Erwin Family Update

Dear Friends,

I pray that you have made it through this spring weather without any damage. It seems there have been more flooding and tornado damage than we have seen for a while. Here in Gardner, we have missed the severe weather and received only seasonal rain.

Ministry Update

Ministry is going at a frantic pace for the next 5 weeks. I will pick Brother Ebey up at Los Angeles airport on May 24th. I have been spending a lot of time on the phone and email the past month trying to schedule as many meetings as possible. The biggest challenge is finding churches that will allow Brother Ebey to speak on Sunday and Wednesdays. Once I have found church meetings, we fill in the rest of the time with visits to key donors, missions committees, pastors, businessmen and partner ministries. In all the 5 weeks will require about 60 appointments to be scheduled. Along with the appointments, travel schedules must be set and each night to find a place to sleep. Our goal is that each night we are able to stay in the homes of friends of the ministry. In the 5 years of Serve India Ministry we have only stayed in a few motel rooms.

This will be a very important summer because we are really behind on getting our pastors sponsored. We currently have 450 pastors that are not sponsored but they are going through the training and doing outreach to the unreached villages. We will need to raise an additional $150,000 of new support each year to fund the growth on the field. We are praying to raise some general missions funds along with getting100-200 new sponsors, that should be enough to get us well into next year. Thank you for your prayers for this spring tour so we are able to keep up with the rapid growth on the mission field. There are now 1007 pastors we are working with and they are targeting over 5000 unreached villages.

Benjamin and Jane Update

Benjamin in all done with AWANA and finishing up his 4th grade school work. He is very excited to begin a band class this fall but he hasn't decided what instrument he will play. He is leaning toward trumpet but hasn't actually played one yet. In early June the music store will host a week long band camp. The band camp is simply meeting for 5 nights and the students will test several types of instruments so they can find which one they would like to learn. The actual band lessons will start in September.

Janey is still going through TMJ treatments and it will be a slow process of gradual improvement. Our last appeal to the insurance company to cover the treatment was denied. They said is was not medically necessary; I guess who ever made that decision has never had migraine headaches? Either way, we will trust God for healing and financial provision for the treatments.

Support Report
Thank you agian to everyone who has so generously given to support our ministry. Please pray for us as we seek to find partners who will provide that last bit of our monthly support. We are closing in on our 15th year of full time ministry and God has provided year after year, month after month even when so we give Him the praise. Many doubters don't believe that missionaries can raise support these days but we keep seeing God's provision.