July and August Schedule

With Brother Ebey's travels here in the USA in May and June, there were many meetings that will need to be followed up. We still need to find about 150-200 sponsors between now and the end of the year, so it will require many more church meetings. Most of the meetings that I have found for Brother Ebey have come from relationships that I have had over the past 14 years of ministry. It is important that I take as many opportunities as possible to speak at churches because it costs a lot to bring Brother Ebey from India, and the U.S. staff has to pick up the slack as much as possible.

Right now I am trying to schedule going to the following areas:

• Texas - July 11-14
• Ohio and Indiana - July 22-24
• Texas and Oklahoma - July 30-31
• Iowa and Minnesota - August ?
• Indiana and Kentucky - August ?
• South Carolina and Georgia - September?

80 Teen Agers Visiting our Mission Field

We will especially need prayer for next month as there is a lot of follow up needed from Brother Ebey's time here in the U.S. during the months of May and June.

We have 80 teenagers who will be going to our mission field in India with a group called Teen Mania (www.teenmania.org).

Here is the facebook link for the group going to India:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Global-Expeditions-India-B-2011/165066606844812

Please be in prayer for them and our India leaders. Brother Ebey’s daughter Andrea will be the primary contact for the group. Andre is 23 and has recently completed her MBA. She speaks excellent English, and I am sure she will have 80 very good friends when the trip is over in late July.

This will be a tremendous amount of work for the India leadership, but we realized that this is a very important time in these young people's lives and if they can have a powerful experience on the mission field and see our village pastors in ministry, it will impact them for the rest of their lives. With the impact on these teens that their experience in India will have, they will be great advocates for Serve India Ministries and will have a lifelong love for India. This group will be in India for nearly three weeks, and they will be doing outreach in many public schools and working with our village pastors, helping them set up Stepping Stone Centers for village children. The area to which they are traveling has a population of 2.5 million people-- in an area the size of one of our rural counties in the USA! The landscape is littered with huge Hindu Temples, so there will be a lot of opposition.

Before they go to India, I will be traveling to Texas and speaking with the group to brief them on the area where they will be working and tell them about how Serve India Ministries is working to plant churches in the area. They will be a benefit to the village pastors as they minister to children, and this will open the door for the pastors to bring the entire family into the church and hear the Gospel.

As I have mentioned in earlier letters, this generation of young people called the Millennial Generation (those born after 1984 and before 2001) will be the dominant generation in five years. The Millennial Generation numbers 100 million people, which is larger than the baby boomers. It will be up to this generation to fulfill the great commission over the next 30 years. Right now Baby Boomers give 90% of giving in the USA, and in five years that will drop to only 22%. The problem for ministries is that the Millennial Generation donors will grow only to 10% of giving in five years; right now it is only 1%. As you can see from the attached graph, there will be a 59% deficit of giving.

Seeing these figures, I see that it is urgent that our ministry find young donors to partner with us, and we need to grow their involvement over the coming years. Thank you for praying that we can minister to these young people and build relationships with them as they return from their missions trip.

Jane's Update

Janey continues to cheerfully serve at Costco, where she brings a joyful attitude to customers and management. We are very thankful that she is able to work at Costco and provide our family with very good health insurance as well as supplemental income. It seems like it is costing more and more for everything, so these are days when we need to be wise as serpents and harmless as doves. I have found that when things look impossible, just focus on Jesus and the vision or calling He has given us and things will eventually work out.

We have been keeping you updated on Janey's treatment for TMJ, which we believe is the primary contributing factor to her migraine headaches. It has been a 20-year struggle for her, and we hope that soon we can turn a corner.

Thank you for praying for Janey, and you might give her a call or just drop an email or card to encourage her. She is my number one fan when it comes to ministry, and I could not accomplish anything worthwhile without her.

Ebenezer Samuel Tour June 2011

I hope you had a joyful Lord’s Day and are encouraged for your week ahead. I wanted to send a quick email since I haven’t sent an email update for several months. I have changed my e-newsletter format from using constant contact to using my regular email.

