Prayer Letter Update

Happy Thursday! Here is a link to our latest prayer letter!

June Prayer Letter

In Him,
The Utts

Encouragement. Take Two.

So, I log on to Crusade's "Staff Web" today to see if there is any news I need to be aware about in the Crusade world. There's a section that answers a frequently asked question from staff members. There's a new question each week. I had to laugh to myself when I saw the title of this week's topic:

MPD During a Difficult Economic Time

[MPD = Ministry Partner Development - what we're doing right now with developing our ministry partner team of people supporting us prayerfully & financially.]

Thanks God for thinking of us in our last post and giving us encouragement with this article. You are amazing! :)

-J

p.s.....If you're curious what the article is about, here it is. [There's a quote that I love that I put in bold/italics. Ellis said that same thing at our new staff training]:

Question

A staff member asks:

"Food and gas prices are up. Many homeowners are in trouble with their mortgages. The dollar is falling overseas. How would you encourage staff members who need to raise support during these troubled economic times?"

Answer

This is not the first time we have faced a challenging economy as a ministry.

During the 1970s and 80s, we lived in a period of rapid inflation, we were in a recession, mortgage rates were increasing drastically and gasoline was scarce due to the oil embargo.

Christy and I were living in New England with a 7% loan on our home. Then I transferred to California where the interest rate on our mortgage doubled to 14%.

During difficult economic times we need to keep a proper view of what is true -- that God really is in control.

I love what my friend Ellis Goldstein says, "From the beginning of eternity, God's net worth has remained constant." None of this has taken Him by surprise -- He still owns everything.

Raising support in today's economy is challenging because many ministry partners are feeling the impact as we are.

But God has blessed this ministry with incredible partners. Our donors are committed to God's work, advancing His Kingdom and the staff members they love and support. They are not rushing out to drop their giving.

In fact, giving to staff members is up about 2.3% compared to this time last year, while overall giving to the ministry has remained about the same.

That tells us that during this tough time, our ministry partners see the importance of continuing to support you, our staff members, while project giving is down slightly.

I would encourage each of you to look at I Chronicles 29 where David talks about how wealth and honor come from the Lord. Also look at II Corinthians 8 where Paul talks about the generosity of the Macedonians.

These two chapters help give a Biblical frame to this discussion and keep our perspective on God's timing, not our own.

Encouragement.

We are praising God as He has blessed us with different appointments with potential ministry partners that have been really encouraging lately! It is so encouraging to share our vision and calling to a small group and have people come up afterwards as say that they were excited and want to hear more!

This encouragement is much needed because, reality is, God has called us to be raising support as a time where the economy isn't really doing that great. It's tough at time and, yes, we do ask ourselves: why now?

Sorry, we don't have the answer. One idea could be that perhaps God is pushing the world to begin to live more simplified in order to gain more glory for Himself. We don't know the big picture. We can't even begin to wrap our mind around God's plans. We just know that He has provided for us all along this journey. He is drawing us to Keynote, and He is our Ultimate Provider.

Reflecting back on just a few recent provisions:
-He provided us with a great community of believers with our church after just one week of living in Dayton after we got married.
-He provided a job for Jonelle for the last half of this school year that was contracted at the exact amount remaining on our car loan so we can be debt free.
-He provided us a place to live that will let us get out of our lease with no penalties when we need to move to Indy.
-Ultimately though, God has provided us with a way to live out our faith and allow Him to be glorified as we encourage others of what Christ's death has done for us.

Maybe it's not a big theology lesson. After all, it could be as simple as God saying something like: Hey, look at everything that I have provided for you already. Look where I have led you. Please don't doubt that I can provide for you in this stage of you lives as well. Just trust me and walk.

-J & T

Sacrificing

I finally got word on what the rest of my summer is going to look like. My supervisor cleared for me to do some short term TDY in lovely Portsmouth Ohio. I will be away from Jonelle during the week and come home thursday evenings in order to spend some time with her on weekends doing some fun MPD. It is a sacrifice, but I am okay with it, I just ask that you could pray for us during these next weeks while I am away. After that I will work in Montgomery county (where we live) doing some hearings for new home values, I know sounds exciting. That starts in July. So the outlook on my position will be done near the beginning of August. It is good to see the light at the end of the tunnel, but yet, we have a long way to go with support raising. Being away sounds like a bummer, but it will free up my fridays in order to commit a whole day towards MPD, so that is a blessing for sure. Jonelle will be finished soon with school and she can commit a lot more time to MPD while I am still working. Some might ask, why keep working, the answer is so we can pay off the lovely Saturn and help our Ministry Partners feel relieved that they are not paying towards our debt. It is almost paid for, we just need to see our government surplus check!
-T

Prayer Letter Update

Here is a link to our latest prayer letter for the month of May:

May Prayer Letter

Let us know if you would like to receive this monthly update via email.

