 in all. Their desire is to begin to do missions together. I will be introducing them to the opportunity to connect with church planting networks in Estonia, Latvia and Sweden.

By connecting these groups together it is our hope that more churches will get planted in Northern Europe and the Alabama/Georgia region. So please pray as this is the beginning of a new "Northern European Network"!

Anytime we bring together visionaries and practitioners who are establishing new churches among unreached, under-reached, or unchurched people (what ever your terminology is) we get exited because this is at the center of God's heart - reaching His creation with the good news and seeing disciples made which can through word and deed continue to touch their society and bring glory to God.

I'll give you an update next week but we can not succeed without prayer for His will to be done. I humbly asked you to remember this weekend. If you want to see more of what I am doing go to our Partnership page on our web site.

Cuba Summit Update

Great Time - Fantastic - The Best Ever... These were some of the comments of our time in Toronto. The whole purpose of this meeting was to get an update on from our Cuban brothers on how things were proceeding and how the partners could continue to contribute to see Jesus made famous on this island.

We heard about how the training centers we operating and developing new leaders, we heard about how partner churches were helping through ministry colaboration, we heard of a desire to plant another 45 churches in the next 5 years. All this is very exiting.

Thank you for praying for me as I led this meeting. The attached photo is just a portion of those who attended. Keep praying for Cuba, the government, the church and for the people who still need to come into relationship with Jesus. To date we have 10 churches involved, a denomincation from Canada and a Latin Seminary. We are looking for four more churches to adopt a province so if you have a desire to get involved give me a call or drop an email.

NOTE: (Adoption of a province means training & sending a qualified Cuban missionary to a province, purchasing/building a house which doubles as a church & training center & providing ongoing training so that from this location other churches are started that reach the people of the region)