Dear Friends,

Wow! Where does the time go? Already 2018 is rapidly drawing to a close. We’ve had our last school day with our Bible college students until after the holidays. Lisa and I, along with our whole team, are taking a little break so that we can enjoy some much needed down time.

Lisa and I are binging on sappy Christmas movies and enjoying all the tasty treats that the holiday season brings. I’m also taking advantage of the break to review the past year of ministry and look ahead to what God would have us do in the coming year.

Overcoming Challenges

You see we ran into a challenge in 2018. The overwhelming majority of the visible ministry activity we do happens under the Charis Bible College umbrella and banner. Yet the financial support that allows us to be here in Scotland doing what we do with the Bible college comes in through NewCREEations.

Early in 2018 I asked God how we can increase the visible ministry activity NewCREEations does without taking time away from our work with Charis and the students we are pouring so much into.

One of the things God showed me to do was to start a daily devotional via email. So in March we launched our Daily Reflections email devotional. God has certainly blessed our efforts there. In just over 9 months Daily Reflections has grown from nothing to 1,227 subscribers as of this writing. That’s more than 1,200 precious souls who are being touched by NewCREEations and encouraged in the Lord every day!

God is also showing me some things for us to do in the coming year that I think are going to be really exciting. I’ll share more on those things in the future.

2018 In Numbers

Looking back across this past year, here are some numbers from the past twelve months to give you a sense of just how many lives our partners are touching by supporting what we do.

• 325,589 — the total number of emails we sent out
• 88,972 — total emails opened from the ones we sent out
• 1,968 — number of free eBooks distributed
• 296,661 — number of unique visitors to our website
• 422,773 — total number of individual pages viewed on our website
• 29 — students receiving intense discipleship via Charis Dumfries

That’s in addition to all the amazing things God has done this year through Charis Dumfries!! The numbers are only important because they represent people. They are lives being touched with the goodness of God. It will be interesting to see how all those numbers grow in the coming year along with what other ministry numbers God has us add to the list!

McFarland Visit

Lisa and I were blessed to host our good friends Rick and Joann McFarland this past month. Rick and Joann pastor River Rock Church in Colorado Springs. In addition, Rick is the Dean of Education for Charis Bible College at the headquarters in Colorado. Joann is the Assistant to Andrew Wommack’s Executive Assistant. (She’s the one responsible for most all of Andrew’s travel arrangements, etc.)

We originally got to know Rick & Joann in our first year as Charis students when we were students together. The four of us were part of the “back row gang” that sat at the back of the room.

It’s nice that we got an extra day with them to show them around the area some. Rick blessed our students and guests from the local community when he taught in the school on that Saturday. He shared how to walk in the spirit in a way that was very simple and easy to understand. In fact, I highly recommend his book How to Walk in the Spirit if that’s a topic you’d like to know more about. (Click the title to find it on Amazon.)

We look forward to seeing them visit us again in Scotland soon!

Charis Christmas Celebration

As mentioned above, this past Saturday was the last day we had students on campus at Charis Dumfries for 2018. Lisa created a festive environment for everyone. In addition to our regular class work with the students, we built in a long lunch break for some festivities.

We had a nice lunch catered in for the students. We served jacket potatoes, which are baked potatoes with a variety of toppings. The most popular topping was something called coronation chicken. It’s incredibly tasty and has become one of my own favorite sandwich fillings since we moved here to Scotland. But I still haven’t figured out how to describe it well to my American friends who’ve never experience it.

After lunch we added some levity to the day with a very silly Christmas Quiz. It’s kind of becoming a Charis Dumfries tradition. We divided the students up into 4 teams: the Mince Pies, the Christmas Crackers, the Brussel Sprouts, and the Sausage Rolls. Then we asked them trivia questions about Christmas carls, local traditions, and the Bible, etc. This year the Christmas Crackers won handily. You can see a brief clip from this year’s quiz on Facebook here.

But the big prize was awarded for the Christmas jumper contest. The winner received a copy of The Heart of Christmas DVD. It was just made available here in the UK and we were able to get the copy about a week before. You can purchase it here in the USA, or here in the UK.

Looking Forward to the New Year

Here are some of the things we are looking forward to in the next several months:

• Cecil and Lisa Paxton ministering in January
• Inbound mission trip from Charis Jacksonville in February
• Outbound mission trip to Highlands/Isle of Lewis Scotland in March
• Outbound mission trip to Finland in April
• Our first ever In-house graduation in May
• First Dumfries graduating class at the Grace and Faith Conference in May
• Andrew Wommack coming to Dumfries in June

That’s just part of what we have going on with the Bible College. Plus God has other things in store too! We already see God opening the doors to additional ministry opportunities for us in the coming year. We will share more about those opportunities as they happen.

Praise Report

Lisa and I have been believing for new phones since this past summer. We know there is nothing wrong with the phones we have. However, we feel that God is directing us to do more with video and photography so that we can impact more people for the Kingdom of God.

We did our research and talked to some folks who specialize in media. The new iPhone X’s have very high quality cameras and make it easy to create high quality media quickly with modest technical means.

Lisa and I sowed a financial seed back in June and believed that we received those phones.

Praise God that He provides supernaturally through natural means! This past month God spoke to someone to donate money specifically for, “any equipment you may need.” They had no idea we were believing for the anything specific. Turns out it was just the amount we needed to purchase the phones and they are on their way to us.

Starting next year expect to see more media content from NewCREEations!

Merry Christmas and a Blessed Happy New Year!

Lisa and I want to wish you a very merry Christmas on behalf of all our NewCREEations Ministries partners.

We pray that you receive a revelation of how wonderfully amazing the Father’s love is for you this holiday season, especially if you are going through hard times. We know for some, holidays can tend to be lonely days. But we speak joy and peace, comfort and hope to everyone who reads these words.

And we declare that 2019 will be more prosperous for you than you even hoped possible. Look to God. Expect big things from God. Trust Him. He is the only true source of everything you need to experience an abundant life.

"And God is able to make all grace abound toward you, that you, always having all sufficiency in all things, may have an abundance for every good work."
— 2 Corinthians 9:8

Abundant Blessings,

Chris & Lisa Cree

P.S. Now is the perfect time to get that last minute charitable giving in so that it is recorded for your 2018 taxes before the end of the year. Please know that NewCREEations is good ground to sow your financial seed into.

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NewCREEations Ministries
120 N. Elm St
Wooland Park, CO 80863

P.P.S. Wow! You read all the way to the end! If you are feeling especially generous this Christmas season, would you please consider liking our Facebook page? We want to offer our Daily Reflections email devotional to people so they can sign up directly from within Facebook. That will make it even easier to encourage folks to tap into the blessing of Daily Reflections. We must have at least 2,000 likes on our page before Facebook will let us do that. We're still a bit short of that number. You can help! Please click the big blue button below and then like our page. Thanks in advance for your generosity!