Tuesday, January 27, 2015

Mountain Top Experience….

This past weekend we had our Annual Pure Joy Board, Advisors, Staff and Spouses Retreat. We held it in a location we have lovingly named “God’s Mountain”. We have met in that location for the past 3 years. It is awesome! And to our friends who allow us to use their home to retreat annually, words are not enough!! Thank you for giving in so many ways!!

I’m so thankful for that mountain top experience because we needed to be refreshed and rejuvenated ourselves as a ministry staff… especially since we opened registration Monday for the Italy retreat and we have already had 30 women sign up as of this writing and it is growing by the minute! Yea, God!!

Also due to the location of the retreat we are increasing sponsorship per missionary to $600 instead of $500. We have looked at several locations. Either they are not in a safe area of Naples or the conference rooms are too small, which we deal with often in foreign countries. Most of our time together is spent in the conference room so it is important for it to be very conducive to what we hope God will accomplish through us while we are there. So, if God is moving on your heart to give, please give. You can donate on line or by sending your check in the mail.

I want to give you a challenge I gave our Board, Advisors, and Staff along with a journal. (Sorry, you are on your own for the journal.) The challenge was to watch for God to do AMAZING things this year. Make sure and write ONLY the AMAZING things God does this year. Do not use it for a grocery list. Ha, ha, ha. Next year when we come back together they were all instructed to bring their journals with them and share. Maybe you could send us some of your journal entries at the end of the year.

By the way, “amazing” is defined by Webster as great surprise or wonder. That is what we desire to do every time we leave the country to go minister to a new group of missionary women. We want them to be amazed by HIM. Hopefully, Pure Joy brings that to the field on all our trips. In Mongolia He did that through a gift someone provided from home for one of the missionary women. Who would have thought Cheez-its could be so amazing!


Please pray for the Italy team as we prepare for our departure in April. Lots of details need to be taken care of and missionaries need to be sponsored.

Love you all…

His,
Vickie

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