As we have been traveling around the country these past months, I have continued in my role as technology lead for Host Israelis and Planet Zula. Unfortunately, we ran into some trouble with the outside company we hired to develop the web and mobile apps for our network. They suddenly became unresponsive, and did not complete the work which we paid them to do. This left us in a bind where we were unable to use the apps, and unable to receive any support from the original developers. We were so close to completion, but this was a huge setback. We were forced to transfer the apps to Chosen People Ministries’ servers so that we can develop, maintain, and have complete control over our technology. During this transfer process, several things inevitably broke, which caused a lot of errors in the system; and no one on our team knows enough to fix it ourselves.

Fortunately, when I told this predicament to a good friend of mine, who is a web and mobile app developer, he dropped everything to help us out! He is currently working on diagnosing the issues, and fixing all the errors in our systems. Praise God for this huge provision! Please pray that we can get the apps back up and running and have the technology ready by this Summer. Our goal is to launch a test run of this hospitality network this year, but that depends on the apps being ready.

In the last year or so, it feels like we have faced a lot of push back from the enemy as we develop this network. It is tempting to feel discouraged, but God reminded me of James 1:2-3, “Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness.”

I am so encouraged that God is using these trials to strengthen our faith and grow our perseverance! Pray not that God would take away these trials, but that we would remain strong in our faith and our walks with God through these trials. Pray that we can honor and glorify God and be a testimony for the Gospel through these circumstances.

We are also encouraged to keep pressing on because we know that you are supporting us through your prayers. Thank you for continually praying for us and our ministry, we could not do this without you.

Love, 

BJ, Carissa, and Ari