JAMA Ministries

Today June 13 marks 1 month since we have left the U.S.! What an interesting journey. I guess I will call it a journey for a long time. I still do not feel like this is my home but I am feeling more comfortable here. The house we live in has been made quite comfortable by my amazing husband. I am so grateful for his hard work. Today he is hard at work putting in more electric outlets currently there is only 1 per room. That makes it a bit hard when you have things to plug in and I guess as Americans we have A LOT to plug in.
Each day seems to get a little easier here. Running errands is still a pain; I think it always will be. Especially not knowing the language very well, even Jon does a lot of miming to get his point across. I do ok but I sound more like a 2 year old than anything. Oh well, the locals appreciate that I try. And I do try, but usually they forget and start talking to me and they talk so FAST! I catch like 2 words then yell for Jon. LOL I know it will get better; Jon always smiles at me when I attempt my Spanish.
Being a mom here has its challenges too. I thought making sure the girls were safe would be tough but honestly it seems safer here than it did there. The people are so family friendly, they love children and look out for each other’s children. We have let the girls walk to the corner market a couple times together and it has been fine. Helping them manage their homesickness, language barrier and cultural differences is a whole different matter. Monique is only 12 and seems to be of dating age here and gets a lot of attention. Teaching her how to deal with that is hard but Kristi is helping. I never thought of it before but it seems that in another culture ALL the rules change. Like how you interact with men, I cannot make eye contact for more than a second or I am flirting. Who knew!!! I guess the first couple weeks I was really flirting, lol! I am more careful now but it is weird because in the U.S. it is polite to make and keep eye contact!
Jon and I have never spent so much time together in one stretch in our whole marriage. We are on the same side of a huge task and we are conquering it. Keeping open communication is the key and I am not so great at it. I tend to bottle my feelings up and just clam up. Jon has been amazing at pulling my feelings out of me. I can honestly say that we are closer now than we have ever been. And that goes for the girls too. They are so super close, and we work hard on communication with them too. This is hard for adults it has got to be hard for kids.
We are excited for the girls though. They start Taekwondo on Tuesday. We went and signed them up and talked a lot with the Master and watched some classes. They do some things differently but they girls will catch on quickly. The Master said he would do most classes in Korean so we have a list of Korean words the girls are working on. Poor kids they live in Mexico trying to learn Spanish doing a Korean sport! LOL
I have been hard at work for Kristi and Dwight. I have been working on doing inventory control for Dwight and making a spread sheet of how much things cost including labor and printing. I am about ½ done with that project. For Kristi I have written 4 Bible stories, written a nursery help pamphlet and will begin working on an Ants craft book next week. That is the beginning! Woot!
Well, that’s all for now!

Our little town on Axapusco is as cute as we remembered. The cute cobble stone streets are not as easy to drive over as we remembered though. Our house was not like we remembered, in some ways it was much better and others it was just different. There is a lot of work that needs to be done to make it livable. Such as, water, the city only turns on the water to fill tanks on the weekend evenings it seems so by Monday we were out of water. Jon and Dwight are working on a solution. We knew moving down there was much to be done so installing cabinets and fixing toilets, converting our gas stove to propane and the zillion other things that need to be done is nothing we did not know. But it is exhausting; a different culture means different expectations and different time lines. Errands take 3 times the amount of time you would hope they would. And as everyone knows projects always take longer than you think they should. All in all we have a livable home once we get the water issue figured out.
The weather is interesting too. We knew we moved down during the rainy season so we were prepared but living in it is different. It is beautiful each morning, the sun shines and it warms up to 75ish during the day and then at about 4 p.m. the clouds roll in and clash together making some amazing thunder and lightning storms. When the rain hits it is strong and hard for a short time then lightly rains for a few hours. It stops like someone flipped a switch, after the rain it is cool, almost too cool really. By morning you really do need a sweater or light jacket. I found my slippers right away as the tile makes me tosies freeze!
Life is different here, in a lot of ways right now it seems too hard. Honestly there are tears most days as we go through the changes of life, missing our friends and family and getting used to our “new”. I know that God is in this though. I can see His hand of grace each day on my little family. We ask you to pray that the girls meet some new friends, and settle in here. Please pray Jon gets through this exhausting phase. And that I can figure out what “normal” is. We work from the moment we wake up till the moment we drop in bed to get our home together so we can start spending more time in the Los Ninos Cuenten Office.
Jon has started working at the shop a little. The main server for the web site went down and he rescued it. There is much to be done, and we will get there. Each day more and more comes together.
So please Pray, We do, A LOT!

