Verse to consider: 1 John 3:23-24
“And this is his commandment, that we believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ and love one another, just as he has commanded us. Whoever keeps his commandments abides in God, and God in him. And by this we know that he abides in us, by the Spirit whom he has given us.”
School Update
It’s been well over a month since our last update, but not without reason! Our Spring Semester has ended and we wanted to wait until we could give one conclusive update for all that has happened and what is to come.
Before classes ended, Samantha and I had another opportunity to teach. I began by teaching the book of 1 John, and Samantha taught 2 and 3 John.
These books are so rich in statements concerning truths about Jesus and our identity as believers. 1 John in particular seems to serve almost as a list of “creedal” statements by which believers may look for guidance and assurance; “By this we know…” being a key repeated phrase to John’s writing.
One of the duties that Samantha and I share is to cook breakfast for the students and staff before each class, so the students decided to bless us in return and cook breakfast for us on our last class day!
We wrapped up the semester with a week of “debrief” for our students, where we took the time to affirm them and reflect on all that they had learned from their journey through the New Testament. What an amazing group of disciples they’ve been!
And finally, we held an end of semester celebration for our students where we invited all of our local ministry partners and the student’s families. We’re so proud of these students!
Summer Plans
Heading into summer, we (Emmaus Ministries staff) will be busy planning for our next semester. Not only will we have students from our current semester returning to study the Old Testament, but we will be adding a handful of new students that we’ve accepted to attend our next semester. It’s going to be a full classroom! As many of you know, we spent last summer doing a lot of planning and restructuring of our school to make it what it is today, and now we will look at fine tuning our program from all that we’ve learned. Please pray that God will continue to lead us and bless Emmaus Ministries as we do our best to help others know God through his Word.
Along with preparations for Fall semester, Samantha and I will being doing a bit of traveling in order to visit friends and family and work on raising support. Between the 4th-18th of June, Samantha and I will be traveling to Homer, AK to stay with family there. And then we will be traveling to Virginia around the first two weeks of July. All of you from either of these places, we’d love to connect with you!
Our Fall semester will pick back up on August 13th.
Prayer Requests and Baby news
Samantha is currently in her 27th week of pregnancy and is doing awesome! She’s such a trooper!
We’d love for your prayers for her especially as we look to our traveling plans and think about her comfort. Along with that, we’d also appreciate your continued support as we are still trying to find a more agreeable living situation. Simply, we need to increase our monthly donations in order to afford alternate housing. We’re currently living on about $1500 a month. And with your help, we’d love to see that amount reach $3000! If you’d like to contribute to our mission, please take a moment to visit our donation page.
Also, if you would like to contribute by helping us prepare for our new baby, you can also visit our baby registries at Target and Amazon:
Click here for Target registry
Click here for Amazon registry
Thank you all so much for the encouragement and support that you’ve shown us, we could never express how much it has ministered to our hearts and blessed our lives.
– Jacob and Samantha McRae
More Pictures
The McRae Family 