Happy Thanksgiving And Jenkins Update

Wow! It has been a while since we sent an update. What a crazy year 2020 has been for so many of us. As much as we have been trying so hard to avoid COVID-19, as many of you may already know if you follow us on social media Dave, our son Timothy, and I had COVID-19. Thankfully, we did not have to be hospitalized and although the last few weeks are a bit of a blur of survival, we are hopefully through the worst of it. We are now just trying to get back to our baseline and our energy back. We are so thankful for all the support and care that we received. Many of you sent meals our way, and extra cash gifts to help us through this rough season. We also felt all the prayers and kind words that you sent to us!   We are so thankful for our daughter Sophia and son-in-law, Matt who cooked food for us, walked our dog, and organized a meal train for us that many of you participated in! We are thankful to have them living in North Dakota for this year before they head off to Med school next fall.

We hope you all had a great Thanksgiving! I know this is a different kind of celebration this year. We had our smallest Thanksgiving celebration ever.  We were thankful that some of our family could gather. We held space for both grieve and joy this year.

Many of you know that besides following the East African Diaspora to the Dakotas, we were also drawn here because of a part-time teaching pastor role that Dave got. We were excited to be a part of a church where we could both use our gifts unfortunately none of us could imagine what 2020 would bring. For those of you in ministry know how hard this has been to serve in this season. It was especially hard for us as we were new to this church and did not have the bank of relationships to weather this storm. As our COVID numbers began to significantly increase in North Dakota in September and after 6 months of trying to get the church to develop some type of COVID protocol, we asked the church leaders if they could respect the local health recommendations and several adamantly refused. In addition, through this process, we began to see that we had significantly different interpretations of scriptures, and ways of seeing the world with the other staff and many of the leaders. Considering this after much prayer and counsel from others Dave resigned as teaching pastor at Revive Christian Church. We are disappointed but also feel real peace about our decision. Even though this was a part-time job it had taken a lot of bandwidth and energy that we felt was taking us away from our primary role of serving the East African Diaspora here in the Dakotas. We are still wanting to connect with churches here and hoping that Dave will be able to do some interim preaching in the area. In fact, this month he has already been asked to preach at the First Baptist Church of Bismarck as they sadly have lost their Pastor who has recently passed away with COVID-19.

With this loss of income, we really need to find some additional support to keep us viable here in North Dakota. Will you prayerfully consider giving a one-time gift or becoming a monthly supporter?

Jana and some of our new friends from Adoni Evangelical Church

Here are some highlights of the last several months:   We were thankful when the pandemic hit that much of our ministry is online, so we did not have to pivot as much as other ministries. This summer as there was a bit of a break in the pandemic we were able to have a few young people over as well as being invited into some homes and get to know the East African Community better here in the Dakotas.  Dave spoke several times at the East African church we attend Sunday afternoons-- Adoni Evangelical Church. Dave has started a Sunday morning Facebook live series “Neighboring During COVID-19 Pandemic” and many are joining in to watch and we have had several follow-up discussions.  Several of our adult kids were able to visit us in August. We had to quarantine some of the time they were here, but it was nice to have each other to quarantine with.  Matt and Sophia and our granddaughter Penny ended up moving here to Bismarck, ND for this year as they prepare for Matt to go to Med School in fall 2021. We are loving having them in the same town. This consistent time with our granddaughter is priceless!     Thanks so much for your prayers and support! We could not answer this call without you!   Jana

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