Good Day From Bolivia,
What a great time we have had these last couple of months. They have been slammed full of work and ministry and they have been great!
Due to the local political situation, we have been trying to prepare our first church to be on its own. We are planning to have to leave for a furlough later in the year and are doing our best to prepare the people and the church. We now have people that help clean the church and some that are helping with the offering. We also had a family from another good church that just moved to the area of our church. The husband has been trained in Bible college, taught Sunday School for years and led children’s ministry. His former church is too far to try and go every week, so he has decided to come and help our church. This will be great for this church and for Pastor Francisco with our pending departure.
Our second church had a special evangelistic meeting at the beginning of July. We had several new visitors come for it. Several of them made professions of faith. One of these was a lady that we have been witnessing to for a long time. We are now praying and continuing to work with her husband. We were also able to have our first baptism there. We had several to baptize but due to the cold weather we offered to suspend it. All agreed except one that wanted to go ahead and be baptized anyway.
We are also excited to mention that we passed the 100,000 mark for printing scripture portions! Thanks to a ministry in the states that helps us in this, not only have we printed them, but they are all almost gone. I only have 200 left at our house and they already have a destination. Please help us pray, we have a big open door to be able to ship thousands in at a time. We are still working to figure out how to make this work.
We had a supporting church come for a mission trip. We were allowed to host 9 people. We had a wonderful time with them, and it was a great encouragement to our family! Although they were not even in country a full week, we got a lot done. We had VBS in both of our churches. Between both churches we had around 90-100 children present. We also had a joint youth service, and a special “friends and family day”. They even ended up going with me to the funeral of a 7-year-old little boy that died. Plus, we were able to pass out around 1,300 scripture portions during their trip. It was a very busy week!!! One of the exciting things for us was during our “Friends and Family Day” at our first church. I had our people work to invite their friends and family. One family had their dad show up that we have been praying for. He is a strong Catholic. They have tried having people come witness to him the past, but he always refuses to even speak to them. We have worked and prayed for months and he finally showed up in church for the very first time! He didn’t get saved as far as we know but he did publicly acknowledge that he was lost. We will continue to work to try and win this man for the Lord.
Please continue praying for our churches and for our family. Our family is probably as excited now as ever with what God is doing here in Bolivia. We are looking forward to seeing what He has ahead for us too!
