Pray For Us...

Gary & Phyllis Waldecker

December 18, 2006

Praises

  • We're thankful for your prayers on our behalf.
  • Our visits this fall to supporting churches went very well.
  • Our support account has been improving.
  • Seth, Andrea and Audrey finished their semesters well, and Micah is doing well in his work.
  • We are glad that Seth will be with us for Christmas.

Prayer Requests

  • Pray for Gary as he travels to Monterrey, Mexico, this winter to help MTW church planting teams with the design and implementation of their leadership training program.
  • Pray for Gary as he plans to make another trip to Mexico this winter to continue his research into how to plant churches that are both Christ-centered and reflect the national culture.
  • Pray for Gary as he helps various missionaries from different parts of Latin America think through how best to prepare national church planters.
  • Although our support account is improving, it is not yet in great shape.
  • Audrey is preparing to go to college next fall.
  • Seth needs to find a place to live that is closer to Washington University.
My position with MTW for the last few years has been Resource Team Director for Latin America.  While this Resource Team is mainly focused on issues like church planting strategy and effectiveness, we are also concerned about other problems and challenges that face our missionaries. One of the things we missionaries need these days is a good way to communicate with churches electronically. I'm talking about email and a website.

When I was MTW's Regional Director of South America I created a uniform email address for all our missionaries in the region. Today there are many missionaries who make use of their email address "username@mtwsa.org." The idea was to provide an email address that represented who we were (Mission To the World South America) and that would remain the same whether the missionary was on the field or on Home Ministry Assignment.

I also created a website through which our missionaries could interface with supporting chuches: www.mtwsa.net. A gentleman in one of our supporting churches graciously offered to maintain the website for me. If you are not familiar with this website, you might want to take a look at it. Many MTW missionaries from South America have made use of this site to present their minstries to those who are interested.

Recently we made the decision to expand this email and website service to all of our missionaries in Latin America. This reflects a desire on the part of the MTW Latin America leadership (of which I am a part) to promote a sense of unity and cooperation among all our missionaries in Latin America. So MTW personnel who minister in Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean are now  being offerered a region-specific email address and a spot on the regional website.

To reflect our focus on Latin America as a single, unified region, I have changed the name of the regional website to www.mtwla.org. If you should accidentally go to the old site at www.mtwsa.net, you will be automatically taken to the new one at www.mtwla.org.

You may also see some missionaries beginning to use their mtwla.org email address. Both the old address (username@mtwsa.org) and the new address (username@mtwla.org) will work. In other words, email sent to user1@mtwsa.org and email sent to user1@mtwla.org will both go to user1.

I want to remind you of the website that is dedicated to giving you information about our ministry: http://partners.waldecker.net. This site has family pictures, previous prayer letters, thoughts on missions, and other information. It also includes a link to our page on the regional website.

Thanks again for your prayers. We very much appreciate your partnership with us in the gospel.

Gary and Phyllis Waldecker