We January was a busy month for us. We put 2,447 ministry miles on the car. We were in Ohio for a week of meetings at Cedarville University. We met with the head of the Intercultural Studies program and were invited back to share in one of his classes later this year. We’re grateful for the family that saved us a hotel expense by inviting us to stay with them that week, even though we’d never met. Unfortunately we didn’t get to spend much time with them because we were on campus 13 or 15 hours a day and got ‘home’ after they’d all gone to bed.
After Ohio we headed straight to Iowa for a weekend retreat with about 40 teenagers at East Iowa Bible Camp, where I was asked if I would be willing to “kind of run things” since the new program director wasn’t full-time just yet. I asked what that meant, and the director replied with, “You know, just do your thing. Do the whole Tim Carmical show.” I still don’t know what the whole Tim Carmical show is, but I was in charge of games, keeping things going, and of course teaching. We had 4 sessions from John 3 and 4 where we compared Christ’s interactions with Nicodemus and the Samaritan Woman. It was a great weekend.
Next we went to Emmaus Bible College. We encouraged students we know, and made a few new friends. When we heard that the Intercultural Studies majors were meeting the next day, we thought it would be worth the cost of another night in a hotel to have the chance to talk to them. I was right, it was totally worth it. Emmaus sends out students to the mission field each year, and we’re praying for even more.
The heat in our car quit working on our way to Emmaus Bible College. We had the heater core flushed out which seemed to fix the problem. (update: it didn’t fix the problem. As of March we’ve had the car in the shop 4 times.)
From Emmaus Bible College we headed to Wisconsin to visit Ethos360 Bible Institute. We have 10 students there that we’ve challenged into missions, including two Carmicals, one of whom just got married in December. It was great getting to see Connor and his bride Sarah in their tiny apartment. Sarah’s a much better cook at her age than either of us are now! We also got to spend time with our other ‘kids’. These are young people from Illinois, Iowa, and Nebraska who we love dearly. We always take them out somewhere and either feed them or get them coffee, even if we can’t always get all of them together at the same time. They’re good kids, studying nothing but the Bible for 2 years.
After Wisconsin we headed to Illinois to visit both our parents. After that we headed back to TN to see if our house was still there. It was.
What’s next?
I’m working on building a storage shed in the backyard. We have a room in the house that looks like a jungle! It’s filled with fake trees, bamboo and even a tribal hut. Combine that with all the other things I cart around the country and you can imagine why we need a shed.
Next month (Feb) we have meetings in Iowa, Wisconsin, and Florida at our mission headquarters. I’m thinking about doing something nice for Joan while we’re in FL to make up for the pictures of her I put on Facebook. Can you go to a big FL theme park if you never took your kids there? I don’t know. 🙂
Prayer requests.
We’re starting to think about a newer car. We were given a camper trailer that we’d like to fix up to use during our summer camp season, but it would would be nice to have something bigger to pull it.
We found a donor family who wants to help pay half tuition for students in our Bible school, we just need to keep finding new freshman each year. Pray that the Lord keeps sending them to us, or us to them.
“Therefore beseech the Lord of the harvest to send out workers into His harvest.”
Tim Carmical
I forgot about our support. We are seeing more people join our team, and without us asking them. Most of our new supporters have been young people, some just out of college, young families, and parents of kids we’ve ministered to. We are around 80% of what our mission recommends.