Jeff is going to Germany!

Every spring eDOT has a strategic planning meeting (aka strategic guessing). The past two years, Jeff has taken part in these meetings via Skype.Since we’re all so sure we will be there soon, Jeff has been invited to fly out for the week-long meeting this year. He leaves tomorrow (3/26/14) and will be gone ten days. Along with planning and team building, he’ll also be looking at apartments!

Ready for "Set!"

Ever run in a race? Remember how it started? “Ready! Set! Go!” We are sitting on “Ready!” We’ve rented out our house, sold our car, went to missionary training, and, sadly, we’ve even said good bye to Carrie’s mom. Now we’re ready for “Set!” We’re close to 80% of our needed monthly support and “Set!” happens at 90%. That’s when we’ll buy our plane tickets and begin planning our move. We’re so close!!!

If you know you want to sign up as a financial armor bearer, but just haven’t gotten around to it, now is the time! We’re convinced there are enough people out there that want to support us, but for whatever reason haven’t yet. Perhaps they don’t know how. It can be as easy as shopping on Amazon.com. Please go to our giving site at www.bit.ly/engageeurope and follow the instructions there. However, if you’d rather signup old school, print this PDF and mail it in.

This is the first time we’ve asked people to support us through one of our quarterly emails, but we’re so excited and can't wait to go! Please consider partnering with us as we reach Europe and the world with our gifts and skills.

New Ideas for eDOT

What do you get when ten Christian computer geek college students get together to write code for their spring break? The answer: Four apps custom designed for three ministries that didn’t have the means to write their own apps! (Not to mention mass consumption of Mountain Dew.) I’m friends with the leaders of a ministry called LightSys. This ministry invites computer science and engineer majors from Christian colleges to spend their spring breaks on a short term missions outreach to write code for ministries. They call these Code-a-Thons, but they’re also known as Hackathons.

I have an idea to do something similar for eDOT. To research this idea, I spent a week with a Code-a-Thon to observe and participate with my own technical skills. It felt good to put those old skills back into practice and I believe I really helped.

Almost every day, eDOT—my ministry in Germany—gets requests from various ministries from across Europe that need technical solutions to their ministry problems. There is more work than they have bandwidth to achieve. My idea is to host something similar to a Code-a-Thon in Europe to help us create these solutions.

So often the plumbers and carpenters of the body of Christ are called to serve with their trades, skills, and professional experience, but when was the last time it called the programmers and tech professionals to use their skills for the Kingdom (beyond designing the church website)? My vision is to invite the geeks of the church to come and write code to serve the ministries of Europe and help them reach the world!

My experience with LightSys was invaluable. I wrote a detailed, day-by-day review of the Code-a-Thon I observed on our blog. I’m really excited about this prospect and think it will be an excellent way for the more technically minded to use their gifts to fulfill the great commission!

Family Update

I (Carrie) wanted to give you a personal update.

The Lord has continued to provide a place for us to stay in Monument. This has been a really wonderful place as we are waiting to move! The kids and I fill our days with home school, church, and support appointments. This road has been much longer than we thought (I won't lie), it has been very hard to wait as we feel uprooted from "regular" life. However, we all know that God's timing is perfect.

My recent Beth Moore study had me review the story of Zechariah and Elizabeth (Luke 1:5-23). It was such a beautiful reminder of how the Lord blessed them in their waiting with a child that would be mightily used by God.

In our waiting, my desire is not just to get there, but to also be mightily used by God. Have you ever had to wait for God? Feel free to drop me a line and tell me about it! Also, we ask you to cover us in your prayers, and please let us know how we can pray for you. It would be a privilege. You can easily hit "reply" to this email and it will go directly to us.

Love and Blessings.