Dr. John (Jack) and Natalie Holstead, Retired
Casa Robles
6390 Oak Avenue
Temple City, CA 91780

Phone:  (626) 447-6467
Email:  jnholstead@charter.net

Jack - May 31
Natalie - March 11
Anniversary - August 18, 1951
Jack and Natalie celebrated their 60th anniversary August 18, 2011! 

September 10th, 2011:

Dear friends,

Just a short note to thank you for your prayers for Natalie.  She still has several medical issues and one is her poor kidneys.  She needs your continued prayers.

Now we praise the Lord because she was able to leave the nursing home and come home.  Yesterday I picked her up and she was ready to go!  She will have continued physical therapy at home with a nurse coming three times a week.

I thought you would like to know of her wonderful improvement.  The Lord does answer prayer.

Jack

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August13th, 2011:

This is the latest update on Natalie's situation.

I have been on the go and running.  Natalie was discharged from the hospital to a nursing home this past Thursday.

She cannot walk, needs a wheelchair.  She can't feed herself.  Her mind is rather confused.  She did have a very high amount of calcium in her blood.  This causes a lot of it.  Hopefully she will return to normal.  That is our prayer.  It is the most difficult thing in my life to deal with.  Natalie and I have been together for 65 years.  We and the family are coping and the grace of God is our support.  Your prayers mean so much.

Your olde friend,

Jack

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November 11th, 2010:

Seriously, Natalie and I are both doing well. I speak this Sunday at the Altadena Church of the Nazarene not far from us. Then December 5th I preach in Chinese at our Chinese Church at First Church Pasadena. We do pray for a lot of folk too. This month I lead the singing at our Casa Robles weekly Thursday Prayer Meeting. We take every opportunity to encourage our fellow seniors and friends via e-mail.

Our roses around our house (over twenty bushes) have over one hundred blooms. I have seven large pomolos growing in our back yard tree. They will be ripe in another week.We just put in a new water pump for our back yard waterfall and pool. We set our own pace and it is great. Ha.

Appreciate your keeping in touch and we have so much to praise the Lord for. Give our love to olde Canada Central.

Your "golden oldie" missionary friends,

Jack and Natalie 

On L.I.N.K.S. Ministry:

I am not sure how old the LINKS program is! Back when Mary Scott was the General Director of NWMS it was referred to as Box Work. Kansas City would request that we be specific and name brand names of the things that we needed. We were overwhelmed at the response! Each year we would receive clothes and shoes for our children. A lot of things were not available in Taiwan in those days. Natalie would receive beautiful table cloths, a few of which we still have. Many of the local churches would write personal notes and letters and send cards on our birthdays and anniversaries. You have no idea how that encouraged us!

We remember so well at Christmas time when we had the gifts from the home churches all wrapped and under the Christmas tree. We would tell our children that these gifts were from our family of Nazarenes back home.

Those were all gestures of sacrifice and love for Missionaries. In turn, we would respond to the churches with personal notes, pictures and put them on our regular missionary prayer letters. I believe we were bonding in a unique way with these dear folk who went out of their way to send us gifts of love. We felt as though we were in it together - this gigantic task of World Evangelism.

In the nearly 50 years that we have been affiliated with World Mission the Box Work program and the succeeding LINKS program. This has tied us closer to the home churches. When furlough came around and we visited the churches we would meet those wonderful Nazarenes who shared and cared for their missionaries. We are ever in debt to the faithful Nazarenes, pastors and local churches who supported their representatives serving in foreign lands.

It just highlighted the fact that we were in this task of global outreach together. We were part of the family and being remembered with cards and cash gifts and other items also meant the home church was praying for us as well as the mission fields. LINKS affords the average Nazarene an opportunity to show real love and care for real people called missionaries.

Natalie and I are coming to the end! We only hope and pray that our Zion will not, by neglect and insensitivity, phase out the Links program. There is a great family of missionaries not only depending on the home church but desperately needing the personal touch. LINKS invigorates and energizes the faith and labours of the missionaries!

THANK YOU CANADA CENTRAL NAZARENES FOR YOUR FAITHFULNESS IN THIS AREA OF SERVICE. WE TRULY ARE FOREVER INDEBTED TO YOU.

Your "golden oldie" missionaries,

Jack and Natalie Holstead