Christmas 2008

We did Christmas a little differently this year. First, we gave our children the opportunity to serve others by helping with sorting and distributing Christmas gifts to those in need. Second, we spent less on gifts than in prior years and gave our children Christmas money to purchase some gifts that they would really use. I excerpted some clips from Christmas Day.



The day after Christmas, we took the kid's to a ranch not far from our house to a Bed and Breakfast where they give horseback riding lessons. We had a great time as a family and learned some new skills.

Our trainer, "Ms Tweety", taught us how to groom, bridle, and ride. You'll see briefly in the video that Joshua's horse, Meg, kept walking away and at one point Joshua was facing in the opposite direction as everyone else. It was quite funny!



John

Merry Christmas!

We learned many things in 2008, but above all, we learned in a more profound way that God is faithful. I have seen God do the impossible in our lives, making a way for us to do things I would never have imagined. I hope that each of my readers are encouraged by our testimony and that you too experience God's faithfulness. This Christmas, remember that He has brought hope to the world through his Son, Jesus Christ, our Saviour.

My blog entry today contains highlights for our family from the past year. We wanted to share these events with our family and friends as a demonstration of God's faithfulness.

In July and early August, I visited Burundi, Africa to teach a 2 day Peacemaking Seminar. Below is a photo of an orphanage that I visited with the other team members during our stay.


Upon returning to the US, I began investigating the possibility of developing a 100 hectare (roughly 250 acres) farm in Burundi as a project with my friend Jean-Marie Nibizi. The purpose of the project is to provide jobs for 100 Burundians. We developed a business plan and are currently working with investors to secure the funds. The farm will be used to grown Jatropha, a plant used for making biodiesel fuel. In the process of pursuing this venture, I was offered a new position in my company to lead a marketing effort for biofuels. The new company we are forming is called Envara Fuels. I traveled to Costa Rica in November to visit a Jatropha farm and to begin the formation of a joint venture with the Costa Rica Seed Company. In the photo below I am touring the farm on horseback.

Kim was asked to be an event planner for Christian HELP. She organized an event called Christmas in July to raise money to provide Christmas for families struggling to survive in the Orlando area. Kim also developed the Christmas toy distribution program for Christian HELP. Below, she is standing with Sandi Vidal, the Executive Director for Christian HELP.

Elizabeth earned the "All American Teen Talent 2009" and "All American Teen Community Service Award" in October. She discovered her love for gardening, cultivating tomatoes, cucumbers, carrots, and several other plants. As an early Christmas present, she received a 20 square foot rolling planter box that we built over Thanksgiving. She is performing this month in four performances of the Nutcracker Ballet with the Russian Ballet of Orlando.

Our biggest discovery was Andrea's abilities in Art. The front of our Christmas letter is her drawing of Santa Mouse. She easily mastered creating several Wallace & Gromit characters out of clay. Andrea received her 1st degree black belt in Taekwondo.

Joshua loves building with Legos. This past year he competed in a Central Florida Taekwondo competition and won 2nd place in forms and sparring. He was the smallest, but the loudest in his age category. Joshua also earned his 1st degree black belt this year.

Merry Christmas from John, Kim, Elizabeth (age 14), Andrea (age 12), and Joshua (age 9).

Happy Thanksgiving!

We have much to be thankful for over the past year. Once again, life has brought us many changes and God has shown His faithfulness in many ways. I thought I would share a few highlights from our Thanksgiving day with a video.

Jatropha in Costa Rica

On November 13-16th I traveled to Costa Rica to visit a Jatropha plantation and a biodiesel refinery. I was somewhat surprised when they told me we would be traveling by horseback, since I have not ridden since I was a young teen. I loved it!


My goal in visiting was to meet with Ed Acosta and Daniel Yepez, who run the Costa Rica Seed Company. They currently have 200 acres and are continually planting additional Jatropha within Costa Rica. They are also supplying seed and cuttings to Central America, Africa, Europe and the US.

Our vision is to develop a partnership that would allow us to convert the Jatropha oil they produce into jet fuel. We already have a conversion process working in our lab and will run a test with their Jatropha oil in December. The next phase is to scale up to a 25-50 gallon per day process in preparation for a commercial pilot. We will use the fuel to run tests with a turbine engine to validate the concept. The next phase is a scale up to a 500-1000 gallon per day pilot that we will use to fuel a jet for demonstration and testing. Once that testing is complete, we will begin designing a commercial production facility. I expect that to take us up to 5 years.

