December 2006

God Completes Restoration Village!

This will be the final update for Restoration Village , our project in Sri Lanka , as we are now celebrating all that God has done to bring this effort to a wonderful conclusion. Words cannot express the gratitude of these families or our staff. We have all been blessed and changed by your unselfish generosity and by your heart for the people of Restoration Village . Thanks to you, this project is FULLY FUNDED and almost finished!

(Click HERE to see our new photos or HERE to see our supporter thank you video)

A view from the playground looking up to the homes on the hill . . . Look what God has done!

In less than 22 months, we have witnessed:

•  A tropical jungle become a bustling village

•  Eighty-five families restored to new homes

•  The impact of God's love transcending language and culture

•  The power of prayer to move mountains

•  A house church birthed and growing

•  125 workers (short, medium and long-term) sent out to serve the people of Restoration Village

•  God's favor on our project as it is widely considered one of the best in the nation

•  Tremendous healing in the hearts of children and families

•  An outpouring of gratitude and love from the people

•  Men returning to work in fishing and in other occupations

•  Many miracles of God, including transformed lives, $1.3 million dollars received for the project, and tremendous favor with the government

•  God's faithfulness to provide people and resources at every step of this journey

•  And so much more!

A view of a bustling street and fenced yard

We have been blessed to partner with you and with God in bringing hope, love, and an opportunity for a new life to people who have experienced trauma and heartache beyond anything most of us will ever endure. Because you have given and prayed, this generation and the ones that follow will have hope for their future that otherwise would simply not exist. You truly have an inheritance in Sri Lanka !

In a dedication ceremony in October,
the villagers presented us with a plaque of appreciation

At this time, all of the homes are finished and occupied! The community/learning center plans are near completion, and our livelihood project is underway. The playground and professional building/school are complete. Restoration Village is now home to over three hundred and fifty Sri Lankans! Our long-term team leader has chosen to live in the village with the people, and the impact she and her team have there is profound. Please continue to pray for this team to thrive and for God to fully restore the people in the village in every way, including being drawn into a personal relationship with Jesus.

May you be blessed a hundred fold for what you have sown into this project and this group of people. May God stir your heart to continue to live simply and to give generously so that many others may have the opportunity to experience God's abundant life. Thank you for making a difference!

Pat Murphy
Development Director

June 2006

Move-in day for our first sixty-five families!

Sixty-five of ninety homes are complete, and all but five are underway. This piece of land that was a tropical jungle only sixteen months ago has been transformed into a bustling little village with children riding bikes and playing, adults cooking and having neighbors over for meals, planting flowers, hanging clothes out to dry and moving on with their lives. The faces of these families express all that needs to be said. They are overjoyed and overwhelmed that this dream has actually been realized and they are so thankful!

The website has been updated showing some of the images from this remarkable event. Take a look at www.restorationvillage.org

A big THANK YOU to each and every one of you who has taken part in seeing this project come from a dream God planted in our hearts to an almost completed project! You have made such a difference, and God is working in the hearts of these people drawing them to Himself.

If you adopted a family (by giving $10,030 to build them a home), the picture of your family will be sent to you in the fall when the project is complete. For all who have given, may God bless you one hundred times over. If you haven’t given, there is time to make a difference as we still need $140,000 to bring the project to completion. The final cost of this undertaking will exceed $1,300,000, and we have been very blessed by the more than one thousand individuals and churches who have given so generously. Your gifts combine to be almost $1,200,000! God has surely worked a miracle by providing these resources, and we know that He will provide the rest.

Would you help us finish the work? There are still families to be adopted and other work that needs to be done. If you could help us finish the job, we would be able to move the rest of the families into their homes by July! As we have spoken with so many of you who have given, the joy in being a part of this is something remarkable. If you haven't yet experienced that with this project, you have an amazing opportunity to help see families and a village restored.

You can send your gift to:  Global Hope, PO Box 3087 Waco , TX 76707

With your help, we will complete the job by July! Stay tuned for more updates as we near the finish line! For more information, please contact Pat Murphy at 254-754-0386 or pat-murphy@aminternational.org .

January 2006

To all who have supported or are aware of our work in Sri Lanka

Our purpose in this update is two-fold. First, for those who have given to this work, we want to thank you for your generous support and update all of you on the project. Secondly, we would like to ask for your help in connecting the local church to this opportunity/need.

The Update:
A beautiful village is emerging and the people are excited and thankful about God's provision. Seventy-five of ninety homes have been started, and twenty are complete. The professional services building is completed, and the community center, fishing pavilion, and industrial/business building are nearing the starting line. Electrical power, water treatment and water supply have all been installed. It will take approximately $425,000 to bring the project to completion so that the families can leave their current unpleasant living conditions and move into their new homes in Restoration Village . Our new CFO/office manager and his wife have just arrived on the scene to serve the project and the team. This is another of God's great provisions.

