Foster Family Update

This year has been an awesome experience. We have come to love the Thai culture and are experiencing the great commission at work first hand. I had the privilege of being taught my last class, by my father, on discipleship. He gave me tremendous impartation through his class on being a disciple of Christ. This summer is going to be quite busy. I will be leaving for Burma on the 7th of May, then on the 10th, April Poolson will be arriving in Bangkok to spend two weeks in Thailand with us, then two days later Dawn, Sailor and April will be going to Cambodia for 4 or 5 days. It will be good for Dawn while I become Mr. Mom and look after Sailor while her and April experience Thailand. After that we have a team coming in June, from Church of the King, that we will help lead in ministry and outreaches. Then in the beginning of July we will going to Penang Malaysia for two weeks to spend time with the parents, and celebrates Sailor's 3rd birthday. Then from there we will go to Southern Thailand to help lead a missions trip for 7 Weeks in Asia. We will have the month of August free and in the month of September I will be Starting school again. So we have our summer pretty full, but I am excited about all that is going to happen. We love ya'll so much and hope to hear from all of you. Thank you for your Prayer and support. God has blessed us tremendously through you. We are very grateful to have friends and family like you in our lives. May God bless you.

    God is doing a great work in our hearts. We are pressing toward the goal of perfection, God has called us to be righteous in Him. We are righteous people as the church. We are in right standing with God. We cannot give up, we have to press toward the goal, and work harder, and conform to God’s Word. His word will cut into the deepest parts of our hearts and begin to change us from the inside out. People need to know the truth about God’s Word and His wonderful love and mercy that we receive. People are being deceived, but we need to set our feet upon the rock, our cornerstone, our firm foundation, and our savior. We need to begin to fight using the word and begin to see lives changes by the power of God’s word. We cannot stop; we have to continue to persevere unto the end. We need to become real men, leaders of our families, and need to get rid of our selfish desires and begin to ask God to put His desires in our hearts. Change starts with us, the way we act, the way we treat our wife, the standards we set for our children, to keep them away from the snares of the enemy. A snare is hidden and captures you and then you have a hard time to trying to free yourself. We need to teach our children to recognize right from wrong, to become doers of the word. As leaders of the household we need to be Jesus to our wives and children. Change starts in the family. We need to raise our families to seek God with all their hearts and the realization that Satan is fighting to deceive people and have them in hell with him. We will not allow him to take control of our lives. We have the power to conquer the Devil. We may not have the ability to change our government but we can change our families. Thank you Lord that I am going to be conformed to your word that I am being conformed to your word. I am your child and hear your call to righteousness. I will do your will, Your word is going to cut into my life and change the way I live and the way I think.

Amen

Love

Gabe, Dawn, and Sailor

Jungle Trip

One week ago, I was in a Korin village in Thailand. Being in this place in itself was a total eye opener. I have never actually seen people who didn't have much, living simple lives raising their families without the entertainment of this world. Camping outside of this village made me feel as if I were alive 200 years ago, without the villagers owning motorcycles of course. We actually camped outside of two villages and both of them had a church, and both were led by woman pastors. It was amazing to see both of them laying their lives down, and being obedient to God with the very little they have. These are the ones who never get talked about or the ones who never have mega churches but they are being faithful to God, being good stewards of what God has given them. I believe God is very well pleased with their work, even though they do not have a church of 2,000 or greater. Can we really think that God will judge us by the amount of people we have in our ministry, or by our love and obedience we have toward Him. He looks at our hearts, and wants to know that we will do whatever He tells us. 

This trip made me realize how much we have to offer from the west. We could live in this village and help out so much financially, and most important spiritually. There is still so much work to be done, and God is calling us to reach the nations. Christ commissioned us to go to the ends of the earth. I am not saying we are all called to missions, but those who are called need all of our support as brothers and sisters in Christ. We are the body of Christ all over the world, not just in Asia, or North America, or South America. It was great to get to encourage our fellow brothers and sisters in Christ. We are the family of God. Doctrines and belief systems do not matter when our brothers and sister are in need on the other side of the world. They need people to love, encourage, and believe in them. They don't have study bibles, or healing services come to town. They have to rely on the word of God to sustain them. They are persevering toward the end of the race without mentors and spiritual mothers and fathers always being there to encourage them. But they are still doing what God is calling them to do. We need to rely on God in everything we do, we cannot not become life changers without the power of the Holy Spirit at work in our lives. He is the one who empowers and strengthens us to go and preach the Gospel into the ends of the earth. We need to listen to the voice of God and be obedient to His calling for our lives. We are children of God, therefore joint heirs with Christ, and God gave Christ authority over heaven and earth. We need to begin to walk out our calling with authority, knowing that we are His children.

