Hi praying friends!

We are 10 days into our 366 day long Home Ministry Assignment (HMA).

What does one do on HMA?

Well - for every worker it is a little different! A major part of our assignment is to connect with people and churches. We are also encourage to find times of respite and recharge for our next term. Our responsibilities with our Envision Berlin team mean that we will continue to be involved in bookkeeping, recruiting, some administration work, and refining some of our story-telling channels.

So far - since we just landed 10 days ago, that has meant unpacking, getting some stuff out of storage, attempting to sort through things, having a short family reunion on the Picconatto side, finishing the draft of our site's Rule of Life, writing to a lot of churches, planning out visits to churches, talking with Elissa about what we want to share with churches, ordering podcasting equipment for our site while we trade off Home Assignments, and meeting with some supporters.

Can you pray for us as we look for good rhythms? We place a really high value on good working relationships with our teammates, and the time difference can make communication tricky. When we are sleeping in MN they are working in Berlin. If we wait too long to engage in tasks and ask questions in MN, the work day is over in Berlin. We just need to figure out how those patterns work well! Since so much of our communication is written, the tone with which we read messages (early in the morning or after a long work day) can also impact how we work together. Our team is great - and the years we have worked together certainly help, but we could use prayer!

On Sunday we fly to Ohio for an Envision conference. Can you pray for our leaders as they finish putting the conference together? It will be fun to see not only our teammates again, but also people from the other Envision sites around the world!

After we get back on the 20th, we will head to Omaha for a couple days, will be at Word of Life in Coon Rapids on September 29th, and will be in Staples, MN October 3-6th.

Other prayer requests:

1. Pray for our teammates, the Jones, as they travel from Berlin for the conference.
2. Pray for an upcoming short-term team in Berlin!
3. Pray for an intern landing at the beginning of October in Berlin.
4. Pray for Elissa's back. A lot of travel and unpacking has left her with some extra stiffness.

Thanks for your prayers!

mike