It is with great sadness that I write to you today to formally announce the end our Appointee status with HCJB Global. Despite our best efforts, we have been unable to make progress in our Deputation and support raising endeavors. We have come to feel strongly that the Lord is telling us that this is a closed door. And you should know that this is our decision, unprompted by HCJB Global.

We still believe strongly in the ministries of HCJB Global, and would encourage all of our readers to get involved personally with a ministry or missionary.

As much as we would have liked to have worked on the Missions Field, we would be ineffective if we were there outside of the Lord's plan. Someday, if the Lord leads, we may try again. For now we will be contacting our existing supporters to inform them of our decision and are starting to think about where to go from here.

Thank you all for your prayers, support, interest, friendship & love.

I also want take a moment to address a few of obvious questions:

What happens to the money that we have already raised?
All the money collected, belongs to HCJB Global and cannot be refunded as they were tax deductible donations. We plan on making a recommendation for a special need or project in the near future. We will make another post once we have made a decision.

What is the fate of this blog?
Undecided. We have talked about transitioning it to a family blog as we already have a number of readers.

What are our plans now?
Also undecided. But we are intending to remain in North Carolina indefinitely. We have come to enjoy living here, have made friends, and there are plenty of opportunities to make a life here.

Thanks and God Bless.

A supporter of ours asked us some questions about our ministry for a college class, and we thought we would share some of the answers.

1. Name, where and how you serve.

Dennis & Sarah Crissman

We are currently raising support to work with HCJB Global as Software Developers. There is currently a great need on the missions field for "support missionaries", specifically with technical skills, and we feel that we can help fill that gap. Our skills will be used in many areas of the ministry: building webpages, working on financial systems, and ultimately facilitating communications between "front-line" missionaries and their family, friends, supporters, and missions organization.

2. When and how did God confirm your call to missions?

It's kind of funny, God called both of us, but in very different ways. Sarah grew up hearing about Nate Saint and other missionary heros and had a heart from an early age to dedicate her life to the missions field. Dennis on the other hand, knew that he wanted to use his computer skills for God's kingdom, but for missions was the furthest thing from his mind. As our relationship developed and we were married, our passions merged into a united dream to dedicate our careers and life together for God's kingdom in the area of Software Development.

3. What has surprised you so far? (that you didn't foresee in your initial dreams)

As we all learned in Sunday School, all followers of Christ have been called to serve in missions in one way or another, at home or in a distant land. Yet in the back of our minds we all are waiting for some bright light showing us where and how. What was surprising for us is when we figured out that regardless of how we may or may not feel called, if we go and serve God will use us. Have you ever heard of someone working in a soup kitchen or going on a missions trip and come back only to say how awful it was? No, it is always how awesome it was to see God move and work through them and how changed they feel.

4. So far, how have you seen lives affected positively by your "yes" to missions?

While still in College, Sarah spent a summer in Ecuador with HCJB Global (then HCJB World Radio). She had the opportunity to visit a remote hospital that was badly in need of a system for keeping medical records, as everything up until that point had been kept in paper notebooks. Sarah was able to use her technical skills to build a series of Excel spreadsheets that could be utilized to better keep and maintain these records. Although to her it seemed like a simple project, it had a huge impact on the hospital staff and in turn, the patients they served.

5. What kind of education was necessary?

All missionaries with HCJB Global are required to have 16 Bible credits, so far we both have 8. In our case, we both had four years of college for software development and a number of years of professional experience in the business world. There was also some general training that the organization gives to new appointees (missionaries accepted into the organization, but that are still raising financial support).

6. Who or what helped you prepare for missions?

We have both been on short term (3-month) mission trips to Ecuador with HCJB Global before we were married. While there we stayed with missionary families and got a taste of what real missionaries were like. Not in a church for some presentation, but the real life.

7. What misconceptions have you had to overcome?

* You do not have to be a super-Christian to be a missionary.

* Being a missionary is not necessarily going to some foreign land and doing without modern convinces and healthcare. Some missionaries live very comfortably. Being a missionary does require some sacrifices, but that doesn't mean that the missionary is unhappy or miserable under those conditions. Ever meet a miserable missionary? It is not because they are pretending to be happy, the Lords work can be tough, but is also fulfilling in ways that cannot be explained.

* Like in a musical, not all missionaries can be on stage, some have to be behind the scenes running the lights and moving the props, and that is ok. We are all a single body made up of many parts, we must all do our parts for the show to go on.

8. What is a favorite scripture?

Dennis:
Revelation 3:20 - Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him, and he with me.

Sarah:
Matthew 17:20 "... I tell you the truth, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, 'Move from here to there' and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you."

Focus for our ministry:
Romans 12:4-6 "Just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, so in Christ we who are many form one body, and each member belongs to all the others. We have different gifts, according to the grace given us."

9. Who is your own missionary hero?

Dennis:
Jeff Ingram - An average missionary husband and father of the family I stayed with in Ecuador. He had his struggles and faults but the Lord used him each and everyday through radio broadcasts to reach countless lives for Christ. His life and family was and continues to be an inspiration to me.

