You have reached the Newsletter of Jeff and Penny Vann, missionaries with Advent Christian General Conference, currently serving in New Zealand as pastors-at-large with the Advent Christian Conference of New Zealand (ACCONZ). We serve as teaching pastors at Takanini Church of Christ, and Christian LIFE Church, Takanini, Auckland.
photo by Jachin Mandeno
Our friend and fellow pastor David Burge continues to struggle with Leukemia, and is in the hospital for treatments often. He is no longer a candidate for bone marrow transplant, and his doctors are now merely trying to prolong his life. Please continue to pray for a miracle -his complete recovery.
Since Jeff and Penny have been here to take on the preaching and teaching duties at David’s church, he has been busy enjoying life with his wife and children. He is also completing a number of writing projects in which he has invested a great deal of time. Jeff is also serving as editor on some of those projects, and enjoying that task emensely.
You can follow David’s progress at this site: http://davidburge.wordpress.com/
photo by Jachin Mandeno
Jeff has been preaching two concurrent series on Sunday mornings. Galatians: The Gospel of Salvation by Grace is taking the Takanini congregation through the book of Galatians (a chapter a month). Keep On is a series of sermons based on Paul’s commands encouraging the churches to persevere in doing the right thing. Presentation slides,notes and .pdf files of these sermons are available at Jeff’s current web log: http://jeffersonvann.blogspot.com/
This month Jeff begins a new course on New Testament Greek which meets every Thursday night at the church lounge. The course is being scaled back to meet the needs of home-schoolers, but is available for anyone who would like to study God’s word in one of its original languages.
So what has Penny been doing? She handles communion almost every week. She is also getting ready to teach a seminar on the Old Testament.
Our Kids:
Naomi, our youngest, is staying the summer with Liz. She is planning on getting a Summer job there but as of this writing has not been able to. Please pray she can find one.
Connie: Is expecting a baby, so we will have another grandchild soon.
Liz: Just finished teaching another year of school.
We plan a short trip to the South Island June 29th-July 2nd to visit some friends we met while Jeff was at Gordon-Conwell seminary. We’ll probably see snow there.
Please Pray:
1)For Penny as she is rarely busy. After so many years of teaching full time,the down time is very hard.
2)The Takanini church as they adjust to two Americans on their pastoral team.
3)David Burge’s recovery.
4)Our safety as we visit our friends on the South Island.
jeffersonvann 