Photos from our family vacation

Erwin Family News -Lord Willing, the Erwin Family is Traveling to India in September!

We are settling in very well in Gardner, Kansas, about 40 miles southwest of Kansas City. This is a small town that is growing but still has that country charm. Benjamin is able to walk across the street to a swimming pool so we are excited about that. We go bicycle riding along a nice trail that is close by and hope to go camping at Hillsdale Lake, which is 10 miles south of here. Janey is looking at some new treatments for headaches that look promising so we will keep you updated after her first consultation.

We ordered Benjamin's curriculum for next year. It is calledSwitched on Schoolhouse and is an online curriculum that will fit Benjamin's needs very well. It is a five-subject curriculum of math, language arts, science, Bible and history/geography. We also got a typing tutor module as well. We are excited to start him with this curriculum in September.

India September 2010
We are working on the details for our family to travel to India in September. Janey, Benjamin and I will travel first to our headquarters in the south in Tamil Nadu. Then I hope to travel to Rajasthan in the northwest of Inida. Plans are still being confirmed and, of course, we will need to raise about $4,000 for the travel. Where God guides, He provides, so your prayers for us are very helpful. I will be telling you more about our trip and how you can be involved in the coming months.

Influence! What does Amy Carmichael and Joesph Stalin have in common?

I have been researching a lot of world evangelism lately as I prepare to do a presentation at next month's Colorado Home Educators Conference (CHEC). I am finding some interesting statistics about the population of children throughout the world. In almost every country outside the U.S., Canada and Europe; children make up 50% of the world's population, but I find that only about 15% of mission dollars are spent to specifically reach children.
I believe we are living in a day that paradigms are changing rapidly. Greater efforts must be made to reach children throughout the world because they are #1 more open to the Gospel and #2 they have more time to listen. Most importantly is the fact that a child that accepts Christ at an early age and is properly discipled will mature with a Biblical worldview and influence their cultures for the cause of Jesus Christ.
As we look at history, every leader that has impacted this world, both evil and good, has been influenced by someone. Karl Marks, Joseph Stalin, Osama Bin Laden, Adolf Hitler and Napoleon were influenced by someone, and that influence caused massive destruction and death.
What if these men would have been influenced by Christ? What a different world we would live in. In the coming decades there will be voids where God's leaders must influence societies. Look at the impact in India of pioneers like Amy Carmichael and William Carey. There are many generations of Christians who have followed in their footsteps.
Serve India Ministries President, Brother Ebenezer Samuel, comes from the very state (Tamil Nadu) that Amy Carmichael ministered in and Brother Ebey descends from 5 generations of Christians and now is leading an effort to help plant 100,000 churches in the nation of India. As a young man, Brother Ebey attended Serampore College in Calcutta, the college founded by William Carey.
As I travel around the U.S. sharing the vision of Serve India Ministries, I hear from many people who are so overwhelmed by the world's needs that don't feel that they can make a difference. If you really want a good bang for your buck, look at children's ministry both here in the U.S. and in the world. Serve India Ministries is helping 4,000 children through its Stepping Stone Program. $3 per month per child goes a long way to impact a child's life forever and enable him or her to influence their community or their nation.
May God grant us the grace to influence our cultures for Christ with our work and our resources. May He give us the grace to raise our children to be influenced by Jesus so we can be salt and light to our communities and to the world.

Erwin Family News - March, 2010

We are moving next month to a small town south of Olathe called Gardner. We were very blessed to find a two-year-old home that will cost us about the same as the rent we are paying right now but a more rural setting. Benjamin and I are planning a garden when it warms up and the soil dries out. We already have some tomatoes and peppers growing indoors.

Benjamin is almost finished with 3rd grade math and is able to understand fractions and decimals very well. Janey is working with Benjamin with English and grammar, which he understands very well, but he doesn't like to write sentences so we have to find creative ways for him to write stories and journal.

We look forward to visiting family for Easter weekend in Harrison, Arkansas, and I will also be able visit one of the churches in town that supports our ministry. Janey continues to work at Costco, which gives us health benefits as well as extra income. She is continuing to receive treatment for her neck, which is the possible cause of migraine headaches. We are beginning to think that there are multiple causes of her headaches ranging from her neck to sinuses. Either way we are praying for wisdom and provision.

Benjamin and I will be setting up a booth at the Kansas City Home School Conference April 16 and 17. I will be doing two workshops for parents titled "Preparing Our Children to Fulfill the Great Commission."

We hope to move to our new home before the 15th of April because after we're done with the home school conference, I will be traveling to Pennsylvania for a week to help Brother Ebey during his speaking tour.

Please be in prayer for us during the months of April and May because we are hoping to raise support for 200 pastors that are working to plant churches.

Thankful

Romans Chapter 12 verse 1 tells us, "Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God--this is your spiritual act of worship." This has always been a very challenging scripture to me and I think even more so in the days we live in. When I think of the majority of people in India, they live day to day, many traveling miles each day just to carry water for the family use, with no transportation other than their feet and no guarantee that there will be food for that day. There are 150 million children working in sweat shops, and many never do anything else the rest of their lives.

