Partnership with Cascade has been a real encouragement to us over the years. Your prayers and financial support have allowed us to carry on our ministry of encouraging and training missionaries who are working to become relevant in their contexts of ministry. Most recently, we have used our experience to train others for this important role.

While we are not responsible for all of our travel expenses, we have extra costs as we serve a broader team. For example, Jessica is traveling with me to this Language Learning Encourager Course and will also come to Mozambique and South Africa. She hopes to join in one or two other ministry trips this year.

We cannot do what we do without the faithful support of churches like Cascade. Knowing that we have a group praying for us is invaluable to the ministry since prayer often precedes the movements of God. There have been times when Cascade has come through for us financially when we really needed financial help and we are so grateful.

We have two financial needs coming up this summer.

1. We are trying to raise enough for our daughter’s MK Re-Entry Program and for our family to travel to Germany to attend our organization’s international conference.

2. Every August we must renew our business license to secure our residency visas to remain in the country. This year, because we are leaving at the end of June, we must renew the business in June before we leave.

Wow! What can I say? Cascade church has been our faithful partner in ministry for over 20 years! The growth and impact of our ministry to church leaders in many areas of Asia is a direct result of Cascade’s partnership with us, providing over 70% of our funding for the past 20 years. We could not have encouraged the thousands of students with the Lahu Christian Correspondence Course (L3C) or the key church leaders with the Biblical Leadership Training (BLT) without your generous giving. Cascade has given, we have served, and God has caused the growth. All praise to the Lord!

Regarding our financial needs, we have many doors of ministry opening up and are praying the Lord will provide the funds needed to walk through as many as possible. Our current needs include replacing a vehicle that can reach remote areas, the costs associated with attending a training, and also the travel required to provide training to young leaders in multiple countries.

Thank you again for your faithful support in the past, and we look forward to fruitful ministry together for years into the future.

Our Cascade visits on our home assignments are the church visit that most blesses and encourages us, more than any other church we visit. There is an interest shown to us as persons and in the work we are doing, in the way you make us feel special and pamper us with a nice meal and your loving care, that we always look forward to being with the Cascade Community family.

That affirmation and encouragement is one of the ways that our work is impacted and strengthened as you so generously give evidence of your commitment to us and our work.

A second form of affirmation is the consistent, never missed, monthly financial support for our work. We know that we can count on your monthly support check which is a great blessing and impact. Though there is not so much connection and communication between visits, we know you are committed to us. That is impacting.

Regarding financial needs, I would mention two needs coming from initiatives to sensitive areas. Oru goal is to gain an understanding of the situation and opportunity, from which a “road map” would be formulated.

In one area, there is a group of four mission leaders. We have elaborated a Memo of Understanding with these leaders with our organization for deployments of workers to go to serve in pioneer contexts. We have 4 couples and 4 singles in “Group A”, ready to be sent this year. They are trained and qualified and need finances for initial flights and set-up expenses in their new location. We hope that these workers, with professional skills and capacity to learn new skills, will be at least partially self-supporting in the countries of service.

This other visit to a sensitive area is motivated by our hearing from colleagues on the ground that change is happening so fast in the country that the people are now more open than ever to Jesus, as a result. We also know of many, many foreign workers in the country who are engaged in significant prayer that God would raise up His church in that country. It is already happening. We would like to know how we might support this move of God while this “window of opportunity” remains open.

We send our love and gratefulness to you.

It may seem redundant, but one of the main ways Cascade's partnership has impacted us is just through the long-term consistency of support. Having that consistent, unwavering investment has enabled us to plan, to pioneer, and pursue ministry with the assurance that that financial amount can be counted on. That does wonders for a missionary's peace of mind! And your partnership has been consistent for 20-25 years, which is such a blessing!

Our partnership with Cascade, as with other churches, is more about a long-term journey - of trust and support, and belief in us and our calling - rather than any particular event or program, or project partnership. We are so grateful for that consistent partnership!

