Prayer & Praise Update from the Deam Team

 

Serving the Lord at the

Child Evangelism Fellowship® (CEF®) International Headquarters

 

December 2008

 

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Our School Good News Club®

Our Good News Club at the Wright City Elementary School is growing! We have over 35 children enrolled with an average of 30 children who have been attending each week.

 

Praise:

·         Praise the Lord that we have many helpers from our sponsoring church and that we’ve been working more effectively as a team. We had a good meeting with the pastor and his wife from our sponsoring church and worked out the responsibilities for the helpers and things have been running fairly smooth during club the past couple of weeks.

 Prayer

·         Pray that the Lord will speak through us as we share His Word and that He will reveal Himself to each child.

·         Pray that details can be worked out for us to obtain a second room for the club. Pray that the Lord will give us wisdom to know how to divide the children into two groups after Christmas and how to use the workers effectively.

 

The Spring Session of the Children's Ministries Institute® (CMI®) 

On January 21, students will be arriving at the CEF International Headquarters to begin the spring session of CMI.

 

Prayer Request:

·         Pray that the Lord will bring the students of His choice to take this session.

·         Pray that the Lord will give us ideas to update some of our teaching notes and make other adjustments in our teaching lessons during December and January. We want to use our time wisely for these CMI preparations.

·         Pray for the Lord’s wisdom as the CMI staff discusses improvements and changes that will make CMI even more effective in the years to come.

    

  

Lisa’s Children’s Ministry Degree Update

Praise the Lord!! Lisa completed her New Testament History course! From January through April she will be taking her last course—World Religions. This will be a 16-week distance learning course where she will listen to lectures on CD, read books and do assignments on her own. She is excited about the course content as it will really benefit her for future ministry with CEF; however this will be a new way of taking classes for her. 

 

Prayer & Praise:

·         Praise—only one more course (3 credit hours) to go before she graduates in May!

·         Pray for Lisa to be disciplined to work on her own and complete this last course on time.

·         Pray that she will be able to adjust to this new format of learning. She really enjoys interaction with the professor and other students so this will be quite different.

 

CEF’s Finances

Over the past several months the incoming finances for CEF have been lower than the outgoing expenses. Each department here at CEF has been challenged to look at ways of cutting expenses and ways of raising additional support. We made a big push to raise additional support for our Deam Team account three years ago and we praise the Lord for His provision of new supporters and present supporters raising their regular giving amount. However, we never did completely reach our goal of being 100% supported. Also, since our last big push for additional support, some of our long time supporters have had to stop supporting us because of job changes or other reasons. The CEF general fund makes up the difference in our monthly shortage but with the general fund hurting we feel obligated to work harder at raising financial support. The financial policy of CEF has always been “Ask God and tell His people.”

 

Prayer Request:

·         Pray that the Lord will provide the funds for CEF during this difficult financial time.

·         Pray that the Lord will prompt people of His choice to start financially supporting us.

·         Pray that the Lord will prompt others (churches, individuals, businesses or those responsibility for giving grants) to give to CEF’s general fund.

 

NOTE: Some friends of CEF have offered a matching grant for our CEF Mailbox ClubÔ program. If CEF can raise $200,000 by January 1 then this friend will give CEF $100,000. Pray that the Lord will prompt people of His choice to give for this special Mail Box Club project. All tax-deductible checks can be mailed to: CEF, PO Box 348, Warrenton, MO 63383. Be sure to write Deam Account #HQ00 2830 on the memo line for designating monies to be credited to our Deam account or write Mail Box Club project on the memo line if you want monies to go to this special “matching gift” project.

 

Merry Christmas!

We pray that you will have a nice Christmas holiday. We will be traveling to visit our families over the Christmas holiday.

Praise:

·         Praise the Lord for the travel mercies He gave us as we traveled to Indiana and back for Thanksgiving. The trip home was a slow go as we traveled through snow and sleet.  

Prayer Request:

·         Pray that we will have safety as we travel over the Christmas holiday.

·         Pray that we will have quality time with our families as well as with the Lord.

 

 

May the Lord bless you this Christmas and holiday season!

We truly thank the Lord for your prayer and for your financial support. You are partners with us in reaching the children for Christ. We praise the Lord for His provision and we will continue trusting Him for the future. God bless!

 

Tim & Lisa Deam

Department of Education, Child Evangelism Fellowship Inc.