Hello,
2020 has been an interesting year. There have been many challenges and trials to overcome. But we serve a great God. A God who I dare say likes to accomplish things that we look at as being impossible. Jesus even says so in Matthew 19:26
"But Jesus beheld them, and said unto them, With men this is impossible; but with God all things are possible."
We started this year off with some incredible goals: to present our ministry in 25 churches and to see our support level rise above 50%.
At the time of our January Prayer letter, we were at 14.5% and only had a few churches scheduled for the year. And yet, God was good, and we were able to get some meetings on the books, and made plans for a trip to some of the southern states.
All of that changed as our nation was hit with COVID-19.
We made a lot of changes to our plans over the course of the year. We have quarantined as a family four times. The most recent time because one of our own children had tested positive for the virus.
There have been times when meeting our goals for this year seemed impossible "...but with God all things are possible."
As a family, we have prayed a lot about our situation, and every time, we felt that keeping the goals the same seemed like the best course of action.
1 John 5:14-15 says "And this is the confidence that we have in him, that, if we ask any thing according to his will, he heareth us: And if we know that he hear us, whatsoever we ask, we know that we have the petitions that we desired of him."
As we look to the remaining months in 2020, it does not look like we will reach our goal of 25 churches. We just had too much downtime over the course of the spring and summer, when churches weren't able to meet.
But praise God, we did reach the 50% goal. In fact, we surpassed it by quite a bit. As I write this, we have committed support that will bring us to 84.4%.
A lot of people have been praying that we would see God provide our support this year. And Praise God, He has.
Now we are asking that you all keep praying for our family. We need less than $1000 per month in committed support to reach 100%.
We are also looking at some costs associated with moving and preparing the house we will live in at Missionary Acres. Our original estimate for these initial expenses was for $27,500 of which we have $3,000 saved. Please pray that these additional funds would also come in quickly.
We are so thankful for how the Lord has been working. He truly can make things that seem impossible happen.
In Christ,
Bryan & Lisa Tanner & Family
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