Mission Update from Megan Lekavick

Dear Praying Friends and Family,

Thank you for all of your continued prayers and support! February has been a great and busy month. We have been preparing for our annual banquet, which is this coming Thursday!! Also our big camp fundraiser with mulch is underway. These are two events we are praying that God uses to provide finances for our area and for kids to go to camp this summer at a reduced rate.

In February all of our leaders joined with the other Young Life leaders in Virginia to fast and pray for 24 hours at Rockbridge. It was a powerful and sobering time to be together. All throughout the night leaders would wake up and pray through year books of middle and high schools throughout Virginia. We brought every kids name in a year book before the throne of God and prayed for their lives. It was and is a beautiful image of what our ministry really is, to stand in the gap for kids. Yes, we go and love, laugh, and share life with kids, but all the while hopefully standing in the gap between them and their Savior. It was a sweet time.

Recently I have started to help out as the assistance coach for the girl’s varsity soccer team at Lee! It has been exciting to meet new girls and get to spend a lot of fun time with them. I am praying that the Lord continues to build these relationships.

I have felt, probably more than any other time in my life, the power of all of our prayers going up and being united with one love and purpose. I cannot express how encouraged I am when I think of you and know that our prayers are uniting and being heard!!

I pray that God continues to draw you nearer to Himself and that you would know Him more and more each day! Thank you for all you do! (Attached is a prayer calendar for March.)

Prayer Highlights: (1) Urban club start-up again, (2) continued homes to be open for our traditional club, (3) campaigners to take leadership of Club at Lee, (4) mulch fundraiser to get kids to camp cheaper, (5) ministry to the girls soccer team and head coach, (6) John and I as we prepare for marriage (wedding planning is going great thanks to mom and sister), (7) soccer girls Windsor, Kathleen, Liz, Taylor, Yatzen, and Bri.

All my love in Him,
Megan

Mission Update from Tom Holcomb

February 24, 2009

Dear Friends,

Have you ever wanted to cuss at Tupperware? I sit on the floor of the kitchen surrounded by piles of molded plastic that are staring at me, taunting me, mocking my inability to find the matching lid, the one lid out of 162 to chose from, the one lid that matches the container of leftover spaghetti that is sitting on the floor next to me! I start throwing Tupperware around the room and saying manly things about what I’m going to do to that lid when I find it as the kids run out of the kitchen. "Stand back. Dad’s fighting the Tupperware!" (And I know this doesn’t just happen in the Holcomb house either.)

But then, on try number 137, the right lid is found. And, admit it men, after you’re done quietly blaming your wife for ever buying the stupid stuff, there’s almost a tear that comes to your eye as you savor the precious few seconds of euphoric victory and think "This is what Michael Phelps must have felt like in Beijing." And so you stand up, a little swagger in your step as prouder, a champion, nay, a Tupperware conqueror. Last month we asked you to be praying with us for specific be bringing about, but we still had to “find the right Tupperware lid” for them happen.

In this past week – I met with a local pastor who would like to expose his church to storying as they are seeking God to make inroads to the Hispanic and African-American communities. I talked with a South African ministry about dates that I could come train their interns in Tomorrow I have a meeting with a missionary living in East Asia to find out how we can train workers in his closed country. Storying who can in turn go to other countries to train. Working in a multinational ministry with over eighty ethnic groups. A meeting with the president of a global ministry was set up for early April to talk about Central Americans his ministry works with to go to closed Middle Eastern countries to be trainers. (Latinos draw much less negative attention than Americans.)

When you look at this list, you can see there is quite an array of people – local ministry, post-modern, unreached people groups, on four very different continents. The common thread is two-fold. First, these people all live in hard to reach places. Second, they are all stepping stones (as opposed to ends in and of themselves) towards seeing the "nationals" of their context be trained and mobilized.

Why am I excited about these? Let me share a story with you. Next Monday I’m meeting with a missionary who did story training in Congo in January using some materials we were able to provide him. In a few days he trained about 20 Congolese pastors, followed by four days in the Congo-Rwanda bush area. When they returned, they shared that over 100 people had accepted Christ! My friend asked me to go with him this year to train these pastors and new believers to start churches in other areas. These are exciting things we are all a part of! And I’ll gladly go anywhere in the world they don’t have Tupperware.

Yours for giving every person a chance to hear a really good story, Tim and Kathy’s Feb/March Prayer Card. Please pray for: (1) March 2-6 Tim will be at Columbia (SC) International, (2) University leading storying seminars, meeting students going into missions, and training a team going to West Africa this summer to a Muslim unreached people group, (3) March 13-18 Tim will be in Brussels, Belgium, with a multinational ministry working in the capital of the European Union to develop a storying strategy to reach over one hundred nationalities living in Brussels, (4) the Kath and the kids as Tim is traveling.

Tim is looking for a volunteer bookkeeper who can help one day a week with the financial aspects of the ministry. It is becoming too time consuming for Tim to juggle as opportunities are growing. The Lord to continue blessing Kath’s sewing business with steady work. Brady is directing the lighting and sound for the middle school musical (lots of switches, buttons, and computer displays!). Pray he has fun with the several shows they are doing. It really is fun to seem him love this.

Praises: Tim’s getting some seminary work done while ministry doors continue opening. God is providing some needed financial relief. Today I confirmed a trip to Brussels, Belgium, to begin training Europeans.