March 12, 2015

Happy New Year from Beijing!

Happy Chinese New Year from Beijing!

We are rejoicing in God’s blessings upon our life and ministry. This new season has brought new opportunities for ministry. We join with the millions of Chinese Christians who are praying this New Year of “the sheep” will be a year of great advance for the “Lamb of God.” Thanks so much for faithfully supporting and praying for us.

Family Blessings



While our granddaughter Maylee was celebrating her 11th birthday in Kazakhstan, our first grandson was born in Portland, Oregon. Here are Nathan and Heather with their son Kekoapomaika’i Frederick Lee Blair.  Because of the time differences, Kekoa’s birthday is January 24 and Maylee’s is the 25th.  Our new grandson’s name means ‘blessed warrior’ and our prayer is that he will be all that for Jesus Christ our King! 

ZGC Bible Week

Chinese New Year brings a month of travel for hundreds of millions of people in this nation. Businesses and schools close as citizens try their best to get home for this most important holiday. The café that houses our church office closed for a week. So we got permission to turn it into the classroom for our first ZGC Bible Week with daily teaching through Paul’s pastoral letters. It was a privilege to grow in the Word with leaders from Uganda, Samoa, Peru, Mexico, Holland, Philippines, Madagascar, Nigeria, Ghana, Tanzania, China, and the USA.


Spring Planting

Since 90% of our members are linked to the over 80 Universities around us, we must reach out afresh at the beginning of each semester! 100,000 International students, many who have never heard the Good News of Jesus Christ, are our neighbors here – a million Chinese students! We are blessed to have a gifted team of young leaders who serve faithfully in many areas of ministry. There are many great International student ministries, but many are not integrally linked to a local church. And even fewer have the students themselves serving in all areas of church leadership and ministry. Our goal of “Gathering, Growing, and Going” is being lived out as the Lord gives us several years to disciple young leaders and then bless them as they return to their homelands around the world. 

Tuesday Training

We have just begun a series of weekly ministry training courses. Many of our members who are pursuing degrees in various disciplines want to also receive biblical and theological knowledge for years of ministry ahead of them. So, we are gathering a team of good teachers to offer courses this spring on Biblical Counseling, Hermeneutics, Doctrine of Salvation, and the Gospel of John.  We had 51 students turn up for our first class!

Global Diaspora Forum

This month we will be going to the Philippines. Our primary purpose will be to participate in the Lausanne Global Diaspora Forum: http://www.globaldiaspora.net/gdf/  The focus is to consider how to share Jesus Christ with 253 million people in our world who are away from their homelands. Millions have been ripped away from home by war and terror. Millions have chosen to leave for work and study. We have been invited to attend GDF because of our unique church-based ministry with International students the Lord has raised up in Beijing.

Following GDF we will go to Tacloban and lead a pastor’s conference in the area hit by Supertyphoon HAIYAN (Yolanda) in late 2013 - the strongest in recorded history.  Thousands of people died, tens of thousands were displaced, and over 100 churches were greatly damaged or destroyed. BICF has been helping to rebuild churches materially and spiritually, this will be our second leader’s conference there. We are expecting 150-200 leaders to come. We will be there the first part of Holy Week (the biggest holiday in the Philippines!) and it will be a privilege to share with pastors about preaching the Cross and Resurrection.

Sisters to Sisters

Dayna has helped launch a new Women’s ministry in our church. “Sisters to Sisters” is a monthly Sunday afternoon meeting that is a catalyst to lots of smaller fellowships and mentoring among women. With so many young 20 something women in our fellowship, all far from their mom’s and auntie’s back home, they have really appreciated the prayers, encouragement, and advice of their “older sisters.”


One More Grandparents Brag…

Please indulge us one more boast! Maylee, our granddaughter, is the 4th fastest skier in her age bracket (11 to 13) in Kazakhstan – she is 11. We are thankful for her other grandpa’s kind and enthusiastic support to help her with the costs and training for this sport she has been enjoying since age 8. Almaty is vying to hold the Winter Olympics in 2020 and you can thus connect the dots of their – and our – enthusiasm.  We could never have scripted this life of adventure and blessing the Lord has given us in His service!


We are very thankful for your prayers and support these many years. We praise the Lord for bringing us to a place of great fruitfulness in this season of serving Him. We plan to visit California this summer. Please let us know what might be some good times to visit with you.

In the Name of our Crucified and Risen Lord, Mark and Dayna Blair

Our Mission
Pioneers - 10123 William Carey Drive - Orlando, FL 32832 – USA www.pioneers.org
(Checks should be made out to ‘Pioneers’ – with a separate note attached saying: ‘Mark and Dayna Blair, Beijing.’ Electronic transfers can be sent to: http://www.pioneers.org/Give/AutomatedGiving.aspx )


Our Blog        www.blairstan.blogspot.com

Skype  blairstan

Our Ministry
Beijing International Christian Fellowship www.bicf.org/zgc

Hear Mark’s sermons at: http://bicf.org/english-service
BICF Sermon App for Apple or Android: www.bicf.org/app (ZGC sermon tab)

Mark preached recently at Haidian Christian Church and his sermon is on video: http://english.hdchurch.org/html/news/2015/0301/516.html








No comments: