Baby # 8 coming soon!

 

We are super excited to announce that Walter baby #8 is coming this August! We are super excited about this great news and thank the Lord for the gift of life. The family is doing great and we seem to stay pretty busy buying groceries and doing laundry! 

What will it be...boy or girl? We find out this coming Friday?

Staying busy doing Evangelism

 

My co worker Samuel and I doing "Man Overboard"

For the first time in over year, we took out the USS Repentance for outreach, and it was a great time. We continue to proclaim the gospel in all sorts of creative and crazy ways to the people of our city. God is bringing people into the kingdom, and what a blessing to be able to be a part of that great work. We also recently had our "Pulpit to Pavement" outreach with local pastors. Our group was quite a bit smaller than usual, but we still had a great time.

Pastors doing some debrief after "Pulpit to Pavement"

Kaleidescope

In January we added another component to the ministry called Kaleidoscope. Above you can read what it's all about. January we went to an Anglican church, February a Baptist church, March we had to skip because of ice storm clean up, but next week we will be visiting a Wesleyan church. These times have been so rich and beneficial for all. I look forward to doing more throughout the year.

Some of our staff having conversations with the Anglican priest about what it means to be Anglican

 

Equipping Continues...and continues...and continues....

 

Since January, we have had 8 interns come through our Face to Face evangelism internship. We presently have 5 new interns getting ready to start as well. I often feel like our updates may sound monotonous because we are always doing the same thing...evangelism...and equipping others in evangelism! So many stories to share of how the internship is impacting our city.  Not only are the internship going great, but more training and equipping is happening with all our staff as I developed a curriculum called "Sharpen", which is an 8 session training series to help our mentors become better in their mentoring of others in evangelism. So much fun, and so exciting to see more people equipping more people for evangelism!

All of our staff go through this new series I put together. It's been great!

We continue to host our monthly equipping time called the "Toolbox" the last Thursday of the month

A New Book!

 

New Book Cover

I am excited to announce the publishing of my new book. I decided to write this amidst the beginning of the COVID pandemic. It is a collection of 24 stories from the ministry, meant to inspire us all to share the gospel with others. I am real excited for this book, and hope it will be a blessing to all who read it. If you would like a copy, let me know, or you can order it off Amazon. It should be ready for publishing within a week!  

Team Changes

 

The Team Having Some Fun in the Snow

I find myself in a very interesting time with the ministry. Gospel Focus is very unique in that the staff of the ministry are a mix of full time YWAM'ers as well as local volunteers. Sometimes, there is more of one than the other. Two key staff members who have been with me for many years are moving on to other areas, and I will miss them for sure. At the same time, the Lord has brought new young staff who are eager to learn and grow. We also have a super solid group of local volunteers who serve with the ministry consistently, which is allowing us to expand and grow in many ways. Pray for our staff and that the Lord gives me wisdom how to lead. 

Ice Storm of the Century

YWAM Staff cleaning up! All Hands on Deck!

In February we had one of the worst ice storms we have ever seen here happen. The news called it the "Ice Storm of the Century". In one night, we saw devastation in our city like I have never seen. The YWAM Campus had a ton of trees fall on our property, and we are still in the process of cleaning things up. Our Ropes course on campus took a real toll as well. Thankfully, with the help of all our staff and many volunteers from our city, we are almost done with the clean up. It was a night to remember for sure. Sarah and I were with the kids at home when all of a sudden it sounded like a war broke out as tree limbs began to snap and break all through out the night. Although we had many trees fall around our house and in our neighborhood, none hit our home. Our power was only out for about 36 hours, which is amazing considering many in our city were without power for over a week!

Trees were all over the place on the YWAM Campus