End of 2021 Newsletter

 Dear family and friends,

The year is almost over. After 2020, we are grateful for what we were able to do, even though it was a scaled-back version of pre-Covid years. Looking back, we want to give thanks to you who have encouraged, supported, and prayed for us this year. Most of all, we want this Christmas season to be a season of praise to God for His grace in our lives through this year so we filled in this “Thankful” acrostic.

Trip to South America: For the first time since Covid shut borders throughout our world, we were able to travel. In Arequipa, Peru, I taught about Biblical finances to the Bible Institute students and spent hours with the church leaders going over qualifications for those in leadership in the church. Joan taught the children’s workers how to plan lessons and advised the children’s teachers on developing their own curriculum.

Abigail and Joan

Health: Two years have passed since my stroke. Life changed dramatically that day, but God continues to give grace for ministry. I tire more easily, but the trip to Peru proved that being able to teach invigorates me.

Abigail: Abigail is an eleven-year-old girl in Peru. When she was three, her parents asked us to be her “spiritual parents.” Due to the distance between us, we cannot do much more than pray, but we are delighted to see her growing academically, socially, and spiritually. We look forward to seeing how God will use her.

Next year: We are expecting a busy year in 2022. Right now we are planning five trips abroad: to Bolivia, the Amazon, Luxembourg and Spain, Mexico, and Liberia. Of course, much can change between now and then.

Kindness of neighbors: We were in Maine when we received a call from our neighbor about a tree that had fallen in our yard. We are thankful that they were willing to check for damage to the house (none) and to take pictures for us.

Family and friends: The encouragement we receive from our family and friends helps to motivate us in our ministry despite fatigue or discouragement.

Unreached goals: We still have things we want to do before
God calls us home. We thank God for these unreached goals as they keep us pressing on.

Love: Your love demonstrated to us in many ways has encouraged us many times. However, God’s love keeps us throughout the trials and triumphs of life.

Thank you so much for your encouragement and prayers. We look forward to seeing what God will do in the coming year.

Your partners with missionaries around the world,

Charlie and Joan Farley

Missionary Support: Churches or Individuals?

Which group is better for raising support?  These are some of the arguments on both sides.

Churches are better:

• They are consistent.  If they commit to you, you can be quite sure that the money will be there every month.  If they have to let you go, they will notify you.
• They can give larger amounts.
• You have a whole group of people behind you praying for you.

Individuals are better:

• They are quicker in their decisions to take you on for support.
• We can have a personal connection with them.  When you visit them, you are only visiting one person or family instead of a whole group at once.
• We can be more involved personally in their lives.

Which do we want?  Both.  Both are very important to us.  We recognize there are advantages and disadvantages on both sides, but we love the advantages that having both gives us.  Yes, I know these are my reasons and they may not be the same for our supporters, but from this side of the process, I love having both.

I want churches because:

• I have been part of prayer meetings where prayers have gone up from an entire congregation on behalf of their missionary.  I want individuals in their churches to have that corporate sense of “We’re in this together.  We’re on our knees before God as an army who is fighting with them.”
• We both love explaining missions and our particular ministry to groups of people.  For Charlie, that’s often from the pulpit.  For me, it’s with children, teens, and women.  I love the questions they ask and the interest they have.  It encourages me to keep our presentations fresh and meaningful, and to make sure we are one our knees before God before each one of those presentations asking Him what His desires are for that group of people to know.
• When we have churches, we pray for their corporate witness and testimony in the community, for their leaders, and for the decisions they have in front of them.  We want to be able to support entire churches this way.

I want individuals because:

• We can be involved personally in their lives.  When a baby is born, we rejoice.  When a parent dies, we grieve.  
• We pray more personally for those people who are our personal supporters.  When we pray for a church, we are praying for the whole church and sometimes a person or two who comes to mind at the time.  But when we have individual families supporting us, we pray for the family’s own needs.
• We can visit with them easily when we pass through town.  With churches, we can only see them as a group on Wednesdays and Sundays, but with individuals we can meet up for coffee and get together on other days of the week.

So as we wait for our support to come in, we are praying that God would give us both individuals and churches who would see and want to support the niche that God has given us in missions of working under national leaders to train their people.

Changes in Raising Support

"Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than meat, and the body than raiment?  Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they?"  Matthew 6:25-26

My first support raising experience was simple.  After I graduated from college, I decided to go work in an orphanage in Mexico.  Most of my daily costs would be covered by living at the orphanage.  I would need money for insurance, food costs on my days out of the orphanage, gas money to travel back and forth to the orphanage in Mexico and the office in Texas, and other miscellaneous expenses.  My home church promised me monthly support as well as several relatives and individuals.  Within a little more than a month, I was ready to go.  I don't think I even had health insurance.

After my two-year commitment there, I resigned and looked for another ministry where God could use me.  God opened the doors to Guatemala.  This time I was asked to raise $400 a month in support.  That sounded like an astounding amount to me after my first experience.  The mission agreed to let me go even though I didn't have that much promised yet, and they would help me find more support after I arrived.  In three months, I was in Guatemala.

When I left Guatemala for the Philippines, my support requirements increased as did my connections.  By the time I left there, though, I was working for a church that gave me a salary and no longer needed monthly support.

This experience is completely different.  Because of overseas travel, medical sharing expenses, and the cost of living, we are being asked to raise a phenomenal amount.  We are hoping to demonstrate that we can live well on a lot less than is recommended, but until we have enough to cover our daily expenses so that we can buy (or rent) a place to live again, we won't know.  We are frugal people.  We don't believe we should be living lavishly.  We want our supporters' money to be well spent in ministry.

My past experiences of raising support were simple.  Raise what you can, go, and expect God to meet the rest.  This time we can't do that.  Although we might end up living abroad, that is not currently the plan.  The current plan is to live in the US and travel to other locations to teach.

I sometimes wonder how in the world we will raise this kind of money.  We're talking more than twelve times what I was asked to raise thirty years ago.  But God is able.  He can either raise that kind of money for us or show us how we can reduce our expenses so that we can live on lots less.  Either way, it will be God who meets our needs.

We would appreciate your prayers for us.  We have had requests to go teach which we have had to turn down because our support isn't high enough yet.  We are currently at 7% of our stated requirements.  In order to accept more teaching engagements, that number needs to come up.