Update part 1 of 3

Hello all,

Charlie here. So much is happening, it’s time to catch you all up again regarding what’s happening with Strong Missions and our different ministries. I suspect this will be posted in several installments.

First of all, the addition of our two program assistants, Rebecca last summer and Scott the beginning of this year, is working out fantastic. They’ve learned so fast and work so hard that it is allowing me to spread out and begin to work in other areas. One of those areas is marketing, as we’re still a little down in numbers for 2011, and therefore we still need numerous for this year to finish the projects we have lined up. Remember, we’re still offering $100 off per person, for a team of 10 or more, for Fall months (September through the first week of December this year).

With the increased marketing, we’re planning to visit various churches with which we have ongoing relationships, as well as visit new interested churches and distribute information at youth and mission conferences, etc. If you would like a visit from us, please let us know, and we’ll try our best to get to your neck of the woods asap.

We’re now also beginning to take contact info for medical staff, as we have a ton of people interested in our putting a few such teams together for them. We have the areas to work, much of which with undocumented immigrants, as they tend to fall through the cracks. We’re excited about the number of people wanting to help as well as the possibility to help in such a way, and we suspect there will be various opportunities for medical staff to do so within the next year or so.

We’re also moving headquarters, as the owner of the former property increased the rent by 15%, and let us know there would be 15% added on each year. That’s just not feasible if we want to keep costs down for teams, so God blessed us, the same day as a matter of fact, with a large two story house connected to the Hotel Los Horcones, just 200 yards from the old place. We’re also renting the hotel beginning May 1, which means with additional hotel traffic we should be able to keep team lodging costs down for years to come, perhaps until we buy land and build our own place.