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Dear Friends & Family,

Feels like summer already here in Kansas City! High humidity and temperatures in the mid90s have arrived, and so have the kids for our first summer camp. One of the joys of summer atIHOPKC is all the children and youth that come here by the hundreds to attend our camps andmusic intensives. It is amazing to see them immersed in the culture of night-and-day prayerand worship and how they encounter the Lord while theyre here. We have a real treat as well

Jessianna has returned home for the summer to be on staff with our camps! She will be headingback to Waterloo, Iowa in the fall to continue helping with the house of prayer there, and attendcommunity college. But it is so great to have her with us here in KC for the next couple months.We are very excited to share with you about the mission training we just completed in GrandRapids, Michigan. Again, thanks for reading and keeping up with us! Love, The Marcums

Carrying LIFE to the NationsOn May 19 we left for a one-week, 1,300 mile road trip to Grand Rapids, the secondlargest city in the state of Michigan, and headquarters of Life International a

missions organization with a vision to start life-giving ministries wherever abortion

exists around the world. Life International began in 1997 in the heart of KurtDillinger, who at that time was director of a local PRC (Pregnancy Resource Center)

in Grand Rapids. In 2001, the ministry launched as a separate missions organization,

and in 2003 the Lord gave them the building they now occupy in downtown Grand

Rapids, at the corner of Ransom and Fountain. At the core of the building is a

prayer room which is aptly named the International Prayer Center for Life. Weactually began our first session of the training in this Prayer Room.

The story is quite amazing how the Lord ransomed this building on Ransom Street. You see, prior to Life

International obtaining it, this building housed the largest abortion clinic in West Michigan! Many believers hadstood in faith and prayer that one day the Lord would ransom this building for his purposes. One night, the Lord

gave a dream to Bill Velker, who is now the director of the International Prayer Center for Life and V.P. of Life

International. Bill was on the board of the PRC and was involved in pro-life ministries in Grand Rapids. In the

dream, the Lord had given the building at 72 Ransom which housed the abortion clinic, to the PRC. He saw the

inside of the building filled with people praising and worshiping God. After he shared it with Kurt Dillinger and

others, more prayer went up, as no one had the funds to buy the building, and the building was not even for sale! Not

long after, in a surprise way, the building did in fact come up for sale, yet still there were no funds. Then one night

the Lord gave a dream to Kurt, and in this dream he saw people passing by the building and falling down in front ofit, struck by the power of God. The Lord spoke to Kurt in the dream, This building used to be powerful for death,

but it is going to become 10 times more powerful for Life!

Soon the Lord put His plan in motion, and a group of Christian businessmen in Grand Rapids caught the vision. They

came together and bought the building in 2003, and gave it to Life International! An amazing event occurred the firsttime the businessmen and leaders of Life International gathered to dedicate the

building. After a time of worship & prayer, they felt they should go to the basement

where the abortion rooms had been located, and have a time of cleansing prayer. There

was a back door there that entered into an alley, the door that the abortionist had always

used to enter and exit the building. After praying in the former abortion rooms, they

stood in the hallway leading to the back door and began to pray out loud that the Lord

would cleanse the building forever and redeem it for His purposes to impart LIFE

where there had been death. Suddenly the back door flew open and a gust of windfilled the building. Someone said, I think the Lord came in, and I think something just

left as well! Everyone rejoiced at this sign of a new beginning for this building and

for Life International.

The Marcum Family/Ministry NewsJune 2016

Our training group of Life-givers!

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Jim & Melissa

After meeting at Life International headquarters, we drove together about 45

minutes away to a beautiful retreat center named Wingshadow where therest of our training took place. There were a dozen of us in the training group

(15 is the most they take at a time), and we spent a good deal of time togetherin discussion, study, classes, and some great meals, too! One of our trainers

was from Ukraine, and one of the attendees had just returned from the

mission field in South Sudan. Another woman came from Canada, and sheand her husband were former missionaries in Bolivia. It was a great group

and we all became quite close during our days together.

The first outreach Life International took part in was in Georgetown, Guyana, and since that time they are now working

in 86 countries, equipping the people of God in life-giving ministries. They have helped open many PRCs in high-riskabortion areas where there were none at all. They have begun abstinence training programs, post-abortion healing

ministries, women & childrens homes, and other types of ministries. Their foundational statement in all they do is

Intimacy before Impact. All of their ideas and the work they do come out of the place of prayer and intimacy with theLord. They begin every day with prayer together, and the staff devotes an entire day together in prayer once a quarter.

Everyone who joins their mission teams has a first assignmentbuild a prayer team who will cover you in prayer.

The training itself was intensely practical, with the view to becoming culturally intelligent learning to understand

multiple cultures and their worldviews about human life. We did many role-play and other exercises together which

drove home the points we were learningsometime in a very fun way! We talked about honor/shame cultures which

exist around the world. We talked about how to contact key influencers and local life-givers as we enter into

communities and cultures for the first time. We learned about the various training events led by Life International, whatthey involve, and what the team member roles are so we could begin to think of where we fit. One of the ways we

believe we can serve is in the Advance Prayer Initiatives which take place 30 days in advance of their training events.These initiatives are often led by Bill Velker, and involve a 3-day prayer strategy & training event for local believers out

of which is built a prayer team who will pray for 30 days in advance of the upcoming Life training event as well as pray

during the event. We were told many amazing stories of spiritual breakthrough and healing that happens at these events!

We were given reading assignments and other homework that we have begun working on

since the training. Our plan is to take our first mission trip with Life International sometime

between January and April of 2017. There are many nations requesting mission teams from

Life International to come next year India, Nepal, China, Brazil, Guatemala, Albania, and

others. We are staying in touch with the team leaders at Life International, believing the Lord

will show us which team to join and what team role He is calling us to. If you would like to

join our prayer support team, please let us know! We may be contacting some of youpersonally about this, as this is the first step we will be taking. We are very excited to seehow the Lord will orchestrate and lead us into international life-giving ministries!

Theres gonna be a wedding!

We are so blessed to announce that on Sunday, May 15, our daughter, Joy, was engaged

to be married to Joshua Lee. They met in the fall of 2014, at a time when Joshua was

one of the students in our IHOPU discipleship group. Both Joshua and Joy have been

leaders together in youth ministries at IHOPKC, and have done ministry trips together.

We are so proud of Joy for waiting and trusting the Lord for her husband, and were

proud of Joshua for holding his heart in readiness for her as well. They will be married

in Oct/Nov, and their plan is to move to Lexington, KY where Joshua will pursue his

Masters degree at Asbury College.

FINAL WORD: Since we shared about Joy and Jessianna, we also want to say were proud of Jonathan he gothis drivers license! Jonathan has finished his audio engineering course at JTL Recording Studios, and is continuingto apprentice there while working full-time at Target. We want to say a special thanks to our partners, especially thegifts given toward our mission training were so appreciated. And as always, keep in touch, were praying for you!

Because He is worthy of it all,

Jim & Melissa Marcum & family

Jim & Melissa Marcum

P.O. Box 1099, Grandview, MO 64030

Phone/text: 816-287-3525 / 816-287-2228

Email/PayPal: intercessorymissions@gmail.com

Egiving:www.ihopkc.org/give/staffsupport (JM204009)

International House of Prayer Kansas City, MO

The Wingshadow Retreat Centerbeautiful!

Privileged to meet Bill Velker