The past year has been packed full of wonderful adventures in both learning and life.  It was almost one year ago that we set foot on this small island of Oahu and started working with New Hope Christian Fellowship.  God has taught us so much through the mentorship of Pastor Wayne Cordeiro and New Hope Christian Fellowship.  From developing leadership teams to growing in our own daily walks with the Lord through devotions and journaling, God has been daily opening our eyes to His plans for us.

One of the reasons for the the success of New Hope is that they have learned to “prune back to heart” and to make sure that everything that they do is connected to a soul.  What does it mean to “prune back to heart?”  The heart of Jesus should be the only reason why we do what we do and when we get to a point in life that we can’t see His heart in our lives or ministry than it is time to prune back to heart.  Get rid of the things that are getting in the way and prune back until we see the heart of what we are doing.

Growth in a church or in our own lives is great and it is natural and healthy, but just like a master gardner who prunes back his garden so that it becomes stronger and more fruitful we too need to carefully watch the growth in our lives so that it does not get out of control and we loose the purpose for which we live - the heart of Christ.

God’s desire in all of our lives is to be fruitful in everything that we do.  Jeremiah 29:11 says, “For I know the plans that I have for you,’ declares the Lord, ‘plans for welfare and not for calamity to give you a future and a hope.’”

After so much growth through New Hope in the last year the Lord is calling Audrey and I to prune our garden to make sure that our family and ministry are in balance and both have room to grow in a healthy way.  On October 23rd we will be moving to Goodland Kansas to continue what the Lord has started in our live at New Hope.  This move will allow us to both steward well the family that he has given us along with continuing my education through Pacific Rim Bible College and ministry in the town of Goodland and the church that my dad pastors.  We are looking forward to taking the heart of New Hope and all that we have learned to Goodland.

Through New Hope, God has taught us a lot about margins in our lives.  What would driving be like without a safe distance between you and the car in front of you or a term paper without any spaces between the words?  It’s the spaces in this newsletter that allow you to make any sense of what you are reading and it’s the margins in life that give our lives meaning.  Margins are where relationships are built. It is out of the margins of life that ministry happens.  You see this in the story of Jesus healing the blind beggar on his way to Jericho on the roadside.  It wasn’t the destination that was as important as much as the ministry that happened along the way. As we are excited about this move, this will give us the margins to be able to both minister to those around us and also to our family.  Keep us in your prayers over the next month as we make this move.  We’ll continue to keep you posted on all that the Lord is doing in our lives and how he is using us to bring the Good News to the world around us.