Monday we loaded up the moving van and started our trek towards Mexico. We got further than we thought we would and called it a night in Shasta City CA. The next morning we got up and loaded ourselves our cat, dog, two kids and Jon’s dad in in the vehicles and hit the road. The cat stopped eating and drinking and by evening I was upset so a quick call to the vet and we were forcing her to eat via syringe. She started eating again after a day and a half of that. Who wants food shoved in them. Or wrapped tightly in a blanket, we did not want to be scratched up! So the second day we made it east of LA, that was a tough one. We had started at 9:30 am and dropped to our pillows at 12:38 am. Waking up in East LA proved to be nice. I got in a short quick walk to get some energy out of Lynk the dog and stretch my back muscles out some. We then loaded up, grabbed some breakfast burritos at McDonalds and hit the road. It was cool to see the wind mills, hundreds of them sending energy into their generators. But as for scenery that was it for the day. There was a lot of brown, lots of shades of brown. And it got hot, then it got hotter and then it was smoken hot at 108 at one point. We arrived in Tucson, got a room and called it a night. Up and at em Thursday. We had to unload part of the moving truck into the van and trailer and cross the border. In that kind of heat it was hard to do anything. But we made it to the border and 2.5 hours later with no problems but hot pets, (we had them in the air conditioned van but it could not keep up with the heat not moving) we were on our way. We made it to Santa Ana last night, got a room had some dinner and collapsed. We are all doing well. The pets have settled in for a couple days as we are here until Monday. Jon and his dad are making the other border run today. The should be back by 6.
God is good and gracious! I am so thankful things have been uneventful so far. I will say, pulling out of Scappoose was tough. I said goodbye to a life I loved. But I love God more. I have excitement for what the next season of life brings.

It’s here, it’s time to go!  We have heard from God through our Pastor, our family and friends and through His word that the time is now!  Our dream of training and equipping Sunday school teachers in Mexico and Latin America will launch on May 14, 2013!  Less than a month away!

What an amazing journey we are on.  We are taking so many new friends and partners in this journey God has set us all on.  You have blessed and encouraged us with so many of the stories we have heard while sharing our stories with you.  Thank you for sharing your hearts and lives with us!  We are praying with you. You are very important to us!

Those of you who are still deciding if you want to partner with us, now is the time to make that decision.  We are going to hit the ground running once we get to Axapusco and you have the opportunity to run this race with us.  We would love to share the blessing for being part of reaching 1 million children this year.

Now is the time to “get your pray on” that’s my little saying these days.  As each of you know we are going to need a lot of prayer.  Specifically right now we need prayer for a smooth transition.  There is much to be done and a long road to drive please join with us as we make this journey.

You are Invited:
Commissioning and Sending Party
May 11, 2013, 3-4:30 pm
Branches Kids Building
52347 Columbia River Hwy
Scappoose, OR

We are planning a wonderful celebration filled with love, laughter (and tears).   We want to hug you and pray with you and express how very grateful we are.  Please join us.  You will not be disappointed.

Jon and Angie Kangas
JAMA Ministries
52593 NW 1^st St
Scappoose, OR 97056

This has been a spectacular weekend. Friday at lunch I was approached by a respected advisor who has been there for us through thick and thin. He counseled us that it is time to go now and join the ministry in Mexico.

We talked for a while about all the implcations of going before we had pledges that totaled our projections for what it would take to live and minister in Mexico. That having been said he still councelled us to go, by May 15th.

