Hello Friends and Family,
We have some exciting news to share with you! One month ago, we wrote an update talking about our season of support raising and how we were waiting on the Lord to provide for us. We were really excited but nervous. After just one month, we have reached over half of our support goal! In February, we saw over $1200 per month come in. We are blown away by God’s faithfulness to us through each of you.
But that’s not the only exciting update. Starting last week, Brittany and I have transitioned to working part time with Adventures in Missions until we reach the other half of our support goal. This has been such a blessing to us. To some degree, we are still training and learning how to effectively do our jobs, but we are learning fast and there is so much to be done. You might recall in a previous update where we shared that we have over 1000 participants signed up for trips this summer. Now, we have over 70 trips scheduled on the calendar this year with even more continuing to come in. We are doing everything we can to learn on the fly and support our team as we mobilize all of these people.
Last weekend, February 25-27th, we hosted all of our project leaders (short-term mission trip leaders from AIM) at the Adventures in Missions Headquarters in Gainesville, GA for a weekend event called “Project Leader Training.” Close to 70 people signed up with interest to lead missions trips with us! These leaders are from all over the U.S., and soon they’ll be leading trips all over the world.
Project Leader Training is so powerful for a number of reasons, but it was amazing to see the testimonies of leaders who have been volunteering weeks of their time to serve the Lord. Beyond the encouragement, testimonies, and training, there was spiritual fruit as well.
On the second day of the training, a 15 year old named Gage was participating in worship with all of the leaders. Gage tends to hang out at the office and help out anywhere he is asked or needed. At the end of the worship service, I saw Gage sitting against the wall in the tiny little media room, hugging his knees and tears running down his face. I went over to him and asked him what was going on.
The first words out of his mouth were, “There is no place for me in this world!” Immediately, my heart felt the weight of those words. When he said that, I could tell there was a lot of pain and disappointment behind those words. I could hear it in his cracking voice as he shared with me.
I wasn’t exactly sure how to handle that situation. I just sat and listened, and after Gage had expressed the things he was feeling, I reminded him that there is grace for him, and that Jesus died for him, and that he is uniquely gifted by God, and that he is only 15 years old and he doesn’t need to have all the answers yet. And then he said to me, “I want to give my life to Christ.”
It was such a beautiful and unexpected interaction.
I learned a lot from this short exchange with Gage. The main thing is that the goal of this training was to equip people to lead short term mission trips, primarily with young people. Our prayer is that young people go on a trip and are moved to follow Christ, and that their relationship with God is deepened. And even there, at a largely logistical training, Jesus shows up to save the only young person present.
God is so so good. And He is doing powerful things in this ministry.
On March 7th, Brittany and I are headed to Mayfield, Kentucky on our first mission trip together. The goal is to help build relationships with our new ministry partner there, and help come up with a strategy for disaster relief. In case you haven’t heard, Mayfield is still in ruins, so we will be partnering with a disaster relief organization there to make sure our projects are truly helpful. Local authorities are estimating at least a 2-year clean-up process for this community from the tornados that hit in December and displaced over 400 families. We can’t wait to share the stories of how we see the Lord work in Kentucky.
We are so grateful for all of your support. So much has happened in the last month, and we have seen the Lord’s favor over and over again, and currently we are only involved part-time. We are so excited to be able to participate in this ministry full-time!
Your partners in the Gospel,
Ben & Brittany