As I think about these things, I realize how ungrateful I can be and how forgetful I am of God's great mercy. But for the mercy of God I would be struggling to survive in India!

How do I respond to the scripture "in view of God's mercy?" How do I make myself a "Living Sacrifice?" I have two ways that I can respond to this scripture: I can give God a Guilt Offering (Leviticus 5:1-19) or a Thank Offering (Exodus 29:39-41.) The difference between the two offerings is that one (guilt offering) is obligatory and the other (thank offering) is a freewill offering.

God no longer wants or requires guilt offerings from me because Jesus paid it all so my response should be a thanksgiving offering of myself to God.
As I see our son Benjamin and as each of us see our children, we are often perplexed by the fact that they take their blessings for granted. It has been my experience that if our children are not thankful, it is because we the parents are not thankful to God and we do not live a life of thankfulness to God.

Children are wonderful that way; often, the way they behave is a reflection on the way we behave because they learn their behaviors somewhere. Thank you, Father, for your great mercy that does not give me what I deserve and thank you for your great grace that gives me eternal life, that which I do not deserve.

Father, I thank you for our friends who support us in our ministry because of your grace working in their lives. May our partnership bring glory to Your name and fruit for eternity!

Here are some more recent photos of India

Support Update

We are so blessed for the support so many of our friends have provided. You enable us to serve Jesus according to the burden He has given us for the lost of India.

Please be in prayer for us as I continue to find new support for this exciting ministry. I plan on speaking in several area churches this year, hoping to find friends to partner with our ministry. Our prayer goal is to see $500 of new support in 2010 as well as work to reduce our living expenses. If you remember back in March of 2009, we came to Serve India Ministries with a 50% pay cut, and we have been able to both increase our monthly support and lower our expense. Janey’s work at Costco has also allowed us to retain health benefits along with providing additional income as well.

I am so amazed at the generosity of our partners, knowing the difficulty of today’s economy. I give God the glory for each of you as your generosity reflects the goodness of Christ. We have an exciting 2010 ahead of us.

We Love You!

Michael, Jane and Benjamin Erwin

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Please Pray for AOTW video editing process

As you read last month, Ian Skelly of All Over the World (http://www.aotw.tv/), a Christian TV program about different mission organizations, filmed three of the Serve India mission fields in Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Rajasthan, India. The 30-minute TV program will air in March or April. After it airs, we will have a high-quality video that we can give to our current and future donors.

Please pray for Ian Skelly as he works with Susan, our operations manager, to edit the many hours of film down to a 30-minute broadcast.

Brian Slater Photos

You can see more of Brian's Work at http://forwardsbackwards.com

Brother Ebey’s Spring Tour

I continue to spend most of my time in coordination with Gene Mackie to schedule Brother Ebey’s speaking tour when he visits the USA from April 1–May 9. We are seeing many breakthroughs with new churches that are opening their pulpits and allowing Brother Ebey to share the vision of Serve India Ministries.

As I shared last month, Brother Ebey has also been invited by the U.S. Center for World Mission to attend the “Global Mission Consultation and Celebration,” a world-wide mission conference in Tokyo May 11–13. Brother Ebey has been asked to submit a strategy paper to the conference leaders who want to know more about Serve India Ministries' strategy working with existing independent pastors. The group will be focusing on finishing the Great Commission (Matthew 28:19-20) and how ministries might be able to coordinate their efforts.

Erwin Family News

We have been looking and praying for the right opportunity to take Janey and Benjamin to India to see the work. When it comes to a long-term vision for world missions, seeing is believing. Our family would like to dedicate many years of our lives to the mission fields of India and are so honored to have a major part of the church-planting effort in this great nation.

Our lease is up on our rental home in Olathe in May, and we are praying about what we should do. We would like to move to a less expensive home, and we are even considering moving to the Springfield, Missouri, area, where the cost of living is much less than the Olathe, Kansas, area.

Janey continues to be a blessing at Costco Wholesale, and Benjamin is just about done with 3rd grade math and 2nd grade English. He made his first basket of the year during his upward basketball game a couple of weeks ago and really enjoys playing the sport.

Please be in prayer for us that we find the next rental home here or in Springfield, Missouri. In Springfield, we will be closer to my dad and Janey’s parents, which will be better for all of us. If we move to Springfield, Janey will need to find comparable work because she also provides our health insurance along extra needed income.

February 2010 - Greetings Friends :)

I have just returned from a round-trip to Sarasota, Florida, to attend a ministers’ conference. From there, I traveled to Philadelphia, where I attended the Lancaster Mission Fest.

I always try to schedule church meetings on the Sundays and Wednesdays when I travel as this is better stewardship of ministry resources. I was able to meet some key contacts who are interested in Serve India Ministries as well as an interest in having Brother Ebey speak at their church when he is here in the United States.

We rely heavily upon Brother Ebey’s sharing the vision of Serve India Ministries, but our goal is to be effective in finding sponsors for our pastor-missionaries even while Brother Ebey is in India. During the past two months the Lord has provided around 40 new sponsorships and a good potential for another 40 before Brother Ebey returns in early April.