So we talked to our pastor. He said go.
So we talked to Dwight and Kristi. They said go.
So we talked to my folks. They said go.
So we fasted and prayed. The Bible lit up with go.
So we visited a church to share our story, the pastor preached on go.
So we called Angie’s family and said we were going to go. Even though they are not sure they believe in God, they said go. (Not kidding)

So, what do we do about not having enough pledges?
Our hope is in the Lord, we will go.

at the same time…
We share our story, we share our story every chance we get, for the next 4 weeks from here, then later from the field.

We have a lot of work to get done, better get going…

TESTIMONIOS
(FACEBOOK)

From April 3 to 6.

Yeimy Donatl
Puerto Rico

God bless our River of Life Church in Humacao, Puerto Rico have been using the material for 3 years or both at school and in the camps Sunday “Only Live It”, “Galaxy Express” and “Brave as Lion” and they have been a blessing to our children and those of the community who participated in the lessons. Seeing them motivated to memorize verses, enjoy the games, experiments, each character sketch in the camps is a beautiful experience. Currently we use “Camp Love” and bringing education to their homes, perform the task, memorizing the verse to win medals makes them be motivated to learn and practice the word. It is a blessing to me as a Sunday school teacher and mother of a girl in which I can also see the fruit. Thanks for such a great contribution to our children and our church. May the Lord continue to bless and equip you with much wisdom to continue to be the channel of blessing for our children.

Kari Moran
El Salvador

God bless. Hello, I am writing in El Salvador. I have the privilege of working with children within the Christian Church Eben Ezer. I have not had the pleasure of working with your books but Sr. Kristina’s capsules have helped me a lot. I have put into practice all the advice she gives us… our class has approximately 40-50 children (we are growing) they are children between 3 and 12 years. We have classes on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays which are the days that are worship services at our church hope God keeps using you and we keep going because we are a team of teachers eager to learn more and more …. (I do not lose anything by trying … Hope this COUNT) GOD BLESS YOU

Loaiza Citla
Yucatan

Dear Sister. I have used several [of your materials] but when we use the book of “traveling with great Christians” with my children not only did they learn but we teachers were also edified. I am from Yucatan and I have in our church approximately 30 children. Gby

Rose Schur Ignatenko
Uruguay

Hello! What beautiful material, you guys saved my life, I can not prepare material, I have little knowledge of computer. Your material is a blessing, on Saturday March 30 we did an activity in the annex in a little town I saw called Algorta 50 km. from the city where we live, (Young Dist. Black Rio Uruguay) we had 36 children and adolescents, photos attached, and the smallest triplets, Lina, Bethany and Ruth. God bless you and reward you greatly. [Included picture not posted here]

Jessica Vielma
Dallas, TX

Hello! Blessed Brothers! I write to you from Dallas, TX where I have the privilege of working as a Sunday School teacher at Temple King of Kings and Lord of Lords with children aged 7-9. We are a small church but their material has really been a blessing for us. We found your ministry in 2011 by Internet and from there we used the Sunday School material and VBS. Ah … right now we are using the “Camp Love” for our children’s ministry which is called “Soldiers of Christ” and also we use “Only Live it” for the 2013 Vacation Bible School. I thank God for your ministry and may God continue to bless you like you also are a great blessing for us. Thank you very much for everything you do and offer free stuff for us to print. God Bless you!

Ana Esther Sanchez Pastene
Chile

hello I write from Chile. I tell you that last year we used the material “To the Pits” on winter holiday period and was a blessing for the children and for the parents. We want to do something special and please I would like the material for a retreat with the children as soon as possible because we are running a bit low with visits. I belong to the CHURCH MINISTERIAL EVANGELISM we are in the middle of the ninth Temuco region that is south of my country and your page has been a blessing to me and to the church this year will use the material “Heroes of the Faith” thanks
God bless you for your work.

