Tuesday, February 27, 2024

Meet Meghan and See Our Anemones

Keith & Karen Mobilize Missionaries for Full-Time Service 

With MMS, Karen and I handle the front side of the ministry. That means we're responsible for Mobilizing (discipling/shepherding/preparing) candidates to flow into the MMS Apprenticeship Pipeline. This includes several steps: 1) initial contact, 2) candidate development, 3) handling all preapplication communication and processes, 4) overseeing completion of the application/reference forms, and 5) coordinating/participating in their week of In-Hangar Evaluation. 

Keith & Karen Train and Coach New Candidates Through Partnership Development   

Should the candidates be "Approved for Service" at the end of the evaluation week, Karen and I immediately shift into our Partnership Development roles to train and coach the new candidate to raise the funds necessary to fulfill their vision for full-time service as part of missionary aviation.

Meet Meghan

Meghan in the air over North Carolina 

We've mobilized Meghan since her first contact with MMS in August, 2022. Meghan is called to be a missionary pilot/mechanic and has a heart for remote peoples in Alaska and Eastern Russia. It's taken a year and a half to reach the point where we can initiate paperwork with Meghan towards apprenticeship with us but the paperwork IS initiated! 👍

Meghan's vision is to complete 30-months of missionary maintenance service with MMS in Coshocton, OH, and transition to Burlington, NC to gain her flight qualifications with Missionary Air Group. There are a few steps to take before that vision can become reality and that's where Karen and I continue to walk beside her.

After years of email, we were blessed to finally meet Meghan in person when we drove down to JAARS Center in Waxhaw, NC. We met Meghan for lunch and enjoyed a wonderful time of fellowship, food, along with Paige and Kayla who oversee JAARS Next Generation Fellows Program. It's a wonderful, pre-field prep program for young men and women called to service. Meghan will finish Fellows in early June and Lord willing, we'll have her up at MMS for eval the middle of June. 

Keith, Meghan, Karen in front of various Bible Translations at JAARS Center.

The older we get, the younger our candidates become. Go figure. Thanks for being part of developing this young lady into a fully-qualified, field-read, Pilot-Mechanic. We'll keep you posted as the process progresses.

See Our Anemones (NOT Sea Anemones)

Our first flowers that bloom in late winter/early spring are Anemones. You've seen our birds in our backyard but these are flowers in our front yard near our front porch. They're one of Karen's favorite flowers. You can stop by to see our anemones but you can't stop by to sea anemones...if you get my drift.




Thank you for for loving and encouraging us as we love and encourage other to service. It's such a blesssing to be preparing missionaries to be prepared for service. 


He said to his disciples, “The harvest is great, but the workers are few. So pray to the Lord who is in charge of the harvest; ask him to send more workers into his fields.”

Matthew 9:37-38 NLT

Wednesday, February 14, 2024

Backyard Birds: February 2024 AND A PICTURE OF KAREN!

Some unusually nice weather enabled me to sneak outside Saturday to take some snapshots of birds who stopped by our backyard for a snack. As I looked over the past year of blog posts...I realized I haven't blogged bird photos since LAST February! 

It was nice to get reacquainted with my camera and our local, and transient, feather friends. Enjoy.

Northern Cardinal: Female

Northern Flicker: Male

Butterbutt: Female

Chickadee

Eastern Bluebird: Female

Northern Cardinal: Male

House Finch: Male

Titmouse

Butterbutt: Male

Pine Warbler

Eastern Bluebird: Male

As a quick update: Karen and I are doing well, there are so many exciting things going on at MMS Aviation, we're set to play ukulele's for church again next month, we're coaching three families raising support to serve, and none of this would be happening WITHOUT YOU!


Karen at her potting bench during a moment of early "spring." Karen likes her potting bench.

Thursday, January 18, 2024

Karen's Dresses Have Arrived in South Africa and Been Distributed!

The duffle bag of the 83 dresses that Karen made was delivered to Johannesburg Airport, (thank you Jensen and Mtende!) then turned over to a courier where the duffle languished for a couple weeks before arriving at Holger and Maria's. To watch the first blog post telling the outbound story, CLICK THIS LINK.  Here's a video of the event with words from Maria below:


Dresses Across Oceans: A Love that Travelled Across the Globe

We would like to give a huge THANK YOU to Karen and Keith Dodson from North Carolina, USA for handmaking us 83 beautiful, bright and brilliant dresses for our Kranshoek girls.

We can feel the love from 13127 km away. These dresses have journeyed across the continents to bring so much joy to our girls. Shipped from the USA to South Africa, then catching a ride with a wonderful couple from our Capital to Plettenberg Bay, these dresses have had their own story to tell.

To celebrate this wonderful surprise with our kids, we had an impromptu fashion show, photoshoot and celebration at our last Saturday Soup Kitchen.

We are so grateful to families like the Dodsons who share their love with communities like ours. You guys help the world go round!

It takes a whole village to raise a child. And a whole community of people who care deeply. And right now, it’s the children of the world who need the most love, a reminder that we see them and we are honored they will be the next generation.

Maria


Thank YOU for being part of this outreach through your gifts and prayers!



Wednesday, December 6, 2023

83 Dresses Are Going to Africa: NOT KAREN!

45 pounds of dresses (83 individual, Karen cut-and-sewn dresses) are headed to South Africa!

While this morning's snapshot of Karen looks like she's going on a trip, she's not. However, the stuffed duffel bag is going all the way to South Africa. 

This story goes back twenty-three years from when Holger & Maria came through apprenticeship at MMS Aviation. They've served in South Africa ever since and are now focused on youth outreach in a in town and in nearby remote villages. Maria is a gifted potter and Holger, besides being a top-rated missionary aircraft mechanic, is also a very skilled artist in wood. Along with their musical skills, Holger and Maria use their artistic abilities and their love of Jesus to create transformational opportunities for youth in need. And one of the needs for the young ladies are quality sewn dresses. That's where Karen comes in. 

Holger and Maria

We've posted about Karen's sewing ministry before but this is the largest shipment of dresses yet. When Karen talked with Maria earlier in the year Maria was so excited and shared what a blessing new dresses would be for the girls. The challenge is how to get dresses from Graham, NC to Holger and Maria in South Africa when there isn't any reliable mail service between here and there. When there's no mail, missionaries usually rely on visitors coming over to personally deliver the goods in person, quite often as luggage. Hmm...who do we know with connections in South Africa?

The next part of the story goes back ten years when we arrived in North Carolina. I leased an office downtown and my "neighbor" in the office next door turned out to be a young man, Jensen, dating a young woman from South Africa, Mtende. Fast forward, Jensen and Mtende are now married and, even though we no longer share office space, we've remained in touch as friends and brothers and sisters in Christ. Every couple of years Jensen and Mtende return to South Africa for Christmas. 

Jensen and Mtende

We had a duffle bag full of dresses that needed to get carried to South Africa and weren't sure how to get it there when God connected relational Kingdom dots (from 2013 and 1997 to today) as we connected Jensen and Mtende with Holger and Maria. Ta Da! The dresses are on their way to South Africa. 

What a crazy story. You can't make this stuff up. We'll post photos of the girls with the dresses after they've been distributed. THANK YOU you for being part of this story and we praise God for how He connects his people to accomplish his purposes in ways only He can do.

With me a surfer from Southern California and Karen a nurse from Pennsylvania. Go figure!