Cole Moving Update!

Last Thursday, we signed a contract for a rental home in the north part of Colorado Springs. We are praising God for His eternal goodness to us as He provided us with a place in just two days! We returned to Florida on Saturday night, along with a bunch of Super Bowl football fans, and are now packing up the last items in our home here. Later this week we’ll be driving the long haul out to Colorado and will move into the house there on February 11. Our new address is:

Curt & Karen Cole
12123 Stanley Canyon Rd
Colorado Springs, CO 80921

While in Colorado last week, we had the chance to attend the inauguration of HCJB Global’s new president, Wayne Pederson. It was a great time of celebration and looking forward to the doors God continues to open up for us as a mission. We’ll continue to be driven by local partnerships in both media and health care, and it will be exciting for Curt as he’ll be working with Wayne and the team in Colorado Springs on those initiatives.

Pray for us as we say good-byes this week, especially for Karen as she has taken care of her Dad for the past couple of years.

Thanks for standing by us. Westward ho!

Curt & Karen

Moving in God's direction ...

I just returned last week from a trip with our new President, Wayne Pederson (far right in the picture). We traveled first to Spain, where we had meetings with our leaders from Sub-Sahara Africa, Europe and the Middle East. Here's a picture of us in a very chilly Spain.

Tomorrow Karen and I fly to Colorado Springs to spend a couple of days looking for a home to rent. Things have come together very quickly. We now have a renter for our home in Florida, and they move in on February 6, so we have been busy packing and getting ready for the big move West.

Part of the reason we can now move is that Karen's father is on hospice care so he is getting alot of additional help. Karen's brother Ken is also now the primary caregiver, so that makes it a bit easier for us to move on, which has been our plan since we left Ecuador 2 1/2 years ago, to be working out of our home office and serving our international leadership from there in Colorado.

While in Colorado Springs, we'll be attending the inauguration of our new President and I'll also be giving a presentation to our board during their meetings on Friday. Then back home to hopefully pack up the U-Haul for the move. Thanks for praying for us, and please pray for God to provide the home He wants for us. Nothing more and nothing less!

Joy in the journey,

Curt

We just got back yesterday from our family time together in Ecuador. A great time of reliving memories and making new ones, but really hard to say good-bye. Not sure when we'll ever be back together there as a family.

God was so good to give us 14 years there and our kids still consider Ecuador home. We enjoyed both ex-pat and Ecuadorian friends, as well as a little beach place we had gone to for many years.

It's like we closed a chapter of our lives, all those years in Quito, but we are now moving on to the next chapter. As of January 1, Curt is now overseeing HCJB Global's ministry efforts in Africa and the Middle East. This means a more direct focus on Muslim ministry and unreached people groups in this part of the world. This also means a move in the near future to our mission's home base of Colorado Springs. We'll keep you posted on that.

Happy New Year!

At the end of October, I visited the Gulf Region of the Middle East to attend a conference with other agencies that are doing ministry in this part of the world. This is a place where the number of Christians is miniscule and where the evangelical church is still very much in its infancy. But God is working, and He is using dreams and visions to reach many Muslims.

While at the conference near Dubai, I heard a story from one of the neighboring Gulf countries about a Christian Filipino maid who awoke one night to some noise in the house. As she peeked out her door, she noticed someone standing outside her master's bedroom. She was scared and didn't say anything, but the next night she saw the man again standing at her master's bedroom door. On the third night, she saw the same person open the master's bedroom door and walk in. The next morning, the maid finally told her employer what she had seen and said it must have been a thief. The Arab smiled and responded, "No, it was not a thief. That was Jesus. For three nights, I've had dreams about Him and last night I asked him to take over my life."

In this part of the world, where God chose to reveal Jesus to humanity, He is revealing Jesus in ways that we cannot even imagine. There is hope in the Middle East and it is exciting to play a small role in this through our media efforts. But sure and check out something we are deeply involved in called OneHousehold.com.

Karen and I want to thank each of you for standing by us this past year. It's been a year of growth and renewal for us, and we know you've been there, praying and supporting us. Our prayer this Christmas season is that God will reveal the miracle of Christ to you in new and exciting ways.

Serving Him,

Curt

Curt & Karen Cole
HCJB Global
ccole@hcjb.org
www.colecurrents.blogspot.com
onehousehold.com

We are on the road again ...this time in our car! On our way back to Florida after six weeks at our mission's home office in Colorado Springs, CO. 1800 long miles from Colorado. Plenty of time for Karen and I to solve all the world's problems!

God has worked in so many ways in the past few months and we are rejoicing for the following answers to things we've been concerned about and praying for:

- As of November 1, Curt has a new boss. Wayne Pederson, former Director of Radio at Moody, is HCJB Global's new president. It was great meeting with him the past few weeks.

- Karen and I had a great trip to Spain in November for meetings with our North Africa/Middle East staff. We also had the chance to kid-sit our regional director's 4 kids for a week (they are German). We communicated with each other in Spanish, although the Spanish in Spain seems to be on high adrenaline compared to Ecuador! We didn't lose any kids and we think we got them to all their classes and other activites on time.

- Carissa, Bryan and Brandon all joined us for Thanksgiving in Colorado Springs. And for Christmas this year, we are all returning to Ecuador as a family. This has been the desire of our kids for a couple of years - so how cool is that?

Please pray for us as we begin the process of trying to rent our home in Florida so that we can move to Colorado Springs to serve our mission better. Our hope is that we can move by the end of the first quarter of 2009.

Mil gracias - a thousand thanks.

One Household - Home

We've got an exciting new initiative at HCJB Global. It's called One Household and focuses on media ministry in the Arab World. Check out this link:

One Household - Home

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Restoration & Refocus

Karen and I have often thought we had unlimited energy. But for the past few years we’ve been pushing the limit on what we can accomplish. The reality is God doesn’t expect us to be like the energizer bunny…in His eyes we are all pilgrims seeking to follow Christ, but sometimes getting tired on that journey.

We are coming off a time of mission-requested “sabbatical rest;” a time to restore ourselves and reflect on the future. We’ve not done anything wrong, but we have let the busyness of global ministry affect our health. It’s rather sobering to realize we hadn’t set proper boundaries in our lives, and we hadn’t recharged our batteries in a long, long time.

One thing has hit home in a big way - we can’t do it all. Sounds simple, but that’s been very hard for both Karen and me to realize. God has also helped me to see what I really enjoy more than anything is helping Christian leaders develop and grow to be successful. I am excited our mission will now be allowing us to spend more time in fewer places in the world, developing deeper relationships with both national and HCJB Global international leaders and mentoring them in their journeys. Ultimately this will mean less crossing of time zones and less fatigue, but more time (up to several months each year) in just a couple of our global sites.

With this time of rest has come a refocusing of what God has for us; a time to really hone in on what God has gifted us to do. I know you’ll be praying along with us as we work out the details. We’ll be working on this more in the next few weeks.

Deeply grateful,

Curt & Karen