Heading out to Romania!

If you normally read our blog you may have noticed an absence of any new posts over the last two months.  It's not that we haven't been doing anything, quite the opposite, so much has been going on.  Perhaps that has contributed to the lack of posting, it is hard to get blogging when time is in short supply.  We would like to get back into blogging more often, and we have a lot of catching up to do.  We'll start that right after this post because there is a more pressing thing to write about: our upcoming trip to Romania!

Being in Romania for five years gave us the opportunity to make many deep relationships with the kids we worked with over there.  Since we left, we miss them a lot.  If you have ever been close to someone who moved away, or you were the one that moved, you probably can identify with how it feels to miss someone so much.  It is like having half of your heart be in another place and having a deep yearning to be reconnected.  Thankfully God has blessed us with being able to go and visit for a little over a week.  

We found the cheapest airfare we have ever seen; we will drive to Chicago and go from there. We fly out tomorrow evening, Wed April 30, and will return Friday April 8.  At first, it was a bit stressful when it didn't seem like details were falling into place.  We have grown to really rely on God and trust His leading and things have started to come together in the last week or two.  We will first be able to see our kids in Rosiori de Vede where we lived and worked most of the time.  Then we will see many of the ones in Bucuresti at the various orphanages there.  We are really excited to see not only our kids but also some friends there.  

We feel really blessed to be able to go back to Romania, but it is also a bittersweet feeling.  Since we will be involved in foster care in not too long, we aren't sure when we will be able to go back to Romania.  It is a distressing thought and the time leading up to this trip has been emotional.  We have to trust that God has a good plan for us and that he will help us as we strive to live our lives following him.  We ask for your prayers in this area especially, and we have listed below some ways that you can pray for us during and after this trip.  We trust that God will honor prayers offered up to him in expectant faith, so thanks for praying!

Prayer Requests:

-For blessed interactions with our friends and kids

-For opportunities to minister to our kids

-For God to be present with us and to work in our hearts

-For God to reveal himself to our kids and work in their hearts

-For safe and uneventful travels

-For good health

Us with Marius at his baptism last year

Answers to Prayer and Fun at the Beach in Winter

Every day we praise God for what he is doing!  There are so many things to be thankful for: blessings in ministry, his provision for us, his working at our church, our wonderful leadership team, and many more. God has been very active and we are trying to hang on for the ride!

One thing that we are especially thankful for is the provision that we received at the end of the year.  We started out in December looking at a deficit of over $2700 of support for the year.  We sent out a Christmas letter which was a summary of the year with just a short mention of that need.  The response was wonderful, and we ended the year with over $1400 surplus!  Thank you all for your generosity!  We praise God for this provision and trust that he will continue this year.

Thankfully the surplus from last year rolls into this year's budget, so we will have enough to make it through the first few months of this year.  We have monthly commitments for nearly 70% of our budget this year, which is an awesome start!  That leaves about $14000 to raise for the rest of the year. We would love it if many more people and churches would decide to make commitments to support us and our ministry!   Would you please join us in praying for this?  Might God be calling you to be one of our regular supporters?  You can get more info on how to do this by clicking here.  Through the church we currently can accept cash, checks, Chase Quickpay which links to a bank account, and we are working on our website and having a PayPal option.

January has been a busy month in other ways, including the launch of our church's newest ministry: Prayer Partners.  Here Rebecca and Anne are being commissioned for their leadership roles.  This ministry consists of teams that pray for people after each church service.  Up until now the pastors were doing this by themselves and so many people wanted prayer that they were very swamped!  Praise God that people want to be prayed for and to pray with others! 

We have also been busy being small group leaders at an interim class at Calvin College.  The class is called Spiritual Strength Training and is about how the Holy Spirit works.  At the end of each class we form small groups and answer questions and dive deeper into the material.  We have seen lots of growth in our students even though this is a very short course.  It is a large time commitment but the potential for fruit in these student's lives is limitless!

We took an afternoon recently to visit Grand Haven with our friend Victoria from church and a new friend Stephanie from Florida.  Stephanie is in Michigan helping with the class at Calvin, so we get to see her a lot.  She had never seen anything like the ice build up on the pier so it was pretty fun!

Michigan: frigid but beautiful!

We have continued to work on our house also, to the point of exhaustion sometimes!  The above room is our multipurpose room on the main level, it will be an office/guest-room/workout room, etc.  A lot was done in here: widening the door so we could get the washer and dryer in and out of the laundry room, scraping the sharp texture off the wall and filling in the remaining gaps with plaster, sanding down and finishing the floors, and painting, whew!

The laundry room got completely overhauled too, with a new tile floors, lots of work patching walls and the ceiling, and fresh paint.

We continue to feel awesomely blessed by having this house, and we are so excited with how it is turning out.  Thanks to all those who have helped us so far, and who will help in the future (we will need it come spring time!).

GoldRush Christmas Party!