THANK YOU!... for giving, praying and partnering with God in this tangible expression of His deep love for these people!

We need your help!

We estimate that the audience viewing this update represents thousands of churches and we are thankful that churches have given a significant portion of the funding we have received thus far. Further, we are aware that some churches still have undistributed funds which were given for tsunami or other disaster relief purposes.

Here's how you can help: Would you…

Contact your church's Missions Committee or one of your pastors to see if they would consider adopting a family (building a home for $10,030) or making a gift of any amount to see Restoration Village completed? Anyone who adopts a family will know their adopted family members by name and will receive a picture of the family with their new home at the completion of the project. If there are undistributed funds already allocated for this purpose, this could be a huge blessing for all concerned. If you or your church would like to make a contribution, please use the enclosed envelope making your check payable to Global Hope.

If someone at your church would like additional information, personal contact or someone from Antioch to come share this compelling story, we would be honored to help in any way we can

Let the following bullet points help motivate you to pray and partner with us.

•  God is allowing all of us to partner with Him in seeing the people of Sri Lanka be restored physically and spiritually.

•  These families are enduring very difficult living conditions while waiting for their new homes.

•  For safety reasons, we must be near completion before families can move into these new homes.

•  If you will become a short-term ambassador to your church for the people of Restoration Village in Sri Lanka , we believe the resources will be released enabling completion of the project within a few short months!

Please take a few moments to pray and ask God how you might be involved in helping us complete the building of Restoration Village . Thank you for praying and for responding! We believe God desires to do “above and beyond anything we could ask or think” in the lives of the people of Sri Lanka !

August 2005
Since January 1 st of this year, Tangalle , Sri Lanka has been the temporary home to more than 50 short and long-term missionaries from Antioch . Some have served for five months and some for 5 days. We have been blessed to serve a displaced fishing village of ninety families whose homes were destroyed in the December 26 th tsunami. Four adults (with one more on the way) and two children have moved there long-term to see a church-planting movement established.

We have bandaged open wounds, provided food and clothing, grieved and cried with them over their loss, provided a school for the children until theirs could reopen, put the men to work around camp, shared meals and life with them, prayed for and with them, visited them in the hospital, loved and served them in a hundred other ways and have been loved by them as they have experienced God's love for the first time in their lives.

In the wake of our early aid and relief effort, God has led us to both a short-term (one year) and a long-term (five to ten years) work. Our short-term project is the rebuilding of their village (now called Restoration Village ) and has been an enormous labor of love. Our long-term work is seeing a reproducing church raised up and turned over to national leaders.

Restoration Village , which will include ninety homes, a community center, professional services building, fishing pavilion, playground and industrial building has literally sprung from a jungle and is nearing the halfway point of completion. Thirty-nine homes have been started and four are complete. Another twelve are within weeks of being finished. The professional building is finished and is serving as the construction office and all but twenty-five of the remaining lots have been prepared for foundations to be laid. Our teams who are overseeing the project have labored tirelessly, pursued excellence, lived simply, loved the people well and have demonstrated remarkable stewardship. As a result of God's favor and the faithfulness of these servants, Sri Lankan government officials consider our project to be the best underway in the nation.

God is providing the resources steadily as we have seen over $695,000 given to this effort since the first of the year. We still need $754,000 to see Restoration Village completed and these families restored to their homes. An exciting opportunity to receive a $100,000 matching grant has presented itself and we are working to finalize the details ASAP. If you would like to help build Restoration Village through this matching grant or in any other way, please contact Pat Murphy via email at pat-murphy@aminternational.org , or by phone 254-754-0386.

The Church is being established and the new believers are hungry to know God and to learn all that it means to follow Jesus. Many of them have testified saying, “God brought a tsunami so that He could send you to us and we could find Him and have a new life.” Praise God for the revelation and transformation we are witnessing!

Thank you to all of you who have given financially and/or in prayer to support this important work! Please continue to pray for the people of Restoration Village , our team there, and for God to stir people's hearts to give financially to finish the work. For pictures, updates and more information, visit www.restorationvillage.org .

May 2005
As we turn the calendar to May, we are thankful for all God has done in the hearts of His people and on the land He provided for Restoration Village . We are now meeting with several couples (new believers) multiple times per week doing bible study and discipling in the basics of following Jesus, and the number of those who are coming grows each week. The power of God's love is bearing fruit in the hearts of these former Buddhist and how exciting it is to be a part of helping a new church spring up from the rubble of the "old way" bringing life to this new day!

Our long term team leaders, Rudy and Emily E. along with their two children, have landed and have hit the ground running working hard to get their arms around the many tasks they will be overseeing. They were welcomed back by the people they had served in January and are settling into what will be their new home for the next five to ten years. Please pray for them and for their children in the transition as language study and cultural challenges are quite demanding.