Thankfully, we are not struggling financially personally. God has been so good to provide for our basic needs over the years. There are 3 things I would like to mention, however.

We are hoping to host additional retreats this coming year, in particular, a songwriters retreat and/or artists retreat for Thai Christian creatives. I'm also hoping to do some real studio recording of an EP or album of prayerful worship songs over the coming year. Thanks to our relationships in YWAM Montana, some of the musicianship can be provided by their music recording ministry without cost. But there will still be some expenses incurred.

And finally, Philip is a young, indigenous ministry leader in Myanmar whom I've been supporting both financially and via regular video chats as a "spiritual elder" who can listen, pray for and encourage him. He has been diligently serving the poor and disadvantaged, as a worship leader and even staffing an online leadership course in spite of the horrific things happening in his country, lack of basic resources (like consistent electricity, internet, etc.), and sometimes fear of violence or apprehension by the corrupt military. He will finally be re-issued a passport this month and hopes to attend our ALLC leadership summit in Thailand in May. I want to help provide for his airfare and travel expenses to do this, as well as have him come stay with us for a few days just to bless him with lavish hospitality.

You have been a tremendous encouragement to us. In an area of the world as we labor in, being encouraged helps us to persevere even when the forces of the opposition seem to greatly outnumber us. We set our faces like flint and our God will ultimately bring the victory. In the 1970’s I read a book, “The Word that Kindles.” God’s word brings life when we read it, speak it, study it, and proclaim it.

Your prayers and gifts help practically as follows: We can live in an apartment. We have transportation, we have the ability to communicate using available technology, we help eleven students go to a private school and one student who is pursuing a graduate degree in Software engineering, we daily help families in need of food various food supplies, medicines, medical procedures, blankets, cooking, and heating supplies. Along with a co-laborer we visit over a hundred families each month… if we had time, we’d visit five thousand families. These are just a few of the ways you give us the ability to help.

Medicines and surgeries are some of the costliest things we face. Even my co-worker needs surgery. He’s missing much of one lung and has trouble breathing. I’d like to have fifteen students in private schools starting in the fall of 2023. This is expensive but it’s well worth it. The people of this country barely get crumbs educationally.

On a personal level, I’d like to research the possibility of acquiring a vehicle that would easier on my back to get into and out of and easier to load supplies into. It’s not imperative but my back would be grateful. We use a vehicle for about 99% of ministry purposes.

Cascade chose to partner with us during a time when our organization was raising our support goal. It was amazing to see the Lord's timing in your choice to support us in the midst of that. Before supporting us, you supported an MAF pilot who mentored me and had a big impact before he retired. He was such a good example of faithful service to the Lord.

Currently, thanks to you and an awesome group of churches and individuals, we are meeting our support target. Thank you for being a part of our team!

Thank you Cascade Church!

I am so happy to let you know we are so blessed by your ministry and support.

As you know we are doing Pastor Leader training in 22 different places. We have 700 pastors and leaders in our training. Because of Covid, we lost much financial support for this.

We are also doing advocacy to the government about religious freedom.

I'd like to give thanks to Cascade Church for sending you and your teams to Cambodia to bring leadership training to help local pastors and church leaders as well as funds to help community programs. A youth mission team from Cascade church helped encourage our Cambodian youth to love God and live as salt and light.

Cascade has partnered with our ministry since we departed from the US nearly 5 years ago. As with many, our ministry was greatly impacted by COVID and the team at cascade was very helpful and encouraging as we were faced with rebuilding activities and events that were restricted and some that never returned. The missions team at Cascade also hosted our family when we returned to the US and were so very encouraging through a difficult season. It means so much to know there are people who understand the challenges praying for us and our ministry. Thank you.

Currently, our ministry is moving into a new season as we have been asked to create a new international ministry in Zagreb which will likely become a new church plant. We are so excited that the church leadership sees the opportunity for these ministries (as immigration has risen 150%) and that they are committed to a visionary solution. While we do not immediately have new financial needs for this ministry (it will begin this Sunday) we do anticipate some financial costs associated with creating a new ministry from the ground up.

