How you can pray for us

When we were at camp a few weeks ago we attended a missionary prayer breakfast. One of the other missionaries created this acronym to share with people how they can pray for the missionaries. I thought I'd share it with you all so you can continue to pray for us!

Ministry-the specific ministry and vision we are called to

Income-faithful financial support for the ministry God has called us to

Strength-physical, emotional and spiritual strength

Safety-protection in travels, from unforeseen dangers and spiritual warfare

Insight-wisdom to learn and adapt to the culture

Opportunities-to share Jesus through words and actions

Nationals-national church leaders and fellow believers

Family Camp

We don't have too much to share today, but we just want to keep you updated on what's going on!

Monday was the first day that we have ever spoke in front of a group of people. We think that it went pretty well for the first time! We got the privilege to share our story at the north district Wesleyan church family camp. There were a few hundred people there. We were so nervous! But I believe that the Lord spoke through us! We have been able to connect with some people and hopefully we will be able to make connections to get into churches. Sean and I have both been able to spend time helping in the children's program which has been really fun. The camp goes until Sunday, so we will keep you updated on how things are going :) Keep praying!!

Time to jump in!

We just recently received our budget and our prayer cards (the 2 things we were waiting on) so we are now ready to jump in full force to fund raise. We also are in contact with the church we will be working with in Yeppoon, Australia and we have been given more defined roles of what we will be doing. Yeppoon Wesleyan Methodist church has about 100 people with ages ranging from 6 months to 80+ years and the average age is 43. The town has about 15,000 people and is near Rock Hampton. There is already a children's ministry in place but they are lacking the leadership to coordinate everything and they want someone to start building relationships with parents. So, I (Sam) will be coming alongside the people who are already running the ministry and begin leading. I can't wait!!!

Right now the church is trying to start a new youth venue. Currently they have a youth service once a month at night. They would like to increase this with Sean's help. Sean will mostly be working with building a worship team for that and leading discipleship groups with the youth and young adults. We're working with the Pastor of our church in Australia to fine tune his role a bit.

Our budget is between $65,000-66,000 a year. Right now we are calling churches and trying to set appointments with churches to come speak and raise money. We are also thinking of having a golf tournament and a massage day to raise money. We would really appreciate your prayers during this time. We know that we serve a faithful God and he has not let us down yet. If you have any ideas of churches who we can contact or any other ideas we'd appreciate your thoughts. You can email us at schwarze12@gmail.com.

Well...that's it for now! We will continue to keep you updated as we find out more information.

The Beginning....

**Above are a few picture from orientation**

As many of you may know, Sean and I were appointed as missionaries through Global Partners to Australia. We have been praying for this for a long time and it is so neat to see the way the Lord has led us to where we are today. So far nothing to exciting has happened, but we will fill you in!

In May, right after graduation, we headed down to Indianapolis for the week for missions orientation. That week we learned all about how Global Partners works, the financial aspect of raising a team and step by step, how to raise your support team. Boy was it a lot of information! It went really well though and we met some great people while we were there.

We found out that we will be heading to the North Queensland area of Australia and helping replant a church. In this area, churches have been planted but have slowly died because they do not have people trained in specific ministries to really feed the needs of the people. So Sean and I will be coming in with worship and children's ministry and helping start a church again. We can't wait! We have more information to come on this...be checking your mail boxes!

So right now we are in the very beginning stages of the fund raising process. We are currently trying to talk with churches and set dates so that can travel around to build a support team. We have one more week of training in January so we are hoping to head out sometime next Spring!

We would appreciate your prayers during this time! The Lord has already provided in ways that we didn't even think of but if you have any connections that would be helpful for us, please let us know!