The Marcum Family/Ministry News April 2015

Dear Friends & Family,

As we write to you this month, a lot is happening! Joy is preparing along with her team to spend the

next week in Minneapolis/St. Paul leading 24/7 worship & prayer over that region. We just found out

she will also be doing a special during the regional Onething conference at the end of the week, so be praying for her! Jessianna is back at her nanny job (a newborn and a 2-yr-old!), and shes still working her job at Target, so shes very busy! Jonathan just PASSED his HI-SET high-school equivalency test, and scored very high! And this weekend is our annual Passion for Jesus conference here at IHOPKC, so were hosting hundreds of visitors from all over the nation and the world! We continually thank the Lord for giving us the grace to serve Him here at this Global Missions Base in

this metro area of over 2 million people! Now to the news for this month thanks again for reading and keeping in touch! -Love, The Marcums

The Bigger Picture An overview of the ministry of Orphan Justice Center (by Melissa)

Most of the time I relate how things are going with Safe Families since that is what I spend most of my ministry time doing. This month, I want to update you on the bigger picture of our ministry family.

Orphan Justice Center (OJC) is the parent organization for Safe Families. OJC was birthed out of the Prayer Room and

the Father-heart of God for His broken and wounded fatherless ones. Safe Families for Children (SFFC) is just one aspect of how we partner with God to reach out and minister to these precious ones in our community. Other aspects of the work

of OJC include:

Orphan Justice League which helps facilitate the funding, prayer support and wrap-around care for families in our community that are adopting both locally and internationally.

We also have a team of people that visit bi-weekly at 2 of our local residential care facilities (orphanages) and minister the love of Jesus to the children there, ages 5-12. Our ministry team helps the kids with homework, does mentoring, and leads in singing and crafts. We have been given a real open door at one of these facilities to share Jesus and actually lead the children in God Encounters. These precious little ones are having real experiences with

Jesus and their lives and behaviors are radically changing!

One more exciting part of OJC is our new program of training for adoptive and foster families. This training includes ways to prepare their homes and hearts to receive these fatherless ones that come with a lot of baggage that

might be hard to deal with. It also trains in ways to help heal the hearts of the children from the trauma they have endured and the hearts of the parents from the pain of rejection and doubt that can occur when you deal with wounded children. We also encourage and facilitate family involvement in the House of Prayer, including prayer

sets designed for and even led by children, and some designed specifically for special-needs kids. We are seeing so many breakthroughs in the lives of children and their families! God is so faithful to meet these precious ones right where they are and draw them to Himself!

Please pray with us as we continue to build relationships within our team, as we reach out to our community with the love of

Jesus, and also as we look toward building the Orphan Justice Center Training Facility and Housing Community. We truly need the partnership of your prayers to see the work of the Lord prosper!

A Heart for Students at UMKC

We continue to have such a heart for the students at the campus of UMKC in downtown Kansas City. Our IHOPU discipleship group led the first hour of worship

& prayer at an outreach at the campus Student Union last Friday. They did an awesome job! UMKC has one of the largest international populations of any state campus in the nation, so as we worshiped & prayed the Lord was enlarging our

hearts for the nations. We really felt the presence of the Lord. I know He was touching many students who stopped & listened for awhile. Oh, and I had to laugh because we forgot the djembe drum, so as you can see in the picture, Tom is playing

(yes) a trash can!

Our IHOPU team leading worship, we were right by the coffee shop where lots of students gather. We even did rapid-fire prayer line for the campus it was powerful!

Jim & Melissa

Open Doors to Minister LIFE! (by Jim)

I had two awesome opportunities to be involved this past month in what the Lord is doing to encourage and strengthen the pro-life movement in Kansas

City. The first was at The Womens Clinic in Grandview as part of a group of men who met with the director of the clinic, Lise Strobel, to discuss the launch of a Mens Advocacy ministry. The clinic is currently staffed with trained advocates who meet with the women who come in to discuss their options & help them make a plan for their pregnancy (a plan for

LIFE!). But up until now there has been no one to meet with the MEN who often come in along with their wives/girlfriends. We want to change that!

The director, Lise, made us aware that Jackson County (KC metro) has the highest rate of both teen pregnancies and STDs in the state of Missouri. Last year, The Womens Clinic in Grandview served 820 patients who were abortion vulnerable young women facing an unplanned pregnancy. 91% chose LIFE for their preborn baby! That is wonderful, but it is sad that 72 women did not choose life. What can we do? One thing the Lord is doing is raising up male advocates who will meet

with the men who come into the clinics. Statistics show that 85% of women who choose abortion state that if the father of the baby were more involved, they WOULD HAVE CHOSEN DIFFERENTLY. That would have been potentially

over 60 children saved from death in the womb, and women saved from the trauma of abortion last year at the Grandview clinic, had there been a male advocate to meet with the men. Please pray with us that we can launch this ministry soon!

The other door the Lord opened this past month was at a meeting of pro-life leaders here in Kansas City. This was the weekly meeting of the leaders of KC Coalition for Life and I was asked to lead worship, and surprisingly was asked to also share the story of meeting President Obama in 2011 when I spoke the word to him - Remember the Unborn. I was encouraged to see the dedication these leaders have to mobilize the Life movement and ministries here in KC!

From the Murder of Innocent Abel.. Part 1 The Good News Bible records Jesus saying: As a result, the punishment for the murder of all innocent people will fall on you, from the murder of innocent Abel The first person born on earth, Cain, became a murderer who shed the innocent blood of a family member, his own brother. What if you could go stand on the very spot where this took place? What ancient principality is rooted there? What does this spot commemorate for the demonic kingdom? What was unleashed upon earth at the first shedding of innocent blood, and what is unleashed or strengthened at every subsequent shedding of innocent blood on earth?

Cains name means to get, acquire, obtain, possess, purchase, buy and is akin to the word for build, create. Even after God punishes Cain with bearing a curse for his murderous deed, what does Cain do except go and build a city in the land of Nod. His life was all about pursuing success, acquiring more it was his name. That is where the shedding of innocent blood finds its beginnings it comes from one who gloried in his own strength determined to get, to acquire, to build. To an extent the shedding of innocent blood that continues daily through abortion is still rooted here, in the desire to have, to acquire, to build, and to let nothing get in the way or inconvenience our plan. The vast majority of mothers & fathers who choose to abort their preborn child do so because the child would get in the way of whatever plans theyve made to have, acquire, and build in their lives. A recent study by the Guttmacher Institute (Planned Parenthood's special research affiliate) found that 92% of women who abort cite social or other reasons (such as: "not ready/wrong timing," "can't afford a baby now," "done with childbearing/have other people depending on me/children are grown," "child would interfere with education or career plans").

In some sense, every abortion done for social or other reasons is Cain rising up to kill Abel again. Its the stronger killing, eliminating the weaker (Abels name means breath or vapor), so that plans can go on. Its the possessor and planner being angry at not being accepted and celebrated for accomplishments, and getting rid of what is in the way. And its families destroying their own families. (Next month in part 2, well consider how the innocent blood of 41 MILLION children globally being killed in the womb each year may in part be what is fueling the spiritual machinations of the demonic kingdom).

FINAL WORD: Its a joy to be in touch again, thank you all for reading our newsletters. Please consider coming to see us, wed love it! Until next time, blessings to each of you, 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

International House of Prayer Kansas City, MO

The Womens Clinic of Grandview is strategically located next door to Planned Parenthood. I help

lead a prayer meeting here weekly each Monday.

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