The Ross Family

November/December 2020

Newsletter

Prayer Request:

  • Justin’s flight training, January 10-25 in Corpus Christi Texas
  • Safe travels while driving to Texas, Kentucky, Tennessee, North Carolina, and South Carolina for January through February while Finishing up filling our schedule for meetings until the end of June 2021.
  • Opportunities to serve and preach the Gospel on our journey.
  • Harmony’s second semester of homeschooling 1st grade on the road!
Greetings in the name of the Lord,

As I contemplate on all we should share for the last newsletter of 2020 let me just start off saying today has been a good day, the last day of the year has been ice cold freezing rain all day in Sherman, Texas. As we look back to this time last year, we were planning a start time for deputation. Justin had the opportunity this past March during spring break to travel to the remote villages in Alaska with Bro. John Pinnix. Having spent time there, seeing such a great need, and after much prayer we started preparing for full time deputation. We spent the next two months of April and May preparing to hit the road and renovated our travel trailer for full time living. We started deputation with our first introduction at North West Bible Family Camp in the beginning of July, then spending our last service with our home church at Bible Baptist Church in Spokane Valley, WA that following Sunday. What an amazing opportunity we have had fellowshipping; meeting new churches and family’s in Washington, Oregon, Montana, South Dakota, Kansas, and Oklahoma. Over 3200 miles already!

Our first announcement of praise would be the arrival of baby Cherrity Edith Ross, she’s finally here! She made her entrance into the world at 8:39 am weighing 8lbs 15oz 21 inches long on December 1, 2020. She’s beautiful and we thank God for keeping her healthy and strong! We are thankful that we were able to be in our home state for the holidays this year and await the arrival of Cherrity. Spending time with family was great for the girls to see both sides of their cousins. The saying “time fly’s when you’re having fun” is oh so true. New places and people to meet not only did we stay busy with family during our rest and recovery, but we were blessed to attend some churches. We presented our ministry in our hometown where Justin and I met, Chelsea Ok. We also visited in Pryor, Sperry, and Claremore Oklahoma! The Lord opened doors for our family to make new friends in the ministry and share our burden for the remote villages in Alaska. We are gracious that these pastors hosted our family and blessed us with kind gifts from their congregations. A pretty sweet gift that was given was an Oklahoma state cut out and the members of that church signed it. The pastor wrote the scripture Galatians 1:10 next to his name so of course I looked it up and had to share the scripture of encouragement from one person passed on to another and now into the newsletter for others to contemplate. “For do I now persuade men, or God? or do I seek to please men? For if I yet pleased men, I should not be the servant of Christ” -KJV. This was a great reminder to my heart mind and soul, as we have been meeting new churches all over the country I’ve come to a conclusion we all may have a different place to be a servant, but we all have one thing in common that is Christ died for all men to be saved. As we had opportunities to serve at our sending church, it was good to take a break from the road to serve and work where we could. On December 26, we hit the road again to finish out our deputation travels. When we started deputation, we prayed and talked about when we would start and ultimately get to Alaska. We know God has called us and we don’t want to waste any time getting there when there is such a great work that needs to be done. We planned for a year deputation and God has blessed above and beyond to get us to our goal. We started by faith in July 2020, setting a time of mid to late July 2021 to be in Alaska. We are amazed to see God work and currently we are at 60% of the monthly support needed to reach our goal!

Justin has a 10-day`w training course in Corpus Christi Texas, we will meet up with Bro. John Pinnix and his family in January. This will give Justin and Bro. John the opportunity to train and use powered paragliders to reach the remote villages and new homesteads in a quicker and more efficient way. As we were praying about how we were to pay for the training course the Lord not only supplied for the course, but through a complete and unexpected love offering from a church in Enid OK, we were able to buy the complete equipment set that will allow Justin to have everything he needs for powered paragliding when we get to Alaska. We never really have time to doubt God because He is so good all the time. The total cost for the training course including equipment was $15,000.00 paid in full from Gods divine timing not by our power; but God has continued to show that He is still in control and we are excited to see what God has instore for His ministry. These last two months of the year have truly been filled with God’s blessings. Justin likes to mention an old preacher he knows that would, without fail, always give the same response when you asked him how he was doing. He would always say: “I have never had a bad day, had a few close calls, but every day is a good day no matter what!” There is a lot of truth in this when we understand that we serve a Risen Savior. We have two things to look forward to as born-again believers: Death, because we will be with Jesus, and the Blessed Hope, because we will be with Jesus. That will always without doubt show us that every day truly is a good day to serve a Risen Savior!

Thank you for all your prayers and we ask that you continue to pray for us as we are almost to our halfway point. The idea that in seven months we will be serving on the mission field gives a great excitement and joy.