2023 Ministry Update and Life Update

 

Unite Ministry and Brandon Nimz Newsletter

Hello everyone! I know it's been a very long time, but I am writing a newsletter to update you a bit on Tella and my life and on the status of Unite Ministry and my personal work as an in-state missionary at the request of several people who do still keep up with our latest happenings. Though much of what occurs with Unite and in my personal ministry as an in-state missionary is still similar to what it was in past, we will still bring you up to speed there. The bulk of the changes that we want to let you know about are in our personal lives.

Regarding Unite happenings, we continue to be the nonprofit responsible for distributing federal government commodities (food) regionally from Hays to approximately 30 food banks in our section of the state. We also locally give out commodities to families and individuals who meet the income guidelines. In addition to this food distribution, we still run the Unite Free Store inside The Gamers Guild at 200 E 8^th Street in Hays, KS. The free store has expanded in size and shelving from what it was even just a few months ago, although we continue to have times where we are full of donations or where the shelves are totally empty depending on how gifts and utilization occur.

For those who don't know about the Free Store, it is a fairly simple concept. We let anyone donate, take, or trade items from the free store regardless of income. There is no checkout or register—people simply take things, leave things, or trade with items on the shelves. This lets the community help itself and is a shadow of the image presented in Acts when the early church shared everything they owned. It also protects the pride of individuals who would not willingly take a handout but who would trade items they don't need for items that they do need. Though we never know what we will stock as it is solely community members donating or trading things that fills the shelves, we typically prefer to receive food items and items that homeless or poor individuals would find useful (things like can openers, microwaves, shoes, backpacks, toothbrushes, personal care or laundry care items, etc.). We tend to prefer people not donate regular clothes as there are other ministries in our area who are better equipped and who are more geared towards that, though we DO like seeing incoming clothes that could be useful to someone who is homeless or to large families (like coats or gloves in the winter, quality shoes any time of year, and baby or infant clothing).

Beyond Unite's more program or project-oriented ministry work, I personally do still meet with college students and individuals in need as situations or desires for conversations arise. Lately this has most frequently involved college students wanting to discuss faith matters and life issues or individuals who just got out of jail or off of parole. Along with these meetings, I frequently end up working with other aid agencies or individuals to help people in rougher circumstances find support.

As a simple example, I recently went to Louisiana to teach an Aikido seminar (for those who don't know, that's a self-defensive Japanese martial art that tries to protect not just oneself, but also the person attacking oneself; since it has a pretty strong love your enemy idea, it often leads to great ministry interactions). The day before I left, a man came into the free store needing help. He had walked to Hays from Toulon (which is a fair distance considering that it was around freezing before taking the wind chill into account and this fellow did not have appropriate clothes on to be outside). He had been kicked out of his living arrangements due to accurately reporting to his parole officer that another person on parole had moved in (and he wasn't allowed to live with someone else on parole, as is typically the case). He got off parole the very next day, but until he was off parole the Salina Rescue Mission would not take him and there was no way to get him a room because First Call for Help had already assisted him once in the past year. After talking to his parole officer and praying and thinking about it, we ended up getting him a room for the night along with some minutes for his phone so he could communicate with several people who needed to know he was leaving the county. The parole officer said he was off parole at midnight, I left at 4AM the next day to go to Louisiana, and Salina Rescue Mission was on the way. I called and confirmed that they'd receive us at 5:30AM as they sometimes don't open until a little later, and they were willing to open the door for us the next day. Just like that, we were able to get him shelter for the night and to the rescue mission the next day.

Later in the week, I received a call from him that he needed some medical and legal papers from the house he had been staying in. Legally the individuals should not have held his items, but they were refusing to send them on or to let a representative of his pick them up. I told him I'd let his parole officer handle the part of getting the items as the officer had volunteered to, and that I could then find someone to get the items to him. Thankfully, a local who works in Wichita frequently was able to run the items to him later that week when we obtained them. After that, the individual was able to get a job and move on to a stable living environment, which is gratifying to see (people we help don't always end up in better situations long-term, depending on what got them there in the first place).

Besides this type of aid work and meeting one on one with college students, I do still try to work with and build partnerships with churches and aid agencies in our area. As part of that, I have been the President and Vice President of the Ellis County Ministerial Alliance since just before COVID. In that capacity, I've been fairly active with a variety of ECMA projects and with re-engineering the ECMA to help it better serve the community and to involve more pastors and ministry workers. This summer I am officially on my way out of that position and drop down to just being a member, but I will still be wrapping up some projects on my way out. To keep the newsletter brief, I won't go into many details, but if any of you are curious about the ECMA projects I worked on OR if any of you want to join the ECMA, let me know (we are looking for a volunteer in the area to be the treasurer, and this position does not require a person to be a regular member/ministering individual in Ellis County).

