God is great! 

 

Thank you to all who have been praying faithfully for Youthmark, an I’d like to specifically give a thanks to those who lifted up these last requests over the weekend. The Lord answered these requests in His timing and in a way that has eased my mind!

 

The Writing

RoadGrip, HomeBase and Merge are all not completed, edited and off to Graphic Layout for final publishing.  The quick turn-around is still a matter of prayer, but the toughest part (writing) is now complete!  I will post the specifics about Merge in my next post.

 

The Needed Call

Jared Coe, a friend and Youth Pastor in Glenwood Springs, CO was a late addition to the YMV’s this year.  While out to Colorado to train students in Colorado Spring (two churches) I made my way up and over to Glenwood to do a last minute training of the Glenwood Springs students.  The only problem:  we didn’t know for sure where they were going to go.  Jared (who has done two trips with me in the past) wanted to do a custom trip and stay in state.  

 

While serving as a Youth Pastor in Phoenix I had taken three teams into Southern Colorado, so it seemed like it would be a an easy land to get one of those three churches to commit to be the “receiving” town for Jared’s group.  Well, for whatever reason, one town/church had a very busy summer and didn’t think they had need for a team.  Another town was very slow in getting back to me and the pastors had changed since I had served there and it seems they weren’t that interested just by how slow they got back to my every call or email.  The third town/church seemed to be a little too far out of the way for Jared’s group, so I was pursuing other options.

 

Because of my great relationship with an organization, Village Missions, I decided to pursue a VM church in Colorado.  The only problem, the Pastor in Kittredge (the church I pursued) was on a mission trip to Poland.  He did, however, respond to an email, and this gave me great hope as he expressed interest.  Well, in order to keep this post from getting too long, long story short, I FINALLY spoke to the Pastor yesterday (after he had returned) and he gave a resounding “Yes” to having a team!  So, without further ado, welcome to Kittredge, CO for a YMV team!  Praise the Lord!

 

The Launch And Landing Details

The other potential “stress” was coming into play last week as well.  Each of our trips starts and ends in a hub city.  The Montana and Idaho are going Launch/Land in Spokane.  NorCal will be in Salem, OR, The Gulf Coast teams will hub in Dallas, and the Hawaii team will be in their town of Anahola.  Well, the only problem, my original Spokane hub church was not able to commit to being the Hub.  So, with less than two weeks before our first trip, we didn’t know where our Hub was going to be (keep in mind we have three different weeks of MT/ID mission trips!). Again, long-story-short, God answered prayers in a mighty way and over the last three days I had two churches say yes to being our hub!  We only need one, but I am thankful that two churches stepped forward!

 

Thanks for your faithful prayers!

 

More Prayer!

Because there are 24 different teams going on the mission trips, it is nearly impossible for me to keep my blog up to date with all the specific requests for each of the teams.  I am going to post an “adopt a team” blog in the next few days.  I did this through my prayer letter and we have several teams adopted already, but we want more people praying faithfully for each team.  Please go to www.youthmark.com and click on “blogs” and you’ll see the list of teams.  Most of the churches are using the blog, some will kick in just for the trip.

 

Grace,
Brian