Latest Newsletter

To All Family and Friends

Praise be to Him! I think every day to myself, "You,You are the one
who is in control, who is taking care of Your children." This
frequently comes to mind anytime I am in a car or near the road. It
feels as if Jesus has just been sending me love note. Due to my
frequent feeling of helplessness, I have been forced to stress and do
things on my own or turn to Him in such a different way. As school
has finished, I have struggled with sadness due to the loss of a few
staff that will be leaving along with students. Even though it is a
Christian school, a relationship with Jesus is not a prerequisite for
parents or students in order to attend RFIS. Some students are
Christian; however, their parents are not. As a few of the students
leave, I pray that they will truly see the light of Christ through the
community of students and teachers.

We will be meeting with Peggy about what she has been coordinating for
summer village teams. I think there are 3 options, so we are seeking
direction as to where we will spend a few weeks serving. It has been
really amazing hearing many different missionary parents share about
how they are reaching people with God’s Word here. There have been
different missionaries who use audio recordings of scriptures when
they are working with language groups who are from oral cultures along
with writing God’s Word in their own language. One of the parents of
our students shared how they had been working on translation and often
would read back what they had translated, and the language helper
would fall asleep. So one day he decided to read a translated passage
in cultural fashion, the way the people group actually tells true
stories. They were so excited to hear God’s Word in their own language
and storytelling form.

The plans for next year - we will no longer have our school counselor,
so Mark has been asked to join a group of staff and students to insure
that students will have someone to talk to. That being said, it is
crazy to think we have been here 4 months! That’s the longest I think
either of us has been away from The States, but time here has gone
quickly.

Just as we are finishing this newsletter, we have finalized plans for
moving into another missionary family's house while they are on
furlough until January 2012. We are very excited because we had begun
to look into housing options outside of our mission organization’s
housing. We began this for two reasons: the first was we heard we
could save money by moving into the local community, and the second
was to join the surrounding local community and to live by
Cameroonians. We found this opportunity with the Gaults as they are
missionaries that just left for 7 months to help their daughter that
just graduated from RFIS settle into college. As we mention below, we
hope that this can help extend our stay with the combination of a few
more monthly financial partnerships.

Fundraising update
We have approximately 85% of our full support for our original 2-year
assignment, but to stay the additional 4 months they have asked of us
we currently are only at 70%. Please pray and share with your family
and friends so that we would have enough support to stay until June
2013.

Praises
That staff and students have survived another school year!That transition in Cameroon feels completeFinding housing that allows us to save money

Prayer Requests
Decision on where to serve for a couple weeks during the summerSafe travel for staff that are flying home for the summer or leaving Cameroon for goodSmooth transition for all the staff and students that are not
returning to CameroonMoving into the neighborhood - for safety and to bless othersJoy and Peace in Christ,
Mark and Leah Janowiak