Dear Friend of Harvest,
This is the second of a three-part series of Big Fred’s Bytes that will discuss missions at Harvest Community Church. I discussed our overall missions' focus at Harvest and shared a little information regarding a couple of specific missionaries.
Christian and Megan Hall will be pursuing a calling to Indonesia, and not Papua New Guinea. While those two locations might seem close to each other when we think about it from Kittanning, Pennsylvania, they are, in fact, two different countries. We look forward to Christian and Megan sharing more about their plans when they return to Kittanning in August.
Christian’s parents,
Matt and Angie Hall, have had many years in Papua New Guinea as well. They were instrumental in teaching the Maleu tribe about Jesus Christ and translating the scriptures into the Maleu language. They currently serve preparing other missionaries via Ethnos 360 Bible Institute in Wisconsin.
We enjoyed our visit with
Mark and Olessya Parrish during the first weekend in May. It was enlightening to hear about God’s ongoing work in the Holy Lands, and we should continue to lift up our prayers for their efforts.
I mentioned several of our missionaries who will be visiting Harvest during the next couple months. This weekend will be another opportunity for you to meet
Peter, Pam, and their daughter Bithyah, Van Der Decker. They plan to visit all campuses at some point this weekend, and your campus pastor will share more of those details. Peter and Pam have lived most of their lives within the jungles of Papua New Guinea but are currently visiting their supporting churches in the US. Their son,
Josiah and his wife, Rachel, have followed their parents into ministry and are also serving in Papua New Guinea as Harvest missionaries. Both Peter/Pam and Josiah/Rachel are associated with the Ethnos 360 sending agency.
As you can see, many of our teams are focused in an area commonly called the “10-40 window." This area lies between the 10
th and the 40
th degree north latitudes and contains many of the “unreached” people of the world. This is a prime area for evangelistic effort, and you can learn more by clicking
here.
Moving on to another Harvest missionary couple --
Kevin and Margie Bishop. Kevin and Margie are developing their ministry in Ecuador. They are members and sent out from a church in Union, New Jersey that Pastor Mike served at before coming to Harvest. We will share more information on their efforts and how we can serve them after George and Josh Kolesar return from visiting them in the summer of 2019.
Upai and Amber Jasa are serving in Thailand as Wycliffe Bible Translators. Amber is the daughter of Barb and Arnie Morris. You will often see Arnie serving as an usher or safety team member around our Harvest Kittanning Campus.
Steve and Pam English have been serving for many years in Guatemala where they facilitate caring for many orphans as well as teaching English and including Jesus Christ in all they do. Harvest has traditionally sent teams to assist their work every couple of years.
Thilak and Liny Pappu are sharing their faith in Jesus Christ among the Hindi people in Haryana which is located just north of New Delhi. It seems like only yesterday that Pastor Mike Harvey was preparing his team from Harvest to serve in the streets of Haryana, but I guess it was actually a year ago now. They returned with many stories and testimonies of God’s work in that area last summer.
Andy and Lizet Bowen are working to develop efforts in Paraguay to share the Good News of Jesus Christ and disciple the believers there. Several teams from Harvest have helped to build a community church as well as serve many other needs within their ministry field. Andy will join our CRAVE team this summer in Juarez, Mexico as a translator working hand-in-hand with our teens. Juarez, Mexico, which is directly adjoined to El Paso, Texas, has been in the news regularly as of late. Juarez was one of the deadliest cities in the world a few decades back as the violence of the drug cartels wreaked havoc in the lives of those who live in this metro area. Today, Juarez is not as violent but struggles to care for the needs of the million plus people who reside there. Harvest works with two missionaries in that area.