Victor and Paola Guzman
Cajamarca (Tol), Colombia

Good morning, Sister Kristina … we would like to share our testimony about working with children and the blessing of having the material you provide.
Our church is called Vision of Multitudes, in the city of Cajamarca (Tol), Colombia. We are developing a ministry called Heirs of the Kingdom, we are starting the work, but we understand that children are not the church of the future but of the present.
We have about 27 children between the ages of 6 to 11 years … we met two hours a week on Thursday, we have been working with the material Los Niños Cuentan, last year we worked with the material “Detectives seeking the Kingdom of God” … this year we have begun to work with the material “Heroes of the Faith”.
The material has been a blessing for children, and equally for us…
We would like a visit to Colombia by your ministry,
We are very, very, very, grateful to you for giving us tools to work with children … truthfully we are unable to pay, what we have done is to spread the word about the material with other ministries…
Thank you again. God bless you.

We were at a small group the other day and someone said that we were all asked to be missionaries but we all have different CALLS! I loved it. We have been doing a lot of talking to people about the Great Commission and have heard a lot of responses. This statement is one of my favorite. Then this morning there was this post on facebook “God is not calling us to win the world and, in the process, lose our families. But I have known those who so enshrined family life and were so protective of “quality time” that the children never saw in their parents the kind of consuming love that made their parents’ faith attractive to them. Some have lost their children, not because they weren’t at their soccer games or didn’t take family vacations, but because they never transmitted a loyalty to Jesus that went deep enough to interrupt personal preferences.”
- David Shibley, (The Missions Addiction)
I love this too! A LOT! Through the process of partnership, packing, moving and all the emotions that we go through in processing this journey we have shared with our children the importance of Following God. God “called” our family to go get the Gospel into the hands of Children in Mexico and Latin America. Who are we to say no? We make certain that we have family time, and do a lot of “deep” conversations to stay on the same page as the girls. We play, laugh and stay engaged in Taekwondo. But our girls know the GOAL. They understand the faith behind the call maybe even better than we adults do. Being a parent is what I wanted most in life. I am blessed that I get the opportunity to share God with my girls every day. I see understanding and faith being built in them, I see knowledge and wisdom burrowing deep into their hearts. I pray that they will always love Jesus and always want to follow His path. Lord willing we are and will continue to show them that the “consuming love” we have for God is our life Goal!!!

Dear Friends,
As most of you know Pro Vision was able to get materials to 250,000 children in 2012. We have been crunching the numbers and have seen that the amount of curriculum distributed for January is higher this year than last July which statistically is our highest month. Jon says we could go up almost 4X!!! That means we could come close to 1 MILLION children in 2013!! Hallelujah!!!

What an incredible adventure we are on. Right now we are in an interesting phase of this journey, our things are packed and we are ready to leave when God says the time is right. Once our percentage hits 100% we will pack up and leave. Currently the meter is at 63% and climbing.

2013 is flying by as we meet new people and make some amazing partners. What a blessing it is to hear what people are doing for the Great Commission. We love our ministry visits with people, we have had the opportunity to minister into people’s lives and people minister to our lives. We want to share our vision and dream with as many people as we can before we move. So if you can think of anyone that would enjoy our ministry please contact us with the information.

We are filling our days with school, work, ministry meetings, and gathering supplies we know we will need but unable to get easily in Mexico. We are getting closer and closer to departure and we could not be more excited. Please keep us in your prayers for partnership development and the preparation of our hearts as we make this transition.

Thank you for your support and love. We are blessed by your prayers. Remember we would love to pray for you so if you have prayer needs be sure to send us a reply. We love to hear from you for any reason, reply a hello once in a while it does our heart good.
Blessings
Jon and Angie Kangas
Jama Ministries

