Our dear friends, you are getting this letter because we are so grateful for relationship with you. You have been the answer to hundreds of prayers for us to find the community, family, church, school, prayer and worship fellowship, and the adoptive family camaraderie that we knew we needed in the Carolinas, and knew only God could provide. You have been the answer and we love you. We don’t consider you chance acquaintances, but God-given gifts, and you are precious to us.
You probably recall that we moved here in summer of 2019 to work with the missions organization SIM from their Int’l headquarters in Ft. Mill. Of course, we’ve been working from home since early 2020 anyway! Our income is through the financial support of churches, friends, and family (mostly in Indiana, where we’re both from). Mary has also been working part time in Charlotte urgent care clinics since we arrived, supplementing our income to take care of our children’s needs. Medical and educational expenses we could not have anticipated consumed most of our savings over the past two years. Our SIM finance directors have told us we must build a larger financial support base in order to maintain our current level of income from them. We also have been feeling strongly that Mary needs to step back from urgent care work to focus more on ministry assignments.
We’re reaching out to you to ask for your help in building our team. We have felt abundantly blessed by the personal friendships God has given us here in the Carolinas, but we don’t have much of a network beyond that. We would ask you to pray for us to make the connections we need so that God can provide in the way He wants to. If you think your church would like to meet us to hear about our work and consider supporting us as missionaries, we would love to talk with your pastor or missions director! Or maybe you are in a small group or Sunday school class that we could visit and share what God is doing. Perhaps you own or are connected to a business that may like to be a tax-deductible corporate sponsor. Maybe the Spirit will bring to mind some friends of yours that would find our work interesting, or in line with their own passions, and they might like to strengthen us by prayer and/or financial support. Perhaps you would like to host a coffee or brunch, or serve hors d’oeuvres and introduce us to your people. Perhaps you would like us to host a cookout and you bring friends to our place! We are also happy to just meet people blind-date style. (That’s how the two of us met, actually!)
The following page is our abbreviated story, so you have a more full picture of what we’ve been doing. You know many of the recent family details, but this is our background, current work, and vision. We know you have been praying for our family, and you know how God has been answering. Certainly if you feel compelled to financially sponsor this work God has given us yourself, you’re joyfully invited! We obviously believe it’s a worthy investment! But please know we have no expectation of that. We consider you our great treasure, far more valuable than finances.
We will follow up with you within the next week or two to hear your thoughts or ideas. Some of you have also done fundraising before or have backgrounds in finance and may have some good advice. We also know you will pray. Feel free to reach out to us first if you wish. We love you!
Because He’s worthy,
Bob & Mary