July 2020 Prayer Letter
We hope this letter finds you doing well and in good health. Our family is still healthy, not having had any sickness so far during this pandemic and we are thankful for that.
Bolivia continues to be locked down due to Covid-19. There are only a few repatriation flights coming in and out. Travel between states is also still not allowed. Within this last week, the president and several in her Cabinet have tested positive for the virus. In the last month, the virus has hit several of our local churches. We know several people who are suffering. In particular, one of the pastors had 16 of his family members sick and 5 of them in need of hospital care. The problem is that most of the hospitals are full and not allowing new patients. As of this writing, our city has started opening up a little after 4-5 months of full quarantine. Last week, adults were allowed out more and permited to drive every other day. Next week, we have heard that we will be able to drive any day, but there are still many other restrictions still in place.
Our new police ministry is still going very well. It is going so well that we are struggling to keep up and are doing our best to get some of the local pastors to take charge. The officers are responding much better than I ever would have imagined. We are going several times a week to pray with multiple districts. District 2 has been especially interesting to me. When we first contacted this district, the Major was very closed. He asked about our affiliation. I told him we were Baptists, and he sternly reminded me they were mostly Catholic. It was his way of letting me know that he didn’t want me there, but he allowed me to come anyway because we were giving necessary supplies to his officers. As normal, we thanked the officers for their service and we prayed with them. Then we gave them the items we brought for them. As we left, this same Major thanked me for encouraging his officers and asked me if I could return every week! It was amazing to see the love of God softening his heart.
We have had the opportunity to continue feeding 200 needy families weekly over the last 2-3 months. This is slowly decreasing but God has provided for the need each week and for that we are thankful. We are also thankful to our home church for fascilitating this for us. They have been providing food for some 13,000 families around the world! Without them, our outreach would not have been possible.
We would ask that you help us pray about something. We are excited that, as of the end of June, we have a container full of scripture on the way! We will have about 400,000 scripture portions and over one million gospel tracts! Would you help us pray about the logistics of getting the container into the country? We believe we have everything in order but would appreciate your prayers. Several ministries have helped make this possible but I would like to mention two of them specifically. One is the publishing ministry from our home church. The other is HELP Missions from Evansville, Indiana. Between these two ministries, this container has been packed, and its shipment coordinated at no cost to us. We are thankful for co-laborers in the ministry.
Lastly, we want to thank you, our supporters. We have heard of many missionaries losing support during this pandemic. We heard of one family that lost half of their support! This is tragic! However, we are very thankful that we have not seen any decline in our support. In fact, our support has been higher than normal. It has been a great comfort to our family to have you by our side and continuing for the Lord. We know many of you sacrifice in order to continue supporting missions. I know of one supporting pastor who declined his salary so that the church could continue supporting their missionaries. This is humbling to us. Thank you all for being there for us and for the ministry here in Bolivia.
