Sunday, December 26, 2010
Sunday, December 19, 2010
Monday, December 13, 2010
Dominican Republic Update
Dear Friends of Mission Surge,
The trip to the Dominican Republic last week was extremely productive. We hand delivered the three laptops provided through your generous gifts to Mission Surge. These computers will allow three indigenous pastors to communicate with our Dominican leader here in the United States in order to receive weekly training, direction, and encouragement. They will also allow our Dominican leader in the states to receive reports from our indigenous workers. It is such a blessing to be able to remain in constant face to face contact with our point men in the DR without the $700 plane ticket!
We were also able to meet with the Executive Director of the Dominican Baptist Convention and hear his vision for the Dominican. This allowed us, at Mission Surge, to begin formulating a plan to further Manolo’s vision for his people. God is already working in mighty ways in the DR and Mission Surge has an opportunity to be involved in what He is doing. Here is a summary of the possibilities in the DR.
First, we hope to provide training to those men who are already actively planting churches and cell groups in the DR and some of their key leaders. Three trainings will take place over the course of a year with assignments that must be completed between training sessions. Through the training these men receive we hope to, not only speed up the number of churches being planted, but also strengthen the individual pastor’s spiritual life, family life, and church.
Second, we hope to provide funds to help these faithful men overcome financial barriers in their own lives, ministries, churches, and missions. There are times when these men hit road blocks that they cannot financially overcome. These road blocks slow down their ministries and productivity. We hope to be able to help them get to the next step in their vision and work.
Finally, we hope to financially send and support Dominican missionaries to other Latin American countries. There are several benefits to using Dominican missionaries rather than American missionaries. One, they already know Spanish. Two, they already know the Latin American culture. Finally, they have already proven that they can plant cell groups and churches in a Latin American context. If God allows us to fulfill this part of the vision, then we can begin to link up American mission teams with Mission Surge missionaries all over Latin America. It is exciting to think about.
Of course these are all just initial impressions and ideas. A meeting will take place between Gene Pickern (the Dominican leader here in the U.S.) and myself in a few weeks to map out the vision and plan for the DR. I will update you on that later.
Mission Surge is now tweeting! For those of you who are interested, you can sign up to follow me here: http://twitter.com/#search?q=Missionsurge Spread the word if you don’t mind!
Let me leave you with a few prayer requests.
1. Pray for our board meeting Wednesday night. It is going to be a very long and complex meeting as we elect officials, wade through 501(c)3 paperwork, and debrief concerning our DR trip and upcoming opportunities.
2. Pray for Gene and I as we sort through the possibilities and make plans concerning our DR work.
3. Continue to pray for people to commit to make monthly donations to Mission Surge so that we can prepare a more accurate budget and projection of future ministry. Pray that God will continue to raise up people to support this work in the midst of these hard economic times.
4. Pray for open doors to share about Mission Surge in local churches. If your pastor, or a pastor you know, may be interested in allowing one of us to come share about Mission Surge or preach a revival, evangelistic crusade, or conference, please direct him to www.missionsurge.com and have him contact us ASAP. This year is filling up fast! Also, If your church has an upcoming missions conference or event that we could set a table up at, please let us know.
Thank you for your prayers and support. God is working and we are honored to be a part of what He is doing to reach the world. We are grateful that you have partnered with us in this task. Please share this report with anyone and everyone that may be interested in the work of Mission Surge where we are seeking to impact individuals, families, churches, and the world with the Gospel of Jesus Christ!
The trip to the Dominican Republic last week was extremely productive. We hand delivered the three laptops provided through your generous gifts to Mission Surge. These computers will allow three indigenous pastors to communicate with our Dominican leader here in the United States in order to receive weekly training, direction, and encouragement. They will also allow our Dominican leader in the states to receive reports from our indigenous workers. It is such a blessing to be able to remain in constant face to face contact with our point men in the DR without the $700 plane ticket!
We were also able to meet with the Executive Director of the Dominican Baptist Convention and hear his vision for the Dominican. This allowed us, at Mission Surge, to begin formulating a plan to further Manolo’s vision for his people. God is already working in mighty ways in the DR and Mission Surge has an opportunity to be involved in what He is doing. Here is a summary of the possibilities in the DR.
