Merry Christmas!!

Merry Christmas from the Walter Family!  I wish I could send individual pictures of all the kids doing what they love, but I managed to find 3 of them anyway below!  Aidan continues to love to wrestle and play air soft.  Annie and Alistair are best buddies, playing together all the time.  And little Adalyn is four months old already!  Sarah is still amazing in all ways.  I married up plain and simple.  

Abby and Autumn got us in the holiday spirit with performing in the Children's Nutcracker once again!

Anders continues to aim to have his pilots license.  He hopes to do his first solo flight before he turns 17.  

Preaching and Selling My Book

For 7 weeks in a row, I preached at different churches in our city on Matthew 22:1-14.  I was tremendously grateful for these times, though it was a sacrifice for the family to have me gone every Sunday at a different church.  All the pastors of these churches gave me a platform to sell my new book, which I was very thankful for.  Im happy to say that I sold enough to get past the break even investment of the book!  Now I just need to sell more to help bring in a little extra money to go towards our new vehicle.  I have been getting great feedback from people who have read the book, so that is encouraging.  I plan to do a 2nd edition in which I will be adding 3 more chapters as I think they are needed to make the book "complete" in my over analytical author mind!  A side blessing of speaking in so many churches, is that out of it more people have become aware of Gospel Focus Ministries https://www.gospelfocusministries.com/ and have even begun to do things with us.  I truly love working alongside churches.

Vehicle Fundraiser Update

Back in March, we began a fundraiser to try and raise $20,000 for a vehicle for our growing family.  Through the generousity and donations of many, we have raised around $16,500.  I have also been taking every penny made on my book to go towards this vehicle as well.  We ask for you to continue to pray for the remaining funds needed.  Thank you so much for all who have contributed.  If you have any questions please email. I see the top of the hill!  

The Big Picture Helps

I was thinking the other day of all the small things I need to get down for the ministry, and I began to feel overwhelmed.  I began to grow frustrated as I reflected on areas we need to improve on, success' and failures, etc... Then I paused for a minute and just looked at the "Big Picture" of what God has been doing via Gospel Focus Ministries. First time I hit the streets with a Gospel Guy sign was in July of 2013.  We then planted the Gospel Guy Network in March of 2015.  We then got an office downtown in October of 2015.  During that time we began to add things to our ministry like Temple Talks, Bus evangelism, the Outward Apologetics School, the Toolbox, a Jew, Christian and Muslim Enter a Room, etc... We began to work with college students, local Christian High Schools.  This past year, we saw Gospel Guy start in Vancouver, WA and Albany, OR.  A few months ago we rebranded and came up with Gospel Focus Ministries as our umbrella name for all the various ministries we are doing.  Not only have we become a hugely influencial and well known ministry in our city, we have also become the primary ministry that YWAM Salem uses to train all of its DTS students in evangelism.  Take this amazing statistic I did the numbers on.  In the past 4 years, we have seen 250 DTS students go through YWAM Salem.  All of them have worked alongside us as we have hosted their weekly evangelism. On average, every student did 2.5 hours of evangelism with us each week, and on average in a 12 week DTS they did 10 times of outreach.  Thats 25 hours per student, times 250, and that comes out to 6,250 hours of evangelism with DTS students over the past 4 years with Gospel Focus Ministries!  This is just DTS students, not to mention people from churches, Mission Adventures Students, and us full time staff.  Thats a lot of evangelism! Thats a lot of the gospel being proclaimed!  The Big Picture does help to reflect on at times!  I share this not to gloat, but to step back and reflect on how faithful God is in His work.  Thank you all so much who pray for us, and support us in our work.  You are all in this with us!  Look what God has done and is doing! :) 

Toolbox Training Time

This past month at "The Toolbox" (our monthly training and equipping time) we looked at the Incarnation and how we can effectively discuss it with non believers. It was definately a tall order for me, as it is quite an involved subject, but I had a great time none the less, and got great feedback.  The Toolbox continues to be an effective way to provide solid Biblical training in evangelism and apologetics for our local churches. 

Toolbox at our Office downtown

Greatest Gift Outreach

December 1-18 we hosted our Greatest Gift Outreach here.  5 days a week, 5 hours a day, we were on the streets sharing the Gospel.  It was a great time, and we had quite a number of people from YWAM, and various local churches, and Christian Schools participate.  We saw 3 people give their lives to Christ, and had many seed planting conversations. One HUGE praise report was with the weather...for 2 straight weeks we had no rain at all. Just crisp clear weather that allowed for lots of people out and about which allowed for lots of conversations!

Continuing to Build Relationships via Temple Talks

The above picture is me with some of my Muslim friends from the Salem Islamic Center.  I have been taking Christian groups on our Temple Talks to these guys for a while now, and it is amazing to see how God is working.  Please pray for our Temple Talks to continue to provide platforms for open discussion, where Christians can have their beliefs challenged and put under scrutiny, and vice versa.  

A Jew, Christian, and Muslim Walk Into a Room...

On January 25th, we will finally be having our first "A Jew, Christian, and Muslim Walk into a Room" discussion on a local college campus here.  I am very excited about this and we ask your prayers!  My hope is to have it be a monthly thing, and provide an open platform in discussing spiritual things that matter.  Our first topic will be "Who is God?"  To be honest, I am definately out of my leauge as I really have no idea what I stepping into. My Rabbi friend speaks like 4 different types of Hebrew, and is a very smart guy.  The Muslim guy is the Professor of Islamic Studies from Oregon State University...and then there is me :)  I trust the Lord will have His way in these discussions.  We want it to be as layed back and relational as we can, and hope it will produce long term fruit through our discussion and interactions.

Car Accident

On Sunday, December 18th, Anders and I were on the way to one of his magic shows he was going to be performing at a local church.  On our way, we were rear ended by a lady going about 50 mph.  We were at a complete stop, and she hit us hard enough to send us in a tailspin across oncoming traffic into a ditch.  Praise the Lord there were no oncoming cars.  The real unfortunate thing, aside from the fact that we just got this vehicle 4 months ago from a friend, was that the lady who hit us has no drivers license, no insurance, and was actually in jail 10 days ago.  Worst case scenario type of thing when it comes to insurance stuff.  So we need wisdom.  We have to wait about a week to hear form the body shop, my guess is they are gonna say the repair is more than the worth of the car (its a 2000 Toyota) and then our insurance is gonna write us a check for the minimal amount.  This was a great car, and only had 124,000 on it, we bought it from a good friend.  No way can we purchase anything close to it for what we will get from the insurance company is my guess.  Anyway, all your prayers are appreciated!  

Ladies car who rear ended us.  She tried to leave the scene!  She was put in hand cuffs.