Hi praying friends,

We have a slightly calmer time on our calendar at the beginning of May, so several of our team are using the time to travel and get away. Please pray for the times away to be refreshing! Once we get to the middle of May, it will be a pretty ambitious schedule for about 6 weeks before we get another slight break!

I appreciate your prayers for the MAKD conference last week and for Stephen as he travels. The conference was good, and Stephen was encouraged by the connections at his first stop. Thanks also for praying for Rachel! She seems to have landed well back in the US - just in time for her mom's birthday.

This week our house church network will be doing a service project in the community together. Please pray for us to serve well - and that the time serving is a blessing to both the community and to our church family. I have always enjoyed the way people who serve together grow closer to each other as they serve. Pray that this is the case for us on Sunday!

We have also been in contract negotiations for the space on the corner (as well as having some exciting collaboration conversations with another group about using our space together with them.) I have had to make a lot of suggestions in the contract, something that I am not generally used to doing - but so far they have been better received than I expected. I know this is evidence of you praying. Please continue to pray! We have to make a lot of decisions in the next week - and with our team not all on the same continent, communication about the decisions can be tricky.

Other prayer requests:

1. After some weeks of improvement, this week has been harder for Elissa physically. Thanks for your prayers.
2. Josh is approaching the half-way point of his Apprenticeship and will have some tests coming up soon. Pray for him as he prepares for them.
3. It seems to be an increasingly difficult challenge to get timely visa appointments. Right now we have an intern who is waiting (our first try, we applied at the wrong office for the wrong category of visa - so back to waiting!). Our son Joshua is also waiting for a new appointment to get a new ID card. Please pray for appointments!

Thanks so much for your prayers!

Blessings,

mike