We’re in Colorado now. Our mouths are learning to get outside of the “44″ box. 44 refers to the 44 sounds in the English lanuage. We’ve learned there are a possible 1 million vowels. In English we only speak around 10. So the purpose of our learning is to break out of the “44″ and free our mouths to speak other sounds without trying to conform those sounds to our English 44. Thank you all so much for your involvement in getting us here. This will help us break so many barriers when speaking a new language and dropping our American accent, as much is possible.

Can you believe it is already summer? We are about to begin a very busy season! We leave June 18th for two weeks of languge training in Colorado. Just a little bit after we return from the training we head out to Malakal, Sudan with a short term team from Fellowship Bible Dallas July 12-23. Taylor and I will be staying a little bit longer to get a better feel of SIM Sudan. I will be visiting the SIM Sudan offices in Nairobi, Kenya and getting to catch up with a dear friend who is ministering in Kenya. Taylor will be staying in Sudan with a future SIM teammate Nate to travel to other sites in Sudan SIM is working in. This gives Taylor the opportunity to get shoot some great footage of various ministries SIM works with in Sudan.
Please keep us in your prayers during this busy and very exciting next few months.

Check out our first letter announcing our choice to go live overseas in Sudan doing mission work with SIM.

I (Taylor) wanted to share with you about some recent developments within SIM USA in regards to media in Sudan. There has been a recent push by a department that specifically reaches out to large donors. They are taking a trip themselves to Sudan in a week to film many of the projects going on and interview both people doing the projects and those being impacted by the projects. Most of the projects in Sudan directly serve the physical needs of some very war hardened Sudanese. The goal is to empower them so that they can be self sustaining. Through doing these various projects, we hope to impact the people personally and gain their trust so that Christ’s love will be evident and opens the door for salvation and all that comes with becoming a Christ follower.

All of that to say, there is a large push to create a lot of media for Sudan to share with donors. As many of you know, Sudan is in the world’s spotlight right now, not just by the US. We hope that these new methods of communication cannot only be used in and by the US office, but other SIM offices around the world to highlight the needs in Sudan and get more people involved around the world in the work Christ body is beginning. The encouragement comes in that many more people are getting involved in Sudan through the use of media and even before I’m officially “active” with SIM, I am being invited to take part in work already being done there. There is a chance that even before I go active, I will be helping post production (editing) on a lot of the video which will be acquired this summer.

Please pray for much of the ground work being done right now for the projects SIM has envisioned. It is only through your prayers, your financial donations and God’s favor that makes these thing happen.

Read more about Rebuilding Southern Sudan: Church & Nation.

A typical school in Southern Sudan.

We recently received some preliminary reports of the financial support for the month of May. I was completely WOWed. We have full funding for our summer needs and look forward to sharing with you all in the fall about our time in Sudan. Thank you to each of you who have been contributing both financially and prayerfully.

We look forward to taking some time to listen for God’s feedback and learn from what He will be showing us this summer. Your prayers have been encouraging and our time in Sudan will be a trying time as we experience a new culture, language, traditions, tribes, way of life and certainly spiritual warfare like we have never experienced. SIM is built on prayer, as their tag line reminds us. We need your prayers. Without them and without God’s favor we can do nothing.

For His Glory!

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