Wait for the Lord; be strong, and let your heart take courage; wait for the Lord!
– Psalm 27:14

Greetings to all of you wonderful partners! We want to extend a huge THANK YOU to many of you who joined us either in person or online this past weekend as we celebrated all God has done in our lives and what He is going to do as we move forward in our call to Thailand. We were blessed to have our Commissioning Service at our sending church (Crosswalk Community Church) in Sunnyvale, CA. It was a beautiful time of celebration and we were overwhelmed with joy and gratitude to have some many of you celebrating with us. WOW!

We also want to thank you for all your prayers a few weeks ago as we called on prayer over our Visa situation. Long-story short, we had to make a decision whether or not to move forward with the Visa paperwork which would have put pressure on us to be ready to leave for Thailand by mid-November. With prayers and council from IM we decided to let our Visa paperwork expire and thus allow us time together to raise the remainder of funds and be together as a family. 

While we originally hoped to be in Thailand by November, and were disappointed to not see that come to fruition, we rest in knowing God’s timing is perfect. We “wait for the Lord!” Now we are seeing the “extra” time here in the U.S. as a gift. We are able to embrace more time with family and look forward to having one more Thanksgiving and Christmas together before our departure. We are excited to have more time with friends for better goodbyes. We are thankful to have more time to strengthen church partnerships and hopefully visit a few more before the holidays. We are thankful to have time to breathe, to rest in the presence of the Lord, to trust in His perfect timing and to “be still and know.” (Psalm 46:10)

So what’s next? We will begin the Visa process, again, with the hope of launching to Thailand by late January. We are currently at 87% of our PSG which means we still need  $1,885/month in order to be fully funded. We are thankful to announce that because of your generous giving, both committed and one-time gifts, we have ALL of our “start-up budget” raised! Thank you!!! While your one-time gifts are appreciated, what will get us to Thailand is your committed ongoing partnership, whether it’s $25/month, $100/month, or more, it all helps to get us to Thailand and allows all of us to begin the work God has called us to do through your faithful partnership.

We can’t wait to join in what God is doing at the House of Love and House of Blessing and we are looking forward, with great anticipation, to connect with the people that God has put on our hearts.

Waiting on Him, 

Alise and Mark Juanes

Prayers & Praises

-We are thankful for a beautiful Commissioning Service

-We are thankful for God’s peace and comfort as we wait on His perfect timing

-We thankful that we get to be together with family for the holidays

-Pray for Sydney, Gavin and Kolin to have peace in waiting on the Lord and not knowing for sure when we are moving, it’s hard for them to understand

-Pray for all of our hearts to have room for loving new people in Thailand, whom we don’t even know yet

-Pray for ease in getting our Visa, with no complications

Sydney was very disappointed to hear that we wouldn’t be in Thailand this year. She was really looking forward to having Christmas in Thailand with the Williams family (fellow IM colleagues serving in Chiang Rai whom the kids really connected with.) I loved pointing out that before she was sad to move to Thailand, but now she was sad NOT to be moving to Thailand yet. It brought a smile to her face too!

Kolin asks almost daily, “when are we moving to Thailand?” He is eager to go to make new friends and play football (soccer.)

Gavin ran out of our Commissioning Service and made a beeline for the appetizers yelling as loud as he could, “Chicken Satay….that’s my jam!!!”  We are glad to see he has already embraced the Thai cuisine!