My other motivation for traveling to Costa Rica was to learn more about Jatropha planting in preparation for my trip to Africa next summer. It is there that I will train farmers how to plant, cultivate and harvest Jatropha.

I am planning to take the whole family back to Costa Rica sometime next year, prior to my trip to Africa. While there, I will spend more time learning how to plant and cultivate Jatropha.

Peace and blessings,
John

Jatropha Curcas

I have allowed several weeks to pass without posting to my blog. In part, that is because I have been very busy for the last month with conferences and some new developments at work. The biggest thing to happen in the past month is that I am now working on a new project.

We have developed a process through our lab in Panama City, FL for producing JP-8 jet fuel. The process uses crop oils and converts them to fuel. We are in the process of forming a new spin-off company to commercialize the process. The spin off company is called Envara Fuels and if all goes well, I will be leading the sales and marketing efforts soon.

One of the plants we are going to use to create the fuel is the Jatropha Curcas. The Jatropha plant produces a fruit with a nut inside that contains oil. The oil can be refined into diesel fuel or kerosene based fuels such as JP-8.




In an interesting twist to this story, I have been working with my friend, Jean-Marie, in Burundi, Africa to create a business plan to plant 100 hectares of Jatropha next year. The purpose of this venture is to create jobs for Burundians and to provide a source of fuel. It will take us at least 3 years to begin producing in volume.

I will periodically provide updates as we make progress toward our goal of planting next year.

Peace,
John

My recent trip to Newark, NY

September 5th - 9th I visited my parents in upstate NY in the small town of Newark where I grew up. The purpose of my visit was to help them get their house ready to sell next spring. It also happens that my 42nd birthday fell on Sep 6th, during my visit. My Mom asked what type of cake I wanted for my party and I had my answer ready - not cake, but apple pie (with a scoop of vanilla ice cream of course)! I had been dreaming about the homemade pies I grew up with - apple, cherry, peach, rhubarb, blueberry and probably some I've forgotten. We had peach and cherry trees when I was growing up and my Mom often made us pies made from the freshly picked fruits.

As I recall, the apple tree in our back yard wasn't quite mature enough for us to use the fruit. However, on this occasion it was full of ripe apples. My sisters, Grace and Bridget, made the pie from apples off my parent's tree. That, combined with my Mom's homemade pizza, made for a memorable birthday party. In addition to my parents, several of my siblings were there - Grace, Jim, Bridget, Maureen and Matt, along with spouses, nieces and nephews. When it came time to sing Happy Birthday, I put my wife Kim and my three children - Elizabeth, Andrea, and Joshua on the speaker phone to sing along from back home in Orlando, FL. It's a birthday I won't soon forget.

During my stay, my brother Matt and I managed to cut down 12 bushes from my parent's front yard. The bushes were 35 years old and proved to be stubborn. With some back-breaking labor and a little help from my brother-in-law Mike's van, we pulled the first couple root balls out. The rest came out with a lot of sweat and digging.

Photos courtesy of my brother Matt.

The before shot

The neighbor's chainsaw made quick work of the branches

Getting the roots out was the toughest part...

But the end result was worth it

Matt, Dad, and I helped Mike put up some of the ceiling panels on the covered porch and we painted some of the more difficult to reach areas.

Finally, I was able to spend some time working on their computer, transitioning the AOL email program over to Firefox, which seemed to speed up their email and web surfing considerably. If all goes well, they will be able to read this blog faster than ever before.

There was much more we did than I could possibly fit in a blog entry, but suffice to say that it was a great trip. I look forward to making more frequent visits in the future.

Peace and blessings,
John

Andrea Gets Creative

I love it when my children find a hidden talent and put it to good use. Recently, Andrea took up an interest in molding characters out of clay. She looked at some pictures of Wallace and Gromit and molded them out of clay. You can see the results below. Not bad!



Andrea's next project is to work on Lady Tottington from the Curse of the Were-Rabbit. Who knows, maybe someday she'll get a job working on one of the movies?

I'm flying up to a little town east of Rochester, NY to visit my parents this weekend. We will be working on some projects to help get their house ready to sell in the next year. They've lived there for over 35 years and I grew up in that house, so it'll be tough to see it go, but maintenance is getting tough for them.

Hope you all had a good Labor Day.

