Shields International Ministries

  February 2023 Pre-field Missions Update  Our first full month of discipleship class with our new sending church. Here we are pictured with the small group we get to learn with every week.  February was a busy month of both unexpected blessings and challenges. Between working part-time jobs the first half of the week, and maintaining a busy ministry schedule the second half, we find that we are never short of stories to share! The majority of our month was spent establishing a new schedule in regards to our new sending church, attending Sunday and Wednesday worship as well as discipleship on Thursday nights as pictured above. It has been a time of wonderful refreshment and growth that we now look forward to every week.  Despite the many weeks of relatively bad weather we’ve experienced, the Lord protected and provided for safe travels to multiple other churches including Harbor Church of East Tawas and Calvary Baptist of Gaylord. Both churches, scheduled for the same week, we found to

  Growing Partners And A New Home Church The first month of the year has come and all but gone to a close, and much change has already taken place in both our lives and ministries. After returning home from Australia in November, we began to feel the Lord tugging on our hearts regarding our need for a new sending church. While we have no hard feelings in regards to our previous one, it was clear that the Lord was calling us to move in a different direction. So, after much prayer and discussion, we became members of Hale Baptist Church on January 1, 2023.  Since then, we have had the opportunity to become involved with many of the ministries there, sharing a recap of our survey trip on the 18th, as well as becoming involved in the praise and worship team each Sunday we are able to be present. We also are blessed with the opportunity to begin a discipleship course with our pastor this upcoming Thursday, and could not be more excited about it.   As mentioned in our previous newsletter, Ja

  They say that life is never the same after a survey trip.  It’s one thing to know there is a need, but its another to actually see it in front of you- the spiritual emptiness, the longing, the darkness, and all the things that happen as a result of it. It’s enough to fill your heart with incessant aching, and your soul with a desire for change.  They say that life is never the same after a survey trip, and boy have we found that to be true. We knew going into it, that there would be significant change as a result, but never did we imagine just how much. Our perspectives have changed, and with it, many of our circumstances. And somehow we are fully aware that there is no going back.  Someone once told me that we should never live life as if seeing through a rearview mirror. We are to consistently move forward despite the setbacks, disappointments, and heartbreaks. And as we near the end of another year, we plan to do just that. We’ve turned the page into a new chapter of life and mini

  Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. Over five million current residents. Two hundred and fifty thousand immigrants each year and counting from all over the world.  It is a city full of endless opportunity where many have come to start a new and better life. The job market is increasingly generous and plentiful, and the contrast of the endless ocean and towering mountains unmatched. Yet somehow, less than a third of these people live their lives from day to day with any knowledge or interest in God.  On November 15, 2022, after two full years of being denied access to return due to the countries strict adherence to covid laws, we boarded our first flight as a married couple to Sydney. Twenty-six hours, and 9,474 miles later, we arrived physically exhausted but mentally and emotionally renewed.  Over the course of two full weeks in the country, we were blessed to be able to partake in the ministries of four different churches, two on the northern central coast, one two hours south, and

  We are exactly twenty days out from our very first international missions trip as a married couple working under ABWE and the excitement has begun to peak. Plans are set (Tentative plans…as things do not always go as we plan them to…), bags are ready to be packed, and schedules have been cleared. In a little less than three weeks, we will, Lord willing, be on a plane to Australia together for the first time. This will be Hanna’s first trip there since the pandemic, and Trenton’s first ever. Expectations are high, and it could not have been scheduled for a better time (The Lord has a way of doing that).  As of the second week of October, our house has been officially been sold and closed on. The new owners seem to love it just as much as we did, and though it was sad to see our first home go, we are confident that the Lord has His hand on the situation in both big and small ways. As of yesterday, we have been fully moved in to our temporary room, and all of our outstanding debt aside

  It started in my early teens and worsened into adulthood. At the very moment my life was supposed to be beginning, it felt in every way as if it were about to end. I wanted an escape from the pain, and often turned to all the wrong things. But because of the Lord’s great grace, He pulled me from the ashes and gave me a heart to run after Him as I never had before.  I remember those years as I look back. I was not the person I wanted to be, and I knew I needed to change. So I dug through the Scripture, I listened to preaching, and I read every book I could get my hands on. These are just a few of the books, aside from Scripture, that helped bring me back and change me into the person I am today.  1. Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand     I came across this book while working at my first job. I worked at a movie theatre and saw the ad for its upcoming movie. I was so moved by it that I bought and read the book in less than a week. All 567 pages of it…As I read through this true story, I beg