Being content is an important part of life. In our country there is a mentality that “I need more, or I want something different”. Well I was in a place where I was completely content. I had home that I dearly loved. We helped build it; I mean literally helped build it. I remember screwing in the nails on the deck and helping the kids paint the playhouse. There was a lot of love, time and energy that went into that house. We knew it was built for a reason though; as a matter of fact 3 weeks after we moved into it when it was brand new my dad and stepmom came to live with us for several months while he went through Chemo and Radiation for Cancer. They had a room that we made very comfortable for them. Over the next 3 years they came and went for various doctor appointments. I got to see my dad more over that 3 year period than I ever had before. Although it was hard times they were blessed, my dad accepted Jesus Christ as his LORD and Savior in that house. And 5 weeks later I said good bye to dad and he passed 2 days later. Then, not even a week later we got an offer on the house for the asking price. It was sold! I now know the reason it was built. That house served as a comfortable place for my family to love on my dad and stepmom. It was a location that brought us closer together than we had ever been before. Maybe that is one of the reasons it was so hard to leave. It was not a house it was our home. But we asked God to sell it and He did, it was a true miracle. Now we live in a different house. It has taken a while to call it home. It is a nice enough place, but not full of the memories the other one had. All of our personal touches are packed in boxes ready to be shipped so there is no “homey” feel here. All that said I know that God told me I needed to be content. I realized that I was leaving all day every day! I had things to do you know! I finally figured out leaving was an excuse for not staying and dealing with change. I walk most mornings and do a lot of talking with God during that time. Unfortunately it has been quite cold and I have not walked as much as I would like. But during one cold brisk walk I felt God told me that I had to be content here before I could be content there! So that is my daily goal, to be content. I had been so busy for months leading to the move that I did not have a lot of free time. Now that we are moved and live with the necessary things only I have too much time and not a lot to do. So that means I have to be content in not being busy (which is very new as I love to be BUSY)!!!!! But I think I am getting there, I fill my days with household tasks, school with the girls, working on ministry details and a little computer gaming or reading and visiting with friends a little. I no longer need to leave during the days and have adjusted to the quirks of this old house. I think I am on my way to being CONTENT here!

By Jon

We started December with signing the offer on our house. At the same time Angie’s car was in the shop getting fixed after being rear-ended by a truck while she was stopped at a light. The Thursday before Christmas I went to the dentist to get a crown. However, when I arrived at the dentist it seemed wise and necessary to get 2 crowns on opposing teeth. In hindsight I would probably not get 2 crowns within a week of Christmas and a 1 day move. I was in periodic excruciating pain as the ibuprofen wore off and the new ones took effect. As these things sometimes go, I had to follow up with a root canal yesterday. It seems a lot like God has turned up the heat on us with tight deadlines, additional stressing elements and a series of life’s most stressful challenges all stacked up in some sort of Missionary boot camp.

Christmas was totally awesome. I think this Christmas will go down on record as the most thoughtful and intentionally delightful Christmas ever.  I am super grateful for Gayle and Wayne, Angie’s mom and her husband. They spent a couple weeks with us before Christmas and when the Siskiyous snowed up making their return home before Christmas inadvisable, they stuck around for Christmas with our family and then helped us move before heading home. I don’t think we could have been successful without their help, care, and comfort. We had very little extra time this Holiday season, so we made every day count and when it was time to put down the boxes and enjoy Christmas we had a blast. On Christmas night after we put the girls to bed we took down all of our Christmas decorations and tree and everything. It was a little difficult, but we knew that was going to be our only window of time to really pack up all those decorations well enough to make the trip south.

Moving day we had about 30 people who worked on getting us moved. Many people gave us the little time they had, and some gave us all day. It was the combined work effort that enabled us to enjoy Christmas in our home and then move all of our belongings the following day. It was a wonderful Christmas gift for us to enjoy the day in our home even though we had to be out the following day.

Finally, we ended December by paying off our final remnants of debt. Credit card debt is some of the hardest to get rid of. When we were called to join Dwight and Kristi in Mexico we had around a lot of credit card debt. Some of it for medical emergencies, some of it from building the house, and some of it from when I had my own business. Even though we lost money on our house overall, we were able to still pay off the remainder of our debt before the end of the year. God has richly blessed us this year, and we are glad to have paid off our debts before taking any salary from the ministry.

My final note about December is one of incredible awe at what God is up to all around us. We have been blessed by friends,  family,  work, and our partners. At the same time we struggle as we mourn the loss of some of the previous blessings that God had provided for us and we enjoyed for a season but have laid down in our pursuit of the work in Mexico. We are very grateful for our prayer partners who drop everything and pray with us when we get overwhelmed. Perhaps one day we will be stronger for this, but until then, whatever comes next I ask you to stand and pray with us.

Thanks,

Jon