P&B,

John

Go away Tropical Storm Fay!

When Tuesday passed with no ill effects from Tropical Storm Fay yet, we thought we may have dodged a bullet. However, Fay decided to slow down dramatically, crossing the state and camping out just offshore. Meanwhile, East Central Florida was inundated with non-stop rain for two days, followed by a day of intermittent rain. When the wind really started picking up, it was hitting the front of our house almost horizontally. That's when the trouble started.

I had made an attempt to patch a "small" leak the prior week, thinking it was coming from our window, however, with the driving rain, the water starting streaming in. You can see the result below.



All told, we received 12 inches of rain in Oviedo. It could have been much worse as closer to the coast they received record rainfall of over 25 inches. At some point, the rain has no where to go, so the sewers and drainage ponds begin to fill and the roads flood. Here in Seminole County we were fortunate that the rain did not get severe enough to flood the roads. Ultimately we had to tear up our living room carpet and take down some of the drywall under the window. Yesterday we purchased a dehumidifier and already we are noticing that the wetness is gone. I found the main source of the leak in the flashing of our roof and we have someone coming next week to seal the leaking area. I will still have to repair the drywall, put the molding back on, and eventually replace the flooring, but by God's grace it was not as bad as it could have been.

We also lost two of our 12 foot Papaya trees and pulled over 20 large Papayas off. That was probably the saddest result of this storm.



This is a great reminder that God is in control. When the storms come, there is very little we can do to protect ourselves from the storms and we need to place our trust in Him.

We are grateful to be drying out once again.

Peace and blessings,
John

Cibitoke

One of the high points of my trip to Burundi was visiting the orphanage in the Cibitoke province. This is a work in progress with some buildings without roofs and some still just at the foundation. There is a school, dorms for both boys and girls and eventually there will be a clinic there as well.

Funds for the orphanage and school have been trickling in and work progresses as the funds arrive. My hope is that some day in the near future, we will have the opportunity to raise support for this project. I can't think of a greater legacy to leave than to provide a future for these children.



Peace and blessings,
John

Burundi Peacemaker Conference

This is the first in a series of blog entries where I will be discussing details of my recent trip to Burundi. One of my primary objectives on the trip was to teach a 2 day Peacemaking Seminar on July 28-29th based on materials we translated into Kirundi, the local language. The materials were provided by Peacemaker Ministries.

We had more than 70 pastors and church leaders attend the conference. The response from the attendees was very positive, so I'm already looking at scheduling a longer conference and inviting more teachers to join me next year.

About a week before I left for the conference, by God's providence I met up with Ken Sande, who founded Peacemaker Ministries. Ken gave me some tips for teaching the conference and suggested that I contact Karl Dortzbach, who has taught in Bujumburu in the past. Karl helped me significantly in two ways. First, he provided the Peacemaker brochure in Kirundi, which we copied and used during the seminar. Second, he provided me with a syllabus with small group breakout sessions that were very effective in conveying many of the concepts. I'm not sure how I would have effectively taught the material without Karl and Ken's invaluable suggestions.

I could not have done the seminar without Jean-Marie Nibizi's excellent translation skills. Jean-Marie also understood the material well and helped me out of a few difficult situations where I was having trouble conveying information to the small groups. This talented man speaks English, Kirundi, Swahili and French and I had no trouble understanding him.



Here is one of the 11 small groups that participated in the conference.


Following each small group, I gave the group leaders an opportunity to share insights from the groups. Some of the most important points were made during these group wrap-up sessions.



Near the close of the 2 day conference, I asked 3 volunteers to help me with a role play that Karl Dortzbach has used at his conferences. The gist of the role play is that 3 church members engage in gossip over a pastor's salary and in the process literally become entangled in their sin. Only when they discover their sin and specifically confess it do the ropes begin to fall off. These 3 Burundians took the role play to a level I had not anticipated and were able to use humor and dialogue to powerfully demonstrate the effect of conflict in the church. At the end, 11 people came forward for prayer regarding conflicts they had been involved with.



I would also like to thank Prosper Ndabishuriye who helped me organize the conference, invited the attendees and made sure everything ran smoothly. The conference really never would have happened without his leadership.

From left, Rick Robles, who helped me during the conference, Prosper, me, and Jean-Marie.