Sarah:
Nate Saint - Missionary pilot and member of the well-known team of missionaries martyred in Ecuador whose stories were told in Through the Gates of Splendor and End of the Spear. He had a gift of ingenuity that allowed him to develop techniques for using his airplane to serve other missionaries and to reach the unreached. Certainly not the most famous member of the team but, like all of the members, played a key role in the ministry.

10. Any other experiences or thoughts?

A small, but huge and humbling life lesson we have learned...
God couldn't care less what we know or don't know, what we can do or cannot do, or what we or anyone else thinks of us.
God is not looking for our skills, but us.

God Bless.

It is with great pleasure that I am able to announce that the Oldsmobile is gone!!



Sarah and I bought this 2005 Ford Focus from a local CarMax and it is a beautiful thing! There is no more praying that the car won't suddenly die. No more worrying about the coolant or low oil pressure! AND if anything goes wrong we can get it fixed for a flat $50 for the forseeable future.



We are gratful that the Lord has provided us with the resources to get a reliable vehicle that we can trust and that is backed by the dealership. What a blessing!!

Sarah has added the ability to receive our blog posts via email. If you would like, click on the "Subscribe Now!" button on the right margin of the blog or click this link.



For those that we manually send out emails to, we will go ahead and enter your email address for you. You will get a notice in your inbox asking you to confirm your desire to get the blog posts as emails.

God Bless.

Recently I was chatting with a couple of our partners and while the details of the conversations varied greatly, both boiled down to the same basic question... how long? That is a question I must confess, that we ourselves have recently struggled with on multiple levels.

* How long, oh Lord... before you have fully revealed your reasons for placing us in North Carolina?

* How long, oh Lord... before you provide the necessary funding that we need to support our ministry?

* How long, oh Lord... must our life feel like it is on hold?

* Lord... did we make a mistake? Somehow miss a turn signal that you left for us?

* One partner even honestly told me that they were asking... how long, oh Lord should we go on financially contributing to this ministry?

These are not easy questions and as only God knows the answers, I am confidant that they too are not easy. My initial feeling about these questions was guilt, they just seem so unfaithful. Then it occurred to me that these are not faithless questions, rather exactly the opposite, they all make the same basic assumptions:

1. God is real
2. God is listening
3. God has a plan that is larger then what we can see right now

So with that encouragement, I boldly step out and say that this ministry is the vision that God gave us two years ago, and it is the same vision that he has given us for today. It is on faith and faith alone that we trust that the Lord is going to answer the above questions according to his plan and in his timing. As there can be no better outcome then that, we rest in that knowledge.

We ask all of our existing partners and people considering a partnership, to step out in faith with us. To ask the tough questions and wrestle with God.

As far as our ministry goes, this is not simply the case of one person supporting another, rather this is all of us joining together, stepping out in faith, to reach the world with the good news of Jesus Christ.

God Bless.

Well folks as you may have guessed, we're safely back in North Carolina. We had a great vacation and the wedding was beautiful. But more to come about that in a later post, right now I want to tell you about how God used one of the guys in our Bible Study to provide for our laptop situation that I mentioned in a previous post.

This friend of ours had an "extra" laptop that he wasn't using... and he gave it to us!! I put quotes around extra, because this isn't just some old hand-me-down machine, this is a top of the line HP that is as good, if not better, then the laptop that we're having problems with!! Praise the Lord!

As for our original laptop, it turns out that a single stick or RAM went bad, and so a nominal cost, we should be able to have two beautiful computers for our ministry.

So what seemed like a unfortunate circumstance, has turned out to be a blessing.

Before we hopped on the plane to fly to Michigan, our laptop died. We were able to recover all our important files, praise the Lord, but when we get back we will still be left without a home computer. This is a problem for many reasons, but the most immediate is our personal banking and ministry needs.

Could you please pray that we will either be able to find someone who can help us diagnose and fix the problem OR to be able to find a reliable yet inexpensive replacement?

God Bless.

My brother-in-law Jonathan is getting married this weekend, so we are currently vacationing in Michigan visiting our families and enjoying the outdoors. So far we have spent the past five days with my parents and have had a great time. We played a new game called "Ladder Ball" (kind of similar to horseshoes) and then broke off by ourselves to take a canoe trip down the Sturgeon River. Today we drive down to Saginaw to start helping Jon and his soon-to-be bride prepare for their life together!!

This is a little late, but please pray for us as we travel, that we’ll be able to relax and enjoy our vacation, and of course for the soon-to-be newly weds.

God Bless.

This past Thursday, we had the opportunity to share about our ministry and vision of Software Development in missions with our Bible Study group. This was a big step for a couple of reasons.

1) This is the first time we have presented since we moved to North Carolina
2) Gave us a chance to share with some of our new friends

I have traditionally been very nervous during presentations, often to the point of barely being able to speak clearly. This time however, even after such a long pause, was the best presentation yet! Sarah and I were able to have a dynamic conversation about what God has placed on our hearts with a group that was interested and asked lots of questions. Afterwards they encouraged and prayed over us.

I felt like God used this time revitalized us, something that we didn't even know that we needed. It was like God was reaching out his hand through our friends, to tell us that even though we are going through some trials right now, that he has bigger plans for us.

We are greatly looking forward to the day that God provides all that we need so that we can go and serve with HCJB Global. But for now, we are learning to be thankful for the people that God has placed in our lives and the time that we get to share with them.

God Bless.