Cascade Church has blessed, encouraged and supported us for nearly 17 years:

Every time we visit Cascade, we leave loved, encouraged, and strengthened to keep ministering in a spiritually dry and challenging Muslim context.

We know several of the folks at Cascade regularly pray for us and God's work here. Cascade's faithful financial support allows us to focus on the relationships and tasks before us in the country we serve in.

Our biggest need right now is our Media Development Project. This fund pays for regional radio broadcasts of chronological Bible stores in local languages. A relatively new part of this project is the Basic Wolof Bible Translation (BWBT). The full Bible in the Wolof language will hopefully be printed later this year or early 2024. We are adapting significant portions of the original translation into a more basic, easier-to-understand, and read translation. We partner with two other missions, sharing the costs, and we anticipate it will take 7-8 years. There are five locals who work part-time with us on this project. They are compensated for the time they spend working on the BWBT adaptation. For the next couple of years, our primary expense in this adaptation project is to pay these local native partners.

We are grateful for your partnership in this Great Venture with the Great King!

We have been so blessed over the many years by the care and support of Cascade. We have been greatly encouraged by your genuine interest and partnership with our ministry. The many visits you have made, the opportunities to share with the church when we are in the US, the prayer support, and the financial partnership have made it possible for us to remain on the field and serve. Recently God has opened up an amazing opportunity for ministry among Chinese nationals who are immigrating to the country we serve in. We have baptized over 20 new believers since the end of last year and there is a great hunger for the Word! Your partnership makes it possible for us to be sharing the Gospel as these doors open before us!

Denise has had ongoing eye problems for several years. This past summer she was able to have cataract surgery on one eye while we were in the US. Last week she was able to have surgery done on the other eye here. It is a real praise as she now has 20/20 vision! But, it has been very expensive and our insurance only covered a small portion of the surgery. Thank you so much for your care, prayers, and generous support!

My wife and I really feel connected to the church through watching Sunday services on YouTube each week. We also feel that our children are loved by the church and have a connection. It's been a huge encouragement to have had visitors from Cascade twice in the last several years. Thank you for investing in us as we serve overseas.

Cascade's financial partnership with our ministry means we are able to be serving missionary families on the ground in Papua New Guinea. Our work with Ukarumpa International School supports the families of Bible translators and other missionaries so parents can be focused on the work God has called them to. Our mission is currently engaged in 130 languages in Papua New Guinea, and we are expecting to dedicate 3 New Testaments and a full Bible in 2023.

We are amazed that God continually meets all of our needs through Cascade and many other supporters. We have had several unexpected expenses over the last year, and have also seen a decrease in financial support for our ministry. But we are confident that we count on God to take care of us.

Thanks to Cascade's faithfulness in supporting financially our work, we were able, for the last year to help so many people by providing water pumps, seeds, fertilizer, sewing machines, cows, goats, and many chickens. We reach people from several villages and thanks to the physical help we provide, people are opening their hearts and we established true friendships. Many of these daily discussions lead to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. People start to think beyond their traditional Muslim upbringing. We see how the Holy Spirit is preparing hearts to receive Jesus Christ as their one and only Savior.

Cascade is very important to us, not only because CCC makes it possible for us to provide physical help to these people, but even more so because of your faithful prayer support. We strongly believe in the power of your prayers enabling us to work in the Lord's vineyard.

In regard to financial needs, we started a watering device micro irrigation initiative. The devices are produced in France and we have them shipped to this area.

This is a big financial need, we already shipped 2400 devices and we plan to have 8000 more devices shipped before the end of this year. We also hope to provide cows, goats, and chickens, water pumps, and sewing machines for the region.

We are so so deeply grateful for the amazing partnership we have with CCC

and we ask the Lord to bless each one from this church, for God's Glory!

