Hey everybody! Sorry about not posting anything this weekend, I was busy with things so I will update now for last week!
Last week was spiritual warfare week here at our DTS! We were taught about the spiritual battle that we face every day as Christians against the spiritual forces in this world. How we are to deal with evil forces that seek to deceive, hinder and destroy our walk with Jesus Christ and how we are to wield the power given to us through Jesus Christ by His Holy Spirit. We learned more about the spiritual gifts that God has given us and also how to use them for God's glory. That is an EXTREMELY brief overview of what we are learning about, an trust me, if you deny that the things that I have just spoken of aren't real, please come to this side of the world, the spiritual battle is VERY real, and you should be aware.
We have been doing many things here other than just learning in class. Most notably we have been interceding for the city that we are living in (Kapan), interceding for people groups, prostitutes, alcoholics and more. The Lord has been giving us very unveiling visions about the spiritual state of this city and we are taking up the authority given to us as well as the guidance, both from Jesus to combat the spiritual forces of evil in this city. We believe that this city is going to experience its first ever spiritual revival because of the praying we have been doing and it is already showing in small ways!!! We are soooo excited about being apart of this glorious mission for God's kingdom. Please pray that we remain steadfast against the enemy and that we all continue to seek the Lord with everything that we have.
I ask that you would all start to pray about the battle that the Lord would have you take up in your own city. I am so convinced of the power of prayer in numbers and I know that the Lord wants to set each of our cities free from whatever spiritual bondage that has it captive. We also certainly covet your prayers in this time for both Alicia and I, as well as our team. We are on the front lines here and Satan is hard at work.
We love all of you and will update you on the next week when it comes that time! THANK YOU for your support!
In Christ
-Evan
Monday, January 30, 2012
Saturday, January 21, 2012
Kapan, Armenia!
I would like to share a little about Kapan, where we will be doing our Discipleship Training School for the next 3 months. The school has a focus on reaching the Muslim world. As Evan shared we just finished our 1st week. Each of the 12 weeks will have a different topic with a different teacher from somewhere around the world. Soon we will begin to pray as a team about where we will go for outreach.
Kapan is in southern Armenia about 25 miles from the Iran border. It is nestled in a mountain valley with apx. 30,000 people. It is not extreme poverty, but in comparison to most of America, it is. It is a developing nation and I believe still considered 3rd world. Christianity just came to this town about 10 years ago and pagan sacrifice sites still exist today. So as you can imagine it has a lot of room for salvation and growth! We are very excited to learn more and see how the Lord shows His love to this town and pray He will use this group as a tool.
Your prayer is so valuable to us. You are all the hands and feet of the church as you join us. Whether we are here, praying at home, or supporting financially we are fulfilling the Great Commission and God's dream, that His glory will be known in all nations! May He give us all His love and heart for the nations. Please pray for our transition and culture shock: food, language, schedule, focus in class. Building relationships within our team. Sharing the love of Christ with this town. God to speak and transform our minds in the likeness of His.
Love & blessings in Christ,
Alicia
Kapan is in southern Armenia about 25 miles from the Iran border. It is nestled in a mountain valley with apx. 30,000 people. It is not extreme poverty, but in comparison to most of America, it is. It is a developing nation and I believe still considered 3rd world. Christianity just came to this town about 10 years ago and pagan sacrifice sites still exist today. So as you can imagine it has a lot of room for salvation and growth! We are very excited to learn more and see how the Lord shows His love to this town and pray He will use this group as a tool.
Your prayer is so valuable to us. You are all the hands and feet of the church as you join us. Whether we are here, praying at home, or supporting financially we are fulfilling the Great Commission and God's dream, that His glory will be known in all nations! May He give us all His love and heart for the nations. Please pray for our transition and culture shock: food, language, schedule, focus in class. Building relationships within our team. Sharing the love of Christ with this town. God to speak and transform our minds in the likeness of His.
Love & blessings in Christ,
Alicia
1 week down!
Hey everyone! I am currently sitting in the dining room/teaching room relaxing after a long but good week learning about Missiology and getting to know the people I am living with more. There is snow all over the place, as yesterday it snowed over a 1 foot here! I have attached pictures of where we are living with and without snow, as well as a picture of our team.
It has been so fantastic being here in Kapan, Armenia. We have now been here a week and our week has been full to say the least! Our typical day starts off with breakfast at 8, then quiet time for 1 hour, then either worship or intercession for 1 hour followed by 3 hours of teaching then lunch. We usually have free time for a while after this but reconvene for learning methods of outreach, worship, or some team building exercises, followed by dinner. After dinner we have free time until coming together to go over the "YWAM" values. Finally BED TIME! It has been challenging to keep up with the fast pace of the day, but we are managing well. We thank you all so much for your prayers, as I feel like we will start to rely on prayers more and more to get through our days.