Ebenezer Samuel U.S. Tour

We have just completed a very busy month that began in Los Angeles on May 24. In LA, I met Brother Ebenezer Samuel at the airport when he arrived from India, and we were able to schedule him for about 60 different appointments. After several grueling weeks, he will be flying home to India tomorrow.

Currently, we have 1007 pastors who are partnering with us, and they are working in over 5000 unreached villages. Each of these pastors is going through a five-year training process that will equip them to plant five churches in that five-year period. The training and outreach during these five years cost $35 per month per pastor.

With this rapid growth come huge challenges for our U.S. staff. We currently have about 400 of our pastors who have not been sponsored yet. When Brother Ebey comes to the USA, we (the U.S. staff) schedule as many appointments as possible during his six to eight weeks he is here. By God’s grace, we have received around 100 new sponsorships for our pastors and financial support that will fund 100 more pastors through the end of next year.

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.

Family Fun

Our family is doing well. I thank each of you who have sacrificed to help bring God’s provision for us while we minister on behalf of India. We give God glory and thanks for your prayer and concern.

Benjamin completed his AWANA for the year and did very well, he also traveled with me to South Carolina to help with a home school conference booth that we had for Serve India Ministries. As a family we will be able to attend “School Day at the K” and event hosted by the Kansas City Royals in conjunction with a local tv station. They will be doing science experiments along with teaching about weather related subjects. After the presentation, we will be able to see the Royals play baseball.

Janey also completed her time with AWANA where she taught the 1st and 2nd graders and really enjoyed working with the children. She is a great help and encouragement to me as we work to support the development work for Serve India Ministries.

I am planning to lead a donor tour to India in November and I would really love to take Janey and Benjamin with us but finances will need to be raised, for the three of us to go it will cost at least $4500 so we will make sure we have God’s leading and from there we will have His provision.
Support update.

Here Come the Millinnials !

There is a major shift that is about the hit all charities in the next 5 years. As you can tell from the graph above, the baby boomer generation (those born between 1946 – 1964) will begin retiring in droves. Currently this generation is retiring at a rate of 10,000 per day. The problem that is pending is that the baby boomer generation accounts for 90% of current charitable giving while the upcoming millennial generation only accounts for 1% of giving. As you can see from the graph, there will be a 59% shortfall in charitable giving in just 5 years. Ministries like Serve India must adapt as quickly as possible and find a way to engage the younger donor. This is a real urgent dilemma but knowing that God has called us to a specific task, may we have the faith and wisdom to prepare for this major shift.
At Serve India Ministries we are working to upgrade our web site and rapidly increase our ministries presence on the web in order to introduce our ministry to millennial Christians who have a heart for church planting. Please pray for us that we will have wise council and financial provision to make these changes and keep pace with our mission field growth.

Faith vs Planning

Faith vs Planning Ahead
As I contemplate the future of donor relationships with Serve India Ministries, I realize that planning is needed along with wise council. We as a ministry have this amazing goal to plant 100,000 churches in unreached villages. Only God can accomplish this goal but he expects us to have faith and “plan” for our success. Our success will require 20,000 trained pastors and it will require 20,000 financial partners that God leads our way and believe in our vision.

Proverbs 15:22 tells us: “Plans fail for lack of counsel, but with many advisers they succeed.” Where does that leave faith? Hebrews 11:1 also tells us “Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.”

Faith asked us to do the impossible, to dream big dreams. With this bid dream, God wants us to trust Him to provide the provision for the goal or vision He has set for us. Nehemiah had a God-given burden to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem but with that burden took tremendous leadership and planning along with God’s miraculous provision provided by the king of Persia.

