Hello everyone, and happy almost New Year! I promise we’ll have a proper family/ministry update soon, but each year, I typically post a list of the books I’ve read over the past 12 months. This is partially because people have asked in the past for recommendations, and partly because it helps me to look back and think about some of the written data I’ve consumed over the year. I’m only posting books I’ve read cover to cover in 2018. I’ll make some comments here and there, and as a side note, I certainly don’t endorse every book or author as holding to my own particular beliefs (especially because the vast majority of my reading is related to Christianity). I’ve separated the books loosely by category, mostly fairly specific, with an added catch-all Theology/Christianity/Other category at the end. Hope you enjoy, and feel free to ask questions, make comments, and let me know what you’ve been reading yourself :) ...

Hello Friends and Family! I pray you are all doing well, and as always, I’d like to thank you for taking the time to open and read this short update from my family and I. It is such a blessing to know there are people who love us and care about what is going on with our ministry! Our Step of Faith Last month marked the one year anniversary of my family taking the step of faith to come on staff with SGWM. And while we had prayed for years for the opportunity to take a “full-time” ministry role with Saving Grace, it was a step of faith indeed. Because I work in part for Calvary Chapel Saving Grace’s Yorba Linda ministry, the church pays a portion of my salary. But because the other half of my work here is for Saving Grace World Missions, the other portion of my salary comes from us raising financial support. It’s been an amazing season of doing work so closely associated with with the heart of the Great Commission (you can read more about all of those things in our blog updates), but it has been a great step of faith to rethink the way God provides for us financially. ...

Hello Friends! We pray you are all doing well, and thank you for taking a moment to read our latest update! I (Joel) have been reflecting lately on what in the past has been, quite frankly, my least favorite portion of scripture: Joshua’s dividing up of the land to Israel after they entered the Promised Land. The list of boundary lines and cities is not a thrilling read, but I was assigned to teach this to our Bible College students in South Asia (via Skype) through the book of Joshua as I finished up my portion of this semester’s teachings. As I approached this text, I noticed that the future of Israel’s rich history was represented in what was, at that time, cities and lands full of potential. This potential for them was the choice between honoring God with the land and seeing His blessings in it (with places like Shiloh and Jerusalem), or offending God with idol worship and receiving the curse of disobedience (as with Ben-Himmon or Dan). As we move forward in our lives of following Christ, the same pregnant potential lies in front of us at all times. Will we reach out and receive His promises in faith and obedience, or end up heaping trouble on our lives with sin, laziness, or cowardice? Praise God that for us, above all of this, stands His great and faithful grace! ...

Hello Friends and Family! I pray that you are all doing well, and we want to thank you from the bottom of our hearts for taking the time to read this quick update and join us in prayer! First of all, we’re excited to present our big news to you all: Amy is pregnant with our 4th child! We’ll be introducing our newest little one into the world in Spring of 2019. We are blessed that the Lord has allowed us to have a “full quiver” of children so close in age so that they can grow and learn and be friends together. Amy and I celebrated our 7th anniversary of marriage this past month and are blown away by God’s faithfulness to us! ...

Hey Friends & Family! Here’s another quick Summer update along with some prayer requests for those of you who are following our ministry. Thank you all so much for your prayer and for faithfully partnering with us! Last week, I (Joel) got to go on my first youth retreat in a couple of years. It took some mental preparation to get back into “Youth Leader Mode,” as it’s been over 2 years now since I stepped away from being the church’s Jr. High Leader to being our Young Adults Leader. I was honored to lead worship for the majority of the trip and give a couple of teachings, one on God’s holiness and one on God’s mercy. What a blessing to see these students worshiping God with their whole hearts! One of my biggest takeaways was the effect that past retreats have had on these students. Youth retreats like this produce lasting fruit that many of them will look back on as spiritually defining moments in their lives, and that was what I was hearing from them on this retreat. ...

One of my favorite aspects of my job is interviewing missionaries and writing up articles describing their ministries to get the word out about what SGWM’s missionaries are up to. I’ll post some of those here on my own blog from time to time to give an example of what I’m doing to help promote the work of SGWM and our missionaries. Here’s an article I wrote awhile back about the Record Family, who have the unique role of doing Christian Apologetics ministry in Cambodia. If you’d like to become a supporter of our ministry, please see below this article for some instruction on that. ...

Hello Friends! I pray that this Summer has been treating you well, and if it’s as hot (or hotter!) where you are as it is here in SoCal, I hope you’ve been able to keep cool! The Summer months have been productive and fun for our family. Our SGWM team returned from South Asia a couple of weeks ago and brought back with them a boatload of vision for how God is going to move in that country in the coming months! One cool way that I get to participate is to bring my experience working in the financial department of SGWM to help our board see what kind of financial support is coming in and what funds are further needed to accomplish what God wants to do in that country. Crunching numbers and finances are not the most exciting part of missions, but it is incredibly vital and I’m so glad to play a role in this important aspect of SGWM. ...

Hello Friends and Family! First of all, I want to thank you all for reading this. It is such an honor to know that we have people supporting us in prayer who want to know how to pray for us and what the Lord is doing in and through our lives! As some of you know, about half of our SGWM staff has been on an almost 3-week (including travel time) trip to South Asia. With Pastor Mike’s wife gone there as well, leaving him to fill the role of mom and dad, that has left most of the day-to-day responsibilities for SGWM to land on myself and our awesome intern missionary (who is raising support to become a missionary in Croatia) Rebecca Alaniz. She has been such an amazing asset to our team and has helped make these three weeks a breeze! By God’s grace, we survived the team’s absence, but we’re looking forward to their return! I’ve already seen some of the amazing work they’ve been able to do over there, and I can’t wait to hear all about how the Lord used them! While I’m a bit jealous not to have gone, I’m honored that I get to stay behind and support them by holding the fort here at the SGWM office to free them up to be used by God there. Here’s a pic of our team there: ...

A couple of months ago I was in the book of the prophet Isaiah in my Bible reading plan. I was down in a small room at our church with couches, an isolated little spot where I spend time with Jesus an hour or two before work during the week. This amazing poem in the book (chapter 25, verses 6 though 9) leapt off the page: The Lord of hosts will prepare a lavish banquet for all peoples on this mountain; A banquet of aged wine, choice pieces with marrow, Refined, aged wine. And on this mountain He will swallow up the covering which is over all peoples, Even the veil which is stretched over all nations. He will swallow up death for all time, And the Lord God will wipe tears away from all faces, And He will remove the reproach of His people from all the earth; For the Lord has spoken. And it will be said in that day, “Behold, this is our God for whom we have waited that He might save us. This is the Lord for whom we have waited; Let us rejoice and be glad in His salvation.” ...

One of my favorite aspects of my job is interviewing missionaries and writing up articles describing their ministries to get the word out about what SGWM’s missionaries are up to. I’ll post some of those here on my own blog from time to time to give an example of what I’m doing to help promote the work of SGWM and our missionaries. Here’s an article I wrote a few weeks ago about Rebecca Alaniz and Brenna Kulla, who are both preparing to go serve Jesus in Eastern Europe. If you’d like to become a supporter of our ministry, please see below this article for some instruction on that. ...