Fall 2009

Dear family and friends, greetings from the Brenner house!

A lot has been happening over the last few months and we wanted to give you an update.  So hold onto your hat, and here we go!

                First lets start with the kids.  School is in full swing this fall after a summer break that each of the kids thoroughly enjoyed. Michael is quite the young man, hard for me to believe that he could be driving a car  (legally) five years from now.  Some of his favorite hobbies include reading, being the mayor of the little town that he and the other staff kids created in our woods called Kid’s Creek, legos, dart guns, and setting up play times with his friends.  Rachel is now 9 years old and is such a sweat heart.  She loves cooking, playing with Silas the cat, taking pictures, gardening, and is a great organizer of play dates as well.   She has really been applying herself to studying piano.  Stephen is 8 years old and his hobbies include legos, dart guns, bike riding and playing with friends.  Of course one of the quickest ways to get the kids excited is to tell them that they get to go either of the grandparents houses.  They usually get to see both sets of grandparents once a week. 

                The Ranch finished summer camp in August.  For  nine weeks there were hundreds of ranchers and summer staff here.  It was very busy but also very rewarding.  Each of these ranchers  had the opportunity to invite Christ into their life, or deepen their commitment to him, as they were challenged spiritually here.  This summer there were 73 kids that accepted Christ as their savior at camp.  Our kids each attended camp and count it as a highlight of their summer break.  If you know of anyone that you think might benefit from a week of camp let them know to plan for next year.  We would like to fill up each week to capacity.  There are also scholarships available for those who are unable to pay the full price.  We don’t turn down anyone because they lack money.

                This summer Jen worked on her part of the kids school reports.  Each year a sample of the kid’s work has to be turned in to an evaluator and then to the public school officials.  These are called home school portfolios.  She  also kept up a garden full of vegetables, and flowers, and a house for a steady stream of guests.  She really loves photography and has taken some pretty neat pictures this year. In the next couple weeks she will be teaching a Horse Science class to the apprentices. 

                My construction project for the near future is a new indoor riding arena that also has horse stalls, tack rooms, and a full sized apartment built into it.  Right now we are trying to get the riding arena part usable by December.  The size of the footprint is 224’x144’.  It is the largest building I have worked on to date and a new challenge.  This summer I worked with volunteers and apprentices to get the building shelled in.  We had help from an organization called MMAP each month this summer.  MMAP stands for Mobile Missionary Assistance Program.  These folks are retired and self -supporting volunteers.  They bring their RV’s and set up in our camp ground for a month at a time.  They are such a blessing to us.  One of my jobs is to coordinate all the work schedules for the different crews and keep the materials on hand.  If you would like to come and volunteer let me know and I will set it up.

                Last year's apprentice program entered the last phase in June before they graduated in August.  Each student was assigned an area of leadership in the summer camp program.  The two apprentices that we served as advisors for were Rachel Mozeika and Lisa Sobek.  Rachel was a counselor this summer and Lisa worked  in food service.  Most of the students had the opportunity to lead bible study times and some  led breakout chapels of a smaller number of people.  Rachel and Lisa have done well this year showing much personal spiritual growth.  Jen and I are excited that God  brought them into our lives and look forward to see how he will use them in His great plan.  The new apprentice class started in September with 40 new students.  Jen and I serve as advisors to three young men.  We meet with them every Tuesday night for a meal and spend a few hours with them.  It is a privilege to be a part of their lives as God teaches them to be more like him in character.

                In  June  I was part of a team of short term missionaries that included my dad and several friends, traveling to Mexico.  We were connected with a ministry that is reaching out to remote mountain  Indian villages where the people are very poor, very hungry, and needing Christ.  We drove about 12 hours though the mountains to an extremely remote Pima Indian village.  As remote as it was there are many more villages even hours further into the mountains.  There we distributed food, clothes, medicine, health care provided by a doctor that was traveling with us, and did construction work on a church that they are building in the village.  The doctor saw over 80 people in one day.  He worked right through meals and into the night to see everybody that needed care.  There are no toilets in the village, only very very primitive forms of out houses.  The church that we are building will have the first toilets and showers.  We hand dug a 12’x8’x4’ deep hole where the first septic tank will be built.  There are great difficulties buying even the simplest of construction materials in Mexico unless you are near a very major city.  I would like to take a group of apprentice alumni and second year apprentices back to Mexico in April or May of  2010.  If you are interested in this trip let me know.  There will be more details coming out in the next month or so and I will keep you posted. 

Psalm 100:4 Enter into His gates with thanksgiving, and into His courts with praise: be thankful unto Him, and bless His name.

                I have been thinking about a conversation that we had at a recent advisor meeting with our three young men.  We have been studying gratefulness for the last month and a question came up that went something like this.  How do we know if we are grateful for something?  One of the fellas said that he felt he was a pretty grateful person even though he did not outwardly express gratefulness very often.  He was grateful in his head and therefore was having a tough time coming up with personal examples of how he had been grateful.  I think his struggle is one that we all identify with to a certain degree.  I asked him if I really love my wife in my head but don't show any outward evidence, am I a loving person.  Each of us want to think of ourselves as   Are we really grateful if we just think it in our heads and do not show it outwardly?  Or would that just be living a fantasy life of thankfulness in our minds?  If we say we are thankful does that make us grateful?  How many times have we prayed “Thank you God for this food...” and then when we found out what was being served, we did not even try it.  Or how many times have we said thank you for something without truly considering the cost of what someone has done for us.  Talk can be cheap. God is never satisfied with merely an outward token, he is looking into the depths of our heart.  While a verbal thank you is good, it is just scratching the surface of a grateful heart.                 One true reflection of gratefulness is when we are givers in our heart to God and to others.  What are other ways we can show a grateful heart? We can show gratefulness to people we love by giving them our attention and listening to them with interest.  We can show gratefulness to God and others by sharing  the things God has given us.  We can show we are grateful for God's forgiveness and mercy by extending it freely to those who need it.   An ungrateful person is a taker not a giver, no matter how many thank yous they say verbally.

                I hope these thoughts  will challenge you as they have me.  One area of application for me is in expressing gratefulness to each of you for the sacrifices you make for us to be on staff here at MMRM.  It is not enough to think it in my head, but I also want to be a giver toward you all.  May God richly bless each of you.

Love In Christ,

Mark, Jen, Michael, Rachel, and Stephen

Prayer Requests and Needs

·         We need prayer each day for us and our children as they learn through homeschooling, for concentration, attitudes, and self discipline.

·         Pray for Jen and I as we teach classes to the apprentices over the next few months.  Jen teaches horse science.  I teach Responsible Relationships with the Opposite Sex, Christian Ethics 101, Music Appreciation 101 and other short seminars.

·         Prayer for the construction site needs as we work on this riding arena, for materials, volunteers, and safety.

·         Provisions for new snow tires for our family van.

·         God's direction in planning a return short term mission trip to Mexico with apprentice alumni.

Praises

·         God has helped us find some things that have been helping Jen sleep and feel much better.

·         For God's faithfulness in meeting our needs.

·         For the initiative the kids are taking in their studies and for the work God is doing in their hearts.

·         The special opportunities we have with our apprentices this year to be a part of their lives.