-The Utts

Back Again.

This past month has been crazy! [in case you hadn't inferred from our lack of posts] We apologize for the lack of updates since, well, you are walking along side of us on our journey and would love to know what is going on!

Right now we're getting ready to transition out of being youth leaders at our church. We certainly love the students whom we work with, but need to transition out of these roles to focus more on ministry partner development. We'll be 'officially' done at the end of this month. Two really neat things that have happened in the last month with the youth, though, are the spring retreat and a fundraising dinner/silent auction. I'd love to highlight those quickly for you.

Spring Retreat [taken from our most recent prayer letter]:

We recently went on spring retreats with the students whom we work with at our church. The boys and the girls went two separate locations. The weekend was filled with conversation, challenges, encouragement, and little sleep! Here is a small glimpse into each of our weekends:

G.R.U.N.T.
The guys truly had an outdoor adventure – tent camping on a 10-acre lot. No showers. No bathrooms. Our theme was: R.E.A.L Manhood. We talked about what it means to Reject Passivity, Embrace Integrity, Accept Responsibility, and Lead Courageously as men in this world. We also did manly things like log throwing, cooking over a blazing fire, and hiking through a hailstorm. The boys had numerous questions about real masculinity, and the leaders were encouraged by the integrity that was expressed throughout the weekend!
-Tony


Basilieos:
The girls had their own adventure, packing into a cabin down deep in the woods of Southern Ohio – with no cell phone reception! Our theme was: Basilieos, which means “royalty” in Greek. We talked about control, identity, and worship, while focusing on 1 Peter 2:9:
“But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.”
I was encouraged to see relationships being built among high school and middle school students! I pray these relationships grow back at home!
-Jonelle


Spaghetti Diner & Silent Auction Fundraiser:

This is hot off the press! The event was last night. Our middle schoolers have been planning this event since January. All the money donated from ticket sales & the silent auction is going to buy supplies and items for the Miami Valley Women's Center, a local crisis pregnancy center. We had about 25 items up for bid for the silent auction ranging from family outing baskets, date night baskets, man baskets, and more. We were so grateful for all the auction items that were donated! We still do not have an exact total, but God raised a tad over $1,000 through ticket sales and silent auction items! Praise Him! My middle school girls' small group will be taking the money soon and buying supplies [such as diapers, formula, clothing, infant care products] for the center to help women & families who find themselves in crisis pregnancy situations. After we buy those supplies, we're going over to the center to put all the supplies away.

We've had a blast through the past two years with these students through small groups, retreats, camps, and other events. We will certainly miss hanging out weekly with our students and other leaders, but we really feel that this is the right time to be transitioning out of youth ministry. God has given us a great peace about the timing. Praise Him for the neat things that He is doing in our students' lives!

-J

Mouse Hunt - Part II

Just in case you were anxious and like resolution in life....

The conclusion of our friend's mouse hunt. Will Moby find the mouse?

Mouse Hunt, Part Two

To resolve another post, we will be getting back our money from the Skybus tickets that we had for next month. Praise Jesus! Tony talked to the credit card people, and things are moving along nicely.

-J

Skybus' Surprise Brings Sadness.

If you haven't heard by now...Skybus is no more. I suppose, yes, it was too good to be true. It would have been nice if they would have given a tad bit more warning than....well, no warning at all.

Please pray that we can get our money back for the tickets that we bought to go see our NC & SC friends in May. Thanks.

-J

How To Catch A Mouse....Maybe.

Friends, a video camera, and a cat....of course.

A post or two, I shared about a friend's quest to find the mouse that was lurking around their house. Finally we have video!

Mouse Hunt, Part One


-J

God is Encouraging

Quite often the little impatient monster creeps up on us....feeding us lies that we should have more support coming in than we do. For working full-time on top of MPD, we're not at a bad place. We'd love to be working at our new Keynote jobs...well like yesterday....but God's timing and ours is just quite not the same. God has been encouraging us lately, though. Our church is really focusing heavily on missions now, and we feel that the sermons have been preparing people's hearts before we talk to them. Last night, we meet with a friend from church who knows a lot of people. He's like the person in college you'd be walking across campus with and you couldn't get to where you needed to go because you'd be stopped by all these people along the way....in a good way, though. :) Anyway, we are praising God for our friend and how God is using him. We got a lot of referrals at our meeting last night with many other people - who love missions and know other people. He's been calling them all last night and today and telling these people who we are and a bit of our vision and that we'd love to meet with them to share more. God is good! We can't wait to see what He does out of all of these referrals!