I felt the prayers of many during the conference and I am privileged to have been part of this opportunity to bring these critical truths to these pastors. I'm looking forward to future opportunities to equip these and more leaders to teach other Burundians these important Biblical truths.

Peace and blessings,
John

Back from Africa

It will take me a while to get completely back in the swing of things, but I thought a quick update on my trip would be appropriate.

This past Wednesday at 3pm, our team of 11 returned to Orlando airport after leaving Bujumbura, Burundi at 3:15 pm on Monday (9:15 am EST). We made a short stop in Rwanda, then flew to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia where Ethiopian Airlines put us up in a hotel for 24 hours. On Tuesday we spent the day with some people from the Lutheran church and visited a seminary. We left Addis at 10:45 pm (3:45 pm EST), stopped over in Rome and landed in Washington, DC at 8 am EST. After our final layover, we landed in Orlando, a full 2 days after leaving Burundi.

There are way too many highlights to include in a single post, so I'll give just a few. The 2 day Peacemaking seminar I taught had 60 pastors and leaders on day 1 and over 70 on day 2. I had several pastors request that I return to teach another seminar in their churches and over 30 requested additional materials. I have already begun to strategize on how I can return with more teachers next year.

One of our team members took over 1000 photos. I filmed 100 video segments with my Flip camera. Another member filmed several hours of video. So be looking for more photos and highlights over the next few months.

I'll close with a photo that we took at an orphanage and school. Click the photo to enlarge it. I am holding up a Z88.3 sticker which I sent to ZRadio.org to post on their site. In the distance is the Congo.

Christmas in July

Kim was the event organizer for Christian Help's first Christmas in July event. The purpose of the event was to raise money for Central Florida families that cannot afford Christmas.

Kim with Executive Director Sandi Vidal


Elizabeth received several sponsorships for Fuzzy Hats for cancer patients at the event.


We even had a visit from Santa and Mrs. Claus!

Set the World on Fire!

I'm getting a quick post off before I leave for Burundi, Africa. I leave on July 23rd, returning on August 6th. While there I will be teaching a Peacemaking Seminar to 200 pastors and church leaders in Carama. The other 10 people who I am traveling with will be helping stucco mud brick homes and working in a health clinic. Following the seminar, I will join back up with the group and help them work on homes for a day. After that, we'll travel to an orphanage and school that is being built in Cibitoke. We will spend a few days visiting the Lutheran World Relief sites in Ruyigi. We will be meeting with government leaders and church leaders on several of our daily trips. I will have an opportunity to preach at a church in Carama my first Sunday there and the second Sunday we will be at the capital - Bujumbura.

Elizabeth recently danced to Set the World on Fire. I couldn't think of a better tie in to what God is allowing the 11 of us to do in Burundi over the next 2 weeks. Only the Lord knows how many hundreds of lives will be impacted.



Thank you for your prayers for our safety and also that many lives will be impacted, as well as our own!

Peace and blessings,
John

Happy 4th of July!

On Friday, we sat at the end of our driveway and had a few of our neighbors join us to watch fireworks. Since we have nearby neighbors that put on a decent fireworks show, we don't have to go far. This video shows just over a minute of the fireworks. We also had some of our own fireworks, but they didn't show up quite so well on the video, so I didn't include them here.

Taekwondo Black Belt Ceremony

In June, we received our 1st degree black belts in a special ceremony. This video has some clips from the ceremony and some comments John and Joshua made during the ceremony.

Puppets with Joshua and Andrea

Joshua and Andrea do a dry run of their puppet show -

Happy Father's Day!

Happy Father's Day to Grandpa's in NY and KY -

Joshua clowns around

I got a new Flip camera for Father's Day, so expect to see more videos on my blog in the coming months. I've been holding off for a while on uploading some videos of Joshua acting silly on camera. Here are a couple of new ones -





Joshua and the girls are just getting warmed up. I'm sure we'll have some very funny videos given their creative spirit.

Elizabeth's recital costumes

Elizabeth's end of year ballet recital is on June 20th and 21st. We took a couple of photos of her with the outfits she will be wearing. She will be in three dances, including one solo performance. I'll have to post her solo costume later, but she will be dancing to Britt Nicole's "Set the World on Fire".




Listen to "Set the World on Fire" -

The Joy of Giving

Don't let the title scare you. I just wanted to make a short entry about something we have been working on with our three children. I found out about these things called Action Packs from Voice of the Martyrs. I first found out about this cool ministry from Randy Alcorn's excellent novel "Safely Home". It's one of those can't put down once you start novels.

