Bonjour Friends! We are trying to get healthy again down here in Texas after being hit with a brutal cold virus! Thank you for praying for us! Tom has started his final semester in seminary to complete his Masters of Divinity and he spent the first two weeks of the year in Indiana studying Interfaith Dialogue. He will be traveling back there periodically over the next few months. We are full swing into our fund raising for the field and are excited to share what God is doing!
God at Work Now
We are grateful in this time of living in-between the call and the country, that God is moving in our lives and in the lives of those around us. We have had the privilege to lead worship a few times at Vineyard of Grace church here in Keller, the boys have memorized the Lord’s Prayer and Joanna was given the opportunity to lead a co-worker at Starbucks to Christ just before Christmas!
We were reading through our journals from our vision trip to France and were struck with the way God was breaking our hearts for the people while we were there in person. Life and ministry can seem simply hypothetical when we are so distant from the mission field. We are thousands of miles away from French soil and months away from being there ourselves, but we don’t want that to diminish the sense of urgency we feel for the people of France to hear about the love of Jesus. The front page of our website says, “The hope for this nation is Jesus”. France is in such dire need of hope and we are eager to move there to be lights in a dark place!
La Rochelle, France (West Coast)
The Road to France
To that end, we began to invite financial partnership in earnest in mid-December and we are excited to report that we have reached 15% of our needed monthly support already! Thank you to those of you have already begun to partner with us financially, we are blessed by you! Our method for fundraising is to meet with people, either face-to-face or computer-screen-to-computer-screen, to see if God is stirring individuals to become partners in God’s ministry to France through our family. We are blessed to have a long list of friends that we get to contact, making phone calls and setting up dates during nap times and after the boys go to bed. It has been wonderful to connect with everyone so far and we are looking forward to speaking to more of you in the coming weeks and months.
If God is stirring your heart to support us financially NOW, then please contact us right away! No seriously, click the button below right now! We will set up a time as soon as possible to share with you what God is doing in France and how you can join us!
Prayer Points
-Tom, in full-FULL time seminary this semester (taking 7 classes!)
-Our family, as we live in this time of transition
-Our upcoming move to Nashville, more to come on this - we are so excited to be back in our “home town” and to engage with our long time church family at The Gate Community Church
-GEM France Team, as they engage with new believers and the lost across France and for the GEM Refuge project that focuses on serving those in the middle of the refugee crisis in Europe.
Love and Grace and Peace to you all,
The Appels