The language barrier has been a fun challenge for me. Everyone here speaks Russian with only some of the people speaking broken English. I have learned a good amount of Russian this week and hope to be able to speak it by the end of our DTS. We are finding that we have to rely totally on the Lord during our prayer sessions as well as worship, when I'm not leading because they are totally in Russian. It has been so good though, we know that the Lord knows all of our hearts and that by the spirit we are all praying with one purpose!
I would like to share more but fear this is getting long. I will try to get Alicia to send out a quick overview of what we are getting into and prayer requests this weekend. Just know that we are doing very well and love that God has lead us here!
(pictured is our team, our staff leader and teacher for the week, view from our front porch, Alicia and I, view over Kapan, view without snow from our porch.)
In Christ
-Evan
It has been so fantastic being here in Kapan, Armenia. We have now been here a week and our week has been full to say the least! Our typical day starts off with breakfast at 8, then quiet time for 1 hour, then either worship or intercession for 1 hour followed by 3 hours of teaching then lunch. We usually have free time for a while after this but reconvene for learning methods of outreach, worship, or some team building exercises, followed by dinner. After dinner we have free time until coming together to go over the "YWAM" values. Finally BED TIME! It has been challenging to keep up with the fast pace of the day, but we are managing well. We thank you all so much for your prayers, as I feel like we will start to rely on prayers more and more to get through our days.
The language barrier has been a fun challenge for me. Everyone here speaks Russian with only some of the people speaking broken English. I have learned a good amount of Russian this week and hope to be able to speak it by the end of our DTS. We are finding that we have to rely totally on the Lord during our prayer sessions as well as worship, when I'm not leading because they are totally in Russian. It has been so good though, we know that the Lord knows all of our hearts and that by the spirit we are all praying with one purpose!
I would like to share more but fear this is getting long. I will try to get Alicia to send out a quick overview of what we are getting into and prayer requests this weekend. Just know that we are doing very well and love that God has lead us here!
(pictured is our team, our staff leader and teacher for the week, view from our front porch, Alicia and I, view over Kapan, view without snow from our porch.)
In Christ
-Evan
Tuesday, January 10, 2012
We are here!
Hey everybody! We are so excited to say that the Lord has gotten us to Tbilisi safely! After a long 24 hours of travel we arrived at our temporary home in a village just outside of Tbilisi.
We have been acclimating nicely and have been seeing different sites in and around town here. Pictured we have the home we are staying in, an overview of Tbilisi, a road around the house we are staying in and a picture of us at McDonald's as I write this :).
We are heading to Armenia on Thursday and will spend the night in the capital city of Yerevan. On Saturday we will head down to the southeastern city of Kapan to begin our Discipleship Training School (DTS). We are pretty sure that we will be doing outreach to the Iranian community in Kapan while we are there.
I'm sorry I can't go into more details now, as we are in a hurry to leave McDonald's now. I will try to update more soon on what we are doing and what the Lord is doing here and in Armenia.
We need your prayers for u here an for the people here. We know the Lord has massive plans for the people here and we are excited to be involved.
We would also like to here how you are doing back home. Please email us at epa529@yahoo.com to fill us in on your lives and thoughts, we truly care about you and would love to hear from you.
We love you all!
-Evan
We have been acclimating nicely and have been seeing different sites in and around town here. Pictured we have the home we are staying in, an overview of Tbilisi, a road around the house we are staying in and a picture of us at McDonald's as I write this :).
We are heading to Armenia on Thursday and will spend the night in the capital city of Yerevan. On Saturday we will head down to the southeastern city of Kapan to begin our Discipleship Training School (DTS). We are pretty sure that we will be doing outreach to the Iranian community in Kapan while we are there.
I'm sorry I can't go into more details now, as we are in a hurry to leave McDonald's now. I will try to update more soon on what we are doing and what the Lord is doing here and in Armenia.
We need your prayers for u here an for the people here. We know the Lord has massive plans for the people here and we are excited to be involved.
We would also like to here how you are doing back home. Please email us at epa529@yahoo.com to fill us in on your lives and thoughts, we truly care about you and would love to hear from you.
We love you all!
-Evan
Tuesday, December 27, 2011
Small update!
We just found out this morning that we will be going to the southeastern city of Kapan in Armenia to do the lecture phase if our DTS! This is a small change from where we thought we were going to be in Yerevan, which is in the north of the country, to the southeastern boarder of Armenia and Azerbaijan. Other fantastic news is that we have a large house that the leaders have rented out for us to stay in. Praise God for His quick answer to our petitions for housing!
Thank you all for your continued support!
In Christ
-Evan
Thank you all for your continued support!
In Christ
-Evan
Small change in plans and good news!
Hi there all of my faithful brothers and sisters! I trust that you all had a most enjoyable Christmas and are slowly returning to the normalcy of life. Alicia and I had a wonderful Christmas and are now about to enter a very hectic time before we leave for Georgia on January 5th.
