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Teach me to do your will, for you are my God! Let your good Spirit lead me on level ground! Psalms 143:10 ESV

October Newsletter

Thank you for reading our devotional and being a part of Refreshing Hope Ministries. I wanted to update you on what is going on here because this is an exciting time in our life. For several months I had felt a restlessness, and that God wanted me to do something else. He had spoken to me in seven dreams during this time which confirmed it. I also knew that two years ago, He had placed me at Peace Be With U Ministries as the pastor and I did not want to leave His will or abandon the people that He had trusted me with. One thing that the Lord has taught me though, is that there are seasons in life. Just because He gives you something, does not mean that it is forever. It may be for a season. We have to listen to the rhema (spoken word) as well as the logos (written word). 

I needed to clear the airways so that I could discern the Lord’s will for my life. In August, I began a forty day juice fast and committed to praying one hour each morning. I find that fasting and praying gets the ball rolling and changes your environment. After a couple of weeks, it became clear that I was to leave PBWU, even though I knew that the Lord had put me there and it was certainly His work. I was to leave all that I had helped build and the readers that I had gotten to know, and step back into being unemployed. I put it off for a while, but then decided that really the only thing that matters in life is the current will of God. That is where peace and happiness lives. I gave my notice. 

We sent out a special update to let everyone know that I would be leaving PBWU and I began to update my resume` and look for work. I figured that I would take a job somewhere and continue writing in my spare time, however, all the doors seemed closed. I could not find a job. My wife, Sylvia, and I had started Refreshing Hope Ministries during a work lapse a year ago. We felt that we were following the Lord’s prompting, but we only had about forty readers. It would take a miracle to make that work.

On day thirty of our fast, the owner of PBWU contacted us and explained that after a lot of prayer, he felt that he did not have the time or the skill set to take care of the PBWU ministry properly. He asked us to move it all under Refreshing Hope Ministries and continue, which the Lord had already had us set up as a 501c3 non-profit the year before. In return, we would continue to help him maintain his servers there if they broke (I have an I.T. Background).

So it looked like the Lord was asking me to give up all that I had worked for, to lay it on the altar and walk away. Then when I did, He gave it all back and so much more. I was prepping my resume to start looking for a job, and the next thing that I know, we are out on our own in full-time ministry. It is the Holy Spirit pushing us deeper and into scarier things, but He is raising up those that will support us at the same time. I am humbled to be a part of it and watch it all come together. This picture explains it best: 

Here is what has been happening at Refreshing Hope Ministries over the last month:

• We have now completed moving the prayer network and devotional to www.refeshinghope.org. 
• Released my first book: Forty Days of Faith which is available on Amazon or our website. 
• Built a new monitoring system that watches all of our websites, the prayer network and our mail servers. If something fails or gets too hot, it will send me a text message on my phone. 
• Put a lot of work in making the prayer network more user-friendly:

• You can now send a blank email to prayerreport@refreshinghope.org and get a list of your prayer requests emailed back to you with links to all of the replies.
• Tried to clarify the text in the prayer emails that are sent out.
• Made submitting a prayer request return a clear success message to help prevent duplicates.
• Fixed an issue where prayer partners would not get mailed the responses.
• Added an email confirmation request the first time someone submits a prayer so we would not waste resources by sending replies to bad email addresses. 
• If you choose “Do not contact”, you no longer need to enter an email address at all. 

Here is what we are planning to work on:

• We plan to send out a monthly newsletter like this to let you know what is going on. If you do not want to receive this, please click “unsubscribe” at the bottom. We only want to spend resources on those that care. If you have read this far, you probably do… but if not, there is someone waiting to take your place. :)
• I feel that the Lord is leading us into podcasts. It came to me in a dream a few nights ago. We plan to soon record a weekly audio message that you can listen to on our website or your phone. I have much to learn, but I think that it will include the RHM news of the week and a short teaching to begin with.
• Soon we will release a second book: Forty Days of Hope. 
• I would like to add a testimonial page to the prayer network so people can share answered prayers.

Thank you so much for reading this long message. I am humbled to be here at all. So much has happened in such a short time, that I can see the hand of God in this. Thank you to those who are praying for us. We pray for you as well and ask that the Lord will cause you to have all that you have need of. Thank you to those who have and continue to support us financially, as we are trying to start something with nothing. We are just trying to blindly follow the Lord and I pray that the Lord returns your giving one-hundred fold. 

May the Lord bless you, provide for you, protect you, give you a fresh vision and guide you into His perfect will for your life, in the name of Jesus I pray. 

Dion Todd