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Whenever Moses held up his hand, Israel prevailed, and whenever he lowered his hand, Amalek prevailed. But Moses’ hands grew weary, so they took a stone and put it under him, and he sat on it, while Aaron and Hur held up his hands, one on one side, and the other on the other side. So his hands were steady until the going down of the sun. And Joshua overwhelmed Amalek and his people with the sword. (Exodus 17:10–13 ESV)

March Newsletter - 2015

Hello there,

Thank you for reading our devotional and being a part of Refreshing Hope Ministries. This is our monthly update on what has been happening here. It has been a busy month at Refreshing Hope and it is hard to believe that it is already March! That said, I am looking forward to spring and warmer weather… 

We have launched our new ministry website / online church at www.refreshinghope.org and as I write this, we have around 500 members so far. It is still under development and each day brings new changes but overall we are pretty happy with its progress. All of my writings and teachings are being archived on there as well as others. Each member can have their own blog and share their writings with others. 

As you know, we have changed the email system to send people back to the website. I know that some people preferred the old format, but to us it was like sending an email into space. You never even knew if anyone opened it and often hundreds bounced back to us as spam which was discouraging. People would email us wondering where their devotional was, and there was really nothing that we could do about it. It was lost in cyberspace. The more text in an email, the more difficult it is to get through spam filters. Each word adds points and soon the email is marked as spam and blocked, especially when you send 100,000 emails a day.  

With the new method, we now we have people coming onto the website and leaving comments, making friends and discussing the teaching in more depth. We love the interactivity and connection that is happening there. We are growing together day by day as a community and getting to know each other better. 

There is a private prayer network as always where you can submit prayer requests. You do need to be logged in now to submit prayer requests but it makes it much more seamless. There is a nice chat / instant messaging system built into the bottom bar. You can share posts right to Facebook and Twitter. There is a “Printable View” at top of every article that renders it as plain text for printing or better readability. It has a nice mobile interface but we also have Apps now named “Refreshing Hope.” The Android App is out on Google Play and the Apple IOS App is waiting on review. It should be on the App store within a week. It has been a lot of work to get here, but it has been worth it to see all of the connections happening. 

So we have been praying what now? The key to building a strong community is leaders and there is no way that Sylvia and I can be available 24x7 because just like Moses, we will get tired. We would love to see small group leaders step up and have events. For example, say someone wanted to have a weekly Bible study online, they could create their own group, we could advertise it, people could join it, create an event with a set schedule and say Wednesday evening everyone in that group could meet in a chat room at Refreshing Hope and discuss the Bible together. It would be a bit like a life group, but online with people from around the world and from the comfort of your home. 

A friend of ours is starting up a Christian Internet radio station and wants us to share the Daily Word of Hope on it, so there may soon be an audio version of the Daily Word that you can listen to, possibly a weekly teaching. We will let you know the details if it comes about. 

Another thing that we are looking at is a way to do a live broadcast with an embedded chat room under it so that we could have a movie night and broadcast videos, say at 7PM and then be able to discuss it together. Perhaps one day down the road when finances permit it, we may be able to set up a small studio and do live broadcasts weekly with praise and worship and all. 

For now, we need leaders, leaders, leaders. So if you are up to leading a small group, please let us know. The topic can be anything that you are passionate about. Email us, we will talk about it, pray about it, and if it sounds viable, we will help you get started, advertise it and help you however that we can to make it successful. We will probably attend the first few meetings but then hand it over to you once you are comfortable managing it. Together we will overcome. 

We have had a lot of prayer requests over the last month, and the transitioning has caused all of our prayer partners to have to create new accounts because it is a new website. We are sorry for the inconvenience of that, but hopefully it is here to stay this time. If you fell through the cracks, please let us know!

I want to thank you for your prayers and support during this time, we could not do any of this without you. If you have not created an account at www.refreshinghope.org yet, please do so and join us there. We look forward to being a part of an online community where we can connect with each other daily and share our lives with you in a deeper way. 

I pray that the Lord richly blesses you and that you are covered with His presence as you read this, in the name of Jesus. 

Pastor Dion