Gifford December 07

Ray and Patience Gifford

Today is the last day of the 10 week ladies Bible study on Developing Intimacy With God and what a delightful journey it has been! Plenty of listening hearts and hopefully changed relationships with God. What an honor to have taught it! Preparing always gives me the opportunity to grow and by default Ray, as well.

So for the rest of the year, I'll teach some other people. Two Thursday evenings this month I'll teach on how prayer can transform people, families, and cities in Medium security at the women's prison. Ray is teaching in Minimum security using the movie "Facing the Giants" on how nothing is impossible with God. Since there are inmate initiated prayer meetings going on in both sides of the prison we want to feed the fire of passion for prayer.

On Sunday I will drive to Vancouver, BC to teach for YWAM there on spiritual warfare. There are 23 students with some of them getting ready to go to Perm, Russia, to use ice hockey as an avenue to evangelism. Creative, no?

Then I will be teaching in Westbank, BC, again on spiritual warfare for both the English students and the Korean school that is running there. Translators will be happy about the powerpoint program the staff at the Victoria YWAM base helped me put together. It is much easier all the way around with all those words up on a screen. A friend from our church will be traveling with me to have her first YWAM experience. Never do we approach these teaching weeks as something on the calendar. There are eternal things God always wants to/needs to do in lives (the teacher included) so while it may sound like just the next thing on the list it is a very serious responsibility to us. Even though this fall Ray has not been able to go he carries these times in prayer just as diligently as I do, perhaps more. Wanna join us in that?

Every other year for Christmas we try to drive back to see our other daughter and her family in Ohio, as well as Ray's siblings...

Now, lest you run out of things to pray about for us you can anticipate with us the huge step of faith we are taking planning a missions trip in Feb-March of 2008 to Fiji - to teach for YWAM, then to Korea - to build relationships with our contacts there, Mongolia and China - to acquaint ourselves with the staff and the work of Alpha Communities first hand. Our travel agent tells us we will need at least $8,000 just for flights. While God has been building up this fund slowly Ray not working means we need all the homefront financial obligations taken care of too, in order to go. So, we all can continue to grow in our prayer life - perhaps even our giving life. Aren't you glad you are our friends? Just think of all the opportunities we give you to spend more time with the Lord.

Enjoy Him,

Ray & Patience

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