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Workers for Jesus with 5+ years experience in Eastern Europe. For updates, please check our Facebook or Instagram accounts.
Jordan grew up in the Southwest and on the Gulf Coast, graduated from Harding University in Searcy, Arkansas and trained for church ministry in Lubbock, Texas. Natalie was raised on the Atlantic Coast of Central Florida and graduated from Lipscomb University in Nashville, Tennessee. They're one of those "these days" couples, barely into their thirties, who first met on the internet, got married and found their shared-life swept up into the Story of what God has done, is doing and will do in this world. They spent their first four and a half years of marriage in a rural West Texas community, nourished by the love of their first congregation, Southside Church of Christ. They've pitched their tent among a peculiar people of this earth who actually believe that they themselves have been lifted up from the world's boring, dying story and translated into the ongoing epoch of the Lord Jesus' death, burial and resurrection. From the summer of 2014, their adventure with Christ has now brought them to the Central European nation of Slovakia, where they worked for a year with a courageous assembly of believers proclaiming the good news of God's kingdom in the capital city, Bratislava. After much thought and prayer, they decided to move to Košice, Slovakia's second largest city, to work with the church there. They travel as needed in between the three main congregations of Bratislava, Košice and Banská Bystrica/Martin to offer support. Košice nests in a valley in far Eastern Slovakia, the easternmost state in the European Union. From Košice to the Hungarian border is 10 miles, and to Ukraine it is 40 miles. Košice and it surrounding area is home to nearly 350,000 souls. It has multiple universities, a large steel industry and is a rail and agricultural hub. Its residents are predominately Roman Catholic. The winters are cold, the food heavy, but sweeter hearts are hardly found world-over. In August of 2016, Jordan and Natalie welcomed their first child, Adelaide, in the world. Two and half years later in February 2019, sister Annabelle joined her. The Arnolds are partners with numerous churches, families and individuals Stateside. The Church of Christ in Champions (Houston, TX) is their sponsoring congregation. |
Why We're Here
If the world's one true creator-god is the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and if the God of Israel was in the man Jesus of Nazareth indeed reconciling the world to himself, then, by God, everything is different, and nothing is as it first appears to our fallen eyes and bored and broken senses. This world has not been condemned nor abandoned. If in Jesus God has actually suffered with the world and in the world for the sin of the world, then there is a God who is recklessly determined to right every wrong, a Lord who is making all things new. His kingdom is real. His salvation has come, is coming and will come. And by the power that raised Jesus from the dead on the third day, heaven and earth will be one. That's the story we believe, breathed to life by the Holy Spirit, the story we received, the adventure to which all who believe are called, the word given to and witnessed by the apostles of Jesus Christ over 2,000 years ago and handed down to the church to tell for the sake of the world: the gospel of God.