April Newsletter

Our family with Davi, from Brazil, an English Cross-Cultural Orientation (ECCO) student, on his graduation day!

Please Pray. 

Dear friends and family.  This month we'd like to ask you to pray with us for two things that are on our hearts:

    1. That God would reveal the specific mission He has for our family.
    2. That we would be content while He prepares us for that mission.  

We came to YWAM Minneapolis trying for find our place in the world, and what a great place this is for that!  Through this season of Lent, we as a base have been focusing our daily prayer times on the theme of "Crossing the River", asking God what is the Promised Land (people, place, mission) that He is calling us to, and what lies in the way of us getting there?   We are seeing God move some of our staff off our Rockford campus and into strategic places in the metro area.  They are crossing the Crow River to reach the un-reached in Minneapolis.  It's exciting to be a part of.  I'm helping one couple get a donated trailer house ready in an impoverished mobile home park where we've been doing homework help for a couple years.  Now we'll have YWAMer's living there full time!  Another couple is creating a business that provides summer work for youth with on-the-job evangelism and discipleship.  My Ford F-150 just got donated to that work.  A staff lady from Pakistan is moving to the inner city to work in women's shelter.  We are looking for someone to move into Columbia Heights where the largest population of Tibetan's is outside of Tibet.  

     The picture that follows is a symbolic act culminating our Lenten season of prayer - YWAM staff and students crossing the Crow river on the 1885 bridge in Hanover, as we ask God to help us take possession of the spiritual lands He's promised us.    
   
So we ask you to pray with us as we wait on God for the people or place that He has for our family.    
   
     Meanwhile there are more than enough projects around the campus, as well as worship leading, collecting maple sap  and firewood (Joel), homeschooling (Renee) working in the accounting office (Renee), hosting a medicinal herb night (also Renee), learning Spanish (mostly Renee and the kids), as well as trying to make new friends here.
 
    We really enjoyed some of the English Cross Cultural Orientation students who graduated at the end of March.  Some are off to further missions training. Others are going back into their workplaces, universities, churches and YWAM bases in six different Latin American countries.  We look forward to being more involved with students in the upcoming schools as well. 

     In our local outreach, a playgroup in Columbia Heights with kids from an un-reached people group, we are seeing a gradual softening of hearts toward us.  We have a new group of YWAM students from a School of Ministry Development coming with us each Tuesday and they are full of enthusiasm to spend more time praying and planning ways to engage these kids. Only Joshua and I are a part of this local outreach because it ends up being a late night, which ties into our prayer request theme of missions for the whole family.

           "Have I not commanded you?  Be strong and of good courage; do not be afraid, nor be dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go."  Joshua 1:9


Thank-you for standing with us in prayer. For giving sacrificially. For working alongside of us.

A Happy Easter, full of Resurrection, Hope and the Love of Jesus, be to you.

Love, the Pikes 

P.S.  In this next month we will participate in a planning retreat for Missions Adventures,  a YWAM regional conference in Wisconsin, and Renee and I will celebrate our 10 year anniversary in the Redwoods of CA!