May Prayer Letter

 

“Mobilizing the Church Through Short-term Missions

May 2023

      We wanted to provide some exciting news from our most recent trip.  Matt led a team from Boonsboro Bible Church down to Welch in April.  The team consisted of four people but God used those four in a HUGE way!  Never doubt what God can do with smaller groups.  Jesus turned the world upside down with twelve followers.  The team was incredibly hard-working and faithful.  We started with simply running errands and getting ready for the next day.  We packed LOTS of hygiene bags to hand out at our community event on Saturday. We didn’t quite have the turnout that we had hoped for, but we served around 40 people and had a chance to pray with folks on the streets.

      Our team worked closely with the Living Waters Resource Center in Welch WV.  The center’s primary purpose is to provide Christian drug rehab for women.  There was only one lady actively involved in the program when we arrived.  Her name is Margaret.  Margaret had a long history of drug abuse, namely opioids.  She kept telling us that she was ashamed of how she had wasted her life.  The ladies on the trip poured out their love and attention on her.  They provided her with a Bible study focusing on hope.  She was so grateful and texted that she wants the ladies to come back again.  The ladies also led a cooking class for Margaret.  She wanted to learn basic life skills so she could live on her own one day.  She was so proud to make meatballs for the first time.  She couldn’t wait to tell her family that she was officially a ‘chef.’  Our team also worked on mudding walls that were recently dry-walled, reset cement to the fence, and planned future construction jobs to the shower area and a laundry area.

     We also offered a painting class to the community.  We had around 15 people come in to paint, most of them were unsaved and unchurched.  Pastor Allen faithfully led the class.  As we painted butterflies, he talked about how God changes our lives.  The class was extremely fun and I’m not sure if I’ve ever laughed so much in my life.  Needless to say, I don’t think I’ll be a professional painter in the future.  This outreach allowed the church to build bridges of relationship to the community

    Our final outreach was to the teachers of Welch Elementary.  The teams prepared a lovely lunch for each teacher along with a goodie bag will with teacher supplies and snacks.  CiM has built a wonderful relationship with the principal, Sarah Diaz.  Sarah is a faithful follower of Jesus who is passionate about giving children hope.  She loves having teams come to the school to reach boys and girls for Jesus, but also to encourage her teachers.  Welch Elementary is one of the poorest schools in West Virginia.  100% of the children receive free breakfast and lunch through the school.  Also, a majority of the children are dramatically behind.  Pray for the school and for other future projects to love the kids and teachers of the community.

     Thank you for partnering with us and loving our family. We are eagerly preparing for VBS, camps, and mission trips this summer.  Pray for energy, good connections, our teams as they prepare, and mostly that people would know Jesus as their Savior too!

Gifts sent to:  P.O. Box 51519 Durham, NC 27717

 give online via www.churchesinmissions.org      

Designate for Matt & Tiffanie Robinson

Take Me Home: April 12th Devotional

Take Me Home

John 14:1-6

April 12th Devotional

 

      On this day in 1971, the famous folk singer John Denver released his hit single, Country Roads.  The song debuted on his RCA label named “Poems, Prayers, and Promises.”  This album helped skyrocket Denver into the mainstream.  This song has morphed into the state anthem of West Virginians and holds a special place for many mountaineers, but what is the story behind Country Roads?  The song was the creation of a husband and wife songwriting team, Bill Danoff and Taffy Nivert. They were struggling musicians trying to make it big.  They wanted to create one hit song that would impact the music industry.  That song came in the form of County Roads.   The inspiration for the song came after they left a wedding in Maryland.  They were enjoying the drive through the winding roads and started to sing together.  They instantly knew they had something, the problem was that the state of Maryland only had three syllables, and their song needed a state with four syllables.  Taffy mentioned her home state of Massachusetts had the correct number of syllables and they started to craft a song based on it. But Massachusetts sounded clunky so they quickly changed to West Virginia.  They said that it had a certain ring to it.  The irony is that neither Billy nor Taffy had ever been to West Virginia.  They wrote a song that would become West Virginia’s state national anthem without ever being in the state!  Their original goal was to perform the song for Johnny Cash and sell it to him, but all of that changed in 1970.  They were the opening act for Denver at a Club called the Cellar Door in Washington DC. They listened intently to Denver singing folk songs.  They knew that Denver had the voice and the heart to bring their song to life. They introduced the song to Denver after the concert and he was smitten with it.  They stayed up until the early hours of the morning tweaking it until it was the masterpiece that they were aiming for.  Denver returned to the same club later in 1970 to sing the song for the first time.  The result was astounding.  The crowd was moved to tears and gave him a five-minute standing ovation. This continued every time he performed the song.  The song became a part of American culture.  It topped at number 2 on the Billboard charts in 1971 and became a gold-certified album.

