Dear Friends,

I’m currently between trips, catching up on work at home and snatching some rest.

At age 63, I’m finding that my travels take more out of me than they used to. I’ve been across the ocean four times this year and am feeling it. I head in for a physical exam tomorrow.

Meanwhile more doors are opening for ministry than ever before. Invitations are coming to some pretty far-flung places. I’m trying to build them into a five-year and then a ten-year plan that includes writing as well as teaching. I want to pass on all that I’ve learned while I have strength.

A Different Kind Of Newsletter

This newsletter will be a little different. We’ll focus on a variety of smaller disciplemaking opportunities.

Mission Hope is involved in lots of projects that you might never hear about. But they are crucial. This newsletter will focus on several of them. It is important that you know the scope of what we are doing.

Mongolia-Singapore-Haggai

Last summer a young female doctor in Mongolia resigned her practice to work full time for her church. Her name is Glory Aldershig.

Glory Aldershig with the women in her class at Haggai Institute. Seated in the first row on the left., Glory resigned a medical practice to help make disciples in her church in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia.

The church is pastored by a former doctor and attracts many from the medical community. It meets in a theater and looks like a big rock & roll show on the weekend. Many people are coming to Jesus—and they plant churches.

Few, including the pastor, have any formal theological training. So when Haggai Institute invited Glory to attend we got behind the project, hoping to help in any way possible.

At first we hoped she could attend the training at the campus in Maui, but the U.S. government wouldn’t issue a visa. A member of our team continued to work with Glory and she was later accepted in the program in Singapore. We were able to cover expenses on the ground with Haggai picking up the rest of the costs. A small investment, but one made in a person and church with a big vision. It will bear fruit.

Missouri

I recently traveled to Missouri to speak at a men’s camp—something I normally turn down. I did it because I could spend time with a vibrant pastor named John Wiley.

Hanging out with several pastors of very new churches in a retreat center at Pomme de Terre, Missouri. The event centered on local churches multiplying disciples and new churches!

John and I became friends when he attended a “practicum” we did at our church campus for pastors wanting to multiply churches. It was one of those “God things” where what I

taught simply underscored what he was already thinking. We gave him permission to go ahead and break the rules. The results took the form of eight new churches.

During the camp I got to spend meal-times with the pastors of those churches. They had all read my book, Starting A New Church, as a tool in their planting process. As you could imagine everyone came loaded with questions.

It was a thrill to meet with these guys. Takes me back to my own beginnings with all the attendant fear and excitement.

Honolulu Chinatown

Clayton Arnett brings hope to the streets of Honolulu’s Chinatown. He’s also bringing people in from the streets to a life of freedom in Christ—and his converts are discipling others.

Every Saturday I spend the morning discipling men who are launching new churches and/or new ministries. One of the latest to join the group is Clayton Arnett.

In and out of drug-treatment centers seventeen times, Clayton finally became serious about Jesus a few years back during our Friday night services.

At that time he was in treatment at a center which is next-door-neighbor to our church.

For the past couple of years Clayton has brought hundreds from his old “alma mater” to the church and over 200 have accepted Christ.

Lately he brings about two dozen people from the center to our Alpha discipleship course every Wednesday night.

Honolulu Chinatown is a beautiful place by day. A dangerous drug-infested center for prostitution and violence after dark. But the light of Jesus is drawing people off these streets into a number of churches.

But the exciting new ministry goes on in Honolulu Chinatown two nights a week. Chinatown has become the center for street drugs and prostitution in our island.

Clayton takes ordinary Christians out on the streets handing out sandwiches and praying with whoever looks like they need help.

Some end up in treatment centers. Some prostitutes have been rescued to shelters. And, many make it into our church. I recently had dinner (at Alpha) with three of Clayton’s converts. One was a former Chinatown dealer and the other two were his former clients.

These newly transformed individuals are busy discipling others and volunteering at church. We fund sandwiches and gas-money. Again small investment, big bang!

Opportunities

In the last newsletter I mentioned the opportunity/need to print my books on church planting in Japan. It is definitely a non-commercial venture. The total market for such books is around 1,000 copies. Yet the opportunity is vast if we could get a thousand Japanese pastors excited about planting churches.

About one-third of the money needed already came in. Praise the Lord.

Today, I was hit with another such opportunity—this time it shouldn’t cost Mission Hope any money. A group in Russia wants to translate and publish the church planting books in the Russian language. As always, I give away any rights or royalties for overseas publishing. I consider it a privilege that the books are helping make disciples of the nations.

Many thanks,

Ralph