Last year, after much prayer, we launched our discipleship small groups.  Initially, three were established and I am thrilled.  We witnessed students surrender their lives to Jesus, get baptized and mature in their faith.  But there was one thing missing, a local indigenous partner.

As we continued through the semester, we prayed for God to lead us to a national partner whom we could partner with to multiply these small groups to cover every campus.  (Just in one city alone, there are 1 million students and 100 campuses.)  Within a few months, we met that local partner.

It has been an honor learning about him, his church and his co-workers.  It’s been exciting watching all the dots connect as we hear about his vision for small groups, vision for missions among the unreached and more.  Without going into all the details today, I see his vision completely in line with ours, OR it is our vision that is in line with his on my levels!  However you say it, it’s exciting for me!  It’s like I’m looking at myself in a mirror, only he’s East Asian!

As I watch all the dots being connected, I foresee 2011 being an exciting year in ministry for us, more than we’ve experienced thus far!

I hope you will join me on this journey in prayer.  We need your prayer support.  We have a lot of work to do, which I have sensed from the Lord since we arrived in East Asia.  We are continually seeking to develop and increase our staff/team into a multi-national team.  We will be fine tuning our discipleship small group model next month at our staff retreat. 

As for immediate prayer requests, I ask that you pray for our new local partner.  We really want him at our staff retreat next month because his input in needed in the small group model we will be outlining.  The biggest obstacle with getting him there is obtaining an entry visa.  I do believe it will happen but I still want to ask you to pray for him.  He’s working on it as I type.  Once that is secured, we’ll proceed with obtaining his transportation and other items needed for his trip.  In addition, I ask that you pray for our staff retreat in February.  We need God to guide and direct us, not ourselves guiding ourselves.  We need to be able to hear from God so that we outline His plan, not our plan.  Please ask that He’ll work in us to be at that place to hear from Him.