Brandon & Julianna Jones

This past weekend Brandon and I were blessed with a invigorating and relaxing weekend at a lake in Texas with some of the leaders from our housechurch. Especially after the previous weekend's trip to Austin/San Antonio — which had been great but also fairly exhausting — this was a welcome respite. Thanks, Cathleen and Justin for organizing and hosting the trip! Now on to other news: Mike and Kalyn Arndt visited Norman this weekend. They are full-time missionaries with All Nations in Cape Town, and we worked with them in May on our short-term mission trip. We'll be working with them when we move there in February.
This picture of Kalyn Arndt at Cape Point in South Africa is from our May trip to Cape Town. In a characteristic pose, Kalyn (in the chair) is surrounded by young women, sharing her insight and perspective with them.
They are fantastic people from Oklahoma, and because of their connections with our housechurch they gave the message on Sunday at housechurch. It was such a thrilling reminder of why Brandon and I are moving to Cape Town: because the message of Jesus is the only hope for the problems of the world. That leads me to a related topic. I've been reading in Isaiah with my D-group lately. (You should read Isaiah, by the way. It's great. If you haven't read it before and you start it, you may find it really intense at first, but stick with it and it gets awesome around chapter 35.) So I was reading in Isaiah this morning and found this great verse reminding me that God's plan all along has been to see the whole earth redeemed by his love and mercy. It can be weird reading through the Old Testament and hearing about all the special treatment God gave Israel, but then I come across verses like this and am reminded that God's plan has always been to see the salvation of all people. His plan was to use Israel to reach the rest of the world: Isaiah 49:6 — He says: "It is too light a thing that you should be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to bring back the preserved of Israel; I will make you as a light for the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth." Isn't that awesome?! God wants to bring his kingdom of love, forgiveness, justice and mercy to the whole world. He wants us to bring the kingdom here where we are. I'm excited about doing that here in Norman, but especially also about bringing that to Cape Town starting in February. And because there's all sorts of great words from the Lord in Isaiah, I'll leave you with one more, that doesn't necessarily have to do with missions but is really neat nonetheless. God reminds me (and you!) that no matter how alone we feel, God always sees what's going on in our lives. He's with me as Brandon and I are community raising and generally being really busy, and he's also with you in whatever challenges you're facing. Isaiah 49:15 (God is talking here) — "Can a woman forget her nursing child, that she should have no compassion on the son of her womb? Even these may forget, yet I will not forget you. Behold, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands…" — Julianna

Most of you reading this will probably already know a lot of what's going on in our lives right now, but seeing as we hadn't updated our blog in for-e-ver, I decided to write a short update to give you the 411. Well, Brandon and I have jumped into the community-raising venture whole heartedly, and the we've seen the Lord provide in pretty amazing ways! At the beginning of this month, Brandon and I got word that we were officially accepted to CPx, the church-planting training school that will start off our time in Cape Town. We were very excited, because it means our dreams are that much closer to becoming a reality. The notification from All Nations also was important because it gave us some key information, namely: the financial timeline. We found out that if we paid for all of CPx by Sept. 1, we'd get 15 percent off the cost of the training. That discount comes to about $1,500, because the cost of the training includes everything except insurance, plane tickets and pocket money. So we began praying harder and stepping up our fundraising efforts. The Lord totally heard our prayers and because of the generosity of many people — we have all that we need to pay for CPx by Sept. 1! Praise Jesus! Needless to say, that takes a big load off of us. That was a really big expense with a quick deadline. Brandon and I are glad our father has taken care of that, but we aren't necessarily slacking off in our community-raising efforts. We're still working on building a community of people who can share our vision for God's work in Cape Town and support us through encouragement, prayer and finances. As far as finances go, we still need to buy plane tickets — which will cost about $3,000 for the both of us — hopefully by the end of September. Then we'll need people to commit to partner with us financially monthly. That's a key part of our community-raising goals because we plan to stay in Africa for many years, and this long-term commitment from others is so valuable to us. So that's how our missions stuff is going. In other news, Brandon and I are plugging away at our jobs, making a concerted effort to be faithful in those areas when our hearts are often somewhere else (Africa!). We're excited for what God's doing in our housechurch community here in Norman as well, and eager to jump in again with international students as the semester begins. We both really want to end our time (the next five months) in Norman well, staying faithful to our commitments and maintaining our relationships well. The Lord has been really faithful to supply all of our needs — financially, through interpersonal support, relationships and also in rest. As for the future: we'll continue to meet with those interested in hearing our plans for moving to Cape Town. We're looking for people interested in getting involved in what God is doing there (the fields are ripe with the harvest!) by partnering with us. We'll continue to meet with individuals and small groups here in Norman, as well as in other cities on several upcoming trips. We were in San Antonio and Austin this past weekend, we'll be in Chicago Sept. 4-6, and back to San Antonio/Austin Oct. 2-4. There will be more trips, but that's all we've got planned for sure now. If you would like to meet with us, please let us know! Thanks for reading this far down my blog post— you are truly a valuable part of our community.