On The Rhoads

Here’s our February 2009 Prayer Letter.

What an amazing journey!  And what a GREAT God we serve!  Just two years ago we began the application process with Mission Aviation Fellowship.  As we have trusted God, he has led us and blessed us beyond measure.  We can not get over what a blessing it is to get to serve God through the ministry of Mission Aviation Fellowship.  It seemed a little crazy for Brad to quit his job and sell our house in a downturned economy, but God can do anything.  We reached out initial support goal this fall and have moved to MAF’s home office in Nampa, ID.

We had people praying for us for months about our housing and finding a new church home.  We just wanted to be where God could use us the most.

We thought we would have to rent a house, but the downturn in the economy meant a great opportunity for us.  Housing prices here are at their lowest in years.  We looked for a house for about a week and were ready to make an offer on one when our realtor attended a lunch sponsored by a local builder.  Our realtor told the builder about us and explained that our budget would not allow us to purchase one of his houses.  They discussed our needs and our realtor left the lunch.  Three hours later, our realtor got a call.  They said, “Show them this house.”  Our realtor pulled up the listing on his computer and reminded them of our budget.  They said, “Show them the house and put in a low offer.”

The builder had done a custom job for someone that fell through.  He had a BEAUTIFUL: home that had been sitting empty for a year after completion and he was willing to let us buy it for what our budget allowed, which was WAY below the market value, even in a slow market.  God clearly answered the prayers about directing us to the house he wanted us in.  And He blessed us with a home more incredible than we could ever imagine.  We moved in December 20^th.  We go to bed every night wondering when someone is going to knock on the door and tell us to get out because this couldn’t possibly be our house!

Our new house is very close to the site where our new church is building a new building.  We had people praying for us to find a new church home quickly and it happened.  We are very excited to be a part of this body.  Between friends from MAF and our new church, we had over 30 people come to help unload the moving truck that had been in storage since we left Illinois.  It was completely emptied in only ONE hour.

We also asked for people to pray for friends for our kids.  God has covered every detail.  The house across the street has a Christian family with a ten year old boy and they just moved here in September.  We also have MANY new friends both at church and through MAF.  Sarah has a little playmate who has been over several times already.

We want to thank you for praying for us and encourage you with the news of how God has answered your prayers.  Here are our current needs to lay before God:

1. Brad’s work:  How exciting it is to be working as part of the learning technologies team!  Here is Brad’s technical update on his work:

I’m working on two main projects right now. The first one is our DEViewer program. It’s a program for presenting training that has a very simple user interface. I’m trying to make it available to a wider audience by getting it to work in another web browser (Firefox). The current program only works in Internet Explorer and so limits its use to machines running Microsoft Windows. After my update is released it will be able to run on computers running other operating systems, such as Linux and the Macintosh.

The other project I’m actively working on is called Flash Lit (pronounced Flash Light). It’s a program I’m starting from scratch that is a kind of digital card catalog. It’s an index for digital libraries. For example, we have a missionary in Thailand who is building a library of theological resources in the Thai language. Whereas we might not be able to freely distribute all of the resources (many we can), Flash Lit will make the availability of these resources know and at least provide information on where the resources can be found. A neat feature of Flash Lit is that it can be given to other people to develop indexes and then all of these separate indexes can be aggregated automatically. So our missionary may have the master index that brings in information from other people all over the country.

I’d love to talk to anyone who’s interested in hearing more.

1. Susan’s Trip:  Jan 4 will be one year since my dad went home to be with the Lord.  I got a bargain ticket (yeah southwest!) and am going to fly back to Illinois on New Years Day to be with Mom for a week.  Please pray for God’s comfort and peace at this time.  Pray for Brad as he is home with the kids by himself.  Thank God for our new friends who will watch the kids while Brad is at work.

1. Financial Support:  Praise God for providing for the financial needs of our ministry!  Pray for our ministry support to be maintained and grow a little to cover rising costs.

Thank you again for your prayer support.  Without you, our ministry would not be effective.  We can’t wait to see what God does next!

Happy New Year!

Love,

Brad and Susan

Here’s our first Christmas Letter with MAF. Merry Christmas!

I’m I bit late on this post, but I’ve been busy -packing! Yes, God brought in the initial support we needed and I’m writing this from a hotel room in Cheyenne, WY, about half way to Idaho!

Thanks for partnering with us and especially for praying for us. Our top prayer concerns now are getting the rest of the way to Idaho safely and finding a place to live. We’ll live in the MAF apartments for a short time, while we finalize where we’ll be living.

We would really like to not move again, but we’re not in a position to buy right now. So we’re praying for a good rent-to-own. There are lots of them available, but for a long-term purchase we really want a 4 bedroom which is more money. So please pray that we end up where God wants us to be.

OK, so our October Prayer Letter says that we’ve reached 100% of our original goal of $5,700/month. Well it looks like my accoutning and MAF’s is slightly out of sync. MAF has us at 99%. So who want’s to invest the last 1% of our support ($57/month)? Just call MAF at 1800-FLYS-MAF or give online. Thank you!

Please read:

On The Rhoads October 2008

We are at 93%! God’s been doing amazing things. We have < $400/month to go. If you’d like to help us finish, you can signup online at http://www.maf.org/rhoads.

Our August prayer letter is here: On The Rhoads August 2008.

In any verse that I interpret visually, I look for the main idea and give it greatest emphasis. Since “wisdom and knowledge” are so universally desired, I decided to celebrate these attributes in a variety of colors and with flourishes. The big question looms over us in an election year, “who is able to lead us?” In a haunting manner, I have repeated the word “who” over and over again to illustrate the immensity of the challenge. Yet the great promise of the Bible is that as we trust in the Lord and submit to His Word, He does guide us through His Spirit. -Tim Botts

On The Rhoads April 2008