Summer Update!

Posted on by Joel Garcia

Hello Friends!

I pray that this Summer has been treating you well, and if it’s as hot (or hotter!) where you are as it is here in SoCal, I hope you’ve been able to keep cool!

The Summer months have been productive and fun for our family. Our SGWM team returned from South Asia a couple of weeks ago and brought back with them a boatload of vision for how God is going to move in that country in the coming months! One cool way that I get to participate is to bring my experience working in the financial department of SGWM to help our board see what kind of financial support is coming in and what funds are further needed to accomplish what God wants to do in that country. Crunching numbers and finances are not the most exciting part of missions, but it is incredibly vital and I’m so glad to play a role in this important aspect of SGWM.

While the team was gone last month, I got to finally launch our SGWM Prayer E-Book, which you can download in PDF for your Kindle or iBooks app here! Here at SGWM, we value prayer for our ministry and missionaries over all other forms of support, so this tool is a huge deal for us and we ask that if you have a heart for SGWM that you would download this and make it a part of your prayer life. What an honor that I got to be a part of its release! Here’s just a sample of what one of the pages looks like:

Another aspect of my job is representing SGWM outside of our church, and I was blessed to be able to do that with SGWM missionary Rebecca Alaniz a couple of weeks ago at Calvary Chapel Downey’s Missions Conference. It was so great getting to talk to people about who SGWM is and what we do!
Please continue to pray for wisdom and guidance from the Holy Spirit for our ministry. With so much happening in so many countries for SGWM, different trips are getting added and moved around, so I am praying about which trips I should go on to teach overseas, scope out terrain for new ministry, and encourage our missionaries in places like South Asia, Uganda, and Peru. Please pray for additional financial support to come in to help us pay for these trips.
I will also start Skype teachings for South Asia again next month, teaching through the book of Joshua for one of our Bible schools over there, so I am excited about that!
On the personal and church ministry front, things have been really fruitful as well. Our church is going through a 4-week Wednesday night series and I got to teach the first session on the subject of worship, which was a weighty responsibility and huge blessing! In about 3 weeks, I’ll also get to go lead worship and teach a few sessions for our church’s youth retreat, which I am honored I get to participate in.
Finally, our family got to do another camping trip with some friends of ours, which was a ton of work, but produced some great memories, fun for the kids, and some crazy cute pictures! And, I got to officiate my first wedding, which was a great blessing, and Amy and I cleaned up rather nicely for the occasion 🙂

Last minute pic of Amy and I right after getting ready for the wedding at my in-law’s place 🙂

Please continue to pray for us as life gets busy with three kids and so much ministry; we need lots of wisdom! We’d also ask that you pray for our financial support, as the cost of living is rising as our kids grow and we’d love to eventually be able to afford a larger living space for them to have room for more play and for us to be able to practice hospitality in ways we aren’t necessarily able to at the moment.

Thank you so much for your continued support and prayers!

All the Best for His Glory!
Joel, Amy, Maggie, Harrison, and Jude