{Hoffman Holla' 2020-3} COVID-19 Ramifications

Prayer / Encouragement

This virus has exposed us to real existential and physical threats. This creates personal challenges for all of us but also opens doors for God to move. God is the Great Redeemer who transforms what is intended for evil to be a tool in His hand for good.

Things are tough. People are getting sick, dying, overextending health care workers, losing income/jobs. This is suffering. However the goodness of God remains and perseveres.

John 1:5 - The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.
1 John 1:5 - This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you: God is light; in him there is no darkness at all.

God is light. The nature of light is that it a more powerful force than darkness. The absence of light can not stop light. Light has to be covered/removed for its powers to be diminished. Let's look for the ways light is overpowering the darkness. Let's keep our eyes open for the redemptive things God is doing. Let's break our idols, firm our foundation in Christ and drive ourselves to the heart of God in this season.

We would love to hear what God is speaking to you during this time?

COVID-19 Personally

Thankfully, our personal transition into quarantine has been smooth. Unlike many others with life adjustments, we already work and school from home. Our daughter' social & extracurricular calendar is most affected. She is having a hard time with all the canceled events and is greatly missing her horse time. Our new chicken friends are definitely helping with this.

This virus is getting close within our network. We have a dear family friend who's positive for the virus. We've got family with known exposure. We have friends that have already seen COVID related deaths in their community.

There is pain in the midst of this, so we are leaning on Jesus and trying to help others do the same.

There is plenty of fear to talk about and see but you have to work a little harder to see the good. We are trying hard to show Noriah how we can be good neighbors and live out of faith of loving others. We have taken time to walk our neighborhood and check in on some older families that live around us. She loved passing out single rolls of toilet paper and our neighbors loved it too. Our daughter's kindness club has started a #thankthehelpers project where they are all making thank you signs and posting them on facebook. It has lifted all our spirits to shut the news off and do some good.

COVID-19 and Ministry

COVID-19 has presented many challenges for Perspectives. Perspectives has classes that meet all over the country, gathering people together, and instructors fly or drive to different classes. Very quickly gatherings were getting shut down and a plan B had to be put into place. Thankfully Perspectives has been running an online program, has high quality videos of speakers and an amazing staff that was ready to tackle the problem. As a whole team we were able to move our live classes to a virtual platform using zoom. Instructors are still teaching and classes are still able to interact through some pretty awesome technology. Our local volunteer coordinators are the true heros in this as they have had to put all this into action.

For the past two weeks Adam has been in an added three hours of daily meetings to address our organizational response to COVID-19. Our initial prayer strategy and most of crisis response has been moving forward so now we will be switching our attention to the long-term implications of this virus' impact on our ministry going forward.

Frontier Ventures international staff has decided to stay in the countries they are serving in; our office-based US staff have moved to home based work. Our April board meetings are now virtual instead of face-to-face.