Anyway, I decided to order an Action Pack for each of our three children and today we filled them. Elizabeth knitted a blanket and sweater for hers and she put her knitted hats in each of the bags. We were able to find the remaining items the bag listed and each child paid for the contents. We put a photo of the children in each bag. Finally, we mail them to Voice of the Martyrs and they send them on to Pakistan on our behalf to persecuted Christians.

I titled this entry The Joy of Giving because you can see by their faces that our kids loved putting these together. They are beginning to understand how much they've been given and it really blesses them to give back to others.

I took a photo of one of our Papaya trees. Kim has picked countless papayas from this tree and used them to make smoothies. This one is about 12 feet tall. Amazingly, it was just a baby tree 2 1/2 years ago. I'll get some photos of our Plumeria's when they bloom, which should be soon since the buds are already starting.

Zellwood Corn Festival

On Saturday, we went to the Zellwood Corn Festival. The Festival is held every year in Zellwood, Florida. They serve "all the sweet corn you can eat" and line up several Christian bands. Originally, Steven Curtis Chapman was scheduled to perform, but his friend Michael W. Smith came to take his place. The Chapman's lost their 5 year old daughter Maria in a tragic accident the previous Wednesday. This video is a fitting tribute to her.



In honor of the Chapman's, we signed a huge banner and also laid carnations on a table, with a pledge to pray for them. I didn't get a photo of the banner, but here are some of the carnations (many more were laid on the table after I took this photo).



One of the performers was Chris Sligh of American Idol fame. He was quite good and I even recognized a few of his songs from our local Christian station - Z88.3.



We had some fun with the kids "racing" each other on some of the tractors they had on display. These tractors are used in the Zellwood tractor pulls during the summer months.



Joshua looks right at home on this John Deere.



It was hot and humid, although there was a breeze that made it more bearable. We sat on these chairs for a few hours, listening to various bands and periodically walking around to see the craft booths and grab food. When it got close to the time when Michael W. Smith was going to perform, Kim saw lightning and decided we needed to pack up. It ended up pouring for over an hour before they decided to cancel the rest of the show . Maybe next time...



We went to Cypress Gardens on Sunday afternoon, but I didn't get any photos. I'll have to take care of that next time we go.

Peace and blessings,
John

Pray for Myanmar and China!

Stephanie Duffee put together this slide show of photos and text from the recent natural disasters in Myanmar and China. The presentation is almost 7 minutes, but well worth it. The last slide lists several prayer topics. We prayed through this list as a group on the evening of 5/22 and the next morning we heard that Myanmar was allowing foreign aid workers into the country - the first item on our prayer list!

Thank you Scott and Stephanie for organizing this.

Peace and blessings,
John

Click in the lower right corner to switch to full screen.

Black Belts, Mother's Day, and a Soldier's Homecoming

I pulled a few pictures off my camera from the last month, so I thought this would be a good time to catch you up on our activities. Rather than put these photos in separate blog entries, I decided to combine them into one.

In April, we received our Black Belt recommended through the American Taekwondo Association, which means we are now eligible for our 1^st Degree Black Belts. This has been a 2 year journey for us, so it's exciting to be close to achieving this milestone. We started down this path so that I could do something fun with the children. We have learned several traditional Taekwondo forms, many different kicks, self defense, board breaks, and how to use weapons like the bow staff and nunchucks. I'm looking forward to continuing toward our 2nd Degree.

Last week was Mother's Day and my daughters wanted to honor their Mom by throwing a party. Their idea was to decorate in a Hawaiian theme since Hawaii is one of her favorite places (we went to Oahu and Big Island for her 40th birthday). The girls helped me get the decorations and organize. We also purchased her a mango tree since she loves adding mangoes to her homemade smoothies. I grilled marinated chicken and pineapple for her and she loved it.

There were two funny things about the party. The first was that the day before, Kim looked me straight in the eye and told me she wanted to wear her Hawaiian dress to church. Now she had no idea we were doing this. Does she read minds or what?! The second thing that happened was we had to set up right after church while Kim went to the mall so that she could come home and be surprised. We were literally running around the house frantically getting everything ready and in the process I burned myself on the grill. Then I went inside to help make the smoothies and we panicked and let the smoothie maker overflow one of the cups because we couldn't turn it off. It was hilarious because Mom's do this stuff every day and even with 4 of us we still couldn't get it done.

