CMF Executive Director Doug Priest recently announced that Bill and Verna Weber, professors and pastoral counselors at Cincinnati Christian University, Cincinnati, Ohio, have joined the CMF staff as Consultants in International Leadership Development. The Webers will visit mission fields during the summer when they are not teaching at CCU and will be available for service at CMF’s assessment centers, furlough retreats and conventions.

Bill and Verna served as missionaries in Johannesburg, South Africa, for 12 years, and as professors and pastoral counselors at Nebraska Christian College before joining the CCU staff. Bill’s Ph.D studies were in non-formal education and leadership development. Verna has earned master’s degrees in human development and family studies and also in pastoral counseling. Bill has served as dean of Cincinnati Bible Seminary (CCU’s graduate school) and is a past president of the National Missionary Convention. The Weber’s daughter and her family are missionaries in New Zealand and their son is currently completing his Ph.D.

Gary and Judy Woods’ recent newsletter highlighted a significant spiritual milestone worth celebrating: “God has planted 22 churches in seven tribes in Tanzania through our church planters during the last four years,” they wrote. This fruit has come through the hard work of national Christians who have studied at CMF’s church planter training center in Tanzania.

Dennis Equitz of Yorba Linda, California, recently learned that it’s a long way from Orange County to the Mathare Valley of Nairobi, Kenya.

A public school teacher and long-time member of Eastside Christian Church in Fullerton, Dennis and his family were part of an 80-member team that recently returned from a two-week mission trip to Nairobi. Here are some of his thoughts about the experience:

“When the 80 of us arrived in the slums we were separated into different teams based on our tasks. I was assigned to the construction team. My wife will be the first to tell you that I am not the handiest of guys and not really proficient around power tools, but fortunately we didn’t use many power tools for our construction project. My team and I assisted a Kenyan carpenter named Steve as he built and assembled two bunk beds for two families who had children attending one of the Missions of Hope schools. We spent the better part of two days working with Steve as he turned raw pieces of lumber into two well-built bunk beds.

“The most exciting part of the trip was the day we delivered the beds to the families. The first bed was delivered to a 31-year-old woman who lives in a typical Mathare shanty with her 10 children. It is made entirely of corrugated tin with no electricity or running water, no windows, and a dirt floor. The total size of the shanty is about 9 feet square. The bed had to be assembled in the shanty because it was too big to fit through the door. The children –age 2 to 12 — sat patiently as we assembled the bed. We were told that they had never slept in a bed before. There was not a dry eye in the house when we had the bed assembled and told them all to hop up on it. All 10 children jumped up on the top bunk. What a great joy to have been a part of making something that these children could use every day!

“The second bed was delivered the same day to a woman who lives closer to the river that runs through the valley. It is not good to live closer to the river in Mathare because it is choked with all sorts of debris and filth that has accumulated as it runs through the valley. She also lived in a 9 X 9 dirt-floor shanty. She shares the shanty with her eight children, ranging in age from 12 to 25. Our Kenyan social worker told us that she had delivered all of her children in the shanty on her own without the assistance of a doctor. Once again, the children waited patiently as we assembled the bunk bed and were thrilled to have the chance to jump up and claim it as their own.

“I don’t know when I’ll have the chance to go on another mission trip. I don’t believe I’ll ever see these families again. What I do know is this: there are two families in the Mathare slum whose children are not sleeping on a dirt floor tonight.

“I learned many things during this trip. I learned that we have so much to be thankful for in Orange County. I’m thankful for a bed and a comfortable place to lay my head each night. I’m thankful for clean water, clean air, electricity, and a clean house. Mostly, I’m thankful for the opportunity to work for a few days in the Mathare Valley and to see the struggle of daily life on the other side of the globe.”

A eclectic team of American Christians from several different churches, led by a CMF staff member, visited CMF’s East Asia team in late June. Members of the group ranged from a 20-something female college graduate to a 70-something retiree, but each person used his unique testimony to share aspects of God’s love with the Asian friends he met there. This small group of six hit the ground running to help the team with three major projects: a biblical seminar, a special migrant school English class and home visits with families in the poor migrant community.

The three-day biblical seminar was held for the members a Bible study group that one of the resident team members has been leading for the past several months. Three of the six short-termers prepared short talks on important life lessons based on biblical morality. The topics included dating and marriage, finance and forgiveness. The group members were encouraged to bring friends, so more than 50 people crammed into the small room for the sessions. Many had no knowledge of God or the Bible. A local house church followed up with many of the students for future discipleship.

The next project for the group was initiating an English tutoring program at a new migrant school. The group tutored elementary students in basic English in preparation for their exams during three sessions. More than 150 students spoke English to foreign white faces for the first time. The school principal was very appreciative of the help and excited about the team’s home visitation program.

Finally, the short-term trip group also assisted the team with several home visits. After prayer walks through the neighborhood, they made follow-up visits to poor families that the team has been working with. The families welcomed the visiting Americans into their homes and thanked them for teaching English to their children. The short-termers were able to see the heart of the CMF’s team’s ministry with these families and pray with them.