We directly support
Jorge Ramirez in his effort to minister to the people in the mountains of Sierra Tarahumara. Additionally, we partner with North Apollo Church of God to work with the
Alianza Christiana Church led by
Pastor Mario as they reach out to the street children in that area. They are in the process of building an orphanage at the church, and the efforts of the North Apollo Church, as well as Harvest, have been instrumental in doing so. Many of you have already joined the efforts to support the CRAVE teens going there this summer. If you have not, I encourage you to ask Pastor Dave Lusk how you can learn more about their plans and prayerfully participate with them on their trip in July.
Life Choices has been an integral partner here at home as we regularly interact with their efforts to support mothers who are willing to turn away from abortion and choose LIFE! Those efforts continue in many ways, and we look forward to their regular interaction with Harvest.
Pittsburgh Regional International Student Ministry, otherwise know as
PRISM, has become a regular partner of Harvest as well. Instead of going to international opportunities, these opportunities come to us. In conjunction with PRISM, we participate in the annual Garage Giveaway held at Bellefield Presbyterian Church in Oakland (just off the PITT and CMU campuses). The objective of the giveaway is to share household items with incoming international students as they set up their apartments while attending one of the Pittsburgh Universities. We also invite many of these students to visit our homes, our church, and attend special events throughout the year as we share the love of Jesus Christ.
Suzanna Clarke is a full-time staff member of PRISM and dedicated to working with the students in a student housing location of PRISM.
Alycia Hodil is a Harvest member who serves with Coalition for Christian Outreach (CCO Pittsburgh). You can learn more about Alycia’s ministry needs by talking with her directly at the Kittanning Campus where she serves as part of the worship team. Alycia’s husband,
Brian, has been very active in leading our “
I WAS BROKE, NOW I’M NOT” class to assist our church family with financial decision making. You can look for more details on that class in the upcoming edition of Harvest Happenings coming out in mid-June.
Josiah Painter is teaching in Taiwan for Word of Life International. Josiah is the son of Matt Painter of the Kittanning Campus. Josiah shared a brief story of one of his students who accepted Christ as his Lord and Savior in his recent newsletter. These stories continue to fuel our passion to send workers as God provides.
Hannah Parobek is a recent addition to our field missions’ partners, and she serves in Chaing Mai, Thailand. She is actively working in youth camps there and we look forward to an update toward the end of 2019 as Hannah returns to the US for a two-month furlough.
I realize that I have really breezed through information on several of our missions' partners, but my goal here is only to familiarize you with some of our relationships and let you know that we have been very active in sharing the Gospel of Jesus Christ, not just at our four campuses or in the surrounding communities but, literally, around the world. When I use the pronoun “we," that means
“you” too. If you are part of Harvest Community Church, you are a part of this work. Your weekly tithes/offerings are already at work in these ministry efforts. We invite you to join us to increase that relationship. We need to continue to develop prayer partners who are instrumental in these efforts as Satan would love to isolate these workers and undermine the efforts of sharing God’s Good News. We need to continue to develop people who are willing to go! “Go” could include short-term trips, go for a season, or go as a way of life.
Are you willing? Are you open to setting yourself, your family, your time, your resources in motion as God leads? If you are, we would love to help you fulfill that calling.
We still have a significant portion of our missionary team to cover in part 3 -- our
10:16 Team. That section will be a little more difficult to articulate as we are very careful regarding those specific details for safety and security reasons. Three families that have long been a part of the Harvest church family are now serving as one team in a very dark area of our world. The Gospel is largely non-existent within the people group they are called to serve. For some of you, it will be easy to understand as you have a personal relationship with them and/or their families. Others will need to read between the lines. So, when I use only a letter to refer to them, you will be able to discern their names with the following key. I won’t go into that detail in part 3 of this special addition of our Bytes newsletter so please keep that in mind when you receive it in a few weeks ("A" = Adams, "C" = Clinch, "J" = John).
In closing, missions brought the Good News to you, and it is God’s plan for it to reach the ends of the earth through that same process. Let your pastors or Hugh Adams know if you are willing to take the next step. Hugh serves as an executive elder heading up our missions' efforts.
In His service,
Big Fred
