Author: Patrick

Colorado Week 2 Update

We can’t believe that it is already the ½ way point of our month long training.   We have finished the language portion of the training and I believe we can all say that our perspective on language training has changed; to truly understand someone and understand their culture you need to get to know their language.  It will be hard work, but we are excited and nervous to begin our official language learning of Swahili.

SnowFallinTrees

This weekend we were able to experience God’s greatness through the beauty of the Mountains.  Katie’s friend let us all stay in her cabin up in the Rockies, an hour outside of Denver near some of the best ski resorts.  We were able to have tea in the Shawnee Tea Room, hike 3.25 miles up and then down the mountain, get caught driving in a white out of drifting snow, watch movies, eat s’mores and enjoy family time.

GerbersOnColoradoTrail

It’s exciting to think we are at the ½ way point of our training and we are getting close to the ½ way point of our monthly commitments.  Now is the time to join our team, please prayerfully considering joining our team with a monthly commitment.

Colorado Week 1 Update

1 down, 3 more weeks of missionary training to go! So what have we been doing this past week?

We have a very strict schedule, kinda like camp, breakfast at 7:30 (8:30 on Weekend :), lunch at noon, dinner at 5:30. The rest of the day we are all in class, and yes we have homework in the evening. The classes are full of teaching us different language techniques and phonetics to help us learn any new language more quickly and effectively. Our mouths have made sounds we never knew we could make and we now understand some Russian and a tribal language from Vietnam.

GardenOfTheGods
Katie and Hannah at Garden of the Gods Park in Colorado Springs. [Click to enlarge]
This 1st weekend we were able to get out with a rental car and visit a Pioneer museum and go hiking in one of the most beautiful places we have ever seen, Garden of the Gods. Sunday we were able to worship at Academy Christian Church and then we were blessed to spend time with Katie’s Aunt, Uncle and Cousin who we haven’t seen in years. It was wonderful to catch up and we look forward to spending more time with them. They also blessed our socks of with allowing us to borrow their car. Yay, no more rentals!!!!

Please continue to Pray for us and if you haven’t joined our team yet please go to gerbersgo.com/support so we can get to Kenya and use all of these new skills to expand His Kingdom.

Happy Birthday Jesus!

Please watch our video to hear about one of our Gerber family Christmas traditions. We are sharing this video to remind people to be intentional about focusing on Jesus this Christmas and so that more people will consider joining our team and supporting our ministry.

So what traditions have you started to keep the focus on Christ at Christmas?  We’d love for you to share them in the Comments section.  If you are a Facebook or Twitter user, look for our post with this video and Like, Comment, and Share or even Retweet it there.

November 2015 Update

The last few weeks have been CRAZY for us! We’ve been in 4 states, told our story to lots of friends and strangers, went to 4 days of training on the style of ministry done in Nairobi, Commissioned by CMF and by our church, and had some work done on the house that had us living out of one room in the basement for awhile.

FINANCIAL SUPPORT:

We have made lots of progress on gathering partners in the last couple of weeks! As of today we are over 50% of our Sending budget and at 20% of our Monthly budget! We want to get to Kenya early next year. So these totals are behind the pace for the GO date we’ve been praying for, but we are still celebrating each new financial support as it comes in, no matter what size. God is orchestrating it all!

PRAYER REQUESTS:

  • This weekend we are speaking at Castine Church of the Brethren near Greenville, OH. This is Katie’s parents’ new church so we are looking forward to getting to know them better.
  • We are working on a new video for this Christmas season that we are very excited about. Pray that it starts a new Christmas tradition for people.
  • Pray for ordinary people like you and me to catch the vision for this ministry and decide to invest in the people of Kenya by supporting our ministry each month. That is our biggest need.
  • The house is getting close to ready so pray for home buyers!

THANKS for being on ‪#‎TeamGerbersGo‬!

GerbersGo Shirts are Ready!

Did you know you can help us get to Kenya beyond your prayers and finances?  There are lots of ways including hosting us to share our story with your friends or a group, donating something you no longer need, but has value, throwing a fundraiser for us, or just start telling our story yourself to your family and friends. 

To help you start those conversations, we’ve created these shirts with our original Africa artwork on the front. On the back it reads, “I’m on #TeamGerbersGo!” along with our logo and our web address. 

Shirts are $20 (or less if you buy more than 1) and a small portion of that comes back to our support. Shirts can be purchase here.   

Support Status Update 10/11

Getting to Kenya in early 2016 was always an aggressive timeline for raising our support. While we are still moving right along with that timeline, our financial support is behind where we hoped it would be.

We know that many people plan to support our ministry, but just haven’t started yet. Maybe that’s you. If so, now is the time to start! That would be a huge encouragement to us.

If we haven’t had a chance to tell you why we’re going, what we’ll be doing, or even how to give, let us know so we can hang out and catch up!

So prayer request #1 for you: Pray for people to commit to partner monthly with us financially to expand this ministry in Kenya.

INDY Road Trip

A wedding for one of our first youth group (BLAST) kids is a great excuse to make a road trip to Indianapolis. We’re looking forward to a fun time seeing old friends at the wedding Friday night.

We decided that if we’re going to be in Indy, we should reconnect with as many of our old friends in Indiana and tell them about what God is up to in Kenya and how he’s called us to join in that work.

So if you can get to the Castleton area either Thursday at 7pm, Friday at noon, or Saturday at 10am we would love to see you!  Yes, we want you to join #TeamGerbersGo, but we will not be “passing the hat” so leave your checkbooks at home. This is BIGGER than us and we are asking you to pray!

We will be meeting at CMF International’s Cook Center located at 5525 E. 82nd St. Indianapolis, IN 46250. (Map)

“Building” Support

God is faithful. When we started this journey back in January I knew we had been called to go to Kenya, I just didn’t know how God was going to get us there. It’s like starting construction on a house, you start out with a plan, so excited to see that beautiful blue print and then the construction starts. I feel like we have just started that 1st stage. This week we laid the foundation.

What an amazing week of God surprises. This week we were so blessed to be able to be the missionaries for Fort Recovery’s First Church of Christ VBS. Those 60 kids and their families blessed us beyond belief. We had a family run a bake sale for us, we had families go above and beyond their giving and they give way over their $150 goal, over $1500. We were able to connect with old friends and make new friends.

I know this journey will be filled with many surprises, like any construction project. But I do know that once the construction part is complete we will look back and stand in awe.