What’s New?
- 20+ Trips: International Commission is going full steam again this year, sending teams around the world on 19 International and 3 North American projects! Our Idaho and Panama teams this year reported 1,729 salvations last month, and we have two teams headed out this week to Cameroon and Albania. Pray for Gloria, a long-time friend and faithful ministry partner, who is part of that Cameroon crew!
- Growing IC AV Club: I’m very excited to report that my media team is growing at IC!
- My coworker Brooke has moved into our Development department to focus on content curation and creation for social media, blogs, email, etc.! She’ll also continue spearheading evangelism training for our participants and developing new resources for churches and individuals.
- Samantha is a brand-new staff member who is also joining our Development department to coordinate our marketing strategy and help us reach more of the people we want to mobilize. Pray for Samantha as she raises support and gets started.
- Zoie is a new office volunteer who is helping us with video production and digital archiving. IC’s 50th anniversary is coming up next year, and Zoie is digitizing and cataloging LOTS of videotapes, photos, and documents from the mission field dating back to the 1970s.
- Growing engagement: With more team members and more collaboration, we have been able to strengthen our social media content workflow and strategy in the past few months, resulting in a 2000% jump in our reach and 200% increase in engagement. Please pray with us that this growth will continue and will help us form new and meaningful relationships with people who are passionate about missions and mobilizing others!
- Staff Retreat: A contingent of our multi-national staff got together this month for a week of worshiping, praying, playing, bonding, growing, reconciling, celebrating, mourning, resting, eating, creating, and encouraging.
- Biazi Family: We were especially happy to have the whole Biazi family with us at the retreat and the office for a few weeks. Pastor Marcio leads a church in Rio Preto, Brazil and serves as our National Coordinator there. His wife (Margarete) and daughters (Rafaela and Vitoria) are all involved in IC projects and have incredible testimonies and talents. Rafaela has been a part of my media team for a few years, too, and it was extra fun to work with her in person again. We love them a lot and my family was blessed to take them to the Dallas Zoo one weekend.
About Ukraine
If you’ve been supporting my ministry for a while, you know that I really love Ukraine and have many friends there; both nationals and ex-pats who are involved in churches and seminaries across the country. I want to express my gratitude to those of you who have asked how you can pray and help over the past couple of months. From the beginning of this invasion (which is in fact an escalation of the occupation that has been going on for 8 years) until now, every Ukrainian pastor that I know — and the others connected to IC in Ukraine, Poland, Russia, Moldova, and Romania — have stepped up to lead their churches in caring for their communities. The Baptist churches and seminaries across Ukraine are especially well-organized and connected, and they have done an incredible job with communications and logistics to move people and resources where they need to go. As God would have it, since the very first day, IC has been able to send support to our partners there as they respond. Some of those funds were already allocated for N2N projects that were planned in Ukraine and now have been (obviously) modified and expedited; some were donated specifically for this purpose by American partners who wanted to help (including some of you — thank you!).
In one particular case, “Pastor Z” (whom I met when I worked in the Sumy Oblast in 2019) began moving refugees out of and resources into that region on his own dime. After he raised some support through personal messages to other believers, he was able to bring two tractor-trailers full of supplies from central Ukraine to a certain town but saw long lines of people who still didn’t get food and clothing. Pastor Z and other friends in the network got the word out and more funds poured in from Christians inside and outside Ukraine. He was able to order more trucks and purchase two buses to help refugees escape dangerous areas. Pastor Z also organized a special evangelistic outreach for Easter and is now trying to extract civilians from Mariupol. Let me know if you’d like to help with that financially. My main point of contact for this response has been my friend Luba, a national who I have worked with twice during IC projects. Please pray for Luba; right now, she is in Poland serving refugees who have crossed the border.
It is a high privilege to be so intricately involved with these believers, both as an organization (IC) and as an individual, but it has also been an immense burden to hear from my friends there every day as atrocities and desperation continue to escalate. In our day and age, we see news and images of the destruction of war all the time from all over the world. But it hits home when those are places you have been to and have your own photos of; places that are home to your personal friends. Please pray with me that God will preserve life, put an end to the violence, and restore peace and freedom to Ukraine. Please pray with me that friends who have left their lives behind can return and rebuild. Please pray with me that God will stop Putin; whether by taking him out or changing his heart.
What’s Next?
- North Carolina: In May, our Development team will spend a few days in Winston-Salem to host another Celebration Dinner.
- iCelebration: We’re currently in production for a special online “iCelebration” on May 26th! Since we only do these Celebration Dinners in a few locations each year and not everyone can come, we want to bring the experience to you right where you are! Stay tuned for more details, but go ahead and register now! it’s free.
- Staff stories: During the retreat, we filmed some testimonies from staff members sharing how they have seen Jesus change lives from darkness to light. Keep an eye on our Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube as those stories debut in the near future.
- Spain: I’ll be headed with a mission team to Spain in June! The churches there have been praying for lost friends for three years as this project has been postponed twice, so we expect to see a great harvest.
Family Updates
- Classes and creativity: Evie, Maisy, and Mia continue to enjoy dance and tumbling classes at Illuminate (the art studio at a church near our house) and Evie has started attending a horse club every month with a friend from church (I get to accompany her and hang out with the horses, which I’m really enjoying). Ella has landed the lead role in an original production at Illuminate and we’re super proud! Levi makes up games all day.
- Getaway: We got to take a quick getaway to attend a homeschool convention and stay at an Airbnb. It was fun and much-needed.
- Outreach: We all attended a Holi festival celebration at a city park to get messy and have gospel conversations with Hindu neighbors in March (a great evangelism opportunity if you have a South Asian population in your area). The older two and I participated in a workday for our city to install a new playground at a park near our house. We’re excited to see our town growing and improving, and we like to get to be a part of it.
- Murphy hits hard: In the past year, we have replaced our AC system, water heater, garbage disposal, dishwasher (twice), refrigerator, van, and an entire bathroom. God has graciously allowed us to afford it (savings, stimulus checks, and tax credits have come in handy), and we’re not going to let it steal our joy or keep us from living on mission, but would you please pray that stuff stops breaking?
- Mom’s health: I’m not going to detail it all here, but please pray for my mom’s health. She has been in the hospital for months and needs to get well enough to get a kidney transplant.
If you’ve made it this far, thanks for reading the whole newsletter and for lifting all these things in prayer. My family highly values you and your support, and those things have been especially important in this season of life. Together, we’re charging forward on mission into a world that is quite obviously falling apart and we’re taking the hope and light of Jesus into dark places to see them transform. Let’s keep going and growing!
The Kryptonian 