Beyond this, I am beginning to carve out small amounts of time in my schedule to write. It's been impressed upon me to 'let them know' what God has been doing in my life and to share some of what He has helped me learn over the years (mostly things I have extremely repeated conversations about with the people I end up meeting with). I also feel I am likely supposed to start developing an App at some point soon to help greatly improve the efficiency of aid agency coordination in our area; if it works well, it could easily be expanded out to help other areas, as well. I don't feel led to do the programming or technical portions, but I do believe I can seek funding and seek coders to help make this fairly simple idea a reality.

While that wraps up most of the latest ministry happenings, the biggest change in my and Tella's personal lives has been the birth of our son, Simon. He is a joy beyond words, and we love him dearly. He is now a little over one year and two months old, and he is running around, climbing things, and joyfully babbling (and occasionally using some small words, too). He is always seeking to share his experiences with us, and both of us dearly love doing so with him. As those of you with kids know, this has been a huge life change, but I had 9 months of warning and have been progressively decreasing the amount and types of work that I do (including closing my lifeguarding and aquatics training company) to focus in on just what's important in ministry and to maximize time with Simon and Tella.

In addition, Tella and I are expecting identical twin girls in November. While this is deeply exciting, it has also been a harrowing experience as one of the babies is in excellent shape but the other appears to be in fairly severe trouble. The type of trouble has changed several times over the last four weeks as doctors get a better handle on it. First, they thought she might have a cystic hygroma, which is a 10% survival rate. Two weeks and a bunch of prayer later, they confirmed that she does not. They then told us they think she has Ectopia Cordis, which is a different 10% survival rate. Two weeks and a bunch of prayer later, they told us she does not. They did say that they are now fairly confident that she has limb body wall complex (which looked like Ectopia Cordis on the first Ultrasounds), which is almost universally terminal. This has been very hard to work through for us, and the statistics and options are also fairly challenging to consider. If it is limb body wall complex (and the doctors are much more confident this time), the number of global survivors can be counted on one or two hands from what I've been able to find. There is a website called Oakley's miracle that details one such survivor, but there are entire networks of support groups for women who have their babies stillborn or who have them survive a few hours and then hold them while they pass. The number of survivors are low enough that the doctors don't give a percentage chance of survival—they just call it terminal, period. This is additionally complicated since we have identical twins who therefore share a placenta and blood supply. If Baby A (the one with the suspected disorder) dies in utero, which happens 40% of the time, there's a 30% chance that the death in utero will cause kidney or brain damage that can even be terminal to our perfectly healthy Baby B. The doctors are therefore urging us to consider a procedure that burns the umbilical cord of Baby A whose survival odds are essentially nonexistent in their minds, effectively causing her to die, to protect Baby B. We are currently unwilling to deeply consider this procedure, but if they detect signs of Baby A actively and unavoidably dying, we have to keep in in mind. There are very few facilities that can do this procedure. Limb Body Wall Complex has so few survivors that most hospitals will also not intervene the other direction to attempt to save the babies once they are born. The only hospital that seems able to do both paths is Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, which our doctors have referred us to and sent records to. They are willing to do a diagnosis that is much higher level and to go either route, but even the initial evaluation is likely between $15,000-$20,000 per twin. While we are members of Christian Healthcare Ministries, it is a cost sharing program after the expenses are billed, and it is not clear if they will do some of these procedures without payment up front. We are currently working out those details and applying for Kansas Medicaid. Since our family size is considered 5 now by Medicaid, it is likely we will qualify, though not guaranteed. Through all of this, we still have our normal lives to lead, relationships to participate in, and a beautiful baby boy to raise, so please keep all five of us in your prayers. It is a lot.

I want to thank all of you who took the time to read this, to thank those of you who have financially supported us in any way over the years, and to thank those who have been praying for and with us. We sincerely appreciate being able to go on this journey along with you as we all seek to be part of the advancing Kingdom of Heaven that has been among us since the time of Christ. If you want us to pray for you or if you ever want to talk about how God is working in your lives or in our lives, feel free to reach out to me at Brandon.Nimz@gmail.com. Thanks again, and may God help us see the opportunities that are in front of us to be used by Him to spread joy, love, and hope to those around us and to ourselves both today and in the days to come.