July 31, 2006

Dear Friends and Family,

Greetings in the name of our Lord and Savior. We trust as this letter arrives that each of you can say that God has been at work in your churches and your individual lives. I have mentioned before that one thing that God uses deputation for is to teach the missionary how to live a life of faith. He also uses deputation to teach humility. The Christian life must be one of humility. When you are running late for a meeting and then you find out that the address you had was for the pastors home and not the church or you are calling a church to confirm a meeting and find out that they had you scheduled for the day before you were calling, will cause a missionary to be humble. Admitting that you were wrong and then making amends for the error can at times take much humility.

One of the highlights of the past month was to be able to meet another missionary to the deaf. This missionary is deaf herself. She has a wonderful spirit and a great heart to reach the deaf. We thank God for anyone who desires to see the deaf come to know Christ as his personal Savior. It always encourages our heart when we are visiting churches and meet people who are learning Sign Language or who desire to learn the language and then try to reach the deaf. We do our best to help them and encourage them even if it is just for few minutes after a church service. If someone reading this has that desire, don’t lose it! God can use what ever you know for His honor and glory.

We had been nearly using up all our minutes each month with our cell phone plan. I called our provider and was able to rework our contract and get an extra six hundred minutes per month for only ten dollars extra each month. This gives us much more time to be in contact with pastors and churches without having to pay the expensive rates when going over the allotted minutes. A missionary on deputation needs to spend a quite a lot of time on the phone each month. As we are writing this letter, our schedule has been filling up. God has provided several more meetings. Please continue to pray that we can get a hold of the pastors and churches to which God would have us present our ministry. Please continue to pray for the deaf that they will have opportunities to hear about the Savior.

Serving Christ with you,

Cory, Melissa, Amanda, Elaina, and Olivia Ricker