I just wanted to let you all know where things stand, as a lot is on hold right now and i don't seem to have many answers.
1. I had another MRI on Monday of last week for my Melanoma, please pray all comes back clear. I have left it up to my Doctor as to if I will go to New Guinea or not.
2. I have just started dating an amazing woman named Amy Smith who loves the Lord and is pursuing missions as hard as I am. Please pray we would grow together in this time and that God would make it very clear to us how to move forward.
3. I have been asked to go on a vision trip to East Africa with some good friends of mine to look at how the church could be involved there. Please pray for safety as we travel and that God would be very clear in all of this. He has provided over $13k in as many days for the trip. All we can say is thank you Lord.
4. Please pry for patience and wisdom for me, it has been very hard to put all of this on hold and seek God in it all. I want to be overseas serving now and the waiting has been hard. It has been good to as God is definitely pouring out his blessing. Please pray I would lean on him and see what He is doing in it all.
5. In the interim of waiting I have begun to work a nonprofit named Free City International. The main focus is evangelism and discipleship in the refugee community here in Dallas. It is exciting to see God opening doors of ministry here as I wait on Him. there are over 65k refugees here and most of them are either Muslim of Hindu. It has been a challenge to show them true Christianity and not the Hollywood version of it. Please pray for God to move in their hearts and that we would be able to live our lives in a way that shouts loudly to Him.
6. I have stopped raising support as I am now unsure of when I will be leaving, I will be taking the remaining support and using it for this trip to East Africa. I have been able to do enough freelance construction work to put food on the table and a roof over my head but not much else. please pray God would continue to provide the finances necessary to continue forward in this and still remain free to go when the door opens.
Thank you all for your prayer and support, you have been a real encouragement to me.
I am excited to see what God is going to do in all of this.
please keep me in your prayers,
Ryan carpenter
Ephesians 3:14-21 For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen.