May 2016

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Greetings, in the name of our Lord.

May has been a very busy and eventful month.

We were able to reinstall the FM translators at Hughes and Sand Point in a more reliable and permanent location. We will hopefully be doing the same for the village of Grayling this June. We are well on our way to the goal of having all of the stations back on the air this summer.

We have also made great strides in the area of arranging local contacts in the villages who will help us with the maintenance of these stations. It is very encouraging to see people in each of these villages become excited about the gospel witness and discipleship the programming we broadcast provides. While most of the villages that we have translators in now have a functioning church, there are still several villages that do not.

We also were able to iron out a number of glitches with our new automation system and reduce some of the work load that the seemingly constant computer crashes were causing.

Speaking of workload, our longtime KIAM station manager Brian Blair will be moving on after 12 years of faithful service with VFCM. His wife Laurie also served as our office manager. We are sorry to see them go, but they feel God is leading them elsewhere. We are keeping them on our payroll until November to give them time to transition to whatever God has next for them.

Please pray for the Blairs as they seek His will and direction. As well, pray for VFCM as we will have to find a way to distribute the approximately 50-60 man hours a week of duties to our already overworked personnel.

God has already provided a couple of experienced volunteers to help with the on-air duties at KIAM later in the summer. This will give us some relief but it is only temporary. Pray that God provides the financial support for our appointees Mike and Valerie Arena to come to the field soon. Pray that God will call others as well. There is just so much work to do.

Another challenge that we would ask prayer for is our aging buildings in Nenana. We have a number of pressing maintenance needs that we simply don't have the manpower to accomplish. There were two work teams that had tentatively committed to coming up this summer, but now it looks like they probably will not make it this year. We know that God has everything under control and that His timing is perfect. I just pray that some of this can make it through another winter.

I do want to take this opportunity to thank all of you for praying for us and supporting the ministry of VFCM financially. Your support has made it possible to take the gospel to some of the darkest and neediest places in the world.

Again, thank you for your part in taking the gospel to the furthest reaches of this vast and wild land we call "The Last Frontier"

Blessings in Christ,

Art Thompson,
VFCM Executive Director.