Chris & Dana Byers{global + mobile} partnership

We’ve decided we won’t continue Chris’ work travel arrangements past July for the benefit of our family. We’ve prayerfully decided to move to Indianapolis so we can be together as a family, and Chris is assuming the FormStack CEO role indefinitely. This arrangement will allow us to continue funding and monitoring the Blue Door Ministries, Inc. projects we’ve begun in Europe (namely Church Online in Poland and Slovakia).

I’ll remain in my volunteer staff position at LifeChurch.tv and believe this arrangement will allow me to return to providing more off-site video content for Church Online experiences and the blog, which I LOVE doing. Please keep us in your prayers as we locate a home and schools for the kids this week.

We look forward to making new friends and catch up with old ones in Indiana soon. I was born and raised in Indiana and Chris and I met in college only a few miles from where we’ll be living, so in some ways we’re returning home.

No matter where we go – we are grateful for our supportive family and friends who encourage and understand us. Love you guys!

We completed the adoption of our 4 1/2 year old daughter Mackenzie 3 years ago today in Guatemala. Mackenzie has taught me much in 3 years, and we are so blessed to have her in our family forever. God moved heaven and earth to put this precious girl into a family because – as she reminded me this morning – He has a special plan for her life.

God has a special plan for EVERY orphan’s life. Have you ever honestly asked yourself if you could be part of His plan for one or more of these children? Anything is possible with God.

We contributed all of our savings, and friends and loved ones partnered with us by making tax-deductible donations to pay for Mackenzie’s adoption. If you ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever consider adoption…please act in faith.

Just recently Chris returned from a tremendous trip to Europe. He had the opportunity to visit with key leaders in three countries and make headway on various translation projects.

It was a great blessing for Chris to travel with John Otjen, the video production manager for church online. John is a supporter of our work and volunteered his time to travel with Chris.

Germany
Days 1-3 in Germany allowed Chris to meet with a group of German pastors to discuss initial help with German translation of OPEN materials. As a lead-up to the trip we were able to translate into German a set of materials for these leaders. We were excited to make contact with a few key people who are interested in helping translate even more materials into German for churches’ benefit.

Slovakia
After Germany was a three day trip to Slovakia where John provided training to Slovak churches on filming and producing high quality video. Chris consulted with church leaders regarding multi-site options, Sunday services, and the possibility of starting church online in the Slovak language. Chris also had the opportunity to speak to Krestanske Centrum about ‘Getting Out of Debt.’ Church members said that the financial principles he shared were “revolutionary” for Slovaks.

Poland
The last major portion of the trip was spent in Poland. Not only did we have the opportunity to catch up with Hosanna church which has recently been showing 5 Easy Steps to Wreck Your Life [image above] at their Polish church online experience. We helped them find a more viable online worship solution using the Polish language.

KosciolOnline.tv currently has three experiences each week. So far they have seen more than 3,000 views of their website and had 1,000 unique visitors. For a new site and a country with only 40,000 evangelical Christians this is an excellent start to this ministry! More importantly they have sent out 9 ‘kits’ to people who have asked for more information or made a decision to follow Jesus.

Supporters and friends…you have provided for these trips, translation, training, and this ministry. THANK YOU. We would not have this opportunity to reach out to churches in Europe and around the world without this support.

Next Steps
As we look at trips for Spring and Summer please consider three things:

1. Consider how you can be a part of praying for success of online ministry overseas.

2. Consider how you can participate in one of our upcoming trips to Europe – to bless churches with your business, technical or ministry skills.

3. Consider how you can participate financially in this work. We are seeking partners to help us as we put together a project fund of $6,000 to fund Polish church online through 2010. And in addition we require an additional $1,000 monthly toward our goals of working with churches in Europe to develop church online further for every language and nation.

Blessings to you!

Chris & Dana

Chris & John are boarding a plane from Frankfurt to Vienna right now. They’re set to land in 90 minutes. A driver is scheduled to drive them from Vienna to Slovakia, a trip that should take around 2 hours…however it’s quite snowy there and it could be a long night. Please pray for a safe flight, safe drive to Slovakia, and energy for the guys after such a busy (but successful!) day at the Willow Creek Association Global Summit conference in Germany.

Some of you have asked – Chris is currently 7 hours ahead of Oklahoma/central time US.

Here’s a message from our friend, fellow online minister Bernard Deloach of Discovery Church in Orlando, Florida.

Blue Door Ministries from Bernard DeLoach on Vimeo.

Please click here to see how you can contribute to our family’s efforts to share The Gospel online in many languages. Your financial support makes an eternal difference!