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DAVID CERVENKA:
What captures my heart most is the picture of communities, cities, and regions being impacted by the expanse of the Kingdom of God.
I love to inspire believers to faith-filled action and into greater depths of experiencing connectedness to God. There is so much work left to do in the task of discipling the nations and I want my efforts to contribute to this work in particular.
With a background in Literature, I was born into Christ with a passion for the Word of God. I love helping others connect with the power of the Word of God through teaching in a variety of forms.
I also have a growing passion to help parents thrive in their connectedness to their children in ways that model the very behavior and character of God.
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DANIELLE CERVENKA:
Danielle loves helping families to thrive on mission with God. God has empowered her to serve kids in particular and she uses her education and experience in Occupational Therapy to empower children with special needs. She has a growing passion for focusing on the parents of these children as they have so much ability to influence the success of their children in a grace-filled home. She also enjoys discipling women and helping moms thrive on mission with God.
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IN TRANSITION:
As we were preparing to return to the United States for a furlough in March of 2022, we began to understand the toll that living as foreign missionaries was taking on our family. Our four month furlough turned into a year as some of my friends and mentors helped us to see and address the burnout we were experiencing.
During that year Danielle had a chance to spend time with the Lord, time resting, and time renewing her Occupational Therapist license which we had let lapse while living in Japan. We also had a chance, once a week, to take long walks together to pray and discuss what the next season of life and ministry could look like.
As this was going on, I continued to coach some of my friends in Japan and I made several return trips that year to facilitate ongoing trainings both to sharpen up our strategy with existing practitioners and also to generate new work by God’s grace. I also started looking around for what was happening the Greater Metro Austin area. Due to our experience on the field in Japan and one or two connections in the city, we began to meet others who had a heart for Kingdom expansion and for using similar strategies that we had employed overseas. My heart began to be burdened for the needs I was seeing in the city as well as envisioned by the great diversity I saw all around me. I was able to rub shoulders with people in the missions community and I simultaneously began to learn about the Unreached People Groups represented in Austin. (See www.joshuaproject.org for a definition and recent stats about Unreached People Groups.) And in my exploration of the state of the city, I found different pockets of believers aiming for similar goals and using similar strategies, yet they were all working independently. As I began to step into these spaces to serve, it appeared that God had a space prepared for me.
Since the 1970’s, Austin has seen several waves of increased gospel efforts and church multiplication. At this time in history it has been a little more than 10 years since the last wave and we are due for another. A friend of mine has been learning from these movements and also spending significant time and energy documenting the state of the city and the Church in ATX. The Lord was also divinely orienting him through a variety of circumstances to explore what role he could play in the task of expanding the Kingdom of God to a greater degree in this region. These conversations led to the establishment of what would become the Greater Austin Mission Society. (missionatx.org)
I had been juggling a variety of roles on the field in Japan, some of which felt pretty far outside of my gifting. In temporarily pulling back I found myself operating in more of a space that felt suited for my unique set of strengths and weaknesses as well as with my age and experience.
As our year progressed, Danielle and I began to wonder if God was actually using our family circumstances to call us to live in and invest in Texas.
So this is where we are, living in the capital of our home state, doing our best to partner with the Lord to keep the flames burning in Japan and finding ourselves also stepping into fresh works that start here yet impact some of the darkest places on earth.
Blessing Nations 