Mid-Summer Update

I (Julie) won't go into much detail about how our summer trips were at this time, but here's a quick summary of what has happened in the last six weeks!

Lots of luggage space!

Mgcini was able to purchase our Nissan Caravan! We are so excited to have this asset to help lessen the costs for future teams and give us reliable transportation years into the future. It seats 8 "comfortably," and 9+ uncomfortably. ;)

We had a team of two college students that spent about a month serving at Ebenezer Agricultural Training Centre. These two girls were able to build relationships with a number of students, lead the evening teaching sessions, and plan activities for both entertainment and discipleship. They safely returned to the United States about a week and a half ago.

Mgcini preaching at church on Sunday

Julie, the boys, and four others were able to spend the first two weeks of June on a pretty fast-paced trip through Zimbabwe. The first week, the family that traveled with us was able to help lead about a dozen sessions in a conference about Biblical Counseling for a church in Zvishavane. Our family and a Zimbabwean missionary friend of ours were able to be a part of a few sessions on outreach and serving others.

During our time in Zvishavane, we were able to visit with a lot of our family and had some great meetings regarding our future plans to start our own ministry nearby.

The second week of that trip, we joined the girls at Ebenezer. We were able to help with a Kid's Club for three days, but then God had other plans for us, as some car trouble kept us from doing most of what we had hoped to accomplish. What looked to be like a huge problem turned out to be just a bad fuel injector and a need for some filters to be replaced. We were able to get those issues resolved before traveling back to the airport, and the car has been running like a dream since then!

Mgcini and I had some very encouraging and productive conversations with staff at Ebenezer and other local ministries. We are very excited to share about what's next, but that's for another day. :)

Prayer Needs:

• Mgcini has some very exciting leads on land. In the next few weeks, he will be checking out a couple of plots in an ideal location that could be ours.

• The boys and I have been blessed to have family staying with us almost the whole time since we got back. Starting on Tuesday, we will be flying solo and I could use all the prayer!