Happenings with Janey

Janey is starting to see some improvement in the frequency and intensity of headaches cause my the TMJ in her jaw. There is still a long way to go and we are still appealing to our health insurance for a reversal of their denial of coverage for her treatment. Janey was born in Pennsylvania and is a lifetime Pittsburgh Steeler fan so she is very excited that they are in the Super Bowl. has been going through TMJ treatments for a few months now and is enduring a lot of pain in her jaws and the dentist is working to realign her jaw. We are having difficulty with our insurance company as they publish that they will cover up to $2,000 lifetime for TMJ treatments but they are not paying anything because they say that the treatment is medically unnecessary. As long as the treatments help, it will be worth the cost of the treatment and like He has done for our 14 years of ministry, God will supply.

Happenings with Benjamin

It was really fun to take Benjamin to California. From the time we got on the airplane and arrived in LA, it was a new adventure for him. We began by taking him to the Ronald Regan Museum in Simi Valley north of Los Angeles and then the next day he was able to visit Disney Land. The weather was great and the park wasn't crowded. On Wednesday, I had serveral ministry visits to do so Benjamin and Janey went to the Richard Nixon Museum since we were staying right in Yorba Linda. On Thursday we were able to take Benjamin to LegoLand and he really enjoyed it the most because it was build specifically for kids and they can enjoy the simplicity of the park and as parents, we enjoyed the many park benches that they had so we could rest along the way. We are very grateful for the family that gave us the tickets to go to these parks; it was a great blessing.

Benjamin is doing very well in his schoolwork, he has 4 chapters done on all 5 of his subjects and doesn't seem to have any difficulty with any of the subjects even though he is a grade ahead for his age. He is enjoying AWANA and will participate in the Bible Quiz competetion next week and he also plays Upward Basketball each week as well. It is much harder for him in basketball now because they have a 10' basket and the defense can steal the ball off of the dribble.

Ministry Update - Both USA and India

January has been a very busy month in that I have spent 10 days in California and in Oregon introducing Serve India Ministries to key churches and potential partners. We are talking with 3 churches and one business in LA that are seriously considering sponosering a mission field each. This would represent 60 pastors working in 300 villages. I then traveled to Portland where I had a booth at the Missions Connexion which is a major missions conference in the Northwest. Taking advantage of being in the area, I stayed over in Portland for 3 more days and was able to have a serveral more church visits with a church in Corvallis and a 5000 member church in Portland. The church in Corvallis is very interested in sponsoring a mission field in India and while I was there, they were spending an entire week as a church fasting and praying for God's direction for their church. If they do decide to sponsor, it will definately be because God is leading them. The church in Portland is actually already working in the state of Karnataka in India and we have 3 mission fields right in the same vacitnity so they were very interested in learning more to see if they could expand their church planting in the area. This is the same area where there are many Devadasi Temples and they have a burden for these little girls that are being offered to the temples.

In India, Brother Ebey and the ministry leaders are putting the finishing touches on adding 300 more pastors to our 5 year church planting/training program. This will put us at 1100 pastors working in 5500 villages. It is exciting to have a part in this great work.

One of the major challenges for our US office is to raise enough adminstrative support to serve all the pastors in India as well mission field supporters here in the USA. It is very important that we expand our US administrative fund so that we can properly keep up with the rapid growth on the field. I am currently working with a communications group that will help us get our messaging out on the web and drive thousands of potential supporters to our web site. It will take considerable investment to be sucessful but hopefully in a years time we will have a sustainable growth of our US admin fund as well as 20 - 50 new pastor sponsors per month. If we can find these new sponsors via the internet, this will keep up with the growth we need to reach our goal of 100,000 churches by 2020.

Thank you for taking a few minutes to read this letter. Our family is doing well, completeing a busy January. I was scheduled to travel to the West Coast to visit key partners and churches interested in Los Angeles and then travel to Portland for a missions conference and then return to Kansas City on January 26th.

Not wanting to be gone for 10 days without being with Janey and Benjamin, we were able to purchase tickets for them so they could go with me to California. We were very blessed that some friends of our ministry was very generous to us and bought tickets for us to visit Legoland and Disneyland. It is such a blessing as parents to be able to take our son to some fun places while keeping him introduced to the mission field. Our next travel I hope with be to India as funds become available.

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.