John 1:4-5
Dear friends, family, and partners in ministry,
We are praying that in this season of Advent your hearts have found refuge in the inbreaking light of Christ in whatever darkness you may encounter. We wanted to share our greetings for a Merry Christmas and report on ministry happenings in the final quarter of 2025.
In the flight training department, we have been excited to welcome Ben Winsley and his wife Kati this fall. Ben is an MMS pilot/ mechanic apprentice and moved to Burlington to do his pilot training with MAG. Just after they settled in Kati delivered their son Gideon a month early. We are enjoying all three of them in our midst. The goal was to have Ben do his first “solo” flight before Christmas break and that goal was accomplished on Tuesday!
We both did a little ministry related travel this fall. Carmen to the Missio Nexus Conference where she can learn new best practices in missions and help develop MAG’s efforts in mobilization, member care and short-term teams. Sean flew our training plane to MMS to join many others in celebrating our ministry partner’s 50th anniversary. It was a wonderful way to rejoice in what God has done and touch base with the apprentices planning to join us for flight training in the next 2 years.
For Carmen this has been a busy year for mobilization as we have added 4 new staff to the MAG team. We are so excited for each of them and in awe of how God brought them to us. In this current season Carmen has been doing a lot of coaching with them as they are working on raising their ministry financial support. Sean has been doing a lot of behind the scenes work to incorporate them into the tech side of MAG (getting computers set up, email addresses going, remote access to the server, etc.). We are looking forward to the time they will spend with us in Burlington for pre-field flight training.
In Rus Rus our field staff has had a challenging season of working with an area of village life that is a particular stronghold of darkness. It is very common in that culture for young teen girls to be made available to older men. It is hard to see the evidence of this and for them to feel helpless to bring about change. Please pray for a spirit of repentance and for God’s spirit to change the way young women are valued & treated.
On a positive note, Rus Rus just had a visit from a pastoral training team. The books the church leaders studied were 1 & 2 Samuel. Theirs is not the first culture to encounter abuse of power that affects young women. We believe the Holy Spirit and the truth of God’s Word is able to convict hearts and change culture. Our team is preparing for the village Christmas celebration. May the light of Christ shine bright!
We have had the darkness of grief wash over our family this fall with the unexpected death of Carmen’s father Guy Berger. He wasn’t in good health, but we hadn’t expected this so fast. Carmen and her mom were with him as he died. Please pray for all of us, but especially Carmen’s mom, Teresa, as she grieves and adjusts to this new season of life. We are grateful they had moved in February to be near us and that we have so many precious memories.
Since we have become missionaries and have been writing ministry newsletters we have dropped the habit of a family Christmas update. Of course, we are pretty proud of each of our kids so we’ll give a quick update. Nathan is a high school sophomore and is thriving. He earned his driver’s license in September and that has been a game changer for all of us! His biggest passion is tennis and you can frequently find him on the courts with his friends. This spring will be his 4th year of varsity tennis. Since he turned 14, he has been able to earn some money has a youth soccer ref. This has been a great job for him and he has gained lots of grit. Both Nathan and Lilly are swimming for their school this season. It has been a blessing to have them doing the same sport in the same place! Lilly is in 7th grade and also thriving. She also plays soccer and enjoys caring for the guinea pigs she welcomed this fall. Asher and Abigail are almost 2! They both provoke and delight one another as you would expect. Asher loves trains and trucks. Abigail likes finding collections of things to carry around. They are both getting quite chatty and LOVE spotting airplanes.
2025 has definitely been a year with lots of challenges but we have seen God’s presence in the body of believers that has cared for us so well. We pray that the truth of Immanuel, God with us, would fill your hearts with hope and joy as you celebrate Christmas and the New Year!
With Love,
Sean and Carmen