Keeping up with the Joneses
March and April 2006
It was the darkest cloud I’d seen in a long time. The storm to our west was moving in our direction in a hurry while we traveled through Eastern Kansas that Sunday morning. We were familiar with these Spring storms in the Midwest, but this one was awesome! We ultimately were pounded by about 42 million hailstones that left our windshield with literally dozens of little chips in it and a few dents on the hood and doors. Praise the Lord we still made it to our meetings that day even though dozens of tornadoes touched down that day from Kansas to Indiana! To this day, a broken windshield is the worst incident we’ve had while traveling! That’s not bad!
The month of March was a great month in a lot of ways. It was packed with 8 meetings that ranged from Minnesota to Pennsylvania and then down to South Carolina. We traveled 5006 miles in just that one month! April has been just as busy with two great missions conferences and another 4500 miles traveled. God’s been so good to us and we’re more eager than ever to get to Southeast Asia. We’ve been learning so much during this time and we’re actually really enjoying ourselves!
I wanted to give a few more specific requests than normal this month so if you’ve got a few minutes to pray over these things, it would be a blessing to us.
Specific prayer needs:
*Pray that the Thai people would grow discontent with the deception of Buddhism.
*Pray for Kathi Hayes who had to spend some time in the hospital last week after complaining about chest pains and then passing out later that day.
*Pray for Orawan and Ya. They are faithful young ladies in the church in Surin and Satan would love to destroy their testimony. Ya’s mother committed suicide this past week after seeing Ya last weekend for the first time in 9 years.
*Pray for a girl named Top as well. She’s a Believer in Surin and she’s facing a great deal of pressure from her parents to abandon Christianity.
*Jim and Kathi are back in the States for a few weeks so Jim and teach at Maranatha. Pray for safe travels and a refreshing time for them with their family.*Pray that we’ll be at 50% of our support by the end of May.
*Pray specifically that we could leave the States for Thailand by March of 2007.
*Pray for the power of the Spirit to rest on our deputation ministry.
*There are two couples that I’m praying will be called to Thailand soon. I’ll not mention their names (they don’t know I’m praying for them), but please pray that the Lord would call these two families to join our team in Northeastern Thailand.
Praises:
*Last week a team of medical professionals from the States traveled to Thailand with Operation Renewed Hope and Evangelist Tom Farrell. During their time there in the tsunami stricken areas, they were able to treat more than 700 patients and 20 of them responded to the Gospel!
*Our support has continued to increase. A church in South Carolina voted this week to begin our support in July and that moves our support level to 46.4%.
*Our oldest daughter Lindsey has begun to meditate on “spiritual things.” We believe she may understand the Gospel and trust Christ in the near future.
*We paid the last $298.00 on our van this week. We were able to pay it off more than two years ahead of schedule. The Lord provided nearly $5000 since January of this year.
*Our 2001 Ford Windstar hit 133,000 miles this week and is still going strong.
*We have some dear friends in New England that have committed to helping us with our outfit and passage fund later this year. We’ve currently been able to put away $1200 toward the $32,000 target. Amen!
We love you all and can’t tell you how much we need you and appreciate you praying for our family!
To Make Him Known,
The Jones Family
BWM—Thailand