First, we hope to provide training to those men who are already actively planting churches and cell groups in the DR and some of their key leaders. Three trainings will take place over the course of a year with assignments that must be completed between training sessions. Through the training these men receive we hope to, not only speed up the number of churches being planted, but also strengthen the individual pastor’s spiritual life, family life, and church.
Second, we hope to provide funds to help these faithful men overcome financial barriers in their own lives, ministries, churches, and missions. There are times when these men hit road blocks that they cannot financially overcome. These road blocks slow down their ministries and productivity. We hope to be able to help them get to the next step in their vision and work.
Finally, we hope to financially send and support Dominican missionaries to other Latin American countries. There are several benefits to using Dominican missionaries rather than American missionaries. One, they already know Spanish. Two, they already know the Latin American culture. Finally, they have already proven that they can plant cell groups and churches in a Latin American context. If God allows us to fulfill this part of the vision, then we can begin to link up American mission teams with Mission Surge missionaries all over Latin America. It is exciting to think about.
Of course these are all just initial impressions and ideas. A meeting will take place between Gene Pickern (the Dominican leader here in the U.S.) and myself in a few weeks to map out the vision and plan for the DR. I will update you on that later.
Mission Surge is now tweeting! For those of you who are interested, you can sign up to follow me here: http://twitter.com/#search?q=Missionsurge Spread the word if you don’t mind!
Let me leave you with a few prayer requests.
1. Pray for our board meeting Wednesday night. It is going to be a very long and complex meeting as we elect officials, wade through 501(c)3 paperwork, and debrief concerning our DR trip and upcoming opportunities.
2. Pray for Gene and I as we sort through the possibilities and make plans concerning our DR work.
3. Continue to pray for people to commit to make monthly donations to Mission Surge so that we can prepare a more accurate budget and projection of future ministry. Pray that God will continue to raise up people to support this work in the midst of these hard economic times.
4. Pray for open doors to share about Mission Surge in local churches. If your pastor, or a pastor you know, may be interested in allowing one of us to come share about Mission Surge or preach a revival, evangelistic crusade, or conference, please direct him to www.missionsurge.com and have him contact us ASAP. This year is filling up fast! Also, If your church has an upcoming missions conference or event that we could set a table up at, please let us know.
Thank you for your prayers and support. God is working and we are honored to be a part of what He is doing to reach the world. We are grateful that you have partnered with us in this task. Please share this report with anyone and everyone that may be interested in the work of Mission Surge where we are seeking to impact individuals, families, churches, and the world with the Gospel of Jesus Christ!
Sunday, December 12, 2010
Tuesday, December 7, 2010
Santo Domingo Update
We arrived in the Dominican Republic safely and spent Monday afternoon with the head missionary in Santo Domingo. Tuesday morning we drove to the Dominican Baptist Convention Office and met with the outgoing president of the Dominican Baptist Convention and the incoming president to discuss Mission Surge’s role in the DR. In this meeting we heard Manolo’s (outgoing president) vision over the past 5 years for the convention. According to his timeline, Dominican churches are supposed to just be beginning to plant churches. However, God has moved far ahead of his vision. The convention has gone from thirty something churches to more than 200 churches over the past 5 years. They have increased from thirty something pastors to more than 100. Total membership in the Dominican Baptist Convention has increased from 1700 to more than 5000 and they are baptizing hundreds of new believers every year. God is working in the DR and Mission Surge has many opportunities to be involved and help speed the work along. I look forward, upon my return to being able to share more about the possibilities.
Tuesday afternoon we met with a young pastor who has just recently planted a church in an unreached area of the city. Tomorrow morning we will be meeting again with Manolo and another pastor named Yojalaver. Yojalaver is going to be traveling to India with a team from Cleary later this month as the Dominican’s first overseas volunteer missionary. The prayer is that this trip will birth an international missions movement among the believers in the DR.
We will leave this meeting and go scout out a camp and conference center where we plan to offer training next year (2011) to Dominican pastors and church planters. Then we will travel to meet a pastor out in the mountains named Socio. The word on the street is he is preparing us a home cooked meal of Bachalau…a salt cured fish. According to the missionary, he was sick for 3 days after eating this meal. PRAY FOR US!!!! Then, we will meet with a Haitian church and pastor that we are working with and eat with them for supper before heading back to the apartment.
