Our Year in Europe

What would lead us to spend a year in preparation and many years saving up enough frequent flyer miles to fly our entire family to Europe for a year? Well, of course, the answer is God, as well as a passion and calling that God’s love would be known in all the world.

Our time was very fruitful and we accomplished all of our goals serving as the President of Antioch Network. We also experienced so much wonder and beauty as a family. Our primary purpose was to visit and strengthen our staff and ministry partners in Europe and Turkey. In order to do this, we needed to travel a lot.

Black lines show our travel schedule.

In fact, we flew over 20,000 miles, drove over 22,000 miles, and traveled hundreds of miles by ferry spanning 15 different countries and 30 different cities, with the accomplished goal of visiting and encouraging 30+ team members and ministry partners.

By God’s grace we had no major injuries or accidents; besides that one time I forgot to put on the emergency brake and our rental van almost went over a very high cliff into the Mediterranean Sea.

God’s mercy that our van didn’t keep going over the cliff.

Oh yeah, there was also this other time when we were driving to the Anglican church in Malta where we were serving. I was scheduled to preach that morning and we were pulled over at a police checkpoint and had our rental van immediately impounded and subsequently confiscated for almost two weeks. As stressful and costly as those events were, God provided, and we now get many good laughs about it.

Thank you for supporting us prayerfully, personally, and financially. We could not have done the work without you. We could easily fill a book with all that we did and experienced in this year. Below we have listed a few highlights:

– Support refugee ministries in Malta that included taking care of three Eritrean children for two months

– Help plan and give leadership for three major international meetings for Christian reconciliation in Europe

– Support George and Hanna Miley as Hanna was the keynote speaker at a young adult gathering in Lodz, Poland of 5000 young people

– Support Hanna Miley in Poland as she, for the first time, went and prayed at the site where her parents were murdered

– Help start and support an emerging home-church network in Malta and Gozo

– Help support a new ministry of reconciliation in Malta

– Meet Pope Francis four different times including time to pray and worship together

– Participate in a foot-washing ceremony between Catholics and Protestants at the Pope’s summer palace

– Live with two Germany Nobility families who are part of the Wittenberg 2017 team

– Live with the Evangelical Sisters of Mary in Germany (Canaan in the Desert)

If you want to read more in-depth stories and see many photos from our year in Europe you can click this link.