God bless all of you who are reading this. We are very blessed to have you a part of our lives and very thankful for for everything that you have done.

The New Year

God is good all time, and all the time God is good. I believe this year God wants to take us to the next level in our faith. Only if we are willing to lay down our lives in return. This past year for us has been a great success. We released our faith with work behind it and God has blessed us abundantly. I am very excited for what He has in store in the future for us and all of you who are reading this blog. Our family has been doing great, and we will continue to walk under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. We would like to thank all of our friends and family for your commitment this past year and all of your prayers and support. It was very encouraging to have you support our life changing decision in our move to Thailand. My prayer for our family is that we would walk in complete submission to God's will for our life. For me, as a father and husband, my hope is that I will grow spiritually and be guided by the Holy Spirit in every decision I make for my family. Only by the love of God and the power of the Holy Spirit will I be a person who can impact others' lives. Thank you again for your prayers. We are very grateful to have all of you a part of this awesome life changing experience in Thailand. The harvest is ripe, but the workers are few.

Cambodia

Hello all of our friends and family. It is great to be here in Thailand. God is really preparing our hearts for what He has planned for us in the future. This last weekend we went to Cambodia to renew our visa's. While we were there, the pastor of the church (Joel Reimer) gave me and dawn, and anothe couple the service. We were right on the border of Cambodia and Thailand. It was an amazing experience. I have never been to a place that just had nothing. The people there have nothing. The roads were the worst I have ever seen. All the roads were dirt and in horrible condition. It made me realize the need for missionaries who will go and make disciples of all nations. God has been dealing with me about being truly submitted to His call for our life. Christianity isn't about ourselves. So many times we get caught up with ourselves and how God can bless us, but the truth is we are called to be servants of Christ and of others. We need to have a servants mindset in everything we do and press toward the goal of reaching the lost, and helping those who can't help themselves. There are many people in Cambodia who need the love and kindness of Christ shown to them. I just want to thank all of our family and friends who have been supporting financially and spiritually. Yall are a great blessing to our lives, and hopefully one day soon some of yall can come and visit us. 

1 Timothy 6:17-19

Tell those who are rich in this world not to be proud and not to trust in their money, which will soon be gone. But their trust should be in the living God who richly gives us all we need for our enjoyment. Tell them to use their money to do good. They should be rich in works and give generously to those in need, always being ready to share with others whatever God has given them. By doing this they will be storing up their treasure as a good foundation for the future so that they may take hold of real life.

I was reading out of the Smith Wigglesworth devotional the other day and the scripture reading for the day was 1 Timothy 6. The whole chapter is good, but God just really spoke to me through verses 17 through 19. I liked these scriptures so much that I immediately wrote them on a piece of paper and taped them to our wall. 

You see, to be honest, I have this huge desire to help people with their finances, and I questioned whether God could use this desire with me here on the mission field. Like, how can I help other people with their money problems if we are just completely walking by faith in our finances. 

God can definitely make my desire to spread the gospel and my desire to teach finance work together. This scripture in 1 Timothy 6 tells me that. It's not just people in North America who have money issues, but people need financial direction all over the world. 

I love how this scripture takes out of the picture the money we make on our own. It pretty much says to use that money to do God's works and He will take care of you through His surplus. I love that! It says that our "Living God gives us all we need for our enjoyment". He doesn't give to us just so we can survive, but He gives to us for our enjoyment. Hallelujah!

We have already learned in our short time so far on the mission field that the blessings that come from God NEVER run dry. Our bank account may show a shortage, but as we spend that money it just doesn't seem to run out. God is so good. 

Thank you to everyone back home. I am not sure that we could be here living out the dreams of God for our life if it wasn't for God using YOU to support us and pray for us. 

Covenant Relationship

Hello everyone just wanted to give a quick update of what is going on in Sriracha, Thailand with the Foster Family. First to start off, Dawn is doing great! She is teaching English to my fellow classmates. She is such an amazing wife and I am so blessed to have her apart of my life with God. Sailor is doing just fine. She is loved by Thai people and is always getting free food everywhere she goes. She is growing up so fast. Finally me, I am in my fourth week of classes, where actually my dad is teaching Modern Church Movements and it is going great. So I hope to get in touch with some of you soon.

