Today, as I write this letter, marks exactly one year since we sold our house; one year of full time living in our trailer; one year of being houseless vagabonds for Messiah. And it has been an amazing year of adventures with many detours, unplanned stops, and divine encounters.
It has been amazing to see God’s faithful provision in so many ways. God allowed us to connect with dozens of new churches to share about Host Israelis, recruit new hosts, and gain new prayer and financial partners for our ministry.
About the same time that we began traveling West, the original outsourced developer for Host Israelis web and mobile apps went dark, leaving us with an unfinished product and a big mess. So when we arrived in California to pick up our new travel trailer, we had to hold off our travel plans so I could focus on cleaning up the mess and putting all the pieces back together again. After five months of much sweat and tears, and cycling through four different outsourced developers, we finally published Planet Zula in the Apple and Google app stores and launched our focus group of hosts to test our Host Israeli systems and give us feedback. But please continue to pray for this strenuous process, because there are still a lot of bugs to work out.
At the end of our time in California, we found out the gender of our baby: it’s a girl! Due to time constraints and Carissa’s severely limited physical capacity with her pregnancy, we decided to skip the rest of our Southwest destinations and head straight back to Virginia. This pregnancy will put another hold on our travel plans while we return to Virginia for the support of Carissa’s maternal-fetal medicine doctors for her high-risk pregnancy, and the support of Carissa’s family during the pregnancy and new-born stages.
Please pray that God would provide the perfect place for us to park our trailer that will meet all our needs in Lynchburg, VA, where we can stay for a year or so during the pregnancy and new born stages. We are excited to see what opportunities arise during our time back in Virginia. I will continue my role as Tech Lead for Host Israelis; and Carissa and I will help with recruiting, interviewing, and training our new hosts for the network. Shmuli and Jenna Arnold will soon move to Rio to start their new ministry, and I accepted their invitation to join the board of directors for Chosen People Ministries Brazil! I am grateful to be involved in planning, developing, and supporting this new ministry in Brazil.
Please pray for the health and safety of Carissa and our baby girl during this high-risk pregnancy, and for God’s provision and direction for our future.
As always, thank you for your support and prayers for us on this crazy adventure reaching Jewish people for Messiah.
Love,
BJ, Carissa, and Ari