I wanted to share an email that I just wrote to all of our supporters who are on our email list. Many of you all have expressed an interest in our ministry after reading my blog, so I decided to post it to you as well. Thank you all for your support since I started the Families Again blog. I have really enjoyed writing it and look forward to writing more and getting to know more of you in 2009. Until then, please have a very happy New Year. God bless all of you. Tim
Dear Family and Friends,
I hope that you all had a very Merry Christmas, and the rest of your holidays will be very blessed. God has richly blessed the Tinkel household this holiday season. Although the year has been a difficult one, the blessings that God has given us far outweigh the problems. Some of the greatest blessings that God has given are the faithful friends and family that have prayed, encouraged and supported us throughout this past year. There is no year, good or bad, that we could survive without you all. We thank God for you and pray for you all continuously.
Although you may not consider yourselves as such, you are a valuable part of the our team at Good News Mission. This past year we have strived to keep you better informed as to what is happening in our ministry. Sarah has tried to send our more frequent prayer letters, and I have begun my blog and begun to post our newsletters online. Please let us know if there is anything else we can do to keep you better informed.
This year our goal is to endeavor to serve you all better. You all have done so much for us, that we would like to do something for you. For those of you who live close by, please call us if there is anything that we can do for you. Be it physical help or prayer, we will do all that we can to assist you. For those of you who live far away from us, we could, at least, come along side of you in prayer. Please call, write, or email and let us know how we can help you.
As the new year approaches, please continue to be in prayer for our ministry here in Livingston. As Sarah has written in her newsletters, God has richly blessed Good News Mission. Our Sunday meal and Bible study has grown tremendously and our new ladies cooking class and kids Bible club have been well received. Our special events have also been very popular, and have allowed us to serve and get to know some individuals and families that don't usually attend our other mission functions.
We have many more plans for this coming year. As well as continuing the ministries that we already have, we hope to add afternoon tutoring for the kids and a craft class for Sarah's ladies. This summer, we are planning a community garden for folks who live in the neighborhood and perhaps expanding our summer ministry to the children of the area. These things, along with the our commitment to homeschooling and our children's Drs. visits, therapies, etc. add for very busy days and weeks. Please pray that we will schedule our time and use our time wisely.
One praise that we have is our finances. God has always abundantly supplied for all of our needs and this past year has continued to do so. Although our support has fluctuated we have ended the year with a plus in that area. One small prayer request in this area though. BCM has required that our support level be at $2000 a month before the end of 2009. Although God has richly blessed, we are not at that level yet. If you would like to know more about how to support us financially, or if you would like us to speak at your church, please let us know. Even a pledge of $5.00 a month would help. If you feel that you could give us an end of the year gift, it is not too late. Just send it to the BCM address below. Please make out the check to BCM and then attach a note saying it is for Tim and Sarah Tinkel, account number 642.
Thank you again for all that you do for us, and please let us know what we can do for you. We will be praying that God blesses you greatly in this coming year. We hope that you have a blessed rest of 2008 and an even greater 2009.
Families Again Freebies Topic: FamiliesAgain Freebies
Being homeschoolers, we are members of several online homeschool groups and receive many homeschool newsletters. One of the newsletters sends out a weekly email called "Freebie Fridays". I look forward to it every week, because it really does have some valuable online freebies for homeschoolers. Some of them I have passed on to you in the past.
I don't know if I want to commit to doing it weekly, but I do like the idea of passing on some freebies to you from time to time that promote family values. Since I'm not sure how often it will be, I'm calling my posts "Families Again Freebies". It may be every week, it may be a couple of times a week, or I may skip a week or so, but I hope to be fairly regular in passing on free websites and ideas that will help you in your journey of raising kids.
In one of my early posts I talked about Behemoth.com. I lamented that they had daily free downloads but required a credit card to set up an account. Since that post, we switched banks and now have a check card that I was able to use to register. I love it! They have historical talks, talks on family values, educational downloads etc. ... all from a Christian worldview. I look forward every day to see what the next thing is that I can download. I have listened to many of them, and have not been disappointed yet.
Another website that I have gone to a lot recently is DLTK crafts. Most of the crafts that were used for our Advent nights came from this site and I have even used some of their crafts for my Bible clubs. Everything is free and there is a ton of crafts that you can use for family craft nights. DTLK crafts is a family based site, so you shouldn't find anything too objectionable, but I did find one craft that involved Pokemon, so you do need to be careful.
Let me know what you think of these, and if you know of any good freebies that you think will meet this sites goal of strengthening the Christian family, please let me know and I may put it in a future FamiliesAgain Freebies post.
Well, the holidays are almost over and so are all of my great advent/holiday plans for the family. How did they go? You read about our first advent night in one of my previous posts. The others went a little better but not much. We made sure that our calender was clear for the second advent night, but we still started late, so Joshua still wasn't himself. He was quite during the start of our Bible reading, but then we were interupted and it went downhill from there. He lost focus for the rest of the Bible reading and then didn't want to do the craft. The third night was a little better, he did try the craft even after being antsy during the devotional time.
It is partly my fault. I should have been doing family devotions since all of the kids were little. I can't totally expect them to cooperate right from the start when they aren't used to it. But, that is about to end. I am commited to start daily family devotions beginning January 1st. Of course, we won't have the added crafts, and I will make sure that the devotions are "Joshua friendly". It should be interesting - I'll keep you posted.
I realized as I was writing my last post how little I have talked about the mission organization that Sarah and I are with - BCM (Bible Centered Ministries) International. In fact, there are other organizations that have gotten more mentions in my blog than BCM. I am very embarrassed and plan to rectify this situation immediately! I just promoted, in my last entry, an organization that I don't absolutely totally agree with, but have not done enough to promote my own mission which I totally agree with. Since I just published the other organization's mission statement, I am now proudly publishing the mission statement of BCM and will post more about BCM in the near future.
Jesus said: "I am sending you to them to open their eyes and turn them from darkness to light." Acts 26:18
BCM is a global Bible-Centered Ministry dedicated to making disciples of all age groups for the Lord Jesus Christ through evangelism, teaching and training so that churches are established and The Church strengthened.
We minister through evangelism, church planting, discipleship, leadership training and publishing Bible curriculum and teaching materials. We also provide Bible Clubs, camping, counseling, and compassionate care. BCM strives to make an impact in the world through Reaching Children and Developing Churches Worldwide.
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