"Queen Esther Retreat"

Katelyn, along with seven teenage girls, giggled their way through the weekend retreat led by Becky. They learned to stand, sit, and walk like a "princess" as well as treating each other to a facial and manicure. They had a contest to see how many ways they could identify the changes the star in the movie  Princess Diaries made to become a princess. Before going to bed, they enjoyed popcorn and the story of Queen Esther via the DVD titled One Night with the King. 

Saturday morning, Kent graciously served us a pancake breakfast! The girls then enjoyed learning what God says about modesty in the Bible. Becky used a PowerPoint based on Dannah Gresh's book, Secret Keeper.  A great activity was sorting pictures from  fashion magazines into "throw away", "secret keeper" and "modify this to be a secret keeper" piles. However, the all-time favorite activity was "saree draping." A friend from church came with a dozen beautiful Indian sarees and taught us four ways to wrap six yards of material! Kent took photos of each girl who put their picture in a card she had made for her Dad for Fiji Father's Day on September 6th.  I hear that the father's absolutely LOVED getting a photo of his Indian or Fijian "princess".

A Typical Day? No Such Thing!

Occasionally, we're asked, "What's your typical day like?"  There is never a "normal, typical day" in the life of most missionaries and definitely, not in ours!  For the past eight weeks, in addition to the steady flow of overseas visitors, we have had a work team of local men carrying out maintenance and renovations to the house which we rent.    

This 70-year old house really feels like home because we have lived here for the past 12 1/2 years.  It was way past time for this maintenance to be carried out.  The entire exterior of the house has been painted, including the front fences, the carport gate and it looks so nice again.   However, the workmen are now on the rooftop pulling up the roofing tins and installing steel brackets around every rafter to make the house "cyclone-proof".  It has turned out to be a very noisy undertaking.  So, while the whirlwind of our daily life continues, we also dealing with whirlwind of noisy hammering above our heads. 

Pray that this work will soon be completed so as to not prolong the disturbance to our home school and the office work that Becky does here at home.  You can see from these pictures that the job they're doing is a BIG one!

A Parade of Visitors

There has been a "parade of visitors" passing through our home in the past two months and what a blessing they have been!

In mid-June, we were privileged to have our home-church pastor and his wife to visit with us for a week. Pastor Greg and Gail Allison, from Durham, NC, made their way to Fiji. We had a marvelous week sharing our HEARTS, our MINISTRY and our PEOPLE with them.

Following their visit, we were blessed to have Becky's parents with us for almost four weeks...John and Syble DeBerry from Myrtle Beach, SC. They seemed especially glad to see their growing grandchildren, Jeremy (15) and Katelyn (11 1/2).

Just a few days after Mom & Dad left Fiji, Miss Jan Johnson, the CEF Asia Pacific Education Consultant for this region arrived to be a guest in our home for one week. "Miss Jan" assisted us with conducting a 10-day training course. We were delighted to have her with us.

Within two hours of Jan's departure on August 11th, our next set of house guests arrived. We are pleased to have Carol Bratcher and Grace Stephen with us. These ladies are missionaries having just returned from their furlough. They have spent many days and hours looking for a house to rent. They are hopeful that a house they've seen and like will be available for them sometime around Sept. 10th.

Our next visitor from eastern North Carolina is Mr. Tommy Boyd due to arrive September 14th. Although he's coming on an official visit to Fiji for the U.S. State Dept., he is from a supporting church and is adding a couple of extra days to his itinerary to visit with us. We look forward to meeting him and having him in our home!

The Reason We Live in Fiji is...

...so that precious boys and girls like these will have access to the Gospel and come to know the Savior!

"Even so it is not the will of your Father...that one of these...should perish."

Matthew 18:14

Commiting to Faithful Men & Women

Teaching children effectively is precisely our goal in providing teachers with quality training in child evangelism.

It was our great joy to train NINE adults recently in our CEF Teaching Children Effectively~Level One 30-hour training course. The 11-day program began on July 30th and ended on August 10th. It was a grueling test of stamina both for the staff and the students, but God gave amazing results. We praise the Lord for this special group of people ~ seven women and two men who attended the training.

Pray for this group of students as they are now required to complete five teaching assignments among children in order to receive their certificates. Pray that many boys and girls will come to know the Lord through their teaching and sharing the Gospel.

Have You Heard?

Have you gotten the latest news on The Moriah Project?

CLICK HERE to visit the Moriah Project blog to see how far God has brought us. We continue to trust the Lord to do "great and mighty things which we know not", so as to make it possible for CEF Fiji to begin construction on the new office and training center immediately.

We are trusting the Lord for USD $330,000.00. Of this amount, we have a little over $10,000 on hand. God is trustworthy... so, we trust Him to provide for this need. Our building permits are in hand and all we need is...the money.

We need a MIRACLE and He is able! But we also need some people who will seriously PRAY for God's provision. May we count upon you?

Faith & Patience Rewarded (at Last!)

June 3, 2009 will go down as a LANDMARK day! After months and months of hard work and waiting, Kent was finally issued the BUILDING PERMIT for our new national office today.

Our hearts rejoice over and over! We stand at the edge of the "Red Sea" with plans to dip our "toes" into the waters asking God to "part the sea" and provide the funds from heaven to begin construction.

This is the ideal time of year in Fiji to begin construction as we are now in our "dry season" until December. They estimate that it will take six months to construct the new office and training facility. We had 26 teachers in our training classes yesterday!

PRAY that God will miraculously PROVIDE the funds from amongst His riches to begin the construction soon. Our financial goal is USD$330,00.00 of which we currently have approximately $10,000.00 on hand.

BUT... we are READY... and WAITING on GOD. The NEXT "move" is HIS!