Storey Update: better late than never?

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Dear friends,

We pray this update finds all of you well and thriving! Most of you are into the summer months in the US, and we’re in our dry cooler (but barely cooler) season here.

Prayer requests up front:
One Bibi(grandma) told me recently that, “We don’t pray about the work. Prayer IS the work.”
Let us remember to be lifting one another up continuously before the throne of grace.

  • We thank God for safe travels over the past couple of months as we went for our Greece meeting.

  • We are transitioning ministry here to continue being led by our national partners while we are in the US for our Stateside Assignment(STAS). Please pray that our national partners would be well equipped to continue the discipleship work we share together.

  • We head to the US for 5 months at the end of July. We are praying that it is a time of rest for our family, and a chance to encourage local churches in the states with what God is doing in SubSaharan Africa.

Alright- I’ve been VERY remiss in updating you all with our happenings. This newsletter should provide a brief update of what’s been going on, with a few pictures(though our internet here can make uploads difficult). As always, Rebekah’s comments in italics.

In the end of April we all travelled as a family to Greece for a medical conference that also incorporated a spouses program and kids/youth sessions. Before the conference we rented a van (and filled it to max capacity - driving it tiny the wee morning hours on winding roads at the beginning of our trip, and through nearly the entirety of the country on that back end of our week of vacation) and stayed in Airbnbs with our sisters Kari and Debra. It was an amazing trip and we were so thankful for our friends and family who supported us and made the travel possible.
Greece was incredible! The medical conference was really helpful for my(Josh) continuing medical education, and the boys were all encouraged and blessed to connect with other TCKs from around the world. (We’d been strongly encouraged to attend the conference by some fellow company friends - they stressed how beneficial the conference had been for them in years past and how the Women’s program particularly is designed to be a place of rest and healing - I found this to be true and really felt like the conference came in perfect timing, as we near the end of a very difficult first term).

We got back from Greece (for a much more in-depth at the picture side of our trip, you can see posts I uploaded to instagram under our profile “storeybookafrica” and Facebook under my name, but there’s 130 pictures, so click in at your own risk) and jumped right in to helping host a team of college students from California Baptist University. We enjoy this group every year as they bring so much energy and many are new to Africa! We helped them to run blood pressure and diabetes screening clinics, and work with local churches to go door-to-door evangelizing. This year they did 10 days of clinics. and saw hundreds of people, diagnosing dozens of new cases of chronic illness.

After the CBU team left we started planning a pastoral seminar that we’d been dreaming of for a couple of years. 112 pastors and church leaders came from the region to fellowship together for 3 days, and received teaching from Kenyan and Tanzanian teachers on basics of the Christian faith(Marks of a Believer, What is the Gospel, Biblical worship through song, etc).
It was a sweet time and we are so thankful for how God blessed the seminar, and for the sacrifice the teachers made to come and work with us. We hope to do this a couple times a year, Lord willing. (There are so many things we could say about this seminar, but on a purely personal level for us it was a really sweet confirmation and affirmation from the Lord about the work he’s called us to do here - which to us, prior to landing here, was never on our radar!)
The conference is shockingly cheap to provide(about 10-15 USD/person, including food, lodging, supplies, and transportation). We are grateful for the partners who give to our ministry gifts- that’s the primary way we fund these events.

Life continues apace! This last few months we had end-of-school parties, snakes in the yard, “you’re not real!” sunsets, and other happenings.

STAS plans:
We’ll be in Omaha, NE from the end of July to the middle of August. We’ll be in Grand Junction, CO from the middle of August until the end of December. We hope to do some traveling to KS and WY in that time frame- send us an email at M28StoreyFam@gmail.com if you or your church want us to pay you a visit!

If you’d like to give directly to our ministry gifts for the next pastoral seminar or similar projects, go to www.imb.org/givenow, then select “Missionary or Team” in the dropdown, and put our names(Josh and Rebekah Storey) in the “missionary or team” field, and “Tanzania” for the “affinity or country field”.

Join our Facebook group for other updates.

Email us at M28Storeyfam@gmail.com