The Council is encouraging us to pursue one new outreach per month. Our new Executive Team or “kitchen cabinet” –pastor, moder-ator, vice-moderator and deacon

chair has met several times to assist in strategic vision develop-ment. The Council is encouraged about two ways to improve

out effectiveness as a church. The first is Leadership Grip, an assessment that gives the Christian disciple a chance to

identify his or her Spiritual Gifts from three different angles: Your top gifts, your personal team style and your preferred body building roles. In order to take the assessment, partici-pants can register and be sent a link via email. Leadership Coach, Dr. Neil Tibbot, will be coming to present these materials during a seminar on January 13th. A second method to improve our effective-ness is the Church Unique vision process with Steve Welling: How Missional Leaders create vision, capture culture, and create movement. The purpose is to see what is working and what is missing at Bethel so that we can be better at being a family that adopts here in Everett. Pray for a posture of open-handed listening and discovery of our best pathways forward.

What a Year 2018 has been! This year offered great opportunity to lay foundations for increased work in 2019. In March, Christopher and Jack

scouted out new places in western Nepal to host pastoral trainings. The two traveled to Bharse and discussed work in Jumla, both are-as with few believers. While in Kathmandu, Christopher taught and met with students at two Bible schools as well as visited with Bab-ita, our daughter, and her sister, Sabita, a very young believer in Christ. Christopher, Babita and Jack also had the chance to witness a taxi driver accept Christ following a ride back from dinner. Chris-topher is currently scheduled to travel to Nepal in September but hopes to make an earlier trip in the spring, God willing. In May, Christopher traveled to Ethiopia, training more than 150 pastors and church leaders in three different locations. This was Chris-

topher's first trip to Africa, and he has been invited to train there again this March across multiple cities. The area of Kemise is of great interest to Christopher because it is primarily Muslim. About 50 believers there were so anxious for training that they met late at night and early morning prior to work so as to garner as much information as they could. In August, Christopher traveled with Pastor Jimmy Ferebee to Thailand and Myanmar. In Myanmar, the two hosted more than 100 pastors and church leaders, offering training from 8 in the morning until well past 8 at night, focusing on Biblical foundations. It was a great time for the two men, who will return next year, most likely in November. In addition, the two are discussing a pos-sible training in Thailand focused on raising strong Christian families. This would piggyback on their efforts in Myan-mar. Just this past November, Christopher met up with Pastor Joel Madson and Kurt Goering, very good friends and teachers, for the ongoing training program in Cambodia. Christopher spent more than two weeks there, working with more than 100 church leaders. This year focused on Bible-study methods, and it was ex-citing to see how well those who attended were able to move through the book of Ephesians by the end of each week. Next year, the program is considering expanding to new locations with a fo-cus toward the northeastern border shared with Laos and Vietnam.

Larry & Mary Harris - Mixtec, Mexico When we left for Nuyoo on September 8th, we were asking God for three things in particular: to complete the back-translation and village checking of I Corinthians, Jude and Philemon; to have a re-treat with the three couples involved in translation and church leadership about the process of printing, promoting and distrib-uting the New Testament in Mixtec; and to present ourselves be-fore the general assembly in an attempt to clear up gossip about who we are and why we are here. We were there for six weeks. All our prayers were answered during the last weeks and not in the way we expected. The translation goals took the whole six weeks. God gave us a very talented back translator to render the Mixtec into Spanish so that the consultant can check it and look for possible trouble spots. The whole New Testament is now in semi-final draft. A member of the community, skilled in such things helped us to write an official letter to the municipal authorities requesting per-mission to present our work to the general assembly of all the com-munities pertaining to Santiago Nuyoo. The president was agreea-ble but when folks saw our names on the agenda, there was re-sistance. However, the following Saturday there was a smaller lo-cal assembly in the community where we live. They read our short presentation and it was well received. They acknowledged that we had lived all those years “nobly” among them, had not divided the community and having the Bible in Mixtec was a good idea. The “retreat” we prayed for happened our last Saturday there. We had a wonderful dinner together, prayed and discussed the future of the translation work.

