Hello dear friends..
What a year for our family! Molly and I are one child closer to becoming empty nesters. Joel is in his 3rd year of college, attending Montana State University and living about 5 hours away in Bozeman. We miss him a ton, but he is doing well in life and that is a great blessing to us. Eden is in her junior year (11th grade for the non-Americans), and wonderfully still at home 😊. However, she is very social and involved with activities that it seems she is out more than home!
As for Samuel and Kinley, they are in the process of making us grandparents! (Our son is having a son!) Being grandparents is a wonderful addition to our job description, but honestly a slight mental adjustment (can we be that old already?). We can’t wait for his arrival in March! Molly is very much looking forward to being a grandma… or Grammy, or MiMi, or… Who knows?! My Team at work ran a survey to come up with “What Jeremy will be called as a Grandfather”. Oh my… a LOT of names suggested, ranging from Grandpa-Roo, to Papa West (for your entertainment you can see a few of the names suggested after the photos below). The overall voted favorite? “GrandMate”. Hmmm, we’ll see. As for Molly’s name, that jury is still out.
On the work front, ministry and missions are charging ahead. I (Jer) continue to oversee our campus’s various Discipleship programs. The most rewarding things for me are seeing our people grow, the Gospel making real change in people’s lives both here and around the world, and being able to continue creating space for others to grow and develop. I am very blessed to be working with many high value and high capacity mission workers, excellent leaders, and people-developers.
Molly is still the irreplaceable moving part in the Director’s office as she works to improve our campus, deal with high level decision making and facilitating mission accomplishment. As always, she is keenly involved in several lives of younger ladies in leadership roles, and an ardent supporter of our Bible translation and distribution efforts.
In other campus news we recently welcomed back our DTS’s from Cambodia and 2 other closed nations, and this weekend we will send out several more teams into the nations to plant seeds, water, and harvest!
This week we are also welcoming home Bible teaching teams from 6 nations: Cambodia, Taiwan, Ukraine, Thailand, and 2 other closed countries. These students are in their 20’s and are on fire to be teaching believers and pastors from many villages who have no Bible training. What a joy to be part of sending these young people to make life-changing impact!
You – our friends and partners in ministry – share in that too.
The YWAM Ship “Liberty”, which YWAM Montana is directly involved with for the purposes of Bible translation and medical ministry in Papua New Guinea, has now arrived at its base port of ministry, in Madang. We are directly involved in that project from here, especially Molly in her role within the Directors office and her passion for the Bible. The Liberty will be hosting continual medical teams to reach isolated villages on the coast as well as continual Bible translation for 33 bible-less languages. This is no small undertaking and your prayers for these translations is much appreciated.
As we close this letter, a prayer point. We have recently been asked to staff a Leadership Training School with Darlene Cunningham next Summer in Kona Hawaii. This will be Darlene’s last, and it is a huge honor to be asked to be part of the staff team. But this will bring it’s own challenges: logistical, financial, work, and school stuff in Montana… Would you please pray for our process in this decision? And please contact us with anything you may be discerning for us. We will share more in the near future.
As always, thank you for being a vital part of all we do, as we work to “know God and make Him known”.
Jeremy and Molly
(If you’re still reading…) Grandfather names that didn’t make the cut… 🙂
The Old Cobber
Papa Jer
Skipper
Bub
Grand Pappy
Hefe
Granpy-J
Grand Fella
Old West
Chief
Tutu (Hawaiian) Jeremy
Papí
Puppy (Australian accent)
Bandit
Big G
Kupunakane
Sage
Old Mate
Jeremy (said in an Aussie accent)
Sir
Grand Mate
Gramps
El Padre
Popdaddy
Professor
Papa J
G-Pa
Papaw
Bush Poppy
PeePa
Jerome
Grumpa
Abuelo (Spanish)
Papa Jer Bear
Boss
Grandpa
Captain Jeremy
Pop
Grandpa Roo
Mr West
Grandpa Koala
PeePaw
Pop-Pop
Oupa (South Africa)
Papa Jerry
G Daddy
Pops
Granddad
Big Pop
Mate
Old Man West
Baboon
Pepe (French)
Chuck
Papa West
GoWests! 