June Update
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.
- Having Fun
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
- Brian and Jill Kanyike, serving in Kampala Uganda
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!
