Dear Ambassadors,

While attending a Colombia Mission Team fund raising dinner last Saturday, the wife of a gentleman who works at a very large humanitarian aid organization said to me, "your organization has a lot of momentum". I don't think that observation was about me or even Word & Deed so much as it was about you and the indispensable blessing of the Lord.

One year ago, we began the Word & Deed ambassadors program and our very first ambassador was Lydia Vandenberg (nee Penninga) from Calgary. Today I'm very grateful to report that we have over 50 ambassadors across the country at various levels of involvement and we are rolling out the ambassador model to the USA in 2007. By the way, Lydia is expecting a baby any time now!

I have been thrilled and encouraged by all the contributions you have made to Word & Deed and to the service of the Lord in the developing world. You have made and are making a huge difference in the lives of many needy people there.

Quite a number of you are part of a Word & Deed organizing committee in Grimsby, Hamilton, Calgary, Lethbridge or Chilliwack (from east to west). As you all know, we had a very successful tour with Missy Christie in November which raised $78,000 (it has gone up a bit). The success of this tour was entirely due to the hard work you did in organizing, promoting, setting up, and, in several cases, actually cooking the meals. Thank you! Let's look forward to doing even better in 2007.

Speaking of 2007, the Hamilton contingent of the Colombia Mission Team mentioned above put on a wonderful dinner last Saturday night with 170 people in attendance and raised just under $11,000. Most of these people were from one church, Hamilton Rehoboth URC. What a great start to 2007!

The success of the dinners has encouraged our ambassadors in Edmonton to organize a dinner there in the next few months.

A number of you have been organizing fund raisers in schools and church youth groups or using sports tournaments to raise funds. Thanks very much!

Some ambassadors have been very active in coordinating the mission teams that have been going to Gulfport and some are leading a team going to Colombia in a few weeks. In a few months we will have hit 180 people having gone to Gulfport since we began this program last February. Several of you have gone to Gulfport 2 or 3 times, sometimes for extended periods of time. I offer you my heartfelt thank you.

Others of you have been actively promoting Word & Deed to businessmen, churches and individuals. You have been promoting child sponsorships or you have been organizing sports tournaments. Once again, I am very grateful for all your efforts.

Then we have people who are actively running our website, editing our magazine, taking pictures and video at some of our events. Thank you for all your hard work.

Looking back over the past year I count it a great blessing to have gotten to know most of you by phone and/or face to face. I've even had the privilege of staying at some of your homes. Getting to know you has been one of the many high points of my first year at Word & Deed.

I'll send a separate email outlining what we hope to do in 2007.

May God bless all that we have done to his honour and glory and may we continue to be of use to Him in bringing hope to the needy of the developing world – both for this world and for the next.

In His Service,

Rick Postma

Word & Deed Ministries