Well, we are climbing out from under the rubble after refurbishing our apartment to send you all year-end greetings and best wishes for the New Year!  And also, to update our year for you since there have been some significant developments. Here are some of the highlights of the year:

        OFF STAFF: The first big piece of news is that we plunged head-first into our own ministry as of July 1^st. Ramesh ended his position at TACF after almost six years of being on staff, first in accounting, then to missions and then back (briefly) to accounting. We are grateful for all that we experienced being on staff at a church that is in many ways on the cutting edge of what the Lord is going in the earth today. We learned a lot from those in leadership there and we’ve made some lasting friendships. TACF remains our home church but we are no longer on paid staff.

        “LIVING BY FAITH”: Starting with a “random” thought as Ramesh was walking along and praying on a beach in Santos, Brazil in 1994, there has been an expectation that we would have our own mission agency, our own ministry; yet never feeling that this could be possible for us. The Lord encouraged us by helping us get our ministry registered as a charity with Canada Revenue Agency in record time… miraculous really. So, with that coupled with a number of prophetic words, we feel confident that he is leading us forward as we step out into “living by faith”. You can have a look at our, “The Peniel Trust” website which relates all the wonderful things that the Lord has been letting us see through our ministry.

        WE ARE ORDAINED MINISTERS: Feel like getting married in Ontario? We can do that for you! Our Pastors John and Carol Arnott, ordained us this fall and blessed us to go forth and conquer! Already we feel empowered and given new authority as we minster. It’s been great. You can have a look at a 12 minute clip of our ordination service here. Haven’t married any one yet though!

        HOUSTON: We spend an awesome two months in Houston, Texas (July and August) with our friends Buck and Anna Eaton. We were there “spying out the land” to see if we would accept their invitation to join them in co-pastoring their young church. We gave ourselves two months to determine if this would be where the Lord wanted us at this time. There are tons of benefits to living in Houston, not the least of which is the weather :), but as time went on we realised that it just wouldn’t be feasible to move there now. We all settled on the plan to keep on going down regularly (as we’ve been doing for the last few years) to be with them. We feel that our home base, for the time being, is Toronto and we’ll travel out from here.

        NICARAGUA: We had an exceptional mission trip to Nicaragua from Houston and we see it as the Lord encouraging us as we launch out into what we believe he has for us to do. We saw the Lord raise a lady from her deathbed after she had been suffering with a brain tumour for seven years. You can read about this incredible supernatural miracle and other testimonies to the power, love and grace of the Lord here…

        GOING HOME: We went first to Saskatchewan this summer to visit Elsie’s relatives and to spend time with her mom who was at the time quite sick with bladder cancer. After a couple of surgeries, lots of prayer and the healing virtue of Jesus we can happily report now that she is completely cancer free and in the best shape possible for her age. We also went twice together to Halifax (Ramesh’s Canadian hometown) combining ministry and holidays. For Ramesh, it was exciting to see all the changes and development that had occurred in the intervening 16 years since he was last there. We did some touring around the province taking in the stunning and rugged beauty of God’s favourite province! We also met a lot of warm-hearted, hospitable Haligonians as we ministered there.

        VERY GRATEFUL: As we look back on this year, we are truly very grateful for all that we have experienced, even those events that caused us to come face to face with our own fragility, our lack and inabilities. It is especially in these moments that we find solace and strength in the fact that we are loved and accepted by our Creator who also happens to be our loving Daddy! We are also very grateful for the very fun times that we’ve had this year, like the longest wedding anniversary ever, since Ramesh was in Indonesia and Elsie was in Toronto! We also got to see God do some incredible things through our lives so we are indeed thankful to him. Most of all we are most grateful for the gift of Jesus because he makes it possible for us to really reconnect to our Father in Heaven and to then really begin to discover who we really are in him.

        LOOKING TO 2008: We expect to be doing a lot more travelling in 2008 as the Lord opens doors for us to continue and expand our itinerant ministry of teaching and ministering. We want to share our time between the developed world and the developing world… so, for example, in January we will be ministering in Augusta, Georgia for a week and in March we’ll be in Nicaragua for about 10 days. We’ve got to do something in the Caribbean AND we’ve got do something with orphanages – beyond what we are doing in Nicaragua. We are expecting 2008 to be even more outstanding that 2007 was!

Again, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you all!

With Love from,

Elsie and Ramesh