February/March Mission Update: Progress, Challenges, and Next Steps
- Trenton Shields
- Mar 16
- 3 min read
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Life/Ministry Update
There is a lot of planning going on in our lives right now - planning mission trips, planning youth events, planning for my next book release. There is also a lot of working as we try to pay off the debt we've incurred due to the flooding of our home and many of the other unexpected hardships we ran into last year.
Trenton is working fifty to sixty hours a week every week on top of serving at the church, running the youth group, and keeping up with the last repairs on our home from the flooding we had. He impresses me every day with how he handles it (he always has such a good attitude even when he's overwhelmed).
He received a well-deserved award from his work this past week for leading his store into the top ten in the district!
Meanwhile, I'm keeping myself busy with working part time (until summer when my hours go up), writing, editing, formatting, and marketing my books, and gathering momentum for the GO Initiative which we launched last month. I have a few fundraisers in the works for spring and summer. We started a can drive this past month and have seen quite a bit of revenue come in through that.
We did finally settled on a mission trip for this year. Our initial plan was to serve in San Francisco alongside our missionaries Jake and Hallie Woodfin, but after a lot of prayer and deliberation we've decided that, with things just taking off, and with our big trip to Uganda coming up next year, it was best to put that on hold for the time being. Lord willing, we will be returning to Aurora, Illinois this December to work at the Operation Christmas Child facility again as we had a great response to that and it is much more affordable.
The Sports Event Evangelism ministry is in the beginning stages of preparation for the Soccer World Cup next June. We don't have a lot of details on that just yet, but be in prayer for the leaders as there's always a lot that goes into the planning process.
Be in prayer too about possibly joining us! If you've never been on a mission trip but are looking to get your feet wet, it's the perfect opportunity! I'd be happy to talk with you if you're interested.
Writing/Book Update
There are a lot of big things coming up in the writing world.
First and foremost, the re-release of "What I Call Home" will be available April 8, 2025 and I am so excited to share what I've been working on! It includes fifty pages of added content, a new and improved interior design, brand new official Shadow Series cover, and (my favorite part) an exclusive first look at War of the Rising Phoenix (book two in the Shadow Series coming out later this year)!
I have a giveaway going on over on my Facebook page, so feel free to head on over via the link below and sign up to win a free copy in honor of National Spy Day. A winner will be drawn on April 10th.
I am deep into the editing process for book two. At almost 400 pages, there's a lot to fit together, but my editor and I are managing and I am fairly happy with our progress thus far. I won't have a release date probably until the latter half of this year, but I'll be promoting it at a lot of my shows over the summer, my first of which will be Memorial Day weekend (more info to come in our next newsletter so stay tuned).
Conclusion
Plans are a funny thing.
We thrive off of them thinking "today I have to do this", or "tomorrow I want to do that". But if there's anything I've learned throughout my first years of ministry, it's that things don't always go the way we plan them. Sometimes that's harder to accept than we might think. For example, stepping down from full-time support raising to Australia was very hard for me and I'm still dealing with the effects of having to do that. But God has bigger plans. Sometimes he says "Go", and other times he says "Wait". Our job is to step into whichever He decides with confidence knowing He has bigger things in store.
Feel free to check out our website for updated information on upcoming mission trip opportunities and book release dates. http://www.siministry.org/
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