Recently a team from Grace Church spent the holidays in France and Spain where their main minsitry of encouragement was to put on a Bible School for the children of all of our Grace Brethren European Missionaries that were gathered in Spain. Below is an e-mail that one of our missionaries, Rebekah Becker, sent to a couple which was on that team. Scott and Rebekah Becker (pictured above - sorry, it is a bit old) our missionaries supported by Grace Church. She also mentions how God used the monetary love gift that our church gave to our missioanries as well. This e-mail letter is well worht the read as it is evidence that God continues to use Grace Church to meet as many people as possible (even missionaries) where they are at (even in Ireland and Spain) and help move them to where God wants them to be!
Please pass our thanks along to the team and church if you like... We want you to know that the children have continued to talk about and share about the kids’ time at the conference. Yesterday they were singing GO studio Go to us and even little David was doing the motions with his big sister. The kids had a fantastic time and we have been able to talk further about what you were teaching them. We prayed as a family on New Year's about how we could each be Christ to someone else and how to GO take our faith and knowledge of Jesus. The second found us celebrating epiphany with a French family here (Sean was the king) and we were further able to share about the conference and the fact that people from our church in the states were minding our children.
Scott and I sooooo appreciated that break from the children were both of us could be fed together, snuggling on the comfy couch. It was such a relief to know that our children were safe and in good hands. I appreciated all of the special care that was taken, the excellence that was given to the kids program. You did not just do a program you did it to the very best of your ability. the kids have excitedly shown our church body last night the crafts they did and wanted to sing the song (but we didn't let them). The children have continued to share about Esther and Gideon and the different sessions. This has given us time to review with them and what they learned. Thank you so much for giving up holidays, time with family, and R&R to minister to the families with young children. Please know that we greatly appreciated and perhaps it felt all that more special because it was our home church body.
Please also thank the church for the love gift. What you all didn't know was that the week before Christmas my credit card was lost. That meant that the cash I had on hand at the end of the month was all we had to live on. To add to the challenge for some reason there was miscommunication with my employer here and I wasn't paid. Long story... anyway we lived day to day and Scott and I didn't really do much for each other but the kids and friends were covered. However I knew we were having people for Christmas dinner and that it would cost about 100.00. I also realized on the 23rd that I didn't have enough clothes for Joshua or the older 2 children for a 5 day trip. They normally wear uniforms and Joshua had just outgrown everything and his brothers and he were born different seasons so a search of hand me downs resulted in nothing. A check came from family which covered a few outfits for each child, and the Christmas dinner and we had about $50.00 left for Scott to buy me a present he wanted to get. After we went to the shops and were returning home I was struck with a startling realization. I had forgotten about metro tickets, bus fares, food during our travel to the conference and the fact that our car didn't have enough petrol to get us to the airport. Usually this wasn't a problem because I can put work expenses on my card and get reimbursed but we had no credit card and no more money. Scott had tried to buy a have a gift for 38 euro but we didn't have sufficient funds. Hmmm...I knew that there were a couple of reimbursement checks on their way for medical bills November we spent about E600.00 on medical appointments) but would they arrive on Christmas eve since they hadn't as of 5:00 our time. We returned home at 7:00p.m. to learn that our Christmas gift from Grace church had just arrived in our bank giving us money to travel and pay for the bits we would need to travel. What a huge blessing at just the right time. I knew God would provide somehow for what we needed and he had enough money to buy food (nice food for our Christmas dinner), clothes for my kids, and petrol for my car.
I want to say a huge thanks to Grace church for the gift and the special way it met our needs this Christmas. We are blessed to have moved into a lovely "warm" house this year and we are so thankful for all of our blessings. Please thank the team and our church body for the wonderful gift of money and the children's team which were so wonderful this year.
Oh, and I didn't tell you the epiphany celebration the wife asked how to have a relationship with Christ and we spent an hour sharing about a relationship with Christ. It was a battle to go but God continues to work in their lives. They spent a further hour discussing God and we are praying for them to understand the hope that she wants and says that she sees in our lives. Unfortunately we need some French teammates to come and visit because they are limited in communicating some of the more deep theological terms for lack of vocabulary.
Thank you,
Rebekah
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