McComas Ministry

The list of prayer requests in our life is long right now! Opportunities for the Lord to show up I guess.

• Pray for Jody as she goes into surgery in the morning. She’s having a hysterectomy.
• Pray for strength for us as we deal with our landlord who gave us 30 days notice to be out of our house last Thursday. We feel like she is taking advantage of us and it’s not great timing with surgery, Cru Conference and the holidays.
• Pray that we would hear about the house that we have an offer in on and we’ve been waiting forever to hear from HUD on if it’s a go or not.
• Pray that God would provide great temporary housing for us if needed in the meantime.

This has been a stretching time for us (to say the least), but at the same time God has used many of you to affirm our call to make Christ known on the campuses of Portland. Thanks to all of you for your words of encouragement and blessings. We need them!

Stay tuned for updates on the 3-circus that is our lives at the moment.

For the past 5 or 6 years we’ve sent out email updates in between snail mail newsletters. We’ve officially started to use mailchimp to keep track of all the emails. If you’d like to subscribe please sign up below.

***please note. These are in addition to our snail mail letters and blog posts. If you check you’re email but don’t follow our blog, then this is for you! If you’d like to subscribe to our blogpost via email too, then fill out the form in the right column of our website! Got all that?

Bottomline, we want you to know what’s going on with us and how to pray for us as you invest in our ministry. Thanks!

Today marks 3 weeks until our staff team officially reports for work and 4 weeks till the baby boy we’re adopting is due! Let the craziness begin! All things considered we’re doing pretty well. There have been a few moments where life is overwhelming but God continues to meet us in those moments. We’re excited to launch the Portland ministry and even more excited to adopt this baby boy. We’re so blessed!

Praises!

• God has provided free housing for us while we’re in Boise in September waiting for the adoption paperwork to finalize.
• God continues to provide in remarkable ways for the expense of adoption. More to come about this later when we know exactly what the cost is going to be.
• God is providing students who are willing to help get us officially recognized at PSU.
• God is providing volunteers all over the city who would like to serve with us!

Prayer Requests

• Pray for my (Matt) lower back. I continue to have lower back and leg pain as a result. I think it’s related to sciatic nerve and I’m currently getting it checked out, but it’s been sort of frustrating as sitting is problematic at the moment.
• Pray for the Lord’s peace to be evident in our lives as we near the due date of our baby boy. It’s count down time!
• Pray for our staff team to continue to gel and for the Lord to give us the right strategies that are unique to Portland.

Other Notes:

• Jody is a blogging machine. You can get more insight into our family life on her blog.
• Our garden is doing well. Cucumbers and tomatoes are taking off and I ate some yummy snap peas tonight!

It’s summertime…well it’s supposed to be anyway. It’s been a rainy month here in Portland, but at least it’s green!

As the students and staff of Campus Crusade are serving all over the world right now,  Jody and I are launching into a season of expanding our support team in preparation for launching the Portland metro ministry this fall. Please pray for us during this time as we seek to invite people to partner with our ministry.

This is a challenging process for us, but at the same time we’re deeply grateful for the chance to invite people into what God is doing in the lives of college students. The whole process deepens my dependence on the Lord and allows me to take an audit of my perspective of who God is and clarify as necessary.

We are talking to a number of you over the course of this summer. But if you haven’t heard from us yet and you are interested in helping in this process the two major areas of need for us are:

1. Increased monthly support to help cover the cost of living increase as well as new expenses for adoption of our little boy in August.
2. We simply do not know enough people to raise additional support in a timely manner. We are asking friends and current ministry partners to brainstorm 20 friends/family that they would contact to share about the ministry if they were in our shoes responsible for raising funds to fulfill their ministry.

Thanks for all of your partnership and prayers over the years. The vision for reaching the campuses of this city for Christ is great and we are incredibly thankful for your partnership in this great endeavor. We give thanks for all you daily.