Our middle school ministry is aptly named - GoldRush - because it really is a rush! We had a really fun Christmas party with our youth group this week. 

We started with pizza for dinner and had an extended hang out time.

We had pie and ice cream for dessert, it was a great dinner!

We then moved up to the sanctuary and played a game - the winter clothes relay.

The youth had to put on a really large set of outdoor clothing and then run down the aisle and back, it was a lot of fun.

Next we watched Charlie Brown's Christmas on the big screen.

Many of the kids related to Charlie Brown when he was getting teased by the other kids, we heard our youth sticking up for him and yelling at those mean cartoon kids!

All of the leaders then performed a skit of the nativity, it was pretty epic!

Here the angel is bringing the good news to the shepherd and sheep...

...and then they went to see baby Jesus in the manger.

Here sinister King Herod tries to persuade the wise man to return to him and reveal the location of Jesus.

In the middle of the skit, right after the angel's announcement of Jesus' birth, we broke out into song and led the singing of "Silent Night" and "Joy to the World."

This was arguably my favorite part of the night as I hadn't played my sax for nearly 15 years!

At the end we gave each youth a present and a Bible.  We let them chose which bible they wanted.  Banner of Christ Community Church where my cousins Ed, Barb and family go donated a box of  Action Bibles, which are very cool illustrated Bibles.  Victoria (on the right), a member of our team, got us Teen Study Bibles using her discount from work.  It was so good to see these kids get to pick out their own Bibles, for many of them it might be the only one they have ever received.

We all had a really fun time at our GoldRush Christmas party!  It was a wonderful time of fellowship with our youth and we were able to remind them of the true meaning of Christmas.  Thank you all for praying for them and for this ministry!

Merry Christmas!

Another Story Of God's Providence

Praise God that he provides for even our most basic needs!  We have experienced God's providence over and over again, especially needing to rely on Him as support raising missionaries.  He has used many people like you and sometimes even uses people that we don't know.  We are excited about how God just provided us with a washing machine and dryer!

Our house came with a washer and dryer and we were hoping they would work well so we wouldn't have to buy new ones.  Unfortunately that wasn't the case, so we started looking on Craigslist and prayed for God to lead us to the right ones.

We saw many sets that were nice but too expensive, and if we saw a set that was well priced it was usually gone before we could act.  Sunday Rebecca saw a new post for a set of Bosch machines which were priced very well.  They are about 10 years old but they are top of the line and originally were very expensive.  We inquired and there was already someone else interested!  We shared with the sellers that we are urban missionaries and that we have been looking for something like this for a while, so they said that whoever got there first could buy them (a very fair way to do it).  We raced to find a vehicle to haul them with (thanks Pastor Dave!) and headed out to Byron Center.

When we arrived they were still there, we made it!  We talked for a little while with the couple selling them.  They asked us about what we are doing as urban missionaries and we shared about our work in Grand Rapids and previously in Romania. They shared that both of their parents had been missionaries in the middle east and that they grew up there.  Then they told us they would like to give the washer and dryer to us for free!  Praise God!

We are so filled with thanks and praise!  Would you please continue to pray for providence in our daily lives and our ministry as we ask God to raise up more supporters?  Thank you for your prayers!

Fall Update

Mark & Rebecca Essenburg Fall Update

Family and Friends, We hope that this update finds you well!  It is has been a little over a year since we returned home from being on the mission field in Romania for five years.  Oh how time flies!  God has led us and richly blessed us in so many ways, we basically had to start over from scratch and let God put the pieces together for us.  These are just some of the ways he blessed and provided: We were able to live with different family and friends for the whole year God provided a very reliable car which was all paid for by generous gifts God led us to a new ministry, making the first connections within a month of being home God provided a great old house which we have been able to restore to beauty with lots of help and hardly any outside labor God has given us many new friends and a wonderful new church family God has provided support that has kept us and our ministry going We could go on and on, praise God for taking care of us and for unfolding his plan for us over this past year.  We are really thankful for all of you as well, we have felt overwhelming love and support that has made what could have been a very hard transition go very smoothly.  Not to say that it's always been easy and that we don't miss our kids in Romania, but we know we are where God wants us to be.  Now we would like to share just a few stories that highlight where God has been at work recently.  Thanks for reading and we hope that you enjoy this update!   God is at work here!   Working at Gold Avenue Church in Grand Rapids has helped us find the answer to a very interesting question: is West Michigan a mission field similar to any other place (like Romania for instance)?  After all, there are so many churches, Christian Schools and religious organizations in the area and many people consider this Michigan’s Bible Belt.  The answer is a resounding YES!  It has been really exciting to see and be a part of how God is working here at Gold Avenue Church!  Here are some examples: We have had around 15-20 neighborhood kids coming to our middle school youth group called GoldRush.  This week we learned about the Old Testament Law and how Jesus came to fulfill the law and give us a new covenant.  We shared the gospel of repentance, forgiveness and salvation (through grace by faith).  When asked if they had heard this before only around half raised their hands!  Then at the end when asked if anyone wanted to help close in prayer, Kayla volunteered (she was one that hadn’t raised her hand).  She began: “Dear God - wait do we say God or Lord?" …then she proceeded to pray. What a beautiful thing, one of God's children learning who he is and how to pray!    As we have been praying for revival and transformation of our neighborhood we have seen God working in amazing ways.  One Sunday morning our pastors felt an overwhelming sense that many people in the church were facing despair in their lives.  So instead of preaching the planned sermon they preached about how deep God’s love is for us, especially when we are hurting.  When they asked the congregation if anyone was feeling despair in their lives, a half dozen people raised their hands and we had an extended prayer time for them.  One of them later shared that they had been contemplating suicide the night before, and barely made it to church, but in coming had been very blessed.   We are so thankful that we have the privilege to be a part of this ministry and that we have opportunities to help and learn even beyond our children and youth sphere.  We have come to realize that the need is great and the workers are few.  Would you please pray that God would raise up more people to help in ministry here, we need help in just about any area that you can think of!

