Merry Christmas!
It has been our privilege to partner with you as we serve the Lord in His harvest field. Your prayers and financial support have been invaluable in this adventure.
As the year comes to an end, here are a few highlights and lowlights of 2022:
Highlights:
- Seeing the Lord build His church even under challenging circumstances. For example, Stefan has just returned from the Netherlands, where he visited some church planters. A young Ukrainian couple he met started a bible study with 10 people and it is now regularly attended by 150 refugees. God is building His church!
- Partnerships among Christians from different organizations and denominations is at an all-time high. Shoulder-to-shoulder, Christians are doing everything they can to see the gospel go to the ends of the earth.
- Our family visit to South Africa was our best visit ever!
- We celebrated 25 years of marriage.
- Each family member celebrated some milestone – from learning to scuba dive and visiting a place on Marie’s bucket list for 30 years.
Lowlights:
- It was a rough year to renew passports and apply for visas. There were many obstacles and nail-biting moments to get the right documents in time.
- The death of our former president and friend, Steve Douglass, was a shock. He regularly checked in to pray for and encouraged us. We miss him.
- Moonshadow, our cat, disappeared in May. A neighbor also lost a cat, so we speculate that a coyote was in the area at that time.
- A South Asian country, where Stefan connected a lot in the past, has seen increased hostility towards Christians and even new laws that restrict the work of our missionaries and church planters. It is discouraging and hard for our workers there.
Thank you for standing with us through the highs and the lows of 2022! We look forward to what the Lord has in store for 2023.
Blessings
Stefan & Marie
