Summer furlough report

Hello, partner!

I'm writing to you from Buena Park, California, during a two-month furlough for which our mission is to seek out new ministry partners. As most of you will remember, our financial situation in the Philippines is in crisis due to the weak dollar, as well as other factors (our exchange rate has sunk from P55:$1 to as low as P40:1). Carole determined we should raise an additional $1,800 per month in support in order to meet our budgeted needs, to stop falling behind each month, and to prevent another crisis in our next term.

It has not been easy to find new ministry partners. Virtually every missionary outside of the United States is facing the same pressures, and churches report receiving pleas just like ours from other missionaries. Not a single new church has yet expressed a desire to partner with us. Carole and I are engaged in a cycle of sending out letters to churches and following up those letters with phone calls and e-mails. Please pray that God will connect us with some new partners.

Happily, we also have some good news to report. First, six of you have either begun helping us financially or have increased the level of support at which you were already sharing; as a result, $450 of the $1,800 we want to raise is now committed. Second, in just the past few months the dollar has actually strengthened a bit against the peso--up 12.5%. This means that if the fuel and food crisis don't worsen, we'll really need to raise less than $1,800 more monthly to be able to sustain our work in the Philippines ($1,150 more at this point)! If you'd like to help us, please call us at (714) 728-4824.

A fantastic fringe benefit of being in the States this summer is that we were able to watch our oldest son, Cormack, graduate cum laude from Hope International University's Pacific Christian College. We are very proud of Cormack, who plans to begin work on his Psy.D. at Azusa Pacific University in the fall. And for those of you who know Carole's mom, Mary, I am also happy to report that she is recovering nicely from her broken arm.

Thank you for praying for us regularly. We thank God for our current ministry partners, who have been faithful and in many cases have helped us through some lean months with generous extra giving. Without our partners, we would already have been forced to leave the mission field by now. We hope to visit as many of you as possible while we are here!

You may contact us while we are in the States via e-mail at cmck@missionaries.com. Carole returns to the Philippines with the kids July 30, in time for their school to resume. I will continue here on into August as needed to meet with prospective new partners.

In Christ,

Chris McKinney