When I returned to the States after twelve years as a missionary in Ukraine, Without Walls Church in my home town of Fort Worth welcomed me with open arms. I could identify with the vision of the church to reach out to people where we are, the poorest part of Fort Worth. The somewhat unofficial motto of the church, "The aisles of our church are the streets of the community," were being lived out as they faithfully ministered there. Weekly distribution of over fifty tons of food along with clothing and furniture give-aways soon was accompanied by GED classes and computer training. Our church isn't large (around 100), but we have big vision. My heart desire was to stretch that vision.

Pastors Orlando and Jo Ann Reyes are long-time friends who welcomed me to stay with them for my first year here. What a help that was to dealing with reverse culture-shock! At the end of that year, not only did I get my own place, but Pastor Orlando asked if I would help to develop the missions vision and outreach of the church.

A small group of the faithful helped to put together our first annual missions conference. Our speakers were two of my friends from Ukraine - Volodia Vasutenski, who works with Mission Ethnos doing missions mobilization with me and Pastor Vladimir Habarov, pastor of a church in Western Ukraine which is very missions active. These brothers helped to lay good foundations for us in vision and faith promise giving. What a "jump-start" they gave us vision and encouragement that we could make a difference as they shared about how the people in Ukraine were giving, praying & going from a part of the world that is much poorer than our people.

Dr. Foltz stirred us in a new way in our second missions conference. We celebrated that our church of around 100 people gave over $18,000 to missions in that first year, including sending our pastor and one of our elders to Ukraine on a missions trip to encourage pastors and leaders there.

We are now approaching our third annual missions conference. In these two years our church has grown and developed in missions vision, giving and commitment. Pastor Orlando allows us to do a weekly missions time where we focus on one aspect of missions. Just those few minutes every Sunday has helped so much to get the average person in our church to become a part of what God wants us to do to impact the world. In our second year we gave over $24,000 to missions.

Part of our success in giving has been that our missions committee has been enthusiastic about doing fund-raisers. We try to do about four a year from bake sales to garage sales, but by far our greatest fund-raiser has been our annual Christmas tamale sale. Living in a place where tamales are traditional for many Mexican families & loved by many others, people have stood in line for them. One of our committee members has a "you-can't-top-this" recipe for tamales. Last Christmas we raised $1000 with our tamales. That enabled us to send a special Christmas offering to our missionaries on the field.

We're approaching our third annual missions conference in April. This year Jerry Smith, AIMS vice-president, will be our speaker as we move toward adopting an Unreached People Group. I am personally thrilled that we will be partnering with an old friend from my nine years of working in Germany. Jan Barandse, from Holland, worked with us in Teen Challenge for many years. Now he pastors a large church in Amsterdam, which now has over one-third of its population from Muslim peoples (many of them unreached). We will join hands with Pastor Jan & his son, who pastors in a small town near Amsterdam with almost half of their population Muslim. What a great blessing to reach these people who are precious to Jesus, but have no opportunity to hear the Gospel. The Lord has brought them to Europe for that!

This summer we will also have our first official short-term missions trip to Mexico. This will offer an opportunity for some of our members to "get their feet wet" in a cross-cultural setting.

As a result of our moving to reach out, our church has now officially changed our motto to "The aisles of our church are the streets of the world." The Lord is allowing that to be not only a motto, but our vision!