In addition to these projects, team members assisted at multiple Bible studies at government-approved churches and met with other local partners. Though the trip was a quick 10 days, the long-term CMF Marketplace Ministry team reports that they accomplished several tasks that they could not have done alone. The group demonstrated that short-term teams can be a vital part of overseas ministries when properly utilized. “They were a great encouragement to our team and spurred us on to continue the work,” wrote one MM worker.

College students in the CMF Globalscope El Oasis campus ministry in Santiago, Chile, traveled to the town of Rengo in southern Chile in May to help build homes for dislocated residents. The town was one of those that was hard hit by the mid-April massive earthquake. Team leader Lukas Fortunato shared this video made by one of the students, showing that hard work and good times do go together, especially for college students!

“God is working through the national Christians being trained at the CMF training center in Tanzania,” reported missionaries Scott and Annelle Price in their recent newsletter.

In the Maasaini region alone, there are now 10 new church plants.  More than 200 people have been baptized during the past eight months. The national Christians have caught the vision to take the Gospel to their own people, said the Prices, but they are on the front lines in fighting the spiritual warfare that manifests itself in physical problems.

These national Christian evangelists “persevere under very difficult circumstances,” wrote the Prices, “so please remember them in your prayers and thank God for them.”

This summer’s Vacation Bible School at CrossWay Christian Church, Nashua, New Hampshire, used a replica of a Nairobi, Kenya, slum home to illustrate the week’s theme, “Chase the Light.”

The missions project for the VBS was the church’s upcoming short-term trip to Kenya. The workers on the trip will use the money to purchase supplies for the project known as “Bring the Light,” in which clear plastic panels are inserted into the roofs of the small slum shanties, bringing a bit of light into the darkness. To help the children understand how the people in the Kiandaruru slum live, CrossWay church member Pete Paradise built a small shanty on the church property.

“Pete rigged it with a pull string that would open a small hole in the roof, about the size of a ‘Bring the Light’ hole, that would let the light in,” writes CrossWay minister Ron Kastens. “Kids could pull the rope to see the difference ‘Bring the Light’ makes to a Kenyan family. The whole project was incredibly cool and a very powerful lesson for our church family.”

Sixty of CMF’s 160 on-the-field missionaries were together at the same time in the same place recently, the largest gathering of the organization’s missionaries in its 61-year history.

The historic day was Thursday, July 29, when the missionaries who were attending the 2010 furlough retreat at Ft. Harrison State Park in Indianapolis traveled south to Brown County State Park near Nashville, Indiana. The yearly Celebration for the CMF Globalscope campus ministry teams, held this year in Nashville, overlapped the furlough retreat, and nearly all of the 40 Globalscope campus ministers attended. The two groups met for a picnic and fellowship and enjoyed sharing stories and becoming better acquainted with one another.

The furlough retreat is held each year for missionaries who are back in the U.S. to renew ties with families, churches and partners. During the retreat the missionaries are honored for their work, participate in study sessions, and enjoy various recreational activities with their families.

If you’d like to add CMF missionaries and projects to your prayer list but don’t know where or how to start, we have a suggestion for you: our recently updated and revamped prayer blog.

The online prayer blog replaces the monthly prayer calendar that was mailed to many of CMF’s friends and supporters. This blog will be updated about twice a month.

Click here to visit the prayer blog, in the Partner section of the site. An easy way to keep up to date with prayer items is to go to the prayer blog and look for the box labeled “subscribe.” Enter your email address and new prayer lists will be sent to your inbox whenever the blog is updated. These emails will be easy to print and place with your Bible or devotional materials.

Thanks for praying with us!

CMF is helping host the 2010 North American Christian Convention in Indianapolis this July. We are especially pleased to be one of the Platinum Sponsors for the President’s Reception. This year’s NACC President, Ben Cachiaras, is a long-time friend of CMF. Over the past couple of years, Ben has infused Mountain Christian Church (where he is Sr. Minister) with the vision of empowering the poor and bringing physical and spiritual transformation to those living in the slums of Nairobi through our Missions of Hope ministry. You are invited to join us for the President’s Reception at CMF’s booth (#407) on Tuesday, July 6, from 8:30-10:00 pm.

Mary Kamau, from our Missions of Hope ministry in Nairobi, Kenya, will be featured Wednesday evening. Dick Alexander, Sr. Minister of LifeSpring Christian Church, Cincinnati, OH, will interview Mary during the main session as he challenges us to being Jesus in word and deed—making a holistic global impact. After the main session, CMF will host a “meet and greet” time with Mary at our booth (#407).

We also invite you to attend the 3 mission workshops led by CMF personnel: Doug Priest (Executive Dir.), David Giles (Church Catalyst Director) and Phil Tatum (Globalscope Strategy Director).

We look forward to being challenged by the speakers and workshops that build on the theme: “Beyond: Following Jesus to a Place You’ve Never Been”. Hope to see you at the 2010 NACC!