McComas Ministry

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.

We’re back in Bozeman after spending January in the Portland area. Technically our job is fully focused on launching the Portland ministry, but with a house that needs to sell, it’s long distance work for us for at least a little bit longer.

So right now our days are full of meetings, letters and phone calls to expand our ministry partner team. As well as meetings, conference calls, emails and strategic planning for the Portland ministry. We’re itching to get moving with the Portland ministry, but we’re also thanking the Lord for this time of laying the groundwork for a new day of ministry in Portland.

Please continue to pray for our sanity as we’re stuck in the limbo for the next couple of months. We’re doing really well personally, but we continue to need patience and trust in the Lord’s timing. Also, pray for the right buyer to fall in love with our house soon! We have an open house on Valentines day, so who knows!

Lastly, pray for the Portland ministry. The potential is off the charts for God to do something unique on the campuses in the city. Every day we hear from someone who is excited that we’re coming. We’re believing God to reach the campus for Christ on the way to seeing the city and the world transformed!

After an amazing Christmas in Bozeman, we’re hitting the road for January. We’re loading the bags as I write this and we’ve got some good house-sitters lined up for our house in Bozeman. (Pray that it sells soon!)

First stop will be our winter conference in Portland, Oregon, where us and 700 of our friends will gather in the Portland Convention Center to worship, learn and party in the New Year! 95 students from MSU are joining us! I’m teaching a seminar on transitioning to life after college as well as helping with some video production.

Next (Jan 2-8th) we’ll spend time in Prineville, Oregon visiting some of you! If you have time and are interested in touching base with us, please let us know

Finally, we have a couple housesitting gigs in Portland untill Feb 3rd, where we’ll be raising support, setting up some things for the Portland ministry and trying to figure out where we want to live. If you’re in the area, we’d love to meet with you!

As we wrap up our time at Montana State University and do some end of the semester evaluating, we feel incredibly grateful to have seen our ministry grow from 60 students involved (10 years ago) to where it is now with 37 small groups across campus and 300-400 students attending our weekly meeting! We’re sending students all over the world to serve him and it’s a joy to know that we’re part of God’s redemptive story for the world. What is happening in this small college town matters!

It’s bitter sweet to say goodbye to our staff team and the students involved here, but God has been so good to us here that we can’t help but worship God for who he is and give thanks to him.

Please pray for us over the next few months:

• Pray our house would sell in Bozeman
• Pray for new ministry partners as we raise additional support for our move to the city
• Pray for all of our travel to Oregon and back over the coming months
• Pray for the perfect living situation for us in Portland
• Pray for the details of launching a new ministry would be directing by the Lord
• Pray for us as we serve at our Winter Conference Dec 28th-Jan 2. Pray for the 100 students that are attending from MSU to experience God in a fresh way too.