Another Awesome Meeting!

What do you call it when five women can come together for prayer, ruminate over our talks, share scripture, lay our requests at the feet of Jesus, eat a yummy lunch and dessert, laugh and not want to end the session? ANOTHER AWESOME MEETING!

Barbara Pillsbury with gift for China

You might think that we all work for NASA because every time we see each other we say, “four months or three weeks until we leave for China.” But on Tuesday we said “two weeks and one day, do you believe it”?  Our excitement is definitely growing as the time of our departure draws near. We learned a few words in Chinese…so now we can say ‘hello – Ni Hao’, ‘yes – Shi’, ‘no – Bu shi’ and ‘thank you – Xie xie.’

One of the most important aspects of our mission, and each EFCC mission, is to always, always give thanks for our prayer partners and financial contributors. We are so grateful that our mission is almost (as of this writing) fully funded!  Thanks to you and our Lord for His guidance and grace throughout this process.  Isn’t thankfulness really the deep, contented breath of peacefulness?  If thanks are the highest form of thought – make it my first thought.  I love this quote from Max Lucado – “God has given you/us a cup of blessing; sweeten it with a heaping spoonful of gratitude.”

 

You may remember this song: “His Love has no limit; His Grace has no measure; His Power no boundary known unto men.  For out of His infinite riches in Jesus, He giveth, and giveth, and giveth again.”

 

The journey is about to begin…the travel part, that is!  Stay tuned!

Barbara Pillsbury for the Team

 

Thank You Supporters!

We are so grateful for all you prayers and blessings and for your faithful, generous support to make this mission possible! Knowing that you are our team here at home is such a comfort and encouragement for us as we begin finalizing all of our preparations to leave on October 30^th.   We are experiencing shock and awe!  Shock that the time to fly to China is so near and awe that God is sending us to do His work!

Each team meeting is so rich in information, planning and prayer that we have willing extended our meetings an extra two hours.  Last week we scheduled an extra all day meeting at Mary’s house so we could continue practicing and fine tuning our talks for the Chinese women.  Each talk is 30 minutes long which will actually be one hour with the interpreting.

Serious training efforts

One of the extraordinary aspects of being on a mission team together is being in God’s grace to learn how to lovingly and effectively communicate to each other.  As we practiced our talks last week, each speaker gave her speech and another team member acted as the interpreter and repeated the phrases in English.  The other team members were the audience. The benefit was to find out where the message needed clarification or a different approach in order to convey the intended idea.  God’s grace enabled us to share with each other where the changes could be made and these suggestions were gracefully and gratefully accepted by each speaker! 



What a wonderful learning time for each of us as we became more aware of how to change our messages to better fit the audiences we will be speaking to.  We became much more aware of how our topics will impact them as they have so many similar problems that our culture has: high divorce rates, abortion, domestic violence, loss of dreams, and financial stress.



Fun training efforts

In spite of the seriousness and intense focus of our practice sessions, God also graced us with His humor!  Every once in awhile we just had to cut loose and be silly!  Here’s a snapshot of Mary as interpreter and Leslie as speaker doing just that!

Dear Ones, please pray that the Holy Spirit will continue to inspire our talks and when we stand to give our talks, He will inspire us, inspire the interpreter and open the hearts of the audience of believers and nonbelievers. 

 

Thank you!  You are truly our team here in America!

With blessings and gratitude,

Linda for the China team