Wednesday, December 31, 2008

Petersons' Prayer Guide - January 2009

Pray for us… for we want to live honorably in all we do. May the God of peace…equip you with all you need for doing His will. May He produce in you through the power of Jesus Christ all that is pleasing to Him. Heb. 13: 18, 20(NLT)

Happy New Year to you all! We enjoyed Christmas as a family with a few traditions; a picnic breakfast at the big lakefront in town, and the watching of “The Nativity” movie in the evening. In the afternoon we also accompanied many from our church choir to take part in a Christmas production at Sea World. For serving in this way we were each given two free tickets to return to the park in the next year – quite a deal! We are spending New Year's Day helping with a fundraiser for a high school Christian group, manning concession booths at a big football game.

We are on vacation this week, as mentioned in the last prayer guide. There seems to be a lot of chores to take care of, but we are trying to find ways to rest and be refreshed in between the work.

I am now having physical therapy to try and regain full function in my knee, after the arthroscopic surgery last month. The good news is that the surgeon didn’t find any tears or arthritis. Although he cleaned it out, I have yet to find out if the pain I went in for has been taken care of or not. I didn’t anticipate the time it is taking to get back to normal! Please be patient with us if we take awhile to respond to your letters, etc. The days go by extra fast when you spend several hours each day on rehab!

Josiah has now been accepted at two colleges he’s applied to. He is also finishing an application to Moody Bible Institute in Chicago (it requires more essays...) and would like to visit that college soon, too. He had a good offer of scholarships from Columbia International University, but with the total yearly cost of a private school, he is still several thousand dollars a year short of what is needed. Please continue to pray for him in this decision.

Here’s what’s on the schedule for January:

Gary
The year is starting off very busy for me. We are short staffed and many of us are doing double duty.

I am also preparing to teach Lesson 3 for the Perspectives in the World Christian Movement courses being run in Central Florida in February. I have not taught this lesson before. Shortly thereafter I will be teaching lesson 5 on the north Florida circuit. I have taught this before, but it has been revamped, so I have to re-work my lesson. I love teaching Perspectives, but there is some work involved. I do these after hours (mostly evenings) so I can keep up at the office. Here’s the website if you want to know more about it: www.perspectives.org

5 I will be the host in Discovery for the day. We are down to one volunteer for hosting purposes from the 3 we had in the Fall. It means many of us have to step in as needed.

6 Leading devotions for Wycliffe’s Total It Up course here in Orlando (check out: www.wycliffe.org/Events/EventsList/TOTALItUp.aspx)

6 & 8 I will be teaching the “Anthropology” section for Total It Up. It’s a fun class to teach.

5-9 Wycliffe Discovery Education planning and preparing for new semester.

10 Josiah’s 18th birthday!

11 We will drive Esther back to college following her vacation. Please pray as she works to balance relationships, work, planning for the future and her studies.

13 Mission Encounter for Venice Christian Academy (12 High school / 2 adults)

15 A-Z program for Real Life Christian Academy (28 students / 12 adults)

23 A-Z program for Regency Christian Academy / AZ (28 3rd graders / 18 adults)

25 Robyn celebrates another year of life (:

27 YME Altamonte Christian Academy (20 12th graders)

28 Near Him Home Educators home school group. A-Z (70 1st–5th graders). YME
(30 6th–12th graders)

30 A-Z program for First Christian Academy (120 5th graders).

Tuesday, December 30, 2008

Greetings from the Dudecks - December 2008

It's been a year of challenges, but with plenty of hope and encouragement. Here are some of the challenges we've faced this year:


In January and February Jennifer was part of her school's Robotics team, and John was a "parent-mentor". The team had to build a robot in six weeks that would compete against other robots to play a game. The robot didn't win anything, but the team took the "Rookie Inspiration Award" twice. It was a lot of fun and a good time for John and Jennifer to work together.
Jennifer graduated from Olympic High School this year. She entered a competition with the National Center for Women & Information Technology, and was one of 28 nation-wide to be awarded a laptop computer and $600 cash.

Jennifer applied and was accepted by three universities -- NC State School of Engineering, University of North Carolina at Charlotte, and Taylor University. She decided upon Taylor. It's a small private Christian school in Indiana. She is majoring in Computer Science/New Media and minoring in Studio Art. She has just finished her first semester.

When we went to visit Taylor University in April, the engine died in our Toyota Camry. We had to leave the car in Indiana to have a rebuilt engine put in. It took two more trips from Charlotte to Indiana (an 11 hour drive each way) before we finally got this challenge resolved. We are grateful for a church in California that gave us a gift that covered 1/4 of the expenses. In August we took Jennifer to Taylor and participated in the International/Missionary Kids orientation week.

