Hello friends & family,
Thanks for taking a moment to read our June update. It has been another great month, with much travel and some really exciting developments. So, let’s take a short walk through the month together.
Our month started with a visit from dear friends from New Zealand. Janice was a Rotary Club exchange student in Kelowna and lived with our family back in 1980. Her and Evan spent a week with us and explored some of Kelowna (while we were in our home office :0).
An integral part of our international work is the development and sending of new team members. Michelle had an opportunity to be with them in Toronto, using her skills to co-teach a session on conflict engagement.
Being grandparents is wonderful :0). We had the opportunity to introduce Emil to our moms (the great-grandmas). It is great to see the generations together.
Summer in British Columbia also means time at the beach, and when we can do it with the broader family it is always that much better! One June weekend we got to spend a day with the Derksen clan in the Shuswaps.
We began a 15 day trip June 14. Michelle traveled to Dallas, TX to be part of an intercessor networking training weekend. Not only did her and other Canadian C&MA intercessor network leaders get training, but they heard some incredible stories of what God is doing globally. The relationships started in Dallas continue to develop and we are excited about what this conference will do in Canada and through Canada and around the world.
We then met up in Aruba and spent a couple days with Gabriel & Iris Li, the pastors of the Aruba Alliance Church. It was great to see progress in reaching out to the 6,000+ Chinese living and working on that island.
From there we headed to Panama City and spent time with our Canadian Chinese couple there – Stanley & Rosa Leung. The Leungs have only been there for 5 months and are already seeing some clear ways to be involved in reaching the 300,000+ Chinese living and working in Panama.
After a couple days in Panama, we headed further south to Paraguay, via Argentina and Brazil. Ciudad del Este is a multicultural setting where thousands of people from various parts of the world live together in a free trade zone. This is a prime location for Curtis & Linda Doell, the leaders of a cross-cultural training center, to help train Latin American professionals in character and practical cross-cultural skills before they leave the continent. C&MA Canada sees this type of partnership as a key way that we can come alongside our Latin American partners. We finished our visit there with a leadership summit where we talked about the future of the training and how best to have a constant flow of new candidates.
After a 34 hour return trip to Kelowna, we were significantly depleted and took a couple days to recover. And on the last day of June we celebrated 35 years of marriage! Yup, we made it this far, and are more in love with each other than ever before.
Thank you for your prayers and support for us again this month. If you want to know more about us and our ministry, you can send us a note through the Comment part of this page, or you can check out our biography information at the C&MA website. We also invite you to consider the giving options towards our support or different ministries we have direct contact with.
We look forward to our next connection with you.
Murray & Michelle
The Derksens 
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