Indonesia – James & Carolanne

Branching Into New Countries

Tue, 09 Apr 19 21:46:09 +0000

Dear Friends and Supporters, The past several months have been a whirlwind of activity. We are in the process of building several new partnerships with teams on the ground in places like Indonesia, Liberia, New Caledonia, Jordan and Singapore. Teams in many of these places are joining with us to build evangelism and mentoring strategies to reach their own people, often in their own language, to lead them closer to Jesus. And that is what our team is all about!

The world is online, we help them know Jesus.

Just recently I had the opportunity to connect with a man leading a team in Jordan. They work to help facilitate connections between new believers and churches or individuals in the middle east who can help them take the next steps in their faith. This team is partnering with us to use our mentoring software to make some of these connections and has even volunteered to translate the platform into Arabic. This means we can have Arabic speaking mentors using the software in their own language and connecting with new Arabic speaking believers. In another initiative, one of our staff members with a heart for reaching Liberia has created a special Liberia edition of one of our evangelistic sites. He is in contact with a minister in Liberia who has planted 21 churches, leads a seminary, does some urban ministry on the streets of Monrovia, and is interested in trying our online strategy in his context. We used Facebook advertising to specifically reach people in that country with ads for that site and within 48 hours a $20 investment brought in 17 new people in need of mentoring. In the country of Indonesia a team has been working diligently to create their own translated and adapted version of our evangelistic IssuesIFace strategy called CeritakuCeritamu. They are focused on reaching people in-country using Bahasa Indonesia and connecting them with their own Indonesian speaking mentor. They are also translating the mentoring platform into Bahasa Indonesia in order that Indonesian mentors can use the platform in their own language and respond to people from their own country. You may have heard in previous letters that we were reaching people in the country of India as well. This strategy is continuing and has seen some really great responses and success. We are now working to translate the MyStruggles site into both Punjabi and Hindi in order to reach an even wider segment of the population. We are working with people in-country to provide the best possible resources. These are just a few of the many different strategies and partnerships we are currently working on or have developed. I didn't even mention Iowa, Singapore, Brazil or North Africa. One of our ministry's biggest needs right now is for more mentors. In the words of our Lord, the harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. We really do need more mentors (and also staff) who have a heart for ministry and would like to help contribute to the fulfillment of Jesus' great commission. Please pray for more people to join us. If ministering to one of these countries I've mentioned touches your heart, please don't hesitate to connect with me for more details, or sign up to be a mentor at tmm.io. Thank you for listening! Thank you for praying! And thank you to those of you who give financially to help us continue in this ministry. Check out our blog for other updates and more personal family stories.

March 2014 Update

Wed, 12 Mar 14 16:46:38 +0000

Thank you so much for your prayer and support of us over these past months. I trust you have had a great start to this year. Our year so far with Power to Change has been filled with quite a number of interesting activities so far. As an experiment to help those who like to skim, I have bolded the interesting parts. I'd love to hear your feedback. I travelled back to Indonesia in mid-January in order to meet with some staff who have joined our team on a contract basis. These two Indonesian Christians will be working with us for a while in order to help accomplish some of the projects we currently have on-the-go. They seem like a really great team and so far have been making some great progress building a new, mobile-friendly site for us. Just one month after they started working with us though a volcano erupted only 35 km from their city and covered the area with ash. Thankfully, they were ok, and have been continuing in their work, however please pray for them that no further events such as that one would take place. My time at Power to Change has been split between managing the Indonesian team and working on building a new Intro Mentoring system. We are trying to put together a place where people can easily jump into mentoring without the long application process or the intimidation of not knowing where to start. Intro mentoring gives people an easy way to "try it out" with a much more simple application process and simple, prewritten responses that can be sent to the website visitors. You could check it out for yourself at: http://tmm.io/ It really is fun to be part of a ministry that is actually making a difference in people's lives around the world. This was part of a letter I received recently from our ministry director recently. A few days ago I got an amazing reminder of the work that God is doing in and through us. That morning someone called the front desk at Power to Change. We’ll call her Stephanie. She told us the story of a beautiful young woman in her family who was cutting herself. Stephanie looked to the internet for help and that’s where we came in. First, she found our article, “Understanding Cutting”. From there she saw the link to the chatroom and joined the conversation. She also found the link to talk to a mentor. Stephanie wants to grow as a Christian, so we’ve sent her the link to thelife.com. She wants to help the young woman in her family, so she’s going to get her connected to a mentor. Stephanie wants to find a church and increase her faith, so we’ve sent her online resources to help with that. This caller had a crisis in her family and as a Christian, she reached out for help. TruthMedia was there. What an honor to get to be part of something like that! Thank you for your part in helping to make connections like these happen. There are so many stories that I hear like this one, of people who's lives are touched in some way or another as a result of the ministry God has given us. Thank you for supporting us financially and thank you for your prayer. Both of these are critically important to us and we really appreciate the dedicated people who form our team.

