Al & Diane Mellinger's Missionary Adventure

Celebrating Volunteers

September 29, 2022 – This week Spring Arbor University sent 4 students and a sponsor to our shop to volunteer to help us for 3 hours.  It is part of SAU’s 150-year celebration.  Their goal is to have the students and staff volunteer 150,000 hours this school year.

The team that came helped us get over 1000 new Christmas items sorted, tagged, and labeled. Which was a big help as we are working hard with local groups getting them to make a number of new items for this coming holiday season. 

We are so thankful for and glad to be helping folks in our part of the world care for themselves and their families.

Watch for. the unveiling of these products in the coming weeks.

Also if you would like a display table of product for your church to sell this holiday season. Let us know.

Continue to pray for God's blessing on the stores - with the economic woes sales are slowing but cost are not.

Pray too for the groups we partner with - pray God's grace on and toward them.

And finally, pray about our funding.

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To help with our personal support click here

Marketplacemanna.com – online store

To help with our development fund click here

 

Keeping it Real!

September 17, 2022 – it has been some time since we updated folks. Here are some ups and downs of the last month.

Diane’s 87-year-old mother passed away. It was not unexpected but still a life experience that needs to be processed. The Memorial Service will be September 29^th in Florida and for those family and friends up north another one on October 8^th in Jackson, Michigan. In addition, we attended Diane’s nephew's wedding as well. Pray for the family and friends as we gather for these memorials. Diane and I will be officiating at the Michigan one.

We have been traveling a little, we had planned to be back in Bulgaria, so we did not have churches scheduled. We have spoken at several organizations about what we do. Pray that we could add a few more speaking dates this fall and winter.

We are still working with the local homeless shelter, elderly home, and other groups. Right now, these groups are helping produce Christmas merchandise as we have to get ready for the upcoming Holiday season. Pray for the folks we work with they are people made and loved by God!

The stores are in a holding pattern. They are covering the monthly expenses but not much more for development. The economy (with inflation) means that many folks no longer have the discretionary funds to spend on many of the items we display.  We finally found another employee for our Ann Arbor location which will help with scheduling and upcoming Holiday hours. We praise God for this answer to prayer.

Our personal support some months continues to fall short. Please continue to pray about this, we know we are non-traditional missionaries but still, find ourselves praying with and serving many who have no way of giving back.  We are finding this a regular act of faith to trust God for what we need.  Pray for us and about our regular needs.

That is the low down on what has been happening in our lives.  Thanks as always for your prayers and support for what we do.

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To help with our personal support click here

Marketplacemanna.com – online store

To help with our development fund click here