Thursday morning we will meet with 2 other pastors that we are praying about partnering with and supporting through Mission Surge before heading home. Please keep us in your prayers as we are going to be making some crucial decisions about our work in the DR in the coming weeks. Pray that God will open doors and raise up the financial support, resources, and manpower to do great things in His Name, for His glory, in the DR. Thank you for your continued prayer support.
I will update you more after we return and settle down at home.
In Christ,
Kevin
Tuesday afternoon we met with a young pastor who has just recently planted a church in an unreached area of the city. Tomorrow morning we will be meeting again with Manolo and another pastor named Yojalaver. Yojalaver is going to be traveling to India with a team from Cleary later this month as the Dominican’s first overseas volunteer missionary. The prayer is that this trip will birth an international missions movement among the believers in the DR.
We will leave this meeting and go scout out a camp and conference center where we plan to offer training next year (2011) to Dominican pastors and church planters. Then we will travel to meet a pastor out in the mountains named Socio. The word on the street is he is preparing us a home cooked meal of Bachalau…a salt cured fish. According to the missionary, he was sick for 3 days after eating this meal. PRAY FOR US!!!! Then, we will meet with a Haitian church and pastor that we are working with and eat with them for supper before heading back to the apartment.
Thursday morning we will meet with 2 other pastors that we are praying about partnering with and supporting through Mission Surge before heading home. Please keep us in your prayers as we are going to be making some crucial decisions about our work in the DR in the coming weeks. Pray that God will open doors and raise up the financial support, resources, and manpower to do great things in His Name, for His glory, in the DR. Thank you for your continued prayer support.
I will update you more after we return and settle down at home.
In Christ,
Kevin
Sunday, December 5, 2010
Wednesday, December 1, 2010
Update
Dear Friends,
I wanted to give a brief report on what is going on with Mission Surge at this time. First, we are grateful to our God for the launch of our website: www.missionsurge.com We are also grateful for God placing it on someone’s heart to provide the funds to purchase 3 laptop computers for our Dominican pastors in Santo Domingo. We will be leaving Monday morning at 6 a.m. to deliver them and conduct some important business that pertains to the future work of Mission Surge in the DR and the world. We are also overwhelmed with gratitude for a recent, unexpected donation of $1000 to Mission Surge. God continues to open doors for us to work and he raises up the help we need just in time. We give him thanks.
I want to ask you to pray about the following things.
1. Pray that God’s will be accomplished next week as we go to Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic. The agenda for this trip is fourfold. First, we are delivering the 3 laptops that your gifts have helped make possible. These laptops will be given to three key pastors who are working hard to plant churches in Santo Domingo among Dominicans and Haitians. These computers will help them as they labor, but most importantly it will allow for frequent, live meetings through Skype with our Dominican leader here in the U.S. This is going to be a great blessing and opportunity for teaching, guidance, and accountability without the $700 plane ticket! Second, we will be meeting with and encouraging local pastors in their work. Third, we will be sitting down with the outgoing president of the Dominican Baptist Convention as well as the incoming president to discuss future strategy in the Dominican. We will discuss the role Mission Surge can take in training pastors as well as the possibility of Mission Surge funding the paperwork, travel, and initial costs of sending Dominican Missionaries to other Latin American countries and even as far away as South Asia. Finally, we will be meeting with a Dominican pastor who will be coming to the U.S. in December in order to meet up with a team from our church who is traveling to South Asia to a Muslim people group. He is going along with our team in order to help discern if God may be calling him to serve as a full time missionary to this area of the world. There are a lot of exciting possibilities in the DR and this trip Dec 6-9 will help solidify some of those possibilities. Please pray for us as we travel, meet, and plan!
I hope to post updates on my blog kevinivy.com daily next week as long as we have internet. If you have not signed up to follow it, please do so or check kevinivy.com regularly. You can also access the blog at www.missionsurge.com and click the link at the bottom that reads Mission Surge Blog. Please keep up with us so you can pray for us as we work. Pictures will be coming soon to the Mission Surge webpage and Facebook page of the trip so be on the lookout.
2. Continue praying for the open door we have in Kenya. God has provided a teacher to travel to Kenya in April. In order to house, feed, and transport 400-500 Kenyan pastors, we will need $4000-$5000 dollars. Pray that if God wants this training to occur, that He will raise up the financial support needed to make it happen.
