Snow

Hello everyone,
We had a blast getting to know a lot of you over Christmas, and catching up with old friends. I have a quick prayer request. For awhile now we have had decent weather, decent being around 30ish. Thursday and Friday we got about 4in of snow. Friday there were 4 cars off in the ditch right in front of the school entrance. Being Sunday now...well we are stuck in our house. The roads out side of the training center are supposedly good to go, but the roads here though cleared have a nice thin sheet of ice on them. We live kinda in the middle of a little hill. I took about 4-5 tries to get up it, and got about 10-15ft from the top each time. It is slick here. So I guess we are kind of snowed in with only 4 inches =). I would ask that you guys be praying for all the other students and staff for safety on the roads today. It does not seem like much but it does not take much ice to be dangerous. So please be praying. Thank you so much for your prayers and your eagerness to be a part of this ministry before the foreign field and on it. It has been very encouraging as we head out on the path God has laid out for us. God bless. Your brother in Christ - John Stro

A Year of Praise

God is so good! It's amazing to look back and see all that He has done this year. We wanted to share with you some of the many praises we have seen and experienced in 2009:

Starting up as students.
Being able to have people over and feed them every Sunday afternoon.
Watching relationships bloom.
Being a part of two weddings.
A beloved friend who went home to be with the Lord in December.
Celebrating both Thanksgiving and Christmas with family.
An "In-Gathering" at the Rock House.
Being encouraged by friends and family.
Being blessed at VBS by the children at Grace Church.
Meeting many new friends.
Celebrating with friends who receive their visas.
The two cows and deer that God provided for everyone at the school

We are just thankful for all the provision that God has given us over this last year. Thank you for all the prayers and support that we have received from you all. it has been very encouraging to us.

God bless and happy new year

- The Strozewskis

Cool news in our outreach

This last week while at my outreach, I finally got a chance to have a deeper conversation with one of the kids there about Christ. He was curious, but reluctant, because he believes that he has sinned to much to be saved. I would ask that you pray for him, and that he would ask more questions the next time that I see him. Pray that the Holy Spirit would continue to work in his heart to hear and understand the gospel of grace and that God would give me the right questions and words to say. Also be praying for all the other kids there. Mike (another New Triber) and I have been trying to build relationships with these kids for about 9 weeks now and they are finally opening up to us. Praise God. Same goes for Amanda's ministry with the teen pregnancy center. The girls there were very much quiet and did not want anything to do with the girls that went to help and teach them some basic skills, but now they are more interested and learning these skills and asking questions about the bible. It is so cool to God working on the hearts of these young people (well younger than us =) ). Class have been going well thus far we have now moved into the phonetics. which is teaching us to listen and write down sounds. So we have been learning all the sounds that we make in English and all the ones we do not. It has been difficult but fun. The reason for this is to better prepare us to learn languages once we get to the foreign field and to help brake down the tribal languages. Writing down the sounds phonetically allows us to be able to read and reproduce them the way we heard them. Please be praying that we would continue to be diligent students as we learn these new skills to help us once we get to the foreign field. Please also pray for the kids that we are talking to in our outreaches also that they may come to know Christ as their savior. Thank you for all your prayers

- john stro

PLEASE PRAY

This last month we only received 79 dollars for the month, due to money transfer thing i mentioned in the last post, where 800 dollars that has been given over a few months was transferred to another account and taken from ours. that hurt our budget quite a bit as you can see the amount we are working with this month. so i would ask that you all be praying that more people will join our support team so that we can reach the minimum recommended amount a month of 2500. Praise God that He has provided another person to support our ministry here and our ministry when we get over seas. Please pray that we will continue to trust God for His provision in these tough times. And that we would be good stewards of what He has already given us. We all thank you for the prayers and support that God has provided to us through all of you.

God bless you all
- your brother and sister in Christ - john and amanda

Prayer requests

Hello!

Sorry there have not been any updates lately, things have been getting crazy busy here. I feel as if the training is now getting up to full steam as we start our phonetics course on Monday. We do have some prayer requests right now.

- Sickness has been spreading around, and a few cases of swine flu here
- Pray that those who are sick get well soon and that it does not spread further

- Also pray for our finances, currently we are at about 50% of the recommended $2500 a month, and due to some errors at the finances office some checks went to us instead of someone else for 5 months and they removed that from our account and put it into the correct account. So that put a 800 dollar dent in our finances and it stung. So we would ask if you could pray with us for God to continue to raise up supporters for us, and if you are interested about joining our support team please email us at jahardname@gmail.com

- You can be praying that I can get a deer this hunting season. Last year the meat was a huge blessing to us, it saved us a lot on out grocery bill and allowed us to have more people over so that we could get to know them and or minister to them.

- Please be praying that we would keep our eyes on Christ and the goal of seeing every tribe tongue and nation coming to know Christ.

Thank you so much for you prayers. We are blessed to have so many people praying for us. It means the world to us, when we get a letter from you guys telling us you are praying it's so encouraging. Thank you!

Thanks and God bless!
- John and Amanda Strozewski

NTM Posted a New Video

Hello!

NTM, the organization we are studying with just put out a new video on the web and we wanted to share it with you. We hope you enjoy it!
If you have 10 or so extra minutes check it out at: http://www.ntm.org/reach/awayo.php
If that link doesn't work go to www.ntm.org/reach click on "share the story" to the left of your page. This page should bring up the video.

Hope you enjoy!
John and Amanda Strozewski <><

First Two Weeks

It feels like these last two weeks have just zipped right by. Starting off, classes are going great. We are currently in Foundational Bible Teaching, Communication, Worldview Analysis, and Learning Styles. We just got back home from working on our group project for Learning Styles. We are creating a media presentation showing a conflict due to people having different learning styles. We will try and get some of the pictures we took up on the blog and explain some of what is going on.

I'm loving working over at the MKEC (Missionary Kid Care and Education Center) for my campus ministry. They will be training me to be a home school consultant. We have also discussed various other training opportunities for me. I look forward to learning as much as I possibly can from them. For my outreach I am volunteering at a Pregnancy Center. My team narrowed down each of our roles into pairs. My partner and I are going to ask them if they want to learn to sew. :) Please be praying as we build relationships with the moms and workers there; we will be visiting the center on Monday evenings.

John's campus ministry is grounds crew. His team takes care of the campus grounds. What a great crew! They were weed-whacking earlier this week. John came home exhausted, but his area looked great! On Tuesdays John will be doing his outreach with teens at a new center. Please be praying for him as he builds relationships with the teens.

The Klines, will be our staff mentors. We had dinner with them last Wednesday, and enjoyed catching up with them. They are good friends of John's parents when they went through Bible School. Rumor has it they were in John's parent's wedding! We look forward to spending time with the Klines while we are here as students.

Thanks so much for your love and support! It means so much to us to know that we have people standing behind us in prayer, and encouraging us to keep moving forward.

John and Amanda Strozewski <><