Thiemann Life

SGWM.com

The web is such an amazing tool that God has provided us with in order to further the Gospel to the ends of the earth. This happens two ways. One by providing the Gospel message on websites so people who are unreachable in person can be reached through things like Google; where about 2 million people per-day search for God. Two is by providing communication from the missionary side to the “home-front” side in order to stir-up people who are not called to “Go” to send those who are called to “Go.” This has been my passion for sgwm.com for the past 5 years.

When I came on staff at SGWM my first desire was to get a functioning website up and running. It took me about 6-8 months to get the first launch of sgwm.com live and now it has continued to grow exponentially. The next step was to automate the process for the missionaries so they can post updates, prayer requests, videos, pictures, review financial info, etc… from anywhere in the world where they could get online. I accomplished this goal about two years ago. Well, now the next step in my vision has come to fruition. That is to be able to provide our missionaries with the tools needed to simply build themselves and entire customizable website that they can manage, change, update, etc… with minimal effort and training. All of our missionaries now have their own website they have been given where they can communicate to the world regarding the ministry God has called them to. Boy the days have changed when missionary communication took months or even years!
Why is this significant and important? Missionary communication is one of the most important tasks a missionary can do. Paul did it often on his various missionary journeys, simply look at his epistles, now-a-days we have the internet. Our website has provided opportunity for our missionaries to communicate freely and quickly and build a support base around them of well informed prayer warriors and supporters. Since we have launched our website (and online giving) we now bring in $372,000 a year of online financial support for our various missionaries. Isn’t that great!?!? And, that number continues to grow as more people switch from manual giving to online giving.

Now the next step of my vision for sgwm.com – a complete overhaul! We have 50% of this done as we have completed all our missionaries’ websites. Next we have launched a project that will completely redesign the look, feel, and ‘awesomeness’ of sgwm.com.

New SGWM Ministry Partners

Erin and I have been blessed to be able to bring into partnership two new missionaries. The first is a gal Monica Johnson who will be going to Ethiopia for 1-2 years. You can check out her website (that Erin set up for her) and vision at – http://sgwm.com/monica. Also, the Villalobos family who are heading down to Zacatecas, Mexico. You can also check  their website (that Erin set up) and vision at – http://sgwm.com/villalobos.

Thiemann Family Get-a-way

This month we were blessed to be able to attend the CCSG church camping trip up at the Kern River. We had a blast! But I think Malachi had the best time. It was extra special as I got to spend just about all day long with Malachi playing, fishing, swimming, throwing rocks into the water, etc… We really had a good time to connect and we have seen a MASSIVE change in his attitude and behavior.  Kyla is getting so big, she was crawling all over the camp, you blink and then she is in a different spot.  She is such a joy as she loves to play peek-a-boo and play with her favorite person, Malachi.  They are so cute together, we are so thankful for two beautiful healthy children.

We were also able to spend some time fellowshipping as a family and as a church and I was able to spend some good time fishing. And yes… I caught a lot of fish.

This was our first family vacation in about two years and was such a blessing.

Financial Update

We have been praying for our financial support to increase and I am blessed to say that it has continued to steadily go up. Praise God! However, we are not at our goal yet. We are still praying for another 15-20 monthly supporters at $25-$30 per-month. This would help us greatly! Why? Because it provides a steady budget to work from and it is a manageable amount people can afford to sustain long-term.

How you can help

If you are a current donor… first, thank you for your faithful support. Second, if you are able to increase at any amount that would be massively helpful. We currently have 25 regular monthly donors. If each increased by $5-$10 (or any amount) that would bring our budget up by $125-$250… which would be a huge chunk of the goal. Next, if you are not currently financially supporting us on a monthly basis I would ask that you prayerfully consider joining our Ministry Partner team at $25-$30 per-month. Lastly, if you know anyone that would be interested in what we are doing please feel free to pass our information on to them, set up a meeting with all of us, or host a     support dinner for us.

