Tim and Sharon Simmonds Equipping the Next Generation of Missionaries! Peeking ahead to 2012! And Merry Christmas!
Peeking ahead to 2012, and the many changes that are coming, we are grateful to be serving a God who never changes and whose grace is always sufficient. We are also thankful for new opportunities to serve Him. We appreciate your prayers as we transition to a new location (San Diego, California) and new ministry with Radius International. We will be developing and teaching the Culture and Language Acquisition courses. Thank you so much for your part in this ministry of equipping new missionaries for the great task of reaching the yet unreached with the gospel.
Moving Plans: We plan to move by the end of January. We can keep you updated by email about our plans—if you send us your e-mail!
We Praise God for his provision of a rental home for us for at least the first year (contact us for the address). It is located about 20 minutes from Tijuana, Mexico where we will be traveling to regularly once Radius classes begin there in July. Email us for more info about our new ministry or read more here!
Thanksgiving was spent in the Pensacola, Florida area with Sharon’s brother, Dan, his family, and Sharon’s Mom, Jerry Fitzgerald. It was a great time, and we are thankful for the chance to spend time together. It was worth the 30 hours driving time!
Jason moved to Chico, CA in October and is doing well there, living with some friends. He plans to fly back here for Christmas and spend a couple of weeks with us, before returning there. We are thankful for how well his move and adjustment are going.
Sarah’s Graduation! Sarah’s university graduation ceremony will be held at Southwest Baptist University (Bolivar, MO) Dec. 16th at 7 pm! We are excited for Sarah as she completes this milestone in her life. She will receive two Bachelor’s degrees: BA in General Music, and BA in Intercultural Studies. Sarah plans to move to San Diego with us, at least to start with, with her goal being to serve in East Asia eventually. Pray for wisdom for her, as she makes plans. She hopes to be involved in one of the ethnic Asian churches in San Diego while she is there.
Praise God for another group of missionary candidates who will soon be graduating from the NTM Missionary Training Center and making plans to serve in cross-cultural church planting and support ministries around the world. Praise for those who have heard and believed the good news of Jesus Christ in their own language for the first time this year, and can celebrate the Savior with us this Christmas! Pray that the Lord of the Harvest will raise up more laborers—and be willing to BE one! Praise God for his amazing provision for the disaster relief of the Mamusi tribal villages that were devastated by flooding and landslides back in August. Please also Pray for the ongoing growth and outreach of the Mamusi tribal churches.
We so much appreciate your prayerful interest and partnership in our ministry. We trust you are truly blessed this Christmas.
Moving to San Diego area in January!
Thank you for praying for us as we have considered some major ministry changes this summer (not what we planned on for the summer!)
Moving to Radius International in January! We are excited to report to you that we believe that the Lord is directing us to the San Diego area to work with Radius International! We wrote you a few weeks ago, asking for prayer as we considered a request for us to move to the San Diego area to work with this new mission training school, that was initially called “Among All Peoples” (AAP). We were able to visit some of the leaders of Radius in July, when some friends from one of our sending churches in Seattle were also able to join us to help us work through this potential ministry change.
We came away encouraged, but still had some things we needed to consider and clarify before making a final decision. We have talked with Dave Burdette (Academic Coordinator of Radius) a lot on the phone over the last month or so, and we visited San Diego again this last week for the Radius board meetings. We had an excellent visit with the board, we are excited by their heart and vision, and have accepted their invitation to work with them. Tim will be responsible to develop and teach the Culture and Language Acquisition components of the course. We are privileged to be a part of assisting in the pre-field training aspect of this God-sized project of World Evangelism.
What is Radius International? Radius International is a new missions training organization. It is not a missionary sending agency, but is a comprehensive missionary training program, desiring to provide similar missions training to what we have been involved with here at the NTM Missionary Training Center (MTC), for the wider evangelical missions community. You can obtain more information by visiting the Radius website at www.radiusinternational.org.
NTM seconding (loaning) us to Radius: We have really appreciated being a part of training future missionaries here at the NTM MTC over the last 9 years, and have appreciated our coworkers and leadership. We had no plans to leave and were not looking for anything else, but after receiving a request to consider working with Radius and looking into it more, we believe God is wanting us to take this step of faith and move this way. NTM has been supportive of us as we have considered this change of ministry and has arranged for us to be seconded (on loan) to Radius for a period of 2 years, meaning we will continue as full members of NTM for that time frame.
Radius location: Starting in July 2012, classes will be held at a property in Tijuana, Mexico for the first year or two, while a property in El Cajon, California (just east of San Diego) is being prepared. We will very much appreciate your prayers for us as we look into housing possibilities in the area. We will be traveling to Tijuana for classes at least for the first year or so.
The next few months: It has been amazing to see God provide co-workers to take over our ministries here at the NTM MTC! Tim’s responsibilities have been lightened somewhat this semester, as he will be working on making sure his current course work is ready to pass on, and will be working on training some coworkers, as well as hoping to have time to give some thought to course development for Radius. God has also provided replacements for Sharon’s various responsibilities here on campus and she will be busy with training for these jobs as well. We are praying for someone to replace Sharon’s local ministry with Medical Missions for Christ and our various ministries at our local church here (Lake Area Evangelical Free Church). It’s going to be really hard for us to leave our church, but we believe just as God moved and caused people to step forward and take responsibility when we left our tribal churches in PNG, so He will do here.
Family plans: Jason is strongly leaning towards moving to California, although he may go to a different area of the state where he would live with some of his friends. However, there is also a possibility that he will decide to stay in Missouri, at least for a while. Please pray for him in this decision. Sarah will be graduating from University in December and is also considering moving out with us for a while, before moving on with her mission plans. She may even use the Radius training as she prepares for ministry. This move appears to be good timing for her!
Pictures! You can check out some of our recent pictures here.
Thank you so much for your faithful prayers and support, and your part in this ministry of training the next generation of missionaries!
Partnering together to see the least reached people groups exposed to the good news of Jesus Christ,
Tim and Sharon Simmonds
England Memories
Tim's family
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From South Africa, America, Wales and England,
The Simmonds family all did gather
to celebrate the beloved parents
50th year of marriage!
All of the grandchildren with the grandparents.
We are grateful that we could take part in this momentous event and for the time we were able to spend visiting with different family members, after many years of being separated. During our 3 week visit in England, we were able to make trips to the area where Tim grew up, visit friends in the Cotswolds, visit Tim’s sister and her family in Wales, visit and speak in different churches, visit the area where we went to Bible College in 1982, and spend a lot of time Derbyshire with the family. We were also glad that both of our kids were able to be there with us, and it was a good time of connecting with family again for all of us!
Thank you for your prayers for us during our travels. Everything went well, although with layovers and delays, the trip home was almost a 30 hour journey!