3. Please continue praying for our work with the Vietnamese in Southeast Asia.
4. Please pray also, that God would begin opening doors for us to preach, teach, and share about Mission Surge in local churches. This will increase awareness and allow opportunities for us to share things that we cannot post online. If you know of a church, conference, or pastor that may be interested in our ministry of evangelism, the family, the church, or our mission to the world, please connect them to us. We are praying for open doors.
5. Finally, join me in praying for God to raise up monthly supporters for our work. We are so grateful to God for the way he raises up large donors at just the right times in our ministry. That may be the way God wants to work in this ministry. If so, that is fine. However, it would allow us greater freedom to pledge our monthly support to pastors and missionaries if we had those who would commit to give monthly. You can give online by going here http://missionsurge.com/financial/give-online.html and clicking on any of the give buttons if you feel led.
Thanks so much for your support of this ministry. Please keep us in your prayers and be on the lookout for updates on our DR trip next week.
I wanted to give a brief report on what is going on with Mission Surge at this time. First, we are grateful to our God for the launch of our website: www.missionsurge.com We are also grateful for God placing it on someone’s heart to provide the funds to purchase 3 laptop computers for our Dominican pastors in Santo Domingo. We will be leaving Monday morning at 6 a.m. to deliver them and conduct some important business that pertains to the future work of Mission Surge in the DR and the world. We are also overwhelmed with gratitude for a recent, unexpected donation of $1000 to Mission Surge. God continues to open doors for us to work and he raises up the help we need just in time. We give him thanks.
I want to ask you to pray about the following things.
1. Pray that God’s will be accomplished next week as we go to Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic. The agenda for this trip is fourfold. First, we are delivering the 3 laptops that your gifts have helped make possible. These laptops will be given to three key pastors who are working hard to plant churches in Santo Domingo among Dominicans and Haitians. These computers will help them as they labor, but most importantly it will allow for frequent, live meetings through Skype with our Dominican leader here in the U.S. This is going to be a great blessing and opportunity for teaching, guidance, and accountability without the $700 plane ticket! Second, we will be meeting with and encouraging local pastors in their work. Third, we will be sitting down with the outgoing president of the Dominican Baptist Convention as well as the incoming president to discuss future strategy in the Dominican. We will discuss the role Mission Surge can take in training pastors as well as the possibility of Mission Surge funding the paperwork, travel, and initial costs of sending Dominican Missionaries to other Latin American countries and even as far away as South Asia. Finally, we will be meeting with a Dominican pastor who will be coming to the U.S. in December in order to meet up with a team from our church who is traveling to South Asia to a Muslim people group. He is going along with our team in order to help discern if God may be calling him to serve as a full time missionary to this area of the world. There are a lot of exciting possibilities in the DR and this trip Dec 6-9 will help solidify some of those possibilities. Please pray for us as we travel, meet, and plan!
I hope to post updates on my blog kevinivy.com daily next week as long as we have internet. If you have not signed up to follow it, please do so or check kevinivy.com regularly. You can also access the blog at www.missionsurge.com and click the link at the bottom that reads Mission Surge Blog. Please keep up with us so you can pray for us as we work. Pictures will be coming soon to the Mission Surge webpage and Facebook page of the trip so be on the lookout.
2. Continue praying for the open door we have in Kenya. God has provided a teacher to travel to Kenya in April. In order to house, feed, and transport 400-500 Kenyan pastors, we will need $4000-$5000 dollars. Pray that if God wants this training to occur, that He will raise up the financial support needed to make it happen.
3. Please continue praying for our work with the Vietnamese in Southeast Asia.
4. Please pray also, that God would begin opening doors for us to preach, teach, and share about Mission Surge in local churches. This will increase awareness and allow opportunities for us to share things that we cannot post online. If you know of a church, conference, or pastor that may be interested in our ministry of evangelism, the family, the church, or our mission to the world, please connect them to us. We are praying for open doors.
5. Finally, join me in praying for God to raise up monthly supporters for our work. We are so grateful to God for the way he raises up large donors at just the right times in our ministry. That may be the way God wants to work in this ministry. If so, that is fine. However, it would allow us greater freedom to pledge our monthly support to pastors and missionaries if we had those who would commit to give monthly. You can give online by going here http://missionsurge.com/financial/give-online.html and clicking on any of the give buttons if you feel led.
Thanks so much for your support of this ministry. Please keep us in your prayers and be on the lookout for updates on our DR trip next week.
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