James & Carolanne

Hello from the Warkentins!

We're so thankful that you are part of our team of friends and partners in James' work with Power to Change. We wanted to write a quick update to let you know what is going on these days in our lives and in the Digital Strategies ministry.

The Family

This year feels like it has been flying by rather quickly. The picture you see above was taken on January 1'st and the ice on the nearby Dragon Lake was very thick. However it's been a pretty mild winter/spring and today there are already patches of water visible. The ice isn't completely gone yet, but it won't be long.

Also this year for the first time ever we tried ice fishing! Some friends from here in Quesnel took us out on 10 Mile lake one Saturday and showed us what gear to use and how to do it. It was a great way to spend an afternoon. James even caught a respectably sized trout.

The kids are continuing in homeschool with Ben now in grade 12 and Julia in grade 10. Both are finding it hard-going since the workload of the online school we use seems quite heavy in these later grades. Ben has officially got his learner's license and we've been starting to do some driving practice. It's a bit strange having kids that are almost adults.

Staff Conference

In July of this year James is required to attend the Power to Change Staff Conference. This four-day conference typically takes place every couple years in late July and all P2C staff are asked to attend. The organizers try to vary the location between eastern and western parts of the country since there are P2C staff all across Canada. This year the conference is being held in Hamilton, Ontario.

Since this may be one of the last opportunities for our family to all do a vacation together before kids start moving out or are too old to participate, we have decided to try and attend the conference as a family. Our hope is to stay in Ontario a few extra days and take a vacation, exploring some of the local sights and attractions. We especially want to visit Niagra Falls since we'll be so close and it is something none of us have seen before.

Power to Change is quite welcoming of family to Staff Conferences, however staff are generally required to raise all the funds needed as charitable donations in order to attend. This includes conference costs, meals, flights and any other costs associated with attending. This year we hope to raise additional funds to help cover some of the extra cost of all four of us attending. (this does not include our extra vacation adventures, which we are responsible for ourselves)

If you would be interested in donating to help us attend this conference, we would greatly appreciate your extra support. You can learn more about how to give here:
https://ptc.jamesandcarolanne.com/help-us-keep-ministering

Thank you for considering us in this!

The Ministry

The mentee I shared about who was very skeptical about God I shared about on Tuesday got back to me. She had initially unleashed a barrage of accusations finally let go and has invited Jesus into her life. Before doing this she had mentioned her concern about "eternity" and that when I asked her the question: What kind of eternity would you like to live in? Her answer was: "Hopefully an eternity in Heaven and not Hell. I now want to know Jesus and I want to spend eternity with him." The Holy Spirit is working in her life. God is so gracious and does it in His time.
— An online mentor

We have continued to see some great progress taking place in the ministry the past few months. In the first quarter of 2025 we saw over 12,000 people being mentored by 592 volunteer mentors. On the evangelistic websites, 44,000 people were exposed to some form of gospel message and 151 people told us they made a decision to follow Jesus!

The past few months, in addition to his regular work with Digital Strategies (DS), James has had the privilege of helping out several other ministries within Power to Change. He has helped with website development work for the over-all P2C site, P2C Students, FamilyLifeCanada and Drime. He also continues to work at improving the software used by the volunteer mentors in DS and he is working on developing new ways to build more community-based tools for evangelism and discipleship.

Thank You!

Thank you for your faithful prayer and financial support for us in this ministry! We tremendously appreciate everyone who prays for us and gives financially. Thank you for your faithfulness and generousity.

If you don't happen to know much about who we are or what we do, we would love to chat with you further. Please feel free to reach out. You can also learn more about us and the ministry we are part of by visiting:
https://ptc.jamesandcarolanne.com/about-us