Dear Family and Friends,

Autumn is finally past ... we had our first real snowflakes here at home today, and that can only mean winter will soon be upon us here in Alaska.  We've been watching the snow level on the volcanoes and mountains across the ocean inlet from us steadily lowering, so today was inevitable; but, at least it was a very gentle start for the next five to six months of snow ahead.

Summer and fall was very busy and challenging for us.  After all the "exciting" life adventures recently, David took advantage of an expiring frequent flyer ticket and a free hotel stay to go for a week of R&R down in San Diego earlier this month.  It was a very well needed mental break, and he was able to see several friends and supporters while there.  He was able to re-connect with a friend from Turkey who we had lost touch with for five years, and he also gave a brief lecture at UCSD, thanks to one of our long-time friends who teaches in their MBA program.  David enjoyed "turning on" his procurement brain again for that short moment of time.  After nearly a year here in Alaska, our previous life seems like a lifetime ago.

Karin continues to do very well in her psychology studies here at the local community college.  This semester she has a very full class load that includes Cross-Cultural Psychology, Research Statistics, General Psychology, and Anatomy & Physiology.  We laugh that she's the only student taking 400-level and 100-level classes at the same time :-)  But, she's doing remarkably well and continues to enjoy school immensely. 

Many of you know Karin is taking classes to help earn a housing allowance through the "GI-Bill" education program.  This has been a true blessing, as it has allowed us to serve here with MARC for the past year despite not yet drawing a full salary.  This military retirement benefit is virtually covering our housing mortgage payment for now and makes our missionary service possible right now.

With that in mind, please pray with us as we await an important decision from the M.J. Murdock Charitable Trust, where MARC recently submitted a grant application to help begin funding a salary for David's position as Development Director for MARC.  Our application has made it through the first two application steps, and we're currently awaiting a site visit from the Trust.  Please pray God will bless our application and give our missionary organization favor with the Trust's program managers.

Since we did not raise full financial support before coming to Alaska as most missionaries would have done, this application is critical to sustaining our continued service here at MARC.  Today, with God's continued blessings and sustainment, we are using our retirement earnings/savings, along with the GI-Bill benefit, to primarily fund our missionary service here in Alaska.  We feel that strongly about the spiritual and physical needs here in Alaska!  God has also brought along side of us a few financial stewards who have faithfully made the difference between our success and failure over the past eleven months.  To those partners in our ministry, we're eternally grateful.

With your help, we've been able to help the MARC team achieve remarkable success.  This year, we've already surpassed most of MARC's development goals, and we continue to have great success at sharing and improving the spiritual reputation of MARC to potential stewards around the world.  Despite the poor economy, our efforts have helped MARC gain about 20 percent in our ministry support compared to last year already, which has been essential as MARC has expanded its support this past year by serving more churches, more mission organizations, more Bible camps, more missionaries, and more Christian workers across remote Alaska. 

God continues in helping us to share the unique needs of Alaska with more and more potential stewards each day, and He has been blessing MARC's missionary efforts across the state.  At last count taken several months ago, MARC had already made 1,656 takeoffs and landings in 80 different Alaskan communities--most of them inaccessible by any other means due to the lack of roads in connecting roads in most of Alaska.  In a place where addiction, abuse, and assault are increasingly the norm, MARC's support "lifeline" is providing access to spiritual hope and change every day!

Additionally encouraging, MARC is expanding our missionary staff to support the increasing flight and aircraft maintenance needs of the many ministries we support.  We've added seven new families to our staff this past year who are now in the deputation process of raising the necessary prayer and financial support before they can join our MARC team here on the ground in Alaska.  So far, God has grown MARC's staff support contributions by more than 40 percent this year so far--mostly reflective of these new families who are beginning to receive support commitments from many churches and individuals across the nation.  We're happy to announce the first of those seven additional families is beginning their transition here to Alaska as we speak.  We're looking forward to Kyle & Ellen Braband joining our team soon!  Pray for safe travels as they make the transition here just prior to winter, and pray for the other six families to make a similar transition in the near future.  We need their help!

Although we know all honor belongs to God, we're very thankful He chooses to use our feeble humanly efforts for His glory.  We're starting to see the promise of great progress here and pray He'll continue to sustain our ministry efforts in Alaska.

As you'll see in our MARC newsletter that's "hitting the street" this week, we're advocating for people to join our ministry efforts here at the year's end.  Likewise, we would welcome and appreciate your personal involvement and support in our family's missionary efforts here in Alaska.  Please pray about how God can use you to help in our ministry to impact remote Alaska with the hope of Jesus Christ.

Thank you for your shared involvement! 

With much love,  

David & Karin  

A friend who does a lot of fundraising recently told me his approach is to start by telling folks what he's doing and then asking them if they would make a similar commitment.  While Biblical stewardship definitely cautions against that approach (because our heavenly Father wants our recognition and reward to be reserved for Him alone in order to keep the integrity and heart purpose of our stewardship sincere), I believe the Bible's whole counsel on giving does allow such an approach to be used occasionally for discipling others in godly stewardship habits.  With that purpose in mind, I thought I'd share our tithing approach:

When we left LG Electronics, we were making a very healthy salary thanks to God's blessings along our 21-year career path to that stage of life.  In keeping with our lifelong support for missionary work, Karin & I correspondingly grew our financial support over the years for missionary efforts around the globe.  Several of those efforts are still very dear to our hearts; so when God called us to become missionaries ourselves, He also led us to continue providing financial support to several other key missionary activities making a real difference in Moldova, China, the Philippines, Mexico, Mongolia, Wyoming, and Alaska.  Just today, we were blessed with the opportunity and responded to His call to fill six shoeboxes for Samaritan's Purse's Operation Christmas Child.  We're continually convicted of the need to be doing more to share God's love.

As a result of this continued commitment, today our missionary tithing equals about 17% of our normal monthly income, which is not inconsequential.  But, as blessed recipients of Christ's extravagant love, giving is simply a natural response.  We still have far more than we deserve ... and it's all His to begin with anyway.

Why am I sharing this?  I want to encourage you with our personal example to do the same: give God the "firstfruits" of your time, talents, and treasure; don't give Him your leftovers.  Through the years and even today, Karin & I have come to realize that changing our spending, changing our economic footprint, and changing our habits is so much easier than missing out on the blessings God holds in store for us when do more than "just enough" with what He has bestowed to our care. 

I'm reminded of this truth when I look back over the pictures of the kids faces on the right side of this email from my recent trip to Manokotak.  Sharing God's love and hope with them not only has eternal consequences, but it also has the possibility of making true life changes for them on earth ... right here ... right now.  But, the kind of change they need won't happen if we do "just enough."

Likewise, I'm challenging you to do more than "just enough."  Don't wait for later.  Put good stewardship into practice now.  Take the physical steps to make it happen.  Change your spending.  Change your footprint.  Change your habits.  Surrender to Christ.  After all, surrendering is merely stepping over to the winning side!  :-)

 David