Hello friends and family, I just wanted to give an overview of 2019 with some of my experiences. This past year has been one of the craziest years of my life with so many different experiences I have had and so many things that God has been doing. I am so excited to share with all of you all the grandeur that has been taking place. God is moving in me and in the world. Within 2019 I have gone through so many seasons of life. It has been wild.
The beginning of this year began with me still raising support for my missions work. I was living in Cocoa, Florida working with the founder of Overland on a boat that is the beginning of the Maritime Department of Overland. I was helping to fix it up, and to make it look nice. During this time, I was working on the boat with another individual named Caleb, with whom I was also rooming. You would have read about him in my past newsletters, although I’m not sure I ever mentioned him by name. We were both raising support at the time living together for two months until I got fully-funded at the end of February. At that point, I began recruiting for others to partake in missions trips even though it was late in the season. Caleb became fully-funded about two months later. I was given expeditions to Cambodia, Philippines, and East-Timor; though, through a series of events, East-Timor didn’t happen so I went on a recon to Vietnam.
Expedition season began shortly after I became fully-funded. I flew to Cambodia and immediately had to start learning the culture and adopting a position of leadership I had never really experienced before. I had to learn how to lead teams of people into unreached places of the world alongside with learning all the logistical aspects of running an expedition. There are so many amazing testimonies from this time from these awesome team members that were with me; many of which have helped me mature in various ways. Seeing God move among the villages of Cambodia, and seeing how God impacted many souls; I saw many come to know Christ as their Savior. Praise God! We are in modern day revival.
In my first expedition in Cambodia, I met this wonderful girl named Samrach, and we discovered we had an attraction towards each other. She is Cambodian and has translated with Overland since 2017. She recently finished Overland Missions’ Advanced Mission Training (AMT) at the end of 2019. We are very serious about building a solid relationship in the Lord and with each other. She has a strong heart for missions, so we plan to pursue ministry together. We are looking forward to marriage sometime in 2020 and having many happy years serving God together!
Here is a map of Cambodia. You can see that all the blue marks are villages I was given the opportunity to minister in. There are other points of interest marked, but I wanted to show all of you that these are real villages and locations. Places that are unreached and I was given the privilege to go and bring them the message of reconciliation.
After expedition season, September rolled around. I was reunited with Caleb where we made plans to recruit together for the rest of 2019. We were assigned different trips, but worked well together so we travelled together recruiting. One thing that has been amazing having him around and working with him almost every single day for six months is how God aligned our lives to be walking through the same seasons together and to always be there for each other. We helped each other grow in many ways. We both were walking through support-raising at the same time. We both went through the expedition season, then we both entered into serious relationships. We ended up recruiting for expeditions together. We also
both joined the Media Department of Overland. It has been a blast and an honor to have been traveling and working with him this past year.
Going into the season of recruiting has taken me from Florida to New Mexico, Colorado, Minnesota, Canada, and Wisconsin, now I am back in Florida. That journey has been filled with many adventures and stories seeing God amazingly move in all of it. Literally, lives and families have been impacted by the power of the Gospel. I have the best job in the world! There have been some recent changes, in that I was scheduled to go back to Cambodia for the expedition season, but I have been moved to Zambia instead; due to need in Zambia, as well as due to my encounter with dengue fever in Asia in 2019.
All-in-all I went through many seasons of life in this one year. I could make this newsletter a novel but I think my readers would appreciate a shorter version as I have written now; but, I would love to share it all!
Below I have attached a file that is a PDF version of Overland Missions’ End-of-year-Report (EOY) It contains stories from the field and statistics from the whole of Overland. I want to draw a quick comparison. In 2018, Overland as a whole, traveled just over 1,000,000 miles. In 2019, God increased the miles that have been travelled to over 3,400,000 miles. That’s a huge difference! That’s the ground we are covering and the determination of Overland to reach the unreached and to find the forgotten. I do hope you take the time to read this. It will really bless you.
Be blessed my family! I am in continual prayer for all of you and thankful for all of your continued prayer and financial support for me. You each are a blessing from God to me!