We've been partners with Cascade for about 2 years now. Cascade is one of the few American churches that we tune into regularly for Sunday morning services. We're greatly encouraged and challenged by the messages. Honestly, being able to be a part of a church from our home culture, even if we're only participating a little bit, has been pretty key in keeping us healthy and encouraged here on the field. We're thankful for your continued financial support and are confident that your prayers have been keeping us going as we continue to press on in language learning and building relationships in our community.

Cascade is one of our only supporting churches that (through the missions committee) has reached out to us periodically to do video chats. Those times have been very encouraging to us, and we have greatly appreciated that involvement.

Also, the interactions we've had in person with the people of Cascade have greatly encouraged us and made us feel very welcome and part of the church.

There are two things we can say about our current financial needs. Firstly, we foresee a fair bit of traveling ahead of us this year, both with visits to tribal works as well as potentially taking a furlough toward the end of the year. We have a portion of money set aside for some of that but expect the amount of traveling to exceed our savings.

Secondly, we had noticed that our average support was starting to be a bit lower, around 90% or so, but our field recently updated our support figures, and now we're averaging more like 85%, which means we're lacking roughly $1,000 a month to be fully supported.

Cascade has been an encouragement to us from our early days of itineration and then coming alongside us with prayer and financial support in a crucial time in our ministry. The decade+ of support has facilitated so much ministry, but recently your prayers and support have helped us coach one of our teams as they work with Maldivians (one of the most closed countries in the world). It looks like they will baptize their first Maldivian believer on Easter Sunday! Even more directly, Cascades prayers and support have enabled us to create a focused working group that is praying, partnering, and strategizing on how to reach uncontacted, stone-age tribes on the Andaman Islands.

Our youngest son is graduating high school and we will be spending some extended time in the States in the second half of this year to help him launch into university as well as touch base with our churches and supporters. The cost of being stateside is always heavy on our overall finances. We are also looking to purchase a cheap, efficient, and dependable used car for this time. Looking towards the future we are preparing for trips to our Area in January 2024. These are all very real financial needs for us.

Cascade is our home church and the foundation from which we launched our new life serving in SE Asia. We have always been blessed by the strong encouragement, prayers, and consistent support of our church family. Some of our surprise expenses are related to visas and travel, and some are just managing life in a foreign country. We regularly need to leave the country to reapply for visas. We may guess what they will cost but the rules change and sometimes we have to leave the country unexpectedly just to come right back in to get the stamp on our passport; the cost of that trip when you have four children adds up quickly. Additionally, where we serve is pretty isolated and doesn't have access to a lot of English educational materials so because we have no school options for our kids locally we have to homeschool. Ordering homeschool curriculum while we're overseas and having it shipped halfway around the world is very expensive.

Thank you for your continued support and love as we share the Good News of Jesus to the unreached people in this region.

We are grateful for the prayers and partnership of the Cascade family! You have generously supported our labor in bringing the hope of Jesus Christ to the Japanese people. This previous season has had many challenges and obstacles, and without Cascade's prayers and the encouragement of the leaders, it would likely have been a lot rougher. Now that we have finished our move to Wakayama prefecture I am looking forward to exploring ways that we can deepen and expand our partnership together.

We got married just a little over a year ago--previously my budget and salary were geared towards a single missionary, but adding a second person has stretched things a bit. We're just finishing up the new budgeting season at Converge and I am increasing my salary for the first time in seven years. We also added my wife to our mission's medical insurance. We were very thankful to hear about the generous increase in giving that Cascade has made already. There are some additional projects we would like to pursue alongside the church here in Shirahama, and we will let you know about specific ways that you can give in the future.

God used the Cascade Church Family to fill a sudden gap in our support last year. Because of that, we were able to give more attention to the work here. In addition to helping us deepen our language and relationships, you helped us create an event to celebrate the Birth of Jesus where 25 of our local non-yet-believing friends heard a clear presentation of the Good News. And, just a few weeks ago we were able to take 9 local workers to some training to help them share the Good News more effectively. Thank you all so much!!

We praise God that we are right at 100% of our monthly budget. It is nice to know that if a sudden and unexpected need arises, we would have a resource to reach out to.