Dear Brothers and Sisters in New England,

I want to personally take this opportunity to express how thankful I am for your desire to keep helping the European churches. As you know, 2003 was a very difficult year for the European churches. We had to face quite a turmoil which ended in serious damage of the churches. In Western Europe (that?s Portugal, Spain, Italy, France, French speaking Switzerland and Belgium) more than 30 staff people resigned or were laid off and many disciples left the church. Thanks to the financial help of the New England churches, I was not laid off. Right now, I?m the only full time staff person for this part of Europe. My hope and prayer is to see the churches in these countries be happy and growing. The last two years, God has blessed us in great ways as we have seen most of the European churches stabilized and getting together at European meetings to build unity and strengthen one another.

 The recent European Bible School 1^st session in Budapest was a great victory for God?s church as we gathered almost 80 leaders from 26 nations to learn and encourage one another. The work in Europe is huge. There are over 2000 disciples in the European churches. Every prayer is needed. The remaining European staff is absolutely willing to work hard to build the churches. It?s quite a challenge feeling a bit ?alone? from time to time. However, the Holy Spirit is building unity among leaders in Europe and New England. We are so thankful in Europe for the involvement of disciples like David McAnulty, Kelly Petre, Jim Lenahen, Dave Malutinok, Valdur Koha, Mike Fix, Jimmy Allen and many others? We dream that our cooperation will please God and that God will bless our efforts to build His church. We also desire to develop connections between all the disciples from New England and Europe and not just leaders. In that end, I feel very blessed to be able to join you at the New England conference in a few weeks and share with you the European news and our dreams for the future.

With much love,

Thierry Fender

Geneva