Finally! A report on our New England Connections 2010!

Hello to all of you!

It's been quite a long time since we have communicated with you via "Ben & Sheri's New England Connections"!  Apologies are in order!!!  Somehow it's very difficult for us to get around to composing and publishing a regular, detailed, comprehensive, periodic communique to keep you updated on our activities as Southern Baptist Mission Service Corps missionaries serving in New England.  As most of you know, this is our fourth year to travel to the northeast US to work as Mission Mobilizers in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and eastern Connecticut.  Our pattern has been to spend six months (mid-April to mid-October) in New England and the rest of the year back in our home state of Texas.  In both locations, we work primarily with churches, learning of needs and  resources and  determining ways to connect the two.

Knowing full well how important it is to communicate regularly with you, our wonderful friends and family, we've decided that we could be much more successful at that task if we provide more frequent, shorter updates via this blog rather than laboring to fashion the longer, comprehensive version!  So---we trust that will be more palatable for you as well!

Just so that we can do a much abbreviated "catch-up summary" of our past six months in New England, here are a few brief bullet points detailing what we've been up to in 2010:

           *  Helped in the Northborough Incident Response Center for New England
               Disaster Relief after March floods affected thousands of homes
           *  Hosted "discovery team" from FBC Marshall, TX, at The Church
               at Westerly, Rhode Island
           *  Helped in various ways with "new" Massachusetts Baptist
               Associaton missions house
           *  Taught Inductive Bible Study methods in Rhode Island and Connecticut
           *  Worked closely with two Texas couples to produce a video to encourage
               mature Christians to consider serving as church strengtheners
           *  Helped to pioneer Family Portrait Days as outreach events at four
               churches
           *  Assisted FBC Longview mission team with VBS & discipleship training in
              Haitian congregation in Providence & Hispanic house church in
              Johnston, RI

That's a VERY brief wrap-up of the highlights of last six months!  Now---we'll try to be much more frequent and concise in the future!

We do want you all to know how much we appreciate and count on your participation and your prayers. When you lift us up to the Lord, your role is equally important or more so as ours here "on the ground."  The most inportant thing we all do is PRAY. . . . .

More to come later. . . .promise!

Ben and Sherilyn Johnston