Prayer Requests:

TruthMedia leadership is undertaking a refocusing of our ministry to clarify our identity and direction for the coming years. Please pray for wisdom for them as the work through this process.
Personal support for us is still substantially lower than it should be. Please pray that God would give us wisdom and favour as we continue to raise our funding. Learn more about how to donate here.
TruthMedia ministry funding is also very low. Pray for larger donors to consider giving towards the ministry in order to keep the ministry running.

Volcano Erupts Near Our Team

Thu, 13 Feb 14 19:49:30 +0000

Please pray for our team in Malang, Indonesia. One of the nearby mountains, Gunung Kelud, just erupted spewing gravel and ash up to 50 km away. Malang is only around 35 km away from the volcano, basically the distance from Chilliwack to Abbotsford. This is the city I traveled to just last month for meetings with this team.

Post-Indonesia Update

Wed, 12 Feb 14 16:38:17 +0000

Thank you very much to all who prayed for and supported us on our recent trip to Indonesia. I feel that over-all the trip went really well. For those who didn't know, Sheldon (my supervisor) and I (James) went to Indonesia for a week in January in order to meet and coordinate with two programmers who have joined our team. Marcel and Shierly will be working with us for at least six months in order to help with some of the technical work needed for our upcoming projects. It was really helpful to be able to get to know them face-to-face and to help them start getting up to speed with the software and technology we use for day-to-day work in the ministry. Since being back in Canada I have been working fairly closely with the Indonesian team to help get them going as efficiently as possible. For me, this means working a split-shift so as to partially overlap our timezones. (they start work at 8 am their time, which is 5 pm in BC) Thank you for your prayer for us during the trip. I think we all felt that it went really well and was a great opportunity to build some rapport with this Indonesian team. We even got a bit of R&R while we were there, courtesy of our generous host. (thanks Dusty!) Other Ministry News: In addition to our trip, these past few months have been packed with activity for everyone on our TruthMedia team. The film team has been busy with the Treasure series. The chat team has been very active in leading discussions and devotionals. The writers have been working on a new devotional series. And the programming team has been building a new and easier mentoring system. This report was sent in recently from Winsome, one of our primary chat moderators:

A major focus in 2013 had been the development and release of ”Treasure: Jesus Is Worth Everything.” This material has been introduced into our coed chat room this month, and God is using it to stir some exciting conversations with eternal impact! During the first two weeks one of our moderators was able to talk with two ladies who had not yet given their lives to Christ, and both have now been adopted into the family of God! Four other individuals have prayed TheLife commitment prayer. Thanks to those who worked so hard to produce a quality tool. God is at work and we rejoice!

Praise the Lord for such dedicated staff and volunteers who are constantly at work helping people take the next steps in their journey of faith. One funny story came up recently in our weekly staff meeting. A staff member mentioned he received a message from someone off facebook who said he wanted to know Jesus. His response: "Well, isn't it great he came to the right place! We do that here." I love being part of a team that "does that". It's the core of why we exist! To show people the way to Jesus. Thank you for helping me to be a part of this team. Your prayer and support has been critical in helping me to continue in this ministry. Prayer Requests:

Please pray as we continue to raise our support. Last year was really great. We passed the 50% mark in spite of a few setbacks. Our biggest support raising hurdle right now is knowing who else to ask. We have already talked to many of the people we know and so finding new people who might be interested is a challenge.
Please pray for TruthMedia funding. Though we have lots of great opportunities and results, funding for the ministry over-all is VERY low. There are a number of staff (like me) who are not fully supported, and this puts an extra drain on ministry funds as the ministry covers a portion of the remainder so that we can afford to stay.

Thank you so much, James Warkentin

Global Daily - Nov. 2013

Mon, 10 Feb 14 11:33:18 +0000

Dear Friends, Thank you so much for your prayer and concern for us. The Christmas season is always an interesting time for the internet ministry. There are many people who struggle with the loneliness of loss during this time and often they come to our websites for help or advice. Please pray that our ministry team and mentors will be wise and respond with a special measure of God's grace to these hurting people. Please pray also for James as he will be travelling to Indonesia for a short time at the beginning of January. He will be there to meet with a couple guys who may be joining the programming team to further the ministry by helping with some of the work load. Pray for safety and wisdom on the trip, and for Carolanne as she remains home in Chilliwack with the kids. More information on the trip can be found on our blog at: /indonesia Thank you for your prayers, James & Carolanne Ben & Julia