Been a while

It has been several weeks since I have lasted posted anything and I apologize for that. The reason for this has been a mix between the fact that I have been expecting several more subscribers (hello to you who are new!) and the fact that I simply don't have all that much to report.
The biggest news is that I am $200 a month closer than what I was when I last posted anything. So, I now only $300 more monthly pledges until I am able to go to training. The next session begins on Sept. 10th, so the next few weeks will be the deciding factors.
Other than that, nothing spectacular has been going on. I have started substituting again since the school semester has begun, which is a good thing.
I will end the post with some prayer concerns. Firstly, I would ask you all to pray for my support raising (obviously). Specifically that I would be more assertive in it, but also that I would do better at keeping up with you guys! I want to be closer to you guys than I am, and this requires more time calling and emailing you than I am spending. You can also pray for me while I am learning Estonian. I am able right now to learn grammar, but I won't be able to actually practice speaking the language unless someone comes around to help me with it.

Joshua

Blessed Miscalculation

I was looking over how much support I had in my account and had a dawning realization. I had been figuring the monthly support and one time support separately, which is alright unless you forget to go back every month and add in the support that comes in. I had not been doing this. When I added it up I realized that I had just over $1,000 more support raised that I had thought! To make it even better I sent an email to UWM (my mission board) to ask when the next training sessions was being help. I had assumed that it was in August, but I was informed that it actually begins on September 10th. So I now have less money to raise and more time to raise it in!
That being said, before I can go to training I need to have $1922.60 for my one time amount. What is more important, however is that I need to get $523.20 more monthly pledges to go to training. So, if you know of anyone who you think may support me, or if you would like to come on board yourself, please let me know. I would love to partner with you in teaching the Gospel!

Getting rolling

To begin with I would like to say hello to those getting this newsletter for the first time. I hope that we remain in good contact with each other and that we will be able to minister together for a good long time.

There's not been too awfully much to talk about this time around. The most important thing would be that I am finally getting into a groove of raising support. I have at least one Sunday School class per Sunday booked for the remaining portion of the month. Hopefully I will be able to generate enough support to go to training in August. All I need to go is $3,000! That may sound like a lot, but it's certainly not as bad as it was a month ago. So, I am still hoping (maybe even vainly so) to have enough support to take the next step soon! Once again if any of you want to support me, or know of anyone who might be willing to come on board, then let me know so that this dream can become a reality!

Two surprises

I've had some pleasant surprises in the last two weeks. The first one came from an unpleasant situation. Last week I decided to step down from my position as youth pastor of New Harmony Grove. The reason for this is that there is just not enough time for me to both raise support and to be a youth pastor, so I had to cut it. So, last Wednesday I spoke to the church and told them what was going on and why. The surprising thing is that they had decided to give me a check for $1,000 for the time I had spent there. Also they gave me the money from the VBS penny war (in case you don't know, this is just a competition in which boys and girls compete to see who can bring the most pennies for missions). This came out to be over &1,200, which was a huge boost to my one time fund. Thus my time at the Grove ended. I'm sad to see it go, but I'm very glad that I had experienced it.
The second surprise has to do with New Harmony as well. The youth had been asked to sing at the local county wide gospel sing last Sunday. During the introduction of our presentation Bro. Don (New Harmony's pastor) mentioned that I was a missionary raising support. Towards the end of the service one of the pastors motioned that the group take up an offering and pray for me. They took up the offering and it came out to be $960. Then all of the pastors gathered around me and put their hands on me and everyone prayed for me. It was the first time anything like that had ever happened to me and I think it will be one of my fonder memories in life.
So, I had a pretty good two weeks. I am continuing to look for supporters and I am still in need of a large amount of support. Please continue to pray for me while I'm doing this and if you know of anyone who you think might be willing to support me or if you are willing yourself please let me know!

Sick, but with new ideas

On Saturday me and my friend Deek went out to get some soda from a local gas station. He took me because of its ingenious quality of having not merely your pick of different varieties of Pepsi brand soda, but also your pick of different flavorings to add to it! I got Sprite and Deek got Dr. Pepper, both with vanilla flavoring added to it. We tried each other's concoctions out of pure curiosity, and so I've inherited Deek's sickness this week. It hasn't been too bad, but it did force me to go to bed around 8:00 Monday night.
The new idea part comes in because I'm trying to implement an idea from one of my superiors at UWM into my fund raising. I've been asking people to put on dessert parties that I can speak at. The hope in this is twofold
1) I hope to raise financial support from it (obviously)
2) I hope to get people more involved in what I'm doing so that I have a better relationship with the people who are supporting me. I feel strongly about working with people as a concept, and this is a good way to put that into practice I think.
If anyone has any other ideas I WOULD REALLY AND TRULY LIKE TO HEAR THEM! So, email me or post a comment on by blog. I really and truly want to be working with all of you so feedback would be much appreciated, even if it a critique of what I'm doing.
Also I am going to have a pretty busy weekend. On Saturday the band that I am in is going to play a the skate board park that I work at and then on Sunday I will be taking the youth of New Harmony Grove to Nashville GA for the last performance of the mini tour that I had mentioned last week.

On Tour... kind of

Hello all! I hope everyone has had a great and productive week this week. As for me, I've been busy. Some of you might have known that Monday and Tuesday we took the youth of New Harmony Grove to perform a mini choir tour. I was honestly concerned that we would be way too unprepared to do well, but it turns out that both nights went fantastically. I think that we all learned as a group to work better together and also that we can do fairly big things if we just get up and do it. Needless to say the outcome really encouraged me.
Also, I have been promised a pretty large sum of money ($500) this week from a sunday school class that I had spoken with a good while ago. This puts me closer to my goal of $16,000, but I'm still a pretty long ways away. Please pray for me while I go and speak to people for financial support. Especially pray that I won't be so awkward when asking for money and that people will know how serious I am. My goal is to be gone to training by August, so I have quite a bit of work to do. Also, please pray that I'll start getting in some monthly donations with all of these large one time amounts. They are just as, if not more, important than the larger one time donations.

Getting Rolling

Hopefully many new people are seeing this blog because of the mass email that I sent out and I would like to take the opportunity first off to say “Welcome to my blog!” I hope that you find it informative and that you will participate in working with me to accomplish God’s purposes.

I have finally taken the time the past week and a half to copy the email addresses on my computer via an Excel document and put them into a group on my Hotmail account. I only thought that this would take an hour or two. Those of you who are observant, however, will notice that it took me a week and a half. It took a ridiculous amount of time to get everything organized and in the same place and I am very glad to be done with it so I can move onto other things like writing more blogs!

In response to my last blog post I can pretty much say that my and other’s prayer was answered. I now have as of Wednesday three small jobs that seem to be sufficient enough to pay my expenses and flexible enough to allow me to raise support. These jobs are:

1. Monday-Friday 12:00-3/4:00 I’ll be working at a skateboard park for my friend Matt who is also the drummer of Billy Loves Silly (which is the band that I’m in).
2. Monday, Wednesday, Friday I’ll be working 6:00 am- 9:00 am doing janitorial work for my friend and former Sunday school teacher Keith.
3. I will also soon be the paid youth/children’s pastor for New Harmony Grove, who is the church that I’ve been helping. By the way, many of you are youth pastors or have worked with youth and/or children yourself and any advice or neat idea you could give me would be great!

Lastly, I would like to say that I am going to try my best to get more people actively involved in my mission endeavors. A few friends of mine are going to meet and try to think of some creative ways to do this, but if any of you have some ideas of how people in general (or you yourself) could help in this ministry, feel free to let me know. I would love to work with you!