Devoted – July 2020 Update

Hello Friends and Family!

Thank you so much for taking the time to look at our update. It means so much to us that you would care about what is going on in our lives and pray for us. Lately, the Lord has been moving me toward being more devoted as an individual and as a family as we move forward in our calling for His work. He has done this by bringing me to passages in my daily reading like:

“Devote yourselves to prayer, keeping alert in it with an attitude of thanksgiving.” Colossians 4:2

“Now set your heart and your soul to seek the LORD your God; arise, therefore, and build…” 1 Chronicles 22:19

“No one, after putting his hand to the plow and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God.” Luke 9:62

We all have a tremendous calling on our lives to devote ourselves, heart, mind, soul, and body, to the work of reaching the nations for Christ!

Family

The family is doing great! Clara is walking now, which we are (hesitantly) excited about, and Harrison is doing great reading and will begin “official” schooling soon! Please pray for us, as we have been hit with an unusual amount of spiritual warfare lately, from nightmares to sleeplessness to anxiety. It is good to be reminded that we are in a spiritual battle.

CSOM

The SGWM Calvary School of Missions is underway! The new batch of students are doing great in Mexico, and Pastor Mike and myself are leading the SGWM home office team as well as the weekly church administration while many of our leaders are down there with the school. I am thankful that I will get to go down to the school twice for a couple of days to get to know the students better and lead them with some devotions and worship. We are praying that some of these new students will become interns over the course of this next year with SGWM and CCSG!

Speaking of interns… some of you may know that some new and intense persecution has risen in one of the South Asian countries we work with, meaning that much of our ministry is changing in that location. Thankfully, this has not effected our ability to teach a Bible school class via Skype for one campus in that country. This has provided me the opportunity to teach a Thursday evening class through the book of Hebrews to that group. This time, however, I am using the opportunity to train two of our interns, Jorden and Bryan, who feel a call to pastoral ministry on the foreign mission field, on how to teach the Bible cross-culturally through a translator, so they are co-teaching the class with me. Super exciting stuff! I encourage you to click on their names above to find out more about them and their ministry, and consider partnering with them! I plan to do this with each new batch of interns who feel a pastoral calling on their lives.

Looking Forward

Something exciting that will be happening for us in ministry is that I (Joel) will be taking on a new role with SGWM as Director of Missionary Sending. This is a big job that includes leadership over accepting, sending, and caring for all SGWM missionaries outside of South Asia and CSOM/Interns (which are two other departments of SGWM). I will give more details in the coming months, but please pray that the Lord would guide us with vision for this aspect of SGWM and the ability to manage my time well and do the job with excellence.

We would ask that you pray for our finances and consider partnering with our ministry financially as the Lord leads. If you would like to support us financially either on an ongoing basis or through a one-time donation, you can do so by clicking the “Become A Financial Partner” button below, OR you can mail a check written out to Saving Grace World Missions with “Joel Garcia support” in the memo section to Saving Grace World Missions, 17451 Bastanchury Rd., Suite 203, Yorba Linda, CA 92886-1873.

We also would love to keep you updated on our ministry via our newsletter email updates if you are interested. You can sign up for those by clicking the button below:

Email Updates

Love in Christ,
Joel, Amy, Maggie, Harrison, Jude, and Clara Garcia