A New Year, A New Continent

Dear Loved Ones ~

Merry Christmas and happy New Year! We pray this note finds you well and celebrating God’s goodness from the year past. We are so thankful for His faithfulness, and it’s refreshing to start 2024 looking ahead to what He may do knowing that whatever this year holds, we are held by Him!

One exciting thing about the new year is Chuck’s trip to Peru! He leaves on Jan 8th, and returns Jan 31st. We would love you to pray for his travel (with a Tentmaker’s Bible Mission team), for safety, for the training program that Chuck and his co-worker Nathaniel have designed and written that will be used and tested on this trip, and for the video projects Chuck is overseeing. It will be a busy time! We pray it will be fruitful in the lives of pastors and lay leaders in the church in Tarapoto, as well as an encouragement to our missionary families on the field there!

In other news, we have been living in the new house for just about a year, now, and it is such a blessing. Thanks again to all who helped in various ways with this crazy building project. We are still working on finishing the basement bathroom, laundry room sink, and some outside trim and landscaping (when the weather’s warm again).

Chuck and Connie both taught a class at Frontier this Fall semester, and Chuck will have another missions class for the Spring semester. Connie is homeschooling Asha (16), Elijah (13), and Diya (13) this year and would appreciate continued prayers. Anjali (18) will begin her second year at Frontier School of the Bible in January. She looks forward to preparing for future work in Asia after having had an exciting vision trip this last Fall. Thanks again to all who supported her and are praying for her schooling and future ministry!

Please drop us a line to let us know how you are and how we can pray for you as well.

Love in Christ ~

Chuck & Connie Mathias


He is No Fool…

Jim Elliot, one of the five missionaries who gave their lives reaching the Huaorani people of Ecuador, understood the value of a life committed to Christ. Nearly two thousand years ago Jesus asked his followers, “What shall it profit a man if he gains the whole world yet loses his own soul?” (Mark 8:36) On October 28, 1949, Jim Elliot wrote the following in his journal, “He is no fool to give what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose.”