March Update

Hello Friends,

 

I hope you are all doing very well and each of you are experiencing much grace in your lives.

 

I am excited to let you all know, we are back here in Pine Ridge. It is so good and refreshing to be back here. We didn't skip a beat getting here. Amanda, the kids, and I left Feb 23rd, we stayed in Nashville one night and moved onto Memphis and stayed until Thursday morning. We drove around 12 hrs Thursday and came the rest of the way on Friday and boy were we all glad to be here. Jacob and Leah did wonderful in the car and throughout our stays in different places, we have been so blessed with great children. Along those lines I would like to let all of you know that Amanda is carrying our 3rd child of which we are so very thankful and excited for. She is due Oct 6th and we are already thinking of some native names. We have been referred to as gypsies in recent times, I don't deny that because it sure has felt like we are.

It was great to be at church here yesterday, we have missed the people so much and there was great joy to see the small group of believers that are here. we had a good service, Mike was preaching on constantly stumbling over the gospel and afterwards a man who was from Oklahoma, who was here for a funeral came forward and received Christ.

There were 7 funerals going on in our area alone yesterday. One of them was held at our church, it was the sister of 2 ladies in our church. It is so heart breaking and sad to watch a funeral here, there is so much pain and hurt in their lives and then death just adds to it when you have no hope of eternity. All of their belief is in what they can accomplish in themselves, and if any of you have been around at all you will know that people will always let you down, we will always let ourselves down apart from Christ Jesus. We can never be good enough to merit righteousness before a holy God. Jesus is our righteousness.

We have a lot of work ahead of us. We continue to ask you for your prayers, that we would experience much grace in our family and ministry and that we would continue to grow our support to be here. We are here completely on faith that this is where God wants us to be and leaning on Him to take care of us as we should do anyways. I am hopefully going to get a part time job at the school as a teacher, pray that my interviews and such will go well.

One thing we would like to start doing is a quarterly newsletter that we would actually mail out, some people have asked us about this and we would like to put pictures in there so that you can have a more visual aid of what is going on. I will still include it to all of you that are on our email contacts but if you would like to receive a newsletter in the mail every 3 months please send me your physical address as I plan to work on this in the next few weeks.

I am so very blessed by so many of you. many of you have been a rock to lean on for Amanda and I and we are so very grateful. God is so good, He fills my heart with joy and peace. Our prayer is that the Love of God and His compassion will spill over into the lives of the people we meet along our journey through life. What great examples many of you have been of just that.

Learning to serve the Lord in all we do,

Matt, Amanda, Jacob, Leah and Peanut

Feburary Update

Hello everyone,

Wow what an incredible time in our lives, it has been so busy and rewarding.

We ended last month with the benefit concert that we hosted for our ministry, what a blessing we received. We are so blessed with so many people around us that care for us but also care for the ministry and it shows with their giving and sacrifice of time and efforts to love people and share the gospel.

I left the country on the 27th to head to the Northwest Territory with Jake Ayers and David Hahn, we flew into Edmonton and drove 1500 miles north of there to Deline and then back down and east to go back north to Yellowknife and then back to Edmonton to fly home. altogether we drove around 3500 miles on Ice roads to get to these remote places to minister to various pastors and missionaries to encourage them and to find out how we can help them.

I think this mission trip probably blessed me in a very unique way from other mission trips I have been on. I was encouraged but also very challenged. Challenged to wonder and think about what we are doing as Christians to accomplish the Great Commission. There are over 7,000 people groups in the world that are still unreached. we have gotten so overwhelmed with the comforts of our own homes and churches that we have lost the desire to be uncomfortable and put ourselves on the front lines of reaching the unreached and loving the unloved. When Jesus came, He came to seek out the lost, and He put himself with them, dined with them and loved them. I see how far our church has come from that. we are no longer concerned with what brings glory to God but rather what is most convenient to me right now. However, I do see a generation rising up to take the place of the generations that have been before us. I see a progression of people in our church moving past our agendas through denominations, race and so many other things that I believe have slowed the church from growing and reaching as to what Christ intended His bride to look like.

I challenge you my friends as I am challenged, to allow God to be bigger in your lives. Look past all the stains that our culture has to see the beautiful work of God in our daily lives and have an eternal perspective on life.

Now to update you on where our family is.

We leave two weeks from today (Feb 23rd) to make our way toward SD. Tomorrow we will be in two different local churches and next weekend we will be in MS again.

when we leave the 23rd we will head to Nashville to be at a church that Sunday morning and that Sunday night we will be at a church in Memphis. We will be there until that Thursday and then arrive in Pineridge on that Friday March 1st.

once we get there we are having to move out of the parsonage into another house. we knew that this was a possibility but didn't think it would be this soon.

This is the busiest we have ever been and we covet your prayers. That God would go before us and that we would learn to embrace His grace each day. Pray for Jacob and Leah as well that their hearts would always lean on Jesus as their sufficiency that they would learn that from Amanda and I as we seek the Lord for provision.

God is so good, I cant explain it, I can only say you just have to take a bite and try it for yourself.

we are so blessed and so needy all at the same time and I thank God for each of you.

Learning to serve the Lord in all we do,

Matt, Amanda, Jacob and Leah

Donation Info

Online - www.youthevangelismstratagies.org

Check -

YES

HCR 49 Box 242

Porcupine, SD 57772

Paypal - athadden@gmail.com