The Bethel Lighthouse Season Six - Episode Twelve - December 2018

Shining the Light of Christ to a broken world.

Visit our website - www.betheleverett.org Page 1

Bethel Celebrates Christmas!

Many willing volunteers helped make the season bright for folks here at Bethel Church with beauti-ful decorations around the building.

Several Bethel folks braved the elements and tuned their voices to share Christmas carols with our Bethel folks who are home-bound. We went to see Gary Catway in Marysville, Lovia & Arna Stolz, Jim & Sally Cox, Verona Hanson, Ray Terry and Bill Hawkins. Many thanks to those who worked so hard to make all this possible. Special thanks to Jim & Sally and Deen Hawkins who provided delicious cookies and warm apple cider.

Ground Zero Youth Group also cele-brated Christmas with a “Grinchmas” party with 15 attend-ing. Plenty of games & fun ensued

and also the ex-change of “white elephant” gifts.

Our Bethel MOPS group partici-pated in the

Operation Christmas Child and was able to send 13 boxes to Mexico! Thanks to all who helped purchase items for the boxes and helped pack them up.

During the Christmas worship service, the choir sang You Came to Us and we received a visit from Santa. The

Bethel Bearded Brothers got together and sang Have a Hairy Merry Christmas.

Christmas Eve by Candlelight - What a wonderful time of worship and praise. Thanks be to God for his indescribable gift!

All Saints Christmas Day Service

The Feast of the Nativity - The chil-dren brought the pieces of the man-ger scene and placed them one by one. Fr. Ben then shared the

Christmas story. Glory to God in the Highest and on earth peace, good will toward men.

Page 2 January is Prayer Month

Tuesday January 1st - First Tuesday Fast & Pray. Theme: 21 Days of Dangerous Prayer.

Saturday January 5th - 9:00a.m. -1:00pm API #1 Disciple Apprentice Noon-3pm API #2 Disciple Leader

Sunday January 6th - 11:30 a.m. Church De-Decoration day. Also 6:00 p.m. Deacon/Deaconess Meeting.

Wednesday January 9th - 9:30 a.m. MOPS.

Saturday January 12th - 9:00 a.m. Church Work Day & Second Saturday Sewing Circle. A light lunch will be served.

Sunday January 13th - 6:00p.m. Leadership GRIP Seminar

Wednesday January 16th - 9:30 a.m. MOPS Playdate.

Saturday January 19th - 9:00 a.m. Days for Girls.

Sunday January 20th - 6:30 p.m. Church Council.

January 21st-25th - Pastor Wes attends Soul Shepherding Institute, Los Angeles, CA.

Wednesday January 23rd - 9:30 a.m. MOPS

Sunday January 27th - Ian Smith will be visiting.

January 2019 Calendar Events

Salt of the Earth Ministries every Tuesday 9:00 a.m.-2:00 p.m.

All Saints Evening Prayer every Thursday at 7:00 p.m.

All Saints Church Worship every Saturday at 5:00 p.m.

Jessica Lambert (425) 343-6823 jessicatoikka@frontier.com

Carol Toikka (425) 268-1351 caroltoikka@gmail.com

Diane Sandvick (425) 280-9157 disanvick@comcast.net

Make plans NOW to attend! This retreat will be at Lake Retreat Camp and feature Dr. Kathleen

Troll as our speaker. She is the Dean of Seattle Bible College, Director of By His Grace Minis-tries and involved in Awakenings Prayer Insti-tute. Music will be provided by Robin Alexander & Tammie Williams; formerly of the group His Harmony and presently in the Lullaby League and long time friends of Lake Retreat. Please share this with all our friends and let's see how many women we can get together for an awesome weekend! For more information please contact—