I wanted to take this post to update you on our progress in fun raising as well as to let you know our new plans.
First of all PRAISE GOD!! We have managed to raise our $11,000.00 goal that we set 2 months ago in actual contributions as well as a couple of pledges for giving over time! What an amazing God that we have and what an amazingly obedient body that He has used to send us to the other side of the world! Thanks to all who have contributed in prayer and giving in this matter, you were/are truly needed for this kingdom work. Just so you know, we have not made our $11,000.00 goal a cap. That means that if you feel lead to continue to give, PLEASE DO! We need all that the Lord would say that we need, which seems to be more than what we set as our initial goal.
On another note, we were informed about 3 weeks ago that we will no longer be attending the Discipleship Training School (DTS) in Azerbaijan. The school was not prepared to have English speakers (us) at the base and the leadership team there were worried about the language barrier for us. Not to worry though, as this was all in the Lords plans and therefore, ours too. We will now be heading to Armenia for the first 3 months of our 6 month tenure! We will do the lecture phase of our DTS there in the capital city of Yerevan. Pray for housing for us please :). We are extremely excited about this opportunity to serve the people of Armenia while learning more about out Father in heaven. We will fly out January 5th to Tbilisi, Georgia, spend a few days there and then drive to Armenia to start our lecture phase.
I hope this helps to fill in those of you who we haven't had the pleasure of communicating with in a few weeks.
We love all of you and covet your prayers! If you feel lead to give to us, please make out all checks payable to "Church of the Holy Cross" and in the "for" blank write "Georgia Mission".
All donations made using this method are tax deductible.
Thank you all and all praise be to Jesus Christ!
In Christ
-Evan
I wanted to take this post to update you on our progress in fun raising as well as to let you know our new plans.
First of all PRAISE GOD!! We have managed to raise our $11,000.00 goal that we set 2 months ago in actual contributions as well as a couple of pledges for giving over time! What an amazing God that we have and what an amazingly obedient body that He has used to send us to the other side of the world! Thanks to all who have contributed in prayer and giving in this matter, you were/are truly needed for this kingdom work. Just so you know, we have not made our $11,000.00 goal a cap. That means that if you feel lead to continue to give, PLEASE DO! We need all that the Lord would say that we need, which seems to be more than what we set as our initial goal.
On another note, we were informed about 3 weeks ago that we will no longer be attending the Discipleship Training School (DTS) in Azerbaijan. The school was not prepared to have English speakers (us) at the base and the leadership team there were worried about the language barrier for us. Not to worry though, as this was all in the Lords plans and therefore, ours too. We will now be heading to Armenia for the first 3 months of our 6 month tenure! We will do the lecture phase of our DTS there in the capital city of Yerevan. Pray for housing for us please :). We are extremely excited about this opportunity to serve the people of Armenia while learning more about out Father in heaven. We will fly out January 5th to Tbilisi, Georgia, spend a few days there and then drive to Armenia to start our lecture phase.
I hope this helps to fill in those of you who we haven't had the pleasure of communicating with in a few weeks.
We love all of you and covet your prayers! If you feel lead to give to us, please make out all checks payable to "Church of the Holy Cross" and in the "for" blank write "Georgia Mission".
All donations made using this method are tax deductible.
Thank you all and all praise be to Jesus Christ!
In Christ
-Evan
Wednesday, November 2, 2011
Why we are heading to Georgia and Azerbaijan.
Here is a video that Alicia and I made explaining the story of why we are going to Georgia and Azerbaijan as missionaries. It is about 10 minutes, but doesn't lack for excitement!
This is the link to the video on youtube. Sorry we have had problems trying to upload here.
http://youtu.be/9a2UsFeIiRw
We hope you enjoyed this video, if you have any questions for us, feel free to comment on this post or email us at epa529@gmail.com. If you would like to donate to us through PayPal, click the "Donate" button on the right side of the screen. If you wish to make a tax deductible donation through our church, please make out a check to "Church of the Holy Cross" and in the "Memo" portion of the check write "Georgia Mission". Send to Church of the Holy Cross, PO Box 506, Sullivan's Island, SC 29482. Thank you for your support and prayers! We'll do our best to update y'all on this journey!
This is the link to the video on youtube. Sorry we have had problems trying to upload here.
http://youtu.be/9a2UsFeIiRw
We hope you enjoyed this video, if you have any questions for us, feel free to comment on this post or email us at epa529@gmail.com. If you would like to donate to us through PayPal, click the "Donate" button on the right side of the screen. If you wish to make a tax deductible donation through our church, please make out a check to "Church of the Holy Cross" and in the "Memo" portion of the check write "Georgia Mission". Send to Church of the Holy Cross, PO Box 506, Sullivan's Island, SC 29482. Thank you for your support and prayers! We'll do our best to update y'all on this journey!
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