My first class at VBCI was my Hebrews class. It was a very exciting subject of study, which focused mainly on having a covenant relationship with God. As a christian we should be and are righteous. We are right with God, that is the basic definition of righteousness. God has called us to be in covenant relationship with Him as mature christians. When you make a contract or agreement with someone, you don't have to worry if that person will come through on his or her end of the deal. We need to be the same way with God. Being in a covenant relationship you are promised the blessings of God, but only by doing our parts that He has asked of us. What is our part of the covenant? Our part of the covenant is to believe and act on His word. God is a faithful and just God. If we do our part of the covenant, He will do His part. A covenant will give you the assurance of things hoped for. It helps our faith grow stronger, and we are promised  a life of abundance through covenant. Whatever is promised in the Bible we have the right to it, because of the covenant it is legally ours. 

Thank all of you who have prayed for our family, God is going to do great things through yours and our lives.

Thailand

Greetings from Thailand. I just want to give an update of what's going on in Sriracha. Me and Dawn are loving it here and are very excited about what God is going to do in our lives. We haven't been able to get on the internet as much, but that will soon change. We found a house our first day here, which is a blessing from God. We are still getting settled in and are slowly buying furniture. Please keep us in your prayers, God is still the same today, yesterday, and forever. He supplies all of our needs. I start bible college this Tuesday on the 9th, I am very excited about what I will experience, and be able to grow in the Lord. I just wanted to give a quick update and hope to talk to some of you soon. Our God is an awesome God, He is faithful to the end. Thank all who support us for your prayers, and kindness you have shown to me and Dawn. We love ya'll very much.

Temples

Right now, as I am sitting here in Gabe's parents living room in Penang, Malaysia, I hear the sound of worship coming through the open door.  A few times a day everyday we hear this sound. Someone is on a loud speaker singing at the nearby muslim mosk. I think since we have been here I have only seen one church on the side of the road. I have seen countless buddhist and muslim temples. 

I have never felt so out of my element before. There are so many things I don't understand about these people and their beliefs. When we are riding down the road sometimes we see people on the sides of the roads burning things and lighting candles and incense. And then we have been on these walks up hills and trails and we always see these temples built in the wilderness, sometimes with incense burning in them.  

I haven't quite figured out how to tell the difference between the different temples yet. Whether one is buddhist or hindu or muslim or what is still a mystery to me. 

We need to grow in knowledge and wisdom. And we need to understand these people and their beliefs so we can minister to them as best we can. Please pray for us that the Lord gives us confidence and fearlessness and great love for these people.

Love, Dawn

Malaysia

Good morning to all of our friends. Well we made it to Malaysia with no problems. God is a awesome God, and we couldn't have done it with out Him. It's a weird feeling when you are going out of the country knowing that you are not going back home. We would like to thank all of our friends for being amazingly great to us. Thank you John and Winnie for throwing an awesome party. You have been great leaders, and supporters to me and Dawn. We love you two very much and thank God for putting you in our lives. To our cell group, You all are amazing friends and we know that God is going to do great things in your lives. Please keep us in your prayers, and again thank you so much for everything you have done and we will keep you all updated with everything that is going on. Thanks for everything.

 Now we are in a place where we have to rely on God, and begin to live up to what He has called us to do. There is no faking it over here. We can only be effective by the power of the Holy Spirit. If He is not moving in us, then we will not move anyone around us. My desire is that everyday I can be in tune with the Holy Spirit, and do what is asked of me. God is the only way we will be able to reach these people. So please pray for us, so that we can rely on God as Elijah did when He called down fire from heaven. We need to be properly equipped to impact asian cultures that believes more in the supernatural than we do in America. We serve a mighty God, who has given us truth, and He wants the truth to be heard through out the world.

We truly love you all. 

- Gabe Foster

Crunch Time

Hello friends, we are very excited about this next week. Our departure date is this Tuesday, the 5th of August. God is a faithful God!! This last month has flown by and we are now down to our 7th inning stretch before take off. This time next week we will be on our 13 hour flight to Taiwan (with a two year old), from there we will be flying into Malaysia to stay with our Parents for 3 weeks, and after that we will be in Sriracha, Thailand. We believe that God is going to move in an awesome way, and in the process we are going to experience a change in peoples lives, including our own! I can' t begin to thank all the people who have supported us these last few months. You are all great friends that God put in our lives. Thank you for your support and standing behind us with this life changing decision. Dawn and I appreciate everything yall have done for us, and couldn't ask for better friends. I just wanted to write this post to give an update for our last week in the states for at least two years. Thank you and God bless all of you. please keep us in your prayers.

