Update from the Thurmans

Greetings CCA family,

We greet you with great joy. We greatly miss our CCA family and are grateful for your ongoing prayers and support. We are living in Gozo, a little sister island of the country of Malta in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, not too far from Tunisia. Wherever God places us in the world our work with Antioch Network (AN) is consistent. First, we help start and support new ministries. Second, we encourage and build up the body of Christ. And third, we care for the poor and vulnerable.

Did you know that AN, founded by George and Hanna Miley, is celebrating 30 years of ministry this year? We look forward to being reunited with the Mileys soon. I will get to see them in March in Germany, as we meet with rest of the Wittenberg 2017 team. We will be finalizing details for our large gathering taking place around the five-hundredth anniversary of the Reformation.

Here in Gozo we are helping our AN colleagues start a new church, helping start a network of leaders focused on Christian unity similar to the John 17 ministry we helped start in Phoenix, and using Malta as a base – because of its central location and cheap airfare – to fly to Turkey and Europe to continue to meet with our AN team.

To help paint a fuller picture of what we are currently up to we will share the details of two recent days! On Sunday, January 29, we hosted and led the worship service. We had forty-plus people in our home from ten different countries. Keilah did a reading from Scripture and later gave the Bible lesson to the children. Noleen assisted in the communion and I gave the sermon. After the service, we ate and fellowshipped together. It was awesome. It brought back memories of when we started Apprenticeship to Jesus in our home in Phoenix and then a few years later helped start St. George’s Anglican Church, also in our home.  

The next day, while Noleen was homeschooling the children, I left early in the morning to catch the ferry from Gozo to Malta. I spent the day with a young leader Vanja, from Serbia. She started a ministry here to refugees and immigrants. She has no family and no team. I was able to offer encouragement and advice. We then went shopping to buy food and supplies for the Eritrean family, the three children we took into our home last month while their mother was recovering from tuberculosis in the hospital.

The children are back with their mother, but she is still very sick. It was the first time I was able to meet the mother. It was a joy to see the children again; they miss our family very much, but at the same time it was very painful to see the mother suffering so much. I was able to pray over the mother for God’s healing. Later that night I picked up our Gozo team from the ferry and participated in a meeting of leaders from across Malta and Gozo from different Christian traditions who are praying and working together for the sake of the gospel and for Christian unity.

Three things we have been learning:

1. That the home might just be the most important place on earth. As James K.A. Smith writes, the home is a deeply formative space that teaches us how to love. As a family, we are seeing with new eyes, the important role we have in helping shape one another. We are also learning as a family how to identify and affirm each other’s gifts and how to work together to serve God.

2. Everyone is hungry for love and thirsty for grace. As Hebrews exhorts us, see to it that no one misses the grace of God.

3. Reconciliation is needed now more than ever, as the world appears to be rapidly growing more divisive. The message of reconciliation is more relevant and appealing than ever to a world that longs for restored relationship with God and with one another.

With great love,

The Thurman family

You can read more about our past eight months by clicking this link.

UPDATE: Soon after writing this post, Ryan provided this news: “The Eritrean mother today was rushed to the hospital and the three children will be coming to live with us again today. Please pray!”