Pam's health has been our greatest challenge this year. She has been having trouble with insomnia for several years. Doctors had not been helpful. They just prescribed sleep medications that progressively were less effective. This fall Pam went to her doctor determined to break the pattern. She had to get off of her dependence on the medications, which was very difficult. She has been following a sleep regimen to establish better patterns, and has had definite improvement. She is now sleeping better with no medications than she did before when taking them. We are encouraged. It was very difficult for a while.

John's work at SIM International working on Information Technology projects has been a challenge. His current project has not been making rapid progress, although it is moving ahead. Pam has not been going in to the office, but hopes to soon be feeling enough better that she can return to her work in the archives.

Our financial needs continue to be a challenge. As you know we receive financial donations from supporters for our mission work. We have had increases in our needs, mainly due to the cost of medical insurance, and some of our supporters have cut back or stopped giving. But we have had some giving increases this year, which is encouraging, though we are far short of our requirements.

One of the things we have enjoyed doing is volunteering at various history sites. Pam has been doing living history for years, mostly hearth cooking, and John has started going along to take photos. John is looking into ways to try to make a little money doing photography, although he hasn't sold any pictures yet.

We are planning a trip to California January 17 through February 10, 2009. We will be visiting the churches that support us financially, and spending time with family and friends.
We are grateful for all your prayers on our behalf, and for your generosity towards us.

With all our love,

John, Pam, and Jennifer Dudeck
E-Mail us at: john.dudeck@sim.org.

P.S. We are all on Facebook, so be sure to look us up.

Tuesday, December 02, 2008

Peterson's Prayer Guide - December 2008

“For a child is born to us, a son is given to us. And the government will rest on his shoulders. These will be His royal titles: Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.” Isaiah 9:6

As usual, we had many more events than were scheduled when we wrote the last prayer guide. Overall it was another great month, but I (Gary) confess there were some groups that I felt I just didn’t/couldn’t connect with. One group showed up with less than 24 hours notice. Though I spent a couple of hours with them, I just felt there was no interest. It was discouraging, but I have to leave it with God.

Election Day! We had over 1950 people come to our center to vote. There were many opportunities to talk about what we do, and even to share the gospel with a few. It was fun hearing some of the voters in line accurately telling others all about us. Some of these new friends in the neighborhood have come back to volunteer at the center in various roles. Praise God!

I had a gentleman come up to the Discovery desk with his new bride by his side. She said, “He’s been anxious to see this place for 6 years and we are so excited to finally be here!” He had been one of the workers who put the Discovery Center together. That was just 6 weeks after his first wife died and he was struggling. Assembling it and reading much of the material he was putting up was a big part of his healing through that loss.

Our trip to Columbia International University in South Carolina was a fabulous experience. We hadn’t expected a program for us as parents, but they provided that concurrently with the potential student events. We were very impressed with the college, the lovely setting and the caliber of the staff and students they’re producing. Josiah is leaning strongly towards it, but we are still waiting to hear what scholarships he will receive.

The Last Languages Campaign Celebration on the 21st and 22nd went great – at least from my vantage point. We had lots of visitors from around the world on Friday, and from around central Florida on Saturday. We’ll tell you more about it in our newsletter. We are getting ready to produce that now, so be looking for it in the next few weeks. Pray that we’ll do a good job of communicating and inspiring the recipients.

December Schedule

1st I will be hosting in Wycliffe’s Discovery Center as well as giving the morning tour. Pray for divine appointments. Robyn will be driving Esther back to college after her Thanksgiving break with us (5 hour round trip).

2nd Robyn is having arthroscopic knee surgery. Pray that it will be successful and she’ll recover quickly.

3rd I will be speaking to a large group of Hispanic middle-schoolers (junior high) at Inglesia de Palabra Viva (Living Word Church). They support a colleague of mine who is heading off to serve in Cameroon, Africa.

5th 150-200 soccer players in Orlando for the National Christian College Athletic Association Soccer Tournament will be visiting our center. Pray we’ll be able to really connect with and challenge them. We are told that 10% of these players will not be Christians. We also have 90 elementary age kids and their parents here for an A-Z program at the same time.

6th Gary’s Mother leaves early in the morning to fly back home to California. It has been an honor, privilege and fun to have her here – except that she beat me in most of the games we played. Surely my mother wouldn’t cheat would she? That same morning I will attempt to complete the Orlando half marathon (13.1 miles or 21 kilometers). I haven’t run that far for 7 years! Robyn is taking part in a special fund-raising tea to support AIDS ministry. Pray that God will inspire her as she gives the opening prayer.

11th Mission Encounter for 20 middle school students and two adults from Otis Memorial Academy.

12th Mission Encounter for 70 8th graders from Orangewood Christian School. Pray I will get some extra staff to help me as we are short staffed at the moment.

16th and 24th. Face to Face – I will be the Mission Speaker for our 1pm public presentation to any visitors.

25th Happy Christmas to you all! Thank God for those who now have the Christmas story in their language for the first time.

26th – January 2nd Family staycation – holiday at home. Plenty of work projects to catch up on as well as getting ready for a busy new year.