The first year on the mission field is exciting. It can also be overwhelming.We often hear first-year reports but they are written in hindsight, softening the trials and possibly forgetting the daily joys. So, when Melinda Dilione, and her husband, Mike, left for the mission field in January 2016, we took this as an opportunity to create an article that viewed the first year as it happened. Taken from CMML Missions Magazine

The events Of 9/11 impacted many people. As a nine year old, I questioned the fate of all those who died. A couple weeks later while running an errand for an assembly workday with my dad, I asked him about them. As we discussed it, I realized I wasn’t prepared to die. In the parking lot of the local Home Depot, I asked Christ to forgive my sins and to be my Savior. I was baptized a couple years later. My family heritage greatly inspired my sense of calling to the mission field I grew up listening to the Story [...]

Nathan’s Testimony I was raised in a Christian home in Omaha, Nebraska, with six other siblings. At age 10, our family moved to the countryside in Iowa. In the following years, the call and drawing of God became evident in my life and, a few months before my 16th birthday, I was born again. Christ made my heart new and I haven’t been the same since! But God wasn’t done with His work. In 2009 I was in a severe car accident, which resulted in a fractured skull, a speech impediment, a day in the ICU, three weeks in the [...]

Dear Partakers of the Divine Nature, We have been home a week and pretty much back to the normal capacity of oomph, energy, vitality and vigor. Not as much as when we were young but as the Lord told Moses “…as your days, so shall your strength be.” So we are enjoying the Lord’s provision of both physical and spiritual strength. . The visit to South Africa was one of the choicest blessings in recent years. Just the opportunity for ministry both public and private was an encouragement to our commitment to serve the Lord wherever He calls. The capacity [...]

Dear Fellow Celebrants of the Lord’s Goodness, Fifty years ago this month we felt like Jacob when he remembered the initial trek across the land of Canaan to Haran. He reports many years later that he crossed the river with only his walking stick or as he called it his staff and now became two companies. Only a staff for the aid of his dislocated hip helped his pilgrimage. We left Oakland California 50 years ago this month. We look back at a rented truck with all our worldly goods and two and a half priceless possessions. I suppose the [...]