Sunday 24 July 2011

AEM Prayer Update - August 2011

This is a slightly early and slightly different edition of the monthly bulletin for various reasons. I’m sure it won’t curtail your prayers for the matters raised in July if I direct your attention towards two urgent matters and one general but vital issue.

Firstly can I thank all who responded so promptly and warmly to the news of Niko Treska’s illness and subsequent operation? Our thanks to all who felt able to contribute to an, as yet, incomplete hospital bill. Please accept our apology for being unable to respond to and acknowledge each individual gift. The response has been so overwhelming that this would be impossible in the immediate future. If you are unsure as to whether your gift reached us or need a receipt, please email the mission office and we will provide the necessary confirmation. Latest news of Niko is encouraging; he is still in hospital in Thessaloniki, has begun eating and drinking and could be released to go home this weekend. The prognosis is for a complete recovery. We can thank God for the remarkable way in which Niko’s condition was discovered by the Greek doctors as it was reaching a life threatening point. Please keep on praying for Niko and Monda as well as for their work which must now suffer a temporary interruption.

We have to report a second medical crisis and need for prayer amongst our ranks. This week David Young received the diagnosis that he is suffering from an aggressive skin cancer. The doctors could not be precise but were unnervingly direct in their assessment of what the prognosis could be. Most readers of our ‘updates’ will know that David is due to retire as AEM director in December. He now faces further tests and a lot of anxious waiting. Please pray for our brother and his family in their inevitable turmoil.

Finally, can I ask you to focus your prayers on camps and youth activities throughout the month of August? Our immediate concern is for the many things planned and currently happening in Albania and Kosova, but the growth and positive effect of Christian camps in recent years is certainly not confined to the Balkans – indeed we need look no further than our own shoreline on this subject. Without being specific then, pray that God will bless every effort to touch young lives with the gospel and keep participants safe in the process.

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