Scroll downfor the Stalnaker's latest prayer letter

Ministry Overview:

Cecil teaches at Tyndale Theological Seminary, teaching and training European church leaders (along with some Africans and Asians) for ministry, especially in the areas of evangelism and missions.   In their local church, Cecil is an elder, and Kathy organizes the music portion of the worship services. They serve at Trinity Baptist International Church.

(editor's note:  at the present time the Stalnaker's are in the Santa Clarita area on home assignment until sometime mid 2007.)

Where they live:

Cecil and Kathy live about 100 yards from the Amsterdam city limit in a town of about 10,000 called Badhoevedorp. Holland has a population of 16 million, with about 850,000 Muslims. Evangelicals only make up about 7.6% of the population. The morality of the country is very liberal with homosexual marriages, soft drugs, and euthanasia all being legal. Amsterdam has 800,000 people, with about 100,000 Muslims. The city has 145 nationalities, 400,000 bicycles, 28 parks, 260 trams, 24 diamond polishing factories, 165 canals, 1281 bridges, 6800 buildings that date from 16-18th centuries, and 6 windmills. It rains about 227 days a year and the geography of Holland is flat. 33% of Holland is reclaimed from sea waters. They personally live 15 feet below sea level (Amsterdam has the only international airport in the world below sea level).

Prayer Requests:

Pray that God will continue to use us during our Home Ministry Assignment in the USA.  Pray that God would raise up people to serve in Europe as long-term missionaries and that people will use their resources to fund missions in Europe.

January 2008

Thanks!

I have wanted to get this letter out for several weeks but was just having a hard time doing it because of our travel schedule.  in any case, we have been very encouraged by the gifts, prayers and so many other things that GBC has done for us over the last year or so.  We are very thankful to you and to the Lord for this provision.

Christmas -

Things are going well for us, but we have had a ton of things to do. Some of you know that we were able to be in California to spend time with our family for Christmas.  That was a real treat.  Unfortunately, we didn't have much time to do other visiting.  On our flight back to Holland, we stopped in Atlanta and then drove a car all the way to Newark, NJ.  We were thus able to visit some friends during the trip that have been supporting us in ministry.  Fortunately, we escaped all the bad weather that came afterwards.

The day after arrival in Holland I started teaching a course called "Understanding Islam" for about 30 enthusiastic people in our church (Trinity International Church) on Sunday mornings.  Five days after getting back in the country, Kathy and I attended two brief GEM conferences in Berlin Germany.  The first one was for GEM leaders and the other related to church planting.  These were very profitable conferences which provided a number of resources and networking with other missionaries.  Of course, both helped to stimulate our vision for Europe even more.

The seminary is going well.  At this time we have 55t students, both full and part time.  I have started teaching an intensive course for two weeks at  the seminary called "theology of Missions and Evangelism."  This course deals with the role of the Trinity in missions and various difficult issues in missions such as the problem of the prosperity gospel, receptivity and rejection of the gospel, syncretism, and the uniqueness of Jesus in a pluralistic world of religions.  These are issues that cause lots of problems for anyone trying to reach out to people.

Grace be to you,

Cecil and Kathy