Support Update: God has richly blessed us as we took a step of faith to be support raising missionaries working at Gold Avenue Church.  Through many generous gifts we are nearly fully funded through the end of this year, praise God.  Looking forward however, we only have commitments for 67% of our budget for next year, so we would like to ask that you prayerfully consider how you might be led to partner with us. Follow this link for details, thanks! After months of work we finally completed enough work on our house to be able to move in!  We still have lots of projects which we are chipping away at but it feels so good to have a place of our own again.  We are so thankful for everyone who has helped with our house and for all those that helped us move! Prayer Points:    Pray for God’s blessings on the kids and youth involved in our current ministries -  Children’s Worship and GoldRush Pray for continued leading and guidance for new ministry possibilities - High School Youth Group and Reading Program are a couple on our radar Pray for God’s continued providence in our lives and for more support partnerships Pray for more workers not only at our church but at all churches Pray against spiritual attacks may that come as we advance God's Kingdom

August & September Highlights - We Are Still Here!

Ever since we got the keys to our house we have been really busy.  It seems like all we have been doing is working on ministry at church and then working on the house to get it ready to move into.  This has led to our lack of updates and for that we apologize!  In reality, we have actually done some fun things along the way, it's just been a couple of months since our last post.  So here is a mega recap of what we've been up to!

In early August we traveled to Denver, Colorado, to visit our friend Dorothy.  Dorothy was an intern with us in Romania and we have been able to stay in touch.

We walked around the city a lot, averaging nearly 10 miles each day!  

We toured the state capital building...

...went to a really beautiful botanical garden...

...and enjoyed many nice meals as we explored.  One night we ate a five course meal at this jazz club.

Here we are with Dorothy's husband Andy.  

We ventured out of town on Sunday to go visit the Garden of the Gods.

We love being out in nature and I love a great macro shot, especially of a bee on a flower!

We enjoyed wonderful weather for our hike and couldn't get enough of the stunning views.

On our last night in Denver, we went out for ice cream, waited in line for 30 min in the express line, and then walked back to our overlook for a cool night shot.

Fast forward to Labor Day weekend, we traveled up to Leelenau State Park for some tent camping.

  Love camp food, here I took Rebecca's knife so she used the massive one out of the grill kit!

We enjoyed more beautiful weather and being on the beach and watching sunsets.

Here is the old lighthouse.

We enjoyed hiking and sight seeing while we were there and also went to the beach a couple times.  

We didn't expect to find this many Petoskey Stones, and these are just the ones we found the first day.  

An anchor from a shipwreck in the bay.

In mid September came our move in day - finally!  Nearly one full year after returning from Romania, we now have a place to call our own.  We were thankful for all the help we had moving.  You can see that our dads love their toys!

Part of the moving crew helping unload things from Rebecca's parents place...

...and picking up a gorgeous china hutch from church.  We were able to do the whole move in one day thanks to all of our helpers.  We even started to unpack a bit, and have been working on that since.  There are still many projects to be completed but we got enough done that we could comfortably move in, and we are thankful for that!

We hosted our small group from church in our house, this time with actual furniture!

Then a couple of weekends ago we babysat our friends' kids for the weekend while they were gone for their anniversary.  One of the highlights of the weekend was going to the zoo!

Everyone especially loved the petting zoo!

Hey, they actually like to have their hair brushed!

Here Sam seems to be contemplating something with his flock.

We even got to pet the stingrays!

It was a fun weekend, except for the part where we accidentally went to the Pagan Pride festival, but that's a whole other story! (ask if you want to hear it)  Now we are settling in to our house and hoping that things return to a more normal level of busyness.

We praise God for his faithfulness and for his provision of our family and friends, and for our beautiful old house.  Would you please pray for us as we transition to living on the West Side and continue working on our house?  Please also pray for God's leading, wisdom and empowering in leading ministries at church, we recognize that we can't do this on our own and rely on Him!