Love Gabe and Dawn

Support Information

We figured that some of the people who are financially supporting us while we are in Southeast Asia will be visiting this sight, so we thought we would go ahead and make a blog entry about how to do that. There are three ways for our supporters to give:

1. Mail support to Great Commission Fellowship. This is our missions organization and the information we have on our newsletters. You can make checks payable to Great Commission Fellowship and just put Gabe & Dawn Foster next to memo on the check. Then you can mail it to their address at:

3600 Manhattan Blvd.

Suite 20

Harvey, LA 70058

2. If you go to Harvest Family Church you can just put your support for us in the offering envelope and just write Gabe & Dawn Foster next to where it says "missions". Oh, and make checks payable to Great Commission Fellowship and on the Memo line put Gabe & Dawn Foster.

3. Lastly, Lauren Arteaga, Cody Vandermeulen, & Jamie Vandermeulen will be helping to take care of collecting support for us and depositing it directly into our bank account, so if you know these people, it's just fine if you give it directly to them for us.

So there you go, if you in any way want to support us financially while we are doing missions work in Southeast Asia, those are the three ways to do it. It's quite cheap to live in Thailand, so we won't need that much. Even $5 to $10 dollars a month in support is very nice. We want to just ask for consistency over a big amount of money.

Thanks so much for everything. Many of our friends and family members have been truly amazing in backing us up and sending us out. We truly feel that God has been shining His special favor on our lives. Thank You, Thank You, Thank You!!!

And please please please remember to pray for us!

VBCI

I am posting this little video that will let you see a little of what we will be doing through VBCI (Victory Bible College International). I am excited and expecting God to do great things through me and Dawns life. Please keep us in your prayers, so we can see a great outpouring of the Holy Spirit.

(this video takes clips from videos made by Continuum Media www.continuummedia.com)

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Official Dates

We have some official dates to share with you guys...

June 19 - We will be talking all about where we are going, what we are doing, and what we need at the Remix service at the Wesley Foundation on the campus of Southeastern Louisiana University. This is a service with many of our closest friends in this whole world, so it should be quite encouraging. The service starts at 7:00 pm.

June 29 - Pastor Bray Sibley from our home church, Harvest Family Church, will be sending us out on this date. This is also an extremely important service for us. Gabe's parents, whom we will be working with in Asia, will be at this service. And Pastor Bray and the church have been such a special part of our lives for many years. I believe there will be two times for this Sunday morning service, but I will be sure to post it on here if that changes, 8:30 am & 10:30 am in Hammond, LA. ( www.theharvest.us ) 

August 5 - Leave for Thailand ... this may come as a surprise to some of you, but we have decided to leave a little earlier than our original plans. We had planned on flying out on August 20th, which is the date that many of you knew, but Gabe's job now ends on July 4th instead of August 1st so we have decided to leave a few weeks early. This was a sort of sad decision, but this will put a little less crunch on our finances before we leave. Also, we will get to spend a few weeks in Penang, Malaysia with Mom & Dad Foster before getting settled in Thailand. I am trying not to start crying right now. This is becoming more real to us everyday, and especially now that our plane tickets have been purchased. 

We love you all very much! Thank you for taking the time to read our blog and keep up with us.

Credentials

We are so excited to say that we got our credentials last Sunday (05/04/2008) from White Dove Fellowship in New Orleans, LA. Pastor Mike Milet and his wife have really been so gracious to us. We want to thank them for believing in us and the work we want to do for the Lord our God.

Pastor Mike gave us an opportunity to share with the church about our future plans and then he and his wife Ordained us into Full-Time Ministry! We dream of following our parents, Tony and Margaret Foster, into a great ministry and we believe this is a big step to doing just that, Hallelujah!

And also, Pastor Bray Sibley of Harvest Family Church, in Hammond, La, said he will be sending us out in a service sometime in June. We will keep everyone posted about the date and time of that. Thanks everyone for believing in us!

Here we go .... !

Through Gates of Splendor

I just started a new book today called Through Gates of Splendor by Elisabeth Elliot (Thank you Jamie Van!). I'll let everyone know how it is as I get more into it, but so far, even the first chapter was amazing. The book goes with the movie End of the Spear. I needed a good missionary book to read right before we leave for Thailand. My favorite quote so far:

• It was typical of Jim that, once sure of God's leading, he did not turn aside easily. The "leading" was to Ecuador, so every thought and action was bent in that direction. Jim practiced what he preached when he wrote in his diary: "Wherever you are, be all there. Live to the hilt every situation you believe to be the will of God."

Wow! That so describes the way Gabe and I feel right now about Thailand and Southeast Asia. We watch asian food shows, read through Thai blogs, and research all we can about the people and culture. Thank you LORD for Your leading!