Prayer letter - November 13, 2009

Friday, November 13, 2009

Dear friends,

I had hoped to send out a prayer letter about 2 weeks ago, but our house has been hit with sickness for the past several weeks, so I am finally getting to it now. Thank you for your prayers for us, and please keep them coming! Here’s an update from the Palmers…


Preparation for Urbana

In September, I traveled to St. Louis for a training in preparation for the Urbana missions convention, at which I will lead a Bible study of up to 1,000 people. The training was super helpful. I appreciate your ongoing prayers for my preparation for Urbana. As part of those preparations, I plan to hold two all-day-Saturday Bible study sessions at which I will lead all four of the texts in John’s gospel that I will be leading at Urbana. Anyone who wants to attend is welcome – Saturday, December 5 in Paramount (next to Long Beach), and Saturday, December 12 in Pomona. If you’d like more information about attending one of these studies, please email me.


SP update

Three of the missionaries I have been training this year are hoping to be ready to join our SP team in the Middle East by early January, less than 2 months from now. The Team Leader of that team is in the Middle East right now, continuing to do research and make preparations for the rest of the team to join him and his wife in the coming months. I welcome your prayers at this time for this team and the new members who are seeking to wrap up their fundraising and other preparation.


Ministry in Long Beach

Our small group Bible study has been meeting at our house for 2 months now. It has been very encouraging, to get to know this group of people in a deeper way, and to study and apply the Word with them each week. This Bible study group has been a particular answer to prayer for Mini also, as she values deep relationships, and has really connected deeply with some of the women in our study.


Family update

Lily is thoroughly enjoying pre-school and amazing us with how smart she is. She will be 3-and-a-half next month. Emily is 15 months, and is starting to say some words. She loves to have us read children’s books to her.

Lily wore the green sari that appears in a blog post just below this letter to an Indian wedding we attended, to the delight of the Indian people present. Someone at the wedding asked Lily if she was Indian, or white. She responded, “I’m GREEN!” Good answer!


Smile Pinki

2008 was a great year for Indians in cinema! Slumdog Millionaire was NOT the only movie filmed in India to win an “Oscar” at the Academy Awards earlier this year. The other film was Smile Pinki, which won the 2008 Oscar for Best Documentary Short. It is a 45 minute true story documentary produced by “The Smile Train,” a charitable organization that trains and equips local doctors in the “developing” world to do free cleft lip and cleft palate surgeries, thus changing the lives of thousands of poor children affected by this deformity. Mini had received some unexpected money earlier this year, and she wanted to give it to the Smile Train to provide a cleft lip surgery for a needy child. The Smile Train sent us the Smile Pinki DVD as a thank you. The DVD is so amazing and inspiring. It is profound to realize that for a few hundred dollars you can help change the life of someone like the little girl and boy portrayed in this film. After watching the DVD Mini and I both readily agreed that, though we are raising support ourselves for our ministry, if any of you wanted to make a donation to the Smile Train, even if it were at the expense of making a donation to us, we would be completely in favor of that! The extras on the DVD are very inspiring as well. I thought I would share this with you all, in case you would like to check it out. As far as I know you can’t rent Smile Pinki on Netflix, but you can go to the Smile Train website (www.smiletrain.org) and request your own free copy from the home page.

We are so grateful for your prayers for our ministry and family, and are always happy to hear from you!

For the joy set before us,

Dave, Mini, Lily, and Emily

A quote to ponder:

You make a living by what you get. You make a life by what you give. – Winston Churchill