From Jacob & Megan,

To our Missions & Prayer Partners

By Jacob

Evangelism in Cyprus during missions trip — **Evangelism in Cyprus during my missions training school**

The last few months have been a period of remaining and reflecting with God. We have been reminiscing on our years in missions (Megan 5+, Jacob 2+) and the work God has done in and through us here. I know God has truly transformed the direction of my life. I used to feel extremely hopeless in life because of the lies I believed about myself and the world. My worldview and perspective kept me chained to pride and my life was very inward focused. The separation from God I felt even while “believing in God” was so real. I didn’t really believe in God I believed in my version of God, and that’s not something I understood until about two years ago during my missions training school (DTS) with Youth with a mission (YWAM). This school taught me the truth about God, the Bible, and helped me believe in my true God-given idenity. Megan has many of her own testimonies that she can share another time, but what I know I can say for her is that she knows that God is for her and will always lead her to a joyful life.

The missionary community we live in, the Holy Spirit, and our commitment to following Jesus has helped shape us into the people we are today. We are so grateful for Jesus and his leading in our lives, marriage, and ministry.

We have been reflecting on our time as missionaries and praying about what our future holds. Through processing with God over the last few months we are confident in our understanding to stay in missions here at YWAM for the for the long term. This is a grounding decision for us. It means a surrender and sacrifice of many of our personal desires so that we can follow what God has spoken. We are grateful to be missionaries and to have a great team of partners supporting us in our ministry.

This decision comes with many more implications. Therefore we have decided it is right to take some extended time at home this holiday season to spend with family, learn more French, build an extensive prayer and partnership team, and rest as we prepare to invest here in France. We believe this will take about 3 months to launch and be sent well into what God has for us. We would love to connect with people while we are home and will be reaching out to many of you.

We know the ministry we do is valuable and we are excited to step into a new season of saying yes to more. The vision for us staying is to be a strong support to the campus leadership, the campus ministry, and the other missionaries. We also believe God will be expanding our capacity for local ministry, reaching out more to our local community with our campus ministry called Connect Community. With this we will be making a priority of language learning this next year and will likely be taking time to just learn language so we can more effectively be engaged.

Leading bible study for missionary retreat — **Leading bible study during missionary retreat.**

Annual missionary retreat

In other update news we took time as a missions community to connect and seek direction for the upcoming year at our annual missionary retreat in September. It was a great time of our community coming together, enjoying friendship, and praying for God to make a move through our ministry. During our retreat I was able to led a bible study reflection for our staff on rejoicing in the Lord.

Before leaving for our season of preparing for the long term Megan and I have been training and preparing those we work with to cover our roles and responsibilities while we are away.

Connect Community is thriving and we just had our first English classes of the quarter, and 34 locals attended. This ministry runs English classes twice a week with a bible study offered after classes. It has been a great way to be relational with our neighborhood, share the gospel, and offer teaching about Jesus to those interested.