The Return To Northwest Ohio
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| Joel & Ryan with Kenton students earlier this school year. |
Five years ago, Joel spent much of his first year of full-time ministry speaking in Northwest Ohio. Since Joel is from Van Wert, many requests came from the NW Ohio area. Since then, we expanded his reach to many other states. The amount of out of state engagements has increased every year. For example, last year, Joel flew out to California (twice), North Dakota, and even drove to Texas!
Expanding our reach has its pros and cons. The ability hold successful assemblies and outreaches outside Ohio increases our potential for filling our calendar and reaching more students. However, speaking and holding concerts far away requires many more days on the road and away from family. Thank goodness a full four years has passed since Joel's first year of speaking in Northwest Ohio! This year he has been able to return to some of those schools and speak to a new group of students...in Ohio! How great! Joel and Ryan visited five Northwest Ohio schools in February alone. They reached just as many students, but spent less time on the road. What a blessing!
In early February, Emily Holliday and I were both able to attend the Crestview High School concert which was only about 40 minutes away from Van Wert. We attended as complete spectators and gave feedback later on. The guys definitely put on an entertaining event but also brought the full-force truth of the gospel. This was very encouraging for us, and we were thankful to have this experience.
Expanding our reach has its pros and cons. The ability hold successful assemblies and outreaches outside Ohio increases our potential for filling our calendar and reaching more students. However, speaking and holding concerts far away requires many more days on the road and away from family. Thank goodness a full four years has passed since Joel's first year of speaking in Northwest Ohio! This year he has been able to return to some of those schools and speak to a new group of students...in Ohio! How great! Joel and Ryan visited five Northwest Ohio schools in February alone. They reached just as many students, but spent less time on the road. What a blessing!
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| Ryan performs at Crestview HS |
Until Next Month,
Bethany
Message From Joel
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Friends,
Our transition from FCA to Stand For Truth is going very well. As I mentioned last month, our greatest challenge is transitioning our automatic monthly donors to the new ministry. We are so excited that more than 70% of those donors have already agreed to continue supporting our us. Just over 5% have decided to stop their donations. We will have to work hard to make up for that loss of funds, but it is definitely manageable. There are, however, still more than 20% of our automatic donors who we haven't heard from. Please join us in praying that we will be able to reach these supporters and they will remain committed to partnering with us in the work of the Gospel.
The most exciting part of the transition is that we have been able to maintain our heavy travel schedule. We also plan to keep it up for the rest of the school year (minus a short break for the birth of our third son). In fact, just this week we reached our booking goals through May. We still need to hit the road to fulfill those engagements, but as we do, we can put a lot of effort into finishing the move over to Stand For Truth and even looking ahead to next school year.
Thank you so much for your prayers and support!
God Bless,
Joel