Dear Family & Friends,
First off, I want to say that it is such a blessing to serve the Lord here in Saving Grace World Missions. I love being exhausted and spent for the Kingdom of our God.

The Thiemann Family

Personal

Next, I got a phone call on June 1st letting me know that my grandma had passed away. She had lived a long life and was blessed with a LOT of children and even more grandchildren and a plethora of great grandkids. Please pray for the family as we mourn her passing and celebrate her life. Pray that this time would be used by God to clearly present the Gospel to the whole family and that they would be open.

Lastly (on the emotionally draining side), Erin and I have one vehicle that we share. Well, last week it started shaking and idling (I called it “puttering”) really bad. I have parked it in our driveway until I can get it over to the mechanics and have them look at it and tell me what is wrong. Praise God that Erin and I are able to use the “missionary car” in the mean time until we can save up the money to get it fixed. I guess when it rains it pours.

On a positive note we have had some amazingly good family time over the past few weeks. Now that summer is here and the sun is shining in So Cal we have been able to spend a lot of time at the pool. It has been the joy of my heart watching “baby sister Kyla” splash around in her floaty with a smile ear to ear and to see Malachi build his confidence and jump into the BIG POOL. Malachi and I had a lot of fun jumping in and swimming to the stairs and then jumping in again… over and over and over. Hearing him laugh and say, “come on daddy… let’s do it again” fills me with an unspeakable joy.  Kyla is crawling all over the place, she is just too cute for words as she giggles as she crawls right in to our arms. Malachi is still ever in love with his baby sister.

Ministry

Well, like always we are running to catch up to God. God keeps SGWM moving and growing in ways that we never dreamed of. Almost all the new missionary blogs are up, Erin has been working diligently on getting them created with all the archived updates and running smoothly, which is amazing. Now each missionary can basically design and manage their own website and have it up on sgwm.com in a matter of minutes. God has really blessed us with this technology. Also, the Newsblog and the Facebook account keep growing and getting bigger. This is great news because the word is getting out all over the World about all the amazing things God is doing in and through our wonderful missionaries. I love to think about how far missions has come. A hundred years ago communication between missionaries and their home was almost non-existent. Now we can simply pick up a phone, log onto Facebook or Skype, or check out a website and get instant communication and information from missionaries all over the world. Prayer warriors, supporters and administrative help are now more and better equipped to support missionaries through all this amazing technology.

God is truly using sgwm.com to reach the nations. To give you a little food for thought… when I first designed sgwm.com about five years ago we had about 20 pages and averaged about five to ten visitors per day (the majority of those were me and a few

volunteers). Now we easily have upwards of a 1000 pages with 36 fully functioning “sub-websites” (websites that branch off of SGWM.com that are created by SGWM – missionary blogs, the Newsblog, the Golf Tournament website, etc…) and an average of over 500 unique visitors per-day. What am amazed things God has done to bridge the gap of communication between our missionaries and their family, friends, and ministry partners (supporters). This is a great investment!

On the ministry support side for Erin and I… praise God that our support has been increasing steadily every month. But we are still a ways off from meeting our goal. What we are praying for (and you can please pray with us) is another 20-25 ministry partners to come alongside of us and provide $25-$30 per-month. That would allow us to increase our monthly income by $500-$750 per-month.

On Fathers Day at Calvary Chapel Saving Grace Erin headed up another bake sale with our friend Jenn, and we were able to raise a financial gift of $375 for Brian and Jill Kanyike.  It is truly our heart to not only facilitate our missionaries practically but also to advocate for them back here in the states and has been such a joy to live this out, and really help our missionaries stay in the fore-front of the minds of the people back at home.

I want to thank you for your time and your faithful prayers and support. There are still pages of information to share and it is always hard to pick what topics to write about. But we will end it here for this month.

God Bless,
Mike, Erin, Malachi & Kyla

Malachi Loving the Water

Bottle before Swimming

Loving the Water

Kyla in her Floaty

Fun Time Swimming

So fun!