Last night we threw a party for our good friends, the Nobles. CAPT Chaplain Jason Nobles and his family were in town for a welcome home party. Jason returned from Ramadi on April 1st. It was a huge blessing to hear Jason's testimony of answered prayer. Not only did God protect him while there, but he was able to share the gospel with many Soldiers. Please remember to pray for the Nobles as they head to their next assignment in South Carolina.

It is hot here in Orlando as we look forward to the rainy season. It's been a while since we've had rain, so much of the grass is withering. It certainly makes you appreciate the rain when you don't have it.

Peace and blessings,
John

Tour of the UCF Computer Vision Lab

On Monday I went on a tour of the University of Central Florida's (UCF) Computer Vision Lab. Our office is just down the street from UCF and at least half of the people in the office are UCF grads (I'm in the minority - a University of Maryland grad). The purpose of the tour was to talk to some of the students and professors to determine what areas we could collaborate on in the future.

In the photo above, I'm standing next to my division manager, Matt Kraus. We are in front of UCF's entry into the DARPA Urban Challenge (see their page for more photos). Their car is called, interestingly enough, Knight Rider (UCF is home to the Golden Knights in case you aren't aware).

In the photo below, you can see some of the instrumentation they used. On the front of the car are a couple of LIDAR scanners to scan the road, making sure the car stays on track and also is aware of obstacles. The center front of the car has a radar detector that they used to detect oncoming vehicles to help navigate intersections. On top of the car are more LIDAR scanners, a GPS for navigation, and some other gadgets whose purpose I do not recall. They have several rack servers inside to run the instrumentation and control the vehicle.

OK, so those of you who have no idea what the DARPA Urban Challenge was, DARPA offered $2 million to the team whose car could autonomously navigate a 60 mile course in less than 6 hours. The cars were required to obey all traffic rules (no speeding, legally passing, merging into traffic, negotiating intersections, etc.). You read that correctly - autonomously means that the car is driving itself. Carnegie Mellon won the competition in just over 4 hours. UCF, operating on a very small budget, made it 2 hours through the course and then went off track due to a bug in the GPS system.


Actually, the car was on the last part of the tour. The first part of our tour was of the Computer Vision Lab. The students are involved in some very interesting projects, such as an image tracking application that can track a target (person or vehicle). One use for the technology is to locate a person or vehicle in a video feed and track it's movement for surveillance purposes. I'm looking for opportunities to work with them on upcoming projects.

Peace and blessings,
John

I leave for Burundi, Africa on July 23rd for a 2 week mission trip. We will fly out of Orlando on United to Dulles airport and then we take Ethiopian Air to Addis, Ababa. We stay overnight in Addis and then travel to Bujumbura, Burudi.

While there, I will be teaching a 2 day Peacemaking seminar where I will teach a group of pastors principles of conflict resolution. The teaching materials come from Peacemaker Ministries. I was able to have the lesson translated into the native language, which will make it easier for the translators. I have only taught with a translator once before, while in Haiti, and that was a short lesson, so this will be an entirely new experience for me.

We will also be helping stucco some of the new homes that have been built. The photos below show what the mud brick homes look like. During rainy season, these homes do not stand up well to the elements, so our goal is to stucco them with cement to protect them from the rain.

We will also have the opportunity to meet with church leaders, people living in the area, and with some of the government leaders. Our main purpose there is to bring hope to people who represent one of the poorest countries in the world. Burundi is at the bottom of the list in terms of per capita GDP.

I have decided to trust God for my expenses for the trip, which will run about $3000 for the airfare, food, lodging, vaccinations, and other expenses. The airfare alone is $2190. I had planned to use part of my refund from the tax stimulus checks the government is sending out to pay for the airfare. To my surprise, I checked my savings account today, and the IRS deposited $2100 into my account! I don't think it's a coincidence that the amount is almost exactly what I need for airfare.

More importantly, Kim and I have been raising money to pay for the pastor's transportation costs, food, lodging, translation, and conference rental fee for the 2 day conference. The average cost per pastor is $80. So far we have raised over $1400. There is no cap on the number of pastors we can invite, so any additional money that comes in will automatically go toward bringing more pastors to the Peacemaker's Conference.

Thank you for your prayers and support.

Peace and blessings,
John