Rudy is overseeing the construction of Restoration Village, along with his other responsibilities, and is thankful for our team members, Eric, Raheel, Grant and Sarah as they are working diligently to make sure this project is done with excellence and within budget.

Construction Update:  We now have 18 homes nearing completion and the professional services building is finished making a perfect construction office. We hope to have another 10 to 15 foundations poured before the monsoons come in early June and will likely do more inside work after that until the rain lets up. For the latest pictures from Restoration Village, click here.

Fundraising Update: We are thankful for so many individuals, churches and businesses who have given or who have committed to give to this project. Your generosity is literally restoring a people and their community both physically and spiritually. To date the funding for twenty-five homes has been given or pledged. One church is building three homes! Another team captain from Houston, TX  has pledged to raise the money for the community center, a $70,800 commitment! God is providing the resources through people from around the country, many we don't even know. We are still looking for another 18 team captains to commit to raise the funds for one home or some other aspect of Restoration Village. Will you consider taking a home and family into your heart and sharing their story with others who could be looking for a way to make a difference in this much-needed rebuilding effort?

Prayer Update: We have crafted a prayer for Restoration Village to help us focus on the main things. Please use this prayer and remember to pray for these people and this project, as both are on God's heart. 

If you would like to know more about how you can be involved in this project, please contact Pat Murphy, at 254-754-0386, or email pat-murphy@aminternational.org . Keep praying for the people of Restoration Village, to come to know the only one who can restore their lives!

Restoration Village Prayer

Jeremiah 33: 6-11
Nevertheless, I will bring health and healing to it: I will heal my people and will let them enjoy abundant peace and security… For I will restore the fortunes of the land as they were before', says the Lord.

Lord, based on the above scripture, we ask you to take this village and restore them
not only with homes, but with their hearts restored to You.

•  Reminder that this is God's story

Matthew 25:40
The King will answer and say to them, ‘Truly I say to you, to the extent that you did it to one of these brothers of Mine, even the least of them, you did it to Me.'

Lord, you called us to respond to the destruction of the Tsunami by going to Sri Lanka and
you led us to this one particular village. You placed in our heart your burden to see
this village completely restored.

•  Salvation for all in Restoration Village

Luke 9:56
"For the Son of Man did not come to destroy men's lives, but to save them."

Lord, you have come to bring salvation to this camp. We are asking you to pour out your Spirit as is written in Acts 2 on each of the families in the village. We are asking that the testimony of your restoring power in the lives of the people in this village would touch the whole nation.

We ask you to fill the long-term team with wisdom, unity and daily provide
opportunities to sow the seed of the Gospel.

•  Financial Provision

Jeremiah 32:27
“Behold, I am the Lord, the God of all flesh, is anything to difficult for Me?”

Lord, we believe you will provide the 1.1 million dollars needed to build Restoration Village . We ask you to link us to the financial givers who will generously give toward restoring this village. Use our brochure, email, videos and other communication pieces to reach the right people. We ask for responsive hearts in those who read and hear about Restoration Village .

All for your glory we pray.

In Jesus' name,
Amen

March 2005
In Sri Lanka we have seen a great display of power. First we saw how the power of nature could in a moment destroy homes, occupations and lives. We have now seen how the power of God can restore hope and joy to the very same lives. He has been healing hearts and making a way to heal the land of Sri Lanka.

In our last update we mentioned the possibility of providing permanent housing for the displaced fishermen. Well, a lot has happened in the last weeks and that dream is becoming a reality. It has been unbelievable to watch as God has opened doors of opportunity and favor. Our team has made some great connections with people of influence including the Prime Minister of Sri Lanka.

Working with the fishermen in the village has brought us many opportunities to provide for them, serve them and love on them. We are very excited about the last opportunity that has come. Through a series of divinely orchestrated events and relationships we have began the process of building permanent houses for the displaced fishermen. This means that 90 families will soon have their own homes!

While part of our team continues to work within the village with the fishermen and their families others are focused on the housing project. When I left Sri Lanka the land was nearly completely cleared and the first foundation was being laid! Quickly the tsunami destroyed…yet quickly God restores.

Not only are their houses now being built, but their hearts are being restored as well. Some of the men have been able to return to the sea to fish while others are working to help build their future homes. The women are weaving coconut ropes and returning to their regular chores. The children have returned to school and in the evenings they laugh and play with our team.

Others have taken the ultimate step towards healing and confessed that they wish to follow Jesus. It was to fishermen that Jesus first turned to chose His disciples and in this hour there are fishermen in Sri Lanka that are saying, “yes” as Jesus says, “Come and follow Me.”

The new village we are rebuilding will be called “Restoration Village.” The biblical definition of “restore” is “to bring back into an original state of being…to rebuild.” Surely God desires to rebuild people not just homes and prepare Heavenly dwellings not just earthly ones.

February 2005
www.restorationvillage.org goes online.