      The chorus opens up with the words "Country Roads, take me home, to a place, where I belong."  Where does this country road lead us?  To Maryland which inspired the song?  Or maybe Massachusetts Taffy's home state which happened to have four syllables?  Or to the mountain state of West Virginia?  Or maybe home is somewhere else.  For the believer our ultimate home is heaven.  We trek through this world for a temporal time, though it might seem long, but as the old song says 'this world is not my home, I'm just a passin' through.'  According to Paul, our citizenship is in heaven (Philippians 3:20).  But how can we have confidence that heaven is our home?  Our confidence is rooted in the words of Jesus in John 14:1-2, "Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in me.  In my Father's house are many mansions if it were not so I would have told you.  I go to prepare a place for you."  We often get hung up on the word 'mansions.'  We get this image that we are going to have a golden palace just over the hilltop, but that isn't what Jesus is saying.  The Greek text makes it clear that there are many rooms in our Father's House (heaven) and one of them is ours if we trust in Christ as our Savior.  The image that Jesus paints is that heaven is like one house and each believer gets a room.  I would rather have a room in God's house than a mansion down the street, further away from His presence.  A room in our Father's house symbolizes how near we will be to God in heaven.  It's almost as if He is just down the hall.  It paints a picture of how 'intimate' our relationship will be with the Father in glory.  There will be no separation or boundary between us.  According to the promise of Jesus, we are going to have a room in our Father's House.  The troubles of this world can overwhelm us at times.  Discouragement and disappointments mount, often taking our focus off heaven.  Today, allow your eyes to move from the woes of the world and the screens that we hold and instead look to heaven.  Realize, with an assurance that Christ has made the way.  He holds the keys and has already opened the door.  We are simply waiting until we head home.  Let us be comforted to know that there is more than this temporal life, so much more, and we are already on the road heading home.

Churches in Missions March 2022 Prayer Letter

Churches-In Missions 

P.O. Box 1559 Sanford, NC 27331

“Mobilizing the Church Through Short-term Missions”

      Easter is quickly approaching and all our eyes begin to turn away from the woes of this world to the hope that sprung forth from an empty tomb.  Our Savior, Jesus, suffered and died the death that we rightly deserved and rose from the grave promising eternal life to all who believe.  The world needs to hear this message, not just from missionaries but from all of us.  Each of us have been tasked with telling the world the Good News of Jesus.  I pray that you will be investing your lives into the unsaved that surround you during this season.  I pray that you will build relationships that lead to redemption.  I also want to remind each of us that Jesus did not merely come to this world to make bad people good, but instead He came to take dead people and bring them life (dead in our trespasses and sin).

      I wanted to give you a family update. Maggie and Noah competed in a speech meet at school.  They both did FANTASTIC.  Noah was able to recite his poem before the entire school.  Noah has been showing A LOT of interest in drama.  He recently recited a poem at a talent show in Martinsburg and played the part of Jesus in the 4^th grade play.  He also participated in his first archery tournament.  Titus has been growing in leaps and bounds.  He is learning how to read and recently lost his first tooth!  Maggie continues to impress us with her artistic talent and caring attitude!

      Our family also enjoyed a week at Myrtle Beach for our CiM personnel meetings.  Our meetings were so encouraging.  The mission loves our family and encourages us to spend as much time together as we can.  We love a mission that helps us to focus on our family.  Our personnel meetings were created to talk about the future of CiM.  We unveiled our new logo, talked about our new website, talked about future ministries opportunities, creating new Bible studies to reach men, and countless other blessings.  My family shared one of our goals for future ministry.  We have been collecting a lot of items recently.  These items help open the door for the Gospel in the communities in which we work.  Needless to say the items have outgrown our ability to house them.  We are asking the Lord to provide us with a large place to store the items.  This will elevate the overflow that we currently have.  We are going to start looking at potential places to rent in the next few weeks.  Maybe you know someone who has a place for us to use or maybe your church has an extra big room that is going unused.  Let us know.  We would LOVE to talk about finding a way to expand and grow our ministry.

      We wanted to thank the MANY different churches who have donated items for our upcoming trips.  We are packing the items during the week of Easter.  We look forward to sharing the Gospel with hundreds of people on that trip.  Pray for good weather and good success from April 22-24^th.  We have also been meeting with multiple different churches prepping their teams for upcoming trips.  We rejoice in the many different times we have been blessed to share the ministry!

      We are so thankful for each of your prayers and financial gifts.  We love each and everyone of you.  We are truly humbled by your partnership!  Keep praying for us as we share what God has laid on our hearts.  Also continue to pray for us as we grow our support to expand the work that God has for us.  We are overflowing with excitement to see what God’s going to do!

Gifts sent to:  P.O. Box 51519 Durham, NC 27717

Or give online via www.churchesinmissions.org      

Designate for Matt & Tiffanie Robinson

Check out https://robinsonsroadsidechats.blogspot.com/ for weekly devotionals

Noah's School Play

Titus at Mrytle Beach

Maggie Waving HI!