Hello to you all,

I trust my e mail finds you doing well and walking in the blessings of the Lord. We have enjoyed a few weekends off, but they haven’t been weekends of sitting and doing nothing. We have been part of special family events, as well as special ministry times in our home churches. We’ve been blessed to have some great speakers at our home church, along with the regular staff of Pastors who have been bringing some great messages and a wonderful Word to encourage the congregation. As many of you know, our Pastor went to heaven back in October and Marni and I have really felt led to be at our home church more through this transition time. Being that we’ve been part of the House of Prayer for over 30 years, they’re all like family to us. They’ve also been very supportive of The Thurston ministry. This being said, it was our turn to show how supportive we are of them and let them know we are here for the Cokonougher Family. We’ve become even closer than we have been for so many years, and we’ve fallen in love with all of their grandkids, too.

We’ve been buys with our own family things going on, as well. We celebrated Mother’s Day with Marni. Our oldest son had a birthday. Our son Brnadon competed in a competition we attended, 4 of the grandkids are playing soccer, and our oldest grandson not only turned 18 years old this week, but he graduates High School this Sunday afternoon. We can’t believe how fast we got here, but we’re excited for Eric, Jr. and look forward to seeing what God has for him as he continues to move into a new season of life. God has blessed us with a wonderful family, and we’re grateful.

We will purposely be home two weekends in June to celebrate Father’s Day. We have never been home for Father’s Day. When our kids were traveling with us full time it didn’t matter where we were on any special day, because we were always together. This year we will purposely protect Father’s Day to allow Monty to have time with his kids, and for me to have time with my kids. We’ll also take time to honor Marni’s dad, Neil. Many of you have met Neil over the years, as he’s been known to get on the bus and ride with us from time to time over the years. Neil will be 80 years old in September. He’s not jumping on the bus as much these days, but he still helps behind the scenes in getting me picked up and delivered to the service garage to get the bus serviced, chasing after parts, or just about anything we ask of him. He still has a heart for ministry.

We’ll also reserve a weekend in June for our grandsons open house. We have family coming in from around the country, and we’ve decided that we want to enjoy the entire weekend with them. While we’re celebrating, Monty is going camping with his family for the weekend.

Here are the places you can come out and be with us in the month of June.

June 8th – Lakeshore House of Prayer/Holland, MI @ 10:30am
June 8th – Waypoint Church/Zeeland, MI @ 6pm
June 29th – Faithway Church/Bad Axe, MI @ 10am
June 29th – Living Word Worship Center/Cass City, MI @ 6pm

We have several events scheduled throughout the summer and fall, including our fall homecoming. There is information attached to this e mail that will tell you more about that.

We have a few dates open for 2025 and would love to come to your church and share our music and ministry. Be sure to reach out to us if we’re not already scheduled to be with you.

I’d like to make a special request and ask that you all be in agreement with us for some ministry needs to be met. We’ll never be a ministry that dumps all of our burdens on people. The Bible teaches us to cast our cares upon the Lord (1 Peter 5:7/Ps. 55:22). The Bible also teaches us that God will supply all of our needs (Phil. 4:19). He has proven Himself to be faithful time and time again.

The Bible also teaches us that we have more power if we’re in agreement when two or more agree on earth about anything you ask, it will be done for you by my Father in heaven (Mathew 18:19-20).

As a church requires a building for a meeting place for ministry, our traveling ministry requires a mode of transportation. Our bus, we call Tumbleweed, has been a great tool and piece of equipment, providing us a safe mode of travel, a bunk to sleep and rest in, a shower, a fridge and microwave to help prepare meals, and a place of rest when we’re in between scheduled services. However, Tumbleweed is a 1997 model bus that is now 28 years old. The ole’ girl has required some upkeep and we have spent around $15,000 over the past few months and over the rest of this year we could be looking at more than that to continue with keeping up on general maintenance and repairs, along with a much needed paint job, due to flaking clear coat and some oxidation build up on the skin.

This sounds like a great deal of money, and we know that it is. However, when you look at replacing this coach would cost over a quarter of a million dollars, and that this bus in still in great shape and is paid for, it’s worthy of continuing to stay on top of these maintenance things and continue running the bus.

Why I share this with you is because if we don’t share some of this, you would never know. You’d never know because we don’t burden our friends with these issues, and seldom do we ever talk about it. God has been so faithful to meet the needs of this ministry for the past 21 years. That won’t change.

If you all would be praying and agreeing with us for these needs to be met over the next few months, we’d certainly appreciate your prayer of agreement.

Until we see you again, I want to again say Thank You for your friendship, kindness and the prayers you continue to show to this ministry. We’re grateful for you and look forward to seeing you sometime very soon. Be sure to be in church this Sunday, and be sure to reach out to someone with a word of encouragement. You can be a real blessing to someone today.

God bless.

Dave Thurston
The Thurstons